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THE SECRET
DOCTRINE.
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HELENA PETROVNA
BLAVATSKY
1831-1891
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THE SECRET
DOCTRINE:
THE SYNTHESIS
OF
SCIENCE,
RELIGION, AND PHILOSOPHY.
BY
H. P. BLAVATSKY,
AUTHOR OF "
"There is
no Religion higher than Truth."
VOL. I. --
COSMOGENESIS.
THE THEOSOPHICAL
PUBLISHING COMPANY, LIMITED.
7, Duke Street,
Adelphi, W.C.
WILLIAM Q.
JUDGE,
117, Nassau
Street, New York.
THE MANAGER OF
THE THEOSOPHIST,
Adyar, Madras.
---
1888.
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"Entered
according to Act of Congress in the year 1888, by H. P. Blavatsky,
in the Office of
the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C."
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This Work
I Dedicate to
all True Theosophists,
In every
Country,
And of every
Race,
For they called
it forth, and for them it was recorded.
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PREFACE.
THE Author -- the
writer, rather -- feels it necessary to apologise for the long delay which has
occurred in the appearance of this work. It has been occasioned by ill-health
and the magnitude of the undertaking. Even the two volumes now issued do not
complete the scheme, and these do not treat exhaustively of the subjects dealt
with in them. A large quantity of material has already been prepared, dealing
with the history of occultism as contained in the lives of the great Adepts of
the Aryan Race, and showing the bearing of occult philosophy upon the conduct
of life, as it is and as it ought to be. Should the present volumes meet with a
favourable reception, no effort will be spared to carry out the scheme of the
work in its entirety. The third volume is entirely ready; the fourth almost so.
This scheme, it
must be added, was not in contemplation when the preparation of the work was
first announced. As originally announced, it was intended that the "Secret
Doctrine" should be an amended and enlarged version of "Isis Unveiled."
It was, however, soon found that the explanations which could be added to those
already put before the world in the last-named and other works dealing with
esoteric science, were such as to require a different method of treatment: and
consequently the present volumes do not contain, in all, twenty pages extracted
from "Isis Unveiled."
The author does
not feel it necessary to ask the indulgence of her readers and critics for the
many defects of literary style, and the imperfect English which may be found in
these pages. She is a foreigner, and her knowledge of the language was acquired
late in life. The English tongue is employed because it offers the most
widely-diffused medium for conveying the truths which it had become her duty to
place before the world.
These truths are
in no sense put forward as a revelation; nor does the author claim the position
of a revealer of mystic lore, now made public for the first time in the world's
history. For what is contained in this work is to be found scattered throughout
thousands of volumes embodying the scriptures of the great Asiatic and early
European religions, hidden under glyph and symbol, and hitherto left unnoticed
because of this veil. What is now attempted is to gather the oldest tenets
together and to make of them one harmonious and unbroken whole. The sole
advantage which the writer has over her predecessors, is that she need not
resort to personal speculations and theories. For this work is a partial
statement of what she herself has been taught by more advanced students,
supplemented, in a few details only, by the results of her
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own study and observation.
The publication of many of the facts herein stated has been rendered necessary
by the wild and fanciful speculations in which many Theosophists and students
of mysticism have indulged, during the last few years, in their endeavour to,
as they imagined, work out a complete system of thought from the few facts
previously communicated to them.
It is needless
to explain that this book is not the Secret Doctrine in its entirety, but a
select number of fragments of its fundamental tenets, special attention being
paid to some facts which have been seized upon by various writers, and
distorted out of all resemblance to the truth.
But it is
perhaps desirable to state unequivocally that the teachings, however
fragmentary and incomplete, contained in these volumes, belong neither to the
Hindu, the Zoroastrian, the Chaldean, nor the Egyptian religion, neither to
Buddhism, Islam, Judaism nor Christianity exclusively. The Secret Doctrine is
the essence of all these. Sprung from it in their origins, the various
religious schemes are now made to merge back into their original element, out
of which every mystery and dogma has grown, developed, and become materialised.
It is more than
probable that the book will be regarded by a large section of the public as a romance
of the wildest kind; for who has ever even heard of the book of Dzyan?
The writer,
therefore, is fully prepared to take all the responsibility for what is
contained in this work, and even to face the charge of having invented the
whole of it. That it has many shortcomings she is fully aware; all that she
claims for it is that, romantic as it may seem to many, its logical coherence
and consistency entitle this new Genesis to rank, at any rate, on a level with
the "working hypotheses" so freely accepted by modern science.
Further, it claims consideration, not by reason of any appeal to dogmatic
authority, but because it closely adheres to Nature, and follows the laws of
uniformity and analogy.
The aim of this
work may be thus stated: to show that Nature is not "a fortuitous
concurrence of atoms," and to assign to man his rightful place in the
scheme of the Universe; to rescue from degradation the archaic truths which are
the basis of all religions; and to uncover, to some extent, the fundamental
unity from which they all spring; finally, to show that the occult side of
Nature has never been approached by the Science of modern civilization.
If this is in
any degree accomplished, the writer is content. It is written in the service of
humanity, and by humanity and the future generations it must be judged. Its
author recognises no inferior court of appeal. Abuse she is accustomed to;
calumny she is daily acquainted with; at slander she smiles in silent contempt.
De minimis non
curat lex.
H.P.B.
London, October,
1888.
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TABLE OF
CONTENTS.
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PAGE.
INTRODUCTION ...
xvii.
The Need of such
a Book ... xix.
The Antiquity of
Documents and MSS. ... xxiii.
What the Book is
intended to do ... xxviii.
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VOLUME FIRST.
COSMOGENESIS.
PROEM ... 1
The Oldest MSS.
in the world and its Symbolism ... 2
The One Life,
Active and Passive ... 4
The Secret
Doctrine -- Pantheism -- Atheism ... 6
"Space"
in all Religions and in Occultism ... 9
Seven Cosmic
Elements -- Seven Races of Mankind ... 12
The Three
Postulates of the Secret Doctrine ... 14
Description of
the Stanzas from the Book of Dzyan ... 20
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BOOK I. -- PART
I.
COSMIC
EVOLUTION.
SEVEN STANZAS
FROM THE BOOK OF DZYAN ... 27
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The Seven
Eternities ... 36
"Time"
... 37
The Universal
Mind and the Dhyan Chohans ... 38
Nidana and Maya:
The Causes of Misery ... 39
The Great Breath
... 43
Being and
Non-Being ... 45
The Eye of
Dangma ... 47
Alaya, the
Universal Soul ... 49
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PAGE.
STANZA II. --
THE IDEA OF DIFFERENTIATION ... 53
The Absolute
knows Itself not ... 55
The Germ of Life
was not yet ... 57
The Universe was
still concealed in the Divine Thought ... 61
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STANZA III. --
THE AWAKENING OF KOSMOS ... 62
The Great
Vibration ... 63
Nature's Symbols
... 65
The Power of
Numbers ... 67
The Logoi and
the Dragon ... 73
The Astral Light
... 75
Primeval
Radiations from Unity ... 79
The Web of Being
... 83
Conscious Electricity:
Fohat ... 85
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STANZA IV. --
THE SEPTENARY HIERARCHIES ... 86
The Sons of the
Fire ... 86
The Vehicle of
the Universe -- the Dhyan Chohans ... 89
The Army of the
Voice ... 93
Speech and Mind
... 95
The Ogdoad and
the Heptad ... 99
The Stellar
"Sons of Light" ... 103
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STANZA V. --
FOHAT: THE CHILD OF THE SEPTENARY HIERARCHIES ... 106
The Fiery
Whirlwind and the Primordial Seven ... 106
They Produce
Fohat ... 108
The Correlation
of the "Gods" ... 113
Evolution of the
"Principles" of Nature ... 119
The Mystery of
the Fire ... 121
The Secret of
the Elements ... 123
The Square of
the Tabernacle ... 125
The Planetary
Spirits and the Lipika ... 129
The Ring
"Pass Not" ... 130
The Sidereal
Book of Life ... 131
The Soul's
Pilgrimage and its "Rest" ... 134
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STANZA VI. --
OUR WORLD, ITS GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT ... 136
The Logos ...
136
Mystery of the
Female Logos ... 137
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PAGE.
The Seven Layu
Centres ... 138
The
"Elementary Germs" ... 139
The Evolution of
the Elements ... 140
The Building of
the Worlds ... 145
A Neutral Centre
... 147
"Dead"
Planets -- The Moon ... 149
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THEOSOPHICAL
MISCONCEPTIONS ... 152
The Planetary
Divisions and the Human Principles ... 153
The Moon ... 155
Transmigrations
of the Ego ... 159
The Septenary
Chain ... 161
Relation of the
other Planets to the Earth ... 163
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EXPLANATIONS
CONCERNING THE GLOBES AND THE MONADS ... 170
The Lunar Chain
and the Earth Chain ... 172
The Earth, the
Child of the Moon ... 173
Classification
of the Monads ... 175
The Monad
Defined ... 177
The Lunar Monads
-- the Pitris ... 179
A Triple
Evolution in Nature ... 181
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STANZA VI. --
CONTINUED ... 191
"Creation"
in the Fourth Round ... 191
The
"Curse," "Sin," and "War" ... 193
The Struggle for
Life and the Birth of the Worlds ... 202
The Adepts and
the Sacred
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STANZA VII. --
THE PARENTS OF MAN ON EARTH ... 213
Divisions of the
Hierarchies ... 214
Correlations of
Beings ... 223
What incarnates
in Animal Man ... 233
Formation of
Man: the Thinker ... 238
Occult and
Kabalistic Pneumatics ... 243
Akasa and Ether
... 257
The Invisible
"Lives" ... 259
Occult Vital
Chemistry and Bacteriology ... 261
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PAGE.
The Watcher and
his Shadow ... 265
Earth peopled by
the Shadows of the Gods ... 267
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SUMMING UP ...
269
The pith and
marrow of the Secret Doctrine ... 273
Hermes in
Christian Garb ... 285
Some Occult
Aphorisms ... 289
The Seven Powers
of Nature ... 293
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BOOK
THE EVOLUTION OF
SYMBOLISM IN ITS APPROXIMATE ORDER.
§§
I. SYMBOLISM AND
IDEOGRAPHS ... 303
Emblem and
Symbol differ ... 305
Magic Potency of
Sound ... 307
Mystery Language
... 309
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II. THE MYSTERY
LANGUAGE AND ITS KEYS ... 310
The Jews and
their System ... 313
Moses copied
from Sargon ... 319
Identity of
Ancient Symbols ... 323
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III. PRIMORDIAL
SUBSTANCE AND DIVINE THOUGHT ... 325
Divine Thought,
or Cineritious Matter? ... 327
Ether and
Intelligence ... 330
The Seven
Prakritis ... 335
The Mystic Fire
... 339
One Tree of
Knowledge ... 341
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IV. CHAOS --
THEOS -- KOSMOS ... 342
The
The Birth of
Mind ... 345
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V. THE HIDDEN
DEITY, ITS SYMBOLS AND GLYPHS ... 349
The Gnostic Idea
... 351
International
Correlation of Gods ... 355
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§§ PAGE.
VI. THE MUNDANE
EGG ... 359
Egg-born Logoi
... 363
The Winged Globe
... 365
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VII. THE DAYS
AND NIGHTS OF BRAHMA ... 368
Human Gods and
Divine Men ... 369
The Rebirth of
Gods ... 371
The Puranic
Prophecy ... 377
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VIII. THE LOTUS
AS A UNIVERSAL SYMBOL ... 379
Exoteric and
Esoteric ... 381
The Purity of
early Phallicism ... 383
The Egyptian
Lotus ... 385
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IX. DEUS LUNUS
... 386
A Glance at the
Lunar Myth ... 387
A Key-note to
the Moon ... 389
Copies and
Originals... 393
The Moon
Bi-sexual ... 397
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X. TREE AND
SERPENT AND CROCODILE WORSHIP ... 403
Degeneration of
the Symbol ... 405
The Seven-headed
Dragons ... 407
Dragon and
Crocodile ... 409
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XI. DEMON EST
DEUS INVERSUS ... 411
Death is Life
... 413
The Fall of the
Angels ... 418
Transformation
of the Legend ... 421
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XII. THE
THEOGONY OF THE CREATIVE GODS ... 424
The Point within
the Circle ... 426
The Logos or
Verbum ... 429
The Factors of
Creation ... 432
Identity of the
Hierarchies in all Religions ... 438
Difference
between the Aryan and Semitic Systems ... 444
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§§ PAGE.
XIII. THE SEVEN
CREATIONS ... 445
The Gnostic and
the Hindu Versions ... 449
The Seven
Puranic "Creations" ... 450
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XIV. THE FOUR
ELEMENTS. ... 460
The
"Gods" and the "Elements" ... 463
The Language of
the Elements ... 464
Pagan and
Christian Worship of the Elements ... 467
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XV. ON
KWAN-SHI-YIN AND KWAN-YIN ... 470
Kwan-Shi-Yin and
Phallicism ... 471
The Real Meaning
... 472
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BOOK
SCIENCE AND THE
SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED.
§§
I. REASONS FOR
THESE ADDENDA ... 477
Occultism versus
Materialism ... 479
The Sabbath of
the Mystic ... 481
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II. MODERN
PHYSICISTS ARE PLAYING AT BLIND MAN'S BUFF ... 482
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III. AN LUMEN
SIT CORPUS NEC NON? ... 483
The Hypothetical
Ether ... 485
Scientific
Theories of its Constitution ... 489
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IV. IS
GRAVITATION A LAW? ... 490
Intelligences or
Blind Forces? ... 493
The Cause of
Attraction ... 498
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§§ PAGE.
V. THE THEORIES
OF ROTATION SCIENCE ... 500
Conflicting
Hypotheses ... 502
More Hypotheses
... 505
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VI. THE MASKS OF
SCIENCE ... 506
What are the
"Forces?" ... 508
The View of the
Occultists ... 510
Scientific and
Occult Theories on Heat ... 515
The Atoms of
Science ... 519
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VII. AN ATTACK
ON THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF FORCE BY A MAN OF SCIENCE ... 523
Ether and Atoms
... 527
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VIII. LIFE,
FORCE, OR GRAVITY? ... 529
Dr. Richardson
on Nervous Ether ... 531
The Senses and
their Action ... 535
Too much
"Life" may Kill ... 539
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IX. THE SOLAR
THEORY ... 540
The Primordial
Element ... 542
Elements and
Meta-Elements ... 546
The Tree of Life
and Being ... 549
Prof. Crookes on
the Elements ... 552
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X. THE COMING
FORCE ... 554
Mr. Keeley, an
Unconscious Occultist ... 557
Inter-Etheric
Waves ... 561
The Secrets of
Sound and Odour ... 565
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Xl. ON THE
ELEMENTS AND ATOMS ... 566
Metaphysical
Chemistry ... 569
What are the
Seven Planets? ... 575
The Cyclic Fall
of the Gods ... 577
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§§ PAGE.
XII. ANCIENT
THOUGHT IN MODERN DRESS ... 579
All-Potential
Unity ... 583
The
"Seventh" in Chemistry ... 585
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XIII. THE MODERN
NEBULAR THEORY ... 588
Forces are
Emanations ... 591
What is the
Nebula? ... 595
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XIV. FORCES --
MODES OF MOTION OR INTELLIGENCES? ... 601
The Vital
Principle ... 603
Occult and
Physical Science ... 605
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XV. GODS,
MONADS, AND ATOMS ... 610
The Gods of the
Ancients -- the Monads ... 613
The Monad and
the Duad ... 617
The Genesis of
the Elements ... 621
Hermes and
Huxley ... 625
The Teaching of
Leibnitz ... 627
The Monads
according to Occultism ... 632
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XVI. CYCLIC
EVOLUTION AND KARMA ... 634
Karmic Cycles
and Universal Ethics ... 637
Destiny and
Karma ... 639
Karma-Nemesis
... 643
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XVII. THE ZODIAC
AND ITS ANTIQUITY ... 647
The Jewish
Patriarchs and the Signs of the Zodiac ... 651
Zodiacal Cycles
... 656
Hindu Astronomy
... 661
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XVIII. SUMMARY
OF THE MUTUAL POSITION ... 668
Science
Confesses her Ignorance ... 669
Materialism is
leading
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N.B. -- The
Index and Glossary will be found at the close of Volume II.
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INTRODUCTORY.
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"Gently to
hear, kindly to judge."
-- SHAKESPEARE.
SINCE the
appearance of Theosophical literature in
Old truisms are
often the wisest. The human mind can hardly remain entirely free from bias, and
decisive opinions are often formed before a thorough examination of a subject
from all its aspects has been made. This is said with reference to the prevailing
double mistake (a) of limiting Theosophy to Buddhism: and (b) of confounding
the tenets of the religious philosophy preached by Gautama, the Buddha, with
the doctrines broadly outlined in "Esoteric Buddhism." Any thing more
erroneous than this could be hardly imagined. It has enabled our enemies to
find an effective weapon against theosophy; because, as an eminent Pali scholar
very pointedly expressed it, there was in the volume named "neither
esotericism nor Buddhism." The esoteric truths, presented in Mr. Sinnett's
work, had ceased to be esoteric from the moment they were made public; nor did
it contain the religion of Buddha, but simply a few tenets from a hitherto
hidden teaching which are now supplemented by many more, enlarged and explained
in the present volumes. But even the latter, though giving out many fundamental
tenets from the SECRET DOCTRINE of the East, raise but a small corner of the
dark veil. For no one, not even the greatest living adept, would be permitted
to, or could -- even if he would -- give out promiscuously, to a mocking,
unbelieving world, that which has been so effectually concealed from it for
long aeons and ages.
"Esoteric
Buddhism" was an excellent work with a very unfortunate
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title, though it
meant no more than does the title of this work, the "SECRET
DOCTRINE." It proved unfortunate, because people are always in the habit
of judging things by their appearance, rather than their meaning; and because
the error has now become so universal, that even most of the Fellows of the
Theosophical Society have fallen victims to the same misconception. From the
first, however, protests were raised by Brahmins and others against the title;
and, in justice to myself, I must add that "Esoteric Buddhism" was
presented to me as a completed volume, and that I was entirely unaware of the
manner in which the author intended to spell the word "Budh-ism."
This has to be
laid directly at the door of those who, having been the first to bring the
subject under public notice, neglected to point out the difference between
"Buddhism" -- the religious system of ethics preached by the Lord
Gautama, and named after his title of Buddha, "the Enlightened" --
and Budha, "Wisdom," or knowledge (Vidya), the faculty of cognizing,
from the Sanskrit root "Budh," to know. We theosophists of
This explanation
is absolutely necessary at the beginning of a work like this one. The
"Wisdom Religion" is the inheritance of all the nations, the world
over, though the statement was made in "Esoteric Buddhism" (Preface
to the original Edition) that "two years ago (i.e. 1883), neither I nor
any other European living, knew the alphabet of the Science, here for the first
time put into a scientific shape," etc. This error must have crept in
through inadvertence. For the present writer knew all that which is
"divulged" in "Esoteric Buddhism" -- and much more -- many
years before it became her duty (in 1880) to impart a small portion of the
Secret Doctrine to two European gentlemen, one of whom was the author of
"Esoteric Buddhism"; and surely the present writer has the undoubted,
though to her, rather equivocal, privilege of being a European, by birth and
education. Moreover, a considerable part of the philosophy
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expounded by Mr.
Sinnett was taught in America, even before Isis Unveiled was published, to two
Europeans and to my colleague, Colonel H. S. Olcott. Of the three teachers the
latter gentleman has had, the first was a Hungarian Initiate, the second an
Egyptian, the third a Hindu. As permitted, Colonel Olcott has given out some of
this teaching in various ways; if the other two have not, it has been simply
because they were not allowed: their time for public work having not yet come.
But for others it has, and the appearance of Mr. Sinnett's several interesting
books is a visible proof of the fact. It is above everything important to keep
in mind that no theosophical book acquires the least additional value from
pretended authority.
In etymology
Adi, and Adhi Budha, the one (or the First) and "Supreme Wisdom" is a
term used by Aryasanga in his Secret treatises, and now by all the mystic
Northern Buddhists. It is a Sanskrit term, and an appellation given by the
earliest Aryans to the Unknown deity; the word "Brahma" not being
found in the Vedas and the early works. It means the absolute Wisdom, and
"Adi-bhuta" is translated "the primeval uncreated cause of
all" by Fitzedward Hall. AEons of untold duration must have elapsed,
before the epithet of Buddha was so humanized, so to speak, as to allow of the
term being applied to mortals and finally appropriated to one whose
unparalleled virtues and knowledge caused him to receive the title of the
"Buddha of Wisdom unmoved." Bodha means the innate possession of
divine intellect or "understanding"; "Buddha," the
acquirement of it by personal efforts and merit; while Buddhi is the faculty of
cognizing the channel through which divine knowledge reaches the
"Ego," the discernment of good and evil, "divine
conscience" also; and "Spiritual Soul," which is the vehicle of
Atma. "When Buddhi absorbs our EGOtism (destroys it) with all its Vikaras,
Avalokiteshvara becomes manifested to us, and Nirvana, or Mukti, is
reached," "Mukti" being the same as Nirvana, i.e., freedom from
the trammels of "Maya" or illusion. "Bodhi" is likewise the
name of a particular state of trance condition, called Samadhi, during which
the subject reaches the culmination of spiritual knowledge.
Unwise are those
who, in their blind and, in our age, untimely hatred of Buddhism, and, by
re-action, of "Budhism," deny its esoteric teachings (which are those
also of the Brahmins), simply because the name
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suggests what to
them, as Monotheists, are noxious doctrines. Unwise is the correct term to use
in their case. For the Esoteric philosophy is alone calculated to withstand, in
this age of crass and illogical materialism, the repeated attacks on all and
everything man holds most dear and sacred, in his inner spiritual life. The
true philosopher, the student of the Esoteric Wisdom, entirely loses sight of
personalities, dogmatic beliefs and special religions. Moreover, Esoteric
philosophy reconciles all religions, strips every one of its outward, human
garments, and shows the root of each to be identical with that of every other
great religion. It proves the necessity of an absolute Divine Principle in
nature. It denies Deity no more than it does the Sun. Esoteric philosophy has
never rejected God in Nature, nor Deity as the absolute and abstract Ens. It
only refuses to accept any of the gods of the so-called monotheistic religions,
gods created by man in his own image and likeness, a blasphemous and sorry
caricature of the Ever Unknowable. Furthermore, the records we mean to place
before the reader embrace the esoteric tenets of the whole world since the
beginning of our humanity, and Buddhistic occultism occupies therein only its
legitimate place, and no more. Indeed, the secret portions of the
"Dan" or Jan-na"* ("Dhyan") of Gautama's metaphysics
-- grand as they appear to one unacquainted with the tenets of the Wisdom
Religion of antiquity -- are but a very small portion of the whole. The Hindu
Reformer limited his public teachings to the purely moral and physiological
aspect of the Wisdom Religion, to Ethics and MAN alone. Things "unseen and
incorporeal," the mystery of Being outside our terrestrial sphere, the
great Teacher left entirely untouched in his public lectures, reserving the
hidden Truths for a select circle of his Arhats. The latter received their
Initiation at the famous Saptaparna cave (the Sattapanni of Mahavansa) near
Time and human
imagination made short work of the purity and philo-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Dan, now
become in modern Chinese and Tibetan phonetics ch'an, is the general term for
the esoteric schools, and their literature. In the old books, the word Janna is
defined as "to reform one's self by meditation and knowledge," a
second inner birth. Hence Dzan, Djan phonetically, the "Book of
Dzyan."
** Mr. Beglor,
the chief engineer at Buddhagaya, and a distinguished archaeologist, was the
first, we believe, to discover it.
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sophy of these
teachings, once that they were transplanted from the secret and sacred circle
of the Arhats, during the course of their work of proselytism, into a soil less
prepared for metaphysical conceptions than
Thus the reader
is asked to bear in mind the very important difference between orthodox
Buddhism -- i.e., the public teachings of Gautama the Buddha, and his esoteric
Budhism. His Secret Doctrine, however, differed in no wise from that of the
initiated Brahmins of his day. The Buddha was a child of the Aryan soil; a born
Hindu, a Kshatrya and a disciple of the "twice born" (the initiated
Brahmins) or Dwijas. His teachings, therefore, could not be different from
their doctrines, for the whole Buddhist reform merely consisted in giving out a
portion of that which had been kept secret from every man outside of the
"enchanted" circle of Temple-Initiates and ascetics. Unable to teach
all that had been imparted to him -- owing to his pledges -- though he taught a
philosophy built upon the ground-work of the true esoteric knowledge, the
Buddha gave to the world only its outward material body and kept its soul for
his Elect. (See also Volume II.) Many Chinese scholars among Orientalists have
heard of the "Soul Doctrine." None seem to have understood its real
meaning and importance.
That doctrine
was preserved secretly -- too secretly, perhaps -- within the sanctuary. The
mystery that shrouded its chief dogma and aspirations -- Nirvana -- has so tried
and irritated the curiosity of those scholars who have studied it, that, unable
to solve it logically and satisfactorily by untying the Gordian knot, they cut
it through, by declaring that Nirvana meant absolute annihilation.
Toward the end
of the first quarter of this century, a distinct class of literature appeared
in the world, which became with every year more defined in its tendency. Being
based, soi-disant, on the scholarly researches of Sanskritists and Orientalists
in general, it was held scientific. Hindu, Egyptian, and other ancient
religions, myths, and emblems were made to yield anything the symbologist
wanted them to
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yield, thus
often giving out the rude outward form in place of the inner meaning. Works,
most remarkable for their ingenious deductions and speculations, in circulo
vicioso, foregone conclusions generally changing places with premisses as in
the syllogisms of more than one Sanskrit and Pali scholar, appeared rapidly in
succession, over-flooding the libraries with dissertations rather on phallic
and sexual worship than on real symbology, and each contradicting the other.
This is the true
reason, perhaps, why the outline of a few fundamental truths from the Secret
Doctrine of the Archaic ages is now permitted to see the light, after long
millenniums of the most profound silence and secrecy. I say "a few
truths," advisedly, because that which must remain unsaid could not be
contained in a hundred such volumes, nor could it be imparted to the present
generation of Sadducees. But, even the little that is now given is better than
complete silence upon those vital truths. The world of to-day, in its mad
career towards the unknown -- which it is too ready to confound with the
unknowable, whenever the problem eludes the grasp of the physicist -- is
rapidly progressing on the reverse, material plane of spirituality. It has now
become a vast arena -- a true valley of discord and of eternal strife -- a
necropolis, wherein lie buried the highest and the most holy aspirations of our
Spirit-Soul. That soul becomes with every new generation more paralyzed and
atrophied. The "amiable infidels and accomplished profligates" of
Society, spoken of by Greeley, care little for the revival of the dead sciences
of the past; but there is a fair minority of earnest students who are entitled
to learn the few truths that may be given to them now; and now much more than
ten years ago, when "Isis Unveiled," or even the later attempts to
explain the mysteries of esoteric science, were published.
One of the
greatest, and, withal, the most serious objection to the correctness and
reliability of the whole work will be the preliminary STANZAS: "How can
the statements contained in them be verified?" True, if a great portion of
the Sanskrit, Chinese, and Mongolian works quoted in the present volumes are
known to some Orientalists, the chief work -- that one from which the Stanzas
are given -- is not in the possession of European Libraries. The Book of Dzyan
(or "Dzan") is utterly unknown to our Philologists, or at any rate
was never heard of by them under its present name. This is, of course, a great
drawback
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to those who
follow the methods of research prescribed by official Science; but to the
students of Occultism, and to every genuine Occultist, this will be of little
moment. The main body of the Doctrines given is found scattered throughout
hundreds and thousands of Sanskrit MSS., some already translated -- disfigured
in their interpretations, as usual, -- others still awaiting their turn. Every
scholar, therefore, has an opportunity of verifying the statements herein made,
and of checking most of the quotations. A few new facts (new to the profane
Orientalist, only) and passages quoted from the Commentaries will be found
difficult to trace. Several of the teachings, also, have hitherto been
transmitted orally: yet even those are in every instance hinted at in the
almost countless volumes of Brahminical, Chinese and Tibetan temple-literature.
However it may
be, and whatsoever is in store for the writer through malevolent criticism, one
fact is quite certain. The members of several esoteric schools -- the seat of
which is beyond the Himalayas, and whose ramifications may be found in China,
Japan, India, Tibet, and even in Syria, besides South America -- claim to have
in their possession the sum total of sacred and philosophical works in MSS. and
type: all the works, in fact, that have ever been written, in whatever language
or characters, since the art of writing began; from the ideographic hieroglyphs
down to the alphabet of Cadmus and the Devanagari.
It has been
claimed in all ages that ever since the destruction of the Alexandrian Library
(see Isis Unveiled, Vol. II., p. 27), every work of a character that might have
led the profane to the ultimate discovery and comprehension of some of the
mysteries of the Secret Science, was, owing to the combined efforts of the
members of the Brotherhoods, diligently searched for. It is added, moreover, by
those who know, that once found, save three copies left and stored safely away,
such works were all destroyed. In
It is maintained,
furthermore, that every sacred book of that kind, whose text was not
sufficiently veiled in symbolism, or which had any
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Prof. Max
Muller shows that no bribes or threats of Akbar could extort from the Brahmans
the original text of the Veda; and boasts that European Orientalists have it
(Lecture on the "Science of Religion," p. 23). Whether
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direct
references to the ancient mysteries, after having been carefully copied in
cryptographic characters, such as to defy the art of the best and cleverest
palaeographer, was also destroyed to the last copy. During Akbar's reign, some
fanatical courtiers, displeased at the Emperor's sinful prying into the
religions of the infidels, themselves helped the Brahmans to conceal their MSS.
Such was Badaoni, who had an undisguised horror for Akbar's mania for
idolatrous religions.*
Moreover in all
the large and wealthy lamasaries, there are subterranean crypts and
cave-libraries, cut in the rock, whenever the gonpa and the lhakhang are
situated in the mountains. Beyond the Western Tsay-dam, in the solitary passes
of Kuen-lun** there are several such hiding places. Along the ridge of
Altyn-Toga, whose soil no European foot has ever trodden so far, there exists a
certain hamlet, lost in a deep gorge. It is a small cluster of houses, a hamlet
rather than a monastery, with a poor-looking temple in it, with one old lama, a
hermit, living near by to watch it. Pilgrims say that the subterranean
galleries and halls under it contain a collection of books, the number of
which, according to the accounts given, is too large to find room even in the
British Museum.***
All this is very
likely to provoke a smile of doubt. But then, before
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Badaoni wrote
in his Muntakhab at Tawarikh: "His Majesty relished inquiries into the
sects of these infidels (who cannot be counted, so numerous they are, and who
have no end of revealed books) . . . As they (the Sramana and Brahmins) surpass
other learned men in their treatises on morals, on physical and religious
sciences, and reach a high degree in their knowledge of the future, in
spiritual power, and human perfection, they brought proofs based on reason and
testimony, and inculcated their doctrines so firmly that no man could now raise
a doubt in his Majesty even if mountains were to crumble to dust, or the
heavens were to tear asunder." This work "was kept secret, and was
not published till the reign of Jahangir." (Ain i Akbari, translated by
Dr. Blochmann, p. 104, note.)
**
*** According to
the same tradition the now desolate regions of the waterless
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the reader
rejects the truthfulness of the reports, let him pause and reflect over the
following well known facts. The collective researches of the Orientalists, and
especially the labours of late years of the students of comparative Philology
and the Science of Religions have led them to ascertain as follows: An immense,
incalculable number of MSS., and even printed works known to have existed, are
now to be found no more. They have disappeared without leaving the slightest
trace behind them. Were they works of no importance they might, in the natural
course of time, have been left to perish, and their very names would have been
obliterated from human memory. But it is not so; for, as now ascertained, most
of them contained the true keys to works still extant, and entirely
incomprehensible, for the greater portion of their readers, without those
additional volumes of Commentaries and explanations. Such are, for instance,
the works of Lao-tse, the predecessor of Confucius.*
He is said to
have written 930 books on Ethics and religions, and seventy on magic, one thousand
in all. His great work, however, the heart of his doctrine, the
"Tao-te-King," or the sacred scriptures of the Taosse, has in it, as
Stanislas Julien shows, only "about 5,000 words" (Tao-te-King, p.
xxvii.), hardly a dozen of pages, yet Professor Max Muller finds that "the
text is unintelligible without commentaries, so that Mr. Julien had to consult
more than sixty commentators for the purpose of his translation," the
earliest going back as far as the year 163 B.C., not earlier, as we see. During
the four centuries and a half that preceded this earliest of the commentators
there was ample time to veil the true Lao-tse doctrine from all but his
initiated priests. The Japanese, among whom are now to be found the most
learned of the priests and followers of Lao-tse, simply laugh at the blunders
and hypotheses of the European Chinese scholars; and tradition affirms that the
commentaries to which our Western Sinologues have access are not the real
occult records, but intentional veils, and that the true commentaries, as well
as almost all the texts, have long since disappeared from the eyes of the
profane.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "If we
turn to China, we find that the religion of Confucius is founded on the Five
King and the Four Shu-books, in themselves of considerable extent and
surrounded by voluminous Commentaries, without which even the most learned
scholars would not venture to fathom the depth of their sacred canon."
(Lectures on the "Science of Religion," p. 185. Max Muller.) But they
have not fathomed it -- and this is the complaint of the Confucianists, as a
very learned member of that body, in
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If one turns to
the ancient literature of the Semitic religions, to the Chaldean Scriptures,
the elder sister and instructress, if not the fountain-head of the Mosaic Bible,
the basis and starting-point of Christianity, what do the scholars find? To
perpetuate the memory of the ancient religions of
These, however,
are almost valueless, even as a clue to the character of what has disappeared.
For they passed through the hands of his Reverence the Bishop of Caesarea --
that self-constituted censor and editor of the sacred records of other men's
religions -- and they doubtless bear to this day the mark of his eminently
veracious and trustworthy hand. For what is the history of this treatise on the
once grand religion of
Written in Greek
by Berosus, a priest of the temple of Belus, for Alexander the Great, from the
astronomical and chronological records preserved by the priests of that temple,
and covering a period of 200,000 years, it is now lost. In the first century
B.C. Alexander Polyhistor made a series of extracts from it -- also lost.
Eusebius used these extracts in writing his Chronicon (270-340 A.D.). The
points of resemblance -- almost of identity -- between the Jewish and the Chaldean
Scriptures,* made the latter most dangerous to Eusebius, in his role of
defender and champion of the new faith which had adopted the Jewish Scriptures,
and with them an absurd chronology. It is pretty certain that Eusebius did not
spare the Egyptian Synchronistic tables of Manetho -- so much so that Bunsen**
charges him with mutilating history most unscrupulously. And Socrates, a
historian of the fifth century, and Syncellus, vice-patriarch of Constantinople
(eighth century), both denounce him as the most daring and desperate forger.
Is it likely,
then, that he dealt more tenderly with the Chaldean records, which were already
menacing the new religion, so rashly accepted?
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Found out and proven
only now, through the discoveries made by George Smith (vide his "Chaldean
account of Genesis"), and which, thanks to this Armenian forger, have
misled all the civilized nations for over 1,500 years into accepting Jewish
derivations for direct Divine Revelation!
** Bunsen's
"
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So that, with the
exception of these more than doubtful fragments, the entire Chaldean sacred
literature has disappeared from the eyes of the profane as completely as the
lost Atlantis. A few facts that were contained in the Berosian History are
given in Part II. of Vol. II., and may throw a great light on the true origin
of the Fallen Angels, personified by Bel and the Dragon.
Turning now to
the oldest Aryan literature, the Rig-Veda, the student will find, following strictly
in this the data furnished by the said Orientalists themselves, that, although
the Rig-Veda contains only "about 10,580 verses, or 1,028 hymns," in
spite of the Brahmanas and the mass of glosses and commentaries, it is not
understood correctly to this day. Why is this so? Evidently because the
Brahmanas, "the scholastic and oldest treatises on the primitive
hymns," themselves require a key, which the Orientalists have failed to
secure.
What do the
scholars say of Buddhist literature? Have they got it in its completeness?
Assuredly not. Notwithstanding the 325 volumes of the Kanjur and the Tanjur of
the Northern Buddhists, each volume we are told, "weighing from four to
five pounds," nothing, in truth, is known of Lamaism. Yet, the sacred
canon of the Southern Church is said to contain 29,368,000 letters in the
Saddharma alankara,* or, exclusive of treatises and commentaries, "five or
six times the amount of the matter contained in the Bible," the latter, in
the words of Professor Max Muller, rejoicing only in 3,567,180 letters.
Notwithstanding, then, these "325 volumes" (in reality there are 333,
Kanjur comprising 108, and Tanjur 225 volumes), "the translators, instead
of supplying us with correct versions, have interwoven them with their own
commentaries, for the purpose of justifying the dogmas of their several
schools."** Moreover, "according to a tradition preserved by the
Buddhist schools, both of the South and of the North, the sacred Buddhist Canon
comprised originally 80,000 or 84,000 tracts, but most of them were lost, so
that there remained but 6,000," the professor tells his audiences.
"Lost" as usual for Europeans. But who can be quite sure that they
are likewise lost for Buddhists and Brahmins?
Considering the
sacredness for the Buddhists of every line written
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Spence Hardy,
"The Legends and Theories of the Buddhists," p. 66.
**
"Buddhism in
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upon Buddha or
his "Good Law," the loss of nearly 76,000 tracts does seem
miraculous. Had it been vice versa, every one acquainted with the natural course
of events would subscribe to the statement that, of these 76,000, five or six
thousand treatises might have been destroyed during the persecutions in, and
emigrations from,
Owing to the
expressed regrets and numerous confessions of almost every one of the
Orientalists (See Max Muller's Lectures for example) the public may feel
sufficiently sure (a) that the students of ancient religions have indeed very
few data upon which to build such final conclusions as they generally do about
the old religions, and (b) that such lack of data does not prevent them in the
least from dogmatising. One would imagine that, thanks to the numerous records
of the Egyptian theogony and mysteries preserved in the classics, and in a
number of ancient writers, the rites and dogmas of Pharaonic Egypt ought to be
well understood at least; better, at any rate, than the too abstruse
philosophies and Pantheism of India, of whose religion and language Europe had
hardly any idea before the beginning of the present century. Along the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Lassen,
("Ind. Althersumkunde" Vol. II, p. 1,072) shows a Buddhist monastery
erected in the
** Reverend T.
Edkins, "Chinese Buddhism."
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covered with
hieroglyphic inscriptions, and with the strange pictures of gods and goddesses.
. . . . On rolls of papyrus, which seem to defy the ravages of time, we have
even fragments of what may be called the sacred books of the Egyptians; yet,
though much has been deciphered in the ancient records of that mysterious race,
the mainspring of the religion of Egypt and the original intention of its
ceremonial worship are far from being fully disclosed to us."* Here again
the mysterious hieroglyphic documents remain, but the keys by which alone they
become intelligible have disappeared.
Nevertheless,
having found that "there is a natural connection between language and
religion"; and, secondly, that there was a common Aryan religion before
the separation of the Aryan race; a common Semitic religion before the
separation of the Semitic race; and a common Turanian religion before the
separation of the Chinese and the other tribes belonging to the Turanian class;
having, in fact, only discovered "three ancient centres of religion"
and "three centres of language," and though as entirely ignorant of
those primitive religions and languages, as of their origin, the professor does
not hesitate to declare "that a truly historical basis for a scientific
treatment of those principal religions of the world has been gained!"
A
"scientific treatment" of a subject is no guarantee for its
"historical basis"; and with such scarcity of data on hand, no
philologist, even among the most eminent, is justified in giving out his own
conclusions for historical facts. No doubt, the eminent Orientalist has proved
thoroughly to the world's satisfaction, that according to Grimm's law of
phonetic rules, Odin and Buddha are two different personages, quite distinct
from each other, and he has shown it scientifically. When, however, he takes
the opportunity of saying in the same breath that Odin "was worshipped as
the supreme deity during a period long anterior to the age of the Veda and of
Homer" (Compar. Theol., p. 318), he has not the slightest "historical
basis" for it. He makes history and fact subservient to his
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* So little
acquainted are our greatest Egyptologists with the funerary rites of the
Egyptians and the outward marks of the difference of sexes made on the mummies,
that it has led to the most ludicrous mistakes. Only a year or two since, one
of that kind was discovered at Boulaq,
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own conclusions,
which may be very "scientific," in the sight of Oriental scholars,
but yet very wide of the mark of actual truth. The conflicting views on the
subject of chronology, in the case of the Vedas, of the various eminent
philologists and Orientalists, from Martin Haug down to Mr. Max Muller himself,
are an evident proof that the statement has no historical basis to stand upon,
"internal evidence" being very often a jack-o'lantern, instead of a
safe beacon to follow. Nor has the Science of modern Comparative Mythology any
better proof to show, that those learned writers, who have insisted for the
last century or so that there must have been "fragments of a primeval
revelation, granted to the ancestors of the whole race of mankind . . . .
preserved in the temples of
Questioned
further on this point, he would say no more. This was at
No doubt the
mystification played, in the last century at
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in that affair
than the Missionaries and Colonel Wilford themselves. The former, on the
testimony of Sir William Jones himself (see Asiat. Res., Vol. I., p. 272), were
silly enough to maintain that "the Hindus were even now almost Christians,
because their Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesa were no other than the Christian
trinity."* It was a good lesson. It made the Oriental scholars doubly
cautious; but perchance it has also made some of them too shy, and caused, in
its reaction, the pendulum of foregone conclusions to swing too much the other
way. For "that first supply on the Brahmanical market," made for
Colonel Wilford, has now created an evident necessity and desire in the
Orientalists to declare nearly every archaic Sanskrit manuscript so modern as
to give to the missionaries full justification for availing themselves of the
opportunity. That they do so and to the full extent of their mental powers, is
shown by the absurd attempts of late to prove that the whole Puranic story
about Chrishna was plagiarized by the Brahmins from the Bible! But the facts
cited by the Oxford Professor in his Lectures on the "Science of
Religion," concerning the now famous interpolations, for the benefit, and
later on to the sorrow, of Col. Wilford, do not at all interfere with the
conclusions to which one who studies the Secret Doctrine must unavoidably come.
For, if the results show that neither the New nor even the Old Testament
borrowed anything from the more ancient religion of the Brahmans and Buddhists,
it does not follow that the Jews have not borrowed all they knew from the
Chaldean records, the latter being mutilated later on by Eusebius. As to the
Chaldeans, they assuredly got their primitive learning from the Brahmans, for
Rawlinson shows an undeniably Vedic influence in the early mythology of
Babylon; and Col. Vans Kennedy has long since justly declared that Babylonia
was, from her origin, the seat of Sanskrit and Brahman learning. But all such
proofs must lose their value, in the presence of the latest theory worked out
by Prof. Max Muller. What it is everyone knows. The code of phonetic laws has
now become a universal solvent for every identification and
"connection" between
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Max
Muller's "Introduction to the Science of Religion." Lecture On False
Analogies in comparative Theology, pp. 288 and 296 et seq. This relates to the
clever forgery (on leaves inserted in old Puranic MSS.), in correct and archaic
Sanskrit, of all that the Pundits of Col. Wilford had heard from him about Adam
and Abraham, Noah and his three sons, etc., etc
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the gods of many
nations. Thus, though the Mother of Mercury (Budha, Thot-Hermes, etc.), was
Maia, the mother of Buddha (Gautama), also Maya, and the mother of Jesus,
likewise Maya (illusion, for Mary is Mare, the Sea, the great illusion
symbolically) -- yet these three characters have no connection, nor can they
have any, since Bopp, has "laid down his code of phonetic laws."
In their efforts
to collect together the many skeins of unwritten history, it is a bold step for
our Orientalists to take, to deny, a priori, everything that does not dovetail
with their special conclusions. Thus, while new discoveries are daily made of
great arts and sciences having existed far back in the night of time, even the
knowledge of writing is refused to some of the most ancient nations, and they
are credited with barbarism instead of culture. Yet the traces of an immense
civilization, even in
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"Not a
pool, not a bush, not a house is seen,
And the
mountain-range forms a rugged screen
Round the
parch'd flats of the dry, dry desert. . . . ."
But there is no
need to send the reader across the desert, when the same proofs of ancient
civilization are found even in comparatively populated regions of the same
country. The oasis of Tchertchen, for instance, situated about 4,000 feet above
the level of the river Tchertchen-D'arya, is surrounded with the ruins of
archaic towns and cities in every direction. There, some 3,000 human beings
represent the relics of about a hundred extinct nations and races -- the very
names of which are now unknown to our ethnologists. An anthropologist would
feel more than embarrassed to class, divide and subdivide them; the more so, as
the respective descendants of all these antediluvian races and tribes know as
little of their own forefathers themselves, as if they had fallen from the
moon. When questioned about their origin, they reply that they know not whence
their fathers had come, but had heard that their first (or earliest) men were
ruled by the great genii of these deserts. This may be put down to ignorance
and superstition, yet in view of the teachings of the Secret Doctrine, the
answer may be based upon primeval tradition. Alone, the tribe of Khoorassan
claims to have come from what is now known as
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woollen garment,
her bosom was covered with golden stars, the feet being left naked." (From
a lecture by N. M. Prjevalsky.) To this, the famous traveller adds that all
along their way on the river Tchertchen they heard legends about twenty-three
towns buried ages ago by the shifting sands of the deserts. The same tradition
exists on the Lob-nor and in the oasis of Kerya.
The traces of
such civilization, and these and like traditions, give us the right to credit
other legendary lore warranted by well educated and learned natives of
To recapitulate.
The Secret Doctrine was the universally diffused religion of the ancient and
prehistoric world. Proofs of its diffusion, authentic records of its history, a
complete chain of documents, showing its character and presence in every land,
together with the teaching of all its great adepts, exist to this day in the
secret crypts of libraries belonging to the Occult Fraternity.
This statement
is rendered more credible by a consideration of the following facts: the
tradition of the thousands of ancient parchments saved when the Alexandrian
library was destroyed; the thousands of Sanskrit works which disappeared in
India in the reign of Akbar; the universal tradition in China and Japan that
the true old texts with the commentaries, which alone make them comprehensible
-- amounting to many thousands of volumes -- have long passed out of the reach
of profane hands; the disappearance of the vast sacred and occult literature of
Babylon; the loss of those keys which alone could solve the thousand riddles of
the Egyptian hieroglyphic records; the tradition in India that the real secret
commentaries which alone make the Veda intelligible, though no longer visible
to profane eyes, still remain for the initiate, hidden in secret caves and
crypts; and an identical belief among the Buddhists, with regard to their
secret books.
The Occultists
assert that all these exist, safe from Western spoliating hands, to re-appear
in some more enlightened age, for which in the words of the late Swami Dayanand
Sarasvati, "the Mlechchhas (outcasts, savages, those beyond the pale of
Aryan civilization) will have to wait."
For it is not
the fault of the initiates that these documents are now "lost" to the
profane; nor was their policy dictated by selfishness, or
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any desire to
monopolise the life-giving sacred lore. There were portions of the Secret
Science that for incalculable ages had to remain concealed from the profane
gaze. But this was because to impart to the unprepared multitude secrets of
such tremendous importance, was equivalent to giving a child a lighted candle
in a powder magazine.
The answer to a
question which has frequently arisen in the minds of students, when meeting
with statements such as this, may be outlined here.
"We can
understand," they say, "the necessity for concealing from the herd
such secrets as the Vril, or the rock-destroying force, discovered by J. W.
Keely, of
The danger was
this: Doctrines such as the planetary chain, or the seven races, at once give a
clue to the seven-fold nature of man, for each principle is correlated to a
plane, a planet, and a race; and the human principles are, on every plane,
correlated to seven-fold occult forces -- those of the higher planes being of
tremendous power. So that any septenary division at once gives a clue to
tremendous occult powers, the abuse of which would cause incalculable evil to
humanity. A clue, which is, perhaps, no clue to the present generation --
especially the Westerns -- protected as they are by their very blindness and
ignorant materialistic disbelief in the occult; but a clue which would,
nevertheless, have been very real in the early centuries of the Christian era,
to people fully convinced of the reality of occultism, and entering a cycle of
degradation, which made them rife for abuse of occult powers and sorcery of the
worst description.
The documents
were concealed, it is true, but the knowledge itself and its actual existence
had never been made a secret of by the Hierophants of the
Moreover, there
is a well-known fact, a very curious one, corroborated to the writer by a
reverend gentleman attached for years to a Russian Embassy -- namely, that
there are several documents in the
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burg Imperial
Libraries to show that, even so late as during the days when Freemasonry, and
Secret Societies of Mystics flourished unimpeded in Russia, i.e., at the end of
the last and the beginning of the present century, more than one Russian Mystic
travelled to Tibet via the Ural mountains in search of knowledge and initiation
in the unknown crypts of Central Asia. And more than one returned years later, with
a rich store of such information as could never have been given him anywhere in
This is a
corroboration of that which has been stated many times before, and,
unfortunately, too indiscreetly. Instead of benefiting humanity, the virulent
charges of deliberate invention and imposture with a purpose thrown at those
who asserted but a truthful, if even a little known fact, have only generated
bad Karma for the slanderers. But now the mischief is done, and truth should no
longer be denied, whatever the consequences. Is it a new religion, we are
asked? By no means; it is not a religion, nor is its philosophy new; for, as
already stated, it is as old as thinking man. Its tenets are not now published
for the first time, but have been cautiously given out to, and taught by, more
than one European Initiate -- especially by the late Ragon.
More than one
great scholar has stated that there never was a religious founder, whether
Aryan, Semitic or Turanian, who had invented a new religion, or revealed a new
truth. These founders were all transmitters, not original teachers. They were
the authors of new forms and interpretations, while the truths upon which the
latter were based were as old as mankind. Selecting one or more of those grand
verities -- actualities visible only to the eye of the real Sage and Seer --
out of the many orally revealed to man in the beginning, preserved and
perpetuated in the adyta of the temples through initiation, during the
MYSTERIES and by personal transmission -- they revealed these truths to the
masses. Thus every nation received in its turn some of the said truths, under
the veil of its own local and special symbolism; which, as time went on,
developed into a more or less philosophical cultus, a Pantheon in mythical
disguise. Therefore is Confucius, a very ancient
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legislator in
historical chronology, though a very modern Sage in the World's History, shown
by Dr. Legge* -- who calls him "emphatically a transmitter, not a
maker" -- as saying: "I only hand on: I cannot create new things. I
believe in the ancients and therefore I love them."** (Quoted in
"Science of Religions" by Max Muller.)
The writer loves
them too, and therefore believes in the ancients, and the modern heirs to their
Wisdom. And believing in both, she now transmits that which she has received
and learnt herself to all those who will accept it. As to those who may reject
her testimony, -- i.e., the great majority -- she will bear them no malice, for
they will be as right in their way in denying, as she is right in hers in
affirming, since they look at TRUTH from two entirely different stand-points.
Agreeably with the rules of critical scholarship, the Orientalist has to reject
a priori whatever evidence he cannot fully verify for himself. And how can a
Western scholar accept on hearsay that which he knows nothing about? Indeed,
that which is given in these volumes is selected from oral, as much as from
written teachings. This first instalment of the esoteric doctrines is based
upon Stanzas, which are the records of a people unknown to ethnology; it is
claimed that they are written in a tongue absent from the nomenclature of
languages and dialects with which philology is acquainted; they are said to
emanate from a source (Occultism) repudiated by science; and, finally, they are
offered through an agency, incessantly discredited before the world by all
those who hate unwelcome truths, or have some special hobby of their own to
defend. Therefore, the rejection of these teachings may be expected, and must
be accepted beforehand. No one styling himself a "scholar," in
whatever department of exact science, will be permitted to regard these
teachings seriously. They will be derided and rejected a priori in this
century; but only in this one. For in the twentieth century of our era scholars
will begin to recognize that the Secret Doctrine has neither been invented nor
exaggerated, but, on the contrary, simply outlined; and finally, that its
teachings antedate the Vedas.*** Have not the latter been derided, rejected,
and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Lun Yu (§ I a)
Schott. "Chinesische Literatur," p. 7.
** "Life of
Confucius," p. 96.
*** This is no
pretension to prophecy, but simply a statement based on the knowledge of facts.
Every century an attempt is being made to show the world that Occultism
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called "a
modern forgery" even so recently as fifty years ago? Was not Sanskrit
proclaimed at one time the progeny of, and a dialect derived from, the Greek,
according to Lempriere and other scholars? About 1820, Prof. Max Muller tells
us, the sacred books of the Brahmans, of the Magians, and of the Buddhists,
"were all but unknown, their very existence was doubted, and there was not
a single scholar who could have translated a line of the Veda . . . of the Zend
Avesta, or . . . of the Buddhist Tripitaka, and now the Vedas are proved to be
the work of the highest antiquity whose 'preservation amounts almost to a
marvel' (Lecture on the Vedas).
The same will be
said of the Secret Archaic Doctrine, when proofs are given of its undeniable
existence and records. But it will take centuries before much more is given
from it. Speaking of the keys to the Zodiacal mysteries as being almost lost to
the world, it was remarked by the writer in "Isis Unveiled" some ten
years ago that: "The said key must be turned seven times before the whole
system is divulged. We will give it but one turn, and thereby allow the profane
one glimpse into the mystery. Happy he, who understands the whole!"
The same may be
said of the whole Esoteric system. One turn of the key, and no more, was given
in "
Such a work as
this has to be introduced with no simple Preface, but with a volume rather; one
that would give facts, not mere disquisitions, since the SECRET DOCTRINE is not
a treatise, or a series of vague theories, but contains all that can be given
out to the world in this century.
It would be
worse than useless to publish in these pages even those
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] is no vain superstition. Once the door permitted
to be kept a little ajar, it will be opened wider with every new century. The
times are ripe for a more serious knowledge than hitherto permitted, though
still very limited, so far.
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portions of the esoteric
teachings that have now escaped from confinement, unless the genuineness and
authenticity -- at any rate, the probability -- of the existence of such
teachings was first established. Such statements as will now be made, have to
be shown warranted by various authorities: those of ancient philosophers,
classics and even certain learned Church Fathers, some of whom knew these
doctrines because they had studied them, had seen and read works written upon
them; and some of whom had even been personally initiated into the ancient
Mysteries, during the performance of which the arcane doctrines were
allegorically enacted. The writer will have to give historical and trustworthy
names, and to cite well-known authors, ancient and modern, of recognized
ability, good judgment, and truthfulness, as also to name some of the famous
proficients in the secret arts and science, along with the mysteries of the
latter, as they are divulged, or, rather, partially presented before the public
in their strange archaic form.
How is this to
be done? What is the best way for achieving such an object? was the
ever-recurring question. To make our plan clearer, an illustration may be
attempted. When a tourist coming from a well-explored country, suddenly reaches
the borderland of a terra incognita, hedged in, and shut out from view by a
formidable barrier of impassable rocks, he may still refuse to acknowledge
himself baffled in his exploratory plans. Ingress beyond is forbidden. But, if
he cannot visit the mysterious region personally, he may still find a means of
examining it from as short a distance as can be arrived at. Helped by his
knowledge of landscapes left behind him, he can get a general and pretty
correct idea of the transmural view, if he will only climb to the loftiest summit
of the altitudes in front of him. Once there, he can gaze at it, at his
leisure, comparing that which he dimly perceives with that which he has just
left below, now that he is, thanks to his efforts, beyond the line of the mists
and the cloud-capped cliffs.
Such a point of
preliminary observation, for those who would like to get a more correct
understanding of the mysteries of the pre-archaic periods given in the texts,
cannot be offered to them in these two volumes. But if the reader has patience,
and would glance at the present state of beliefs and creeds in Europe, compare
and check it with what is known to history of the ages directly preceding and
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following the
Christian era, then he will find all this in Volume III. of this work.
In that volume a
brief recapitulation will be made of all the principal adepts known to history,
and the downfall of the mysteries will be described; after which began the
disappearance and final and systematic elimination from the memory of men of
the real nature of initiation and the Sacred Science. From that time its
teachings became Occult, and Magic sailed but too often under the venerable but
frequently misleading name of Hermetic philosophy. As real Occultism had been
prevalent among the Mystics during the centuries that preceded our era, so
Magic, or rather Sorcery, with its Occult Arts, followed the beginning of
Christianity.
However great
and zealous the fanatical efforts, during those early centuries, to obliterate
every trace of the mental and intellectual labour of the Pagans, it was a
failure; but the same spirit of the dark demon of bigotry and intolerance has
perverted systematically and ever since, every bright page written in the
pre-Christian periods. Even in her uncertain records, history has preserved
enough of that which has survived to throw an impartial light upon the whole.
Let, then, the reader tarry a little while with the writer, on the spot of
observation selected. He is asked to give all his attention to that millennium
which divided the pre-Christian and the post-Christian periods, by the year ONE
of the Nativity. This event -- whether historically correct or not -- has
nevertheless been made to serve as a first signal for the erection of manifold
bulwarks against any possible return of, or even a glimpse into, the hated
religions of the Past; hated and dreaded -- because throwing such a vivid light
on the new and intentionally veiled interpretation of what is now known as the
"New Dispensation."
However
superhuman the efforts of the early Christian fathers to obliterate the Secret
Doctrine from the very memory of man, they all failed. Truth can never be
killed; hence the failure to sweep away entirely from the face of the earth
every vestige of that ancient Wisdom, and to shackle and gag every witness who
testified to it. Let one only think of the thousands, and perhaps millions, of
MSS. burnt; of monuments, with their too indiscreet inscriptions and pictorial
symbols, pulverised to dust; of the bands of early hermits and ascetics roaming
about among the ruined cities of Upper and Lower Egypt, in desert and
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mountain,
valleys and highlands, seeking for and eager to destroy every obelisk and
pillar, scroll or parchment they could lay their hands on, if it only bore the
symbol of the tau, or any other sign borrowed and appropriated by the new
faith; and he will then see plainly how it is that so little has remained of
the records of the Past. Verily, the fiendish spirits of fanaticism, of early
and mediaeval Christianity and of Islam, have from the first loved to dwell in
darkness and ignorance; and both have made
"--------------
the sun like blood, the earth a tomb,
The tomb a hell,
and hell itself a murkier gloom!"
Both creeds have
won their proselytes at the point of the sword; both have built their churches
on heaven-kissing hecatombs of human victims. Over the gateway of
In other words
-- "THERE IS NO RELIGION (OR LAW) HIGHER THAN TRUTH" -- "SATYAT
NASTI PARO DHARMAH" -- the motto of the Maharajah of Benares, adopted by
the Theosophical Society.
As already said
in the Preface, the Secret Doctrine is not a version of "Isis
Unveiled" -- as originally intended. It is a volume explanatory of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Lectures
on the Science of Religion," by F. Max Muller, p. 257.
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it rather, and,
though entirely independent of the earlier work, an indispensable corollary to
it. Much of what was in
Concerned simply
with the philosophies within our historical times and the respective symbolism
of the fallen nations, only a hurried glance could be thrown at the panorama of
Occultism in the two volumes of Isis. In the present work, detailed Cosmogony
and the evolution of the four races that preceded our Fifth race Humanity are
given, and now two large volumes explain that which was stated on the first
page of ISIS UNVEILED alone, and in a few allusions scattered hither and
thither throughout that work. Nor could the vast catalogue of the Archaic
Sciences be attempted in the present volumes, before we have disposed of such
tremendous problems as Cosmic and Planetary Evolution, and the gradual
development of the mysterious Humanities and races that preceded our "Adamic"
Humanity. Therefore, the present attempt to elucidate some mysteries of the
Esoteric philosophy has, in truth, nothing to do with the earlier work. As an
instance, the writer must be allowed to illustrate what is said.
"So very
old that our modern antiquarians might ponder over its pages an indefinite
time, and still not quite agree as to the nature of the fabric upon which it is
written. It is the only original copy now in existence. The most ancient Hebrew
document on occult learning -- the Siphrah Dzeniouta -- was compiled from it,
and that at a time when the former was already considered in the light of a
literary relic. One of its illustrations represents the Divine Essence
emanating from ADAM* like a luminous arc proceeding to form a circle; and then,
having attained the highest point of its circumference, the ineffable glory
bends back again, and returns to earth, bringing a higher type of humanity in
its vortex. As it approaches nearer and nearer to our planet, the Emanation
becomes more and more shadowy, until upon touching the ground it is as black as
night."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The name is
used in the sense of the Greek word [[anthropos]].
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The "very
old Book" is the original work from which the many volumes of Kiu-ti were
compiled. Not only this latter and the Siphrah Dzeniouta but even the Sepher
Jezirah,* the work attributed by the Hebrew Kabalists to their Patriarch
Abraham (!), the book of Shu-king, China's primitive Bible, the sacred volumes
of the Egyptian Thoth-Hermes, the Puranas in India, and the Chaldean Book of
Numbers and the Pentateuch itself, are all derived from that one small parent
volume. Tradition says, that it was taken down in Senzar, the secret sacerdotal
tongue, from the words of the Divine Beings, who dictated it to the sons of
Light, in Central Asia, at the very beginning of the 5th (our) race; for there
was a time when its language (the Sen-zar) was known to the Initiates of every
nation, when the forefathers of the Toltec understood it as easily as the
inhabitants of the lost Atlantis, who inherited it, in their turn, from the
sages of the 3rd Race, the Manushis, who learnt it direct from the Devas of the
2nd and 1st Races. The "illustration" spoken of in "Isis"
relates to the evolution of these Races and of our 4th and 5th Race Humanity in
the Vaivasvata Manvantara or "Round"; each Round being composed of
the Yugas of the seven periods of Humanity; four of which are now passed in our
life cycle, the middle point of the 5th being nearly reached. The illustration
is symbolical, as every one can well understand, and covers the ground from the
beginning. The old book, having described Cosmic Evolution and explained the
origin of everything on earth, including physical man, after giving the true
history of the races from the First down to the Fifth (our) race, goes no
further. It stops short at the beginning of the Kali Yuga just 4989 years ago
at the death of
But there exists
another book. None of its possessors regard it as very ancient, as it was born
with, and is only as old as the Black Age,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Rabbi Jehoshua
Ben Chananea, who died about A.D. 72, openly declared that he had performed
"miracles" by means of the Book of Sepher Jezireh, and challenged
every sceptic. Franck, quoting from the Babylonian Talmud, names two other
thaumaturgists, Rabbis Chanina and Oshoi. (See "Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin,"
c. 7, etc.; and "Franck," pp. 55, 56.) Many of the Mediaeval
Occultists, Alchemists, and Kabalists claimed the same; and even the late
modern Magus, Eliphas Levi, publicly asserts it in print in his books on Magic.
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namely, about
5,000 years. In about nine years hence, the first cycle of the first five
millenniums, that began with the great cycle of the Kali-Yuga, will end. And
then the last prophecy contained in that book (the first volume of the
prophetic record for the Black Age) will be accomplished. We have not long to
wait, and many of us will witness the Dawn of the New Cycle, at the end of which
not a few accounts will be settled and squared between the races. Volume II. of
the Prophecies is nearly ready, having been in preparation since the time of
Buddha's grand successor, Sankaracharya.
One more
important point must be noticed, one that stands foremost in the series of
proofs given of the existence of one primeval, universal Wisdom -- at any rate
for the Christian Kabalists and students. The teachings were, at least,
partially known to several of the Fathers of the Church. It is maintained, on
purely historical grounds, that Origen, Synesius, and even Clemens
Alexandrinus, had been themselves initiated into the mysteries before adding to
the Neo-Platonism of the Alexandrian school, that of the Gnostics, under the
Christian veil. More than this, some of the doctrines of the Secret schools --
though by no means all -- were preserved in the Vatican, and have since become
part and parcel of the mysteries, in the shape of disfigured additions made to
the original Christian programme by the Latin Church. Such is the now
materialised dogma of the Immaculate Conception. This accounts for the great
persecutions set on foot by the Roman Catholic Church against Occultism,
Masonry, and heterodox mysticism generally.
The days of
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one fountain
head, the ever-flowing perennial source, at which were fed all its streamlets
-- the later religions of all nations -- from the first down to the last. This
period, beginning with Buddha and Pythagoras at the one end and the
Neo-Platonists and Gnostics at the other, is the only focus left in History wherein
converge for the last time the bright rays of light streaming from the aeons of
time gone by, unobscured by the hand of bigotry and fanaticism.
This accounts
for the necessity under which the writer has laboured to be ever explaining the
facts given from the hoariest Past by evidence gathered from the historical
period. No other means was at hand, at the risk even of being once more charged
with a lack of method and system. The public must be made acquainted with the
efforts of many World-adepts, of initiated poets, writers, and classics of
every age, to preserve in the records of Humanity the Knowledge of the
existence, at least, of such a philosophy, if not actually of its tenets. The
Initiates of 1888 would indeed remain incomprehensible and ever a seemingly
impossible myth, were not like Initiates shown to have lived in every other age
of history. This could be done only by naming Chapter and Verse where may be
found mention of these great characters, who were preceded and followed by a
long and interminable line of other famous Antediluvian and Post-diluvian
Masters in the arts. Thus only could be shown, on semi-traditional and
semi-historical authority, that knowledge of the Occult and the powers it
confers on man, are not altogether fictions, but that they are as old as the
world itself.
To my judges,
past and future, therefore -- whether they are serious literary critics, or
those howling dervishes in literature who judge a book according to the popularity
or unpopularity of the author's name, who, hardly glancing at its contents,
fasten like lethal bacilli on the weakest points of the body -- I have nothing
to say. Nor shall I condescend to notice those crack-brained slanderers --
fortunately very few in number -- who, hoping to attract public attention by
throwing discredit on every writer whose name is better known than their own,
foam and bark at their very shadows. These, having first maintained for years
that the doctrines taught in the Theosophist, and which culminated in
"Esoteric Buddhism," had been all invented by the present writer,
have finally turned round, and denounced "Isis Unveiled" and the rest
as a plagiarism from Eliphas Levi (!), Paracelsus (!!), and, mirabile
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dictu, Buddhism
and Brahmanism (!!!) As well charge Renan with having stolen his Vie de Jesus
from the Gospels, and Max Muller his "Sacred Books of the East" or
his "Chips" from the philosophies of the Brahmins and Gautama, the
Buddha. But to the public in general and the readers of the "Secret
Doctrine" I may repeat what I have stated all along, and which I now
clothe in the words of Montaigne: Gentlemen, "I HAVE HERE MADE ONLY A
NOSEGAY OF CULLED FLOWERS, AND HAVE BROUGHT NOTHING OF MY OWN BUT THE STRING
THAT TIES THEM."
Pull the
"string" to pieces and cut it up in shreds, if you will. As for the
nosegay of FACTS -- you will never be able to make away with these. You can
only ignore them, and no more.
We may close
with a parting word concerning this Volume I. In an INTRODUCTION prefacing a
Part dealing chiefly with Cosmogony, certain subjects brought forward might be
deemed out of place, but one more consideration added to those already given
have led me to touch upon them. Every reader will inevitably judge the
statements made from the stand-point of his own knowledge, experience, and consciousness,
based on what he has already learnt. This fact the writer is constantly obliged
to bear in mind: hence, also the frequent references in this first Book to
matters which, properly speaking, belong to a later part of the work, but which
could not be passed by in silence, lest the reader should look down on this
work as a fairy tale indeed -- a fiction of some modern brain.
Thus, the Past
shall help to realise the PRESENT, and the latter to better appreciate the
PAST. The errors of the day must be explained and swept away, yet it is more
than probable -- and in the present case it amounts to certitude -- that once
more the testimony of long ages and of history will fail to impress anyone but
the very intuitional -- which is equal to saying the very few. But in this as
in all like cases, the true and the faithful may console themselves by
presenting the sceptical modern Sadducee with the mathematical proof and
memorial of his obdurate obstinacy and bigotry. There still exists somewhere in
the archives of the
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a fact, and thus
impart to it each of them 5/6 of certitude; that fact will have then 35/36 of
certitude; i.e., its probability will bear to its improbability the ratio of 35
to 1. If three such evidences are joined together the certitude will become
215/216. The agreement of ten persons giving each 1/2 of certitude will produce
1023/1024, etc., etc. The Occultist may remain satisfied, and care for no more.
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PROEM.
-------
PAGES FROM A
PRE-HISTORIC PERIOD.
AN Archaic
Manuscript -- a collection of palm leaves made impermeable to water, fire, and air,
by some specific unknown process -- is before the writer's eye. On the first
page is an immaculate white disk within a dull black ground. On the following
page, the same disk, but with a central point. The first, the student knows to
represent Kosmos in Eternity, before the re-awakening of still slumbering
Energy, the emanation of the Word in later systems. The point in the hitherto
immaculate Disk, Space and Eternity in Pralaya, denotes the dawn of
differentiation. It is the Point in the Mundane Egg (see Part II., "The
Mundane Egg"), the germ within the latter which will become the Universe,
the ALL, the boundless, periodical Kosmos, this germ being latent and active,
periodically and by turns. The one circle is divine Unity, from which all
proceeds, whither all returns. Its circumference -- a forcibly limited symbol,
in view of the limitation of the human mind -- indicates the abstract, ever
incognisable PRESENCE, and its plane, the Universal Soul, although the two are
one. Only the face of the Disk being white and the ground all around black,
shows clearly that its plane is the only knowledge, dim and hazy though it
still is, that is attainable by man. It is on this plane that the Manvantaric
manifestations begin; for it is in this SOUL that slumbers, during the Pralaya,
the Divine Thought,* wherein lies concealed the plan of every future Cosmogony
and Theogony.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is hardly
necessary to remind the reader once more that the term "Divine
Thought," like that of "Universal Mind," must not be regarded as
even vaguely shadowing forth an intellectual process akin to that exhibited by
man. The "Unconscious," according to von Hartmann, arrived at the
vast creative, or rather Evolutionary Plan, "by a clairvoyant wisdom
superior to all consciousness," which in the Vedantic language would mean
absolute Wisdom. Only those who realise how far Intuition soars above the tardy
processes of ratiocinative thought can form the faintest conception of [[Footnote
continued on next page]]
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It is the ONE
LIFE, eternal, invisible, yet Omnipresent, without beginning or end, yet
periodical in its regular manifestations, between which periods reigns the dark
mystery of non-Being; unconscious, yet absolute Consciousness; unrealisable,
yet the one self-existing reality; truly, "a chaos to the sense, a Kosmos
to the reason." Its one absolute attribute, which is ITSELF, eternal,
ceaseless Motion, is called in esoteric parlance the "Great Breath,"*
which is the perpetual motion of the universe, in the sense of limitless,
ever-present SPACE. That which is motionless cannot be Divine. But then there
is nothing in fact and reality absolutely motionless within the universal soul.
Almost five
centuries B.C. Leucippus, the instructor of Democritus, maintained that Space
was filled eternally with atoms actuated by a ceaseless motion, the latter
generating in due course of time, when those atoms aggregated, rotatory motion,
through mutual collisions producing lateral movements. Epicurus and Lucretius
taught the same, only adding to the lateral motion of the atoms the idea of
affinity -- an occult teaching.
From the
beginning of man's inheritance, from the first appearance of the architects of
the globe he lives in, the unrevealed Deity was recognised and considered under
its only philosophical aspect -- universal motion, the thrill of the creative
Breath in Nature. Occultism sums up the "One Existence" thus:
"Deity is an arcane, living (or moving) FIRE, and the eternal witnesses to
this unseen Presence are Light, Heat, Moisture," -- this trinity
including, and being the cause of, every
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] that absolute Wisdom which transcends the ideas
of Time and Space. Mind, as we know it, is resolvable into states of consciousness,
of varying duration, intensity, complexity, etc. -- all, in the ultimate,
resting on sensation, which is again Maya. Sensation, again, necessarily
postulates limitation. The personal God of orthodox Theism perceives, thinks,
and is affected by emotion; he repents and feels "fierce anger." But
the notion of such mental states clearly involves the unthinkable postulate of
the externality of the exciting stimuli, to say nothing of the impossibility of
ascribing changelessness to a Being whose emotions fluctuate with events in the
worlds he presides over. The conceptions of a Personal God as changeless and
infinite are thus unpsychological and, what is worse, unphilosophical.
* Plato proves
himself an Initiate, when saying in Cratylus that [[theos]] is derived from the
verb [[theein]], "to move," "to run," as the first
astronomers who observed the motions of the heavenly bodies called the planets
[[theoi]], the gods. (See Book II., "Symbolism of the Cross and
Circle.") Later, the word produced another term, [[aletheia]] -- "the
breath of God."
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phenomenon in Nature.*
Intra-Cosmic motion is eternal and ceaseless; cosmic motion (the visible, or
that which is subject to perception) is finite and periodical. As an eternal
abstraction it is the EVER-PRESENT; as a manifestation, it is finite both in
the coming direction and the opposite, the two being the alpha and omega of
successive reconstructions. Kosmos -- the NOUMENON -- has nought to do with the
causal relations of the phenomenal World. It is only with reference to the
intra-cosmic soul, the ideal Kosmos in the immutable Divine Thought, that we
may say: "It never had a beginning nor will it have an end." With
regard to its body or Cosmic organization, though it cannot be said that it had
a first, or will ever have a last construction, yet at each new Manvantara, its
organization may be regarded as the first and the last of its kind, as it
evolutes every time on a higher plane . . . .
A few years ago
only, it was stated that:--
"The
esoteric doctrine teaches, like Buddhism and Brahminism, and even the Kabala, that
the one infinite and unknown Essence exists from all eternity, and in regular
and harmonious successions is either passive or active. In the poetical
phraseology of Manu these conditions are called the "Days" and the
"Nights" of Brahma. The latter is either "awake" or
"asleep." The Svabhavikas, or philosophers of the oldest
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Nominalists,
arguing with
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two are able to
understand the profound logic of their philosophy. The former will allow of no
other God than the personified secondary powers which have worked out the
visible universe, and which became with them the anthropomorphic God of the
Christians -- the male Jehovah, roaring amid thunder and lightning. In its
turn, rationalistic science greets the Buddhists and the Svabhavikas as the
"positivists" of the archaic ages. If we take a one-sided view of the
philosophy of the latter, our materialists may be right in their own way. The
Buddhists maintained that there is no Creator, but an infinitude of creative
powers, which collectively form the one eternal substance, the essence of which
is inscrutable -- hence not a subject for speculation for any true philosopher.
Socrates invariably refused to argue upon the mystery of universal being, yet
no one would ever have thought of charging him with atheism, except those who
were bent upon his destruction. Upon inaugurating an active period, says the
Secret Doctrine, an expansion of this Divine essence from without inwardly and
from within outwardly, occurs in obedience to eternal and immutable law, and
the phenomenal or visible universe is the ultimate result of the long chain of
cosmical forces thus progressively set in motion. In like manner, when the
passive condition is resumed, a contraction of the Divine essence takes place,
and the previous work of creation is gradually and progressively undone. The
visible universe becomes disintegrated, its material dispersed; and 'darkness'
solitary and alone, broods once more over the face of the 'deep.' To use a
Metaphor from the Secret Books, which will convey the idea still more clearly,
an out-breathing of the 'unknown essence' produces the world; and an inhalation
causes it to disappear. This process has been going on from all eternity, and
our present universe is but one of an infinite series, which had no beginning
and will have no end." -- (See "Isis Unveiled"; also "The
Days and Nights of Brahma" in Part II.)
This passage
will be explained, as far as it is possible, in the present work. Though, as it
now stands, it contains nothing new to the Orientalist, its esoteric
interpretation may contain a good deal which has hitherto remained entirely
unknown to the Western student.
The first
illustration being a plain disc [[diagram]] the second one in the Archaic
symbol shows [[diagram]], a disc with a point in it -- the first
differentiation in the periodical manifestations of the ever-eternal nature,
sexless and infinite "Aditi in THAT" (Rig Veda), the point in the
disc, or potential Space within abstract Space. In its third stage the point is
transformed into a diameter, thus [[diagram]] It now symbolises a divine
immaculate Mother-Nature within the all-embracing absolute Infinitude.
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When the
diameter line is crossed by a vertical one [[diagram]], it becomes the mundane
cross. Humanity has reached its third root-race; it is the sign for the origin
of human life to begin. When the circumference disappears and leaves only the
[[diagram]] it is a sign that the fall of man into matter is accomplished, and
the FOURTH race begins. The Cross within a circle symbolises pure Pantheism;
when the Cross was left uninscribed, it became phallic. It had the same and yet
other meanings as a TAU inscribed within a circle [[diagram]] or as a
"Thor's hammer," the Jaina cross, so-called, or simply Svastica
within a circle [[diagram]]
By the third
symbol -- the circle divided in two by the horizontal line of the diameter --
the first manifestation of creative (still passive, because feminine) Nature
was meant. The first shadowy perception of man connected with procreation is
feminine, because man knows his mother more than his father. Hence female
deities were more sacred than the male. Nature is therefore feminine, and, to a
degree, objective and tangible, and the spirit Principle which fructifies it is
concealed. By adding to the circle with the horizontal line in it, a
perpendicular line, the tau was formed -- [[diagram]] -- the oldest form of the
letter. It was the glyph of the third root-race to the day of its symbolical
Fall -- i.e., when the separation of sexes by natural evolution took place --
when the figure became [[diagram]], the circle, or sexless life modified or
separated -- a double glyph or symbol. With the races of our Fifth Race it
became in symbology the sacr', and in Hebrew n'cabvah, of the first-formed
races;* then it changed into the Egyptian [[diagram]] (emblem of life), and
still later into the sign of Venus, [[diagram]] Then comes the Svastica (Thor's
hammer, or the "Hermetic Cross" now), entirely separated from its
Circle, thus becoming purely phallic. The esoteric symbol of Kali Yuga is the
five-pointed star reversed, thus [[diagram]] -- the sign of human sorcery, with
its two points (horns) turned heavenward, a position every
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See that
suggestive work, "The Source of Measures," where the author explains
the real meaning of the word "sacr'," from which "sacred,"
"sacrament," are derived, which have now become synonyms of
"holiness," though purely phallic!
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Occultist will
recognise as one of the "left-hand," and used in ceremonial magic.*
It is hoped that
during the perusal of this work the erroneous ideas of the public in general
with regard to Pantheism will be modified. It is wrong and unjust to regard the
Buddhists and Advaitee Occultists as atheists. If not all of them philosophers,
they are, at any rate, all logicians, their objections and arguments being
based on strict reasoning. Indeed, if the Parabrahmam of the Hindus may be
taken as a representative of the hidden and nameless deities of other nations,
this absolute Principle will be found to be the prototype from which all the others
were copied. Parabrahm is not "God," because It is not a God.
"It is that which is supreme, and not supreme (paravara)," explains
Mandukya Upanishad (2.28). IT is "Supreme" as CAUSE, not supreme as
effect. Parabrahm is simply, as a "Secondless Reality," the
all-inclusive Kosmos -- or, rather, the infinite Cosmic Space -- in the highest
spiritual sense, of course. Brahma (neuter) being the unchanging, pure, free,
undecaying supreme Root, "the ONE true Existence, Paramarthika," and
the absolute Chit and Chaitanya (intelligence, consciousness) cannot be a
cogniser, "for THAT can have no subject of cognition." Can the flame
be called the essence of Fire? This Essence is "the LIFE and LIGHT of the
Universe, the visible fire and flame are destruction, death, and evil."
"Fire and Flame destroy the body of an Arhat, their essence makes him
immortal." (Bodhi-mur, Book II.) "The knowledge of the absolute
Spirit, like the effulgence of the sun, or like heat in fire, is naught else
than the absolute Essence itself," says Sankaracharya. IT -- is "the
Spirit of the Fire," not fire itself; therefore, "the attributes of
the latter, heat or flame, are not the attributes of the Spirit, but of that of
which that Spirit is the unconscious cause." Is not the above sentence the
true key-note of later Rosicrucian
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* We are told by
the Western mathematicians and some American Kabalists, that in the Kabala also
"the value of the Jehovah name is that of the diameter of a circle."
Add to this the fact that Jehovah is the third Sephiroth, Binah, a feminine
word, and you have the key to the mystery. By certain Kabalistic
transformations this name, androgynous in the first chapters of Genesis,
becomes in its transformations entirely masculine, Cainite and phallic. The
fact of choosing a deity among the pagan gods and making of it a special
national God, to call upon it as the "One living God," the "God
of Gods," and then proclaim this worship Monotheistic, does not change it
into the ONE Principle whose "Unity admits not of multiplication, change,
or form," especially in the case of a priapic deity, as Jehovah now
demonstrated to be.
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philosophy?
Parabrahm is, in short, the collective aggregate of Kosmos in its infinity and
eternity, the "THAT" and "THIS" to which distributive
aggregates can not be applied.* "In the beginning THIS was the Self, one
only" (Aitareya Upanishad); the great Sankaracharya, explains that
"THIS" referred to the Universe (Jagat); the sense of the words,
"In the beginning," meaning before the reproduction of the phenomenal
Universe.
Therefore, when
the Pantheists echo the Upanishads, which state, as in the Secret Doctrine,
that "this" cannot create, they do not deny a Creator, or rather a
collective aggregate of creators, but only refuse, very logically, to attribute
"creation" and especially formation, something finite to an Infinite
Principle. With them, Parabrahmam is a passive because an Absolute Cause, the
unconditioned Mukta. It is only limited Omniscience and Omnipotence that are
refused to the latter, because these are still attributes (as reflected in
man's perceptions); and because Parabrahm, being the "Supreme ALL,"
the ever invisible spirit and Soul of Nature, changeless and eternal, can have
no attributes; absoluteness very naturally precluding any idea of the finite or
conditioned from being connected with it. And if the Vedantin postulates
attributes as belonging simply to its emanation, calling it "Iswara plus
Maya," and Avidya (Agnosticism and Nescience rather than ignorance), it is
difficult to find any Atheism in this conception.** Since there can be neither
two INFINITES nor two ABSOLUTES in a Universe supposed to be Boundless, this
Self-Existence can hardly be conceived of as creating personally. In the sense
and perceptions of finite "Beings," THAT is Non-"being," in
the sense that it is the one BE-NESS; for, in this ALL lies concealed its
coeternal and coeval emanation or inherent radiation, which, upon becoming
periodically Brahma (the male-female Potency) becomes or expands itself into
the manifested Universe. Narayana moving on the (abstract) waters of Space, is
transformed into the Waters of concrete substance moved by him, who now becomes
the manifested WORD or Logos.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See
"Vedanta Sara," by Major G. A. Jacob; as also "The Aphorisms of
S'andilya," translated by Cowell, p. 42.
** Nevertheless,
prejudiced and rather fanatical Christian Orientalists would like to prove this
pure Atheism. For proof of this, see about Major Jacob's "Vedanta
Sara." Yet, the whole Antiquity echoes this Vedantic thought:--
"Omnis enim
per se divom natura necesse est
Immortali aevo
summa cum pace fruatur."
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The orthodox
Brahmins, those who rise the most against the Pantheists and Adwaitees, calling
them Atheists, are forced, if Manu has any authority in this matter, to accept
the death of Brahma, the creator, at the expiration of every "Age" of
this (creative) deity (100 Divine years -- a period which in our years requires
fifteen figures to express it). Yet, no philosopher among them will view this
"death" in any other sense than as a temporary disappearance from the
manifested plane of existence, or as a periodical rest.
The Occultists
are, therefore, at one with the Adwaita Vedantin philosophers as to the above
tenet. They show the impossibility of accepting on philosophical grounds the
idea of the absolute ALL creating or even evolving the "Golden Egg,"
into which it is said to enter in order to transform itself into Brahma -- the
Creator, who expands himself later into gods and all the visible Universe. They
say that Absolute Unity cannot pass to infinity; for infinity presupposes the
limitless extension of something, and the duration of that
"something"; and the One All is like Space -- which is its only
mental and physical representation on this Earth, or our plane of existence --
neither an object of, nor a subject to, perception. If one could suppose the
Eternal Infinite All, the Omnipresent Unity, instead of being in Eternity,
becoming through periodical manifestation a manifold Universe or a multiple
personality, that Unity would cease to be one. Locke's idea that "pure
Space is capable of neither resistance nor Motion" -- is incorrect. Space
is neither a "limitless void," nor a "conditioned fulness,"
but both: being, on the plane of absolute abstraction, the ever-incognisable
Deity, which is void only to finite minds,* and on that of mayavic perception,
the Plenum, the absolute Container of all that is, whether manifested or
unmanifested: it is, therefore, that ABSOLUTE ALL. There is no difference
between the Christian Apostle's "In Him we live and move and have our
being," and the Hindu Rishi's "The Universe lives in, proceeds from,
and will
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The very names
of the two chief deities, Brahma and Vishnu, ought to have long ago suggested
their esoteric meanings. For the root of one, Brahmam, or Brahm, is derived by
some from the word Brih, "to grow" or "to expand" (see
Calcutta Review, vol. lxvi., p. 14); and of the other, Vishnu, from the root
Vis, "to pervade," to enter in the nature of the essence;
Brahma-Vishnu being this infinite SPACE, of which the gods, the Rishis, the
Manus, and all in this universe are simply the potencies, Vibhutayah.
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return to,
Brahma (Brahma)": for Brahma (neuter), the unmanifested, is that Universe
in abscondito, and Brahma, the manifested, is the Logos, made male-female* in
the symbolical orthodox dogmas. The God of the Apostle-Initiate and of the
Rishi being both the Unseen and the Visible SPACE. Space is called in the
esoteric symbolism "the Seven-Skinned Eternal Mother-Father." It is
composed from its undifferentiated to its differentiated surface of seven
layers.
"What is
that which was, is, and will be, whether there is a Universe or not; whether
there be gods or none?" asks the esoteric Senzar Catechism. And the answer
made is -- SPACE.
It is not the
One Unknown ever-present God in Nature, or Nature in abscondito, that is
rejected, but the God of human dogma and his humanized "Word." In his
infinite conceit and inherent pride and vanity, man shaped it himself with his
sacrilegious hand out of the material he found in his own small brain-fabric,
and forced it upon mankind as a direct revelation from the one unrevealed
SPACE.** The Occultist
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Manu's
account of Brahma separating his body into male and female, the latter the
female Vach, in whom he creates Viraj, and compare this with the esotericism of
Chapters II., III., and IV. of Genesis.
** Occultism is
indeed in the air at the close of this our century. Among many other works
recently published, we would recommend one especially to students of
theoretical Occultism who would not venture beyond the realm of our special
human plane. It is called "New Aspects of Life and Religion," by
Henry Pratt, M.D. It is full of esoteric dogmas and philosophy, the latter rather
limited, in the concluding chapters, by what seems to be a spirit of
conditioned positivism. Nevertheless, what is said of Space as "the
Unknown First Cause," merits quotation. "This unknown something, thus
recognised as, and identified with, the primary embodiment of Simple Unity, is
invisible and impalpable" -- (abstract space, granted); "and because
invisible and impalpable, therefore incognisable. And this incognisability has
led to the error of supposing it to be a simple void, a mere receptive capacity.
But, even viewed as an absolute void, space must be admitted to be either
Self-existent, infinite, and eternal, or to have had a first cause outside,
behind, and beyond itself.
"And yet
could such a cause be found and defined, this would only lead to the
transferring thereto of the attributes otherwise accruing to space, and thus
merely throw the difficulty of origination a step farther back, without gaining
additional light as to primary causation." (p. 5.)
This is precisely
what has been done by the believers in an anthropomorphic Creator, an
extracosmic, instead of an intracosmic God. Many -- most of Mr. Pratt's
subjects, we may say -- are old Kabalistic ideas and theories which he presents
in quite a new garb: "New Aspects" of the Occult in Nature, indeed.
Space, however, viewed as a "Substantial Unity" -- the "living
Source of Life" -- is as the "Un- [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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accepts
revelation as coming from divine yet still finite Beings, the manifested lives,
never from the Unmanifestable ONE LIFE; from those entities, called Primordial
Man, Dhyani-Buddhas, or Dhyan-Chohans, the "Rishi-Prajapati" of the
Hindus, the Elohim or "Sons of God," the Planetary Spirits of all
nations, who have become Gods for men. He also regards the Adi-Sakti -- the
direct emanation of Mulaprakriti, the eternal Root of THAT, and the female
aspect of the Creative Cause Brahma, in her A'kasic form of the Universal Soul
-- as philosophically a Maya, and cause of human Maya. But this view does not
prevent him from believing in its existence so long as it lasts, to wit, for
one Mahamanvantara; nor from applying Akasa, the radiation of Mulaprakriti,* to
practical purposes, connected as the World-Soul is with all natural phenomena,
known or unknown to science.
The oldest
religions of the world -- exoterically, for the esoteric root or foundation is
one -- are the Indian, the Mazdean, and the Egyptian. Then comes the Chaldean,
the outcome of these -- entirely lost to the world now, except in its
disfigured Sabeanism as at present rendered by the archaeologists; then,
passing over a number of religions that will be mentioned later, comes the
Jewish, esoterically, as in the Kabala, following in the line of Babylonian
Magism; exoterically, as in Genesis and the Pentateuch, a collection of
allegorical legends. Read by the light of the Zohar, the initial four chapters
of Genesis are the fragment
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] known Causeless Cause," is the oldest dogma
in Occultism, millenniums earlier than the Pater-AEther of the Greeks and
Latins. So are the "Force and Matter, as Potencies of Space, inseparable,
and the Unknown revealers of the Unknown." They are all found in Aryan
philosophy personified by Visvakarman, Indra, Vishnu, etc., etc. Still they are
expressed very philosophically, and under many unusual aspects, in the work
referred to.
* In
contradistinction to the manifested universe of matter, the term Mulaprakriti
(from Mula, "the root," and prakriti, "nature"), or the
unmanifested primordial matter -- called by Western alchemists Adam's Earth --
is applied by the Vedantins to Parabrahmam. Matter is dual in religious
metaphysics, and septenary in esoteric teachings, like everything else in the
universe. As Mulaprakriti, it is undifferentiated and eternal; as Vyakta, it
becomes differentiated and conditioned, according to Svetasvatara Upanishad,
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of a highly
philosophical page in the World's Cosmogony. (See Book III., Gupta Vidya and
the Zohar.) Left in their symbolical disguise, they are a nursery tale, an ugly
thorn in the side of science and logic, an evident effect of Karma. To have let
them serve as a prologue to Christianity was a cruel revenge on the part of the
Rabbis, who knew better what their Pentateuch meant. It was a silent protest
against their spoliation, and the Jews have certainly now the better of their
traditional persecutors. The above-named exoteric creeds will be explained in
the light of the Universal doctrine as we proceed with it.
The Occult
Catechism contains the following questions and answers:
"What is it
that ever is?" "Space, the eternal Anupadaka."* "What is it
that ever was?" "The Germ in the Root." "What is it that is
ever coming and going?" "The Great Breath." "Then, there
are three Eternals?" "No, the three are one. That which ever is is
one, that which ever was is one, that which is ever being and becoming is also
one: and this is Space."
"Explain,
oh Lanoo (disciple)." -- "The One is an unbroken Circle (ring) with
no circumference, for it is nowhere and everywhere; the One is the boundless
plane of the Circle, manifesting a diameter only during the manvantaric
periods; the One is the indivisible point found nowhere, perceived everywhere
during those periods; it is the Vertical and the Horizontal, the Father and the
Mother, the summit and base of the Father, the two extremities of the Mother,
reaching in reality nowhere, for the One is the Ring as also the rings that are
within that Ring. Light in darkness and darkness in light: the 'Breath which is
eternal.' It proceeds from without inwardly, when it is everywhere, and from
within outwardly, when it is nowhere -- (i.e., maya,** one of the centres***).
It expands and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Meaning
"parentless" -- see farther on.
** Esoteric
philosophy, regarding as Maya (or the illusion of ignorance) every finite thing,
must necessarily view in the same light every intra-Cosmic planet and body, as
being something organised, hence finite. The expression, therefore, "it
proceeds from without inwardly, etc." refers in the first portion of the
sentence to the dawn of the Mahamanvantaric period, or the great re-evolution
after one of the complete periodical dissolutions of every compound form in
Nature (from planet to molecule) into its ultimate essence or element; and in
its second portion, to the partial or local manvantara, which may be a solar or
even a planetary one.
*** By
"centre," a centre of energy or a Cosmic focus is meant; when the
so-called "Creation," or formation of a planet, is accomplished by
that force which is designated by the Occultists LIFE and by Science
"energy," then the process takes place [[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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contracts
(exhalation and inhalation). When it expands the mother diffuses and scatters;
when it contracts, the mother draws back and ingathers. This produces the
periods of Evolution and Dissolution, Manwantara and Pralaya. The Germ is
invisible and fiery; the Root (the plane of the circle) is cool; but during
Evolution and Manwantara her garment is cold and radiant. Hot Breath is the
Father who devours the progeny of the many-faced Element (heterogeneous); and
leaves the single-faced ones (homogeneous). Cool Breath is the Mother, who
conceives, forms, brings forth, and receives them back into her bosom, to
reform them at the Dawn (of the Day of Brahma, or Manvantara). . . . ."
For clearer
understanding on the part of the general reader, it must be stated that Occult
Science recognises Seven Cosmical Elements -- four entirely physical, and the
fifth (Ether) semi-material, as it will become visible in the air towards the
end of our Fourth Round, to reign supreme over the others during the whole of
the Fifth. The remaining two are as yet absolutely beyond the range of human
perception. These latter will, however, appear as presentments during the 6th
and 7th Races of this Round, and will become known in the 6th and 7th Rounds
respectively.* These seven elements with their numberless Sub-Elements
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] from within outwardly, every atom being said to
contain in itself creative energy of the divine breath. Hence, whereas after an
absolute pralaya, or when the pre-existing material consists but of ONE
Element, and BREATH "is everywhere," the latter acts from without
inwardly: after a minor pralaya, everything having remained in statu quo -- in
a refrigerated state, so to say, like the moon -- at the first flutter of
manvantara, the planet or planets begin their resurrection to life from within
outwardly.
* It is curious
to notice how, in the evolutionary cycles of ideas, ancient thought seems to be
reflected in modern speculation. Had Mr. Herbert Spencer read and studied
ancient Hindu philosophers when he wrote a certain passage in his "First
Principles" (p. 482), or is it an independent flash of inner perception
that made him say half correctly, half incorrectly, "motion as well as
matter, being fixed in quantity (?), it would seem that the change in the
distribution of Matter which Motion effects, coming to a limit in whichever
direction it is carried (?), the indestructible Motion thereupon necessitates a
reverse distribution. Apparently, the universally co-existent forces of
attraction and repulsion which, as we have seen, necessitate rhythm in all
minor changes throughout the Universe, also necessitate rhythm in the totality
of its changes -- produce now an immeasurable period during which the
attracting forces predominating, cause universal concentration, and then an
immeasurable period, during which the repulsive forces predominating, cause
universal diffusion -- alternate eras of Evolution and dissolution."
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far more
numerous than those known to Science) are simply conditional modifications and
aspects of the ONE and only Element. This latter is not Ether,* not even A'kasa
but the Source of these. The Fifth Element, now advocated quite freely by
Science, is not the Ether hypothesised by Sir Isaac Newton -- although he calls
it by that name, having associated it in his mind probably with the AEther,
"Father-Mother" of Antiquity. As Newton intuitionally says,
"Nature is a perpetual circulatory worker, generating fluids out of
solids, fixed things out of volatile, and volatile out of fixed, subtile out of
gross, and gross out of subtile. . . . . Thus, perhaps, may all things be
originated from Ether," (Hypoth, 1675).
The reader has
to bear in mind that the Stanzas given treat only of the Cosmogony of our own
planetary System and what is visible around it, after a Solar Pralaya. The
secret teachings with regard to the Evolution of the Universal Kosmos cannot be
given, since they could not be understood by the highest minds in this age, and
there seem to be very few Initiates, even among the greatest, who are allowed
to speculate upon this subject. Moreover the Teachers say openly that not even
the highest Dhyani-Chohans have ever penetrated the mysteries beyond those
boundaries that separate the milliards of Solar systems from the "Central
Sun," as it is called. Therefore, that which is given, relates only to our
visible Kosmos, after a "Night of Brahma."
Before the
reader proceeds to the consideration of the Stanzas from the Book of Dzyan
which form the basis of the present work, it is absolutely necessary that he
should be made acquainted with the few fundamental conceptions which underlie
and pervade the entire system of thought to which his attention is invited.
These basic ideas are few in number, and on their clear apprehension depends
the understanding of all that follows; therefore no apology is required for
asking the reader to make himself familiar with them first, before entering on
the perusal of the work itself.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Whatever the
views of physical Science upon the subject, Occult Science has been teaching
for ages that A'kasa -- of which Ether is the grossest form -- the fifth
universal Cosmic Principle (to which corresponds and from which proceeds human
Manas) is, cosmically, a radiant, cool, diathermanous plastic matter, creative
in its physical nature, correlative in its grossest aspects and portions,
immutable in its higher principles. In the former condition it is called the
Sub-Root; and in conjunction with radiant heat, it recalls "dead worlds to
life." In its higher aspect it is the Soul of the World; in its lower --
the DESTROYER.
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The Secret
Doctrine establishes three fundamental propositions:--
(a) An
Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless, and Immutable PRINCIPLE on which all
speculation is impossible, since it transcends the power of human conception and
could only be dwarfed by any human expression or similitude. It is beyond the
range and reach of thought -- in the words of Mandukya, "unthinkable and
unspeakable."
To render these
ideas clearer to the general reader, let him set out with the postulate that
there is one absolute Reality which antecedes all manifested, conditioned,
being. This Infinite and Eternal Cause -- dimly formulated in the
"Unconscious" and "Unknowable" of current European
philosophy -- is the rootless root of "all that was, is, or ever shall
be." It is of course devoid of all attributes and is essentially without
any relation to manifested, finite Being. It is "Be-ness" rather than
Being (in Sanskrit, Sat), and is beyond all thought or speculation.
This
"Be-ness" is symbolised in the Secret Doctrine under two aspects. On
the one hand, absolute abstract Space, representing bare subjectivity, the one
thing which no human mind can either exclude from any conception, or conceive
of by itself. On the other, absolute Abstract Motion representing Unconditioned
Consciousness. Even our Western thinkers have shown that Consciousness is
inconceivable to us apart from change, and motion best symbolises change, its
essential characteristic. This latter aspect of the one Reality, is also symbolised
by the term "The Great Breath," a symbol sufficiently graphic to need
no further elucidation. Thus, then, the first fundamental axiom of the Secret
Doctrine is this metaphysical ONE ABSOLUTE -- BE-NESS -- symbolised by finite
intelligence as the theological Trinity.
It may, however,
assist the student if a few further explanations are given here.
Herbert Spencer
has of late so far modified his Agnosticism, as to assert that the nature of
the "First Cause,"* which the Occultist more logically derives from
the "Causeless Cause," the "Eternal," and the
"Unknowable," may be essentially the same as that of the
Consciousness which wells up within us: in short, that the impersonal reality
pervading
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The
"first" presupposes necessarily something which is the "first
brought forth, the first in time, space, and rank" -- and therefore finite
and conditioned. The "first" [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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the Kosmos is
the pure noumenon of thought. This advance on his part brings him very near to
the esoteric and Vedantin tenet.*
Parabrahm (the
One Reality, the Absolute) is the field of Absolute Consciousness, i.e., that
Essence which is out of all relation to conditioned existence, and of which
conscious existence is a conditioned symbol. But once that we pass in thought
from this (to us) Absolute Negation, duality supervenes in the contrast of
Spirit (or consciousness) and Matter, Subject and Object.
Spirit (or
Consciousness) and Matter are, however, to be regarded, not as independent
realities, but as the two facets or aspects of the Absolute (Parabrahm), which
constitute the basis of conditioned Being whether subjective or objective.
Considering this
metaphysical triad as the Root from which proceeds all manifestation, the great
Breath assumes the character of precosmic Ideation. It is the fons et origo of
force and of all individual consciousness, and supplies the guiding
intelligence in the vast scheme of cosmic Evolution. On the other hand,
precosmic root-substance (Mulaprakriti) is that aspect of the Absolute which
underlies all the objective planes of Nature.
Just as
pre-Cosmic Ideation is the root of all individual consciousness, so pre-Cosmic
Substance is the substratum of matter in the various grades of its
differentiation.
Hence it will be
apparent that the contrast of these two aspects of the Absolute is essential to
the existence of the "Manifested Universe." Apart from Cosmic
Substance, Cosmic Ideation could not manifest as individual consciousness,
since it is only through a vehicle** of matter that consciousness wells up as
"I am I," a physical basis being necessary to focus a ray of the
Universal Mind at a certain stage of complexity. Again, apart from Cosmic
Ideation, Cosmic Substance would remain an empty abstraction, and no emergence
of consciousness could ensue.
The
"Manifested Universe," therefore, is pervaded by duality, which is,
as it were, the very essence of its EX-istence as "manifestation."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] cannot be the absolute, for it is a
manifestation. Therefore, Eastern Occultism calls the Abstract All the
"Causeless One Cause," the "Rootless Root," and limits the
"First Cause" to the Logos, in the sense that Plato gives to this
term.
* See Mr. Subba
Row's four able lectures on the Bhagavad Gita, "Theosophist,"
February, 1887.
** Called in
Sanskrit: "Upadhi."
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But just as the
opposite poles of subject and object, spirit and matter, are but aspects of the
One Unity in which they are synthesized, so, in the manifested Universe, there
is "that" which links spirit to matter, subject to object.
This something,
at present unknown to Western speculation, is called by the occultists Fohat.
It is the "bridge" by which the "Ideas" existing in the
"Divine Thought" are impressed on Cosmic substance as the "laws
of Nature." Fohat is thus the dynamic energy of Cosmic Ideation; or,
regarded from the other side, it is the intelligent medium, the guiding power
of all manifestation, the "Thought Divine" transmitted and made
manifest through the Dhyan Chohans,* the Architects of the visible World. Thus
from Spirit, or Cosmic Ideation, comes our consciousness; from Cosmic Substance
the several vehicles in which that consciousness is individualised and attains
to self -- or reflective -- consciousness; while Fohat, in its various
manifestations, is the mysterious link between Mind and Matter, the animating
principle electrifying every atom into life.
The following
summary will afford a clearer idea to the reader.
(1.) The
ABSOLUTE; the Parabrahm of the Vedantins or the one Reality, SAT, which is, as Hegel
says, both Absolute Being and Non-Being.
(2.) The first
manifestation, the impersonal, and, in philosophy, unmanifested Logos, the
precursor of the "manifested." This is the "First Cause,"
the "Unconscious" of European Pantheists.
(3.)
Spirit-matter, LIFE; the "Spirit of the Universe," the Purusha and
Prakriti, or the second Logos.
(4.) Cosmic
Ideation, MAHAT or Intelligence, the Universal World-Soul; the Cosmic Noumenon
of Matter, the basis of the intelligent operations in and of Nature, also called
MAHA-BUDDHI.
The ONE REALITY;
its dual aspects in the conditioned Universe.
Further, the
Secret Doctrine affirms:--
(b.) The
Eternity of the Universe in toto as a boundless plane; periodically "the
playground of numberless Universes incessantly manifesting and
disappearing," called "the manifesting stars," and the
"sparks of Eternity." "The Eternity of the Pilgrim"** is
like a wink
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Called by
Christian theology: Archangels, Seraphs, etc., etc.
**
"Pilgrim" is the appellation given to our Monad (the two in one)
during its cycle of incarnations. It is the only immortal and eternal principle
in us, being an indivisible part of the integral whole -- the Universal Spirit,
from which it emanates, and into which it is absorbed at the end of the cycle.
When it is said to emanate from the one [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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of the Eye of
Self-Existence (Book of Dzyan.) "The appearance and disappearance of
Worlds is like a regular tidal ebb of flux and reflux." (See Part II.,
"Days and Nights of Brahma.")
This second
assertion of the Secret Doctrine is the absolute universality of that law of
periodicity, of flux and reflux, ebb and flow, which physical science has
observed and recorded in all departments of nature. An alternation such as that
of Day and Night, Life and Death, Sleeping and Waking, is a fact so common, so
perfectly universal and without exception, that it is easy to comprehend that
in it we see one of the absolutely fundamental laws of the universe.
Moreover, the
Secret Doctrine teaches:--
(c) The fundamental
identity of all Souls with the Universal Over-Soul, the latter being itself an
aspect of the Unknown Root; and the obligatory pilgrimage for every Soul -- a
spark of the former -- through the Cycle of Incarnation (or
"Necessity") in accordance with Cyclic and Karmic law, during the
whole term. In other words, no purely spiritual Buddhi (divine Soul) can have
an independent (conscious) existence before the spark which issued from the
pure Essence of the Universal Sixth principle, -- or the OVER-SOUL, -- has (a)
passed through every elemental form of the phenomenal world of that Manvantara,
and (b) acquired individuality, first by natural impulse, and then by
self-induced and self-devised efforts (checked by its Karma), thus ascending
through all the degrees of intelligence, from the lowest to the highest Manas,
from mineral and plant, up to the holiest archangel (Dhyani-Buddha). The
pivotal doctrine of the Esoteric philosophy admits no privileges or special
gifts in man, save those won by his own Ego through personal effort and merit
throughout a long series of metempsychoses and reincarnations. This is why the
Hindus say that the Universe is Brahma and Brahmâ, for Brahma is in every atom
of the universe, the six principles in Nature being all the outcome -- the
variously differentiated aspects -- of the SEVENTH and ONE, the only reality in
the Universe whether Cosmical or micro-cosmical; and also why the permutations
(psychic, spiritual and physical), on the plane of manifestation and form, of
the sixth (Brahmâ the vehicle of Brahma) are viewed by metaphysical
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] spirit, an awkward and incorrect expression has
to be used, for lack of appropriate words in English. The Vedantins call it
Sutratma (Thread-Soul), but their explanation, too, differs somewhat from that
of the occultists; to explain which difference, however, is left to the
Vedantins themselves.
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antiphrasis as
illusive and Mayavic. For although the root of every atom individually and of
every form collectively, is that seventh principle or the one Reality, still,
in its manifested phenomenal and temporary appearance, it is no better than an
evanescent illusion of our senses. (See, for clearer definition, Addendum
"Gods, Monads and Atoms," and also "Theophania," "Bodhisatvas
and Reincarnation," etc., etc.)
In its
absoluteness, the One Principle under its two aspects (of Parabrahmam and
Mulaprakriti) is sexless, unconditioned and eternal. Its periodical
(manvantaric) emanation -- or primal radiation -- is also One, androgynous and
phenomenally finite. When the radiation radiates in its turn, all its
radiations are also androgynous, to become male and female principles in their
lower aspects. After Pralaya, whether the great or the minor Pralaya (the
latter leaving the worlds in statu quo*), the first that re-awakes to active
life is the plastic A'kasa, Father-Mother, the Spirit and Soul of Ether, or the
plane on the surface of the Circle. Space is called the "Mother"
before its Cosmic activity, and Father-Mother at the first stage of
re-awakening. (See Comments, Stanza II.) In the Kabala it is also
Father-Mother-Son. But whereas in the Eastern doctrine, these are the Seventh
Principle of the manifested Universe, or its "Atma-Buddhi-Manas"
(Spirit, Soul, Intelligence), the triad branching off and dividing into the
seven cosmical and seven human principles, in the Western Kabala of the
Christian mystics it is the Triad or Trinity, and with their occultists, the
male-female Jehovah, Jah-Havah. In this lies the whole difference between the
esoteric and the Christian trinities. The Mystics and the Philosophers, the
Eastern and Western Pantheists, synthesize their pregenetic triad in the pure
divine abstraction. The orthodox, anthropomorphize it. Hiranyagarbha, Hari, and
Sankara -- the three hypostases of the manifesting "Spirit of the Supreme
Spirit" (by which title Prithivi -- the Earth -- greets Vishnu in his
first Avatar) -- are the purely metaphysical abstract qualities of formation,
preservation, and destruction, and are the three divine Avasthas (lit.
hypostases) of that which "does
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is not the
physical organisms that remain in statu quo, least of all their psychical
principles, during the great Cosmic or even Solar pralayas, but only their
Akasic or astral "photographs." But during the minor pralayas, once
over-taken by the "Night," the planets remain intact, though dead, as
a huge animal, caught and embedded in the polar ice, remains the same for ages.
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not perish with
created things" (or Achyuta, a name of Vishnu); whereas the orthodox
Christian separates his personal creative Deity into the three personages of
the Trinity, and admits of no higher Deity. The latter, in Occultism, is the
abstract Triangle; with the orthodox, the perfect Cube. The creative god or the
aggregate gods are regarded by the Eastern philosopher as Bhrantidarsanatah --
"false apprehension," something "conceived of, by reason of
erroneous appearances, as a material form," and explained as arising from
the illusive conception of the Egotistic personal and human Soul (lower fifth
principle). It is beautifully expressed in a new translation of Vishnu Purana.
"That Brahma in its totality has essentially the aspect of Prakriti, both
evolved and unevolved (Mulaprakriti), and also the aspect of Spirit and the
aspect of Time. Spirit, O twice born, is the leading aspect of the Supreme
Brahma.* The next is a twofold aspect, -- Prakriti, both evolved and unevolved,
and is the time last." Kronos is shown in the Orphic theogony as being
also a generated god or agent.
At this stage of
the re-awakening of the Universe, the sacred symbolism represents it as a
perfect Circle with the (root) point in the Centre. This sign was universal,
therefore we find it in the Kabala also. The Western Kabala, however, now in
the hands of Christian mystics, ignores it altogether, though it is plainly
shown in the Zohar. These sectarians begin at the end, and show as the symbol
of pregenetic Kosmos this sign [[diagram]], calling it "the
As may be
judged, however, from the most important, as the best known of the
Rosicrucians' symbols, there is one which has never been hitherto understood
even by modern mystics. It is that of the "Pelican" tearing open its
breast to feed its seven little ones -- the real creed of the Brothers of the
Rosie-Cross and a direct outcome from the Eastern
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Thus Spencer,
who, nevertheless, like Schopenhauer and von Hartmann, only reflects an aspect
of the old esoteric philosophers, and hence lands his readers on the bleak
shore of Agnostic despair -- reverently formulates the grand mystery;
"that which persists unchanging in quantity, but ever changing in form,
under these sensible appearances which the Universe presents to us, is an
unknown and unknowable power, which we are obliged to recognise as without
limit in Space and without beginning or end in time." It is only daring
Theology -- never Science or philosophy -- which seeks to gauge the Infinite
and unveil the Fathomless and Unknowable.
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Secret Doctrine.
Brahma (neuter) is called Kalahansa, meaning, as explained by Western
Orientalists, the Eternal Swan or goose (see Stanza III., Comment. 8), and so
is Brahma, the Creator. A great mistake is thus brought under notice; it is
Brahma (neuter) who ought to be referred to as Hansa-vahana (He who uses the
swan as his Vehicle) and not Brahma the Creator, who is the real Kalahansa,
while Brahma (neuter) is hamsa, and "A-hamsa," as will be explained
in the Commentary. Let it be understood that the terms Brahma and Parabrahmam
are not used here because they belong to our Esoteric nomenclature, but simply
because they are more familiar to the students in the West. Both are the
perfect equivalents of our one, three, and seven vowelled terms, which stand
for the ONE ALL, and the One "All in all."
Such are the
basic conceptions on which the Secret Doctrine rests.
It would not be
in place here to enter upon any defence or proof of their inherent reasonableness;
nor can I pause to show how they are, in fact, contained -- though too often
under a misleading guise -- in every system of thought or philosophy worthy of
the name.
Once that the
reader has gained a clear comprehension of them and realised the light which
they throw on every problem of life, they will need no further justification in
his eyes, because their truth will be to him as evident as the sun in heaven. I
pass on, therefore, to the subject matter of the Stanzas as given in this
volume, adding a skeleton outline of them, in the hope of thereby rendering the
task of the student more easy, by placing before him in a few words the general
conception therein explained.
Stanza I. The
history of cosmic evolution, as traced in the Stanzas, is, so to say, the
abstract algebraical formula of that Evolution. Hence the student must not
expect to find there an account of all the stages and transformations which
intervene between the first beginnings of "Universal" evolution and
our present state. To give such an account would be as impossible as it would
be incomprehensible to men who cannot even grasp the nature of the plane of
existence next to that to which, for the moment, their consciousness is
limited.
The Stanzas,
therefore, give an abstract formula which can be applied, mutatis mutandis, to
all evolution: to that of our tiny earth, to
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that of the
chain of planets of which that earth forms one, to the solar Universe to which
that chain belongs, and so on, in an ascending scale, till the mind reels and
is exhausted in the effort.
The seven
Stanzas given in this volume represent the seven terms of this abstract
formula. They refer to, and describe the seven great stages of the evolutionary
process, which are spoken of in the Puranas as the "Seven Creations,"
and in the Bible as the "Days" of Creation.
---------------------
The First Stanza
describes the state of the ONE ALL during Pralaya, before the first flutter of
re-awakening manifestation.
A moment's
thought shows that such a state can only be symbolised; to describe it is
impossible. Nor can it be symbolised except in negatives; for, since it is the
state of Absoluteness per se, it can possess none of those specific attributes
which serve us to describe objects in positive terms. Hence that state can only
be suggested by the negatives of all those most abstract attributes which men
feel rather than conceive, as the remotest limits attainable by their power of
conception.
The stage
described in Stanza II. is, to a western mind, so nearly identical with that
mentioned in the first Stanza, that to express the idea of its difference would
require a treatise in itself. Hence it must be left to the intuition and the
higher faculties of the reader to grasp, as far as he can, the meaning of the
allegorical phrases used. Indeed it must be remembered that all these Stanzas
appeal to the inner faculties rather than to the ordinary comprehension of the
physical brain.
Stanza III.
describes the Re-awakening of the Universe to life after Pralaya. It depicts
the emergence of the "Monads" from their state of absorption within
the ONE; the earliest and highest stage in the formation of "Worlds,"
the term Monad being one which may apply equally to the vastest Solar System or
the tiniest atom.
Stanza IV. shows
the differentiation of the "Germ" of the Universe
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into the
septenary hierarchy of conscious Divine Powers, who are the active
manifestations of the One Supreme Energy. They are the framers, shapers, and
ultimately the creators of all the manifested Universe, in the only sense in
which the name "Creator" is intelligible; they inform and guide it;
they are the intelligent Beings who adjust and control evolution, embodying in
themselves those manifestations of the ONE LAW, which we know as "The Laws
of Nature."
Generically,
they are known as the Dhyan Chohans, though each of the various groups has its
own designation in the Secret Doctrine.
This stage of
evolution is spoken of in Hindu mythology as the "Creation" of the
Gods.
In Stanza V. the
process of world-formation is described:--- First, diffused Cosmic Matter, then
the fiery "whirlwind," the first stage in the formation of a nebula.
That nebula condenses, and after passing through various transformations, forms
a Solar Universe, a planetary chain, or a single planet, as the case may be.
The subsequent
stages in the formation of a "World" are indicated in Stanza VI.,
which brings the evolution of such a world down to its fourth great period,
corresponding to the period in which we are now living.
Stanza VII.
continues the history, tracing the descent of life down to the appearance of
Man; and thus closes the first Book of the Secret Doctrine.
The development
of "Man" from his first appearance on this earth in this Round to the
state in which we now find him will form the subject of Book II.
---------------------
NOTE.
The Stanzas
which form the thesis of every section are given throughout in their modern translated
version, as it would be worse
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than useless to
make the subject still more difficult by introducing the archaic phraseology of
the original, with its puzzling style and words. Extracts are given from the
Chinese Thibetan and Sanskrit translations of the original Senzar Commentaries
and Glosses on the Book of DZYAN -- these being now rendered for the first time
into a European language. It is almost unnecessary to state that only portions
of the seven Stanzas are here given. Were they published complete they would
remain incomprehensible to all save the few higher occultists. Nor is there any
need to assure the reader that, no more than most of the profane, does the
writer, or rather the humble recorder, understand those forbidden passages. To
facilitate the reading, and to avoid the too frequent reference to foot-notes,
it was thought best to blend together texts and glosses, using the Sanskrit and
Tibetan proper names whenever those cannot be avoided, in preference to giving
the originals. The more so as the said terms are all accepted synonyms, the
former only being used between a Master and his chelas (or disciples).
Thus, were one
to translate into English, using only the substantives and technical terms as
employed in one of the Tibetan and Senzar versions, Verse I would read as
follows:--- "Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas zhiba. All
Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan-Kam not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not;
Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone
Tho-og Yinsin in night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna), &c.,
&c.," which would sound like pure Abracadabra.
As this work is
written for the instruction of students of Occultism, and not for the benefit
of philologists, we may well avoid such foreign terms wherever it is possible
to do so. The untranslateable terms alone, incomprehensible unless explained in
their meanings, are left, but all such terms are rendered in their Sanskrit
form. Needless to remind the reader that these are, in almost every case, the
late developments of the later language, and pertain to the Fifth Root-Race.
Sanskrit, as now known, was not spoken by the Atlanteans, and most of the
philosophical terms used in the systems of the
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dreamers; and,
at the worst, as an additional hypothesis to the many Scientific hypotheses
past, present and future, some exploded, others still lingering. It is not in
any sense worse than are many of the so called Scientific theories; and it is
in every case more philosophical and probable.
In view of the
abundant comments and explanations required, the references to the footnotes
are given in the usual way, while the sentences to be commented upon are marked
with figures. Additional matter will be found in the Chapters on Symbolism
forming Part II., as well as in Part III., these being often more full of
information than the text.
---------------------
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PART I.
COSMIC
EVOLUTION.
---------------------
SEVEN STANZAS
TRANSLATED WITH COMMENTARIES
FROM THE
SECRET BOOK OF
DZYAN.
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Nor Aught nor
Nought existed; yon bright sky
Was not, nor
heaven's broad roof outstretched above.
What covered
all? what sheltered? what concealed?
Was it the
water's fathomless abyss?
There was not
death -- yet there was nought immortal,
There was no
confine betwixt day and night;
The only One
breathed breathless by itself,
Other than It
there nothing since has been.
Darkness there
was, and all at first was veiled
In gloom
profound -- an ocean without light --
The germ that
still lay covered in the husk
Burst forth, one
nature, from the fervent heat.
. . . . . . . .
Who knows the
secret? who proclaimed it here?
Whence, whence
this manifold creation sprang?
The Gods
themselves came later into being --
Who knows from
whence this great creation sprang?
That, whence all
this great creation came,
Whether Its will
created or was mute,
The Most High
Seer that is in highest heaven,
He knows it --
or perchance even He knows not."
"Gazing
into eternity . . .
Ere the
foundations of the earth were laid,
. . . . .
Thou wert. And
when the subterranean flame
Shall burst its
prison and devour the frame . . .
Thou shalt be
still as Thou wert before
And knew no
change, when time shall be no more.
Oh! endless
thought, divine ETERNITY."
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COSMIC
EVOLUTION.
In Seven Stanzas
translated from the Book of Dzyan.
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STANZA I.
1. THE ETERNAL
PARENT WRAPPED IN HER EVER INVISIBLE ROBES HAD SLUMBERED ONCE AGAIN FOR SEVEN
ETERNITIES.
2. TIME WAS NOT,
FOR IT LAY ASLEEP IN THE INFINITE BOSOM OF DURATION.
3. UNIVERSAL
MIND WAS NOT, FOR THERE WERE NO AH-HI TO CONTAIN IT.
4. THE
5. DARKNESS
ALONE FILLED THE BOUNDLESS ALL, FOR FATHER, MOTHER AND SON WERE ONCE MORE ONE,
AND THE SON HAD NOT AWAKENED YET FOR THE NEW WHEEL, AND HIS PILGRIMAGE THEREON.
6. THE SEVEN
SUBLIME LORDS AND THE SEVEN TRUTHS HAD CEASED TO BE, AND THE UNIVERSE, THE SON
OF NECESSITY, WAS IMMERSED IN PARANISHPANNA, TO BE OUTBREATHED BY THAT WHICH IS
AND YET IS NOT. NAUGHT WAS.
7. THE CAUSES OF
EXISTENCE HAD BEEN DONE AWAY WITH; THE VISIBLE THAT WAS, AND THE INVISIBLE THAT
IS, RESTED IN ETERNAL NON-BEING -- THE ONE BEING.
8. ALONE THE ONE
FORM OF EXISTENCE STRETCHED BOUNDLESS, INFINITE, CAUSELESS, IN DREAMLESS SLEEP;
AND LIFE PULSATED UNCONSCIOUS IN UNIVERSAL SPACE, THROUGHOUT THAT ALL-PRESENCE
WHICH IS SENSED BY THE OPENED EYE OF THE DANGMA.
9. BUT WHERE WAS
THE DANGMA WHEN THE ALAYA OF THE UNIVERSE WAS IN PARAMARTHA AND THE GREAT WHEEL
WAS ANUPADAKA?
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STANZA II.
1. . . . WHERE
WERE THE BUILDERS, THE LUMINOUS SONS OF MANVANTARIC DAWN? . . . IN THE UNKNOWN
DARKNESS IN THEIR AH-HI PARANISHPANNA. THE PRODUCERS OF FORM FROM NO-FORM --
THE ROOT OF THE WORLD -- THE DEVAMATRI AND SVABHAVAT, RESTED IN THE BLISS OF
NON-BEING.
2. . . . WHERE
WAS SILENCE? WHERE THE EARS TO SENSE IT? NO, THERE WAS NEITHER SILENCE NOR
SOUND; NAUGHT SAVE CEASELESS ETERNAL BREATH, WHICH KNOWS ITSELF NOT.
3. THE HOUR HAD
NOT YET STRUCK; THE RAY HAD NOT YET FLASHED INTO THE GERM; THE MATRIPADMA HAD
NOT YET SWOLLEN.
4. HER HEART HAD
NOT YET OPENED FOR THE ONE RAY TO ENTER, THENCE TO FALL, AS THREE INTO FOUR,
INTO THE LAP OF MAYA.
5. THE SEVEN
SONS WERE NOT YET BORN FROM THE WEB OF LIGHT. DARKNESS ALONE WAS FATHER-MOTHER,
SVABHAVAT; AND SVABHAVAT WAS IN DARKNESS.
6. THESE TWO ARE
THE GERM, AND THE GERM IS ONE. THE UNIVERSE WAS STILL CONCEALED IN THE DIVINE
THOUGHT AND THE DIVINE BOSOM. . . .
-------
STANZA III.
1. . . . THE
LAST VIBRATION OF THE SEVENTH ETERNITY THRILLS THROUGH INFINITUDE. THE MOTHER
SWELLS, EXPANDING FROM WITHIN WITHOUT, LIKE THE BUD OF THE LOTUS.
2. THE VIBRATION
SWEEPS ALONG, TOUCHING WITH ITS SWIFT WING THE WHOLE UNIVERSE AND THE GERM THAT
DWELLETH IN DARKNESS: THE DARKNESS THAT BREATHES OVER THE SLUMBERING WATERS OF
LIFE. . .
3. DARKNESS
RADIATES LIGHT, AND LIGHT DROPS ONE SOLITARY RAY INTO THE MOTHER-DEEP. THE RAY
SHOOTS THROUGH THE VIRGIN EGG, THE RAY CAUSES THE ETERNAL EGG TO THRILL, AND
DROP THE NON-ETERNAL GERM, WHICH CONDENSES INTO THE WORLD-EGG.
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4. THEN THE
THREE FALL INTO THE FOUR. THE RADIANT ESSENCE BECOMES SEVEN INSIDE, SEVEN
OUTSIDE. THE LUMINOUS EGG, WHICH IN ITSELF IS THREE, CURDLES AND SPREADS IN
MILK-WHITE CURDS THROUGHOUT THE DEPTHS OF MOTHER, THE ROOT THAT GROWS IN THE
DEPTHS OF THE
5. THE ROOT
REMAINS, THE LIGHT REMAINS, THE CURDS REMAIN, AND STILL OEAOHOO IS ONE.
6. THE ROOT OF
LIFE WAS IN EVERY DROP OF THE
7. BEHOLD, OH
LANOO! THE RADIANT CHILD OF THE TWO, THE UNPARALLELED REFULGENT GLORY: BRIGHT SPACE
SON OF DARK SPACE, WHICH EMERGES FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE GREAT DARK WATERS. IT
IS OEAOHOO THE YOUNGER, THE * * * HE SHINES
8. WHERE WAS THE
GERM AND WHERE WAS NOW DARKNESS? WHERE IS THE SPIRIT OF THE FLAME THAT BURNS IN
THY LAMP, OH LANOO? THE GERM IS THAT, AND THAT IS LIGHT, THE WHITE BRILLIANT
SON OF THE DARK HIDDEN FATHER.
9. LIGHT IS COLD
FLAME, AND FLAME IS FIRE, AND FIRE PRODUCES HEAT, WHICH YIELDS WATER: THE WATER
OF LIFE IN THE GREAT MOTHER.
10.
FATHER-MOTHER SPIN A WEB WHOSE UPPER END IS FASTENED TO SPIRIT -- THE LIGHT OF
THE ONE DARKNESS -- AND THE LOWER ONE TO ITS SHADOWY END, MATTER; AND THIS WEB
IS THE UNIVERSE SPUN OUT OF THE TWO SUBSTANCES MADE IN ONE, WHICH IS SVABHAVAT.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
** In the
English translation from the Sanskrit the numbers are given in that language,
Eka, Chatur, etc., etc. It was thought best to give them in English.
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11. IT EXPANDS
WHEN THE BREATH OF FIRE IS UPON IT; IT CONTRACTS WHEN THE BREATH OF THE MOTHER
TOUCHES IT. THEN THE SONS DISSOCIATE AND SCATTER, TO RETURN INTO THEIR MOTHER'S
BOSOM AT THE END OF THE GREAT DAY, AND RE-BECOME ONE WITH HER; WHEN IT IS
COOLING IT BECOMES RADIANT, AND THE SONS EXPAND AND CONTRACT THROUGH THEIR OWN
SELVES AND HEARTS; THEY EMBRACE INFINITUDE.
12. THEN
SVABHAVAT SENDS FOHAT TO HARDEN THE ATOMS. EACH IS A PART OF THE WEB.
REFLECTING THE "SELF-EXISTENT LORD" LIKE A MIRROR, EACH BECOMES IN
TURN A WORLD.
-------
STANZA IV.
1. . . . LISTEN,
YE SONS OF THE EARTH, TO YOUR INSTRUCTORS -- THE SONS OF THE FIRE. LEARN, THERE
IS NEITHER FIRST NOR LAST, FOR ALL IS ONE: NUMBER ISSUED FROM NO NUMBER.
2. LEARN WHAT WE
WHO DESCEND FROM THE PRIMORDIAL SEVEN, WE WHO ARE BORN FROM THE PRIMORDIAL
FLAME, HAVE LEARNT FROM OUR FATHERS. . . .
3. FROM THE
EFFULGENCY OF LIGHT -- THE RAY OF THE EVER-DARKNESS -- SPRUNG IN SPACE THE
RE-AWAKENED ENERGIES; THE ONE FROM THE EGG, THE SIX, AND THE FIVE. THEN THE
THREE, THE ONE, THE FOUR, THE ONE, THE FIVE -- THE TWICE SEVEN THE SUM TOTAL.
AND THESE ARE THE ESSENCES, THE FLAMES, THE ELEMENTS, THE BUILDERS, THE
NUMBERS, THE ARUPA, THE RUPA, AND THE FORCE OF DIVINE MAN -- THE SUM TOTAL. AND
FROM THE DIVINE MAN EMANATED THE FORMS, THE
4. THIS WAS THE
ARMY OF THE VOICE -- THE DIVINE MOTHER OF THE SEVEN. THE
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5.
"DARKNESS" THE BOUNDLESS, OR THE NO-NUMBER, ADI-NIDANA SVABHAVAT:--
I. THE
ADI-SANAT, THE NUMBER, FOR HE IS ONE.
II. THE VOICE OF
THE LORD SVABHAVAT, THE NUMBERS, FOR HE IS ONE AND NINE.
III. THE
"FORMLESS SQUARE."
AND THESE THREE
ENCLOSED WITHIN THE [[diagram]] ARE THE SACRED FOUR; AND THE TEN ARE THE ARUPA
UNIVERSE. THEN COME THE "SONS," THE SEVEN FIGHTERS, THE ONE, THE
EIGHTH LEFT OUT, AND HIS BREATH WHICH IS THE LIGHT-MAKER.
6. THEN THE
SECOND SEVEN, WHO ARE THE LIPIKA, PRODUCED BY THE THREE. THE REJECTED SON IS
ONE. THE "SON-SUNS" ARE COUNTLESS.
-------
STANZA V.
1. THE
PRIMORDIAL SEVEN, THE FIRST SEVEN BREATHS OF THE DRAGON OF WISDOM, PRODUCE IN
THEIR TURN FROM THEIR HOLY CIRCUMGYRATING BREATHS THE FIERY WHIRLWIND.
2. THEY MAKE OF
HIM THE MESSENGER OF THEIR WILL. THE DZYU BECOMES FOHAT, THE SWIFT SON OF THE
DIVINE SONS WHOSE SONS ARE THE LIPIKA, RUNS CIRCULAR ERRANDS. FOHAT IS THE
STEED AND THE THOUGHT IS THE RIDER. HE PASSES LIKE LIGHTNING THROUGH THE FIERY
CLOUDS; TAKES THREE, AND FIVE, AND SEVEN STRIDES THROUGH THE SEVEN REGIONS
ABOVE, AND THE SEVEN BELOW. HE LIFTS HIS VOICE, AND CALLS THE INNUMERABLE
3. HE IS THEIR
GUIDING SPIRIT AND LEADER. WHEN HE COMMENCES WORK, HE SEPARATES THE
4. FOHAT TRACES
SPIRAL LINES TO UNITE THE SIXTH TO THE SEVENTH -- THE CROWN; AN ARMY OF THE
SONS OF LIGHT STANDS AT EACH ANGLE, AND THE LIPIKA IN THE MIDDLE WHEEL, THEY
SAY: THIS IS GOOD, THE
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FIRST DIVINE
WORLD IS READY, THE FIRST IS NOW THE SECOND. THEN THE "DIVINE ARUPA"
REFLECTS ITSELF IN CHHAYA LOKA, THE FIRST GARMENT OF THE ANUPADAKA.
5. FOHAT TAKES
FIVE STRIDES AND BUILDS A WINGED WHEEL AT EACH CORNER OF THE SQUARE, FOR THE
FOUR HOLY ONES AND THEIR ARMIES.
6. THE LIPIKA
CIRCUMSCRIBE THE TRIANGLE, THE FIRST ONE, THE CUBE, THE SECOND ONE, AND THE
PENTACLE WITHIN THE EGG. IT IS THE RING CALLED "PASS NOT" FOR THOSE
WHO DESCEND AND ASCEND. ALSO FOR THOSE WHO DURING THE KALPA ARE PROGRESSING
TOWARDS THE GREAT DAY "BE WITH US." THUS WERE FORMED THE RUPA AND THE
ARUPA: FROM ONE LIGHT SEVEN LIGHTS; FROM EACH OF THE SEVEN, SEVEN TIMES SEVEN
LIGHTS. THE WHEELS WATCH THE RING. . . . .
-------
STANZA VI.
1. BY THE POWER
OF THE MOTHER OF MERCY AND KNOWLEDGE -- KWAN-YIN -- THE "TRIPLE" OF
KWAN-SHAI-YIN, RESIDING IN KWAN-YIN-TIEN, FOHAT, THE BREATH OF THEIR PROGENY,
THE SON OF THE SONS, HAVING CALLED FORTH, FROM THE LOWER ABYSS, THE ILLUSIVE
FORM OF SIEN-TCHANG AND THE SEVEN ELEMENTS:*
2. THE SWIFT AND
RADIANT ONE PRODUCES THE SEVEN LAYA CENTRES, AGAINST WHICH NONE WILL PREVAIL TO
THE GREAT DAY "BE-WITH-US," AND SEATS THE UNIVERSE ON THESE ETERNAL
FOUNDATIONS SURROUNDING TSIEN-TCHAN WITH THE ELEMENTARY GERMS.
3. OF THE SEVEN
-- FIRST ONE MANIFESTED, SIX CONCEALED, TWO MANIFESTED, FIVE CONCEALED; THREE
MANIFESTED, FOUR CONCEALED; FOUR PRODUCED, THREE HIDDEN; FOUR AND ONE TSAN
REVEALED, TWO AND ONE HALF CONCEALED; SIX TO BE MANIFESTED, ONE LAID ASIDE.
LASTLY, SEVEN SMALL WHEELS REVOLVING; ONE GIVING BIRTH TO THE OTHER.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Verse 1 of
Stanza VI. is of a far later date than the other Stanzas, though still very
ancient. The old text of this verse, having names entirely unknown to the
Orientalists would give no clue to the student.
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4. HE BUILDS
THEM IN THE LIKENESS OF OLDER WHEELS, PLACING THEM ON THE IMPERISHABLE CENTRES.
HOW DOES FOHAT
BUILD THEM? HE COLLECTS THE FIERY DUST. HE MAKES BALLS OF FIRE, RUNS THROUGH
THEM, AND ROUND THEM, INFUSING LIFE THEREINTO THEN' SETS THEM INTO MOTION; SOME
5. AT THE
FOURTH, THE SONS ARE TOLD TO CREATE THEIR IMAGES. ONE THIRD REFUSES -- TWO
OBEY.
THE CURSE IS
PRONOUNCED; THEY WILL BE BORN ON THE FOURTH, SUFFER AND CAUSE SUFFERING; THIS
IS THE FIRST WAR.
6. THE OLDER WHEELS
ROTATED DOWNWARDS AND UPWARDS. . . . THE MOTHER'S SPAWN FILLED THE WHOLE. THERE
WERE BATTLES FOUGHT BETWEEN THE CREATORS AND THE DESTROYERS, AND BATTLES FOUGHT
FOR SPACE; THE SEED APPEARING AND RE-APPEARING CONTINUOUSLY.
7. MAKE THY
CALCULATIONS, LANOO, IF THOU WOULDEST LEARN THE CORRECT AGE OF THY SMALL WHEEL.
ITS FOURTH SPOKE IS OUR MOTHER. REACH THE FOURTH "FRUIT" OF THE
FOURTH PATH OF KNOWLEDGE THAT LEADS TO NIRVANA, AND THOU SHALT COMPREHEND, FOR
THOU SHALT SEE . . . . .
-------
STANZA VII.
1. BEHOLD THE
BEGINNING OF SENTIENT FORMLESS LIFE.
FIRST THE
DIVINE, THE ONE FROM THE MOTHER-SPIRIT; THEN THE SPIRITUAL; THE THREE FROM THE
ONE, THE FOUR FROM THE ONE, AND THE FIVE FROM WHICH THE THREE, THE FIVE, AND
THE SEVEN. THESE ARE THE THREE-FOLD, THE FOUR-FOLD DOWNWARD; THE
"MIND-BORN" SONS OF THE FIRST LORD; THE SHINING SEVEN.
IT IS THEY WHO
ARE THOU, ME, HIM, OH LANOO. THEY, WHO WATCH OVER THEE, AND THY MOTHER EARTH.
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2. THE ONE RAY
MULTIPLIES THE SMALLER RAYS. LIFE PRECEDES FORM, AND LIFE SURVIVES THE LAST
ATOM OF FORM. THROUGH THE COUNTLESS RAYS PROCEEDS THE LIFE-RAY, THE ONE, LIKE A
THREAD THROUGH MANY JEWELS.
3. WHEN THE ONE
BECOMES TWO, THE THREEFOLD APPEARS, AND THE THREE ARE ONE; AND IT IS OUR
THREAD, OH LANOO, THE HEART OF THE MAN-PLANT CALLED SAPTASARMA.
4. IT IS THE ROOT
THAT NEVER DIES; THE THREE-TONGUED FLAME OF THE FOUR WICKS. THE WICKS ARE THE
5. THE SPARK
HANGS FROM THE FLAME BY THE FINEST THREAD OF FOHAT. IT JOURNEYS THROUGH THE
SEVEN WORLDS OF MAYA. IT STOPS IN THE FIRST, AND IS A METAL AND A STONE; IT
PASSES INTO THE SECOND AND BEHOLD -- A PLANT; THE PLANT WHIRLS THROUGH SEVEN
CHANGES AND BECOMES A SACRED ANIMAL. FROM THE COMBINED ATTRIBUTES OF THESE,
MANU, THE THINKER IS FORMED. WHO FORMS HIM? THE SEVEN LIVES, AND THE ONE LIFE.
WHO COMPLETES HIM? THE FIVE-FOLD LHA. AND WHO PERFECTS THE LAST BODY? FISH,
SIN, AND SOMA. . . . .
6. FROM THE
FIRST-BORN THE THREAD BETWEEN THE SILENT WATCHER AND HIS SHADOW BECOMES MORE
STRONG AND RADIANT WITH EVERY CHANGE. THE MORNING SUN-LIGHT HAS CHANGED INTO
NOON-DAY GLORY. . . . .
7. THIS IS THY
PRESENT WHEEL, SAID THE FLAME TO THE SPARK. THOU ART MYSELF, MY IMAGE, AND MY
SHADOW. I HAVE CLOTHED MYSELF IN THEE, AND THOU ART MY VAHAN TO THE DAY,
"BE WITH US," WHEN THOU SHALT RE-BECOME MYSELF AND OTHERS, THYSELF
AND ME. THEN THE BUILDERS, HAVING DONNED THEIR FIRST CLOTHING, DESCEND ON
RADIANT EARTH AND REIGN OVER MEN -- WHO ARE THEMSELVES. . . .
Thus ends this
portion of the archaic narrative, dark, confused, almost incomprehensible. An
attempt will now be made to throw light into this darkness, to make sense out
of this apparent NON-SENSE.
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COMMENTARIES
ON THE SEVEN
STANZAS AND THEIR TERMS, ACCORDING TO THEIR NUMERATION, IN STANZAS AND SLOKAS.
STANZA I.
1. "THE
ETERNAL PARENT (Space), WRAPPED IN HER EVER INVISIBLE ROBES, HAD SLUMBERED ONCE
AGAIN FOR SEVEN ETERNITIES (a)."
The "Parent
Space" is the eternal, ever present cause of all -- the incomprehensible
DEITY, whose "invisible robes" are the mystic root of all matter, and
of the Universe. Space is the one eternal thing that we can most easily
imagine, immovable in its abstraction and uninfluenced by either the presence
or absence in it of an objective Universe. It is without dimension, in every
sense, and self-existent. Spirit is the first differentiation from THAT, the
causeless cause of both Spirit and Matter. It is, as taught in the esoteric
catechism, neither limitless void, nor conditioned fulness, but both. It was
and ever will be. (See Proem pp. 2 et seq.)
Thus, the
"Robes" stand for the noumenon of undifferentiated Cosmic Matter. It
is not matter as we know it, but the spiritual essence of matter, and is
co-eternal and even one with Space in its abstract sense. Root-nature is also
the source of the subtile invisible properties in visible matter. It is the
Soul, so to say, of the ONE infinite Spirit. The Hindus call it Mulaprakriti,
and say that it is the primordial substance, which is the basis of the Upadhi
or vehicle of every phenomenon, whether physical, mental or psychic. It is the
source from which Akasa radiates.
(a) By the Seven
"Eternities," aeons or periods are meant. The word
"Eternity," as understood in Christian theology, has no meaning to
the Asiatic ear, except in its application to the ONE existence; nor is
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the term sempiternity,
the eternal only in futurity, anything better than a misnomer.* Such words do
not and cannot exist in philosophical metaphysics, and were unknown till the
advent of ecclesiastical Christianity. The Seven Eternities meant are the seven
periods, or a period answering in its duration to the seven periods, of a
Manvantara, and extending throughout a Maha-Kalpa or the "Great Age"
-- 100 years of Brahma -- making a total of 311,040,000,000,000 of years; each
year of Brahma being composed of 360 "days," and of the same number
of "nights" of Brahma (reckoning by the Chandrayana or lunar year);
and a "Day of Brahma" consisting of 4,320,000,000 of mortal years.
These "Eternities" belong to the most secret calculations, in which,
in order to arrive at the true total, every figure must be 7x (7 to the power
of x); x varying according to the nature of the cycle in the subjective or real
world; and every figure or number relating to, or representing all the
different cycles from the greatest to the smallest -- in the objective or
unreal world -- must necessarily be multiples of seven. The key to this cannot
be given, for herein lies the mystery of esoteric calculations, and for the
purposes of ordinary calculation it has no sense. "The number seven,"
says the Kabala, "is the great number of the Divine Mysteries;"
number ten is that of all human knowledge (Pythagorean decade); 1,000 is the
number ten to the third power, and therefore the number 7,000 is also
symbolical. In the Secret Doctrine the figure and number 4 are the male symbol
only on the highest plane of abstraction; on the plane of matter the 3 is the
masculine and the 4 the female: the upright and the horizontal in the fourth
stage of symbolism, when the symbols became the glyphs of the generative powers
on the physical plane.
-------
2. TIME WAS NOT,
FOR IT LAY ASLEEP IN THE INFINITE BOSOM OF DURATION (a).
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is stated
in Book II., ch. viii., of Vishnu Purana: "By immortality is meant
existence to the end of the Kalpa;" and Wilson, the translator, remarks in
a footnote: "This, according to the Vedas, is all that is to be understood
of the immortality (or eternity) of the gods; they perish at the end of universal
dissolution (or Pralaya)." And Esoteric philosophy says: They
"perish" not, but are re-absorbed.
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(a) Time is only
an illusion produced by the succession of our states of consciousness as we
travel through eternal duration, and it does not exist where no consciousness
exists in which the illusion can be produced; but "lies asleep." The
present is only a mathematical line which divides that part of eternal duration
which we call the future, from that part which we call the past. Nothing on
earth has real duration, for nothing remains without change -- or the same --
for the billionth part of a second; and the sensation we have of the actuality
of the division of "time" known as the present, comes from the
blurring of that momentary glimpse, or succession of glimpses, of things that
our senses give us, as those things pass from the region of ideals which we
call the future, to the region of memories that we name the past. In the same
way we experience a sensation of duration in the case of the instantaneous
electric spark, by reason of the blurred and continuing impression on the retina.
The real person or thing does not consist solely of what is seen at any
particular moment, but is composed of the sum of all its various and changing
conditions from its appearance in the material form to its disappearance from
the earth. It is these "sum-totals" that exist from eternity in the
"future," and pass by degrees through matter, to exist for eternity
in the "past." No one could say that a bar of metal dropped into the
sea came into existence as it left the air, and ceased to exist as it entered
the water, and that the bar itself consisted only of that cross-section thereof
which at any given moment coincided with the mathematical plane that separates,
and, at the same time, joins, the atmosphere and the ocean. Even so of persons
and things, which, dropping out of the to-be into the has-been, out of the
future into the past -- present momentarily to our senses a cross-section, as
it were, of their total selves, as they pass through time and space (as matter)
on their way from one eternity to another: and these two constitute that
"duration" in which alone anything has true existence, were our
senses but able to cognize it there.
-------
3. . . .
UNIVERSAL MIND WAS NOT, FOR THERE WERE NO AH-HI (celestial beings) TO CONTAIN
(hence to manifest) IT (a).
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(a) Mind is a name
given to the sum of the states of Consciousness grouped under Thought, Will,
and Feeling. During deep sleep, ideation ceases on the physical plane, and
memory is in abeyance; thus for the time-being "Mind is not," because
the organ, through which the Ego manifests ideation and memory on the material
plane, has temporarily ceased to function. A noumenon can become a phenomenon
on any plane of existence only by manifesting on that plane through an
appropriate basis or vehicle; and during the long night of rest called Pralaya,
when all the existences are dissolved, the "UNIVERSAL MIND" remains
as a permanent possibility of mental action, or as that abstract absolute
thought, of which mind is the concrete relative manifestation. The AH-HI (Dhyan-Chohans)
are the collective hosts of spiritual beings -- the Angelic Hosts of
Christianity, the Elohim and "Messengers" of the Jews -- who are the
vehicle for the manifestation of the divine or universal thought and will. They
are the Intelligent Forces that give to and enact in Nature her
"laws," while themselves acting according to laws imposed upon them
in a similar manner by still higher Powers; but they are not "the
personifications" of the powers of Nature, as erroneously thought. This
hierarchy of spiritual Beings, through which the Universal Mind comes into
action, is like an army -- a "Host," truly -- by means of which the
fighting power of a nation manifests itself, and which is composed of army
corps, divisions, brigades, regiments, and so forth, each with its separate
individuality or life, and its limited freedom of action and limited
responsibilities; each contained in a larger individuality, to which its own
interests are subservient, and each containing lesser individualities in
itself.
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4. THE
(a) There are
seven "Paths" or "Ways" to the bliss of Non-Exist-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Nippang in
** The
"12" Nidanas (in Tibetan Ten-brel chug-nyi) the chief causes of
existence, effects generated by a concatenation of causes produced (see
Comment. II).
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ence, which is
absolute Being, Existence, and Consciousness. They were not, because the
Universe was, so far, empty, and existed only in the Divine Thought. For it is
. . .
(b) The twelve
Nidanas or causes of being. Each is the effect of its antecedent cause, and a
cause, in its turn, to its successor; the sum total of the Nidanas being based
on the four truths, a doctrine especially characteristic of the Hinayana
System.* They belong to the theory of the stream of catenated law which
produces merit and demerit, and finally brings Karma into full sway. It is
based upon the great truth that re-incarnation is to be dreaded, as existence
in this world only entails upon man suffering, misery and pain; Death itself
being unable to deliver man from it, since death is merely the door through
which he passes to another life on earth after a little rest on its threshold
-- Devachan. The Hinayana System, or School of the "Little Vehicle,"
is of very ancient growth; while the Mahayana is of a later period, having
originated after the death of Buddha. Yet the tenets of the latter are as old
as the hills that have contained such schools from time immemorial, and the
Hinayana and Mahayana Schools (the latter, that of the "Great
Vehicle") both teach the same doctrine in reality. Yana, or Vehicle (in
Sanskrit, Vahan) is a mystic expression, both "vehicles" inculcating
that man may escape the sufferings of rebirths and even the false bliss of
Devachan, by obtaining Wisdom and Knowledge, which alone can dispel the Fruits
of Illusion and Ignorance.
Maya or illusion
is an element which enters into all finite things, for everything that exists
has only a relative, not an absolute, reality, since the appearance which the
hidden noumenon assumes for any observer depends upon his power of cognition.
To the untrained eye of the savage, a painting is at first an unmeaning
confusion of streaks and daubs of color, while an educated eye sees instantly a
face or a landscape. Nothing is permanent except the one hidden absolute
existence which contains in itself the noumena of all realities. The existences
belonging to every plane of being, up to the highest Dhyan-Chohans, are, in
degree, of the nature of shadows cast by a magic lantern on a colourless
screen; but all things are relatively real, for the cogniser is also a
reflection, and the things cognised are therefore as real to him as himself.
Whatever reality things possess must be looked for in them
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Wassilief
on Buddhism, pp. 97-950.
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before or after
they have passed like a flash through the material world; but we cannot cognise
any such existence directly, so long as we have sense-instruments which bring
only material existence into the field of our consciousness. Whatever plane our
consciousness may be acting in, both we and the things belonging to that plane
are, for the time being, our only realities. As we rise in the scale of
development we perceive that during the stages through which we have passed we
mistook shadows for realities, and the upward progress of the Ego is a series
of progressive awakenings, each advance bringing with it the idea that now, at
last, we have reached "reality;" but only when we shall have reached
the absolute Consciousness, and blended our own with it, shall we be free from
the delusions produced by Maya.
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5. DARKNESS
ALONE FILLED THE BOUNDLESS ALL (a), FOR FATHER, MOTHER AND SON WERE ONCE MORE
ONE, AND THE SON HAD NOT AWAKENED YET FOR THE NEW WHEEL* AND HIS PILGRIMAGE
THEREON (b).
(a)
"Darkness is Father-Mother: light their son," says an old Eastern proverb.
Light is inconceivable except as coming from some source which is the cause of
it; and as, in the instance of primordial light, that source is unknown, though
as strongly demanded by reason and logic, therefore it is called
"Darkness" by us, from an intellectual point of view. As to borrowed
or secondary light, whatever its source, it can be but of a temporary mayavic
character. Darkness, then, is the eternal
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* That which is
called "wheel" is the symbolical expression for a world or globe,
which shows that the ancients were aware that our Earth was a revolving globe,
not a motionless square as some Christian Fathers taught. The "Great
Wheel" is the whole duration of our Cycle of being, or Maha Kalpa, i.e.,
the whole revolution of our special chain of seven planets or Spheres from
beginning to end; the "Small Wheels" meaning the Rounds, of which
there are also Seven.
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matrix in which
the sources of light appear and disappear. Nothing is added to darkness to make
of it light, or to light to make it darkness, on this our plane. They are
interchangeable, and scientifically light is but a mode of darkness and vice
versa. Yet both are phenomena of the same noumenon -- which is absolute
darkness to the scientific mind, and but a gray twilight to the perception of
the average mystic, though to that of the spiritual eye of the Initiate it is
absolute light. How far we discern the light that shines in darkness depends
upon our powers of vision. What is light to us is darkness to certain insects,
and the eye of the clairvoyant sees illumination where the normal eye perceives
only blackness. When the whole universe was plunged in sleep -- had returned to
its one primordial element -- there was neither centre of luminosity, nor eye
to perceive light, and darkness necessarily filled the boundless all.
(b) The
Father-Mother are the male and female principles in root-nature, the opposite
poles that manifest in all things on every plane of Kosmos, or Spirit and
Substance, in a less allegorical aspect, the resultant of which is the
Universe, or the Son. They are "once more One" when in "The
Night of Brahma," during Pralaya, all in the objective Universe has
returned to its one primal and eternal cause, to reappear at the following Dawn
-- as it does periodically. "Karana" -- eternal cause -- was alone.
To put it more plainly: Karana is alone during the "Nights of
Brahma." The previous objective Universe has dissolved into its one primal
and eternal cause, and is, so to say, held in solution in space, to differentiate
again and crystallize out anew at the following Manvantaric dawn, which is the
commencement of a new "Day" or new activity of Brahma -- the symbol
of the Universe. In esoteric parlance, Brahma is Father-Mother-Son, or Spirit,
Soul and Body at once; each personage being symbolical of an attribute, and
each attribute or quality being a graduated efflux of Divine Breath in its
cyclic differentiation, involutionary and evolutionary. In the cosmicophysical
sense, it is the Universe, the planetary chain and the earth; in the purely
spiritual, the Unknown Deity, Planetary Spirit, and Man -- the Son of the two,
the creature of Spirit and Matter, and a manifestation of them in his
periodical appearances on Earth during the "wheels," or the
Manvantaras. -- (See Part II. §: "Days and Nights of Brahma.")
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STANZA I. --
Continued.
6. THE SEVEN SUBLIME
LORDS AND THE SEVEN TRUTHS HAD CEASED TO BE (a), AND THE UNIVERSE, THE SON OF
NECESSITY, WAS IMMERSED IN PARANISHPANNA (b) (absolute perfection, Paranirvana,
which is Yong-Grub) TO BE OUT-BREATHED BY THAT WHICH IS AND YET IS NOT. NAUGHT
WAS (c).
(a) The seven
sublime lords are the Seven Creative Spirits, the Dhyan-Chohans, who correspond
to the Hebrew Elohim. It is the same hierarchy of Archangels to which St.
Michael, St. Gabriel, and others belong, in the Christian theogony. Only while
St. Michael, for instance, is allowed in dogmatic Latin theology to watch over
all the promontories and gulfs, in the Esoteric System, the Dhyanis watch
successively over one of the Rounds and the great Root-races of our planetary
chain. They are, moreover, said to send their Bhodisatvas, the human
correspondents of the Dhyani-Buddhas (of whom vide infra) during every Round
and Race. Out of the Seven Truths and Revelations, or rather revealed secrets,
four only have been handed to us, as we are still in the Fourth Round, and the
world also has only had four Buddhas, so far. This is a very complicated
question, and will receive more ample treatment later on.
So far
"There are only Four Truths, and Four Vedas" -- say the Hindus and
Buddhists. For a similar reason Irenaeus insisted on the necessity of Four
Gospels. But as every new Root-race at the head of a Round must have its
revelation and revealers, the next Round will bring the Fifth, the following
the Sixth, and so on.
(b)
"Paranishpanna" is the absolute perfection to which all existences
attain at the close of a great period of activity, or Maha-Manvantara, and in
which they rest during the succeeding period of repose. In Tibetan it is called
Yong-Grub. Up to the day of the Yogacharya school the true nature of Paranirvana
was taught publicly, but since then it has become entirely esoteric; hence so
many contradictory interpretations of it. It is only a true Idealist who can
understand it. Everything has to be viewed as ideal, with the exception of
Paranirvana, by him who would comprehend that state, and acquire a knowledge of
how Non Ego, Voidness, and Darkness are Three in One and alone Self-existent
and perfect. It is absolute, however, only in a relative
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sense, for it
must give room to still further absolute perfection, according to a higher
standard of excellence in the following period of activity -- just as a perfect
flower must cease to be a perfect flower and die, in order to grow into a
perfect fruit, -- if a somewhat Irish mode of expression may be permitted.
The Secret
Doctrine teaches the progressive development of everything, worlds as well as
atoms; and this stupendous development has neither conceivable beginning nor
imaginable end. Our "Universe" is only one of an infinite number of
Universes, all of them "Sons of Necessity," because links in the great
Cosmic chain of Universes, each one standing in the relation of an effect as
regards its predecessor, and being a cause as regards its successor.
The appearance
and disappearance of the Universe are pictured as an outbreathing and
inbreathing of "the Great Breath," which is eternal, and which, being
Motion, is one of the three aspects of the Absolute -- Abstract Space and
Duration being the other two. When the "Great Breath" is projected,
it is called the Divine Breath, and is regarded as the breathing of the Unknowable
Deity -- the One Existence -- which breathes out a thought, as it were, which
becomes the Kosmos. (See "Isis Unveiled.") So also is it when the
Divine Breath is inspired again the Universe disappears into the bosom of
"the Great Mother," who then sleeps "wrapped in her invisible
robes."
(c) By
"that which is and yet is not" is meant the Great Breath itself,
which we can only speak of as absolute existence, but cannot picture to our
imagination as any form of existence that we can distinguish from Non-existence.
The three periods -- the Present, the Past, and the Future -- are in the
esoteric philosophy a compound time; for the three are a composite number only
in relation to the phenomenal plane, but in the realm of noumena have no
abstract validity. As said in the Scriptures: "The Past time is the
Present time, as also the Future, which, though it has not come into existence,
still is"; according to a precept in the Prasanga Madhyamika teaching,
whose dogmas have been known ever since it broke away from the purely esoteric
schools.* Our ideas, in short, on duration and time are all derived from our
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Dzungarian
"Mani Kumbum," the "Book of the 10,000 Precepts." Also
consult Wassilief's "Der Buddhismus," pp. 327 and 357, etc.
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sensations according
to the laws of Association. Inextricably bound up with the relativity of human
knowledge, they nevertheless can have no existence except in the experience of
the individual ego, and perish when its evolutionary march dispels the Maya of
phenomenal existence. What is Time, for instance, but the panoramic succession
of our states of consciousness? In the words of a Master, "I feel
irritated at having to use these three clumsy words -- Past, Present, and
Future -- miserable concepts of the objective phases of the subjective whole,
they are about as ill-adapted for the purpose as an axe for fine carving."
One has to acquire Paramartha lest one should become too easy a prey to
Samvriti -- is a philosophical axiom.*
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STANZA I. --
Continued.
7. THE CAUSES OF
EXISTENCE HAD BEEN DONE AWAY WITH (a); THE VISIBLE THAT WAS, AND THE INVISIBLE
THAT IS, RESTED IN ETERNAL NON-BEING, THE ONE BEING (b).
(a) "The
Causes of Existence" mean not only the physical causes known to science,
but the metaphysical causes, the chief of which is the desire to exist, an
outcome of Nidana and Maya. This desire for a sentient life shows itself in
everything, from an atom to a sun, and is a reflection of the Divine Thought
propelled into objective existence, into a law that the Universe should exist.
According to esoteric teaching, the real cause of that supposed desire, and of
all existence, remains for ever hidden, and its first emanations are the most
complete abstractions mind can conceive. These abstractions must of necessity
be postulated as the cause of the material Universe which presents itself to
the senses and intellect; and they underlie the secondary and subordinate
powers of Nature, which, anthropomorphized, have been worshipped as God and
gods by the common herd of every age. It is impossible to conceive anything
without a cause; the attempt to do so makes the mind a blank.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In clearer
words: "One has to acquire true Self-Consciousness in order to understand
Samvriti, or the 'origin of delusion.'" Paramartha is the synonym of the
Sanskrit term Svasam-vedana, or "the reflection which analyses
itself." There is a difference in the interpretation of the meaning of
"Paramartha" between the Yogacharyas and the Madhyamikas, neither of
whom, however, explain the real and true esoteric sense of the expression. See
further, sloka No. 9.
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This is
virtually the condition to which the mind must come at last when we try to
trace back the chain of causes and effects, but both science and religion jump
to this condition of blankness much more quickly than is necessary; for they
ignore the metaphysical abstractions which are the only conceivable cause of
physical concretions. These abstractions become more and more concrete as they
approach our plane of existence, until finally they phenomenalise in the form
of the material Universe, by a process of conversion of metaphysics into
physics, analogous to that by which steam can be condensed into water, and the
water frozen into ice.
(b) The idea of
Eternal Non-Being, which is the One Being, will appear a paradox to anyone who
does not remember that we limit our ideas of being to our present consciousness
of existence; making it a specific, instead of a generic term. An unborn
infant, could it think in our acceptation of that term, would necessarily limit
its conception of being, in a similar manner, to the intrauterine life which
alone it knows; and were it to endeavour to express to its consciousness the
idea of life after birth (death to it), it would, in the absence of data to go
upon, and of faculties to comprehend such data, probably express that life as
"Non-Being which is Real Being." In our case the One Being is the
noumenon of all the noumena which we know must underlie phenomena, and give
them whatever shadow of reality they possess, but which we have not the senses
or the intellect to cognize at present. The impalpable atoms of gold scattered
through the substance of a ton of auriferous quartz may be imperceptible to the
naked eye of the miner, yet he knows that they are not only present there but
that they alone give his quartz any appreciable value; and this relation of the
gold to the quartz may faintly shadow forth that of the noumenon to the
phenomenon. But the miner knows what the gold will look like when extracted from
the quartz, whereas the common mortal can form no conception of the reality of
things separated from the Maya which veils them, and in which they are hidden.
Alone the Initiate, rich with the lore acquired by numberless generations of
his predecessors, directs the "Eye of Dangma" toward the essence of
things in which no Maya can have any influence. It is here that the teachings
of esoteric philosophy in relation to the Nidanas and the Four Truths become of
the greatest importance; but they are secret.
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STANZA I. --
Continued.
8. ALONE, THE
ONE FORM OF EXISTENCE STRETCHED BOUNDLESS, INFINITE, CAUSELESS, IN DREAMLESS
SLEEP (a); AND LIFE PULSATED UNCONSCIOUS IN UNIVERSAL SPACE, THROUGHOUT THAT
ALL-PRESENCE WHICH IS SENSED BY THE "OPENED EYE"* OF THE DANGMA
(b).**
(a) The tendency
of modern thought is to recur to the archaic idea of a homogeneous basis for
apparently widely different things -- heterogeneity developed from homogeneity.
Biologists are now searching for their homogeneous protoplasm and chemists for
their protyle, while science is looking for the force of which electricity,
magnetism, heat, and so forth, are the differentiations. The Secret Doctrine
carries this idea into the region of metaphysics and postulates a "One
Form of Existence" as the basis and source of all things. But perhaps the
phrase, the "One Form of Existence," is not altogether correct. The
Sanskrit word is Prabhavapyaya, "the place, or rather plane, whence
emerges the origination, and into which is the resolution of all things,"
says a commentator. It is not the "Mother of the World," as
translated by Wilson (see Book I., Vishnu Purana); for Jagad Yoni (as shown by
FitzEdward Hall) is scarcely so much "the Mother of the World" or
"the Womb of the World" as the "Material Cause of the
Universe." The Puranic Commentators explain it by Karana --
"Cause" -- but the Esoteric philosophy, by the ideal spirit of that
cause. It is, in its secondary stage, the Svabhavat of the Buddhist
philosopher, the eternal cause and effect, omnipresent yet abstract, the
self-existent plastic Essence and the root of all things, viewed in the same
dual light as the Vedantin views his Parabrahm and Mulaprakriti, the one under
two aspects. It seems indeed extraordinary to find great scholars speculating
on the possibility of the Vedanta, and the Uttara-Mimansa especially, having
been "evoked by the teachings of the Buddhists,"
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In India it is
called "The Eye of Siva," but beyond the great range it is known as
"Dangma's opened eye" in esoteric phraseology.
** Dangma means
a purified soul, one who has become a Jivanmukta, the highest adept, or rather
a Mahatma so-called. His "opened eye" is the inner spiritual eye of
the seer, and the faculty which manifests through it is not clairvoyance as
ordinarily understood, i.e., the power of seeing at a distance, but rather the
faculty of spiritual intuition, through which direct and certain knowledge is
obtainable. This faculty is intimately connected with the "third eye,"
which mythological tradition ascribes to certain races of men. Fuller
explanations will be found in Book II.
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whereas, it is
on the contrary Buddhism (of Gautama, the Buddha) that was "evoked"
and entirely upreared on the tenets of the Secret Doctrine, of which a partial
sketch is here attempted, and on which, also, the Upanishads are made to rest.*
The above, according to the teachings of Sri Sankaracharya,** is undeniable.
(b) Dreamless
sleep is one of the seven states of consciousness known in Oriental
esotericism. In each of these states a different portion of the mind comes into
action; or as a Vedantin would express it, the individual is conscious in a
different plane of his being. The term "dreamless sleep," in this
case is applied allegorically to the Universe to express a condition somewhat
analogous to that state of consciousness in man, which, not being remembered in
a waking state, seems a blank, just as the sleep of the mesmerised subject
seems to him an unconscious blank when he returns to his normal condition,
although he has been talking and acting as a conscious individual would.
-------
STANZA I. --
Continued.
9. BUT WHERE WAS
THE DANGMA WHEN THE ALAYA OF THE UNIVERSE (Soul as the basis of all, Anima
Mundi) WAS IN PARAMARTHA (a) (Absolute Being and Consciousness which are
Absolute Non-Being and Unconsciousness) AND THE GREAT WHEEL WAS ANUPADAKA (b)?
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* And yet, one,
claiming authority, namely, Sir Monier Williams, Boden Professor of Sanskrit at
Oxford, has just denied this fact. This is what he taught his audience, on June
the 4th, 1888, in his annual address before the Victoria Institute of Great
Britain: "Originally, Buddhism set its face against all solitary
asceticism . . . to attain sublime heights of knowledge. It had no occult, no
esoteric system of doctrine . . . withheld from ordinary men" (!!) And,
again: " . . . When Gautama Buddha began his career, the later and lower
form of Yoga seems to have been little known." And then, contradicting
himself, the learned lecturer forthwith informs his audience that "We
learn from Lalita-Vistara that various forms of bodily torture,
self-maceration, and austerity were common in Gautama's time." (!!) But
the lecturer seems quite unaware that this kind of torture and self-maceration
is precisely the lower form of Yoga, Hatha Yoga, which was "little
known" and yet so "common" in Gautama's time.
** It is even
argued that all the Six Darsanas (Schools of philosophy) show traces of
Buddha's influence, being either taken from Buddhism or due to Greek teaching!
(See Weber, Max Muller, etc.) We labour under the impression that Colebrooke,
"the highest authority" in such matters, had long ago settled the
question by showing, that "the Hindus were in this instance the teachers,
not the learners."
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(a) Here we have
before us the subject of centuries of scholastic disputations. The two terms
"Alaya" and "Paramartha" have been the causes of dividing
schools and splitting the truth into more different aspects than any other
mystic terms. Alaya is literally the "Soul of the World" or Anima
Mundi, the "Over-Soul" of Emerson, and according to esoteric teaching
it changes periodically its nature. Alaya, though eternal and changeless in its
inner essence on the planes which are unreachable by either men or Cosmic Gods
(Dhyani Buddhas), alters during the active life-period with respect to the
lower planes, ours included. During that time not only the Dhyani-Buddhas are
one with Alaya in Soul and Essence, but even the man strong in the Yoga (mystic
meditation) "is able to merge his soul with it" (Aryasanga, the
Bumapa school). This is not Nirvana, but a condition next to it. Hence the
disagreement. Thus, while the Yogacharyas (of the Mahayana school) say that
Alaya is the personification of the Voidness, and yet Alaya (Nyingpo and Tsang
in Tibetan) is the basis of every visible and invisible thing, and that, though
it is eternal and immutable in its essence, it reflects itself in every object
of the Universe "like the moon in clear tranquil water"; other
schools dispute the statement. The same for Paramartha: the Yogacharyas interpret
the term as that which is also dependent upon other things (paratantra); and
the Madhyamikas say that Paramartha is limited to Paranishpanna or absolute
perfection; i.e., in the exposition of these "two truths" (out of
four), the former believe and maintain that (on this plane, at any rate) there
exists only Samvritisatya or relative truth; and the latter teach the existence
of Paramarthasatya, the "absolute truth."* "No Arhat, oh
mendicants, can reach absolute knowledge before he becomes one with Paranirvana.
Parikalpita and Paratantra are his two great enemies" (Aphorisms of the
Bodhisattvas). Parikalpita (in Tibetan Kun-ttag) is error, made by those unable
to realize the emptiness and illusionary nature of all; who believe something
to exist which does not -- e.g., the Non-Ego. And
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
*
"Paramartha" is self-consciousness in Sanskrit, Svasamvedana, or the
"self-analysing reflection" -- from two words, parama (above
everything) and artha (comprehension), Satya meaning absolute true being, or
Esse. In Tibetan Paramarthasatya is Dondampaidenpa. The opposite of this
absolute reality, or actuality, is Samvritisatya -- the relative truth only --
"Samvriti" meaning "false conception" and being the origin
of illusion, Maya; in Tibetan Kundzabchi-denpa, "illusion-creating
appearance."
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Paratantra is
that, whatever it is, which exists only through a dependent or causal
connexion, and which has to disappear as soon as the cause from which it
proceeds is removed -- e.g., the light of a wick. Destroy or extinguish it, and
light disappears.
Esoteric
philosophy teaches that everything lives and is conscious, but not that all
life and consciousness are similar to those of human or even animal beings.
Life we look upon as "the one form of existence," manifesting in what
is called matter; or, as in man, what, incorrectly separating them, we name
Spirit, Soul and Matter. Matter is the vehicle for the manifestation of soul on
this plane of existence, and soul is the vehicle on a higher plane for the
manifestation of spirit, and these three are a trinity synthesized by Life,
which pervades them all. The idea of universal life is one of those ancient
conceptions which are returning to the human mind in this century, as a
consequence of its liberation from anthropomorphic theology. Science, it is true,
contents itself with tracing or postulating the signs of universal life, and
has not yet been bold enough even to whisper "Anima Mundi!" The idea
of "crystalline life," now familiar to science, would have been
scouted half a century ago. Botanists are now searching for the nerves of
plants; not that they suppose that plants can feel or think as animals do, but
because they believe that some structure, bearing the same relation
functionally to plant life that nerves bear to animal life, is necessary to explain
vegetable growth and nutrition. It hardly seems possible that science can
disguise from itself much longer, by the mere use of terms such as
"force" and "energy," the fact that things that have life
are living things, whether they be atoms or planets.
But what is the
belief of the inner esoteric Schools? the reader may ask. What are the
doctrines taught on this subject by the Esoteric "Buddhists"? With
them "Alaya" has a double and even a triple meaning. In the
Yogacharya system of the contemplative Mahayana school, Alaya is both the
Universal Soul (Anima Mundi) and the Self of a progressed adept. "He who
is strong in the Yoga can introduce at will his Alaya by means of meditation
into the true Nature of Existence." The "Alaya has an absolute
eternal existence," says Aryasanga -- the rival of Nagarjuna.* In one
sense it is Pradhana; which
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Aryasanga was
a pre-Christian Adept and founder of a Buddhist esoteric school, though Csoma
di Koros places him, for some reasons of his own, in the seventh century
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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is explained in
Vishnu Purana as: "that which is the unevolved cause, is emphatically
called by the most eminent sages Pradhana, original base, which is subtile
Prakriti, viz., that which is eternal, and which at once is (or comprehends)
what is and what is not, or is mere process." "Prakriti,"
however, is an incorrect word, and Alaya would explain it better; for Prakriti
is not the "uncognizable Brahma."* It is a mistake of those who know
nothing of the Universality of the Occult doctrines from the very cradle of the
human races, and especially so of those scholars who reject the very idea of a
"primordial revelation," to teach that the Anima Mundi, the One Life
or "Universal Soul," was made known only by Anaxagoras, or during his
age. This philosopher brought the teaching forward simply to oppose the too
materialistic conceptions on Cosmogony of Democritus, based on his exoteric
theory of blindly driven atoms. Anaxagoras of Clazomene was not its inventor
but only its propagator, as also was Plato. That which he called Mundane
Intelligence, the nous ([[nous]]), the principle that according to his views is
absolutely separated and free from matter and acts on design,** was called
Motion, the ONE LIFE, or Jivatma, ages before the year 500 B.C. in India. Only
the Aryan philosophers never endowed the principle, which with them is
infinite, with the finite "attribute" of "thinking."
This leads the
reader naturally to the "Supreme Spirit" of Hegel and the German
Transcendentalists as a contrast that it may be useful to point out. The
schools of Schelling and Fichte have diverged widely from the primitive archaic
conception of an ABSOLUTE principle, and have mirrored only an aspect of the
basic idea of the Vedanta. Even the "Absoluter Geist" shadowed forth
by von Hartman in his pessimistic philosophy of the Unconscious, while it is,
perhaps, the closest approximation made by European speculation to the Hindu
Adwaitee Doctrines, similarly falls far short of the reality.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] A.D. There was another Aryasanga, who lived
during the first centuries of our era and the Hungarian scholar most probably
confuses the two.
* "The
indiscreet cause which is uniform, and both cause and effect, and which those
who are acquainted with first principles call Pradhana and Prakriti, is the
incognizable Brahma who was before all" (Vayu Purana); i.e., Brahma does
not put forth evolution itself or create, but only exhibits various aspects of
itself, one of which is Prakriti, an aspect of Pradhana.
** Finite
Self-consciousness, I mean. For how can the absolute attain it otherwise than
as simply an aspect, the highest of which known to us is human consciousness?
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According to
Hegel, the "Unconscious" would never have undertaken the vast and
laborious task of evolving the Universe, except in the hope of attaining clear
Self-consciousness. In this connection it is to be borne in mind that in
designating Spirit, which the European Pantheists use as equivalent to
Parabrahm, as unconscious, they do not attach to that expression of
"Spirit" -- one employed in the absence of a better to symbolise a
profound mystery -- the connotation it usually bears.
The
"Absolute Consciousness," they tell us, "behind" phenomena,
which is only termed unconsciousness in the absence of any element of
personality, transcends human conception. Man, unable to form one concept
except in terms of empirical phenomena, is powerless from the very constitution
of his being to raise the veil that shrouds the majesty of the Absolute. Only
the liberated Spirit is able to faintly realise the nature of the source whence
it sprung and whither it must eventually return. . . . As the highest Dhyan
Chohan, however, can but bow in ignorance before the awful mystery of Absolute
Being; and since, even in that culmination of conscious existence -- "the
merging of the individual in the universal consciousness" -- to use a
phrase of Fichte's -- the Finite cannot conceive the Infinite, nor can it apply
to it its own standard of mental experiences, how can it be said that the
"Unconscious" and the Absolute can have even an instinctive impulse
or hope of attaining clear self-consciousness?* A Vedantin would never admit
this Hegelian idea; and the Occultist would say that it applies perfectly to
the awakened MAHAT, the Universal Mind already projected into the phenomenal
world as the first aspect of the changeless ABSOLUTE, but never to the latter.
"Spirit and Matter, or Purusha and Prakriti are but the two primeval
aspects of the One and Secondless," we are taught.
The
matter-moving Nous, the animating Soul, immanent in every atom, manifested in
man, latent in the stone, has different degrees of power; and this pantheistic
idea of a general Spirit-Soul pervading all Nature is the oldest of all the
philosophical notions. Nor was the Archaeus a discovery of Paracelsus nor of
his pupil Van Helmont; for it is again the same Archaeus or
"Father-Ether," -- the manifested basis
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See
Schwegler's "Handbook of the History of Philosophy" in Sterling's
translation, p. 28.
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and source of
the innumerable phenomena of life -- localised. The whole series of the
numberless speculations of this kind are but variations on this theme, the
key-note of which was struck in this primeval Revelation. (See Part II.,
"Primordial Substance.")
(b) The term
Anupadaka, "parentless," or without progenitors, is a mystical
designation having several meanings in the philosophy. By this name celestial
beings, the Dhyan-Chohans or Dhyani-Buddhas, are generally meant. But as these
correspond mystically to the human Buddhas and Bodhisattwas, known as the
"Manushi (or human) Buddhas," the latter are also designated
"Anupadaka," once that their whole personality is merged in their
compound sixth and seventh principles -- or Atma-Buddhi, and that they have
become the "diamond-souled" (Vajra-sattvas),* the full Mahatmas. The
"Concealed Lord" (Sangbai Dag-po), "the one merged with the
absolute," can have no parents since he is Self-existent, and one with the
Universal Spirit (Svayambhu),** the Svabhavat in the highest aspect. The
mystery in the hierarchy of the Anupadaka is great, its apex being the
universal Spirit-Soul, and the lower rung the Manushi-Buddha; and even every
Soul-endowed man is an Anupadaka in a latent state. Hence, when speaking of the
Universe in its formless, eternal, or absolute condition, before it was
fashioned by the "Builders" -- the expression, "the Universe was
Anupadaka." (See Part II., "Primordial Substance.")
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Vajra --
diamond-holder. In Tibetan Dorjesempa; sempa meaning the soul, its adamantine
quality referring to its indestructibility in the hereafter. The explanation
with regard to the "Anupadaka" given in the Kala Chakra, the first in
the Gyu(t) division of the Kanjur, is half esoteric. It has misled the
Orientalists into erroneous speculations with respect to the Dhyani-Buddhas and
their earthly correspondencies, the Manushi-Buddhas. The real tenet is hinted
at in a subsequent Volume, (see "The Mystery about Buddha"), and will
be more fully explained in its proper place.
** To quote
Hegel again, who with Schelling practically accepted the Pantheistic conception
of periodical Avatars (special incarnations of the World-Spirit in Man, as seen
in the case of all the great religious reformers) . . . . "the essence of
man is spirit . . . . only by stripping himself of his finiteness and
surrendering himself to pure self-consciousness does he attain the truth. Christ-man,
as man in whom the Unity of God-man (identity of the individual with the
Universal consciousness as taught by the Vedantins and some Adwaitees)
appeared, has, in his death and history generally, himself presented the
eternal history of Spirit -- a history which every man has to accomplish in
himself, in order to exist as Spirit." -- Philosophy of History. Sibree's
English translation, p. 340.
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STANZA II.
COMMENTARY.
1. . . . . WHERE
WERE THE BUILDERS, THE LUMINOUS SONS OF MANVANTARIC DAWN (a)? . . . . IN THE
UNKNOWN DARKNESS IN THEIR AH-HI (Chohanic, Dhyani-Buddhic) PARANISHPANNA, THE
PRODUCERS OF FORM (rupa) FROM NO-FORM (arupa), THE ROOT OF THE WORLD -- THE
DEVAMATRI* AND SVABHAVAT, RESTED IN THE BLISS OF NON-BEING (b).
(a) The
"Builders," the "Sons of Manvantaric Dawn," are the real
creators of the Universe; and in this doctrine, which deals only with our
Planetary System, they, as the architects of the latter, are also called the
"Watchers" of the Seven Spheres, which exoterically are the Seven
planets, and esoterically the seven earths or spheres (planets) of our chain
also. The opening sentence of Stanza I., when mentioning "Seven
Eternities," is made to apply both to the Maha-Kalpa or "the (great)
Age of Brahma," as well as to the Solar pralaya and subsequent
resurrection of our Planetary System on a higher plane. There are many kinds of
pralaya (dissolution of a thing visible), as will be shown elsewhere.
(b)
Paranishpanna, remember, is the summum bonum, the Absolute, hence the same as
Paranirvana. Besides being the final state it is that condition of subjectivity
which has no relation to anything but the one absolute truth (Para-marthasatya)
on its plane. It is that state which leads one to appreciate correctly the full
meaning of Non-Being, which, as explained, is absolute Being. Sooner or later,
all that now seemingly exists, will be in reality and actually in the state of
Paranishpanna. But there is a great difference between conscious and
unconscious "being." The condition of Paranishpanna, without
Paramartha, the Self-analys-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
"Mother of
the Gods," Aditi, or Cosmic Space. In the Zohar, she is called Sephira the
Mother of the Sephiroth, and Shekinah in her primordial form, in abscondito.
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ing
consciousness (Svasamvedana), is no bliss, but simply extinction (for Seven
Eternities). Thus, an iron ball placed under the scorching rays of the sun will
get heated through, but will not feel or appreciate the warmth, while a man
will. It is only "with a mind clear and undarkened by personality, and an
assimilation of the merit of manifold existences devoted to being in its collectivity
(the whole living and sentient Universe)," that one gets rid of personal
existence, merging into, becoming one with, the Absolute,* and continuing in
full possession of Paramartha.
-------
STANZA II. --
Continued.
2. . . . . WHERE
WAS SILENCE? WHERE WERE THE EARS TO SENSE IT? NO! THERE WAS NEITHER SILENCE,
NOR SOUND (a). NAUGHT SAVE CEASELESS, ETERNAL BREATH (Motion) WHICH KNOWS
ITSELF NOT (b).
(a) The idea
that things can cease to exist and still BE, is a fundamental one in Eastern
psychology. Under this apparent contradiction in terms, there rests a fact of
Nature to realise which in the mind, rather than to argue about words, is the
important thing. A familiar instance of a similar paradox is afforded by
chemical combination. The question whether Hydrogen and Oxygen cease to exist,
when they combine to form water, is still a moot one, some arguing that since
they are found again when the water is decomposed they must be there all the
while; others contending that as they actually turn into something totally
different they must cease to exist as themselves for the time being; but
neither side is able to form the faintest conception of the real condition of a
thing, which has become something else and yet has not ceased to be itself.
Existence as water may be said to be, for Oxygen and Hydrogen, a state of
Non-being which is "more real being" than their existence as gases;
and it may faintly symbolise the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Hence
Non-being is "ABSOLUTE Being," in esoteric philosophy. In the tenets
of the latter even Adi-Budha (first or primeval wisdom) is, while manifested,
in one sense an illusion, Maya, since all the gods, including Brahma, have to
die at the end of the "Age of Brahma"; the abstraction called
Parabrahm alone -- whether we call it Ensoph, or Herbert Spencer's Unknowable
-- being "the One Absolute" Reality. The One secondless Existence is
ADWAITA, "Without a Second," and all the rest is Maya, teaches the
Adwaita philosophy.
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condition of the
Universe when it goes to sleep, or ceases to be, during the "Nights of
Brahma" -- to awaken or reappear again, when the dawn of the new
Manvantara recalls it to what we call existence.
(b) The
"Breath" of the One Existence is used in its application only to the
spiritual aspect of Cosmogony by Archaic esotericism; otherwise, it is replaced
by its equivalent in the material plane -- Motion. The One Eternal Element, or
element-containing Vehicle, is Space, dimensionless in every sense; co-existent
with which are -- endless duration, primordial (hence indestructible) matter,
and motion -- absolute "perpetual motion" which is the
"breath" of the "One" Element. This breath, as seen, can
never cease, not even during the Pralayic eternities. (See "Chaos, Theos,
Kosmos," in Part II.)
But the
"Breath of the One Existence" does not, all the same, apply to the
One Causeless Cause or the "All Be-ness" (in contradistinction to
All-Being, which is Brahma, or the Universe). Brahma (or Hari) the four-faced
god who, after lifting the Earth out of the waters, "accomplished the
Creation," is held to be only the instrumental, and not, as clearly
implied, the ideal Cause. No Orientalist, so far, seems to have thoroughly
comprehended the real sense of the verses in the Purana, that treat of
"creation."
Therein Brahma
is the cause of the potencies that are to be generated subsequently for the
work of "creation." When a translator says, "And from him
proceed the potencies to be created, after they had become the real
cause": "and from IT proceed the potencies that will create as they
become the real cause" (on the material plane) would perhaps be more
correct? Save that one (causeless) ideal cause there is no other to which the
universe can be referred. "Worthiest of ascetics! through its potency --
i.e., through the potency of that cause -- every created thing comes by its
inherent or proper nature." If, in the Vedanta and Nyaya, nimitta is the
efficient cause, as contrasted with upadana, the material cause, (and in the
Sankhya, pradhana implies the functions of both); in the Esoteric philosophy,
which reconciles all these systems, and the nearest exponent of which is the
Vedanta as expounded by the Advaita Vedantists, none but the upadana can be
speculated upon; that which is in the minds of the Vaishnavas (the Vasishta-dvaita)
as the ideal in contradistinction to the real -- or Parabrahm and Isvara -- can
find no room in published speculations, since
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that ideal even
is a misnomer, when applied to that of which no human reason, even that of an
adept, can conceive.
To know itself
or oneself, necessitates consciousness and perception (both limited faculties
in relation to any subject except Parabrahm), to be cognized. Hence the
"Eternal Breath which knows itself not." Infinity cannot comprehend
Finiteness. The Boundless can have no relation to the bounded and the
conditioned. In the occult teachings, the Unknown and the Unknowable MOVER, or
the Self-Existing, is the absolute divine Essence. And thus being Absolute
Consciousness, and Absolute Motion -- to the limited senses of those who
describe this indescribable -- it is unconsciousness and immoveableness.
Concrete consciousness cannot be predicated of abstract Consciousness, any more
than the quality wet can be predicated of water -- wetness being its own
attribute and the cause of the wet quality in other things. Consciousness
implies limitations and qualifications; something to be conscious of, and
someone to be conscious of it. But Absolute Consciousness contains the
cognizer, the thing cognized and the cognition, all three in itself and all
three one. No man is conscious of more than that portion of his knowledge that
happens to have been recalled to his mind at any particular time, yet such is
the poverty of language that we have no term to distinguish the knowledge not
actively thought of, from knowledge we are unable to recall to memory. To forget
is synonymous with not to remember. How much greater must be the difficulty of
finding terms to describe, and to distinguish between, abstract metaphysical
facts or differences. It must not be forgotten, also, that we give names to
things according to the appearances they assume for ourselves. We call absolute
consciousness "unconsciousness," because it seems to us that it must
necessarily be so, just as we call the Absolute, "Darkness," because
to our finite understanding it appears quite impenetrable, yet we recognize
fully that our perception of such things does not do them justice. We
involuntarily distinguish in our minds, for instance, between unconscious
absolute consciousness, and unconsciousness, by secretly endowing the former
with some indefinite quality that corresponds, on a higher plane than our
thoughts can reach, with what we know as consciousness in ourselves. But this
is not any kind of consciousness that we can manage to distinguish from what
appears to us as unconsciousness.
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STANZA II. --
Continued.
3. THE HOUR HAD
NOT YET STRUCK; THE RAY HAD NOT YET FLASHED INTO THE GERM (a); THE MATRI-PADMA
(mother lotus) HAD NOT YET SWOLLEN (b).*
(a) The ray of
the "Ever Darkness" becomes, as it is emitted, a ray of effulgent
light or life, and flashes into the "Germ" -- the point in the
Mundane Egg, represented by matter in its abstract sense. But the term
"Point" must not be understood as applying to any particular point in
Space, for a germ exists in the centre of every atom, and these collectively
form "the Germ;" or rather, as no atom can be made visible to our
physical eye, the collectivity of these (if the term can be applied to
something which is boundless and infinite) forms the noumenon of eternal and
indestructible matter.
(b) One of the
symbolical figures for the Dual creative power in Nature (matter and force on
the material plane) is Padma, the water-lily of India. The Lotus is the product
of heat (fire) and water (vapour or Ether); fire standing in every
philosophical and religious system as a representation of the Spirit of
Deity,** the active, male, generative principle; and Ether, or the Soul of
matter, the light of the fire, for the passive female principle from which
everything in this Universe emanated. Hence, Ether or Water is the Mother, and
Fire is the Father. Sir W. Jones (and before him archaic botany) showed that
the seeds of the Lotus contain -- even before they germinate -- perfectly
formed leaves, the miniature shape of what one day, as perfect plants, they
will become: nature thus giving us a specimen of the preformation of its
production . . . the seed of all phanerogamous plants bearing proper flowers
containing an embryo plantlet ready formed.*** (See Part II., "The Lotus
Flower as an Universal Symbol.") This explains the sentence "The
Mother had not yet swollen" -- the form being usually sacrificed to the
inner or root idea in Archaic symbology.
The Lotus, or
Padma, is, moreover, a very ancient and favourite
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* An unpoetical
term, yet still very graphic. (See foot-note to Stanza III.)
** Even in
Christianity. (See Part II., "Primordial Substance and Divine
Thought.")
*** Gross,
"The Heathen Religion," p. 195.
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simile for the
Kosmos itself, and also for man. The popular reasons given are, firstly, the
fact just mentioned, that the Lotus-seed contains within itself a perfect
miniature of the future plant, which typifies the fact that the spiritual
prototypes of all things exist in the immaterial world before those things
become materialised on Earth. Secondly, the fact that the Lotus plant grows up
through the water, having its root in the Ilus, or mud, and spreading its
flower in the air above. The Lotus thus typifies the life of man and also that
of the Kosmos; for the Secret Doctrine teaches that the elements of both are
the same, and that both are developing in the same direction. The root of the
Lotus sunk in the mud represents material life, the stalk passing up through
the water typifies existence in the astral world, and the flower floating on
the water and opening to the sky is emblematical of spiritual being.
-------
STANZA II. --
Continued.
4. HER HEART HAD
NOT YET OPENED FOR THE ONE RAY TO ENTER, THENCE TO FALL AS THREE INTO FOUR IN
THE LAP OF MAYA (a).
(a) The
Primordial Substance had not yet passed out of its precosmic latency into
differentiated objectivity, or even become the (to man, so far,) invisible
Protyle of Science. But, as the hour strikes and it becomes receptive of the
Fohatic impress of the Divine Thought (the Logos, or the male aspect of the
Anima Mundi, Alaya) -- its heart opens. It differentiates, and the THREE
(Father, Mother, Son) are transformed into four. Herein lies the origin of the
double mystery of the Trinity and the immaculate Conception. The first and
Fundamental dogma of Occultism is Universal Unity (or Homogeneity) under three
aspects. This led to a possible conception of Deity, which as an absolute unity
must remain forever incomprehensible to finite intellects. "If thou
wouldest believe in the Power which acts within the root of a plant, or imagine
the root concealed under the soil, thou hast to think of its stalk or trunk and
of its leaves and flowers. Thou canst not imagine that Power independently of
these objects. Life can be known only by the Tree of Life. . . ."
(Precepts for Yoga). The idea of Absolute Unity
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would be broken
entirely in our conception, had we not something concrete before our eyes to
contain that Unity. And the deity being absolute, must be omnipresent, hence
not an atom but contains IT within itself. The roots, the trunk and its many
branches are three distinct objects, yet they are one tree. Say the Kabalists:
"The Deity is one, because It is infinite. It is triple, because it is
ever manifesting." This manifestation is triple in its aspects, for it
requires, as Aristotle has it, three principles for every natural body to
become objective: privation, form, and matter.* Privation meant in the mind of
the great philosopher that which the Occultists call the prototypes impressed
in the Astral Light -- the lowest plane and world of Anima Mundi. The union of
these three principles depends upon a fourth -- the LIFE which radiates from
the summits of the Unreachable, to become an universally diffused Essence on
the manifested planes of Existence. And this QUATERNARY (Father, Mother, Son,
as a UNITY, and a quaternary, as a living manifestation) has been the means of
leading to the very archaic Idea of Immaculate Conception, now finally
crystallized into a dogma of the Christian Church, which carnalized this
metaphysical idea beyond any common sense. For one has but to read the Kabala
and study its numerical methods of interpretation to find the origin of that
dogma. It is purely astronomical, mathematical, and pre-eminently metaphysical:
the Male element in Nature (personified by the male deities and Logoi -- Viraj,
or Brahma; Horus, or Osiris, etc., etc.) is born through, not from, an
immaculate source, personified by the "Mother"; because that Male
having a Mother cannot have a "Father" -- the abstract Deity being
sexless, and not even a Being but Be-ness, or Life itself. Let us render this
in the mathematical language of the author of "The Source of Measures."
Speaking of the "Measure of a Man" and his numerical (Kabalistic)
value, he writes that in Genesis, ch. iv., v. 1, "It is called the 'Man
even Jehovah'
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* A Vedantin of
the Visishtadwaita philosophy would say that, though the only independent
Reality, Parabrahmam is inseparable from his trinity. That He is three,
"Parabrahmam, Chit, and Achit," the last two being dependent
realities unable to exist separately; or, to make it clearer, Parabrahmam is
the SUBSTANCE -- changeless, eternal, and incognizable -- and Chit (Atma), and
Achit (Anatma) are its qualities, as form and colour are the qualities of any
object. The two are the garment, or body, or rather attribute (Sarira) of
Parabrahmam. But an Occultist would find much to say against this claim, and so
would the Adwaitee Vedantin.
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Measure, and
this is obtained in this way, viz.: 113 x 5 = 565, and the value 565 can be
placed under the form of expression 56.5 x 10 = 565. Here the Man-number 113
becomes a factor of 56.5 x 10, and the (Kabalistic) reading of this last
numbered expression is Jod, He, Vau, He, or Jehovah. . . . The expansion of 565
into 56.5 x 10 is purposed to show the emanation of the male (Jod) from the
female (Eva) principle; or, so to speak, the birth of a male element from an
immaculate source, in other words, an immaculate conception."
Thus is repeated
on Earth the mystery enacted, according to the Seers, on the divine plane. The
"Son" of the immaculate Celestial Virgin (or the undifferentiated
cosmic protyle, Matter in its infinitude) is born again on Earth as the Son of
the terrestrial Eve -- our mother Earth, and becomes Humanity as a total --
past, present, and future -- for Jehovah or Jod-he-vau-he is androgyne, or both
male and female. Above, the Son is the whole KOSMOS; below, he is MANKIND. The
triad or triangle becomes Tetraktis, the Sacred Pythagorean number, the perfect
Square, and a 6-faced cube on Earth. The Macroprosopus (the Great Face) is now
Microprosopus (the lesser face); or, as the Kabalists have it, the
"Ancient of Days," descending on Adam Kadmon whom he uses as his
vehicle to manifest through, gets transformed into Tetragrammaton. It is now in
the "Lap of Maya," the Great Illusion, and between itself and the
Reality has the Astral Light, the great Deceiver of man's limited senses, unless
Knowledge through Paramarthasatya comes to the rescue.
-------
STANZA II. --
Continued.
5. THE SEVEN
(Sons) WERE NOT YET BORN FROM THE WEB OF LIGHT. DARKNESS ALONE WAS
FATHER-MOTHER, SVABHAVAT, AND SVABHAVAT WAS IN DARKNESS (a).
(a) The Secret
Doctrine, in the Stanzas given here, occupies itself chiefly, if not entirely,
with our Solar System, and especially with our planetary chain. The "Seven
Sons," therefore, are the creators of the latter. This teaching will be
explained more fully hereafter. (See Part II., "Theogony of the Creative
Gods.")
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Svabhavat, the
"Plastic Essence" that fills the Universe, is the root of all things.
Svabhavat is, so to say, the Buddhistic concrete aspect of the abstraction
called in Hindu philosophy Mulaprakriti. It is the body of the Soul, and that
which Ether would be to Akasa, the latter being the informing principle of the
former. Chinese mystics have made of it the synonym of "being." In
the Ekasloka-Shastra of Nagarjuna (the Lung-shu of China) called by the Chinese
the Yih-shu-lu-kia-lun, it is said that the original word of Yeu is
"Being" or "Subhava," "the Substance giving substance
to itself," also explained by him as meaning " without action and
with action," "the nature which has no nature of its own."
Subhava, from which Svabhavat, is composed of two words: Su "fair,"
"handsome," "good"; Sva, "self"; and bhava,
"being" or "states of being."
-------
STANZA II. --
Continued.
6. THESE TWO ARE
THE GERM, AND THE GERM IS -- ONE. THE UNIVERSE WAS STILL CONCEALED IN THE
DIVINE THOUGHT AND THE DIVINE BOSOM.
The "Divine
Thought" does not imply the idea of a Divine thinker. The Universe, not
only past, present, and future -- which is a human and finite idea expressed by
finite thought -- but in its totality, the Sat (an untranslateable term), the
absolute being, with the Past and Future crystallized in an eternal Present, is
that Thought itself reflected in a secondary or manifest cause. Brahma (neuter)
as the Mysterium Magnum of Paracelsus is an absolute mystery to the human mind.
Brahma, the male-female, its aspect and anthropomorphic reflection, is
conceivable to the perceptions of blind faith, though rejected by human
intellect when it attains its majority. (See Part II., "Primordial
Substance and Divine Thought.")
Hence the
statement that during the prologue, so to say, of the drama of Creation, or the
beginning of cosmic evolution, the Universe or the "Son" lies still
concealed "in the Divine Thought," which had not yet penetrated
"into the Divine Bosom." This idea, note well, is at the root, and
forms the origin of all the allegories about the "Sons of God" born
of immaculate virgins.
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STANZA III.
COMMENTARY.
1. THE LAST
VIBRATION OF THE SEVENTH ETERNITY THRILLS THROUGH INFINITUDE (a). THE MOTHER
SWELLS, EXPANDING FROM WITHIN WITHOUT LIKE THE BUD OF THE LOTUS (b).
(a) The
seemingly paradoxical use of the sentence "Seventh Eternity," thus dividing
the indivisible, is sanctified in esoteric philosophy. The latter divides
boundless duration into unconditionally eternal and universal Time and a
conditioned one (Khandakala). One is the abstraction or noumenon of infinite
time (Kala); the other its phenomenon appearing periodically, as the effect of
Mahat (the Universal Intelligence limited by Manvantaric duration). With some
schools, Mahat is "the first-born" of Pradhana (undifferentiated
substance, or the periodical aspect of Mulaprakriti, the root of Nature), which
(Pradhana) is called Maya, the Illusion. In this respect, I believe, esoteric
teaching differs from the Vedantin doctrines of both the Adwaita and the
Visishtadwaita schools. For it says that, while Mulaprakriti, the noumenon, is
self-existing and without any origin -- is, in short, parentless, Anupadaka (as
one with Brahmam) -- Prakriti, its phenomenon, is periodical and no better than
a phantasm of the former, so Mahat, with the Occultists, the first-born of
Gnana (or gnosis) knowledge, wisdom or the Logos -- is a phantasm reflected
from the Absolute NIRGUNA (Parabrahm, the one reality, "devoid of
attributes and qualities"; see Upanishads); while with some Vedantins
Mahat is a manifestation of Prakriti, or Matter.
(b) Therefore,
the "last vibration of the Seventh Eternity" was
"fore-ordained" -- by no God in particular, but occurred in virtue of
the eternal and changeless LAW which causes the great periods of Activity and
Rest, called so graphically, and at the same time so poetically, the "Days
and Nights of Brahma." The expansion "from within without" of
the Mother, called elsewhere the "Waters of Space," "Universal
Matrix," etc., does not allude to an expansion from a small centre or
focus, but, without reference to size or limitation or area, means the
development of limitless subjectivity into as limitless objectivity. "The
ever (to us) invisible and immaterial Substance present in eternity, threw its
periodical shadow from its own plane into the lap
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of Maya."
It implies that this expansion, not being an increase in size -- for infinite
extension admits of no enlargement -- was a change of condition. It
"expanded like the bud of the Lotus"; for the Lotus plant exists not
only as a miniature embryo in its seed (a physical characteristic), but its
prototype is present in an ideal form in the Astral Light from "Dawn"
to "Night" during the Manvantaric period, like everything else, as a
matter of fact, in this objective Universe; from man down to mite, from giant
trees down to the tiniest blades of grass.
All this,
teaches the hidden Science, is but the temporary reflection, the shadow of the
eternal ideal prototype in Divine Thought -- the word "Eternal," note
well again, standing here only in the sense of "AEon," as lasting
throughout the seemingly interminable, but still limited cycle of activity, called
by us Manvantara. For what is the real esoteric meaning of Manvantara, or
rather a Manu-Antara? It means, esoterically, "between two Manus," of
whom there are fourteen in every "Day of Brahma," such a
"Day" consisting of 1,000 aggregates of four ages, or 1,000
"Great Ages," Mahayugas. Let us now analyse the word or name Manu.
Orientalists and their Dictionaries tell us that the term "Manu" is
from the root Man, "to think"; hence "the thinking man."
But, esoterically, every Manu, as an anthropomorphized patron of his special
cycle (or Round), is but the personified idea of the "Thought Divine"
(as the Hermetic "Pymander"); each of the Manus, therefore, being the
special god, the creator and fashioner of all that appears during his own
respective cycle of being or Manvantara. Fohat runs the Manus' (or
Dhyan-Chohans') errands, and causes the ideal prototypes to expand from within
without -- viz., to cross gradually, on a descending scale, all the planes from
the noumenon to the lowest phenomenon, to bloom finally on the last into full
objectivity -- the acme of illusion, or the grossest matter.
-------
STANZA III. --
continued.
2. THE VIBRATION
SWEEPS ALONG, TOUCHING WITH ITS SWIFT WING (simultaneously) THE WHOLE UNIVERSE,
AND THE GERM THAT DWELLETH IN DARKNESS: THE DARKNESS THAT BREATHES (moves) OVER
THE SLUMBERING WATERS OF LIFE (a).
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(a) The
Pythagorean Monad is also said to dwell in solitude and darkness like the
"germ." The idea of the "breath" of Darkness moving over
"the slumbering Waters of life," which is primordial matter with the
latent Spirit in it, recalls the first chapter of Genesis. Its original is the
Brahminical Narayana (the mover on the Waters), who is the personification of
the eternal Breath of the unconscious All (or Parabrahm) of the Eastern
Occultists. The Waters of Life, or Chaos -- the female principle in symbolism
-- are the vacuum (to our mental sight) in which lie the latent Spirit and
Matter. This it was that made Democritus assert, after his instructor
Leucippus, that the primordial principles of all were atoms and a vacuum, in
the sense of space, but not of empty space, as "Nature abhors a
vacuum" according to the Peripatetics, and every ancient philosopher.
In all
Cosmogonies "Water" plays the same important part. It is the base and
source of material existence. Scientists, mistaking the word for the thing,
understood by water the definite chemical combination of oxygen and hydrogen,
thus giving a specific meaning to a term used by Occultists in a generic sense,
and which is used in Cosmogony with a metaphysical and mystical meaning. Ice is
not water, neither is steam, although all three have precisely the same
chemical composition.
-------
STANZA III. --
Continued.
2. [[3.]]
"DARKNESS" RADIATES LIGHT, AND LIGHT DROPS ONE SOLITARY RAY INTO THE WATERS,
INTO THE MOTHER DEEP. THE RAY SHOOTS THROUGH THE VIRGIN-EGG; THE RAY CAUSES THE
ETERNAL EGG TO THRILL, AND DROP THE NON-ETERNAL (periodical) GERM, WHICH
CONDENSES INTO THE WORLD EGG (a).
(a) The solitary
ray dropping into the mother deep may be taken as meaning Divine Thought or
Intelligence, impregnating chaos. This, however, occurs on the plane of
metaphysical abstraction, or rather the plane whereon that which we call a
metaphysical abstraction is a reality. The Virgin-egg being in one sense abstract
Egg-ness, or the power of becoming developed through fecundation, is eternal
and for ever the same. And just as the fecundation of an egg takes place before
it is dropped; so the non-eternal periodical germ which becomes later in
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symbolism the
mundane egg, contains in itself, when it emerges from the said symbol,
"the promise and potency" of all the Universe. Though the idea per se
is, of course, an abstraction, a symbolical mode of expression, it is a symbol
truly, as it suggests the idea of infinity as an endless circle. It brings
before the mind's eye the picture of Kosmos emerging from and in boundless
space, a Universe as shoreless in magnitude if not as endless in its objective
manifestation. The simile of an egg also expresses the fact taught in Occultism
that the primordial form of everything manifested, from atom to globe, from man
to angel, is spheroidal, the sphere having been with all nations the emblem of
eternity and infinity -- a serpent swallowing its tail. To realize the meaning,
however, the sphere must be thought of as seen from its centre. The field of
vision or of thought is like a sphere whose radii proceed from one's self in
every direction, and extend out into space, opening up boundless vistas all
around. It is the symbolical circle of Pascal and the Kabalists, "whose
centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere," a conception which enters
into the compound idea of this emblem.
The
"Mundane Egg" is, perhaps, one of the most universally adopted
symbols, highly suggestive as it is, equally in the spiritual, physiological,
and cosmological sense. Therefore, it is found in every world-theogony, where
it is largely associated with the serpent symbol; the latter being everywhere,
in philosophy as in religious symbolism, an emblem of eternity, infinitude,
regeneration, and rejuvenation, as well as of wisdom. (See Part II. "Tree
and Serpent and Crocodile Worship.") The mystery of apparent
self-generation and evolution through its own creative power repeating in
miniature the process of Cosmic evolution in the egg, both being due to heat
and moisture under the efflux of the unseen creative spirit, justified fully
the selection of this graphic symbol. The "Virgin Egg" is the
microcosmic symbol of the macrocosmic prototype -- the "Virgin
Mother" -- Chaos or the Primeval Deep. The male Creator (under whatever
name) springs forth from the Virgin female, the immaculate root fructified by
the Ray. Who, if versed in astronomy and natural sciences, can fail to see its
suggestiveness? Cosmos as receptive Nature is an Egg fructified -- yet left
immaculate; once regarded as boundless, it could have no other representation
than a spheroid. The Golden Egg was surrounded by seven natural elements
(ether, fire, air, water), "four ready, three secret." It may be
found
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stated in Vishnu
Purana, where elements are translated "Envelopes" and a secret one is
added: "Aham-kara" (see Wilson's Vishnu Purana, Book I., p. 40). The
original text has no "Aham-kara;" it mentions seven Elements without
specifying the last three (see Part II. on "The Mundane Egg").
-------
STANZA III. --
Continued.
4. (Then) THE
THREE (triangle) FALL INTO THE FOUR (quaternary). THE RADIANT ESSENCE BECOMES
SEVEN INSIDE, SEVEN OUTSIDE (a). THE LUMINOUS EGG (Hiranyagarbha), WHICH IN
ITSELF IS THREE (the triple hypostases of Brahma, or Vishnu, the three
"Avasthas"), CURDLES AND SPREADS IN MILK-WHITE CURDS THROUGHOUT THE
DEPTHS OF MOTHER, THE ROOT THAT GROWS IN THE OCEAN OF LIFE (b).
The use of
geometrical figures and the frequent allusions to figures in all ancient
scriptures (see Puranas, Egyptian papyri, the "Book of the Dead" and
even the Bible) must be explained. In the "Book of Dzyan," as in the Kabala,
there are two kinds of numerals to be studied -- the figures, often simple
blinds, and the Sacred Numbers, the values of which are all known to the
Occultists through Initiation. The former is but a conventional glyph, the
latter is the basic symbol of all. That is to say, that one is purely physical,
the other purely metaphysical, the two standing in relation to each other as
matter stands to spirit -- the extreme poles of the ONE Substance.
As Balzac, the
unconscious Occultist of French literature, says somewhere, the Number is to
Mind the same as it is to matter: "an incomprehensible agent;"
(perhaps so to the profane, never to the Initiated mind). Number is, as the
great writer thought, an Entity, and, at the same time, a Breath emanating from
what he called God and what we call the ALL; the breath which alone could
organize the physical Kosmos, "where naught obtains its form but through
the Deity, which is an effect of Number." It is instructive to quote
Balzac's words upon this subject:--
"The
smallest as the most immense creations, are they not to be distinguished from
each other by their quantities, their qualities, their dimensions, their forces
and attributes, all begotten by the NUMBER? The infinitude of the Numbers is a
fact proven to our mind, but of which no proof can be physically
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given. The mathematician
will tell us that the infinitude of the numbers exists but is not to be
demonstrated. God is a Number endowed with motion, which is felt but not
demonstrated. As Unity, it begins the Numbers, with which it has nothing in
common. . . . . The existence of the Number depends on Unity, which, without a
single Number, begets them all. . . . . What! unable either to measure the
first abstraction yielded to you by the Deity, or to get hold of it, you still
hope to subject to your measurements the mystery of the Secret Sciences which
emanate from that Deity? . . . . And what would you feel, were I to plunge you
into the abysses of MOTION, the Force which organizes the Number? What would
you think, were I to add that Motion and Number* are begotten by the WORD, the
Supreme Reason of the Seers and Prophets, who, in days of old, sensed the
mighty Breath of God, a witness to which is the Apocalypse?"
(b) "The
radiant essence curdled and spread throughout the depths" of Space. From
an astronomical point of view this is easy of explanation: it is the
"milky way," the world-stuff, or primordial matter in its first form.
It is more difficult, however, to explain it in a few words or even lines, from
the standpoint of Occult Science and Symbolism, as it is the most complicated
of glyphs. Herein are enshrined more than a dozen symbols. To begin with, the
whole pantheon of mysterious objects,** every one of them having some definite
Occult meaning, extracted from the allegorical "churning of the
ocean" by the Hindu gods. Besides Amrita, the water of life or
immortality, "Surabhi" the "cow of plenty," called
"the fountain of milk and curds," was extracted from this "Sea
of Milk." Hence the universal adoration of the cow and bull, one the
productive, the other the generative power in Nature: symbols connected with
both the Solar and the Cosmic deities. The specific properties, for occult
purposes, of the "fourteen precious things," being explained only at
the fourth Initiation, cannot be given here; but the following may be remarked.
In the "Satapatha Brahmana" it is stated that the churning of the
"Ocean of Milk" took place in the Satya Yug, the first age which
immediately followed the "Deluge." As, however, neither the Rig-Veda
nor
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Number, truly;
but never MOTION. It is Motion which begets the Logos, the Word, in occultism.
** The
"Fourteen precious things." The narrative or allegory is found in the
Satapatha Brahmana and others. The Japanese Secret Science of the Buddhist
Mystics, the Yamabooshi, has "seven precious things." We will speak
of them, hereafter.
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Manu -- both
preceding Vaivasvata's "deluge," that of the bulk of the Fourth Race
-- mention this deluge, it is evident that it is not the "great"
deluge, nor that which carried away Atlantis, nor even the deluge of Noah, which
is meant here. This "churning" relates to a period before the earth's
formation, and is in direct connection with that other universal legend, the
various and contradictory versions of which culminated in the Christian dogma
of the "War in Heaven," and the fall of the Angels (see Book II.,
also Revelations chap. xii.). The Brahmanas, reproached by the Orientalists
with their versions on the same subjects, often clashing with each other, are
pre-eminently occult works, hence used purposely as blinds. They were allowed
to survive for public use and property only because they were and are
absolutely unintelligible to the masses. Otherwise they would have disappeared
from circulation as long ago as the days of Akbar.
-------
STANZA III. --
Continued.
5. THE ROOT
REMAINS, THE LIGHT REMAINS, THE CURDS REMAIN, AND STILL OEAOHOO (a) IS ONE (b).
(a) OEAOHOO is
rendered "Father-Mother of the Gods" in the Commentaries, or the SIX
IN ONE, or the septenary root from which all proceeds. All depends upon the
accent given to these seven vowels, which may be pronounced as one, three, or
even seven syllables by adding an e after the letter "o." This mystic
name is given out, because without a thorough mastery of the triple
pronunciation it remains for ever ineffectual.
(b) This refers
to the Non-Separateness of all that lives and has its being, whether in active
or passive state. In one sense, Oeaohoo is the "Rootless Root of
All"; hence, one with Parabrahmam; in another sense it is a name for the
manifested ONE LIFE, the Eternal living Unity. The "Root" means, as
already explained, pure knowledge (Sattva),*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The original
for Understanding is Sattva, which Sankara (acharya) renders antahkarana.
"Refined," he says, "by sacrifices and other sanctifying
operations." In the Katha, at p. 148, Sattva is said by Sankara to mean
buddhi -- a common use of the word. ("The BHAGAVATGITA with The
Sanatsugatiya and The Anugita," trans- [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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eternal (Nitya)
unconditioned reality or SAT (Satya), whether we call it Parabrahmam or
Mulaprakriti, for these are the two aspects of the ONE. The "Light"
is the same Omnipresent Spiritual Ray, which has entered and now fecundated the
Divine Egg, and calls cosmic matter to begin its long series of differentiations.
The curds are the first differentiation, and probably refer also to that cosmic
matter which is supposed to be the origin of the "Milky Way" -- the
matter we know. This "matter," which, according to the revelation
received from the primeval Dhyani-Buddhas, is, during the periodical sleep of
the Universe, of the ultimate tenuity conceivable to the eye of the perfect
Bodhisatva -- this matter, radical and cool, becomes, at the first reawakening
of cosmic motion, scattered through Space; appearing, when seen from the Earth,
in clusters and lumps, like curds in thin milk. These are the seeds of the
future worlds, the "Star-stuff."
-------
STANZA III. --
Continued.
6. THE ROOT OF
LIFE WAS IN EVERY DROP OF THE OCEAN OF IMMORTALITY (Amrita)* AND THE OCEAN WAS
RADIANT LIGHT, WHICH WAS FIRE AND HEAT AND MOTION. DARKNESS VANISHED AND WAS NO
MORE.** IT DISAPPEARED IN ITS OWN ESSENCE, THE BODY OF FIRE AND WATER, OF
FATHER AND MOTHER (a).
(a) The essence
of darkness being absolute light, Darkness is taken as the appropriate
allegorical representation of the condition of the Universe during Pralaya, or
the term of absolute rest, or non-being, as it appears to our finite minds. The
"fire," "heat," and "motion" here spoken of, are,
of course, not the fire, heat, and motion of physical science, but the
underlying abstractions, the noumena, or the soul, of the essence of these
material manifestations -- the "things in themselves," which, as
modern science confesses, entirely elude the instru-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] lated by Kashinath Trimbak Telang, M.A.; edited
by Max Muller.) Whatever meaning various schools may give the term, Sattva is
the name given among Occult students of the Aryasanga School to the dual Monad
or Atma-buddhi, and Atma-buddhi on this plane corresponds to Parabrahm and
Mulaprakriti on the higher plane.
* Amrita is
"immortality."
** See
Commentary No. 1 to this Stanza.
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ments of the
laboratory, and which even the mind cannot grasp, although it can equally little
avoid the conclusion that these underlying essences of things must exist. Fire
and Water, or Father* and Mother, may be taken here to mean the divine Ray and
Chaos. "Chaos, from this union with Spirit obtaining sense, shone with
pleasure, and thus was produced the Protogonos (the first-born light),"
says a fragment of Hermas. Damascius calls it Dis in "Theogony" --
"The disposer of all things." (See Cory's "Ancient
Fragments," p. 314.)
According to the
Rosicrucian tenets, as handled and explained by the profane for once correctly,
if only partially, so "Light and Darkness are identical in themselves,
being only divisible in the human mind"; and according to Robert Fludd,
"Darkness adopted illumination in order to make itself visible" (On
Rosenkranz). According to the tenets of Eastern Occultism, DARKNESS is the one
true actuality, the basis and the root of light, without which the latter could
never manifest itself, nor even exist. Light is matter, and DARKNESS pure
Spirit. Darkness, in its radical, metaphysical basis, is subjective and
absolute light; while the latter in all its seeming effulgence and glory, is
merely a mass of shadows, as it can never be eternal, and is simply an
illusion, or Maya.
Even in the
mind-baffling and science-harassing Genesis, light is created out of darkness
"and darkness was upon the face of the deep" (ch. i. v. 2.) -- and
not vice versa. "In him (in darkness) was life; and the life was the light
of men" (John i. 4). A day may come when the eyes of men will be opened;
and then they may comprehend better than they do now, that verse in the Gospel
of John that says "And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness
comprehendeth it not." They will see then that the word
"darkness" does not apply to man's spiritual eyesight, but indeed to
"Darkness," the absolute, that comprehendeth not (cannot cognize)
transient light, however transcendent to human eyes. Demon est Deus inversus.
The devil is now called Darkness by the Church, whereas, in the Bible he is
called the "Son of God" (see Job), the bright star of the early
morning, Lucifer (see Isaiah). There is a whole philosophy of dogmatic craft in
the reason why the first Archangel, who sprang from the depths of Chaos, was
called Lux (Lucifer), the "Luminous Son of the Morning," or man-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See
"Kwan-Shai-Yin." The real name from the text cannot be given.
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vantaric Dawn.
He was transformed by the Church into Lucifer or Satan, because he is higher
and older than Jehovah, and had to be sacrificed to the new dogma. (See Book
II.)
---------
STANZA III. --
Continued.
7. BEHOLD, OH
LANOO!** THE RADIANT CHILD OF THE TWO, THE UNPARALLELED REFULGENT GLORY, BRIGHT
SPACE, SON OF DARK SPACE, WHO EMERGES FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE GREAT DARK WATERS.
IT IS OEAOHOO, THE YOUNGER, THE * * * (whom thou knowest now as Kwan-Shai-Yin.
-- Comment) (a). HE SHINES FORTH AS THE SUN. HE IS THE BLAZING DIVINE DRAGON OF
WISDOM. THE EKA IS CHATUR (four), AND CHATUR TAKES TO ITSELF THREE, AND THE
UNION PRODUCES THE SAPTA (seven) IN WHOM ARE THE SEVEN WHICH BECOME THE
TRIDASA*** (the thrice ten) THE HOSTS AND THE MULTITUDES (b). BEHOLD HIM
LIFTING THE VEIL, AND UNFURLING IT FROM EAST TO WEST. HE SHUTS OUT THE ABOVE
AND LEAVES THE BELOW TO BE SEEN AS THE GREAT ILLUSION. HE MARKS THE PLACES FOR
THE SHINING ONES (stars) AND TURNS THE UPPER (space) INTO A SHORELESS SEA OF
FIRE, AND THE ONE MANIFESTED (element) INTO THE GREAT WATERS (c).
"Bright
Space, son of dark Space," corresponds to the Ray dropped at the first
thrill of the new "Dawn" into the great Cosmic depths, from which it
re-emerges differentiated as Oeaohoo the younger, (the "new LIFE"),
to become, to the end of the life-cycle, the germ of all things. He is
"the Incorporeal man who contains in himself the divine Idea," -- the
generator of Light and Life, to use an expression of Philo Judaeus. He is
called the "Blazing Dragon of Wisdom,"
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
** Lanoo is a
student, a chela who studies practical Esotericism.
***
"Tri-dasa," or three times ten (30), alludes to the Vedic deities, in
round numbers, or more accurately 33 -- a sacred number. They are the 12
Adityas, the 8 Vasus, the 11 Rudras, and 2 Aswins -- the twin sons of the Sun
and the Sky. This is the root-number of the Hindu Pantheon, which enumerates 33
crores or over three hundred millions of gods and goddesses.
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because,
firstly, he is that which the Greek philosophers called the Logos, the Verbum
of the Thought Divine; and secondly, because in Esoteric philosophy this first
manifestation, being the synthesis or the aggregate of Universal Wisdom, Oeaohoo,
"the Son of the Son," contains in himself the Seven Creative Hosts
(The Sephiroth), and is thus the essence of manifested Wisdom. "He who
bathes in the light of Oeaohoo will never be deceived by the veil of
Maya."
Kwan-Shai-Yin is
identical with, and an equivalent of the Sanskrit Avalokiteshwara, and as such
he is an androgynous deity, like the Tetragrammaton and all the Logoi* of
antiquity. It is only by some sects in China that he is anthropomorphized and
represented with female attributes,** when, under his female aspect, he becomes
Kwan-Yin, the goddess of mercy, called the "Divine Voice."*** The
latter is the patron deity of Thibet and of the island of Puto in China, where
both deities have a number of monasteries.**** (See Part II. Kwan-Shai-Yin and
Kwan-yin.)
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Hence all the
higher gods of antiquity are all "Sons of the Mother" before they
become those of the "Father." The Logoi, like Jupiter or Zeus, Son of
Kronos-Saturn, "Infinite Time" (or Kala), in their origin were
represented as male-female. Zeus is said to be the "beautiful
Virgin," and Venus is made bearded. Apollo is originally bisexual, so is
Brahma-Vach in Manu and the Puranas. Osiris is interchangeable with Isis, and Horus
is of both sexes. Finally St. John's vision in Revelation, that of the Logos,
who is now connected with Jesus -- is hermaphrodite, for he is described as
having female breasts. So is the Tetragrammaton = Jehovah. But there are two
Avalokiteshwaras in Esotericism; the first and the second Logos.
** No religious
symbol can escape profanation and even derision in our days of politics and
Science. In Southern India the writer has seen a converted native making pujah
with offerings before a statue of Jesus clad in woman's clothes and with a ring
in his nose. When asking the meaning of the masquerade we were answered that it
was Jesu-Maria blended in one, and that it was done by the permission of the
Padri, as the zealous convert had no money to purchase two statues or
"idols" as they, very properly, were called by a witness -- another
but a non-converted Hindu. Blasphemous this will appear to a dogmatic
Christian, but the Theosophist and the Occultist must award the palm of logic
to the converted Hindu. The esoteric Christos in the gnosis is, of course,
sexless, but in exoteric theology he is male and female.
*** The Gnostic
Sophia, "Wisdom" who is "the Mother" of the Ogdoad (Aditi,
in a certain sense, with her eight sons), is the Holy Ghost and the Creator of
all, as in the ancient systems. The "father" is a far later
invention. The earliest manifested Logos was female everywhere -- the mother of
the seven planetary powers.
**** See
"Chinese Buddhism," by the Rev. J. C. Edkins, who always gives
correct facts, although his conclusions are very frequently erroneous.
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(b) "The
"Dragon of Wisdom" is the One, the "Eka" (Sanskrit) or
Saka. It is curious that Jehovah's name in Hebrew should also be One, Echod.
"His name is Echod": say the Rabbins. The philologists ought to
decide which of the two is derived from the other -- linguistically and
symbolically: surely, not the Sanskrit? The "One" and the Dragon are
expressions used by the ancients in connection with their respective Logoi.
Jehovah -- esoterically (as Elohim) -- is also the Serpent or Dragon that
tempted Eve, and the "Dragon" is an old glyph for "Astral
Light" (Primordial Principle), "which is the Wisdom of Chaos."
Archaic philosophy, recognizing neither Good nor Evil as a fundamental or
independent power, but starting from the Absolute ALL (Universal Perfection
eternally), traced both through the course of natural evolution to pure Light
condensing gradually into form, hence becoming Matter or Evil. It was left with
the early and ignorant Christian fathers to degrade the philosophical and
highly scientific idea of this emblem (the Dragon) into the absurd superstition
called the "Devil." They took it from the later Zoroastrians, who saw
devils or the Evil in the Hindu Devas, and the word Evil thus became by a
double transmutation D'Evil in every tongue (Diabolos, Diable, Diavolo, Teufel).
But the Pagans have always shown a philosophical discrimination in their
symbols. The primitive symbol of the serpent symbolised divine Wisdom and
Perfection, and had always stood for psychical Regeneration and Immortality.
Hence -- Hermes, calling the serpent the most spiritual of all beings; Moses,
initiated in the wisdom of Hermes, following suit in Genesis; the Gnostic's
Serpent with the seven vowels over its head, being the emblem of the seven
hierarchies of the Septenary or Planetary Creators. Hence, also, the Hindu
serpent Sesha or Ananta, "the Infinite," a name of Vishnu, whose
first Vahan or vehicle on the primordial waters is this serpent.* Yet they all
made a difference between the good and the bad Serpent (the Astral Light of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Like the logoi
and the Hierarchies of Powers, however, the "Serpents" have to be
distinguished one from the other. Sesha or Ananta, "the couch of
Vishnu," is an allegorical abstraction, symbolizing infinite Time in
Space, which contains the germ and throws off periodically the efflorescence of
this germ, the manifested Universe; whereas, the gnostic Ophis contained the
same triple symbolism in its seven vowels as the One, Three and Seven-syllabled
Oeaohoo of the Archaic doctrine; i.e., the One Unmanifested Logos, the Second
manifested, the triangle concreting into the Quaternary or Tetragrammaton, and
the rays of the latter on the material plane.
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the Kabalists)
-- between the former, the embodiment of divine Wisdom in the region of the
Spiritual, and the latter, Evil, on the plane of matter.* Jesus accepted the
serpent as a synonym of Wisdom, and this formed part of his teaching: "Be
ye wise as serpents," he says. "In the beginning, before Mother
became Father-Mother, the fiery Dragon moved in the infinitudes alone"
(Book of Sarparajni.) The Aitareya Brahmana calls the Earth Sarparajni,
"the Serpent Queen," and "the Mother of all that moves."
Before our globe became egg-shaped (and the Universe also) "a long trail
of Cosmic dust (or fire mist) moved and writhed like a serpent in Space."
The "Spirit of God moving on Chaos" was symbolized by every nation in
the shape of a fiery serpent breathing fire and light upon the primordial
waters, until it had incubated cosmic matter and made it assume the annular
shape of a serpent with its tail in its mouth -- which symbolises not only
Eternity and Infinitude, but also the globular shape of all the bodies formed
within the Universe from that fiery mist. The Universe, as well as the Earth
and Man, cast off periodically, serpent-like, their old skins, to assume new
ones after a time of rest. The serpent is, surely, a not less graceful or a
more unpoetical image than the caterpillar and chrysalis from which springs the
butterfly, the Greek emblem of Psyche, the human soul. The "Dragon"
was also the symbol of the Logos with the Egyptians, as with the Gnostics. In
the "Book of Hermes," Pymander, the oldest and the most spiritual of
the Logoi of the Western Continent, appears to Hermes in the shape of a Fiery
Dragon of "Light, Fire, and Flame." Pymander, the "Thought
Divine" personified, says: The Light is me, I am the Nous (the mind or
Manu), I am thy God, and I am far older than the human principle which escapes
from the shadow ("Darkness," or the concealed Deity). I am the germ
of thought, the resplendent Word, the Son of God. All that thus sees and hears
in thee is the Verbum of the Master, it is the Thought (Mahat) which is God,
the Father.**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Astral
Light, or the AEther, of the ancient pagans (for the name of Astral Light is
quite modern) is Spirit-Matter. Beginning with the pure spiritual plane, it
becomes grosser as it descends until it becomes the Maya or the tempting and
deceitful serpent on our plane.
** By "God,
the Father," the seventh principle in Man and Kosmos are here
unmistakeably meant, this principle being inseparable in its Esse and Nature
from the seventh Cosmic principle. In one sense it is the Logos of the Greeks
and the Avalokiteswara of the esoteric Buddhists.
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The celestial
Ocean, the 'Ether . . . . is the Breath of the Father, the life-giving
principle, the Mother, the Holy Spirit, . . . . for these are not separated,
and their union is LIFE."
Here we find the
unmistakeable echo of the Archaic Secret Doctrine, as now expounded. Only the
latter does not place at the head and Evolution of Life "the Father,"
who comes third and is the "Son of the Mother," but the "Eternal
and Ceaseless Breath of the ALL." The Mahat (Understanding, Universal
Mind, Thought, etc.), before it manifests itself as Brahma or Siva, appears as
Vishnu, says Sankhya Sara (p. 16); hence Mahat has several aspects, just as the
logos has. Mahat is called the Lord, in the Primary Creation, and is, in this
sense, Universal Cognition or Thought Divine; but, "That Mahat which was
first produced is (afterwards) called Ego-ism, when it is born as
"I," that is said to be the second Creation" (Anugita, ch.
xxvi.). And the translator (an able and learned Brahmin, not a European
Orientalist) explains in a foot-note (6), "i.e., when Mahat develops into
the feeling of Self-Consciousness -- I -- then it assumes the name of
Egoism," which, translated into our esoteric phraseology, means when Mahat
is transformed into the human Manas (or even that of the finite gods), and
becomes Aham-ship. Why it is called the Mahat of the Second creation (or the
ninth, that of the Kumara in Vishnu Purana) will be explained in Book II. The
"Sea of Fire" is then the Super-Astral (i.e., noumenal) Light, the
first radiation from the Root, the Mulaprakriti, the undifferentiated Cosmic Substance,
which becomes Astral Matter. It is also called the "Fiery Serpent,"
as above described. If the student bears in mind that there is but One
Universal Element, which is infinite, unborn, and undying, and that all the
rest -- as in the world of phenomena -- are but so many various differentiated
aspects and transformations (correlations, they are now called) of that One,
from Cosmical down to microcosmical effects, from super-human down to human and
sub-human beings, the totality, in short, of objective existence -- then the
first and chief difficulty will disappear and Occult Cosmology may be
mastered.* All the Kabalists and Occultists, Eastern and Western, recognise (a)
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In the
Egyptian as in the Indian theogony there was a concealed deity, the ONE, and
the creative, androgynous god. Thus Shoo is the god of creation and Osiris is,
in his original primary form, the "god whose name is unknown." (See
Mariette's Abydos II., p. 63, and Vol. III., pp. 413, 414, No. 1122.)
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the identity of
"Father-Mother" with primordial AEther or Akasa, (Astral Light)*; and
(b) its homogeneity before the evolution of the "Son," cosmically
Fohat, for it is Cosmic Electricity. "Fohat hardens and scatters the seven
brothers" (Book III. Dzyan); which means that the primordial Electric
Entity -- for the Eastern Occultists insist that Electricity is an Entity --
electrifies into life, and separates primordial stuff or pregenetic matter into
atoms, themselves the source of all life and consciousness. "There exists
an universal agent unique of all forms and of life, that is called Od,** Ob,
and Aour, active and passive, positive and negative, like day and night: it is
the first light in Creation" (Eliphas Levi's Kabala):--- the first Light
of the primordial Elohim -- the Adam, "male and female" -- or (scientifically)
ELECTRICITY AND LIFE.
(c) The ancients
represented it by a serpent, for "Fohat hisses as he glides hither and
thither" (in zigzags). The Kabala figures it with the Hebrew letter Teth
[[hebrew]], whose symbol is the serpent which played such a prominent part in
the Mysteries. Its universal value is nine, for it is the ninth letter of the
alphabet and the ninth door of the fifty portals or gateways that lead to the
concealed mysteries of being. It is the magical agent par excellence, and
designates in Hermetic philosophy "Life infused into primordial
matter," the essence that composes all things, and the spirit that
determines their form. But there are two secret Hermetical operations, one
spiritual, the other material-correlative, and for ever united. "Thou
shalt separate the earth from the fire, the subtile from the solid . . . that
which ascends from earth to heaven and descends again from heaven to earth. It
(the subtile light), is the strong force of every force, for it conquers every
subtile thing and penetrates into every solid. Thus was the world formed"
(Hermes).
It was not Zeno
alone, the founder of the Stoics, who taught that the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See next note.
** Od is the pure
life-giving Light, or magnetic fluid; Ob the messenger of death used by the
sorcerers, the nefarious evil fluid; Aour is the synthesis of the two, Astral
Light proper. Can the Philologists tell why Od -- a term used by Reichenbach to
denominate the vital fluid -- is also a Tibetan word meaning light, brightness,
radiancy? It equally means "Sky" in an occult sense. Whence the root
of the word? But Akasa is not quite Ether, but far higher than that, as will be
shown.
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Universe
evolves, when its primary substance is transformed from the state of fire into
that of air, then into water, etc. Heracleitus of Ephesus maintained that the
one principle that underlies all phenomena in Nature is fire. The intelligence
that moves the Universe is fire, and fires is intelligence. And while
Anaximenes said the same of air, and Thales of Miletus (600 years B.C.) of
water, the Esoteric Doctrine reconciles all those philosophers by showing that
though each was right the system of none was complete.
-------
STANZA III. --
Continued.
8. WHERE WAS THE
GERM, AND WHERE WAS NOW DARKNESS? WHERE IS THE SPIRIT OF THE FLAME THAT BURNS
IN THY LAMP, OH LANOO? THE GERM IS THAT, AND THAT IS LIGHT; THE WHITE BRILLIANT
SON OF THE DARK HIDDEN FATHER (a).
(a) The answer
to the first question, suggested by the second, which is the reply of the
teacher to the pupil, contains in a single phrase one of the most essential
truths of occult philosophy. It indicates the existence of things imperceptible
to our physical senses which are of far greater importance, more real and more
permanent, than those that appeal to these senses themselves. Before the Lanoo
can hope to understand the transcendentally metaphysical problem contained in
the first question he must be able to answer the second, while the very answer
he gives to the second will furnish him with the clue to the correct reply to
the first.
In the Sanscrit
Commentary on this Stanza, the terms used for the concealed and the unrevealed
Principle are many. In the earliest MSS. of Indian literature this Unrevealed,
Abstract Deity has no name. It is called generally "That" (Tad in
Sanskrit), and means all that is, was, and will be, or that can be so received
by the human mind.
Among such
appellations, given, of course, only in esoteric philosophy, as the
"Unfathomable Darkness," the "Whirlwind," etc. -- it is
also called the "It of the Kalahansa, the Kala-ham-sa," and even the
"Kali Hamsa," (Black swan). Here the m and the n are convertible, and
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both sound like
the nasal French an or am, or, again, en or em (Ennui, Embarras, etc.) As in
the Hebrew Bible, many a mysterious sacred name in Sanscrit conveys to the profane
ear no more than some ordinary, and often vulgar word, because it is concealed
anagrammatically or otherwise. This word of Hansa or esoterically
"hamsa" is just such a case. Hamsa is equal to a-ham-sa, three words
meaning "I am he" (in English), while divided in still another way it
will read "So-ham," "he (is) I" -- Soham being equal to
Sah, "he," and aham, "I," or "I am he." In this
alone is contained the universal mystery, the doctrine of the identity of man's
essence with god-essence, for him who understands the language of wisdom. Hence
the glyph of, and the allegory about, Kalahansa (or hamsa), and the name given
to Brahma neuter (later on, to the male Brahma) of "Hansa-Vahana," he
who uses the Hansa as his vehicle." The same word may be read "Kalaham-sa"
or "I am I" in the eternity of Time, answering to the Biblical, or
rather Zoroastrian "I am that I am." The same doctrine is found in
the Kabala, as witness the following extract from an unpublished MS. by Mr. S.
Liddell McGregor Mathers, the learned Kabalist: "The three pronouns
[[hebrew]], Hoa, Atah, Ani; He, Thou, I; are used to symbolize the ideas of
Macroprosopus and Microprosopus in the Hebrew Qabalah. Hoa, "He," is
applied to the hidden and concealed Macroprosopus; Atah, "Thou," to
Microprosopus; and Ani, "I," to the latter when He is represented as
speaking. (See Lesser Holy Assembly, 204 et seq.) It is to be noted that each
of these names consists of three letters, of which the letter Aleph [[hebrew]],
A, forms the conclusion of the first word Hoa, and the commencement of Atah and
Ani, as if it were the connecting link between them. But [[hebrew]] is the
symbol of the Unity and consequently of the unvarying Idea of the Divine
operating through all these. But behind the [[hebrew]] in the name Hoa are the
letters [[hebrew]] and [[hebrew]], the symbols of the numbers Six and Five, the
Male and the Female, the Hexagram and the Pentagram. And the numbers of these
three words, Hoa Atah Ani, are 12, 406, and 61, which are resumed in the key
numbers of 3, 10, and 7, by the Qabalah of the Nine Chambers, which is a form
of the exegetical rule of Temura."
It is useless to
attempt to explain the mystery in full. Materialists and the men of modern
Science will never understand it, since, in order
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to obtain clear
perception of it, one has first of all to admit the postulate of a universally
diffused, omnipresent, eternal Deity in Nature; secondly, to have fathomed the
mystery of electricity in its true essence; and thirdly, to credit man with
being the septenary symbol, on the terrestrial plane, of the One Great UNIT (the
Logos), which is Itself the Seven-vowelled sign, the Breath crystallized into
the WORD.* He who believes in all this, has also to believe in the multiple
combination of the seven planets of Occultism and of the Kabala, with the
twelve zodiacal signs; to attribute, as we do, to each planet and to each
constellation an influence which, in the words of Ely Star (a French
Occultist), "is proper to it, beneficent or maleficent, and this, after
the planetary Spirit which rules it, who, in his turn, is capable of
influencing men and things which are found in harmony with him and with which
he has any affinity." For these reasons, and since few believe in the
foregoing, all that can now be given is that in both cases the symbol of Hansa
(whether "I," "He," Goose or Swan) is an important symbol,
representing, for instance, Divine Wisdom, Wisdom in darkness beyond the reach
of men. For all exoteric purposes, Hansa, as every Hindu knows, is a fabulous
bird, which, when given milk mixed with water for its food (in the allegory)
separated the two, drinking the milk and leaving the water; thus showing
inherent wisdom -- milk standing symbolically for spirit, and water for matter.
That this
allegory is very ancient and dates from the very earliest archaic period, is shown
by the mention (in Bhagavata Purana) of a certain caste named "Hamsa"
or "Hansa," which was the "one caste" par excellence; when
far back in the mists of a forgotten past there was among the Hindus only
"One Veda, One Deity, One Caste." There is also a range in the
Himalayas, described in the old books as being situated north of Mount Meru,
called "Hamsa," and connected with episodes pertaining to the history
of religious mysteries and initiations. As to the name of Kala-Hansa being the
supposed vehicle of Brahma-Prajapati, in the exoteric texts and translations of
the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This is again
similar to the doctrine of Fichte and German Pantheists. The former reveres
Jesus as the great teacher who inculcated the unity of the spirit of man with
the God-Spirit (the Adwaita doctrine) or universal Principle. It is difficult
to find a single speculation in Western metaphysics which has not been
anticipated by Archaic Eastern philosophy. From Kant to Herbert Spencer, it is
all a more or less distorted echo of the Dwaita, Adwaita, and Vedantic
doctrines generally.
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Orientalists, it
is quite a mistake. Brahma, the neuter, is called by them Kala-Hansa and
Brahma, the male, Hansa-Vahana, because forsooth "his vehicle or Vahan is
a swan or goose" (vide "the Hindu Classical Dictionary.") This
is a purely exoteric gloss. Esoterically and logically, if Brahma, the
infinite, is all that is described by the Orientalists, namely, agreeably with
the Vedantic texts, an abstract deity in no way characterised by the
description of any human attributes, and it is still maintained that he or it
is called Kala-Hansa -- then how can it ever become the Vahan of Brahma, the
manifested finite god? It is quite the reverse. The "Swan or goose"
(Hansa) is the symbol of that male or temporary deity, as he, the emanation of
the primordial Ray, is made to serve as a Vahan or vehicle for that divine Ray,
which otherwise could not manifest itself in the Universe, being,
antiphrastically, itself an emanation of "Darkness" -- for our human
intellect, at any rate. It is Brahma, then, who is Kala-Hansa, and the Ray, the
Hansa-Vahana.
As to the
strange symbol chosen, it is equally suggestive; the true mystic significance
being the idea of a universal matrix, figured by the primordial waters of the
"deep," or the opening for the reception, and subsequently for the
issue, of that one ray (the Logos), which contains in itself the other seven
procreative rays or powers (the logoi or builders). Hence the choice by the
Rosecroix of the aquatic fowl -- whether swan or pelican,* with seven young
ones for a symbol, modified and adapted to the religion of every country.
En-Soph is called the "Fiery Soul of the Pelican" in the Book of
Numbers.** (See Part II. "The Hidden Deity and its Symbols and
Glyphs.") Appearing with every Manvantara as Narayan, or Swayambhuva (the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Whether the
genus of the bird be cygnus, anser, or pelecanus, it is no matter, as it is an
aquatic bird floating or moving on the waters like the Spirit, and then issuing
from those waters to give birth to other beings. The true significance of the
symbol of the Eighteenth Degree of the Rose-Croix is precisely this, though
poetised later on into the motherly feeling of the Pelican rending its bosom to
feed its seven little ones with its blood.
** The reason
why Moses forbids eating the pelican and swan, classing the two among the
unclean fowls, and permits eating "bald locusts, beetles, and the
grasshopper after his kind" (Leviticus xi. and Deuteronomy xiv.) is a
purely physiological one, and has to do with mystic symbology only in so far as
the word "unclean," like every other word, ought not to be read and
understood literally, as it is esoteric like all the [[Footnote continued on
next page]]
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Self-Existent),
and penetrating into the Mundane Egg, it emerges from it at the end of the
divine incubation as Brahma or Prajapati, a progenitor of the future Universe
into which he expands. He is Purusha (spirit), but he is also Prakriti
(matter). Therefore it is only after separating himself into two halves --
Brahma-vach (the female) and Brahma-Viraj (the male), that the Prajapati
becomes the male Brahma.
-------
STANZA III. --
Continued.
9. LIGHT IS COLD
FLAME, AND FLAME IS FIRE, AND THE FIRE PRODUCES HEAT, WHICH YIELDS WATER, THE
WATER OF LIFE IN THE GREAT MOTHER (Chaos) (a).
(a) It must be
remembered that the words "Light," "Fire," and
"Flame" used in the Stanzas have been adopted by the translators
thereof from the vocabulary of the old "Fire philosophers,"** in
order to render better the meaning of the archaic terms and symbols employed in
the original. Otherwise they would have remained entirely unintelligible to a
European reader. But to a student of the Occult the terms used will be
sufficiently clear.
All these --
"Light," "Flame," "Hot," "Cold,"
"Fire," "Heat," "Water," and the "water of
life" are all, on our plane, the progeny; or as a modern physicist would
say, the correlations of ELECTRICITY. Mighty word, and a still mightier symbol!
Sacred generator of a no less sacred progeny; of fire -- the creator, the preserver
and the destroyer; of light -- the essence of our divine ancestors; of flame --
the Soul of things. Electricity, the ONE Life at the upper rung of Being, and
Astral Fluid, the Athanor of the Alchemists, at its lowest; GOD and DEVIL, GOOD
and EVIL. . . .
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] rest, and may as well mean "holy" as
not. It is a blind, very suggestive in connection with certain superstitions --
e.g., that of the Russian people who will not use the pigeon for food; not
because it is "unclean," but because the "Holy Ghost" is
credited with having appeared under the form of a Dove.
** Not the
Mediaeval Alchemists, but the Magi and Fire-Worshippers, from whom the
Rosicrucians or the Philosophers per ignem, the successors of the theurgists
borrowed all their ideas concerning Fire, as a mystic and divine element.
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Now, why is
Light called in the Stanzas "cold flame"? Because in the order of
Cosmic evolution (as taught by the Occultist), the energy that actuates matter
after its first formation into atoms is generated on our plane by Cosmic heat;
and because Kosmos, in the sense of dissociated matter, was not, before that
period. The first primordial matter, eternal and coeval with Space, "which
has neither a beginning nor an end," is "neither hot nor cold, but is
of its own special nature," says the Commentary (Book II). Heat and cold
are relative qualities and pertain to the realms of the manifested worlds,
which all proceed from the manifested Hyle, which, in its absolutely latent
aspect, is referred to as the "cold Virgin," and when awakened to
life, as the "Mother." The ancient Western Cosmogonic myths state
that at first there was but cold mist which was the Father, and the prolific
slime (the Mother, Ilus or Hyle), from which crept forth the Mundane snake-matter,
(Isis, vol. i., p. 146). Primordial matter, then, before it emerges from the
plane of the never-manifesting, and awakens to the thrill of action under the
impulse of Fohat, is but "a cool Radiance, colourless, formless,
tasteless, and devoid of every quality and aspect." Even such are her
first-born, the "four sons," who "are One, and become
Seven," -- the entities, by whose qualifications and names the ancient
Eastern Occultists called the four of the seven primal "centres of
Forces," or atoms, that develop later into the great Cosmic
"Elements," now divided into the seventy or so sub-elements, known to
science. The four primal natures of the first Dhyan Chohans, are the so-called
(for want of better terms) "Akasic," "Ethereal,"
"Watery," and "Fiery," answering, in the terminology of
practical occultism, to scientific definitions of gases, which, to convey a
clear idea to both Occultists and laymen, must be defined as Parahydrogenic,*
Paraoxygenic, Oxyhydrogenic, and Ozonic, or perhaps Nitr-ozonic; the latter
forces or gases (in Occultism, supersensuous, yet atomic substances) being the
most effective and active when energising on the plane of more grossly
differentiated matter.** These are both electro-positive and electro-negative.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* [[para]],
"beyond," outside.
** Each of these
and many more are probably the missing links of chemistry. They are known by
other names in Alchemy and to the Occultists who practise in phenomenal powers.
It is by combining and recombining in a certain way (or dissociating) the
"Elements" by means of astral fire that the greatest phenomena are
produced.
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STANZA III. --
Continued.
10.
FATHER-MOTHER SPIN A WEB WHOSE UPPER END IS FASTENED TO SPIRIT (Purusha), THE
LIGHT OF THE ONE DARKNESS, AND THE LOWER ONE TO MATTER (Prakriti) ITS (the
Spirit's) SHADOWY END; AND THIS WEB IS THE UNIVERSE SPUN OUT OF THE TWO
SUBSTANCES MADE IN ONE, WHICH IS SWABHAVAT (a).
(a) In the
Mandukya (Mundaka) Upanishad it is written, "As a spider throws out and
retracts its web, as herbs spring up in the ground . . . so is the Universe
derived from the undecaying one" (I. 1. 7). Brahma, as "the germ of
unknown Darkness," is the material from which all evolves and develops
"as the web from the spider, as foam from the water," etc. This is
only graphic and true, if Brahma the "Creator" is, as a term, derived
from the root brih, to increase or expand. Brahma "expands" and
becomes the Universe woven out of his own substance.
The same idea
has been beautifully expressed by Goethe, who says:
"Thus at
the roaring loom of Time I ply,
And weave for
God the garment thou see'st Him by."
-------
STANZA III. --
Continued.
11. IT (the Web)
EXPANDS WHEN THE BREATH OF FIRE (the Father) IS UPON IT; IT CONTRACTS WHEN THE
BREATH OF THE MOTHER (the root of Matter) TOUCHES IT. THEN THE SONS (the
Elements with their respective Powers, or Intelligences) DISSOCIATE AND
SCATTER, TO RETURN INTO THEIR MOTHER'S BOSOM AT THE END OF THE "GREAT
DAY" AND REBECOME ONE WITH HER (a). WHEN IT (the Web) IS COOLING, IT
BECOMES RADIANT, ITS SONS EXPAND AND CONTRACT THROUGH THEIR OWN SELVES AND
HEARTS; THEY EMBRACE INFINITUDE. (b)
The expanding of
the Universe under the breath of FIRE is very suggestive in the light of the
"Fire mist" period of which modern science speaks so much, and knows
in reality so little.
Great heat
breaks up the compound elements and resolves the
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heavenly bodies
into their primeval one element, explains the commentary. "Once
disintegrated into its primal constituent by getting within the attraction and
reach of a focus, or centre of heat (energy), of which many are carried about
to and fro in space, a body, whether alive or dead, will be vapourised and held
in "the bosom of the Mother" until Fohat, gathering a few of the
clusters of Cosmic matter (nebulae) will, by giving it an impulse, set it in
motion anew, develop the required heat, and then leave it to follow its own new
growth.
The expanding
and contracting of the Web -- i.e., the world stuff or atoms -- expresses here
the pulsatory movement; for it is the regular contraction and expansion of the
infinite and shoreless Ocean of that which we may call the noumenon of matter
emanated by Swabhavat, which causes the universal vibration of atoms. But it is
also suggestive of something else. It shows that the ancients were acquainted
with that which is now the puzzle of many scientists and especially of
astronomers: the cause of the first ignition of matter or the world-stuff, the
paradox of the heat produced by the refrigerative contraction and other such
Cosmic riddles. For it points unmistakeably to a knowledge by the ancients of
such phenomena. "There is heat internal and heat external in every
atom," say the manuscript Commentaries, to which the writer has had
access; "the breath of the Father (or Spirit) and the breath (or heat) of
the Mother (matter);" and they give explanations which show that the
modern theory of the extinction of the solar fires by loss of heat through
radiation, is erroneous. The assumption is false even on the Scientists' own
admission. For as Professor Newcomb points out (Popular Astronomy, pp.
506-508), "by losing heat, a gaseous body contracts, and the heat
generated by the contraction exceeds that which it had to lose in order to
produce the contraction." This paradox, that a body gets hotter as the
shrinking produced by its getting colder is greater, led to long disputes. The
surplus of heat, it was argued, was lost by radiation, and to assume that the
temperature is not lowered pari passu with a decrease of volume under a
constant pressure, is to set at nought the law of Charles (Nebular Theory,
Winchell). Contraction develops heat, it is true; but contraction (from
cooling) is incapable of developing the whole amount of heat at any time
existing in the mass, or even of maintaining a body at a constant temperature,
etc. Professor Winchell tries to reconcile the paradox -- only a seeming one in
fact, as
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Homer Lanes
proved, -- by suggesting "something besides heat." "May it not
be," he asks, "simply a repulsion among the molecules, which varies
according to some law of the distance?" But even this will be found
irreconcileable, unless this "something besides heat" is ticketed
"Causeless Heat," the "Breath of Fire," the all-creative
Force Plus ABSOLUTE INTELLIGENCE, which physical science is not likely to
accept.
However it may
be, the reading of this Stanza shows it, notwithstanding its archaic
phraseology, to be more scientific than even modern science.
-------
STANZA III. --
Continued.
12. THEN
SVABHAVAT SENDS FOHAT TO HARDEN THE ATOMS. EACH (of these) IS A PART OF THE WEB
(Universe). REFLECTING THE "SELF-EXISTENT LORD" (Primeval Light) LIKE
A MIRROR, EACH BECOMES IN TURN A WORLD.* . . .
"Fohat hardens
the atoms"; i.e., by infusing energy into them: he scatters the atoms or
primordial matter. "He scatters himself while scattering matter into
atoms" (MSS. Commentaries.)
It is through
Fohat that the ideas of the Universal Mind are impressed upon matter. Some
faint idea of the nature of Fohat may be gathered from the appellation
"Cosmic Electricity" sometimes applied to it; but to the commonly
known properties of electricity must, in this case, be added others, including
intelligence. It is of interest to note that modern science has come to the
conclusion, that all cerebration and brain-activity are attended by electrical
phenomena. (For further details as to "Fohat" See Stanza V. and
Comments.")
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This is said
in the sense that the flame from a fire is endless, and that the lights of the
whole Universe could be lit at one simple rush-light without diminishing its
flame.
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STANZA IV.
COMMENTARY.
1. LISTEN, YE
SONS OF THE EARTH, TO YOUR INSTRUCTORS -- THE SONS OF THE FIRE (a). LEARN THERE
IS NEITHER FIRST NOR LAST; FOR ALL IS ONE NUMBER, ISSUED FROM NO NUMBER (b).
(a) These terms,
the "Sons of the Fire," the "Sons of the Fire-Mist," and
the like, require explanation. They are connected with a great primordial and
universal mystery, and it is not easy to make it clear. There is a passage in
the Bhagavatgita (ch. viii.) wherein Krishna, speaking symbolically and
esoterically, says: "I will state the times (conditions) . . . at which
devotees departing (from this life) do so never to return (be reborn), or to
return (to incarnate again). The Fire, the Flame, the day, the bright (lucky)
fortnight, the six months of the Northern solstice, departing (dying) in these,
those who know the Brahman (Yogis) go to the Brahman. Smoke, night, the dark
(unlucky) fortnight, the six months of the Southern solstice, (dying) in these,
the devotee goes to the lunar light (or mansion the astral light also) and
returns (is reborn). These two paths, bright and dark, are said to be eternal
in this world (or great kalpa, 'Age'). By the one a man goes never to come
back, by the other he returns." Now these names, "Fire,"
"Flame," "Day," the "bright fortnight," etc., as
"Smoke," "Night," and so on, leading only to the end of the
lunar path are incomprehensible without a knowledge of Esotericism. These are
all names of various deities which preside over the Cosmo-psychic Powers. We
often speak of the Hierarchy of "Flames" (see Book II.) of the
"Sons of Fire," etc. Sankaracharya the greatest of the Esoteric
masters of India, says that fire means a deity which presides over Time (kala).
The able translator of Bhagavatgita, Kashinath Trimbak Telang, M.A., of Bombay,
confesses he has "no clear notion of the meaning of these verses" (p.
81, footnote). It seems quite clear, on the contrary, to him who knows the
occult doctrine. With these verses the mystic sense of the solar and lunar
symbols are connected: the Pitris are lunar deities and our ancestors, because
they created the physical man.
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The Agnishwatha,
the Kumara (the seven mystic sages), are solar deities, though the former are
Pitris also; and these are the "fashioners of the Inner Man." (See
Book II.) They are:--
"The Sons
of Fire" -- because they are the first Beings (in the Secret Doctrine they
are called "Minds"), evolved from Primordial Fire. "The Lord is
a consuming Fire" (Deuteronomy iv. 24); "The Lord (Christos) shall be
revealed with his mighty angels in flaming fire" (2 Thessal. i. 7, 8). The
Holy Ghost descended on the Apostles like "cloven tongues of fire,"
(Acts ii. v. 3); Vishnu will return on Kalki, the White Horse, as the last
Avatar amid fire and flames; and Sosiosh will be brought down equally on a
White Horse in a "tornado of fire." "And I saw heaven open and
behold a white horse, and he that sat upon him . . . . is called the Word of
God," (Rev. xix. 13) amid flaming Fire. Fire is AEther in its purest form,
and hence is not regarded as matter, but it is the unity of Aether -- the
second manifested deity -- in its universality. But there are two
"Fires" and a distinction is made between them in the Occult
teachings. The first, or the purely Formless and invisible Fire concealed in
the Central Spiritual Sun, is spoken of as "triple" (metaphysically);
while the Fire of the manifested Kosmos is Septenary, throughout both the
Universe and our Solar System. "The fire or knowledge burns up all action
on the plane of illusion," says the commentary. "Therefore, those who
have acquired it and are emancipated, are called 'Fires.' " Speaking of
the seven senses symbolised as Hotris, priests, the Brahmana says in Anugita:
"Thus these seven (senses, smell and taste, and colour, and sound, etc.,
etc.) are the causes of emancipation;" and the commentator adds: "It
is from these seven from which the Self is to be emancipated. 'I' (am here
devoid of qualities) must mean the Self, not the Brahmana who speaks."
("Sacred Books of the East," ed. by Max Muller, Vol. VIII., 278.)
(b) The
expression "All is One Number, issued from No Number" relates again
to that universal and philosophical tenet just explained in Stanza III. (Comm.
4). That which is absolute is of course No Number; but in its later
significance it has an application in Space as in Time. It means that not only
every increment of time is part of a larger increment, up to the most
indefinitely prolonged duration conceivable by the human intellect, but also
that no manifested thing can
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be thought of
except as part of a larger whole: the total aggregate being the One manifested
Universe that issues from the unmanifested or Absolute -- called Non-Being or
"No-Number," to distinguish it from BEING or "the One
Number."
-------
STANZA IV. --
Continued.
(2) LEARN WHAT
WE, WHO DESCEND FROM THE PRIMORDIAL SEVEN, WE, WHO ARE BORN FROM THE PRIMORDIAL
FLAME, HAVE LEARNED FROM OUR FATHERS (a).
(a) This is
explained in Book II., and this name, "Primordial Flame,"
corroborates what is said in the first paragraph of the preceding commentary on
Stanza IV.
The distinction
between the "Primordial" and the subsequent seven Builders is this:
The former are the Ray and direct emanation of the first "Sacred
Four," the Tetraktis, that is, the eternally Self-Existent One (Eternal in
Essence note well, not in manifestation, and distinct from the universal ONE).
Latent, during Pralaya, and active, during Manvantara, the
"Primordial" proceed from "Father-Mother" (Spirit-Hyle, or
Ilus); whereas the other manifested Quaternary and the Seven proceed from the
Mother alone. It is the latter who is the immaculate Virgin-Mother, who is
overshadowed, not impregnated, by the Universal MYSTERY -- when she emerges
from her state of Laya or undifferentiated condition. In reality, they are, of
course, all one; but their aspects on the various planes of being are
different. (See Part II., "Theogony of the Creative Gods.")
The first
"Primordial" are the highest Beings on the Scale of Existence. They
are the Archangels of Christianity, those who refuse -- as Michael did in the
latter system, and as did the eldest "Mind-born sons" of Brahma
(Veddhas) -- to create or rather to multiply.
-------
STANZA IV. --
Continued.
3. FROM THE
EFFULGENCY OF LIGHT -- THE RAY OF THE EVER-DARKNESS -- SPRUNG IN SPACE THE
RE-AWAKENED ENERGIES (Dhyan Chohans): THE ONE FROM THE EGG, THE SIX AND THE
FIVE (a); THEN THE THREE, THE ONE,
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THE FOUR, THE
ONE, THE FIVE -- THE TWICE SEVEN, THE SUM TOTAL (b). AND THESE ARE: THE
ESSENCES, THE FLAMES, THE ELEMENTS, THE BUILDERS, THE NUMBERS, THE ARUPA
(formless), THE RUPA (with bodies), AND THE FORCE OR DIVINE MAN -- THE SUM
TOTAL. AND FROM THE DIVINE MAN EMANATED THE FORMS, THE SPARKS, THE SACRED
ANIMALS, AND THE MESSENGERS OF THE SACRED FATHERS (the Pitris) WITHIN THE HOLY
FOUR.*
(a) This relates
to the sacred Science of the Numerals: so sacred, indeed, and so important in
the study of Occultism that the subject can hardly be skimmed, even in such a
large work as the present. It is on the Hierarchies and correct numbers of
these Beings invisible (to us) except upon very rare occasions, that the
mystery of the whole Universe is built. The Kumaras, for instance, are called
the "Four" though in reality seven in number, because Sanaka,
Sananda, Sanatana and Sanat-Kumara are the chief Vaidhatra (their patronymic name),
as they spring from the "four-fold mystery." To make the whole
clearer we have to turn for our illustrations to tenets more familiar to some
of our readers, namely, the Brahminical.
According to
Manu, Hiranyagarbha is Brahma the first male formed by the undiscernible
Causeless CAUSE in a "Golden Egg resplendent as the Sun," as states
the Hindu Classical Dictionary. "Hiranyagarbha" means the golden, or
rather the "Effulgent Womb" or Egg. The meaning tallies awkwardly
with the epithet of "male." Surely the esoteric meaning of the
sentence is clear enough. In the Rig Veda it is said:-- "THAT, the one
Lord of all beings . . . . the one animating principle of gods and man,"
arose, in the beginning, in the Golden Womb, Hiranyagarbha -- which is the
Mundane Egg or sphere of our Universe. That Being is surely androgynous, and
the allegory of Brahma separating into two and recreating in one of his halves
(the female Vach) himself as Viraj, is a proof of it.
"The One
from the Egg, the Six and the Five," give the number 1065, the value of
the first-born (later on the male and female Brahma-Prajapati), who answers to
the numbers 7, and 14, and 21 respectively. The Prajapati are, like the
Sephiroth, only seven, including the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The 4,
represented in the Occult numerals by the Tetraktis, the Sacred or Perfect
Square, is a Sacred Number with the mystics of every nation and race. It has
one and the same significance in Brahmanism, Buddhism, the Kabala and in the
Egyptian, Chaldean and other numerical systems.
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synthetic
Sephira of the triad from which they spring. Thus from Hiranyagarbha or
Prajapati, the triune (primeval Vedic Trimurti, Agni, Vayu, and Surya), emanate
the other seven, or again ten, if we separate the first three which exist in
one, and one in three, all, moreover, being comprehended within that one
"supreme" Parama, called Guhya or " secret," and Sarvatma,
the "Super-Soul." "The seven Lords of Being lie concealed in
Sarvatma like thoughts in one brain." So are the Sephiroth. It is either
seven when counting from the upper Triad headed by Kether, or ten --
exoterically. In the Mahabharata the Prajapati are 21 in number, or ten, six,
and five (1065), thrice seven.*
(b) "The
Three, the One, the Four, the One, the Five" (in their totality -- twice seven)
represent 31415 -- the numerical hierarchy of the Dhyan-Chohans of various
orders, and of the inner or circumscribed world.** When placed on the boundary
of the great circle of "Pass not" (see Stanza V.), called also the
Dhyanipasa, the "rope of the Angels," the "rope" that
hedges off the phenomenal from the noumenal Kosmos, (not falling within the
range of our present objective consciousness); this number, when not enlarged
by permutation and expansion, is ever 31415 anagrammatically and Kabalistically,
being both the number of the circle and the mystic Svastica, the twice seven
once more; for whatever way the two sets of figures are counted, when added
separately, one figure after another, whether crossways, from right or from
left, they will always yield fourteen. Mathematically they represent the
well-known calculation, namely, that the ratio of the diameter to the
circumference of a circle is as 1 to 3.1415, or the value of the (pi), as this
ratio is called -- the symbol being always used in
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In the Kabala
the same numbers are a value of Jehovah, viz., 1065, since the numerical values
of the three letters which compose his name -- Jod, Vau and twice He -- are
respectively 10 ( [[hebrew]]), 6 ( [[hebrew]]) and 5 ( [[hebrew]]); or again
thrice seven, 21. "Ten is the Mother of the Soul, for Life and Light are
therein united," says Hermes. "For number one is born of the Spirit
and the number ten from matter (chaos, feminine); the unity has made the ten,
the ten the unity" (Book of the Keys). By the means of the Temura, the
anagrammatical method of the Kabala, and the knowledge of 1065 (21), a
universal science may be obtained regarding Kosmos and its mysteries"
(Rabbi Yogel). The Rabbis regard the numbers 10, 6, and 5 as the most sacred of
all.
** The reader
may be told that an American Kabalist has now discovered the same number for
the Elohim. It came to the Jews from Chaldaea. See "Hebrew Metrology"
in the Masonic Review, July, 1885, McMillan Lodge, No. 141.
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mathematical
formulae to express it. This set of figures must have the same meaning, since
the 1 : 314,159, and then again 1 : 3 : 1,415,927 are worked out in the secret
calculations to express the various cycles and ages of the "first
born," or 311,040,000,000,000 with fractions, and yield the same 13,415 by
a process we are not concerned with at present. And it may be shown that Mr.
Ralston Skinner, author of The Source of Measures, reads the Hebrew word Alhim
in the same number values, by omitting, as said, the ciphers and by permutation
-- 13,514: since [[hebrew]] (a) is 1 : [[hebrew]] (l) is 3 (or 30); [[hebrew]]
(h) is 5; [[hebrew]] (i) 1 for 10; and [[hebrew]] (m) is 4 (40), and
anagrammatically -- 31,415 as explained by him.
Thus, while in
the metaphysical world, the circle with the one central Point in it has no
number, and is called Anupadaka (parentless and numberless) -- viz., it can
fall under no calculation, -- in the manifested world the mundane Egg or Circle
is circumscribed within the groups called the Line, the Triangle, the Pentacle,
the second Line and the Cube (or 13514); and when the Point having generated a
Line, thus becomes a diameter which stands for the androgynous Logos, then the
figures become 31415, or a triangle, a line, a cube, the second line, and a
pentacle. "When the Son separates from the Mother he becomes the
Father," the diameter standing for Nature, or the feminine principle.
Therefore it is said: "In the world of being, the one Point fructifies the
Line -- the Virgin Matrix of Kosmos (the egg-shaped zero) -- and the immaculate
Mother gives birth to the form that combines all forms." Prajapati is
called the first procreating male, and "his Mother's husband."* This
gives the key-note to all the later divine sons from immaculate mothers. It is
greatly corroborated by the significant fact that Anna (the name of the Mother
of the Virgin Mary) now represented by the Roman Catholic church as having
given birth to her daughter in an immaculate way ("Mary conceived without
sin"), is derived from the Chaldean Ana, heaven, or Astral Light, Anima
Mundi; whence Anaitia, Devi-durga, the wife of Siva, is also called Annapurna,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* We find the
same expression in Egypt. Mout signifies, for one thing, "Mother,"
and shows the character assigned to her in the triad of that country. "She
was no less the mother than the wife of Ammon, one of the principle titles of
the god being "the husband of his mother." The goddess Mout, or Mut,
is addressed as "our lady," the "queen of Heaven" and of
"the Earth," thus "sharing these titles with the other mother
goddesses, Isis, Hathor, etc." (Maspero).
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and Kanya, the
Virgin; "Uma-Kanya" being her esoteric name, and meaning the
"Virgin of light," Astral Light in one of its multitudinous aspects.
(c) The Devas,
Pitris, Rishis; the Suras and the Asuras; the Daityas and Adityas; the Danavas
and Gandharvas, etc., etc., have all their synonyms in our Secret Doctrine, as
well as in the Kabala and the Hebrew Angelology; but it is useless to give
their ancient names, as it would only create confusion. Many of these may be
also found now, even in the Christian hierarchy of divine and celestial powers.
All those Thrones and Dominions, Virtues and Principalities, Cherubs, Seraphs
and demons, the various denizens of the Sidereal World, are the modern copies
of archaic prototypes. The very symbolism in their names, when transliterated
and arranged in Greek and Latin, are sufficient to show it, as will be proved
in several cases further on.
The "Sacred
Animals" are found in the Bible as well as in the Kabala, and they have
their meaning (a very profound one, too) on the page of the origins of Life. In
the Sepher Jezirah it is stated that "God engraved in the Holy Four the
throne of his glory, the Ophanim (Wheels or the World-Spheres), the Seraphim,*
the Sacred Animals, and the ministering angels, and from these three (the Air,
Water, and Fire or Ether) he formed his habitation." Thus was the world
made "through three Seraphim -- Sepher, Saphar, and Sipur," or
"through Number, Numbers, and Numbered." With the astronomical key
these "Sacred Animals" become the signs of the Zodiac.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This is the
literal translation from the IXth and Xth Sections: "Ten numbers without
what? One: the spirit of the living God . . . . who liveth in eternities! Voice
and Spirit and Word, and this is the Holy Spirit. Two: Spirit out of Spirit. He
designed and hewed therewith twenty-two letters of foundation, three Mothers
and seven double and Twelve single, and one spirit out of them. Three: Water
out of spirit; he designed and hewed with them the barren and the void, mud and
earth. He designed them as a flowerbed, hewed them as a wall, covered them as a
paving. Four: Fire out of water. He designed and hewed therewith the throne of
glory and the wheels, and the seraphim and the holy animals and the ministering
angels, and of the three He founded his dwelling, as it is said, He makes his
angels spirits and his servants fiery flames!" Which words "founded
his dwelling" show clearly that in the Kabala, as in India, the Deity was
considered as the Universe, and was not, in his origin, the extra-cosmic God he
is now.
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STANZA IV. --
Continued.
4. THIS WAS THE
ARMY OF THE VOICE -- THE DIVINE SEPTENARY. THE SPARKS OF THE SEVEN ARE SUBJECT
TO, AND THE SERVANTS OF, THE FIRST, SECOND, THIRD, FOURTH, FIFTH, SIXTH, AND
THE SEVENTH OF THE SEVEN (a). THESE ("sparks") ARE CALLED SPHERES,
TRIANGLES, CUBES, LINES, AND MODELLERS; FOR THUS STANDS THE ETERNAL NIDANA --
THE OI-HA-HOU (the Permutation of Oeaohoo) (b).*
(a) This Sloka
gives again a brief analysis of the Hierarchies of the Dhyan Chohans, called
Devas (gods) in India, or the conscious intelligent powers in Nature. To this
Hierarchy correspond the actual types into which humanity may be divided; for
humanity, as a whole, is in reality a materialized though as yet imperfect expression
thereof. The "army of the Voice" is a term closely connected with the
mystery of Sound and Speech, as an effect and corollary of the cause -- Divine
Thought. As beautifully expressed by P. Christian, the learned author of
"The History of Magic" and of "L'Homme Rouge des
Tuileries," the word spoken by, as well as the name of, every individual
largely determine his future fate. Why? Because --
-- "When
our Soul (mind) creates or evokes a thought, the representative sign of that
thought is self-engraved upon the astral fluid, which is the receptacle and, so
to say, the mirror of all the manifestations of being.
"The sign
expresses the thing: the thing is the (hidden or occult) virtue of the sign.
"To
pronounce a word is to evoke a thought, and make it present: the magnetic
potency of the human speech is the commencement of every manifestation in the
Occult World. To utter a Name is not only to define a Being (an Entity), but to
place it under and condemn it through the emission of the Word (Verbum), to the
influence of one or more Occult potencies. Things are, for every one of us,
that which it (the Word) makes them while naming them. The Word (Verbum) or the
speech of every man is, quite unconsciously to himself, a BLESSING or a CURSE;
this is why our present ignorance about the properties or attributes of the
IDEA as well as about the attributes and properties of MATTER, is often fatal
to us.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The literal signification
of the word is, among the Eastern Occultists of the North, a circular wind,
whirlwind; but in this instance, it is a term to denote the ceaseless and
eternal Cosmic Motion; or rather the Force that moves it, which Force is
tacitly accepted as the Deity but never named. It is the eternal Karana, the
ever-acting Cause.
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"Yes, names
(and words) are either BENEFICENT or MALEFICENT; they are, in a certain sense,
either venomous or health-giving, according to the hidden influences attached
by Supreme Wisdom to their elements, that is to say, to the LETTERS which
compose them, and the NUMBERS correlative to these letters."
This is strictly
true as an esoteric teaching accepted by all the Eastern Schools of Occultism.
In the Sanskrit, as also in the Hebrew and all other alphabets, every letter
has its occult meaning and its rationale; it is a cause and an effect of a
preceding cause and a combination of these very often produces the most magical
effect. The vowels, especially, contain the most occult and formidable
potencies. The Mantras (esoterically, magical rather than religious) are
chanted by the Brahmins and so are the Vedas and other Scriptures.
The "Army
of the Voice," is the prototype of the "Host of the Logos," or
the "WORD" of the Sepher Jezirah, called in the Secret Doctrine
"the One Number issued from No-Number" -- the One Eternal Principle.
The esoteric theogony begins with the One, manifested, therefore not eternal in
its presence and being, if eternal in its essence; the number of the numbers
and numbered -- the latter proceeding from the Voice, the feminine Vach, Satarupa
"of the hundred forms," or Nature. It is from this number 10, or
creative nature, the Mother (the occult cypher, or "nought," ever
procreating and multiplying in union with the Unit "I," one, or the
Spirit of Life), that the whole Universe proceeded.
In the Anugita a
conversation is given (ch. vi., 15) between a Brahmana and his wife, on the
origin of Speech and its occult properties.* The wife asks how Speech came into
existence, and which was prior to the other, Speech or Mind. The Brahmana tells
her that the Apana (inspirational breath) becoming lord, changes that
intelligence, which does not understand Speech or Words, into the state of
Apana, and thus opens the mind. Thereupon he tells her a story, a dialogue
between Speech and Mind. "Both went to the Self of Being (i.e., to the
individual Higher Self, as Nilakantha thinks, to Prajapati, according to the
commentator Arjuna Misra), and asked him to destroy their doubts and decide
which of them preceded and was superior to the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Anugita forms
part of the Asvamedha Parvan of the "Mahabharata." The translator of
the Bhagavatgita, edited by Max Muller, regards it as a continuation of the
Bhagavatgita. Its original is one of the oldest Upanishads.
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other. To this
the lord said: 'Mind is Superior.' But Speech answered the Self of Being, by
saying: 'I verily yield (you) your desires,' meaning that by speech he acquired
what he desired. Thereupon again, the Self told her that there are two minds,
the 'movable' and the 'immovable.' 'The immovable is with me,' he said, 'the movable
is in your dominion' (i.e. of Speech) on the plane of matter. To that you are
superior. But inasmuch, O beautiful one, as you came personally to speak to me
(in the way you did, i.e. proudly), therefore, O, Sarasvati! you shall never
speak after (hard) exhalation." "The goddess Speech" (Sarasvati,
a later form or aspect of Vach, the goddess also of secret learning or Esoteric
Wisdom), "verily, dwelt always between the Prana and the Apana. But O
noble one! going with the Apana wind (vital air), though impelled, without the
Prana (expirational breath), she ran up to Prajapati (Brahma), saying, 'Be
pleased, O venerable sir!' Then the Prana appeared again, nourishing Speech.
And, therefore, Speech never speaks after (hard or inspirational) exhalation. It
is always noisy or noiseless. Of these two, the noiseless is the superior to
the noisy (Speech). . . . . The (speech) which is produced in the body by means
of the Prana, and which then goes (is transformed) into Apana, and then
becoming assimilated with the Udana (physical organs of Speech) . . . then
finally dwells in the Samana ('at the navel in the form of sound, as the
material cause of all words,' says Arjuna Misra). So Speech formerly spoke.
Hence the mind is distinguished by reason of its being immovable, and the
Goddess (Speech) by reason of her being movable."
This allegory is
at the root of the Occult law, which prescribes silence upon the knowledge of
certain secret and invisible things perceptible only to the spiritual mind (the
6th sense), and which cannot be expressed by "noisy" or uttered
speech. This chapter of Anugita explains, says Arjuna Misra, Pranayama, or
regulation of the breath in Yoga practices. This mode, however, without the
previous acquisition of, or at least full understanding of the two higher
senses, of which there are seven, as will be shown, pertains rather to the
lower Yoga. The Hatha so called was and still is discountenanced by the Arhats.
It is injurious to the health and alone can never develop into Raj Yoga. This
story is quoted to show how inseparably connected are, in the metaphysics of
old, intelligent beings, or rather "Intelligences," with every sense
or
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function whether
physical or mental. The Occult claim that there are seven senses in man, as in
nature, as there are seven states of consciousness, is corroborated in the same
work, chapter vii., on Pratyahara (the restraint and regulation of the senses,
Pranayama being that of the "vital winds" or breath). The Brahmana
speaks in it "of the institution of the seven sacrificial Priests
(Hotris). He says: "The nose and the eyes, and the tongue, and the skin
and the ear as the fifth (or smell, sight, taste, touch and hearing), mind and
understanding are the seven sacrificial priests separately stationed"; and
which "dwelling in a minute space (still) do not perceive each other"
on this sensuous plane, none of them except mind. For mind says: "The nose
smells not without me, the eye does not take in colour, etc., etc. I am the
eternal chief among all elements (i.e., senses). Without me, the senses never
shine, like an empty dwelling, or like fires the flames of which are extinct.
Without me, all beings, like fuel half dried and half moist, fail to apprehend
qualities or objects even with the senses exerting themselves."*
This, of course,
with regard only to mind on the sensuous plane. Spiritual mind (the upper
portion or aspect of the impersonal MANAS) takes no cognisance of the senses in
physical man. How well the ancients were acquainted with the correlation of
forces and all the recently discovered phenomena of mental and physical faculties
and functions, with many more mysteries also -- may be found in reading
chapters vii. and viii. of this (in philosophy and mystic learning) priceless
work. See the quarrel of the senses about their respective superiority and
their taking the Brahman, the lord of all creatures, for their arbiter.
"You are all greatest and not greatest," or superior to objects, as
A. Misra says, none being independent of the other. "You are all possessed
of one another's qualities. All are greatest in their own spheres and all
support one another. There is one unmoving (life-wind or breath, the 'Yoga
inhalation,' so called, which is the breath of the One or Higher SELF). That is
the (or my) own Self, accumulated in numerous (forms)."
This Breath,
Voice, Self or "Wind" (pneuma?) is the Synthesis of the Seven Senses,
noumenally all minor deities and esoterically -- the septenary and the
"Army of the VOICE."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This shows the
modern metaphysicians, added to all past and present Haegels, Berkeleys,
Schopenhauers, Hartmanns, Herbert Spencers, and even the modern Hylo-Idealists
to boot, no better than the pale copyists of hoary antiquity.
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(b) Next we see
Cosmic matter scattering and forming itself into elements; grouped into the
mystic four within the fifth element -- Ether, the lining of Akasa, the Anima
Mundi or Mother of Kosmos. "Dots, Lines, Triangles, Cubes, Circles"
and finally "Spheres" -- why or how? Because, says the Commentary,
such is the first law of Nature, and because Nature geometrizes universally in
all her manifestations. There is an inherent law -- not only in the primordial,
but also in the manifested matter of our phenomenal plane -- by which Nature
correlates her geometrical forms, and later, also, her compound elements; and
in which there is no place for accident or chance. It is a fundamental law in
Occultism, that there is no rest or cessation of motion in Nature.* That which
seems rest is only the change of one form into another; the change of substance
going hand in hand with that of form -- as we are taught in Occult physics,
which thus seem to have anticipated the discovery of the "Conservation of
matter" by a considerable time. Says the ancient Commentary** to Stanza
IV.:--
"The Mother
is the fiery Fish of Life. She scatters her spawn and the Breath (Motion) heats
and quickens it. The grains (of spawn) are soon attracted to each other and
form the curds in the Ocean (of Space). The larger lumps coalesce and receive
new spawn -- in fiery dots, triangles and cubes, which ripen, and at the
appointed time some of the lumps detach themselves and assume spheroidal form,
a process which they effect only when not interfered with by the others. After
which, law No. * * * comes into operation. Motion (the Breath) becomes the
whirlwind and sets them into rotation."***
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is the
knowledge of this law that permits and helps the Arhat to perform his Siddhis,
or various phenomena, such as disintegration of matter, the transport of
objects from one place to another.
** These are
ancient Commentaries attached with modern Glossaries to the Stanzas, as the
Commentaries in their symbolical language are usually as difficult to
understand as the Stanzas themselves.
*** In a
polemical scientific work, "The Modern Genesis," the author, the Rev.
W. B. Slaughter, criticising the position assumed by the astronomers, asks:--
"It is to be regretted that the advocates of this (nebular) theory have
not entered more largely into the discussion of it (the beginning of rotation).
No one condescends to give us the rationale of it. How does the process of
cooling and contracting the mass impart to it a rotatory motion?" The
question is amply treated in the Addendum. It is not materialistic science that
can ever solve it. "Motion is eternal in the unmanifested, and periodical
in the manifest," says an Occult teaching. It is "when heat caused
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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STANZA IV. --
Continued.
5. . . . . .
WHICH IS:----
"DARKNESS,"
THE BOUNDLESS OR THE NO-NUMBER, ADI-NIDANA SVABHAVAT: THE [[diagram]] (for x,
unknown quantity):
I. THE
ADI-SANAT, THE NUMBER, FOR HE IS ONE (a).
II. THE VOICE OF
THE WORD, SVABHAVAT, THE NUMBERS, FOR HE IS ONE AND NINE.*
III. THE
"FORMLESS SQUARE." (Arupa.) (b).
AND THESE THREE
ENCLOSED WITHIN THE [[diagram]] (boundless circle), ARE THE SACRED FOUR, AND
THE TEN ARE THE ARUPA (subjective, formless) UNIVERSE (c); THEN COME THE
"SONS," THE SEVEN FIGHTERS, THE ONE, THE EIGHTH LEFT OUT, AND HIS
BREATH WHICH IS THE LIGHT-MAKER (Bhaskara) (d).
(a)
"Adi-Sanat," translated literally is the First or
"primeval" ancient, which name identifies the Kabalistic
"Ancient of Days" and the "Holy Aged" (Sephira and Adam
Kadmon) with Brahma the Creator, called also Sanat among his other names and
titles.
Svabhavat is the
mystic Essence, the plastic root of physical Nature -- "Numbers" when
manifested; the Number, in its Unity of Substance, on the highest plane. The
name is of Buddhist use and a Synonym for the four-fold Anima Mundi, the
Kabalistic "Archetypal World," from whence proceed the
"Creative, Formative, and the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] by the descent of FLAME into primordial matter
causes its particles to move, which motion becomes Whirlwind." A drop of
liquid assumes a spheroidal form owing to its atoms moving around themselves in
their ultimate, unresolvable, and noumenal essence; unresolvable for physical
science, at any rate.
* Which makes
ten, or the perfect number applied to the "Creator," the name given
to the totality of the Creators blended by the Monotheists into One, as the
"Elohim," Adam Kadmon or Sephira -- the Crown -- are the androgyne
synthesis of the 10 Sephiroth, who stand for the symbol of the manifested
Universe in the popularised Kabala. The esoteric Kabalists, however, following
the Eastern Occultists, divide the upper Sephirothal triangle from the rest (or
Sephira, Chochmah and Binah), which leaves seven Sephiroth. As for Svabhavat,
the Orientalists explain the term as meaning the Universal plastic matter
diffused through Space, with, perhaps, half an eye to the Ether of Science. But
the Occultists identify it with "FATHER-MOTHER" on the mystic plane.
(Vide supra.)
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Material
Worlds"; the Scintillae or Sparks, -- the various other worlds contained
in the last three. The Worlds are all subject to Rulers or Regents -- Rishis and
Pitris with the Hindus, Angels with the Jews and Christians, Gods, with the
Ancients in general.
(b) [[diagram]]
This means that the "Boundless Circle" (Zero) becomes a figure or
number, only when one of the nine figures precedes it, and thus manifests its
value and potency, the Word or Logos in union with VOICE and Spirit* (the
expression and source of Consciousness) standing for the nine figures and thus
forming, with the Cypher, the Decade which contains in itself all the Universe.
The triad forms within the circle the Tetraktis or Sacred Four, the Square
within the Circle being the most potent of all the magical figures.
(c) The
"One Rejected" is the Sun of our system. The exoteric version may be
found in the oldest Sanskrit Scriptures. In the Rig Veda, Aditi, "The
Boundless" or infinite Space, translated by Mr. Max Muller, "the
visible infinite, visible by the naked eye (!!); the endless expanse beyond the
Earth, beyond the clouds, beyond the sky," is the equivalent of "Mother-Space"
coeval with "Darkness." She is very properly called "The Mother
of the Gods," DEVA-MATRI, as it is from her Cosmic matrix that all the
heavenly bodies of our system were born -- Sun and Planets. Thus she is
described, allegorically, in this wise: "Eight Sons were born from the
body of Aditi; she approached the gods with seven, but cast away the eighth,
Martanda," our sun. The seven sons called the Aditya are, cosmically or
astronomically, the seven planets; and the Sun being excluded from their number
shows plainly that the Hindus may have known, and in fact knew of a seventh
planet, without calling it Uranus.** But esoterically and theologically,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "In union
with the Spirit and the Voice," referring to the Abstract Thought and
concrete Voice, or the manifestation thereof, the effect of the Cause. Adam
Kadmon or Tetragrammaton is the Logos in the Kabala; therefore this triad
answers in the latter to the highest triangle of Kether, Chochmah and Binah,
the last a female potency and at the same time the male Jehovah, as partaking
of the nature of Chochmah, or the male Wisdom.
** The Secret
Doctrine teaches that the Sun is a central Star and not a planet. Yet the
Ancients knew of and worshipped seven great gods, excluding the Sun and Earth.
Which was that "Mystery God" they set apart? Of course not Uranus,
discovered only by Herschel in 1781. But could it not be known by another name?
Says the [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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so to say, the
Adityas are, in their primitive most ancient meanings, the eight, and the
twelve great gods of the Hindu Pantheon. "The Seven allow the mortals to
see their dwellings, but show themselves only to the Arhats," says an old
proverb, "their dwellings" standing here for planets. The ancient
Commentary gives an allegory and explains it:--
"Eight
houses were built by Mother. Eight houses for her Eight Divine sons; four large
and four small ones. Eight brilliant suns, according to their age and merits.
Bal-ilu (Martanda) was not satisfied, though his house was the largest. He
began (to work) as the huge elephants do. He breathed (drew in) into his
stomach the vital airs of his brothers. He sought to devour them. The larger
four were far away; far, on the margin of their kingdom.* They were not robbed
(affected), and laughed. Do your worst, Sir, you cannot reach us, they said.
But the smaller wept. They complained to the Mother. She exiled Bal-i-lu to the
centre of her Kingdom, from whence he could not move. (Since then) he (only)
watches and threatens. He pursues them, turning slowly around himself, they turning
swiftly from him, and he following from afar the direction in which his
brothers move on the path that encircles their houses.** From that day he feeds
on the sweat of the Mother's body. He fills himself with her breath and refuse.
Therefore, she rejected him."
Thus the
"rejected Son" being our Sun, evidently, as shown above, the
"Sun-Sons" refer not only to our planets but to the heavenly bodies
in general. Himself only a reflection of the Central Spiritual Sun, Surya is
the prototype of all those bodies that evolved after him. In the Vedas he is
called Loka-Chakshuh, "the Eye of the World" (our
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] author of "Maconnerie Occulte":--
"Occult Sciences having discovered through astronomical calculations that
the number of the planets must be seven, the ancients were led to introduce the
Sun into the scale of the celestial harmonies, and make him occupy the vacant
place. Thus, every time they perceived an influence that pertained to none of
the six planets known, they attributed it to the Sun. The error only seems
important, but was not so in practical results, if the ancient astrologers
replaced Uranus by the Sun, which is a central Star relatively motionless,
turning only on its axis and regulating time and measure; and which cannot be
turned aside from its true functions." . . . . . . The nomenclature of the
days of the week is thus faulty. "The Sun-Day ought to be Uranus-day
(Urani dies, Urandi)," adds the learned writer, Ragon.
* Planetary
System.
** "The Sun
rotates on his axis always in the same direction in which the planets revolve
in their respective orbits," astronomy teaches us.
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planetary
world), and he is one of the three chief deities. He is called indifferently
the Son of Dyaus and of Aditi, because no distinction is made with reference
to, or scope allowed for, the esoteric meaning. Thus he is depicted as drawn by
seven horses, and by one horse with seven heads; the former referring to his
seven planets, the latter to their one common origin from the One Cosmic
Element. This "One Element" is called figuratively "FIRE."
The Vedas (Aitareya-Brahmana of Haug also; p. i) teach "that the fire
verily is all the deities." (Narada in Anugita).
The meaning of
the allegory is plain, for we have both the Dzyan Commentary and modern science
to explain it, though the two differ in more than one particular. The Occult
Doctrine rejects the hypothesis born out of the Nebular Theory, that the
(seven) great planets have evolved from the Sun's central mass, not of this our
visible Sun, at any rate. The first condensation of Cosmic matter of course
took place about a central nucleus, its parent Sun; but our sun, it is taught,
merely detached itself earlier than all the others, as the rotating mass
contracted, and is their elder, bigger brother therefore, not their father. The
eight Adityas, "the gods," are all formed from the eternal substance
(Cometary matter* -- the Mother) or the "World-Stuff " which is both
the fifth and the sixth COSMIC Principle, the Upadhi or basis of the Universal
Soul, just as in man, the Microcosm, Manas** is the Upadhi of Buddhi.***
(d) There is a
whole poem on the pregenetic battles fought by the growing planets before the
final formation of Kosmos, thus accounting for the seemingly disturbed position
of the systems of several planets, the plane of the satellites of some (of
Neptune and Uranus, for instance, of which the ancients knew nothing, it is
said) being tilted over, thus giving them an appearance of retrograde motion.
These planets are called the warriors, the Architects, and are accepted by the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This Essence
of Cometary matter, Occult Science teaches, is totally different from any of
the chemical or physical characteristics with which modern science is
acquainted. It is homogeneous in its primitive form beyond the Solar Systems,
and differentiates entirely once it crosses the boundaries of our Earth's
region, vitiated by the atmospheres of the planets and the already compound
matter of the interplanetary stuff, heterogeneous only in our manifested world.
** Manas -- the
Mind-Principle, or the human Soul.
*** Buddhi --
the divine Soul.
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Roman Church as
the leaders of the heavenly Hosts, thus showing the same traditions. Having
evolved from Cosmic Space, and before the final formation of the primaries and
the annulation of the planetary nebula, the Sun, we are taught, drew into the
depths of its mass all the Cosmic vitality he could, threatening to engulf his
weaker "brothers" before the law of attraction and repulsion was
finally adjusted; after which he began feeding on "The Mother's refuse and
sweat"; in other words, on those portions of Ether (the "breath of
the Universal Soul") of the existence and constitution of which science is
as yet absolutely ignorant. A theory of this kind having been propounded by Sir
William Grove (see "Correlation of the Physical Forces," 1843, p. 81;
and "Address to the British Association, 1866"), who theorized that
the systems "are gradually changing by atmospheric additions or subtractions,
or by accretions and diminutions arising from nebular substances" . . .
and again that "the Sun may condense gaseous matter as it travels in Space
and so heat may be produced" -- the archaic teaching seems scientific
enough, even in this age.* Mr. W. Mattieu Williams suggested that the diffused
matter or Ether which is the recipient of the heat radiations of the Universe
is thereby drawn into the depths of the solar mass. Expelling thence the
previously condensed and thermally exhausted Ether, it becomes compressed and
gives up its heat, to be in turn itself driven out in a rarified and cooled
state, to absorb a fresh supply of heat, which he supposes to be in this way
taken up by the Ether, and again concentrated and redistributed by the Suns of
the Universe.**
This is about as
close an approximation to the Occult teachings as Science ever imagined; for
Occultism explains it by "the dead breath" given back by Martanda and
his feeding on the "sweat and refuse" of "Mother Space."
What could affect Neptune,*** Saturn and Jupiter,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Very similar
ideas in Mr. W. Mattieu Williams' "The Fuel of the Sun;" in Dr. C.
William Siemens' "On the Conservation of Solar Energy" (Nature, XXV.,
p. 440-444, March 9, 1882); and also in Dr. P. Martin Duncan's "Address of
the President of the Geological Society," London, May, 1877.
** See
"Comparative Geology," by Alexander Winchell, LL.D., p. 56.
*** When we
speak of Neptune it is not as an Occultist but as a European. The true Eastern
Occultist will maintain that, whereas there are many yet undiscovered planets
in our system, Neptune does not belong to it, his apparent connection with our
sun and the influence of the latter upon Neptune notwithstanding. This
connection is mayavic, imaginary, they say.
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but little,
would have killed such comparatively small "Houses" as Mercury, Venus
and Mars. As Uranus was not known before the end of the eighteenth century, the
name of the fourth planet mentioned in the allegory must remain to us, so far,
a mystery.
The
"Breath" of all the "seven" is said to be Bhaskara
(light-making), because they (the planets) were all comets and suns in their
origin. They evolve into Manvantaric life from primaeval Chaos (now the
noumenon of irresolvable nebulae) by aggregation and accumulation of the
primary differentiations of the eternal matter, according to the beautiful
expression in the Commentary, "Thus the Sons of Light clothed themselves
in the fabric of Darkness." They are called allegorically "the
Heavenly Snails," on account of their (to us) formless INTELLIGENCES
inhabiting unseen their starry and planetary homes, and, so to speak, carrying
them as the snails do along with themselves in their revolution. The doctrine
of a common origin for all the heavenly bodies and planets, was, as we see,
inculcated by the Archaic astronomers, before Kepler, Newton, Leibnitz, Kant,
Herschel and Laplace. Heat (the Breath), attraction and repulsion -- the three
great factors of Motion -- are the conditions under which all the members of all
this primitive family are born, developed, and die, to be reborn after a
"Night of Brahma," during which eternal matter relapses periodically
into its primary undifferentiated state. The most attenuated gases can give no
idea of its nature to the modern physicist. Centres of Forces at first, the
invisible sparks of primordial atoms differentiate into molecules, and become
Suns -- passing gradually into objectivity gaseous, radiant, cosmic, the one
"Whirlwind" (or motion) finally giving the impulse to the form, and
the initial motion, regulated and sustained by the never-resting Breaths -- the
Dhyan Chohans.
-------
STANZA IV. --
Continued.
6. . . . . THEN
THE SECOND SEVEN, WHO ARE THE LIPIKA, PRODUCED BY THE THREE (Word, Voice, and
Spirit). THE REJECTED SON IS ONE, THE "SON-SUNS" ARE COUNTLESS.
The Lipi-ka,
from the word lipi, "writing," means literally the
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"Scribes."*
Mystically, these Divine Beings are connected with Karma, the Law of
Retribution, for they are the Recorders or Annalists who impress on the (to us)
invisible tablets of the Astral Light, "the great picture-gallery of
eternity" -- a faithful record of every act, and even thought, of man, of
all that was, is, or ever will be, in the phenomenal Universe. As said in
"Isis," this divine and unseen canvas is the BOOK OF LIFE. As it is
the Lipika who project into objectivity from the passive Universal Mind the
ideal plan of the universe, upon which the "Builders" reconstruct the
Kosmos after every Pralaya, it is they who stand parallel to the Seven Angels
of the Presence, whom the Christians recognise in the Seven "Planetary
Spirits" or the "Spirits of the Stars;" for thus it is they who
are the direct amanuenses of the Eternal Ideation -- or, as called by Plato,
the "Divine Thought." The Eternal Record is no fantastic dream, for
we meet with the same records in the world of gross matter. "A shadow
never falls upon a wall without leaving thereupon a permanent trace which might
be made visible by resorting to proper processes," says Dr. Draper. . . .
"The portraits of our friends or landscape-views may be hidden on the
sensitive surface from the eye, but they are ready to make their appearance as
soon as proper developers are resorted to. A spectre is concealed on a silver
or a glassy surface, until, by our necromancy, we make it come forth into the
visible world. Upon the walls of our most private apartments, where we think
the eye of intrusion is altogether shut out, and our retirement can never be
profaned, there exist the vestiges of all our acts, silhouettes of whatever we
have done."** Drs. Jevons and Babbage believe that every thought,
displacing the particles of the brain and setting them in motion, scatters them
throughout the Universe, and they think that "each particle of the
existing matter must be a register of all that has happened." (Principles
of Science, Vol. II. p. 455.) Thus the ancient doctrine has begun to acquire
rights of citizenship in the speculations of the scientific world.
The forty
"Assessors" who stand in the region of Amenti as the accusers of the
Soul before Osiris, belong to the same class of deities as the Lipika, and
might stand paralleled, were not the Egyptian gods so
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* These are the
four "Immortals" which are mentioned in Atharva Veda as the
"Watchers" or Guardians of the four quarters of the sky (see ch.
lxxvi., 1-4, et seq.).
**
"Conflict between Religion and Science." -- Draper, pp. 132 and 133.
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little
understood in their esoteric meaning. The Hindu Chitra-Gupta who reads out the
account of every Soul's life from his register, called Agra-Sandhani; the
"Assessors" who read theirs from the heart of the defunct, which
becomes an open book before (whether) Yama, Minos, Osiris, or Karma -- are all
so many copies of, and variants from the Lipika, and their Astral Records.
Nevertheless, the Lipi-ka are not deities connected with Death, but with Life
Eternal.
Connected as the
Lipika are with the destiny of every man and the birth of every child, whose
life is already traced in the Astral Light not fatalistically, but only because
the future, like the PAST, is ever alive in the PRESENT -- they may also be
said to exercise an influence on the Science of Horoscopy. We must admit the
truth of the latter whether we will or not. For, as observed by one of the
modern adepts of Astrology, "Now that photography has revealed to us the
chemical influence of the Sidereal system, by fixing on the sensitized plate of
the apparatus milliards of stars and planets that had hitherto baffled the
efforts of the most powerful telescopes to discover them, it becomes easier to
understand how our solar system can, at the birth of a child, influence his
brain -- virgin of any impression -- in a definite manner and according to the
presence on the zenith of such or another zodiacal constellation."**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
** Les Mysteres
de l'Horoscope, p. XI.
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STANZA V.
1. THE
PRIMORDIAL SEVEN, THE FIRST SEVEN BREATHS OF THE DRAGON OF WISDOM, PRODUCE IN
THEIR TURN FROM THEIR HOLY CIRCUMGYRATING BREATHS THE FIERY WHIRLWIND (a).
COMMENTARY.
(a) This is, perhaps,
the most difficult of all the Stanzas to explain. Its language is
comprehensible only to him who is thoroughly versed in Eastern allegory and its
purposely obscure phraseology. The question will surely be asked, "Do the
Occultists believe in all these 'Builders,' 'Lipika,' and 'Sons of Light' as
Entities, or are they merely imageries?" To this the answer is given as
plainly: "After due allowance for the imagery of personified Powers, we
must admit the existence of these Entities, if we would not reject the
existence of spiritual humanity within physical mankind. For the hosts of these
Sons of Light and 'Mind-born Sons' of the first manifested Ray of the UNKNOWN
ALL, are the very root of spiritual man." Unless we want to believe the
unphilosophical dogma of a specially created soul for every human birth -- a
fresh supply of these pouring in daily, since "Adam" -- we have to
admit the occult teachings. This will be explained in its place. Let us see,
now, what may be the occult meaning of this Stanza.
The Doctrine
teaches that, in order to become a divine, fully conscious god, -- aye, even
the highest -- the Spiritual primeval INTELLIGENCES must pass through the human
stage. And when we say human, this does not apply merely to our terrestrial
humanity, but to the mortals that inhabit any world, i.e., to those
Intelligences that have reached the appropriate equilibrium between matter and
spirit, as we have now, since the middle point of the Fourth Root Race of the
Fourth Round was passed. Each Entity must have won for itself the right of
becoming divine, through self-experience. Hegel, the great German thinker, must
have known or sensed intuitionally this truth when saying, as he did, that the
Unconscious evolved the Universe only "in the hope of attaining clear
self-consciousness," of becoming, in other words, MAN; for this is also
the secret meaning of the usual Puranic phrase about
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Brahma being
constantly "moved by the desire to create." This explains also the
hidden Kabalistic meaning of the saying: "The Breath becomes a stone; the
stone, a plant; the plant, an animal; the animal, a man; the man, a spirit; and
the spirit, a god." The Mind-born Sons, the Rishis, the Builders, etc.,
were all men -- of whatever forms and shapes -- in other worlds and the
preceding Manvantaras.
This subject,
being so very mystical, is therefore the most difficult to explain in all its
details and bearings; since the whole mystery of evolutionary creation is
contained in it. A sentence or two in it vividly recalls to mind similar ones
in the Kabala and the phraseology of the King Psalmist (civ.), as both, when
speaking of God, show him making the wind his messenger and his "ministers
a flaming fire." But in the Esoteric doctrine it is used figuratively. The
"fiery Wind" is the incandescent Cosmic dust which only follows
magnetically, as the iron filings follow the magnet, the directing thought of
the "Creative Forces." Yet, this cosmic dust is something more; for
every atom in the Universe has the potentiality of self-consciousness in it,
and is, like the Monads of Leibnitz, a Universe in itself, and for itself. It
is an atom and an angel.
In this
connection it should be noted that one of the luminaries of the modern
Evolutionist School, Mr. A. R. Wallace, when discussing the inadequacy of
"natural selection" as the sole factor in the development of physical
man, practically concedes the whole point here discussed. He holds that the
evolution of man was directed and furthered by superior Intelligences, whose
agency is a necessary factor in the scheme of Nature. But once the operation of
these Intelligences is admitted in one place, it is only a logical deduction to
extend it still further. No hard and fast line can be drawn.
-------
STANZA V. --
Continued.
2. THEY MAKE OF
HIM THE MESSENGER OF THEIR WILL (a). THE DZYU BECOMES FOHAT; THE SWIFT SON OF
THE DIVINE SONS, WHOSE SONS ARE THE LIPIKA,* RUNS CIRCULAR ERRANDS. HE IS THE
STEED, AND
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The difference
between the "Builders," the Planetary Spirits, and the Lipika must
not be lost sight of. (See Nos. 5 and 6 of this Commentary.)
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THE THOUGHT IS
THE RIDER (i.e., he is under the influence of their guiding thought). HE PASSES
LIKE LIGHTNING THROUGH THE FIERY CLOUDS (cosmic mists) (b); TAKES THREE, AND
FIVE, AND SEVEN STRIDES THROUGH THE SEVEN REGIONS ABOVE AND THE SEVEN BELOW
(the world to be). HE LIFTS HIS VOICE, AND CALLS THE INNUMERABLE SPARKS (atoms)
AND JOINS THEM TOGETHER (c).
(a) This shows
the "Primordial Seven" using for their Vahan (vehicle, or the
manifested subject which becomes the symbol of the Power directing it), Fohat,
called in consequence, the "Messenger of their will" -- the fiery
whirlwind.
"Dzyu
becomes Fohat" -- the expression itself shows it. Dzyu is the one real
(magical) knowledge, or Occult Wisdom; which, dealing with eternal truths and
primal causes, becomes almost omnipotence when applied in the right direction.
Its antithesis is Dzyu-mi, that which deals with illusions and false
appearances only, as in our exoteric modern sciences. In this case, Dzyu is the
expression of the collective Wisdom of the Dhyani-Buddhas.
(b) As the
reader is supposed not to be acquainted with the Dhyani-Buddhas, it is as well
to say at once that, according to the Orientalists, there are five Dhyanis who
are the "celestial" Buddhas, of whom the human Buddhas are the
manifestations in the world of form and matter. Esoterically, however, the
Dhyani-Buddhas are seven, of whom five only have hitherto manifested,* and two
are to come in the sixth and seventh Root-races. They are, so to speak, the
eternal prototypes of the Buddhas who appear on this earth, each of whom has
his particular divine prototype. So, for instance, Amitabha is the
Dhyani-Buddha of Gautama Sakyamuni, manifesting through him whenever this great
Soul incarnates on earth as He did in Tzon-kha-pa.** As the synthesis of the
seven Dhyani-Buddhas, Avalokiteswara was the first Buddha (the Logos), so
Amitabha is the inner "God" of Gautama, who, in China, is called
Amita(-Buddha). They are, as Mr. Rhys Davids
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See A. P.
Sinnett's "Esoteric Buddhism," 5th annotated edition, pp. 171-173.
** The first and
greatest Reformer who founded the "Yellow-Caps," Gyalugpas. He was
born in the year 1355 A.D. in Amdo, and was the Avatar of Amitabha, the
celestial name of Gautama Buddha.
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correctly
states, "the glorious counterparts in the mystic world, free from the
debasing conditions of this material life" of every earthly mortal Buddha
-- the liberated Manushi-Buddhas appointed to govern the Earth in this Round.
They are the "Buddhas of Contemplation," and are all Anupadaka
(parentless), i.e., self-born of divine essence. The exoteric teaching which
says that every Dhyani-Buddha has the faculty of creating from himself, an
equally celestial son -- a Dhyani-Bodhisattva -- who, after the decease of the
Manushi (human) Buddha, has to carry out the work of the latter, rests on the
fact that owing to the highest initiation performed by one overshadowed by the
"Spirit of Buddha" -- (who is credited by the Orientalists with
having created the five Dhyani-Buddhas!), -- a candidate becomes virtually a
Bodhisattva, created such by the High Initiator.
(c) Fohat, being
one of the most, if not the most important character in esoteric Cosmogony,
should be minutely described. As in the oldest Grecian Cosmogony, differing
widely from the later mythology, Eros is the third person in the primeval
trinity: Chaos, Gaea, Eros: answering to the Kabalistic En-Soph (for Chaos is
SPACE, [[chaino]], "void") the Boundless ALL, Shekinah and the
Ancient of Days, or the Holy Ghost; so Fohat is one thing in the yet
unmanifested Universe and another in the phenomenal and Cosmic World. In the
latter, he is that Occult, electric, vital power, which, under the Will of the
Creative Logos, unites and brings together all forms, giving them the first
impulse which becomes in time law. But in the unmanifested Universe, Fohat is
no more this, than Eros is the later brilliant winged Cupid, or LOVE. Fohat has
naught to do with Kosmos yet, since Kosmos is not born, and the gods still
sleep in the bosom of "Father-Mother." He is an abstract
philosophical idea. He produces nothing yet by himself; he is simply that
potential creative power in virtue of whose action the NOUMENON of all future
phenomena divides, so to speak, but to reunite in a mystic supersensuous act,
and emit the creative ray. When the "Divine Son" breaks forth, then
Fohat becomes the propelling force, the active Power which causes the ONE to
become TWO and THREE -- on the Cosmic plane of manifestation. The triple One
differentiates into the many, and then Fohat is transformed into that force
which brings together the elemental atoms and makes them aggregate and combine.
We find an echo of this primeval teaching
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in early Greek
mythology. Erebos and Nux are born out of Chaos, and, under the action of Eros,
give birth in their turn to Ether and Hemera, the light of the superior and the
light of the inferior or terrestrial regions. Darkness generates light. See in
the Puranas Brahma's "Will" or desire to create; and in the
Phoenician Cosmogony of Sanchoniathon the doctrine that Desire, [[pothos]], is
the principle of creation.
Fohat is closely
related to the "ONE LIFE." From the Unknown One, the Infinite
TOTALITY, the manifested ONE, or the periodical, Manvantaric Deity, emanates;
and this is the Universal Mind, which, separated from its Fountain-Source, is
the Demiurgos or the creative Logos of the Western Kabalists, and the
four-faced Brahma of the Hindu religion. In its totality, viewed from the
standpoint of manifested Divine Thought in the esoteric doctrine, it represents
the Hosts of the higher creative Dhyan Chohans. Simultaneously with the
evolution of the Universal Mind, the concealed Wisdom of Adi-Buddha -- the One
Supreme and eternal -- manifests itself as Avalokiteshwara (or manifested
Iswara), which is the Osiris of the Egyptians, the Ahura-Mazda of the
Zoroastrians, the Heavenly Man of the Hermetic philosopher, the Logos of the Platonists,
and the Atman of the Vedantins.* By the action of the manifested Wisdom, or
Mahat, represented by these innumerable centres of spiritual Energy in the
Kosmos, the reflection of the Universal Mind, which is Cosmic Ideation and the
intellectual Force accompanying such ideation, becomes objectively the Fohat of
the Buddhist esoteric philosopher. Fohat, running along the seven principles of
AKASA, acts upon manifested substance or the One Element, as declared above,
and by differentiating it into various centres of Energy, sets in motion the
law of Cosmic Evolution, which, in obedience to the Ideation of the Universal
Mind, brings into existence all the various states of being in the manifested
Solar System.
The Solar
System, brought into existence by these agencies, consists of Seven Principles,
like everything else within these centres. Such is the teaching of the
trans-Himalayan Esotericism. Every philosophy, however, has its own way of
dividing these principles.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Mr. Subba Row
seems to identify him with, and to call him, the LOGOS. (See his four lectures
on the "Bhagavadgita" in the Theosophist.)
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Fohat, then, is
the personified electric vital power, the transcendental binding Unity of all
Cosmic Energies, on the unseen as on the manifested planes, the action of which
resembles -- on an immense scale -- that of a living Force created by WILL, in
those phenomena where the seemingly subjective acts on the seemingly objective
and propels it to action. Fohat is not only the living Symbol and Container of
that Force, but is looked upon by the Occultists as an Entity -- the forces he
acts upon being cosmic, human and terrestrial, and exercising their influence
on all those planes respectively. On the earthly plane his influence is felt in
the magnetic and active force generated by the strong desire of the magnetizer.
On the Cosmic, it is present in the constructive power that carries out, in the
formation of things -- from the planetary system down to the glow-worm and
simple daisy -- the plan in the mind of nature, or in the Divine Thought, with
regard to the development and growth of that special thing. He is,
metaphysically, the objectivised thought of the gods; the "Word made
flesh," on a lower scale, and the messenger of Cosmic and human ideations:
the active force in Universal Life. In his secondary aspect, Fohat is the Solar
Energy, the electric vital fluid,* and the preserving fourth
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In 1882 the
President of the Theosophical Society, Col. Olcott, was taken to task for
asserting in one of his lectures that Electricity is matter. Such,
nevertheless, is the teaching of the Occult Doctrine. "Force,"
"Energy," may be a better name for it, so long as European Science
knows so little about its true nature; yet matter it is, as much as Ether is
matter, since it is as atomic, though several removes from the latter. It seems
ridiculous to argue that because a thing is imponderable to Science, therefore
it cannot be called matter. Electricity is "immaterial" in the sense
that its molecules are not subject to perception and experiment; yet it may be
-- and Occultism says it is -- atomic; therefore it is matter. But even
supposing it were unscientific to speak of it in such terms, once Electricity
is called in Science a source of Energy, Energy simply, and a Force -- where is
that Force or that Energy which can be thought of without thinking of matter?
Maxwell, a mathematician and one of the greatest authorities upon Electricity
and its phenomena, said, years ago, that Electricity was matter, not motion
merely. "If we accept the hypothesis that the elementary substances are
composed of atoms we cannot avoid concluding that electricity also, positive as
well as negative, is divided into definite elementary portions, which behave
like atoms of electricity." (Helmholtz, Faraday Lecture, 1881). We will go
further than that, and assert that Electricity is not only Substance but that
it is an emanation from an Entity, which is neither God nor Devil, but one of
the numberless Entities that rule and guide our world according to the eternal
Law of KARMA. (See the Addendum to this Book.)
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principle, the
animal Soul of Nature, so to say, or -- Electricity. In India, Fohat is
connected with Vishnu and Surya in the early character of the (first) God; for
Vishnu is not a high god in the Rig Veda. The name Vishnu is from the root
vish, "to pervade," and Fohat is called the "Pervader" and
the Manufacturer, because he shapes the atoms from crude material.* In the
sacred texts of the Rig Veda, Vishnu, also, is "a manifestation of the
Solar Energy," and he is described as striding through the Seven regions
of the Universe in three steps, the Vedic God having little in common with the
Vishnu of later times. Therefore the two are identical in this particular
feature, and one is the copy of the other.
The "three
and seven" strides refer to the Seven spheres inhabited by man, of the
esoteric Doctrine, as well as to the Seven regions of the Earth.
Notwithstanding the frequent objections made by would-be Orientalists, the
Seven Worlds or spheres of our planetary chain are distinctly referred to in
the exoteric Hindu scriptures. But how strangely all these numbers are
connected with like numbers in other Cosmogonies and with their symbols, can be
seen from comparisons and parallelisms made by students of old religions. The
"three strides of Vishnu" through the "seven regions of the
Universe," of the Rig Veda, have been variously explained by commentators
as meaning "fire, lightning and the Sun" cosmically; and as having
been taken in the Earth, the atmosphere, and the sky; also as the "three
steps" of the dwarf (Vishnu's incarnation), though more philosophically --
and in the astronomical sense, very correctly -- they are explained by
Aurnavabha as being the various positions of the sun, rising, noon, and
setting. Esoteric philosophy alone explains it clearly, and the Zohar laid it
down very philosophically and comprehensively. It is said and plainly
demonstrated therein that in the beginning the Elohim (Elhim) were called
Echod, "one," or the "Deity is one in many," a very simple
idea in a pantheistic conception (in its philosophical sense, of course). Then
came the change, "Jehovah is Elohim," thus unifying the multiplicity
and taking the first step towards Monotheism. Now to the query, "How is Jehovah
Elohim?" the answer is, "By three Steps" from below.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is well
known that sand, when placed on a metal plate in vibration assumes a series of
regular curved figures of various descriptions. Can Science give a complete
explanation of this fact?
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The meaning is
plain.* They are all symbols, and emblematic, mutually and correlatively, of
Spirit, Soul and Body (MAN); of the circle transformed into Spirit, the Soul of
the World, and its body (or Earth). Stepping out of the Circle of Infinity,
that no man comprehendeth, Ain-Soph (the Kabalistic synonym for Parabrahm, for
the Zeroana Akerne, of the Mazdeans, or for any other "UNKNOWABLE")
becomes "One" -- the ECHOD, the EKA, the AHU -- then he (or it) is
transformed by evolution into the One in many, the Dhyani-Buddhas or the
Elohim, or again the Amshaspends, his third Step being taken into generation of
the flesh, or "Man." And from man, or Jah-Hova, "male
female," the inner divine entity becomes, on the metaphysical plane, once
more the Elohim.
The Kabalistic
idea is identical with the Esotericism of the Archaic period. This esotericism
is the common property of all, and belongs neither to the Aryan 5th Race, nor
to any of its numerous Sub-races. It cannot be claimed by the Turanians,
so-called, the Egyptians, Chinese, Chaldeans, nor any of the Seven divisions of
the Fifth Root Race, but really belongs to the Third and Fourth Root Races,
whose descendants we find in the Seed of the Fifth, the earliest Aryans. The
Circle was with every nation the symbol of the Unknown -- "Boundless
Space," the abstract garb of an ever present abstraction -- the
Incognisable Deity. It represents limitless Time in Eternity. The Zeroana
Akerne is also the "Boundless Circle of the Unknown Time," from which
Circle issues the radiant light -- the Universal SUN, or Ormazd** -- and the
latter
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The numbers 3,
5, and 7 are prominent in speculative masonry, as shown in "Isis." A
mason writes:-- "There are the 3, 5, and 7 steps to show a circular walk.
The three faces of 3, 3; 5, 3; and 7, 3; etc., etc. Sometimes it comes in this
form -- 753/2 = 376.5 and 7635/2 = 3817.5 and the ratio of 20612/6561 feet for
cubit measure gives the Great Pyramid measures," etc., etc. Three, five
and seven are mystical numbers, and the last and the first are as greatly
honoured by Masons as by the Parsis -- the triangle being a symbol of Deity
everywhere. (See the Masonic Cyclopedia, and "Pythagorean Triangle,"
Oliver.) As a matter of course, doctors of divinity (Cassel, for instance) show
the Zohar explaining and supporting the Christian trinity (!). It is the
latter, however, that had its origin from the [[diagram]] of the Heathen, in
the Archaic Occultism and Symbology. The three strides relate metaphysically to
the descent of Spirit into matter, of the Logos falling as a ray into the
Spirit, then into the Soul, and finally into the human physical form of man, in
which it becomes LIFE.
** Ormazd is the
Logos, the "First Born" and the Sun.
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is identical
with Kronos, in his AEolian form, that of a Circle. For the circle is Sar, and
Saros, or cycle, and was the Babylonian god whose circular horizon was the
visible symbol of the invisible, while the sun was the ONE Circle from which
proceeded the Cosmic orbs, and of which he was considered the leader. Zero-ana,
is the Chakra or circle of Vishnu, the mysterious emblem which is, according to
the definition of a mystic, "a curve of such a nature that as to any, the
least possible part thereof, if the curve be protracted either way it will
proceed and finally re-enter upon itself, and form one and the same curve -- or
that which we call the circle." No better definition could thus be given
of the natural symbol and the evident nature of Deity, which having its
circumference everywhere (the boundless) has, therefore, its central point also
everywhere; in other words, is in every point of the Universe. The invisible
Deity is thus also the Dhyan Chohans, or the Rishis, the primitive seven, and
the nine, without, and ten, including, their synthetical unit; from which IT
steps into Man. Returning to the Commentary (4) of Stanza IV. the reader will
understand why, while the trans-Himalayan Chackra has inscribed within it
[[diagram]] | [[diagram]] | [[diagram]] (triangle, first line, cube second
line, and a pentacle with a dot in the centre thus: [[diagram]], and some other
variations), the Kabalistic circle of the Elohim reveals, when the letters of
the word [[hebrew]] (Alhim or Elohim) are numerically read, the famous numerals
13514, or by anagram 31415 -- the astronomical (pi) number, or the hidden
meaning of Dhyani-Buddhas, of the Gebers, the Geborim, the Kabeiri, and the
Elohim, all signifying "great men," "Titans,"
"Heavenly Men," and, on earth, "the giants."
The Seven was a
Sacred Number with every nation; but none applied it to more physiologically
materialistic uses than the Hebrews. With these it was pre-eminently the
generative number and 9 the male causative one, forming as shown by the
Kabalists the [[hebrew with numbers above]] or otz -- "the Tree of the
Garden of Eden,"* the "double hermaphrodite rod" of the fourth
race. Whereas with the Hindus and Aryans generally, the significance was
manifold, and related almost entirely to purely metaphysical
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This was the
symbol of the "Holy of Holies," the 3 and the 4 of sexual separation.
Nearly every one of the 22 Hebrew letters are merely phallic symbols. Of the
two letters -- as shown above -- one, the ayin, is a negative female letter,
symbolically an eye; the other a male letter, tza, a fish-hook or a dart.
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and astronomical
truths.* Their Rishis and gods, their Demons and Heroes, have historical and
ethical meanings, and the Aryans never made their religion rest solely on
physiological symbols, as the old Hebrews have done. This is found in the
exoteric Hindu Scriptures. That these accounts are blinds is shown by their
contradicting each other, a different construction being found in almost every
Purana and epic poem. Read esoterically -- they will all yield the same
meaning. Thus one account enumerates Seven worlds, exclusive of the nether
worlds, also seven in number; these fourteen upper and nether worlds have
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* We are told by
a Kabalist, who in a work not yet published contrasts the Kabala and Zohar with
Aryan Esotericism, that "The Hebrew clear, short, terse and exact modes
far and beyond measure surpass the toddling word-talk of the Hindus -- just as
by parallelisms the Psalmist says, 'My mouth speaks with my tongue, I know not
thy numbers' (lxxi., 15). . . . The Hindu Glyph shows by its insufficiency in
the large admixture of adventitious sides the same borrowed plumage that the
Greeks (the lying Greeks) had, and that Masonry has: which in the rough
monosyllabic (and apparent) poverty of the Hebrew, shows the latter to have
come down from a far more remote antiquity than any of these, and to have been
the source (!?), or nearer the old original source than any of them." This
is entirely erroneous. Our learned brother and correspondent judges apparently
the Hindu religious systems by their Shastras and Puranas, probably the latter,
and in their modern translation moreover, which is disfigured out of all
recognition, by the Orientalists. It is to their philosophical systems that one
has to turn, to their esoteric teaching, if he would make a point of
comparison. No doubt the symbology of the Pentateuch and even of the New
Testament, comes from the same source. But surely the Pyramid of Cheops, whose
measurements are all found repeated by Professor Piazzi Smythe in Solomon's
alleged and mythical temple, is not of a later date than the Mosaic books?
Hence, if there is any such great identity as claimed, it must be due to
servile copying on the part of the Jews, not on that of the Egyptians. The
Jewish glyphs -- and even their language, the Hebrew -- are not original. They
are borrowed from the Egyptians, from whom Moses got his Wisdom; from the
Coptic, the probable kinsman, if not parent, of the old Phoenician and from the
Hyksos, their (alleged) ancestors, as Josephus shows in his "Against
Apion," I., 25. Aye; but who are the Hyksos shepherds? And who the
Egyptians? History knows nothing of the question, and speculates and theorizes
out of the depths of the respective consciousnesses of her historians. (See
Isis Unveiled, vol. II., p. 430-438.) "Khamism, or old Coptic," says
Bunsen, "is from Western Asia, and contains some germ of the Semitic, thus
bearing witness to the primitive cognate unity of the Aryan and Semitic
races"; and he places the great events in Egypt 9,000 years B.C. The fact
is that in archaic Esotericism and Aryan thought we find a grand philosophy,
whereas in the Hebrew records we find only the most surprising ingenuity in
inventing apotheoses for phallic worship and sexual theogony.
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nothing to do
with the classification of the septenary chain and belong to the purely
aethereal, invisible worlds. These will be noticed elsewhere. Suffice for the
present to show that they are purposely referred to as though they belonged to
the chain. "Another enumeration calls the Seven worlds -- earth, sky,
heaven, middle region, place of birth, mansion of the blest, and abode of
truth; placing the 'Sons of Brahma' in the sixth division, and stating the
fifth, or Jana Loka, to be that where animals destroyed in the general
conflagration are born again." (see Hindu Classical Dictionary.) Some real
esoteric teaching is given in the "Symbolism." He who is prepared for
it will understand the hidden meaning.
-------
STANZA V. --
Continued.
3. HE IS THEIR
GUIDING SPIRIT AND LEADER. WHEN HE COMMENCES WORK, HE SEPARATES THE SPARKS OF
THE LOWER KINGDOM (mineral atoms) THAT FLOAT AND THRILL WITH JOY IN THEIR
RADIANT DWELLINGS (gaseous clouds), AND FORMS THEREWITH THE GERMS OF WHEELS. HE
PLACES THEM IN THE SIX DIRECTIONS OF SPACE AND ONE IN THE MIDDLE -- THE CENTRAL
WHEEL (a).
(a)
"Wheels," as already explained, are the centres of force, around
which primordial Cosmic matter expands, and, passing through all the six stages
of consolidation, becomes spheroidal and ends by being transformed into globes
or spheres. It is one of the fundamental dogmas of Esoteric Cosmogony, that
during the Kalpas (or aeons) of life, MOTION, which, during the periods of Rest
"pulsates and thrills through every slumbering atom"* (Commentary on
Dzyan), assumes an evergrowing
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It may be
asked, as also the writer has not failed to ask, "Who is there to
ascertain the difference in that motion, since all nature is reduced to its
primal essence, and there can be no one -- not even one of the Dhyani-Chohans,
who are all in Nirvana -- to see it?" The answer to this is:
"Everything in Nature has to be judged by analogy. Though the highest
Deities (Archangels or Dhyani-Buddhas) are unable to penetrate the mysteries
too far beyond our planetary system and the visible Kosmos, yet there were
great seers and prophets in olden times who were enabled to perceive the
mystery of Breath and Motion retrospectively, when the systems of worlds were
at rest and plunged in their periodic sleep."
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tendency, from
the first awakening of Kosmos to a new "Day," to circular movement.
The "Deity becomes a WHIRLWIND." They are also called Rotae -- the
moving wheels of the celestial orbs participating in the world's creation --
when the meaning refers to the animating principle of the stars and planets;
for in the Kabala, they are represented by the Ophanim, the Angels of the
Spheres and stars, of which they are the informing Souls. (See Kabala Denudata,
"De Anima," p. 113.)
This law of
vortical movement in primordial matter, is one of the oldest conceptions of
Greek philosophy, whose first historical Sages were nearly all Initiates of the
Mysteries. The Greeks had it from the Egyptians, and the latter from the
Chaldeans, who had been the pupils of Brahmins of the esoteric school.
Leucippus, and Democritus of Abdera -- the pupil of the Magi -- taught that
this gyratory movement of the atoms and spheres existed from eternity.*
Hicetas, Heraclides, Ecphantus, Pythagoras, and all his pupils, taught the
rotation of the earth; and Aryabhata of India, Aristarchus, Seleucus, and
Archimedes calculated its revolution as scientifically as the astronomers do
now; while the theory of the Elemental Vortices was known to Anaxagoras, and
maintained by him 500 years B.C., or nearly 2,000 before it was taken up by
Galileo, Descartes, Swedenborg, and finally, with slight modifications, by Sir
W. Thomson. (See his "Vortical Atoms.") All such knowledge, if
justice be only done to it, is an echo of the archaic doctrine, an attempt to
explain which is now being made. How men of the last few centuries have come to
the same ideas and conclusions that were taught as axiomatic truths in the
secrecy of the Adyta dozens of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The
doctrine of the rotation of the earth about an axis is taught by the
Pythagorean Hicetas, probably as early as 500 B.C. It was also taught by his
pupil Ecphantus, and by Heraclides, a pupil of Plato. The immobility of the Sun
and the orbital rotation of the earth were shown by Aristarchus of Samos as
early as 281 B.C. to be suppositions accordant with facts of observation. The
Heliocentric theory was taught about 150 B.C., by Seleucus of Seleucia on the
Tigris. -- [It was taught 500 B.C. by Pythagoras. -- H. P. B.] It is said also
that Archimedes, in a work entitled Psammites, inculcated the Heliocentric
theory. The sphericity of the earth was distinctly taught by Aristotle, who
appealed for proof to the figure of the Earth's shadow on the moon in eclipses
(Aristotle, De Coelo, lib. II, cap. XIV.). The same idea was defended by Pliny
(Nat. Hist., II., 65). These views seem to have been lost from knowledge for
more than a thousand years. . . ." (Comparative Geology, Part IV.,
"Pre-Kantian Speculation," p. 551, by Alex. Winchell, LL.D.).
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millenniums ago,
is a question that is treated separately. Some were led to it by the natural
progress in physical science and by independent observation; others -- such as
Copernicus, Swedenborg, and a few more -- their great learning notwithstanding,
owed their knowledge far more to intuitive than to acquired ideas, developed in
the usual way by a course of study.* (See "A Mystery about Buddha.")
By the "Six
directions of Space" is here meant the "Double Triangle," the
junction and blending together of pure Spirit and Matter, of the Arupa and the
Rupa, of which the Triangles are a Symbol. This double Triangle is a sign of
Vishnu, as it is Solomon's seal, and the Sri-Antara of the Brahmins.
-------
STANZA V. --
(Continued.)
4. FOHAT TRACES
SPIRAL LINES TO UNITE THE SIX TO THE SEVENTH -- THE CROWN (a); AN ARMY OF THE
SONS OF LIGHT STANDS AT EACH ANGLE (and) THE LIPIKA -- IN THE MIDDLE WHEEL.
THEY (the Lipika) SAY, "THIS IS GOOD" (b). THE FIRST DIVINE WORLD IS
READY, THE FIRST (is now), THE SECOND (world), THEN THE "DIVINE
ARUPA" (the formless Universe
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* That
Swedenborg, who could not possibly have known anything of the esoteric ideas of
Buddhism, came independently near the Occult teaching in his general
conceptions, is shown by his essay on the Vortical Theory. In Clissold's
translation of it, quoted by Prof. Winchell, we find the following resume:--
"The first Cause is the Infinite or Unlimited. This gives existence to the
First Finite or Limited." (The Logos in His manifestation and the
Universe.) "That which produces a limit is analogous to motion. (See first
Stanza, supra.) The limit produced is a point, the Essence of which is Motion;
but being without parts, this Essence is not actual Motion, but only a connatus
to it." (In our Doctrine it is not a "connatus," but a change
from eternal vibration in the unmanifested, to Vortical Motion in the
phenomenal or manifested World). . . "From this first proceed Extension,
Space, Figure, and Succession, or Time. As in Geometry a point generates a
line, a line a surface, and a surface a solid, so here the connatus of a point
tends towards lines, surfaces and solids. In other words, the Universe is
contained in ovo in the first natural point . . . the Motion toward which the
connatus tends, is circular, since the circle is the most perfect of all
figures . . . The most perfect figure of a Motion . . . must be the perpetually
circular, that is to say, it must proceed from the centre to the periphery and
from the periphery to the centre." (Quoted from Principia Rerum
Naturalia.) This is Occultism pure and simple.
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of Thought)
REFLECTS ITSELF IN CHHAYALOKA (the shadowy world of primal form, or the intellectual)
THE FIRST GARMENT OF (the) ANUPADAKA (c).
(a) This tracing
of "Spiral lines" refers to the evolution of man's as well as
Nature's principles; an evolution which takes place gradually (as will be seen
in Book II., on "The origin of the Human Races"), as does everything
else in nature. The Sixth principle in Man (Buddhi, the Divine Soul) though a
mere breath, in our conceptions, is still something material when compared with
divine "Spirit" (Atma) of which it is the carrier or vehicle. Fohat,
in his capacity of DIVINE LOVE (Eros), the electric Power of affinity and
sympathy, is shown allegorically as trying to bring the pure Spirit, the Ray
inseparable from the ONE absolute, into union with the Soul, the two
constituting in Man the MONAD, and in Nature the first link between the ever
unconditioned and the manifested. "The first is now the second"
(world) -- of the Lipikas -- has reference to the same.
(b) The
"Army" at each angle is the Host of angelic Beings (Dhyan-Chohans)
appointed to guide and watch over each respective region from the beginning to
the end of Manvantara. They are the "Mystic Watchers" of the
Christian Kabalists and Alchemists, and relate, symbolically as well as
cosmogonically, to the numerical system of the Universe. The numbers with which
these celestial Beings are connected are extremely difficult to explain, as
each number refers to several groups of distinct ideas, according to the
particular group of "Angels" which it is intended to represent.
Herein lies the nodus in the study of symbology, with which, unable to untie by
disentangling it, so many scholars have preferred dealing as Alexander dealt
with the Gordian knot; hence erroneous conceptions and teachings, as a direct
result.
The "First
is the Second," because the "First" cannot really be numbered or
regarded as the First, as that is the realm of noumena in its primary
manifestation: the threshold to the World of Truth, or SAT, through which the
direct energy that radiates from the ONE REALITY -- the Nameless Deity --
reaches us. Here again, the untranslateable term SAT (Be-ness) is likely to
lead into an erroneous conception, since that which is manifested cannot be
SAT, but is something phenomenal, not everlasting, nor, in truth, even
sempiternal. It is coeval and
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coexistent with
the One Life, "Secondless," but as a manifestation it is still a Maya
-- like the rest. This "World of Truth" can be described only in the
words of the Commentary as "A bright star dropped from the heart of
Eternity; the beacon of hope on whose Seven Rays hang the Seven Worlds of
Being." Truly so; since those are the Seven Lights whose reflections are
the human immortal Monads -- the Atma, or the irradiating Spirit of every
creature of the human family. First, this septenary Light; then:--
(c) The
"Divine World" -- the countless Lights lit at the primeval Light --
the Buddhis, or formless divine Souls, of the last Arupa (formless) world; the
"Sum Total," in the mysterious language of the old Stanza. In the
Catechism, the Master is made to ask the pupil:--
"Lift thy
head, oh Lanoo; dost thou see one, or countless lights above thee, burning in
the dark midnight sky?"
"I sense
one Flame, oh Gurudeva, I see countless undetached sparks shining in it."
"Thou
sayest well. And now look around and into thyself. That light which burns
inside thee, dost thou feel it different in anywise from the light that shines
in thy Brother-men?"
"It is in
no way different, though the prisoner is held in bondage by Karma, and though
its outer garments delude the ignorant into saying, 'Thy Soul and My Soul.'
"
The radical
unity of the ultimate essence of each constituent part of compounds in Nature
-- from Star to mineral Atom, from the highest Dhyan Chohan to the smallest
infusoria, in the fullest acceptation of the term, and whether applied to the
spiritual, intellectual, or physical worlds -- this is the one fundamental law
in Occult Science. "The Deity is boundless and infinite expansion,"
says an Occult axiom; and hence, as remarked, the name of Brahma.* There is a
deep philosophy underlying the earliest worship in the world, that of the Sun
and of Fire. Of all the Elements known to physical science, Fire is the one
that has ever eluded definite analysis. It is confidently asserted that
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In the Rig
Veda we find the names Brahmanaspati and Brihaspati alternating and equivalent
to each other. Also see "Brihad Upanishad"; Brihaspati is a deity
called "the Father of the gods."
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Air is a mixture
containing the gases Oxygen and Nitrogen. We view the Universe and the Earth as
matter composed of definite chemical molecules. We speak of the primitive ten Earths,
endowing each with a Greek or Latin name. We say that water is, chemically, a
compound of Oxygen and Hydrogen. But what is FIRE? It is the effect of
combustion, we are gravely answered. It is heat and light and motion, and a
correlation of physical and chemical forces in general. And this scientific
definition is philosophically supplemented by the theological one in Webster's
Dictionary, which explains fire as "the instrument of punishment, or the
punishment of the impenitent in another state" -- the "state,"
by the bye, being supposed to be spiritual; but, alas! the presence of fire
would seem to be a convincing proof of its material nature. Yet, speaking of
the illusion of regarding phenomena as simple, because they are familiar,
Professor Bain says (Logic. Part II.): "Very familiar facts seem to stand
in no need of explanation themselves and to be the means of explaining whatever
can be assimilated to them. Thus, the boiling and evaporation of a liquid is
supposed to be a very simple phenomenon requiring no explanation, and a
satisfactory explanation of rarer phenomena. That water should dry up is, to
the uninstructed mind, a thing wholly intelligible; whereas to the man
acquainted with physical science the liquid state is anomalous and inexplicable.
The lighting of a fire by a flame is a GREAT SCIENTIFIC DIFFICULTY, yet few
people think so" (p. 125).
What says the
esoteric teaching with regard to fire? "Fire," it says, "is the
most perfect and unadulterated reflection, in Heaven as on Earth, of the ONE
FLAME. It is Life and Death, the origin and the end of every material thing. It
is divine 'SUBSTANCE.' " Thus, not only the FIRE-WORSHIPPER, the Parsee,
but even the wandering savage tribes of America, which proclaim themselves
"born of fire," show more science in their creeds and truth in their
superstitions, than all the speculations of modern physics and learning. The
Christian who says: "God is a living Fire," and speaks of the
Pentecostal "Tongues of Fire" and of the "burning bush" of
Moses, is as much a fire-worshipper as any other "heathen." The
Rosicrucians, among all the mystics and Kabalists, were those who defined Fire
in the right and most correct way. Procure a sixpenny lamp, keep it only
supplied with oil, and you will be able to light at its flame the lamps,
candles,
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and fires of the
whole globe without diminishing that flame. If the Deity, the radical One, is
eternal and an infinite substance ("the Lord thy God is a consuming
fire") and never consumed, then it does not seem reasonable that the
Occult teaching should be held as unphilosophical when it says: "Thus were
the Arupa and Rupa worlds formed: from ONE light seven lights; from each of the
seven, seven times seven," etc., etc.
-------
STANZA V. --
Continued.
5. FOHAT TAKES
FIVE STRIDES (having already taken the first three) (a), AND BUILDS A WINGED
WHEEL AT EACH CORNER OF THE SQUARE FOR THE FOUR HOLY ONES . . . . . AND THEIR
ARMIES (hosts) (b).
(a) The
"strides," as already explained (see Commentary on Stanza IV.), refer
to both the Cosmic and the Human principles -- the latter of which consist, in
the exoteric division, of three (Spirit, Soul, and Body), and, in the esoteric
calculation, of seven principles -- three rays of the Essence and four
aspects.* Those who have studied Mr. Sinnett's "Esoteric Buddhism" can
easily grasp the nomenclature. There are two esoteric schools -- or rather one
school, divided into two parts -- one for the inner Lanoos, the other for the
outer or semi-lay chelas beyond the Himalayas; the first teaching a septenary,
the other a six-fold division of human principles.
From a Cosmic
point of view, Fohat taking "five strides" refers here to the five
upper planes of Consciousness and Being, the sixth and the seventh (counting
downwards) being the astral and the terrestrial, or the two lower planes.
(b) "Four
winged wheels at each corner . . . . . for the four holy ones and their armies
(hosts)" . . . . . These are the "four Maharajahs" or great
Kings of the Dhyan-Chohans, the Devas who preside, each over one of the four
cardinal points. They are the Regents or Angels who rule over the Cosmical
Forces of North, South,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The four
aspects are the body, its life or vitality, and the "Double" of the
body, the triad which disappears with the death of the person, and the
Kama-rupa which disintegrates in Kama-loka.
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East and West,
Forces having each a distinct occult property. These BEINGS are also connected
with Karma, as the latter needs physical and material agents to carry out her
decrees, such as the four kinds of winds, for instance, professedly admitted by
Science to have their respective evil and beneficent influences upon the health
of Mankind and every living thing. There is occult philosophy in that Roman
Catholic doctrine which traces the various public calamities, such as epidemics
of disease, and wars, and so on, to the invisible "Messengers" from
North and West. "The glory of God comes from the way of the East"
says Ezekiel; while Jeremiah, Isaiah, and the Psalmist assure their readers
that all the evil under the Sun comes from the North and the West -- which
proposition, when applied to the Jewish nation, sounds like an undeniable
prophecy for themselves. And this accounts also for St. Ambrose (On Amos, ch.
iv.) declaring that it is precisely for that reason that "we curse the
North-Wind, and that during the ceremony of baptism we begin by turning towards
the West (Sidereal), to renounce the better him who inhabits it; after which we
turn to the East."
Belief in the
"Four Maharajahs" -- the Regents of the Four cardinal points -- was
universal and is now that of Christians,* who call them, after St. Augustine,
"Angelic Virtues," and "Spirits" when enumerated by
themselves, and "Devils" when named by Pagans. But where is the
difference between the Pagans and the Christians in this cause? Following
Plato, Aristotle explained that the term [[stoicheia]] was understood only as
meaning the incorporeal principles placed at each of the four great divisions
of our Cosmical world to supervise them. Thus, no more than the Christians did,
do they adore and worship the Elements and the cardinal (imaginary) points, but
the "gods" that ruled these respectively. For the Church there are
two kinds of Sidereal beings, the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Says the scholarly
Vossius, in his Theol. Cir. I. VII.: "Though St. Augustine has said that
every visible thing in this world had an angelic virtue as an overseer near it,
it is not individuals but entire species of things that must be understood,
each such species having indeed its particular angel to watch it. He is at one
in this with all the philosophers . . . For us these angels are spirits
separated from the objects . . . whereas for the philosophers (pagan) they were
gods." Considering the Ritual established by the Roman Catholic Church for
"Spirits of the Stars," the latter look suspiciously like
"Gods," and were no more honoured and prayed to by the ancient and
modern pagan rabble than they are now at Rome by the highly cultured Catholic
Christians.
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Angels and the
Devils. For the Kabalist and Occultist there is but one; and neither of them
makes any difference between "the Rectors of Light" and the
Cosmocratores, or "Rectores tenebrarum harum," whom the Roman Church
imagines and discovers in a "Rector of Light" as soon as he is called
by another name than the one she addresses him by. It is not the
"Rector" or "Maharajah" who punishes or rewards, with or
without "God's" permission or order, but man himself -- his deeds or
Karma, attracting individually and collectively (as in the case of whole
nations sometimes), every kind of evil and calamity. We produce CAUSES, and
these awaken the corresponding powers in the sidereal world; which powers are
magnetically and irresistibly attracted to -- and react upon -- those who
produced these causes; whether such persons are practically the evil-doers, or
simply Thinkers who brood mischief. Thought is matter,* we are taught by modern
Science; and "every particle of the existing matter must be a register of
all that has happened," as in their "Principles of Science"
Messrs. Jevons and Babbage tell the profane. Modern Science is drawn more every
day into the maelstrom of Occultism; unconsciously, no doubt, still very
sensibly. The two main theories of science -- re the relations between Mind and
Matter -- are Monism and Materialism. These two cover the whole ground of
negative psychology with the exception of the quasi-occult views of the
pantheistic German schools.**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Not of course
in the sense of the German Materialist Moleschott, who assures us that
"Thought is the movement of matter," a statement of almost unequalled
absurdity. Mental states and bodily states are utterly contrasted as such. But
that does not affect the position that every thought, in addition to its physical
accompaniment (brain-change), exhibits an objective -- though to us
supersensuously objective -- aspect on the astral plane. (See "The Occult
World," pp. 89, 90.)
** The views of
our present-day scientific thinkers as to the relations between mind and matter
may be reduced to two hypotheses. These show that both views equally exclude
the possibility of an independent Soul, distinct from the physical brain
through which it functions. They are:--
(1.)
MATERIALISM, the theory which regards mental phenomena as the product of
molecular change in the brain; i.e., as the outcome of a transformation of
motion into feeling (!). The cruder school once went so far as to identify mind
with a "peculiar mode of motion" (!!), but this view is now happily
regarded as absurd by most of the men of science themselves.
(2.) MONISM, or
the Single Substance Doctrine, is the more subtle form of negative psychology,
which one of its advocates, Professor Bain, ably terms "guarded [[Footnote
continued on next page]]
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In the Egyptian
temples, according to Clemens Alexandrinus, an immense curtain separated the
tabernacle from the place for the congregation. The Jews had the same. In both,
the curtain was drawn over five pillars (the Pentacle) symbolising our five
senses and five Root-races esoterically, while the four colours of the curtain
represented the four cardinal points and the four terrestrial elements. The
whole was an allegorical symbol. It is through the four high Rulers over the
four points and Elements that our five senses may become cognisant of the
hidden truths of Nature; and not at all, as Clemens would have it, that it is
the elements per se that furnished the Pagans with divine Knowledge or the
knowledge of God.* While the Egyptian emblem was spiritual, that of the Jews
was purely materialistic, and, indeed, honoured only the blind Elements and the
imaginary "Points." For what was the meaning of the square tabernacle
raised by Moses in the wilderness, if it had not the same cosmical
significance? "Thou shalt make an hanging . . . of blue, purple, and
scarlet" and "five pillars of shittim wood for the hanging . . . four
brazen rings in the four corners thereof . . . boards of fine wood for the four
sides, North, South, West, and East . . . of the Tabernacle . . . with
Cherubims of cunning work." (Exodus, ch. xxvi., xxvii.) The Tabernacle and
the square courtyard, Cherubim and all, were precisely the same as those in the
Egyptian temples. The square form of the Tabernacle meant just the same thing
as it still means, to this day, in the exoteric worship of the Chinese and
Tibetans -- the four cardinal points signifying that which the four sides of
the pyramids, obelisks, and other such square erections mean. Josephus takes
care to explain the whole thing. He declares that the Tabernacle pillars are
the same
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] Materialism." This doctrine, which commands
a very wide assent, counting among its upholders such men as Lewis, Spencer,
Ferrier, and others, while positing thought and mental phenomena generally as
radically contrasted with matter, regards both as equal to the two sides, or
aspects, of one and the same substance in some of its conditions. Thought as
thought, they say, is utterly contrasted with material phenomena, but it must
be also regarded as only "the subjective side of nervous motion"
whatever our learned men may mean by this.
* Thus the
sentence, "Natura Elementorum obtinet revelationem Dei," (In
Clemens's Stromata, R. IV., para. 6), is applicable to both or neither. Consult
the Zends, vol II., p. 228, and Plutarch De Iside, as compared by Layard,
Academie des Inscriptions, 1854, Vol. XV.
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as those raised
at Tyre to the four Elements, which were placed on pedestals whose four angles
faced the four cardinal points: adding that "the angles of the pedestals
had equally the four figures of the Zodiac" on them, which represented the
same orientation (Antiquities I., VIII., ch. xxii.).
The idea may be
traced in the Zoroastrian caves, in the rock-cut temples of India, as in all
the sacred square buildings of antiquity that have survived to this day. This
is shown definitely by Layard, who finds the four cardinal points, and the four
primitive elements, in the religion of every country, under the shape of square
obelisks, the four sides of the pyramids, etc., etc. Of these elements and
their points the four Maharajahs were the regents and the directors.
If the student
would know more of them, he has but to compare the Vision of Ezekiel (chap. i.)
with what is known of Chinese Buddhism (even in its exoteric teachings); and
examine the outward shape of these "Great Kings." In the opinion of
the Rev. Joseph Edkins, they are "the Devas who preside each over one of
the four continents into which the Hindus divide the world."* Each leads
an army of spiritual beings to protect mankind and Buddhism. With the exception
of favouritism towards Buddhism, the four celestial beings are precisely this.
They are the protectors of mankind and also the Agents of Karma on Earth,
whereas the Lipika are concerned with Humanity's hereafter. At the same time
they are the four living creatures "who have the likeness of a man"
of Ezekiel's visions, called by the translators of the Bible,
"Cherubim," "Seraphim," etc.; and by the Occultists,
"the winged Globes," the "Fiery Wheels," and in the Hindu
Pantheon by a number of different names. All these Gandharvas, the "Sweet
Songsters," the Asuras, Kinnaras, and Nagas, are the allegorical
descriptions of the "four Maharajahs." The Seraphim are the fiery
Serpents of Heaven which we find in a passage describing Mount Meru as: "the
exalted mass of glory, the venerable haunt of gods and heavenly choristers . .
. . not to be reached by sinful men . . . . because guarded by Serpents."
They are called the Avengers, and the "Winged Wheels."
Their mission
and character being explained, let us see what the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Hindus
happen to divide the world into seven continents, exoterically as esoterically;
and their four cosmic Devas are eight, presiding over the eight points of the
compass and not the Continents. (Compare "Chinese Buddhism," p. 216.)
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Christian
Bible-interpreters say of the Cherubim:-- "The word signifies in Hebrew,
fullness of knowledge; these angels are so called from their exquisite
Knowledge, and were therefore used for the punishment of men who affected
divine Knowledge." (Interpreted by Cruden in his Concordance, from Genesis
iii., 24.) Very well; and vague as the information is, it shows that the Cherub
placed at the gate of the garden of Eden after the "Fall," suggested
to the venerable Interpreters the idea of punishment connected with forbidden Science
or divine Knowledge -- one that generally leads to another "Fall,"
that of the gods, or "God," in man's estimation. But as the good old
Cruden knew nought of Karma, he may be forgiven. Yet the allegory is
suggestive. From Meru, the abode of gods, to Eden, the distance is very small,
and from the Hindu Serpents to the Ophite Cherubim, the third out of the seven
of which was the Dragon, the separation is still smaller, for both watched the
entrance to the realm of Secret Knowledge. But Ezekiel plainly describes the
four Cosmic Angels: "I looked, and behold, a whirlwind, a cloud and fire
infolding it . . . also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four
living creatures . . . they had the likeness of a man. And every one had four
faces and four wings . . . the face of a man, and the face of a lion, the face
of an ox, and the face of an eagle . . . " ("Man" was here
substituted for "Dragon." Compare the "Ophite Spirits."*) .
. . "Now as I beheld the living creatures behold one wheel upon the Earth
with his four faces . . . as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel . . . for
the support of the living creature was in the wheel . . . their appearance was
like coals of fire . . ." etc. (Ezekiel, ch. i.)
There are three
chief groups of Builders and as many of the Planetary Spirits and the Lipika,
each group being again divided into Seven sub-groups. It is impossible, even in
such a large work as this, to enter into a minute examination of even the three
principal groups, as it would demand an extra volume. The "Builders"
are the representatives of the first "Mind-Born" Entities, therefore
of the primeval Rishi-Prajapati: also of the Seven great Gods of Egypt, of
which Osiris is the chief: of the Seven Amshaspends of the Zoroastrians, with
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Angels
recognised by the Roman Catholic Church who correspond to these
"Faces" were with the Ophites:-- Dragon -- Raphael; Lion -- Michael;
Bull, or ox -- Uriel; and Eagle -- Gabriel. The four keep company with the four
Evangelists, and preface the Gospels.
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Ormazd at their
head: or the "Seven Spirits of the Face": the Seven Sephiroth
separated from the first Triad, etc., etc.*
They build or
rather rebuild every "System" after the "Night." The Second
group of the Builders is the Architect of our planetary chain exclusively; and
the third, the progenitor of our Humanity -- the Macrocosmic prototype of the
microcosm.
The Planetary
Spirits are the informing spirits of the Stars in general, and of the Planets
especially. They rule the destinies of men who are all born under one or other
of their constellations; the second and third groups pertaining to other
systems have the same functions, and all rule various departments in Nature. In
the Hindu exoteric Pantheon they are the guardian deities who preside over the
eight points of the compass -- the four cardinal and the four intermediate
points -- and are called Loka-Palas, "Supporters or guardians of the
World" (in our visible Kosmos), of which Indra (East), Yama (South),
Varuna (West), and Kuvera (North) are the chief; their elephants and their
spouses pertaining of course to fancy and afterthought, though all of them have
an occult significance.
The Lipika (a
description of whom is given in the Commentary on Stanza IV. No. 6) are the
Spirits of the Universe, whereas the Builders are only our own planetary
deities. The former belong to the most occult portion of Cosmogenesis, which
cannot be given here. Whether the Adepts (even the highest) know this angelic
order in the completeness of its triple degrees, or only the lower one
connected with the records of our world, is something which the writer is
unprepared to say, and she would incline rather to the latter supposition. Of
its highest grade one thing only is taught: the Lipika are connected with Karma
-- being its direct Recorders.**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Jews, save
the Kabalists, having no names for East, West, South, and North, expressed the
idea by words signifying before, behind, right and left, and very often confounded
the terms exoterically, thus making the blinds in the Bible more confused and
difficult to interpret. Add to this the fact that out of the forty-seven
translators of King James I. of England's Bible "only three understood
Hebrew, and of these two died before the Psalms were translated" (Royal
Masonic Cyclopaedia), and one may easily understand what reliance can be placed
on the English version of the Bible. In this work the Douay Roman Catholic
version is generally followed.
** The Symbol
for Sacred and Secret Knowledge was universally in antiquity, a Tree, by which
a Scripture or a Record was also meant. Hence the word Lipika, the [[Footnote
continued on next page]]
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STANZA V. --
Continued.
6. THE LIPIKA
CIRCUMSCRIBE THE TRIANGLE, THE FIRST ONE (the vertical line or the figure 1.),
THE CUBE, THE SECOND ONE, AND THE PENTACLE WITHIN THE EGG (circle) (a). IT IS
THE RING CALLED "PASS NOT," FOR THOSE WHO DESCEND AND ASCEND (as also
for those) WHO, DURING THE KALPA, ARE PROGRESSING TOWARD THE GREAT DAY "BE
WITH US" (b). . . . THUS WERE FORMED THE ARUPA AND THE RUPA (the Formless
World and the World of Forms); FROM ONE LIGHT SEVEN LIGHTS; FROM EACH OF THE
SEVEN SEVEN TIMES SEVEN LIGHTS. THE "WHEELS" WATCH THE RING.
The Stanza
proceeds with a minute classification of the Orders of Angelic Hierarchy. From
the group of Four and Seven emanates the "mind-born" group of Ten, of
Twelve, of Twenty-one, etc., all these divided again into sub-groups of
septenaries, novenaries, duodecimals, and so on, until the mind is lost in this
endless enumeration of celestial hosts and Beings, each having its distinct task
in the ruling of the visible Kosmos during its existence.
(a) The esoteric
meaning of the first sentence of the Sloka is, that those who have been called
Lipikas, the Recorders of the Karmic ledger, make an impassible barrier between
the personal EGO and the impersonal SELF, the Noumenon and Parent-Source of the
former. Hence the allegory. They circumscribe the manifested world of matter
within the RING "Pass-Not." This world is the symbol (objective) of
the ONE divided into the many, on the planes of Illusion, of Adi (the
"First") or of Eka (the "One"); and this One is the
collective aggregate, or totality, of the principal Creators or Architects of
this visible universe. In Hebrew Occultism their name is both Achath, feminine,
"One," and Achod, "One" again, but masculine. The
monotheists have taken (and are still taking) advantage of the profound
esotericism of the Kabala to apply the name by which the One Supreme Essence is
known to ITS manifestation, the Sephiroth-Elohim, and call it Jehovah. But this
is
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] "writers" or scribes; the
"Dragons," symbols of wisdom, who guard the Trees of Knowledge; the
"golden" apple Tree of the Hesperides; the "Luxuriant
Trees" and vegetation of Mount Meru guarded by a Serpent. Juno giving to
Jupiter, on her marriage with him, a Tree with golden fruit is another form of
Eve offering Adam the apple from the Tree of Knowledge.
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quite arbitrary
and against all reason and logic, as the term Elohim is a plural noun,
identical with the plural word Chiim, often compounded with the Elohim.*
Moreover, in Occult metaphysics there are, properly speaking, two
"ONES" -- the One on the unreachable plane of Absoluteness and
Infinity, on which no speculation is possible, and the Second "One"
on the plane of Emanations. The former can neither emanate nor be divided, as
it is eternal, absolute, and immutable. The Second, being, so to speak, the
reflection of the first One (for it is the Logos, or Eswara, in the Universe of
Illusion), can do all this.** It emanates from itself -- as the upper
Sephirothal Triad emanates the lower seven Sephiroth -- the seven Rays or Dhyan
Chohans; in other words, the Homogeneous becomes the Heterogeneous, the
"Protyle" differentiates into the Elements. But these, unless they
return into their primal Element, can never cross beyond the Laya, or
zero-point.
Hence the
allegory. The Lipika separate the world (or plane) of pure spirit from that of
Matter. Those who "descend and ascend" -- the incarnating Monads, and
men striving towards purification and "ascending," but still not
having quite reached the goal -- may cross the "circle of the
Pass-Not," only on the day "Be-With-Us"; that day when man,
freeing himself from the trammels of ignorance, and recog-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The sentence
in the Sepher Jezirah and elsewhere: "Achath-Ruach-Elohim-Chiim"
denotes the Elohim as androgynous at best, the feminine element almost
predominating, as it would read: "ONE is She the Spirit of the Elohim of
Life." As said above, Echath (or Achath) is feminine, and Echod (or Achod)
masculine, both meaning ONE.
** This
metaphysical tenet can hardly be better described than Mr. Subba Row's in
"Bhagavadgita" lectures: "Mulaprakriti (the veil of Parabrahmam)
acts as the one energy through the Logos (or 'Eswara'). Now Parabrahmam, is the
one essence from which starts into existence a centre of energy, which I shall
for the present call the Logos. . . . It is called the Verbum . . . by the
Christians, and it is the divine Christos who is eternal in the bosom of his
father. It is called Avalokiteshwara by the Buddhists. . . . In almost every
doctrine, they have formulated the existence of a centre of spiritual energy
which is unborn and eternal, and which exists in the bosom of Parabrahmam at
the time of Pralaya, and starts as a centre of conscious energy at the time of
Cosmic activity. . . ." For, as the lecturer premised by saying,
Parabraham is not this or that, it is not even consciousness, as it cannot be related
to matter or anything conditioned. It is not Ego nor is it Non-ego, not even
Atma, but verily the one source of all manifestations and modes of existence.
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nising fully the
non-separateness of the Ego within his personality -- erroneously regarded as
his own -- from the UNIVERSAL EGO (Anima Supra-Mundi), merges thereby into the
One Essence to become not only one "with us" (the manifested
universal lives which are "ONE" LIFE), but that very life itself.
Astronomically,
the "Ring PASS-NOT" that the Lipika trace around the Triangle, the
First One, the Cube, the Second One, and the Pentacle to circumscribe these
figures, is thus shown to contain the symbol of 31415 again, or the coefficient
constantly used in mathematical tables (the value of, pi), the geometrical
figures standing here for numerical figures. According to the general
philosophical teachings, this ring is beyond the region of what are called
nebulae in astronomy. But this is as erroneous a conception as that of the
topography and the descriptions, given in Puranic and other exoteric
Scriptures, about the 1008 worlds of the Devaloka worlds and firmaments. There
are worlds, of course, in the esoteric as well as in the profane scientific
teachings, at such incalculable distances that the light of the nearest of them
which has just reached our modern Chaldees, had left its luminary long before
the day on which the words "Let there be Light" were pronounced; but
these are no worlds on the Devaloka plane, but in our Kosmos.
The chemist goes
to the laya or zero point of the plane of matter with which he deals, and then
stops short. The physicist or the astronomer counts by billions of miles beyond
the nebulae, and then they also stop short; the semi-initiated Occultist will
represent this laya-point to himself as existing on some plane which, if not
physical, is still conceivable to the human intellect. But the full Initiate
knows that the ring "Pass-Not" is neither a locality nor can it be
measured by distance, but that it exists in the absoluteness of infinity. In
this "Infinity" of the full Initiate there is neither height, breadth
nor thickness, but all is fathomless profundity, reaching down from the
physical to the "para-para-metaphysical." In using the word
"down," essential depth -- "nowhere and everywhere" -- is
meant, not depth of physical matter.
If one searches
carefully through the exoteric and grossly anthropomorphic allegories of
popular religions, even in these the doctrine embodied in the circle of
"Pass-Not" thus guarded by the Lipika, may be dimly perceived. Thus
one finds it even in the teachings of
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the Vedantin
sect of the Visishtadwaita, the most tenaciously anthropomorphic in all India.
For we read of the released soul that:--
After reaching
Moksha (a state of bliss meaning "release from Bandha" or bondage),
bliss is enjoyed by it in a place called PARAMAPADHA, which place is not
material, but made of Suddasatwa (the essence, of which the body of Iswara --
"the Lord" -- is formed). There, Muktas or Jivatmas (Monads) who have
attained Moksha, are never again subject to the qualities of either matter or
Karma. "But if they choose, for the sake of doing good to the world, they
may incarnate on Earth."* The way to Paramapadha, or the immaterial
worlds, from this world, is called Devayana. When a person has attained Moksha
and the body dies:--
"The Jiva
(Soul) goes with Sukshma Sarira** from the heart of the body, to the
Brahmarandra in the crown of the head, traversing Sushumna, a nerve connecting
the heart with the Brahmarandra. The Jiva breaks through the Brahmarandra and
goes to the region of the Sun (Suryamandala) through the solar Rays. Then it
goes, through a dark spot in the Sun, to Paramapadha. The Jiva is directed on
its way by the Supreme Wisdom acquired by Yoga.*** The Jiva thus proceeds to
Paramapadha by the aid of Athivahikas (bearers in transit), known by the names
of Archi-Ahas . . . Aditya, Prajapati, etc. The Archis here mentioned are
certain pure Souls, etc., etc." (Visishtadwaita Catechism, by Pundit
Bhashyacharya, F.T.S.)
No Spirit except
the "Recorders" (Lipika) has ever crossed its forbidden line, nor
will any do so until the day of the next Pralaya, for it is the boundary that
separates the finite -- however infinite in man's sight -- from the truly
INFINITE. The Spirits referred to, therefore, as those who "ascend and
descend" are the "Hosts" of what we loosely call "celestial
Beings." But they are, in fact, nothing of the kind.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* These
voluntary re-incarnations are referred to in our Doctrine as Nirmanakayas (the
surviving spiritual principles of men).
**
Sukshma-sarira, "dream-like" illusive body, with which are clothed
the inferior Dhyanis of the celestial Hierarchy.
*** Compare this
esoteric tenet with the Gnostic doctrine found in "Pistis-Sophia"
(Knowledge = Wisdom), in which treatise Sophia Achamoth is shown lost in the
waters of Chaos (matter), on her way to Supreme Light, and Christos delivering
and helping her on the right Path. Note well, "Christos" with the
Gnostics meant the impersonal principal, the Atman of the Universe, and the
Atma within every man's soul -- not Jesus; though in the old Coptic MSS. in the
British Museum "Christos" is almost constantly replaced by
"Jesus."
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They are
Entities of the higher worlds in the hierarchy of Being, so immeasurably high
that, to us, they must appear as Gods, and collectively -- GOD. But so we,
mortal men, must appear to the ant, which reasons on the scale of its special
capacities. The ant may also, for all we know, see the avenging finger of a
personal God in the hand of the urchin who, in one moment, under the impulse of
mischief, destroys its anthill, the labour of many weeks -- long years in the chronology
of insects. The ant, feeling it acutely, and attributing the undeserved
calamity to a combination of Providence and sin, may also, like man, see in it
the result of the sin of its first parent. Who knows and who can affirm or
deny? The refusal to admit in the whole Solar system of any other reasonable
and intellectual beings on the human plane, than ourselves, is the greatest
conceit of our age. All that science has a right to affirm, is that there are
no invisible Intelligences living under the same conditions as we do. It cannot
deny point-blank the possibility of there being worlds within worlds, under
totally different conditions to those that constitute the nature of our world;
nor can it deny that there may be a certain limited communication* between some
of those worlds and our own. To the highest, we are taught, belong the seven
orders of the purely divine Spirits; to the six lower ones belong hierarchies
that can occasionally be seen and heard by men, and who do communicate with
their progeny of the Earth; which progeny is indissolubly linked with them,
each principle in man having its direct source in the nature of those great
Beings, who furnish us with the respective invisible elements in us. Physical
Science is welcome to speculate upon the physiological mechanism of living
beings, and to continue her fruitless efforts in trying to resolve our
feelings, our sensations, mental and spiritual, into functions of their
inorganic vehicles. Nevertheless, all that will ever be accomplished in this direction
has already been done, and Science will go no farther.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The greatest
philosopher of European birth, Imanuel Kant, assures us that such a
communication is in no way improbable. "I confess I am much disposed to
assert the existence of Immaterial natures in the world, and to place my own
soul in the class of these beings. It will hereafter, I know not where, or
when, yet be proved that the human soul stands even in this life in indissoluble
connection with all immaterial natures in the spirit-world, that it
reciprocally acts upon these and receives impressions from them." (Traume
eines Geistersehers, quoted by C. C. Massey, in his preface to Von Hartmann's
"Spiritismus.")
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She is before a
dead wall, on the face of which she traces, as she imagines, great
physiological and psychic discoveries, but every one of which will be shown
later on to be no better than the cobwebs spun by her scientific fancies and
illusions. The tissues of our objective framework alone are subservient to the
analysis and researches of physiological science.* The six higher principles in
them will evade for ever the hand that is guided by an animus that purposely
ignores and rejects the Occult Sciences.
The "Great
Day of BE-WITH-US," then, is an expression the only merit of which lies in
its literal translation. Its significance is not so easily revealed to a
public, unacquainted with the mystic tenets of Occultism, or rather of Esoteric
Wisdom or "Budhism." It is an expression peculiar to the latter, and
as hazy for the profane as that of the Egyptians who called the same the
"Day of COME-TO-US,"** which
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* E.g., all that
modern physiological research in connection with psychological problems has,
and owing to the nature of things, could have shown, is, that every thought,
sensation, and emotion is attended with a re-marshalling of the molecules of
certain nerves. The inference drawn by scientists of the type of Buchner, Vogt,
and others, that thought is molecular motion, necessitates a complete
abstraction being made of the fact of our subjective consciousness.
** See "Le
Livre des Morts," by Paul Pierret; "Le Jour de 'Viens a nous' . . .
c'est le jour ou Osiris a dit au Soleil: Viens! Je le vois rencontrant le Soleil
dans l'Amenti." (Chap. xvii., p. 61.) The Sun here stands for the Logos
(or Christos, or Horus) as central Essence synthetically, and as a diffused
essence of radiated Entities, different in substance, but not in essence. As
expressed by the Bhagavadgita lecturer, "it must not be supposed that the
Logos is but a single centre of energy manifested from Parabrahmam; there are
innumerable other centres . . . and their number is almost infinite in the
bosom of Parabrahmam." Hence the expressions, "The Day of Come to
us" and "The Day of Be with us," etc. Just as the square is the
Symbol of the Four sacred Forces or Powers -- Tetraktis -- so the Circle shows
the boundary within the Infinity that no man can cross, even in spirit, nor
Deva nor Dhyan Chohan. The Spirits of those who "descend and ascend"
during the course of cyclic evolution shall cross the "iron-bound
world" only on the day of their approach to the threshold of Paranirvana.
If they reach it -- they will rest in the bosom of Parabrahmam, or the
"Unknown Darkness," which shall then become for all of them Light --
during the whole period of Mahapralaya, the "Great NIGHT," namely,
311,040,000,000,000 years of absorption in Brahm. The day of
"Be-With-Us" is this period of rest or Paranirvana. See also for
other data on this peculiar expression, the day of "Come-To-Us," The
Funerary Ritual of the Egyptians, by Viscount de Rouge. It corresponds to the
Day of the Last Judgment of the Christians, which has been sorely materialised
by their religion.
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is identical
with the former, though the verb "be" in this sense, might be still
better replaced with either of the two words "Remain" or
"Rest-with-us," as it refers to that long period of REST which is
called Paranirvana. As in the exoteric interpretation of the Egyptian rites the
soul of every defunct person -- from the Hierophant down to the sacred bull
Apis -- became an Osiris, was Osirified, though the Secret Doctrine had always
taught, that the real Osirification was the lot of every Monad only after 3,000
cycles of Existences; so in the present case. The "Monad," born of the
nature and the very Essence of the "Seven" (its highest principle
becoming immediately enshrined in the Seventh Cosmic Element), has to perform
its septenary gyration throughout the Cycle of Being and forms, from the
highest to the lowest; and then again from man to God. At the threshold of
Paranirvana it reassumes its primeval Essence and becomes the Absolute once
more.
---------------------
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STANZA VI.
1. BY THE POWER
OF THE MOTHER OF MERCY AND KNOWLEDGE (a), KWAN-YIN,* THE "TRIPLE" OF
KWAN-SHAI-YIN, RESIDING IN KWAN-YIN-TIEN (b), FOHAT, THE BREATH OF THEIR
PROGENY, THE SON OF THE SONS, HAVING CALLED FORTH FROM THE LOWER ABYSS (chaos)
THE ILLUSIVE FORM OF SIEN-TCHAN (our Universe) AND THE SEVEN ELEMENTS:--
(a.) The Mother
of Mercy and Knowledge is called "the triple" of Kwan-Shai-Yin because
in her correlations, metaphysical and cosmical, she is the "Mother, the
Wife and the Daughter" of the Logos, just as in the later theological
translations she became "the Father, Son and (the female) Holy Ghost"
-- the Sakti or Energy -- the Essence of the three. Thus in the Esotericism of
the Vedantins, Daiviprakriti, the Light manifested through Eswara, the Logos,**
is at one and the same time the Mother and also the Daughter of the Logos or
Verbum of Parabrahmam; while in that of the trans-Himalayan teachings it is --
in the hierarchy of allegorical and metaphysical theogony -- "the
MOTHER" or abstract, ideal matter, Mulaprakriti, the Root of Nature; --
from the metaphysical standpoint, a correlation of Adi-Bhuta, manifested in the
Logos, Avalokiteshwara; -- and from the purely occult and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This stanza is
translated from the Chinese text, and the names, as the equivalents of the
original terms, are preserved. The real esoteric nomenclature cannot be given,
as it would only confuse the reader. The Brahmanical doctrine has no equivalent
to these. Vach seems, in many an aspect, to approach the Chinese Kwan-yin, but
there is no regular worship of Vach under this name in India, as there is of
Kwan-Yin in China. No exoteric religious system has ever adopted a female
Creator, and thus woman was regarded and treated, from the first dawn of
popular religions, as inferior to man. It is only in China and Egypt that
Kwan-Yin and Isis were placed on a par with the male gods. Esotericism ignores
both sexes. Its highest Deity is sexless as it is formless, neither Father nor
Mother; and its first manifested beings, celestial and terrestrial alike,
become only gradually androgynous and finally separate into distinct sexes.
** The
"Theosophist" of February, 1887, p. 305, first lecture on the
Bhagavadgita.
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Cosmical,
Fohat,* the "Son of the Son," the androgynous energy resulting from
this "Light of the Logos," and which manifests in the plane of the
objective Universe as the hidden, as much as the revealed, Electricity -- which
is LIFE.
(b)
Kwan-Yin-Tien means the "melodious heaven of Sound," the abode of
Kwan-Yin, or the "Divine Voice" literally. This "Voice" is
a synonym of the Verbum or the Word: "Speech," as the expression of
thought. Thus may be traced the connection with, and even the origin of the
Hebrew Bath-Kol, the "daughter of the Divine Voice," or Verbum, or
the male and female Logos, the "Heavenly Man" or Adam Kadmon, who is
at the same time Sephira. The latter was surely anticipated by the Hindu Vach,
the goddess of Speech, or of the Word. For Vach -- the daughter and the female
portion, as is stated, of Brahma, one "generated by the gods" -- is,
in company with Kwan-Yin, with Isis (also the daughter, wife and sister of
Osiris) and other goddesses, the female Logos, so to speak, the goddess of the
active forces in Nature, the Word, Voice or Sound, and Speech. If Kwan-Yin is
the "melodious Voice," so is Vach; "the melodious cow who milked
forth sustenance and water" (the female principle) -- "who yields us
nourishment and sustenance," as Mother-Nature. She is associated in the
work of creation with the Prajapati. She is male and female ad libitum, as Eve
is with Adam. And she is a form of Aditi -- the principle higher than Ether --
in Akasa, the synthesis of all the forces in Nature; thus Vach and Kwan-Yin are
both the magic potency of Occult sound in Nature and Ether -- which
"Voice" calls forth Sien-Tchan, the illusive form of the Universe out
of Chaos and the Seven Elements.
Thus in Manu
Brahma (the Logos also) is shown dividing his body into two parts, male and
female, and creating in the latter, who is Vach, Viraj, who is himself, or
Brahma again -- it is in this way a learned Vedantin Occultist speaks of that
"goddess," explaining the reason why Eswara (or Brahma) is called
Verbum or Logos; why in fact it is called Sabda Brahmam:--
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Says the
lecturer on p. 306: "Evolution is commenced by the intellectual energy of
the Logos, not merely on account of the potentialities locked up in
Mulaprakriti. This light of the Logos is the link . . . between objective
matter and the subjective thought of Eswara (or Logos). It is called in several
Buddhist books Fohat. It is the one instrument with which the Logos
works."
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"The
explanation I am going to give you will appear thoroughly mystical; but if
mystical, it has a tremendous significance when properly understood. Our old
writers said that Vach is of four kinds (see Rig Veda and the Upanishads).
Vaikhari-Vach is what we utter. Every kind of Vaikhari-Vach exists in its
Madhyama, further in its Pasyanti, and ultimately in its Para form.* The reason
why this Pranava is called Vach is this, that the four principles of the great
Kosmos correspond to these four forms of Vach. Now the whole manifested solar
System exists in its Sukshma form in the light or energy of the Logos, because
its energy is caught up and transferred to Cosmic matter. . . . The whole
Kosmos in its objective form is Vaikhari-Vach, the light of the Logos is the
Madhyama form, and the Logos itself the Pasyanti form, and Parabrahm the Para
form or aspect of that Vach. It is by the light of this explanation that we
must try to understand certain statements made by various philosophers to the
effect that the manifested Kosmos is the Verbum manifested as Kosmos" (see
Lecture on the Bhagavadgita, referred to above).
-------
STANZA VI. --
(Continued.)
2. THE SWIFT AND
THE RADIANT ONE PRODUCES THE SEVEN Layu** (a) CENTRES, AGAINST WHICH NONE WILL
PREVAIL TO THE GREAT DAY "BE WITH US" -- AND SEATS THE UNIVERSE ON
THESE ETERNAL FOUNDATIONS, SURROUNDING SIEN-TCHAN WITH THE ELEMENTARY GERMS
(b).
(a.) The seven
Layu centres are the seven Zero points, using the term Zero in the same sense
that Chemists do, to indicate a point at which, in Esotericism, the scale of reckoning
of differentiation begins. From the Centres -- beyond which Esoteric philosophy
allows us to perceive the dim metaphysical outlines of the "Seven
Sons" of Life and Light, the Seven Logoi of the Hermetic and all other
philosophers -- begins
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Madhya is said
of something whose commencement and end are unknown, and Para means infinite.
These expressions all relate to infinitude and to division of time.
** From the
Sanskrit Laya, the point of matter where every differentiation has ceased.
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the differentiation
of the elements which enter into the constitution of our Solar System. It has
often been asked what was the exact definition of Fohat and his powers and
functions, as he seems to exercise those of a Personal God as understood in the
popular religions. The answer has just been given in the comment on Stanza V.
As well said in the Bhagavadgita Lectures, "The whole Kosmos must
necessarily exist in the One Source of energy from which this light (Fohat)
emanates." Whether we count the principles in Kosmos and man as seven or
only as four, the forces of, and in, physical Nature are Seven; and it is
stated by the same authority that "Pragna, or the capacity of perception,
exists in seven different aspects corresponding to the seven conditions of matter"
(Personal and impersonal God). For, "just as a human being is composed of
seven principles, differentiated matter in the Solar System exists in seven
different conditions" (ibid). So does Fohat.* He is One and Seven, and on
the Cosmic plane is behind all such manifestations as light, heat, sound,
adhesion, etc., etc., and is the "spirit" of ELECTRICITY, which is
the LIFE of the Universe. As an abstraction, we call it the ONE LIFE; as an
objective and evident Reality, we speak of a septenary scale of manifestation,
which begins at the upper rung with the One Unknowable CAUSALITY, and ends as
Omnipresent Mind and Life immanent in every atom of Matter. Thus, while science
speaks of its evolution through brute matter, blind force, and senseless
motion, the Occultists point to intelligent LAW and sentient LIFE, and add that
Fohat is the guiding Spirit of all this. Yet he is no personal god at all, but
the emanation of those other Powers behind him whom the Christians call the
"Messengers" of their God (who is in reality only the Elohim, or
rather one of the Seven Creators called Elohim), and we, the "Messenger of
the primordial Sons of Life and Light."
(b.) The
"Elementary Germs" with which he fills Sien-Tchan (the
"Universe") from Tien-Sin (the "Heaven of Mind," literally,
or that which is absolute) are the Atoms of Science and the Monads of Leibnitz.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
*
"Fohat" has several meanings. (See Stanza V., Commentary et infra).
He is called the "Builder of the Builders," the Force that he
personifies having formed our Septenary chain.
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STANZA VI. --
Continued.
3. OF THE SEVEN
(elements) -- FIRST ONE MANIFESTED, SIX CONCEALED; TWO MANIFESTED -- FIVE
CONCEALED; THREE MANIFESTED -- FOUR CONCEALED; FOUR PRODUCED -- THREE HIDDEN; FOUR
AND ONE TSAN (fraction) REVEALED -- TWO AND ONE HALF CONCEALED; SIX TO BE
MANIFESTED -- ONE LAID ASIDE (a). LASTLY, SEVEN SMALL WHEELS REVOLVING; ONE
GIVING BIRTH TO THE OTHER (b).
(a.) Although
these Stanzas refer to the whole Universe after a Mahapralaya (universal
destruction), yet this sentence, as any student of Occultism may see, refers
also by analogy to the evolution and final formation of the primitive (though
compound) Seven Elements on our Earth. Of these, four elements are now fully
manifested, while the fifth -- Ether -- is only partially so, as we are hardly
in the second half of the Fourth Round, and consequently the fifth Element will
manifest fully only in the Fifth Round. The Worlds, including our own, were of
course, as germs, primarily evolved from the ONE Element in its second stage
("Father-Mother," the differentiated World's Soul, not what is termed
the "Over-Soul" by Emerson), whether we call it, with modern Science,
Cosmic dust and Fire Mist, or with Occultism -- Akasa, Jivatma, divine Astral
Light, or the "Soul of the World." But this first stage of Evolution
was in due course of time followed by the next. No world, as no heavenly body,
could be constructed on the objective plane, had not the Elements been
sufficiently differentiated already from their primeval Ilus, resting in Laya.
The latter term is a synonym of Nirvana. It is, in fact, the Nirvanic
dissociation of all substances, merged after a life-cycle into the latency of
their primary conditions. It is the luminous but bodiless shadow of the matter
that was, the realm of negativeness -- wherein lie latent during their period
of rest the active Forces of the Universe. Now, speaking of Elements, it is
made the standing reproach of the Ancients, that they "supposed their Elements
simple and undecomposable."* Once more this is an unwarrantable state-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The shades of
our pre-historical ancestors might return the compliment to modern physicists,
now that new discoveries in chemistry have led Mr. Crookes, F.R.S., to admit
that Science is yet a thousand leagues from the knowledge of the compound
nature of the simplest molecule. From him we learn that such a thing as a
really simple [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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ment; as, at any
rate, their initiated philosophers can hardly come under such an imputation,
since it is they who have invented allegories and religious myths from the
beginning. Had they been ignorant of the Heterogeneity of their Elements they
would have had no personifications of Fire, Air, Water, Earth, and AEther;
their Cosmic gods and goddesses would never have been blessed with such
posterity, with so many sons and daughters, elements born from and within each
respective Element. Alchemy and occult phenomena would have been a delusion and
a snare, even in theory, had the Ancients been ignorant of the potentialities
and correlative functions and attributes of every element that enters into the
composition of Air, Water, Earth, and even Fire -- the latter a terra incognita
to this day to modern Science, which is obliged to call it Motion, evolution of
light and heat, state of ignition, -- defining it by its outward aspects in
short, and remaining ignorant of its nature. But that which
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] molecule entirely homogeneous is terra incognita
in chemistry. "Where are we to draw the line?" he asks; "is
there no way out of this perplexity? Must we either make the elementary
examinations so stiff that only 60 or 70 candidates can pass, or must we open
the examination doors so wide that the number of admissions is limited only by
the number of applicants?" And then the learned gentleman gives striking
instances. He says: "Take the case of yttrium. It has its definite atomic
weight, it behaved in every respect as a simple body, an element, to which we
might indeed add, but from which we could not take away. Yet this yttrium, this
supposed homogeneous whole, on being submitted to a certain method of fractionation,
is resolved into portions not absolutely identical among themselves, and
exhibiting a gradation of properties. Or take the case of didymium. Here was a
body betraying all the recognised characters of an element. It had been
separated with much difficulty from other bodies which approximated closely to
it in their properties, and during this crucial process it had undergone very
severe treatment and very close scrutiny. But then came another chemist, who,
treating this assumed homogeneous body by a peculiar process of fractionation,
resolved it into the two bodies praseodymium and neodymium, between which
certain distinctions are perceptible. Further, we even now have no certainty
that neodymium and praseodymium are simple bodies. On the contrary, they
likewise exhibit symptoms of splitting up. Now, if one supposed element on
proper treatment is thus found to comprise dissimilar molecules, we are surely
warranted in asking whether similar results might not be obtained in other
elements, perhaps in all elements, if treated in the right way. We may even ask
where the process of sorting-out is to stop -- a process which of course
pre-supposes variations between the individual molecules of each species. And
in these successive separations we naturally find bodies approaching more and
more closely to each other." (Presidential address before the Royal
Society of Chemists, March, 1888.)
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modern Science
seems to fail to perceive is that, differentiated as may have been those simple
chemical atoms -- which archaic philosophy called "the creators of their
respective Parents," fathers, brothers, husbands of their mothers, and
those mothers the daughters of their own sons, like Aditi and Daksha, for
example -- differentiated as these elements were in the beginning, still, they
were not the compound bodies known to science, as they are now. Neither Water,
Air, Earth (synonym for solids generally) existed in their present form,
representing the three states of matter alone recognised by Science; for all
these are the productions already recombined by the atmospheres of globes
completely formed -- even to fire -- so that in the first periods of the
earth's formation they were something quite sui generis. Now that the
conditions and laws ruling our solar system are fully developed; and that the
atmosphere of our earth, as of every other globe, has become, so to say, a
crucible of its own, Occult Science teaches that there is a perpetual exchange
taking place in space of molecules, or of atoms rather, correlating, and thus
changing their combining equivalents on every planet. Some men of Science, and those
among the greatest physicists and chemists, begin to suspect this fact, which
has been known for ages to the Occultists. The spectroscope only shows the
probable similarity (on external evidence) of terrestrial and sidereal
substance; it is unable to go any farther, or to show whether atoms gravitate
towards one another in the same way and under the same conditions as they are
supposed to do on our planet, physically and chemically. The scale of
temperature, from the highest degree to the lowest that can be conceived of,
may be imagined to be one and the same in and for the whole Universe;
nevertheless, its properties, other than those of dissociation and
reassociation, differ on every planet; and thus atoms enter into new forms of
existence, undreamt of, and incognizable to, physical Science. As already
expressed in "Five Years of Theosophy," the essence of Cometary
matter, for instance, "is totally different from any of the chemical or
physical characteristics with which the greatest chemists and physicists of the
earth are acquainted" (p. 242). And even that matter, during rapid passage
through our atmosphere, undergoes a certain change in its nature. Thus not
alone the elements of our planets, but even those of all its sisters in the
Solar System, differ as widely from each other in their combinations, as from
the Cosmic elements beyond our
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Solar limits.*
Therefore, they cannot be taken as a standard for comparison with the same in
other worlds.** Enshrined in their virgin, pristine state within the bosom of
the Eternal Mother, every atom born beyond the threshold of her realm is doomed
to incessant differentiation. "The Mother sleeps, yet is ever
breathing." And every breath sends out into the plane of manifestation her
Protean products, which, carried on by the wave of the efflux, are scattered by
Fohat, and driven toward and beyond this or another planetary atmosphere. Once
caught by the latter, the atom is lost; its pristine purity is gone for ever,
unless Fate dissociates it by leading it to "a current of EFFLUX" (an
occult term meaning quite a different process from that which the ordinary term
implies); when it may be carried once more to the borderland where it had
perished, and taking its flight, not into Space above but into Space within, it
will be brought under a state of differential equilibrium and happily re-absorbed.
Were a truly learned Occultist-alchemist to write the "Life and Adventures
of an Atom" he would secure thereby the eternal scorn of the modern
chemist, perchance also his subsequent
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This is again
corroborated by the same man of science in the same lecture, who quotes Clerk
Maxwell, saying "that the elements are not absolutely homogeneous."
He writes: "It is difficult to conceive of selection and elimination of
intermediate varieties, for where can these eliminated molecules have gone to,
if, as we have reason to believe, the hydrogen, &c. of the fixed stars is
composed of molecules identical in all respects with our own." And he adds:
"In the first place we may call in question this absolute molecular
identity, since we have hitherto had no means for coming to a conclusion save
the means furnished by the spectroscope, while it is admitted that, for
accurately comparing and discriminating the spectra of two bodies, they should
be examined under identical states of temperature, pressure, and all other
physical conditions. We have certainly seen, in the spectrum of the sun, rays
which we have not been able to identify."
** "Each
world has its Fohat, who is omnipresent in his own sphere of action. But there
are as many Fohats as there are worlds, each varying in power and degree of
manifestations. The individual Fohats make one Universal, Collective Fohat --
the aspect-Entity of the one absolute Non-Entity, which is absolute Be-Ness,
'SAT.' "Millions and billions of worlds are produced at every
Manvantara" -- it is said. Therefore there must be many Fohats, whom we
consider as conscious and intelligent Forces. This, no doubt, to the disgust of
scientific minds. Nevertheless the Occultists, who have good reasons for it,
consider all the forces of Nature as veritable, though supersensuous, states of
Matter; and as possible objects of perception to Beings endowed with the
requisite senses.
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gratitude.*
However it may be, "The Breath of the Father-Mother issues cold and
radiant and gets hot and corrupt, to cool once more, and be purified in the
eternal bosom of inner Space," says the Commentary. Man absorbs cold pure
air on the mountain-top, and throws it out impure, hot and transformed. Thus --
the higher atmosphere being the mouth, and the lower one the lungs of every
globe -- the man of our planet breathes only the refuse of "Mother";
therefore, "he is doomed to die on it."**
(b) The process
referred to as "the small wheels giving birth, one to the other,"
takes place in the sixth region from above, and on the plane of the most
material world of all in the manifested Kosmos -- our terrestrial plane. These
"Seven Wheels" are our planetary chain (see Commentary Nos. 5 and 6).
By "Wheels" the various spheres and centres of forces are generally
meant; but in this case they refer to our septenary ring.
-------
STANZA VI. --
Continued.
4. HE BUILDS
THEM IN THE LIKENESS OF OLDER WHEELS (worlds), PLACING THEM ON THE IMPERISHABLE
CENTRES (a).
HOW DOES FOHAT
BUILD THEM? HE COLLECTS THE FIERY DUST. HE MAKES BALLS OF FIRE, RUNS THROUGH
THEM AND ROUND THEM, INFUSING LIFE THEREINTO; THEN SETS THEM INTO MOTION, SOME
ONE, SOME THE OTHER WAY. THEY ARE COLD -- HE MAKES THEM HOT. THEY ARE DRY -- HE
MAKES THEM MOIST. THEY SHINE -- HE FANS AND COOLS THEM (b).
THUS ACTS FOHAT
FROM ONE Twilight TO THE OTHER DURING SEVEN ETERNITIES.***
(a) The Worlds
are built "in the likeness of older Wheels" -- i.e., those that
existed in preceding Manvantaras and went into Pralaya,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Indeed, if
such an imaginary Chemist happened to be intuitional, and would for a moment
step out of the habitual groove of strictly "Exact Science," as the
Alchemists of old did, he might be repaid for his audacity.
** He who would
allotropise sluggish oxygen into Ozone to a measure of alchemical activity,
reducing it to its pure essence (for which there are means), would discover
thereby a substitute for an "Elixir of Life" and prepare it for
practical use.
*** A period of
311,040,000,000,000 years, according to Brahminical calculations.
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because the LAW
for the birth, growth, and decay of everything in Kosmos, from the Sun to the
glow-worm in the grass, is ONE. It is an everlasting work of perfection with
every new appearance, but the Substance-Matter and Forces are all one and the
same. But this LAW acts on every planet through minor and varying laws. The
"imperishable Laya Centres" have a great importance, and their
meaning must be fully understood if we would have a clear conception of the
Archaic Cosmogony, whose theories have now passed into Occultism. At present,
one thing may be stated. The worlds are built neither upon, nor over, nor in
the Laya centres, the zero-point being a condition, not any mathematical point.
(b) Bear in mind
that Fohat, the constructive Force of Cosmic Electricity, is said,
metaphorically, to have sprung like Rudra from Brahma "from the brain of
the Father and the bosom of the Mother," and then to have metamorphosed
himself into a male and a female, i.e., polarity, into positive and negative electricity.
He has seven sons who are his brothers; and Fohat is forced to be born time
after time whenever any two of his son-brothers indulge in too close contact --
whether an embrace or a fight. To avoid this, he binds together and unites
those of unlike nature and separates those of similar temperaments. This, of
course, relates, as any one can see, to electricity generated by friction and
to the law involving attraction between two objects of unlike, and repulsion
between those of like polarity. The Seven "Sons-brothers," however,
represent and personify the seven forms of Cosmic magnetism called in practical
Occultism the "Seven Radicals," whose co-operative and active progeny
are, among other energies, Electricity, Magnetism, Sound, Light, Heat,
Cohesion, etc. Occult Science defines all these as Super-sensuous effects in
their hidden behaviour, and as objective phenomena in the world of senses; the
former requiring abnormal faculties to perceive them -- the latter, our
ordinary physical senses. They all pertain to, and are the emanations of, still
more supersensuous spiritual qualities, not personated by, but belonging to,
real and conscious CAUSES. To attempt a description of such ENTITIES would be
worse than useless. The reader must bear in mind that, according to our
teaching which regards this phenomenal Universe as a great Illusion, the nearer
a body is to the UNKNOWN SUBSTANCE, the more it approaches reality, as being
removed the farther
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from this world
of Maya. Therefore, though the molecular constitution of their bodies is not
deducible from their manifestations on this plane of consciousness, they
nevertheless (from the standpoint of the adept Occultist) possess a distinctive
objective if not material structure, in the relatively noumenal -- as opposed
to the phenomenal -- Universe. Men of science may term them Force or Forces
generated by matter, or "modes of its motion," if they will;
Occultism sees in the effects "Elemental" (forces), and, in the
direct causes producing them, intelligent DIVINE Workmen. The intimate
connection of those Elementals (guided by the unerring hand of the Rulers) --
their correlation we might call it -- with the elements of pure Matter, results
in our terrestrial phenomena, such as light, heat, magnetism, etc., etc. Of
course we shall never agree with the American Substantialists* who call every
Force and Energy -- whether Light, Heat, Electricity or Cohesion -- an
"Entity"; for this would be equivalent to calling the noise produced
by the rolling of the wheels of a vehicle an Entity -- thus confusing and
identifying that "noise" with the driver outside, and the guiding
Master Intelligence within the vehicle. But we certainly give that name to the
"drivers" and to these guiding Intelligences -- the ruling Dhyan
Chohans, as shown. The "Elementals," the Nature-Forces, are the
acting, though invisible, or rather imperceptible, secondary Causes and in
themselves the effects of primary Causes behind the Veil of all terrestrial
phenomena. Electricity, light, heat, etc., have been aptly termed the
"Ghost or Shadow of Matter in Motion," i.e., supersensuous states of
matter whose effects only we are able to cognize. To expand, then, the simile
given above. The sensation of light is like the sound of the rolling wheels --
a purely phenomenal effect, having no existence outside the observer; the
proximate exciting cause of the sensation is comparable to the driver -- a
supersensuous state of matter in motion, a Nature-Force or Elemental. But,
behind even this, stand -- just as the owner of the carriage directs the driver
from within -- the higher and noumenal causes, the Intelligences from whose
essence radiate these States of "Mother," generating the countless
milliards of Elementals or psychic Nature-Spirits, just as every drop of water
generates its physical
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See
"Scientific Arena," a monthly Journal devoted to current
philosophical teaching and its bearing upon the religious thought of the Age.
New York: A. Wilford Hall, Ph.D., LL.D., Editor. (1886, July, August, and
September.)
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infinitesimal
Infusoria. (See "Gods, Monads, and Atoms," in Part III.) It is Fohat
who guides the transfer of the principles from one planet to the other, from
one star to another -- child-star. When a planet dies, its informing principles
are transferred to a laya or sleeping centre, with potential but latent energy
in it, which is thus awakened into life and begins to form itself into a new
sidereal body. (Vide infra, "A Few Theosophical Misconceptions,
etc.")
It is most
remarkable that, while honestly confessing their entire ignorance of the true
Nature of even terrestrial matter -- primordial substance being regarded more
as a dream than as a sober reality -- the physicists should set themselves up
as judges, nevertheless, of that matter, and claim to know what it is able and
is not able to do, in various combinations. Scientists know it (matter) hardly
skin-deep, and yet they will dogmatise. It is "a mode of motion" and
nothing else. But the force that is inherent in a living person's breath, when
blowing a speck of dust from the table, is also, and undeniably, "a mode
of motion"; and it is as undeniably not a quality of the matter, or the
particles of that speck, and it emanates from the living and thinking Entity
that breathed, whether the impulse originated consciously or unconsciously.
Indeed, to endow matter -- something of which nothing is known so far -- with
an inherent quality called Force, of the nature of which still less is known,
is to create a far more serious difficulty than that which lies in the
acceptation of the intervention of our "Nature-Spirits" in every
natural phenomenon.
The Occultists,
who do not say -- if they would express themselves correctly -- that matter,
but only the substance or essence of matter, is indestructible and eternal,
(i.e., the Root of all, Mulaprakriti): assert that all the so-called Forces of
Nature, Electricity, Magnetism, Light, Heat, etc., etc., far from being modes
of motion of material particles, are in esse, i.e., in their ultimate
constitution, the differentiated aspects of that Universal Motion which is
discussed and explained in the first pages of this volume (See Proem). When
Fohat is said to produce "Seven Laya Centres," it means that for
formative or creative purposes, the GREAT LAW (Theists may call it God) stops,
or rather modifies its perpetual motion on seven invisible points within the
area of the manifested Universe. "The great Breath digs through Space
seven holes into Laya to cause them to circumgyrate during Manvantara"
(Occult Catechism). We
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have said that
Laya is what Science may call the Zero-point or line; the realm of absolute
negativeness, or the one real absolute Force, the NOUMENON of the Seventh State
of that which we ignorantly call and recognise as "Force"; or again
the Noumenon of Undifferentiated Cosmic Substance which is itself an
unreachable and unknowable object to finite perception; the root and basis of
all states of objectivity and subjectivity too; the neutral axis, not one of
the many aspects, but its centre. It may serve to elucidate the meaning if we
attempt to imagine a neutral centre -- the dream of those who would discover
perpetual motion. A "neutral centre" is, in one aspect, the limiting
point of any given set of senses. Thus, imagine two consecutive planes of
matter as already formed; each of these corresponding to an appropriate set of
perceptive organs. We are forced to admit that between these two planes of
matter an incessant circulation takes place; and if we follow the atoms and
molecules of (say) the lower in their transformation upwards, these will come
to a point where they pass altogether beyond the range of the faculties we are
using on the lower plane. In fact, to us the matter of the lower plane there
vanishes from our perception into nothing -- or rather it passes on to the
higher plane, and the state of matter corresponding to such a point of
transition must certainly possess special and not readily discoverable
properties. Such "Seven Neutral Centres,"* then, are produced by
Fohat, who, when, as Milton has it --
"Fair
foundations (are) laid whereon to build . . ."
quickens matter
into activity and evolution.
The Primordial
Atom (anu) cannot be multiplied either in its pregenetic state, or its
primogeneity; therefore it is called "SUM TOTAL," figuratively, of
course, as that "SUM TOTAL" is boundless. (See Addendum to this
Book.) That which is the abyss of nothingness to the physicist, who knows only
the world of visible causes and effects, is the boundless Space of the Divine
Plenum to the Occultist. Among many other objections to the doctrine of an
endless evolution and re-involution (or re-absorption) of the Kosmos, a process
which, according to the Brahminical and Esoteric Doctrine, is without a
beginning or an end, the Occultist is told that it cannot be, since "by
all the admissions of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Such, we
believe, is the name applied by Mr. Keely, of Philadelphia, the inventor of the
famous "Motor" -- destined, as his admirers have hoped, to
revolutionise the motor power of the world -- to what he again calls the
"Etheric Centres."
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modern
scientific philosophy it is a necessity of Nature to run down." If the
tendency of Nature "to run down" is to be considered so forcible an
objection to Occult Cosmogony, "How," we may ask, "do your
Positivists and Free-thinkers and Scientists account for the phalanx around us
of active stellar systems?" They had eternity to "run down" in;
why, then, is not the Kosmos a huge inert mass? Even the moon is only
hypothetically believed to be a dead planet, "run down," and
astronomy does not seem to be acquainted with many such dead planets.* The
query is unanswerable. But apart from this it must be noted that the idea of
the amount of "transformable energy" in our little system coming to
an end is based purely on the fallacious conception of a "white-hot,
incandescent Sun" perpetually radiating away his heat without compensation
into Space. To this we reply that nature runs down and disappears from the
objective plane, only to re-emerge after a time of rest out of the subjective
and to reascend once more. Our Kosmos and Nature will run down only to reappear
on a more perfect plane after every PRALAYA. The matter of the Eastern
philosophers is not the "matter" and Nature of the Western
metaphysicians. For what is Matter? And above all, what is our scientific
philosophy but that which was so justly and so politely defined by Kant as
"the Science of the limits to our Knowledge"? Where have the many
attempts made by Science to bind, to connect, and define all the phenomena of
organic life by mere physical and chemical manifestations, brought it to? To
speculation generally -- mere soap-bubbles, that burst one after the other
before the men of Science were permitted to discover real facts. All this would
have been avoided, and the progress of knowledge would have proceeded with
gigantic strides, had only Science and its philosophy abstained from accepting
hypotheses on the mere one-sided Knowledge of their Matter.**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The moon is
dead only so far as regards her inner "principles" -- i.e.,
psychically and spiritually, however absurd the statement may seem. Physically,
she is only as a semi-paralysed body may be. She is aptly referred to in
Occultism as the "insane mother," the great sidereal lunatic.
** The instance
of Uranus and Neptune, whose satellites, four and one respectively, revolved,
it was thought, in their orbits from East to West, whereas all the other
satellites rotate from West to East, is a very good one, as showing how
unreliable are all a priori speculations even when based on the strictest
mathematical analysis. The famous hypothesis of the formation of our Solar
System out of the nebulous rings, put [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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If no physical
intellect is capable of counting the grains of sand covering a few miles of
sea-shore; or to fathom the ultimate nature and essence of those grains,
palpable and visible on the palm of the naturalist, how can any materialist
limit the laws changing the conditions and being of the atoms in primordial
chaos, or know anything certain about the capabilities and potency of their
atoms and molecules before and after their formation into worlds? These
changeless and eternal molecules -- far thicker in space than the grains on the
ocean shore -- may differ in their constitution along the line of their planes
of existence, as the soul-substance differs from its vehicle, the body. Each
atom has seven planes of being or existence, we are taught; and each plane is
governed by its specific laws of evolution and absorption. Ignorant of any,
even approximate, chronological data from which to start in attempting to
decide the age of our planet or the origin of the solar system, astronomers,
geologists, and physicists are drifting with each new hypothesis farther and
farther away from the shores of fact into the fathomless depths of speculative
ontology.* The Law of Analogy in the plan of structure between the trans-Solar
systems and the intra-Solar planets, does not necessarily bear upon the finite
conditions to which every visible body is subject, in this our plane of being.
In Occult Science this law is the first and most important key to Cosmic
physics; but it has to be studied in its minutest details and, "to be
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] forward by Kant and Laplace, was chiefly based
on the above fact that all the planets revolved in the same direction. It is on
this fact, mathematically demonstrated during the time of Laplace, that this
great astronomer, calculating on the theory of probabilities, offered to bet
three milliards to one that the next planet discovered would have in its system
the same peculiarity of motion Eastward. The immutable laws of scientific
mathematics got "worsted by further experiments and observations," it
was said. This idea of Laplace's mistake prevails generally to this day; but
some astronomers have finally succeeded in demonstrating (?) that the mistake
had been in accepting Laplace's assertion for a mistake; and steps to correct
it without attracting general attention to the bevue are now being taken. Many
such unpleasant surprises are in store for hypotheses of even a purely physical
character. What further disillusions, then, may there not be in questions of a
transcendental, Occult Nature? At any rate, Occultism teaches that the
so-called "reverse rotation" is a fact.
* The
Occultists, having most perfect faith in their own exact records, astronomical
and mathematical, calculate the age of Humanity, and assert that the latter (as
separate sexes) has existed in this Round just 18,618,727 years, as the
Brahmanical teachings and even some Hindu calendars declare.
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turned seven
times," before one comes to understand it. Occult philosophy is the only
science that can teach it. How, then, can anyone hang the truth or the untruth
of the Occultist's proposition that "the Kosmos is eternal in its
unconditioned collectivity, and finite but in its conditioned
manifestations" on this one-sided physical enunciation that "it is a
necessity of Nature to run down?"
---------------------
With these
verses -- the 4th Sloka of Stanza VI. -- ends that portion of the Stanzas which
relates to the Universal Cosmogony after the last Mahapralaya or Universal destruction,
which, when it comes, sweeps out of Space every differentiated thing, Gods as
atoms, like so many dry leaves. From this verse onwards, the Stanzas are
concerned only with our Solar System in general, with the planetary chains
therein, inferentially, and with the history of our globe (the 4th and its
chain) especially. All the Stanzas and verses which follow in this Book I.
refer only to the evolution of, and on, our Earth. With regard to the latter, a
strange tenet -- strange from the modern scientific stand-point only, of course
-- is held, which ought to be made known.
But before
entirely new and rather startling theories are presented to the reader, they
must be prefaced by a few words of explanation. This is absolutely necessary,
as these theories clash not only with modern science, but contradict, on
certain points, earlier statements made by other Theosophists, who claim to
base their explanations and renderings of these teachings on the same authority
as we do.*
This may give
rise to the idea that there is a decided contradiction between the expounders
of the same doctrine; whereas the difference, in reality, arises from the
incompleteness of the information given to earlier writers, who thus drew some
erroneous conclusions and indulged in premature speculations, in their
endeavour to present a complete system to the public. Thus the reader, who is
already a student of Theosophy, must not be surprised to find in these pages
the rectification of certain statements made in various Theosophical works, and
also the explanation of certain points which have remained obscure, because
they were necessarily left incomplete. Many are the questions upon which even
the author of "Esoteric Buddhism" (the best and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Esoteric
Buddhism" and "Man."
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most accurate of
all such works) has not touched. On the other hand, even he has introduced
several mistaken notions which must now be presented in their true mystic
light, as far as the present writer is capable of doing so.
Let us then make
a short break between the Slokas just explained and those which follow, for the
Cosmic periods which separate them are of immense duration. This will afford us
ample time to take a bird's eye view of some points pertaining to the Secret
Doctrine, which have been presented to the public under a more or less
uncertain and sometimes mistaken light.
-------
A FEW EARLY
THEOSOPHICAL MISCONCEPTIONS CONCERNING PLANETS, ROUNDS, AND MAN.
Among the eleven
Stanzas omitted* there is one which gives a full description of the formation
of the planetary chains one after another, after the first Cosmic and Atomic
differentiation had commenced in the primitive Acosmism. It is idle to speak of
"laws arising when Deity prepares to create" for (a) laws or rather
LAW is eternal and uncreated; and (b) that Deity is Law, and vice versa.
Moreover, the one eternal LAW unfolds everything in the (to be) manifested
Nature on a sevenfold principle; among the rest, the countless circular chains
of worlds, composed of seven globes, graduated on the four lower planes of the
world of formation (the three others belonging to the Archetypal Universe). Out
of these seven only one, the lowest and the most material of those globes, is
within our plane or means of perception, the six others lying outside of it and
being therefore invisible to the terrestrial eye. Every such chain of worlds is
the progeny and creation of another, lower, and dead chain -- its
reincarnation, so to say. To make it clearer: we are told of the planets -- of
which seven only were held as sacred, as being ruled by the highest regents or
gods, and not at all because the ancients knew nothing of the others** -- that
each of these, whether known or unknown, is a septenary, as is the chain to
which the Earth belongs (see "Esoteric
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See the note
which follows the Commentary on the preceding page, and also the summary of the
Stanzas in the Proem, page 22.
** Many more
planets are enumerated in the Secret Books than in modern astronomical works.
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Buddhism").
For instance, all such planets as Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, etc.,
etc., or our Earth, are as visible to us as our globe, probably, is to the
inhabitants of the other planets, if any, because they are all on the same
plane; while the superior fellow-globes of these planets are on other planes
quite outside that of our terrestrial senses. As their relative position is
given further on, and also in the diagram appended to the Comments on Verse 7
of Stanza VI., a few words of explanation is all that is needed at present.
These invisible companions correspond curiously to that which we call "the
principles in Man." The seven are on three material planes and one
spiritual plane, answering to the three Upadhis (material bases) and one
spiritual vehicle (Vahan) of our seven principles in the human division. If,
for the sake of a clearer mental conception, we imagine the human principles to
be arranged as in the following scheme, we shall obtain the annexed diagram of
correspondences:--
HUMAN
PRINCIPLES.
(1) Spirit*
(2) Soul
Vehicle of
Spirit
(3) Mind
(4) Animal Soul
Upadhi of Mind
(5) Life
(6) Astral Body
Upadhi of Life
(7) Physical
Body**
The Upadhi of
all the 6 Princ.
PLANETARY
DIVISION.
Descending into
matter
1
2
3
4 D Our Earth or
any (Visible) Planet
Ascending to
Spirit
4 D Our Earth or
any (Visible) Planet
5
6
7
DIAGRAM I.
[[above is in
diagram format in the original text]]
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* As we are
proceeding here from Universals to Particulars, instead of using the inductive or
Aristotelean method, the numbers are reversed. Spirit is enumerated the first
instead of seventh, as is usually done, but, in truth, ought not to be done.
** Or as usually
named after the manner of Esoteric Buddhism and others: 1, Atma; 2, Buddhi (or
Spiritual Soul); 3, Manas (Human Soul); 4, Kama Rupa (Vehicle of Desires and
Passions); 5, Linga Sarira; 6, Prana; 7, Sthula Sarira.
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The dark
horizontal lines of the lower planes are the Upadhis in one case, and the
planes in the case of the planetary chain. Of course, as regards the human
principles, the diagram does not place them quite in order, yet it shows the
correspondence and analogy to which attention is now drawn. As the reader will
see, it is a case of descent into matter, the adjustment -- in both the mystic
and the physical senses -- of the two, and their interblending for the great
coming "struggle of life" that awaits both the entities.
"Entity" may be thought a strange term to use in the case of a globe;
but the ancient philosophers, who saw in the earth a huge "animal,"
were wiser in their generation than our modern geologists are in theirs; and
Pliny, who called the Earth our kind nurse and mother, the only element which
is not inimical to man, spoke more truly than Watts, who fancied that he saw in
her the footstool of God. For Earth is only the footstool of man in his
ascension to higher regions; the vestibule --
". . . . .
. . to glorious mansions,
Through which a
moving crowd for ever press."
But this only
shows how admirably the occult philosophy fits everything in Nature, and how
much more logical are its tenets than the lifeless hypothetical speculations of
physical science.
Having learned
thus much, the mystic will be better prepared to understand the occult
teaching, though every formal student of modern science may, and probably will,
regard it as preposterous nonsense. The student of occultism, however, holds
that the theory at present under discussion is far more philosophical and
probable than any other. It is more logical, at any rate, than the theory
recently advanced which made of the moon the projection of a portion of our
Earth extruded when the latter was but a globe in fusion, a molten plastic
mass.*
It is said that
the planetary chains having their "Days" and their
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Says the
author of "Modern Science and Modern Thought," Mr. Samuel Laing:
"The astronomical conclusions are theories based on data so uncertain,
that while in some cases they give results incredibly short, like that of 15
millions of years for the whole past process of formation of the solar system,
in others they give results almost incredibly long, as in that which supposes
the moon to have been thrown off when the Earth was rotating in three hours,
while the utmost actual retardation obtained from observation would require 600
millions of years to make it rotate in twenty-three hours instead of
twenty-four" (p. 48). And if physicists persist, why should the chronology
of the Hindus be laughed at as exaggerated?
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"Nights"
-- i.e., periods of activity or life, and of inertia or death -- and behave in
heaven as do men on Earth: they generate their likes, get old, and become
personally extinct, their spiritual principles only living in their progeny as
a survival of themselves.
Without
attempting the very difficult task of giving out the whole process in all its cosmic
details, enough may be said to give an approximate idea of it. When a planetary
chain is in its last Round, its Globe 1 or A, before finally dying out, sends
all its energy and "principles" into a neutral centre of latent
force, a "laya centre," and thereby informs a new nucleus of
undifferentiated substance or matter, i.e., calls it into activity or gives it
life. Suppose such a process to have taken place in the lunar
"planetary" chain; suppose again, for argument's sake (though Mr. Darwin's
theory quoted below has lately been upset, even if the fact has not yet been
ascertained by mathematical calculation) that the moon is far older than the
Earth. Imagine the six fellow-globes of the moon -- aeons before the first
globe of our seven was evolved -- just in the same position in relation to each
other as the fellow-globes of our chain occupy in regard to our Earth now. (See
in "Esoteric Buddhism," "The Constitution of Man," and the
"Planetary Chain.") And now it will be easy to imagine further Globe
A of the lunar chain informing Globe A of the terrestrial chain, and -- dying;
Globe B of the former sending after that its energy into Globe B of the new
chain; then Globe C of the lunar, creating its progeny sphere C of the terrene
chain; then the Moon (our Satellite*) pouring forth into
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* She is the
satellite, undeniably, but this does not invalidate the theory that she has
given to the Earth all but her corpse. For Darwin's theory to hold good,
besides the hypothesis just upset (vide last footnote), other still more
incongruous speculations had to be invented. The Moon, it is said, has cooled
nearly six times as rapidly as the Earth (Winchell's "World-Life"):
"The Moon, if the earth is 14,000,000 years old since its incrustation, is
only eleven and two thirds millions of years old since that stage . . ."
etc. And if our Moon is but a splash from our Earth, why can no similar
inference be established for the Moons of other planets? The Astronomers
"do not know." Why should Venus and Mercury have no satellites, and
by what, when they exist, were they formed? Because, we say, science has only
one key -- the key of matter -- to open the mysteries of nature withal, while
occult philosophy has seven keys and explains that which science fails to see.
Mercury and Venus have no satellites but they had "parents" just as
the earth had. Both are far older than the Earth and, before the latter reaches
her seventh Round, her mother Moon will have dissolved [[Footnote continued on
next page]]
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the lowest globe
of our planetary ring -- Globe D, our Earth -- all its life, energy and powers;
and, having transferred them to a new centre becoming virtually a dead planet,
in which rotation has almost ceased since the birth of our globe. The Moon is
now the cold residual quantity, the shadow dragged after the new body, into
which her living powers and "principles" are transfused. She now is
doomed for long ages to be ever pursuing the Earth, to be attracted by and to
attract her progeny. Constantly vampirised by her child, she revenges herself
on it by soaking it through and through with the nefarious, invisible, and
poisoned influence which emanates from the occult side of her nature. For she
is a dead, yet a living body. The particles of her decaying corpse are full of
active and destructive life, although the body which they had formed is
soulless and lifeless. Therefore its emanations are at the same time beneficent
and maleficent -- this circumstance finding its parallel on earth in the fact
that the grass and plants are nowhere more juicy and thriving than on the
graves; while at the same time it is the graveyard or corpse-emanations, which
kill. And like all ghouls or vampires, the moon is the friend of the sorcerers
and the foe of the unwary. From the archaic aeons and the later times of the
witches of Thessaly, down to some of the present tantrikas of Bengal, her
nature and properties were known to every Occultist, but have remained a closed
book for physicists.
Such is the moon
from the astronomical, geological, and physical standpoints. As to her
metaphysical and psychic nature it must remain an occult secret in this work,
as it was in the volume on "Esoteric Buddhism," notwithstanding the
rather sanguine statement made therein on p. 113 (5th edition) that "there
is not much mystery left now in the riddle of the eighth sphere." These
are topics, indeed, "on which the adepts are very reserved in their
communications to uninitiated pupils," and since they have, moreover,
never sanctioned or permitted any published speculations upon them, the less
said the better.
Yet without
treading upon the forbidden ground of the "eighth sphere," it may be
useful to state some additional facts with regard to ex-monads of the lunar
chain -- the "lunar ancestors" -- as they play a
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] into thin air, as the "Moons" of the
other planets have, or have not, as the case may be, since there are planets
which have several moons -- a mystery again which no OEdipus of astronomy has
solved.
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leading part in
the coming Anthropogenesis. This brings us directly to the septenary
constitution of man; and as some discussion has arisen of late about the best
classification to be adopted for the division of the microcosmic entity, two
systems are now appended with a view to facilitate comparison. The subjoined
short article is from the pen of Mr. T. Subba Row, a learned Vedantin scholar.
He prefers the Brahmanical division of the Raja Yoga, and from a metaphysical
point of view he is quite right. But, as it is a question of simple choice and
expediency, we hold in this work to the "time-honoured"
classification of the trans-Himalayan "Arhat Esoteric School." The
following table and its explanatory text are reprinted from the
"Theosophist" of Madras, and they are also contained in "Five
Years of Theosophy":--
SEPTENARY
DIVISION IN DIFFERENT INDIAN SYSTEMS.
"We give
below in a tabular form the classifications adopted by the Buddhist and
Vedantic teachers of the principles of man:--
CLASSIFICATION
IN ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.
1. Sthula
Sarira.
2. Prana.**
3. The vehicle
of Prana.***
4. Kama Rupa.
5. Mind
(a) Volitions
and feelings, etc.
(b) Vignanam.
6. Spiritual
Soul.*****
7. Atma.
VEDANTIC
CLASSIFICATION.
[[1.]] Annamaya
kosa.*
[[2., 3.]]
Pranamaya kosa.
[[4., 5.(a)]]
Manomaya kosa.
[[5.(b)]]
Vignanamaya kosa.
[[6.]]
Anandamaya kosa.
[[7.]] Atma.
CLASSIFICATION
IN TARAKA RAJA YOGA
[[1., 2.]]
Sthulopadhi.****
[[5.(a), (b)]]
Sukshmopadhi.
[[6.]]
Karanopadhi.
[[7.]] Atma.
[[above is in
table format in the original text.]]
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Kosa (kosha)
is "Sheath" literally, the sheath of every principle.
**
"Life."
*** The astral
body or Linga Sarira.
****
Sthula-Upadhi, or basis of the principle.
***** Buddhi.
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From the
foregoing table it will be seen that the third principle in the Buddhist
classification is not separately mentioned in the Vedantic division, as it is
merely the vehicle of Prana. It will also be seen that the Fourth principle is
included in the third Kosa (Sheath), as the same principle is but the vehicle
of will-power, which is but an energy of the mind. It must also be noticed that
the Vignanamaya Kosa is considered to be distinct from the Manomaya Kosa, as a
division is made after death between the lower part of the mind, as it were,
which has a closer affinity with the fourth principle than with the sixth; and
its higher part, which attaches itself to the latter, and which is, in fact,
the basis for the higher spiritual individuality of man.
We may also here
point out to our readers that the classification mentioned in the last column
is, for all practical purposes, connected with Raja Yoga, the best and
simplest. Though there are seven principles in man, there are but three
distinct Upadhis (bases), in each of which his Atma may work independently of
the rest. These three Upadhis can be separated by an Adept without killing
himself. He cannot separate the seven principles from each other without
destroying his constitution."
The student will
now be better prepared to see that between the three Upadhis of the Raja Yoga
and its Atma, and our three Upadhis, Atma, and the additional three divisions,
there is in reality but very little difference. Moreover, as every adept in
cis-Himalayan or trans-Himalayan India, of the Patanjali, the Aryasanga or the
Mahayana schools, has to become a Raja Yogi, he must, therefore, accept the
Taraka Raja classification in principle and theory whatever classification he
resorts to for practical and occult purposes. Thus, it matters very little
whether one speaks of the three Upadhis with their three aspects and Atma, the
eternal and immortal synthesis, or calls them the "seven principles."
For the benefit
of those who may not have read, or, if they have, may not have clearly
understood, in Theosophical writings, the doctrine of the septenary chains of
worlds in the Solar Kosmos, the teaching is briefly thus:--
1. Everything in
the metaphysical as in the physical Universe is septenary. Hence every sidereal
body, every planet, whether visible
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or invisible, is
credited with six companion globes. (See Diagram No. 3, after verse 6 of this
commentary.) The evolution of life proceeds on these seven globes or bodies
from the 1st to the 7th in Seven ROUNDS or Seven Cycles.
2. These globes
are formed by a process which the Occultists call the "rebirth of
planetary chains (or rings)." When the seventh and last Round of one of
such rings has been entered upon, the highest or first globe "A,"
followed by all the others down to the last, instead of entering upon a certain
time of rest -- or "obscuration," as in their previous Rounds -- begins
to die out. The "planetary" dissolution (pralaya) is at hand, and its
hour has struck; each globe has to transfer its life and energy to another
planet. (See diagram No. 2 infra, "The Moon and the Earth.")
3. Our Earth, as
the visible representative of its invisible superior fellow globes, its
"lords" or "principles" (see diagram No. 1), has to live,
as have the others, through seven Rounds. During the first three, it forms and
consolidates; during the fourth it settles and hardens; during the last three
it gradually returns to its first ethereal form: it is spiritualised, so to
say.
4. Its Humanity
develops fully only in the Fourth -- our present Round. Up to this fourth
Life-Cycle, it is referred to as "humanity" only for lack of a more
appropriate term. Like the grub which becomes chrysalis and butterfly, Man, or
rather that which becomes man, passes through all the forms and kingdoms during
the first Round and through all the human shapes during the two following
Rounds. Arrived on our Earth at the commencement of the Fourth in the present
series of life-cycles and races, MAN is the first form that appears thereon,
being preceded only by the mineral and vegetable kingdoms -- even the latter
having to develop and continue its further evolution through man. This will be
explained in Book II. During the three Rounds to come, Humanity, like the globe
on which it lives, will be ever tending to reassume its primeval form, that of
a Dhyan Chohanic Host. Man tends to become a God and then -- GOD, like every other
atom in the Universe.
"Beginning
so early as with the 2nd round, Evolution proceeds already on quite a different
plan. It is only during the 1st round that (heavenly) man becomes a human being
on globe A (rebecomes) a mineral, a plant, an animal, on globe B and C, etc.
The process changes
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entirely from
the second round -- but you have learned prudence . . . and I advise you to say
nothing before the time for saying it has come. . ." (Extract from the
Teacher's letters on various topics.)
5. Every
life-cycle on Globe D (our Earth)* is composed of seven root-races. They
commence with the Ethereal and end with the spiritual on the double line of
physical and moral evolution -- from the beginning of the terrestrial round to
its close. (One is a "planetary round" from Globe A to Globe G, the
seventh; the other, the "globe round," or the terrestrial).
This is very
well described in "Esoteric Buddhism" and needs no further
elucidation for the time being.
6. The first
root-race, i.e., the first "men" on earth (irrespective of form) were
the progeny of the "celestial men," called rightly in Indian
philosophy the "Lunar Ancestors" or the Pitris, of which there are
seven classes or Hierarchies. As all this will be sufficiently explained in the
following sections and in Book II., no more need be said of it here.
But the two
works already mentioned, both of which treat of subjects from the occult
doctrine, need particular notice. "Esoteric Buddhism" is too well
known in Theosophical circles, and even to the outside world, for it to be
necessary to enter at length upon its merits here. It is an excellent book, and
has done still more excellent work. But this does not alter the fact that it
contains some mistaken notions, and that it has led many Theosophists and
lay-readers to form an erroneous conception of the Secret Eastern Doctrines.
Moreover it seems, perhaps, a little too materialistic.
"MAN,"
which came later, was an attempt to present the archaic doctrine from a more
ideal standpoint, to translate some visions in and from the Astral Light, to
render some teachings partly gathered from a Master's thoughts, but
unfortunately misunderstood. This work also speaks of the evolution of the
early Races of men on Earth, and contains some excellent pages of a
philosophical character. But so far it is only an interesting little mystical
romance. It has failed in its mission, because the conditions required for a
correct translation of these visions were not present. Hence the reader must
not wonder if our Volumes contradict these earlier descriptions in several
particulars.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* We are not
concerned with the other Globes in this work except incidentally.
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Esoteric
"Cosmogony" in general, and the evolution of the human Monad
especially, differ so essentially in these two books and in other Theosophical
works written independently by beginners, that it becomes impossible to proceed
with the present work without special mention of these two earlier volumes, for
both have a number of admirers -- "Esoteric Buddhism" especially. The
time has arrived for the explanation of some matters in this direction.
Mistakes have now to be checked by the original teachings and corrected. If one
of the said works has too pronounced a bias toward materialistic science, the
other is decidedly too idealistic, and is, at times, fantastic.
From the doctrine
-- rather incomprehensible to western minds -- which deals with the periodical
"obscurations" and successive "Rounds" of the Globes along
their circular chains, were born the first perplexities and misconceptions. One
of such has reference to the "Fifth-" and even
"Sixth-Rounders." Those who knew that a Round was preceded and
followed by a long Pralaya, a pause of rest which created an impassable gulf
between two Rounds until the time came for a renewed cycle of life, could not
understand the "fallacy" of talking about "fifth and sixth
Rounders" in our Fourth Round. Gautama Buddha, it was held, was a
Sixth-Rounder, Plato and some other great philosophers and minds,
"Fifth-Rounders." How could it be? One Master taught and affirmed that
there were such "Fifth-Rounders" even now on Earth; and though
understood to say that mankind was yet "in the Fourth Round," in
another place he seemed to say that we were in the Fifth. To this an
"apocalyptic answer" was returned by another Teacher:-- "A few
drops of rain do not make a Monsoon, though they presage it." . . .
"No, we are not in the Fifth Round, but Fifth Round men have been coming
in for the last few thousand years." This was worse than the riddle of the
Sphinx! Students of Occultism subjected their brains to the wildest work of
speculation. For a considerable time they tried to outvie OEdipus and reconcile
the two statements. And as the Masters kept as silent as the stony Sphinx
herself, they were accused of inconsistency, "contradiction," and "discrepancies."
But they were simply allowing the speculations to go on, in order to teach a
lesson which the Western mind sorely needs. In their conceit and arrogance, as
in their habit of materializing every metaphysical conception and term without
allowing any margin for Eastern
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metaphor and
allegory, the Orientalists have made a jumble of the Hindu exoteric philosophy,
and the Theosophists were now doing the same with regard to esoteric teachings.
To this day it is evident that the latter have utterly failed to understand the
meaning of the term "Fifth and Sixth Rounders." But it is simply
this: every "Round" brings about a new development and even an entire
change in the mental, psychic, spiritual and physical constitution of man, all
these principles evoluting on an ever ascending scale. Thence it follows that
those persons who, like Confucius and Plato, belonged psychically, mentally and
spiritually to the higher planes of evolution, were in our Fourth Round as the
average man will be in the Fifth Round, whose mankind is destined to find
itself, on this scale of Evolution, immensely higher than is our present
humanity. Similarly Gautama Buddha -- Wisdom incarnate -- was still higher and
greater than all the men we have mentioned, who are called Fifth Rounders,
while Buddha and Sankaracharya are termed Sixth Rounders, allegorically. Thence
again the concealed wisdom of the remark, pronounced at the time
"evasive" -- that a few drops of rain do not make the Monsoon, though
they presage it."
And now the
truth of the remark made in "Esoteric Buddhism" by its author will be
fully apparent:--
"It is impossible,
when the complicated facts of an entirely unfamiliar science are being
presented to untrained minds for the first time, to put them forward with all
their appropriate qualifications . . . and abnormal developments. . . . We must
be content to take the broad rules first and deal with the exceptions
afterwards, and especially is this the case with study, in connection with
which the traditional methods of teaching, generally followed, aim at
impressing every fresh idea on the memory by provoking the perplexity it at
last relieves."
As the author of
the remark was himself, as he says, "an untrained mind" in Occultism,
his own inferences, and his better knowledge of modern astronomical
speculations than of archaic doctrines led him quite naturally, and as
unconsciously to himself, to commit a few mistakes of detail rather than of any
"broad rule." One such will now be noticed. It is a trifling one,
still it is calculated to lead many a beginner into erroneous conceptions. But
as the mistaken notions of the earlier editions were corrected in the
annotations of the fifth edition, so the sixth may be revised and perfected.
There were several reasons
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for such
mistakes. (1) They were due to the necessity under which the teachers laboured
of giving what were considered as "evasive answers": the questions
being too persistently pressed to be left unnoticed, while, on the other hand,
they could only be partially answered. (2) This position notwithstanding, the
confession that "half a loaf is better than no bread" was but too
often misunderstood and hardly appreciated as it ought to have been. As a
result thereof gratuitous speculations were sometimes indulged in by the
European lay-chelas. Among such were (a) the "Mystery of the Eighth
Sphere" in its relation to the Moon; and (b) the erroneous statement that
two of the superior Globes of the terrestrial chain were two of our well-known
planets: "besides the Earth . . . there are only two other worlds of our
chain which are visible. . . . Mars and Mercury. . . ." (Esoteric
Buddhism; p. 136.)
This was a great
mistake. But the blame for it is to be attached as much to the vagueness and
incompleteness of the Master's answer as to the question of the learner itself,
which was equally vague and indefinite.
It was asked:
"What planets, of those known to ordinary science, besides Mercury, belong
to our system of worlds?" Now if by "System of Worlds" our
terrestrial chain or "string" was intended in the mind of the
querist, instead of the "Solar System of Worlds," as it should have
been, then of course the answer was likely to be misunderstood. For the reply
was: "Mars, etc., and four other planets of which astronomy knows nothing.
Neither A, B, nor YZ are known nor can they be seen through physical means
however perfected." This is plain: (a) Astronomy as yet knows nothing in reality
of the planets, neither the ancient ones, nor those discovered in modern times.
(b) No companion planets from A to Z, i.e., no upper globes of any chain in the
Solar System, can be seen.* As to Mars, Mercury, and "the four other
planets," they bear
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* With the
exception of course of all the planets which come fourth in number, as our
earth, the moon, etc., etc. Copies of all the letters ever received or sent, with
the exception of a few private ones -- "in which there was no
teaching" the Master says -- are with the writer. As it was her duty, in
the beginning, to answer and explain certain points not touched upon, it is
more than likely that notwithstanding the many annotations on these copies, the
writer, in her ignorance of English and her fear of saying too much, may have
bungled the information given. She takes the whole blame for it upon herself in
any and every case. But it is impossible for her to allow students to remain
any longer under erroneous impressions, or to believe that the fault lies with
the esoteric system.
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a relation to
Earth of which no master or high Occultist will ever speak, much less explain
the nature.*
Let it now be
distinctly stated, then, that the theory broached is impossible, with or
without the additional evidence furnished by modern Astronomy. Physical Science
can supply corroborative, though still very uncertain, evidence, but only as
regards heavenly bodies on the same plane of materiality as our objective
Universe. Mars and Mercury, Venus and Jupiter, like every hitherto discovered
planet (or those still to be discovered), are all, per se, the representatives
on our plane of such chains. As distinctly stated in one of the numerous
letters of Mr. Sinnett's "Teacher," "there are other and innumerable
Manvantaric chains of globes which bear intelligent Beings both in and outside
our solar system." But neither Mars nor Mercury belong to our chain. They
are, along with the other planets, septenary Units in the great host of
"chains" of our system, and all are as visible as their upper globes
are invisible.
If it is still
argued that certain expressions in the Teacher's letters were liable to
mislead, the answer comes:-- Amen; so it was. The author of "Esoteric
Buddhism" understood it well when he wrote that such are "the
traditional modes of teaching . . . by provoking the perplexity" . . .
they do, or do not relieve -- as the case may be. At all events, if it is urged
that this might have been explained earlier, and the true nature of the planets
given out as they now are, the answer comes that: "it was not found
expedient to do so at the time, as it would have opened the way to a series of
additional questions which could never be answered on account of their esoteric
nature, and thus would only become embarrassing." It had been declared
from the first and has been repeatedly asserted since that (1st) no
Theosophist, not even as an accepted chela -- let alone lay students -- could
expect to have the secret teachings explained to him thoroughly and completely,
before he had irretrievably pledged himself to the Brotherhood and passed
through at least one initiation, because no figures and numbers could be given
to the public, for figures and numbers are the key to the esoteric system. (2.)
That
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In this same
letter the impossibility is distinctly stated:-- . . . "Try to understand
that you are putting me questions pertaining to the highest initiation; that I
can give you (only) a general view, but that I dare not nor will I enter upon
details . . ." wrote one of the Teachers to the author of "Esoteric
Buddhism."
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what was
revealed was merely the esoteric lining of that which is contained in almost
all the exoteric Scriptures of the world-religions -- pre-eminently in the
Brahmanas, and the Upanishads of the Vedas and even in the Puranas. It was a
small portion of what is divulged far more fully now in the present volumes;
and even this is very incomplete and fragmentary.
When the present
work was commenced, the writer, feeling sure that the speculation about Mars
and Mercury was a mistake, applied to the Teachers by letter for explanation
and an authoritative version. Both came in due time, and verbatim extracts from
these are now given.
". . . . .
It is quite correct that Mars is in a state of obscuration at present, and Mercury
just beginning to get out of it. You might add that Venus is in her last Round.
. . . . . . . . . . If neither Mercury nor Venus have satellites, it is because
of the reasons . . . (vide footnote supra, where those reasons are given), and
also because Mars has two satellites to which he has no right. . . . . Phobos,
the supposed INNER satellite, is no satellite at all. As remarked long ago by
Laplace and now by Faye (see COMPTES RENDUS, Tome XC., p. 569), Phobos keeps a
too short periodic time, and therefore there 'must exist some defect in the
mother idea of the theory' as Faye justly observes. . . . . Again, both (Mars
and Mercury) are septenary chains, as independent of the Earth's sidereal lords
and superiors as you are independent of the 'principles' of Daumling (Tom
Thumb) -- which were perhaps his six brothers, with or without night-caps. . .
. . . . . . . 'Gratification of curiosity is the end of knowledge for some
men,' was said by Bacon, who was as right in postulating this truism, as those who
were familiar with it before him were right in hedging off WISDOM from
Knowledge, and tracing limits to that which is to be given out at one time. . .
. Remember:--
'. . . . . . . .
. . . knowledge dwells
In heads replete
with thoughts of other men,
Wisdom in minds
attentive to their own. . . .'
You can never
impress it too profoundly on the minds of those to whom you impart some of the
esoteric teachings. . ."
Again, here are
more extracts from another letter written by the same authority. This time it
is in answer to some objections laid before the Teachers. They are based upon
extremely scientific, and as
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futile,
reasonings about the advisability of trying to reconcile the Esoteric theories
with the speculations of Modern Science, and were written by a young
Theosophist as a warning against the "Secret Doctrine" and in reference
to the same subject. He had declared that if there were such companion Earths
"they must be only a wee bit less material than our globe." How then
was it that they could not be seen? The answer was:--
". . . .
Were psychic and spiritual teachings more fully understood, it would become
next to impossible to even imagine such an incongruity. Unless less trouble is
taken to reconcile the irreconcileable -- that is to say, the metaphysical and
spiritual sciences with physical or natural philosophy, 'natural' being a
synonym to them (men of science) of that matter which falls under the
perception of their corporeal senses -- no progress can be really achieved. Our
Globe, as taught from the first, is at the bottom of the arc of descent, where
the matter of our perceptions exhibits itself in its grossest form. . . . . . .
Hence it only stands to reason that the globes which overshadow our Earth must
be on different and superior planes. In short, as Globes, they are in
CO-ADUNITION but not IN CONSUBSTANTIALITY WITH OUR EARTH and thus pertain to
quite another state of consciousness. Our planet (like all those we see) is
adapted to the peculiar state of its human stock, that state which enables us
to see with our naked eye the sidereal bodies which are co-essential with our
terrene plane and substance, just as their respective inhabitants, the Jovians,
Martians and others can perceive our little world: because our planes of
consciousness, differing as they do in degree but being the same in kind, are
on the same layer of differentiated matter. . . . . What I wrote was 'The minor
Pralaya concerns only our little STRINGS OF GLOBES.' (We called chains
'Strings' in those days of lip-confusion.) . . . 'To such a string our Earth
belongs.' This ought to have shown plainly that the other planets were also
'strings' or CHAINS. . . If he (meaning the objector) would perceive even the
dim silhouette of one of such 'planets' on the higher planes, he has to first
throw off even the thin clouds of the astral matter that stands between him and
the next plane. . . . ."
It becomes
patent why we could not perceive, even with the help of the best earthly
telescopes, that which is outside our world of matter. Those alone, whom we
call adepts, who know how to direct their mental vision and to transfer their
consciousness -- physical and psychic both --
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to other planes
of being, are able to speak with authority on such subjects. And they tell us
plainly:--
"Lead the
life necessary for the acquisition of such knowledge and powers, and Wisdom
will come to you naturally. Whenever your are able to attune your consciousness
to any of the seven chords of 'Universal Consciousness,' those chords that run
along the sounding-board of Kosmos, vibrating from one Eternity to another;
when you have studied thoroughly 'the music of the Spheres,' then only will you
become quite free to share your knowledge with those with whom it is safe to do
so. Meanwhile, be prudent. Do not give out the great Truths that are the
inheritance of the future Races, to our present generation. Do not attempt to
unveil the secret of being and non-being to those unable to see the hidden
meaning of Apollo's HEPTACHORD -- the lyre of the radiant god, in each of the
seven strings of which dwelleth the Spirit, Soul and Astral body of the Kosmos,
whose shell only has now fallen into the hands of Modern Science. . . . . . Be
prudent, we say, prudent and wise, and above all take care what those who learn
from you believe in; lest by deceiving themselves they deceive others . . . . .
for such is the fate of every truth with which men are, as yet, unfamiliar. . .
. Let rather the planetary chains and other super- and sub-cosmic mysteries
remain a dreamland for those who can neither see, nor yet believe that others
can. . . ."
It is to be
regretted that few of us have followed the wise advice; and that many a
priceless pearl, many a jewel of wisdom, has been cast to an enemy unable to
understand its value and who has turned round and rent us.
" 'Let us
imagine,' wrote the same Master to his two 'lay chelas,' as he called the
author of 'Esoteric Buddhism' and another gentleman, his co-student for some
time -- 'let us imagine THAT OUR EARTH IS ONE OF A GROUP OF SEVEN PLANETS OR
MAN-BEARING WORLDS. . . . . . (The SEVEN planets are the sacred planets of
antiquity, and are all septenary.) Now the life-impulse reaches A, or rather
that which is destined to become A, and which so far is but cosmic dust (a
"laya centre") . . etc.' "
In these early
letters, in which the terms had to be invented and words coined, the
"Rings" very often became "Rounds," and the
"Rounds" life-cycles, and vice versa. To a correspondent who called a
"Round" a "World-Ring," the Teacher wrote: "I believe
this will lead to a further confusion. A Round we are agreed to call the
passage
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of a monad from
Globe A to Globe G or Z. . . The 'World-Ring' is correct. . . Advise Mr. . . .
strongly, to agree upon a nomenclature before going any further. . . "
Notwithstanding
this agreement, many mistakes, owing to this confusion, crept into the earliest
teachings. The Races even were occasionally mixed up with the
"Rounds" and "Rings," and led to similar mistakes in
"Man." From the first the Master had written --
"Not being
permitted to give you the whole truth, or divulge the number of isolated
fractions . . . I am unable to satisfy you."
This in answer
to the questions, "If we are right, then the total existence prior to the
man-period is 637," etc., etc. To all the queries relating to figures, the
reply was, "Try to solve the problem of 777 incarnations. . . . Though I
am obliged to withhold information . . . yet if you should work out the problem
by yourself, it will be my duty to tell you so."
But they never
were so worked out, and the results were -- never-ceasing perplexity and
mistakes.
Even the
teaching about the Septenary constitution of the sidereal bodies and of the
macrocosm -- from which the septenary division of the microcosm, or Man -- has
until now been among the most esoteric. In olden times it used to be divulged
only at the Initiation and along with the most sacred figures of the cycles.
Now, as stated in one of the Theosophical journals,* the revelation of the
whole system of Cosmogony had not been contemplated, nor even thought for one
moment possible, at a time when a few bits of information were sparingly given
out in answer to letters written by the author of "Esoteric
Buddhism," in which he put forward a multiplicity of questions. Among
these were questions on such problems as no MASTER, however high and
independent he might be, would have the right to answer, thus divulging to the
world the most time-honoured and archaic of the mysteries of the ancient
college-temples. Hence only a few of the doctrines were revealed in their broad
outlines, while details were constantly withheld, and all the efforts made to
elicit more information about them were systematically eluded from the
beginning. This is perfectly natural. Of the four Vidyas -- out of the seven
branches of Knowledge mentioned in the Puranas -- namely,
"Yajna-Vidya" (the performance of religious rites in order to
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
*
"Lucifer," May, 1888.
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produce certain
results); "Maha-Vidya," the great (Magic) knowledge, now degenerated
into Tantrika worship; "Guhya-Vidya," the science of Mantras and
their true rhythm or chanting, of mystical incantations, etc. -- it is only the
last one, "Atma-Vidya," or the true Spiritual and Divine wisdom,
which can throw absolute and final light upon the teachings of the three first
named. Without the help of Atma-Vidya, the other three remain no better than
surface sciences, geometrical magnitudes having length and breadth, but no
thickness. They are like the soul, limbs, and mind of a sleeping man: capable
of mechanical motions, of chaotic dreams and even sleep-walking, of producing
visible effects, but stimulated by instinctual not intellectual causes, least
of all by fully conscious spiritual impulses. A good deal can be given out and
explained from the three first-named sciences. But unless the key to their
teachings is furnished by Atma-Vidya, they will remain for ever like the
fragments of a mangled text-book, like the adumbrations of great truths, dimly
perceived by the most spiritual, but distorted out of all proportion by those
who would nail every shadow to the wall.
Then, again,
another great perplexity was created in the minds of students by the incomplete
exposition of the doctrine of the evolution of the Monads. To be fully
realised, both this process and that of the birth of the Globes must be
examined far more from their metaphysical aspect than from what one might call
a statistical standpoint, involving figures and numbers which are rarely
permitted to be broadly used. Unfortunately, there are few who are inclined to
handle these doctrines only metaphysically. Even the best of the Western
writers upon our doctrine declares in his work that "on pure metaphysics of
that sort we are not now engaged," when speaking of the evolution of the
Monads ("Esoteric Buddhism," p. 46). And in such case, as the Teacher
remarks in a letter to him, "Why this preaching of our doctrines, all this
uphill work and swimming in adversum flumen? Why should the West . . . learn .
. . from the East . . . that which can never meet the requirements of the
special tastes of the aesthetics?" And he draws his correspondent's
attention "to the formidable difficulties encountered by us (the Adepts)
in every attempt we make to explain our metaphysics to the Western mind."
And well he may;
for outside of metaphysics no occult philosophy, no esotericism is possible. It
is like trying to explain the aspirations and affections, the love and hatred,
the most private and sacred workings in
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the soul and mind
of the living man, by an anatomical description of the chest and brain of his
dead body.
Let us now
examine two tenets mentioned above and hardly alluded to in "Esoteric
Buddhism," and supplement them as far as lies in our power.
---------------------
ADDITIONAL FACTS
AND EXPLANATIONS CONCERNING THE GLOBES AND THE MONADS.
Two statements
made in "Esoteric Buddhism" must be noticed and the author's opinions
quoted. On p. 47 (fifth edition) it is said:--
" . . . the
spiritual monads . . . do not fully complete their mineral existence on Globe
A, then complete it on Globe B, and so on. They pass several times round the
whole circle as minerals, and then again several times round as vegetables, and
several times as animals. We purposely refrain for the present from going into
figures," etc., etc.
This was a wise
course to adopt in view of the great secrecy maintained with regard to figures
and numbers. This reticence is now partially relinquished; but it would perhaps
have been better had the real numbers concerning Rounds and evolutional
gyrations been either entirely divulged at the time, or as entirely withheld.
Mr. Sinnett understood this difficulty well when saying (p. 140) that:
"For reasons which are not easy for the outsider to divine, the possessors
of occult knowledge are especially reluctant to give out facts relating to
Cosmogony, though it is hard for the uninitiated to understand why they should
be withheld."
That there were
such reasons is evident. Nevertheless, it is to this reticence that most of the
confused ideas of some Eastern as well as Western pupils are due. The
difficulties in the way of the acceptance of the two particular tenets under
consideration seemed great, just because of the absence of any data to go upon.
But there it was. For the figures belonging to the Occult calculations cannot
be given -- as the Masters have many times declared -- outside the circle of
pledged chelas, and not even these can break the rules.
To make things
plainer, without touching upon the mathematical aspects of the doctrine, the
teaching given may be expanded and some obscure
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points solved.
As the evolution of the Globes and that of the Monads are so closely
interblended, we will make of the two teachings one. In reference to the
Monads, the reader is asked to bear in mind that Eastern philosophy rejects the
Western theological dogma of a newly-created soul for every baby born, as being
as unphilosophical as it is impossible in the economy of Nature. There must be
a limited number of Monads evolving and growing more and more perfect through
their assimilation of many successive personalities, in every new Manvantara.
This is absolutely necessary in view of the doctrines of Rebirth, Karma, and
the gradual return of the human Monad to its source -- absolute Deity. Thus,
although the hosts of more or less progressed Monads are almost incalculable,
they are still finite, as is everything in this Universe of differentiation and
finiteness.
As shown in the
double diagram of the human "principles" and the ascending Globes of
the world-chains, there is an eternal concatenation of causes and effects, and
a perfect analogy which runs through, and links together, all the lines of
evolution. One begets the other -- globes as personalities. But, let us begin
at the beginning.
The general
outline of the process by which the successive planetary chains are formed has
just been given. To prevent future misconceptions, some further details may be
offered which will also throw light on the history of humanity on our own
chain, the progeny of that of the Moon.
In the diagrams
on p. 172, Fig. 1 represents the "lunar-chain" of seven planets at
the outset of its seventh or last Round; while Fig. 2 represents the
"earth-chain" which will be, but is not yet in existence. The seven
Globes of each chain are distinguished in their cyclic order by the letters A
to G, the Globes of the Earth-chain being further marked by a cross -- + -- the
symbol of the Earth.
Now, it must be
remembered that the Monads cycling round any septenary chain are divided into
seven classes or hierarchies according to their respective stages of evolution,
consciousness, and merit. Let us follow, then, the order of their appearance on
planet A, in the first Round. The time-spaces between the appearances of these
hierarchies on any one Globe are so adjusted that when Class 7, the last,
appears on Globe A, Class 1, the first, has just passed on to Globe B, and so
on, step by step, all round the chain.
Again, in the
Seventh Round on the Lunar chain, when Class 7, the
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last, quits
Globe A, that Globe, instead of falling asleep, as it had done in previous
Rounds, begins to die (to go into its planetary pralaya);* and in dying it
transfers successively, as just said, its "principles," or
life-elements and energy, etc., one after the other to a new
"laya-centre," which commences the formation of Globe A of the Earth
Chain. A similar process takes place for each of the Globes of the "lunar
chain" one after the other, each forming a fresh Globe of the
"earth-chain." Our Moon was the fourth Globe of the series, and was
EARTH CHAIN.
FIG. 2.
A+ G+
B+ F+
C+ E+
D+ (Our Earth)
LUNAR CHAIN.
FIG. 1.
A G
B F
C E
D (Our Moon)
DIAGRAM II.
[[above is in
diagram format in the original text]]
on the same
plane of perception as our Earth. But Globe A of the lunar chain is not fully
"dead" till the first Monads of the first class have passed from Globe
G or Z, the last of the "lunar chain," into the Nirvana
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Occultism
divides the periods of Rest (Pralaya) into several kinds; there is the
individual pralaya of each Globe, as humanity and life pass on to the next;
seven minor Pralayas in each Round; the planetary Pralaya, when seven Rounds
are completed; the Solar Pralaya, when the whole system is at an end; and
finally the Universal Maha -- or Brahma -- Pralaya at the close of the "Age
of Brahma." These are the three chief pralayas or "destruction
periods." There are many other minor ones, but with these we are not
concerned at present.
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which awaits
them between the two chains; and similarly for all the other Globes as stated,
each giving birth to the corresponding globe of the "earth-chain."
Further, when
Globe A of the new chain is ready, the first class or Hierarchy of Monads from
the Lunar chain incarnate upon it in the lowest kingdom, and so on
successively. The result of this is, that it is only the first class of Monads
which attains the human state of development during the first Round, since the
second class, on each planet, arriving later, has not time to reach that stage.
Thus the Monads of Class 2 reach the incipient human stage only in the Second
Round, and so on up to the middle of the Fourth Round. But at this point -- and
on this Fourth Round in which the human stage will be fully developed -- the
"Door" into the human kingdom closes; and henceforward the number of
"human" Monads, i.e., Monads in the human stage of development, is
complete. For the Monads which had not reached the human stage by this point
will, owing to the evolution of humanity itself, find themselves so far behind
that they will reach the human stage only at the close of the seventh and last
Round. They will, therefore, not be men on this chain, but will form the
humanity of a future Manvantara and be rewarded by becoming "Men" on
a higher chain altogether, thus receiving their Karmic compensation. To this
there is but one solitary exception, for very good reasons, of which we shall
speak farther on. But this accounts for the difference in the races.
It thus becomes
apparent how perfect is the analogy between the processes of Nature in the
Kosmos and in the individual man. The latter lives through his life-cycle, and
dies. His "higher principles," corresponding in the development of a
planetary chain to the cycling Monads, pass into Devachan, which corresponds to
the "Nirvana" and states of rest intervening between two chains. The
Man's lower "principles" are disintegrated in time and are used by
Nature again for the formation of new human principles, and the same process
takes place in the disintegration and formation of Worlds. Analogy is thus the
surest guide to the comprehension of the Occult teachings.
This is one of
the "seven mysteries of the Moon," and it is now revealed. The seven
"mysteries" are called by the Japanese Yamaboosis, the mystics of the
Lao-Tze sect and the ascetic monks of Kioto, the Dzenodoo -- the "seven
jewels." Only the Japanese and the Chinese
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Buddhist
ascetics and Initiates are, if possible, even more reticent in giving out their
"Knowledge" than are the Hindus.
But the reader
must not be allowed to lose sight of the Monads, and must be enlightened as to
their nature, as far as permitted, without trespassing upon the highest
mysteries, of which the writer does not in any way pretend to know the last or
final word.
The Monadic Host
may be roughly divided into three great classes:--
1. The most
developed Monads (the Lunar Gods or "Spirits," called, in India, the Pitris),
whose function it is to pass in the first Round through the whole triple cycle
of the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms in their most ethereal, filmy,
and rudimentary forms, in order to clothe themselves in, and assimilate, the
nature of the newly formed chain. They are those who first reach the human form
(if there can be any form in the realm of the almost subjective) on Globe A in
the first Round. It is they, therefore, who lead and represent the human
element during the second and third Rounds, and finally evolve their shadows at
the beginning of the Fourth Round for the second class, or those who come
behind them.
2. Those Monads
that are the first to reach the human stage during the three and a half Rounds,
and to become men.*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* We are forced
to use here the misleading word "Men," and this is a clear proof of
how little any European language is adapted to express these subtle
distinctions.
It stands to
reason that these "Men" did not resemble the men of to-day, either in
form or nature. Why then, it may be asked, call them "Men" at all?
Because there is no other term in any Western language which approximately
conveys the idea intended. The word "Men" at least indicates that
these beings were "MANUS," thinking entities, however they differed
in form and intellection from ourselves. But in reality they were, in respect
of spirituality and intellection, rather "gods" than "Men."
The same
difficulty of language is met with in describing the "stages" through
which the Monad passes. Metaphysically speaking, it is of course an absurdity
to talk of the "development" of a Monad, or to say that it becomes
"Man." But any attempt to preserve metaphysical accuracy of language
in the use of such a tongue as the English would necessitate at least three
extra volumes of this work, and would entail an amount of verbal repetition
which would be wearisome in the extreme. It stands to reason that a MONAD
cannot either progress or develop, or even be affected by the changes of states
it passes through. It is not of this world or plane, and may be compared only
to an indestructible star of divine light and fire, thrown down on to our
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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3. The laggards;
the Monads which are retarded, and which will not reach, by reason of Karmic
impediments, the human stage at all during this cycle or Round, save one
exception which will be spoken of elsewhere as already promised.
Now the
evolution of the external form or body round the astral is produced by the
terrestrial forces, just as in the case of the lower kingdoms; but the
evolution of the internal or real MAN is purely spiritual. It is now no more a
passage of the impersonal Monad through many and various forms of matter --
endowed at best with instinct and consciousness on quite a different plane --
as in the case of external evolution, but a journey of the
"pilgrim-soul" through various states of not only matter but
Self-consciousness and self-perception, or of perception from apperception.
(See "Gods, Monads and Atoms.")
The MONAD emerges
from its state of spiritual and intellectual unconsciousness; and, skipping the
first two planes -- too near the ABSOLUTE to permit of any correlation with
anything on a lower plane -- it gets direct into the plane of Mentality. But
there is no plane in the whole universe with a wider margin, or a wider field
of action in its almost endless gradations of perceptive and apperceptive
qualities, than this plane, which has in its turn an appropriate smaller plane
for every "form," from the "mineral" monad up to the time
when that monad blossoms forth by evolution into the DIVINE MONAD. But all the
time it is still one and the same Monad, differing only in its incarnations,
throughout its ever succeeding cycles of partial or total obscuration of
spirit, or the partial or total obscuration of matter -- two polar antitheses
-- as it ascends into the realms of mental spirituality, or descends into the
depths of materiality.
To return to
"Esoteric Buddhism." It is there stated with regard to the enormous
period intervening between the mineral epoch on Globe A, and the man-epoch,*
that: "The full development of the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] Earth as a plank of salvation for the personalities
in which it indwells. It is for the latter to cling to it; and thus partaking
of its divine nature, obtain immortality. Left to itself the Monad will cling
to no one; but, like the "plank," be drifted away to another
incarnation by the unresting current of evolution.
* The term
"Man epoch" is here used because of the necessity of giving a name to
that fourth kingdom which follows the animal. But in truth the "Man"
on Globe A during the First Round is no Man, but only his prototype or dimensionless
image from the astral regions.
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mineral epoch on
Globe A, prepares the way for the vegetable development, and, as soon as this
begins, the mineral life-impulse overflows into Globe B. Then, when the
vegetable development on Globe A is complete and the animal development begins,
the vegetable life-impulse overflows to Globe B, and the mineral impulse passes
on to Globe C. Then finally comes the human life-impulse on Globe A."
(Page 49.)
And so it goes
on for three Rounds, when it slackens, and finally stops at the threshold of
our Globe, at the Fourth Round; because the human period (of the true physical
men to be), the seventh, is now reached. This is evident, for as said, " .
. . there are processes of evolution which precede the mineral kingdom, and
thus a wave of evolution, indeed several waves of evolution, precede the
mineral wave in its progress round the spheres" (ibid).
And now we have
to quote from another article, "The Mineral Monad" in "Five
Years of Theosophy," p. 273 et seq.
"There are
seven kingdoms. The first group comprises three degrees of elementals, or
nascent centres of forces -- from the first stage of differentiation of (from)
Mulaprakriti (or rather Pradhana, primordial homogeneous matter) to its third
degree -- i.e., from full unconsciousness to semi-perception; the second or
higher group embraces the kingdoms from vegetable to man; the mineral kingdom
thus forming the central or turning point in the degrees of the "Monadic
Essence," considered as an evoluting energy. Three stages (sub-physical)
on the elemental side; the mineral kingdom; three stages on the objective
physical* side -- these are the (first or preliminary) seven links of the
evolutionary chain."
"Preliminary"
because they are preparatory, and though belonging in fact to the natural, they
yet would be more correctly described as sub-natural evolution. This process
makes a halt in its stages at the Third, at the threshold of the Fourth stage,
when it becomes, on the plane of the natural evolution, the first really
manward stage, thus forming with the three elemental kingdoms, the ten, the
Sephirothal number. It is at this point that begins:--
"A descent
of spirit into matter equivalent to an ascent in physical
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
*
"Physical" here means differentiated for cosmical purposes and work;
that "physical side," nevertheless, if objective to the apperception
of beings from other planes, is yet quite subjective to us on our plane.
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evolution; a
re-ascent from the deepest depths of materiality (the mineral) towards its
status quo ante, with a corresponding dissipation of concrete organism -- up to
Nirvana, the vanishing point of differentiated matter." ("Five Years
of Theosophy," p. 276.)
Therefore it
becomes evident why that which is pertinently called in Esoteric Buddhism
"Wave of Evolution," and mineral-, vegetable-, animal- and
man-"impulse," stops at the door of our Globe, at its Fourth cycle or
Round. It is at this point that the Cosmic Monad (Buddhi) will be wedded to and
become the vehicle of the Atmic Ray, i.e., it (Buddhi) will awaken to an
apperception of it (Atman); and thus enter on the first step of a new septenary
ladder of evolution, which will lead it eventually to the tenth (counting from
the lowest upwards) of the Sephirothal tree, the Crown.
Everything in
the Universe follows analogy. "As above, so below"; Man is the microcosm
of the Universe. That which takes place on the spiritual plane repeats itself
on the Cosmic plane. Concretion follows the lines of abstraction; corresponding
to the highest must be the lowest; the material to the spiritual. Thus,
corresponding to the Sephirothal Crown (or upper triad) there are the three
elemental Kingdoms, which precede the Mineral (see diagram on p. 277 in Five
Years of Theosophy), and which, using the language of the Kabalists, answer in
the Cosmic differentiation to the worlds of Form and Matter from the
Super-Spiritual to the Archetypal.
Now what is a
"Monad?" And what relation does it bear to an Atom? The following
reply is based upon the explanations given in answer to these questions in the
above-cited article: "The Mineral Monad," written by the author.
"None
whatever," is answered to the second question, "to the atom or
molecule as existing in the scientific conception at present. It can neither be
compared with the microscopic organism, once classed among polygastric infusoria,
and now regarded as vegetable, and classed among Algae; nor is it quite the
Monas of the Peripatetics. Physically or constitutionally the mineral monad
differs, of course, from the human monad, which is neither physical nor can its
constitution be rendered by chemical symbols and elements." In short, as
the spiritual Monad is One, Universal, Boundless and Impartite, whose rays,
nevertheless, form what we, in our ignorance, call the "Individual
Monads" of men,
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so the Mineral
Monad -- being at the opposite point of the circle -- is also One -- and from
it proceed the countless physical atoms, which Science is beginning to regard
as individualized.
Otherwise how
could one account for and explain mathematically the evolutionary and spiral
progress of the Four Kingdoms? The "Monad" is the combination of the
last two "principles" in man, the 6th and the 7th, and, properly
speaking, the term "human monad" applies only to the dual soul
(Atma-Buddhi), not to its highest spiritual vivifying Principle, Atma, alone.
But since the Spiritual Soul, if divorced from the latter (Atma) could have no
existence, no being, it has thus been called . . . . Now the Monadic, or rather
Cosmic, Essence (if such a term be permitted) in the mineral, vegetable, and
animal, though the same throughout the series of cycles from the lowest
elemental up to the Deva Kingdom, yet differs in the scale of progression. It
would be very misleading to imagine a Monad as a separate Entity trailing its
slow way in a distinct path through the lower Kingdoms, and after an
incalculable series of transformations flowering into a human being; in short,
that the Monad of a Humboldt dates back to the Monad of an atom of horneblende.
Instead of saying a "Mineral Monad," the more correct phraseology in
physical Science, which differentiates every atom, would of course have been to
call it "the Monad manifesting in that form of Prakriti called the Mineral
Kingdom." The atom, as represented in the ordinary scientific hypothesis,
is not a particle of something, animated by a psychic something, destined after
aeons to blossom as a man. But it is a concrete manifestation of the Universal
Energy which itself has not yet become individualized; a sequential
manifestation of the one Universal Monas. The ocean (of matter) does not divide
into its potential and constituent drops until the sweep of the life-impulse
reaches the evolutionary stage of man-birth. The tendency towards segregation
into individual Monads is gradual, and in the higher animals comes almost to
the point. The Peripatetics applied the word Monas to the whole Kosmos, in the
pantheistic sense; and the Occultists, while accepting this thought for
convenience sake, distinguish the progressive stages of the evolution of the
concrete from the abstract by terms of which the "Mineral, Vegetable,
Animal, (etc.), Monad" are examples. The term merely means that the tidal
wave of spiritual evolution is passing through that arc of its circuit. The
"Monadic
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Essence"
begins to imperceptibly differentiate towards individual consciousness in the
Vegetable Kingdom. As the Monads are uncompounded things, as correctly defined
by Leibnitz, it is the spiritual essence which vivifies them in their degrees
of differentiation, which properly constitutes the Monad -- not the atomic
aggregation, which is only the vehicle and the substance through which thrill
the lower and the higher degrees of intelligence.
Leibnitz
conceived of the Monads as elementary and indestructible units endowed with the
power of giving and receiving with respect to other units, and thus of
determining all spiritual and physical phenomena. It is he who invented the
term apperception, which together with nerve- (not perception, but rather) --
sensation, expresses the state of the Monadic consciousness through all the
Kingdoms up to Man.
Thus it may be
wrong on strictly metaphysical lines to call Atma-Buddhi a MONAD, since in the
materialistic view it is dual and therefore compound. But as Matter is Spirit,
and vice versa; and since the Universe and the Deity which informs it are
unthinkable apart from each other; so in the case of Atma-Buddhi. The latter
being the vehicle of the former, Buddhi stands in the same relation to Atma, as
Adam-Kadmon, the Kabalistic Logos, does to En-Soph, or Mulaprakriti to
Parabrahm.
A few words more
of the Moon.
What, it may be
asked, are the "Lunar Monads," just spoken of? The description of the
seven classes of Pitris will come later, but now some general explanations may
be given. It must be plain to everyone that they are Monads, who, having ended
their life-cycle on the lunar chain, which is inferior to the terrestrial
chain, have incarnated on this one. But there are some further details which
may be added, though they border too closely on forbidden ground to be treated
of fully. The last word of the mystery is divulged only to the adepts, but it
may be stated that our satellite is only the gross body of its invisible principles.
Seeing then that there are 7 Earths, so there are 7 Moons, the last one alone
being visible; the same for the Sun, whose visible body is called a Maya, a
reflection, just as man's body is. "The real Sun and the real Moon are as
invisible as the real man," says an occult maxim.
And it may be
remarked en passant that those ancients were not so foolish after all who first
started the idea of "the seven moons." For though
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this conception
is now taken solely as an astronomical measure of time, in a very materialised
form, yet underlying the husk there can still be recognised the traces of a
profoundly philosophical idea.
In reality the
Moon is only the satellite of the Earth in one respect, viz., that physically
the Moon revolves round the Earth. But in every other respect it is the Earth
which is the satellite of the Moon, and not vice versa. Startling as the
statement may seem it is not without confirmation from scientific knowledge. It
is evidenced by the tides, by the cyclic changes in many forms of disease which
coincide with the lunar phases; it can be traced in the growth of plants, and
is very marked in the phenomena of human gestation and conception. The
importance of the Moon and its influence on the Earth were recognized in every
ancient religion, notably the Jewish, and have been remarked by many observers
of psychical and physical phenomena. But, so far as Science knows, the Earth's
action on the Moon is confined to the physical attraction, which causes her to
circle in her orbit. And should an objector insist that this fact alone is
sufficient evidence that the Moon is truly the Earth's satellite on other
planes of action, one may reply by asking whether a mother, who walks round and
round her child's cradle keeping watch over the infant, is the subordinate of
her child or dependent upon it; though in one sense she is its satellite, yet
she is certainly older and more fully developed than the child she watches.
It is, then, the
Moon that plays the largest and most important part, as well in the formation
of the Earth itself, as in the peopling thereof with human beings. The
"Lunar Monads" or Pitris, the ancestors of man, become in reality man
himself. They are the "Monads" who enter on the cycle of evolution on
Globe A, and who, passing round the chain of planets, evolve the human form as
has just been shown. At the beginning of the human stage of the Fourth Round on
this Globe, they "ooze out" their astral doubles from the
"ape-like" forms which they had evolved in Round III. And it is this
subtle, finer form, which serves as the model round which Nature builds
physical man. These "Monads" or "divine sparks" are thus
the "Lunar" ancestors, the Pitris themselves. For these "Lunar
Spirits" have to become "Men" in order that their "Monads"
may reach a higher plane of activity and self-consciousness, i.e., the plane of
the Manasa-Putras, those who
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endow the
"senseless" shells, created and informed by the Pitris, with
"mind" in the latter part of the Third Root-Race.
In the same way
the "Monads" or Egos of the men of the seventh Round of our Earth,
after our own Globes A, B, C, D, et seq., parting with their life-energy, will
have informed and thereby called to life other laya-centres destined to live
and act on a still higher plane of being -- in the same way will the Terrene
"Ancestors" create those who will become their superiors.
It now becomes
plain that there exists in Nature a triple evolutionary scheme, for the
formation of the three periodical Upadhis; or rather three separate schemes of
evolution, which in our system are inextricably interwoven and interblended at
every point. These are the Monadic (or spiritual), the intellectual, and the
physical evolutions. These three are the finite aspects or the reflections on
the field of Cosmic Illusion of ATMA, the seventh, the ONE REALITY.
1. The Monadic
is, as the name implies, concerned with the growth and development into still
higher phases of activity of the Monad in conjunction with:--
2. The
Intellectual, represented by the Manasa-Dhyanis (the Solar Devas, or the
Agnishwatta Pitris) the "givers of intelligence and consciousness"*
to man and:--
3. The Physical,
represented by the Chhayas of the lunar Pitris, round which Nature has
concreted the present physical body. This body serves as the vehicle for the
"growth" (to use a misleading word) and the transformations through
Manas and -- owing to the accumulation of experiences -- of the finite into the
INFINITE, of the transient into the Eternal and Absolute.
Each of these
three systems has its own laws, and is ruled and guided by different sets of
the highest Dhyanis or "Logoi." Each is represented in the constitution
of man, the Microcosm of the great Macrocosm; and it is the union of these
three streams in him which makes him the complex being he now is.
"Nature,"
the physical evolutionary Power, could never evolve intelligence unaided -- she
can only create "senseless forms," as will be seen in our
"ANTHROPOGENESIS." The "Lunar Monads" cannot progress, for
they have not yet had sufficient touch with the forms
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Vide CONCLUSION
in Part II. of this Book.
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created by
"Nature" to allow of their accumulating experiences through its
means. It is the Manasa-Dhyanis who fill up the gap, and they represent the
evolutionary power of Intelligence and Mind, the link between
"Spirit" and "Matter" -- in this Round.
Also it must be
borne in mind that the Monads which enter upon the evolutionary cycle upon
Globe A, in the first Round, are in very different stages of development. Hence
the matter becomes somewhat complicated. . . . Let us recapitulate.
The most
developed Monads (the lunar) reach the human germ-stage in the first Round;
become terrestrial, though very ethereal human beings towards the end of the
Third Round, remaining on it (the globe) through the "obscuration"
period as the seed for future mankind in the Fourth Round, and thus become the
pioneers of Humanity at the beginning of this, the Fourth Round. Others reach
the Human stage only during later Rounds, i.e., in the second, third, or first
half of the Fourth Round. And finally the most retarded of all, i.e., those
still occupying animal forms after the middle turning-point of the Fourth Round
-- will not become men at all during this Manwantara. They will reach to the
verge of humanity only at the close of the seventh Round to be, in their turn,
ushered into a new chain after pralaya -- by older pioneers, the progenitors of
humanity, or the Seed-Humanity (Sishta), viz., the men who will be at the head
of all at the end of these Rounds.
The student
hardly needs any further explanation on the part played by the fourth Globe and
the fourth Round in the scheme of evolution.
From the
preceding diagrams, which are applicable, mutatis mutandis, to Rounds, Globes
or Races, it will be seen that the fourth member of a series occupies a unique
position. Unlike the others, the Fourth has no "sister" Globe on the
same plane as itself, and it thus forms the fulcrum of the "balance"
represented by the whole chain. It is the sphere of final evolutionary
adjustments, the world of Karmic scales, the Hall of Justice, where the balance
is struck which determines the future course of the Monad during the remainder
of its incarnations in the cycle. And therefore it is, that, after this central
turning-point has been passed in the Great Cycle, -- i.e., after the middle
point of the Fourth Race in the Fourth Round on our Globe -- no more Monads can
enter the human kingdom. The door is closed for this Cycle and the balance
struck. For were it otherwise -- had there been a new soul
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created for each
of the countless milliards of human beings that have passed away, and had there
been no reincarnation -- it would become difficult indeed to provide room for
the disembodied "Spirits;" nor could the origin and cause of
suffering ever be accounted for. It is the ignorance of the occult tenets and
the enforcement of false conceptions under the guise of religious education,
which have created materialism and atheism as a protest against the asserted
divine order of things.
The only
exceptions to the rule just stated are the "dumb races," whose Monads
are already within the human stage, in virtue of the fact that these
"animals" are later than, and even half descended from man, their
last descendants being the anthropoid and other apes. These "human
presentments" are in truth only the distorted copies of the early
humanity. But this will receive full attention in the next Book.
As the
Commentary, broadly rendered, says:--
1. "Every
form on earth, and every speck (atom) in Space strives in its efforts towards
self-formation to follow the model placed for it in the ' HEAVENLY MAN.' . . .
Its (the atom's) involution and evolution, its external and internal growth and
development, have all one and the same object -- man; man, as the highest
physical and ultimate form on this earth; the MONAD, in its absolute totality
and awakened condition -- as the culmination of the divine incarnations on
Earth."
2. "The
Dhyanis (Pitris) are those who have evolved their BHUTA (doubles) from
themselves, which RUPA (form) has become the vehicle of monads (seventh and
sixth principles) that had completed their cycle of transmigration in the three
preceding Kalpas (Rounds). Then, they (the astral doubles) became the men of
the first Human Race of the Round. But they were not complete, and were
senseless."
This will be
explained in the Books that follow. Meanwhile man -- or rather his Monad -- has
existed on the earth from the very beginning of this Round. But, up to our own
Fifth Race, the external shapes which covered those divine astral doubles
changed and consolidated with every sub-race; the form and physical structure
of the fauna changing at the same time, as they had to be adapted to the
ever-changing conditions of life on this globe during the geological periods of
its formative cycle. And thus shall they go on changing with every
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Root Race and
every chief sub-race down to the last one of the Seventh in this Round.
3. "The
inner, now concealed, man, was then (in the beginnings) the external man. The
progeny of the Dhyanis (Pitris), he was 'the son like unto his father.' Like
the lotus, whose external shape assumes gradually the form of the model within
itself, so did the form of man in the beginning evolve from within without.
After the cycle in which man began to procreate his species after the fashion
of the present animal kingdom, it became the reverse. The human foetus follows
now in its transformations all the forms that the physical frame of man had
assumed throughout the three Kalpas (Rounds) during the tentative efforts at
Plastic formation around the monad by senseless, because imperfect, matter, in
her blind wanderings. In the present age, the physical embryo is a plant, a
reptile, an animal, before it finally becomes man, evolving within himself his
own ethereal counterpart, in his turn. In the beginning it was that counterpart
(astral man) which, being senseless, got entangled in the meshes of
matter."
But this
"man" belongs to the fourth Round. As shown, the MONAD had passed
through, journeyed and been imprisoned in, every transitional form throughout
every kingdom of nature during the three preceding Rounds. But the monad which
becomes human is not the Man. In this Round -- with the exception of the
highest mammals after man, the anthropoids destined to die out in this our
race, when their monads will be liberated and pass into the astral human forms
(or the highest elementals) of the Sixth* and the Seventh Races, and then into
lowest human forms in the fifth Round -- no units of either of the kingdoms are
animated any longer by monads destined to become human in their next stage, but
only by the lower Elementals of their respective realms.**
The last human
Monad incarnated before the beginning of the 5th
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Nature never
repeats herself, therefore the anthropoids of our day have not existed at any
time since the middle of the Miocene period; when, like all cross breeds, they
began to show a tendency, more and more marked as time went on, to return to
the type of their first parent, the black and yellow gigantic Lemuro-Atlantean.
To search for the "Missing Link" is useless. To the scientists of the
closing sixth Root-race, millions and millions of years hence, our modern races,
or rather their fossils, will appear as those of small insignificant apes -- an
extinct species of the genus homo.
** These
"Elementals" will become human Monads, in their turn, only at the
next great planetary Manvantara.
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Root-Race.* The
cycle of metempsychosis for the human monad is closed, for we are in the Fourth
Round and the Fifth Root-Race. The reader will have to bear in mind -- at any
rate one who has made himself acquainted with "Esoteric Buddhism" --
that the Stanzas which follow in this Book and Book II speak of the evolution
in our Fourth Round only. The latter is the cycle of the turning-point, after
which, matter,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Such
anthropoids form an exception because they were not intended by Nature, but are
the direct product and creation of "senseless" man. The Hindus give a
divine origin to the apes and monkeys because the men of the Third Race were
gods from another plane who had become "senseless" mortals. This
subject had already been touched upon in "Isis Unveiled" twelve years
ago as plainly as was then possible. On pp. 278-279, the reader is referred
"to the Brahmins, if he would know the reason of the regard they have for
the monkeys. For then he (the reader) would perhaps learn -- were the Brahman
to judge him worthy of an explanation -- that the Hindu sees in the ape but
what Manu desired he should: the transformation of species most directly
connected with that of the human family, a bastard branch engrafted on their
own stock before the final perfection of the latter. He might learn, further,
that in the eyes of the educated 'heathen' the spiritual or inner man is one
thing, and his terrestrial physical casket another. That physical nature, the
great combination of physical correlations of forces, ever creeping onward
towards perfection, has to avail herself of the material at hand; she models
and remodels as she proceeds, and finishing her crowning work in man, presents
him alone as a fit tabernacle for the overshadowing of the divine Spirit."
Moreover, a
German scientific work is mentioned in a footnote on the same page. It says
that a Hanoverian scientist had recently published a Book entitled "Ueber
die Auflosung der Arten durch Naturliche Zucht-wahl," in which he shows,
with great ingenuity, that Darwin was wholly mistaken in tracing man back to
the ape. On the contrary, he maintains that it is the ape which is evolved from
man. He shows that, in the beginning, mankind were morally and physically the
types and prototypes of our present Race, and of our human dignity, by their
beauty of form, regularity of feature, cranial development, nobility of
sentiments, heroic impulses, and grandeur of ideal conception. This is a purely
Brahmanic, Buddhistic and Kabalistic philosophy. The Book is copiously illustrated
with diagrams, tables, etc. It asserts that the gradual debasement and
degradation of man, morally and physically, can be readily traced throughout
the ethnological transformation down to our time. And, as one portion has
already degenerated into apes, so the civilized man of the present day will at
last, under the action of the inevitable law of necessity, be also succeeded by
like descendants. If we may judge of the future by the actual Present, it
certainly does seem possible that so unspiritual and materialistic a body
should end as Simia rather than as Seraphs. But though the apes descend from
man, it is certainly not the fact that the human Monad, which has once reached
the level of humanity, ever incarnates again in the form of an animal.
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having reached
its lowest depths, begins to strive onward and to get spiritualized with every
new Race and with every fresh cycle. Therefore the student must take care not
to see contradiction where there is none, as in "Esoteric Buddhism"
Rounds are spoken of in general, while here only the Fourth, or our present
Round, is meant. Then it was the work of formation; now it is that of
reformation and evolutionary perfection.
Finally, to
close this chapter anent various, but unavoidable misconceptions, we must refer
to a statement in "Esoteric Buddhism" which has produced a very fatal
impression upon the minds of many Theosophists. One unfortunate sentence from
the work just referred to is constantly brought forward to prove the
materialism of the doctrine. On p. 48, 5th Edition, the Author, referring to
the progress of organisms on the Globes, says that "the mineral kingdom
will no more develop the vegetable . . . than the Earth was able to develop man
from the ape, till it received an impulse."
Whether this
sentence renders literally the thought of the author, or is simply (as we
believe it is) a lapsus calami, may remain an open question.
It is really
with surprise that we have ascertained the fact that "Esoteric
Buddhism" was so little understood by some Theosophists, as to have led
them into the belief that it thoroughly supported Darwinian evolution, and
especially the theory of the descent of man from a pithecoid ancestor. As one
member writes: "I suppose you realise that three-fourths of Theosophists
and even outsiders imagine that, as far as the evolution of man is concerned,
Darwinism and Theosophy kiss one another." Nothing of the kind was ever
realised, nor is there any great warrant for it, so far as we know, in
"Esoteric Buddhism." It has been repeatedly stated that evolution as
taught by Manu and Kapila was the groundwork of the modern teachings, but
neither Occultism nor Theosophy has ever supported the wild theories of the
present Darwinists -- least of all the descent of man from an ape. Of this,
more hereafter. But one has only to turn to p. 47 of "Esoteric Buddhism,"
5th edition, to find there the statement that "Man belongs to a kingdom
distinctly separate from that of the animals." With such a plain and
unequivocal statement before him, it is very strange that any careful student
should have been so misled unless he is prepared to charge the author with a
gross contradiction.
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Every Round
repeats on a higher scale the evolutionary work of the preceding Round. With
the exception of some higher anthropoids, as just mentioned, the Monadic
inflow, or inner evolution, is at an end till the next Manvantara. It can never
be too often repeated, that the full-blown human Monads have to be first
disposed of, before the new crop of candidates appears on this Globe at the
beginning of the next cycle. Thus there is a lull; and this is why, during the
Fourth Round, man appears on Earth earlier than any animal creation, as will be
described.
But it is still
urged that the author of "Esoteric Buddhism" has "preached
Darwinism" all along. Certain passages would undoubtedly seem to lend
countenance to this inference. Besides which the Occultists themselves are
ready to concede partial correctness to the Darwinian hypothesis, in later
details, bye-laws of Evolution, and after the midway point of the Fourth Race.
Of that which has taken place, physical science can really know nothing, for
such matters lie entirely outside of its sphere of investigation. But what the
Occultists have never admitted, nor will they ever admit, is that man was an
ape in this or in any other Round; or that he ever could be one, however much
he may have been "ape-like." This is vouched for by the very
authority from whom the author of "Esoteric Buddhism" got his
information.
Thus to those
who confront the Occultists with these lines from the above-named volume:
"It is enough to show that we may as reasonably -- and that we must, if we
would talk about these matters at all -- conceive a life-impulse giving birth
to mineral form, as of the same sort of impulse concerned to raise a race of
apes into a race of rudimentary men." To those who bring this passage
forward as showing "decided Darwinism," the Occultists answer by
pointing to the explanation of the Master (Mr. Sinnett's "teacher")
which would contradict these lines, were they written in the spirit attributed
to them. A copy of this letter was sent to the writer, together with others,
two years ago (1886), with additional marginal remarks, to quote from, in the
"Secret Doctrine." It begins by considering the difficulty
experienced by the Western student, in reconciling some facts, previously
given, with the evolution of man from the animal, i.e., from the mineral,
vegetable and animal kingdoms, and advises the student to hold to the doctrine
of analogy and correspondences. Then it touches upon the mystery of the Devas,
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and even Gods,
having to pass through states which it was agreed to refer to as
"Inmetallization, Inherbation, Inzoonization and finally
Incarnation," and explains this by hinting at the necessity of failures
even in the ethereal races of Dhyan Chohans. Concerning this it says:
"Still, as
these '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. . . . ." After which only a hint is given
about the mystery contained in the allegory of the fallen Asuras, which will be
expanded and explained in Book II. When Karma has reached them at the stage of
human evolution, "they will have to drink it to the last drop in the
bitter cup of retribution. Then they become an active force and commingle with
the Elementals, the progressed entities of the pure animal kingdom, to develop
little by little the full type of humanity."
These Dhyan
Chohans, as we see, do not pass through the three kingdoms as do the lower
Pitris; nor do they incarnate in man until the Third Root Race. Thus, as the
teaching stands:
"Man in the
First Round and First Race on Globe D, our Earth, was an ethereal being (a
Lunar Dhyani, as man), non-intelligent but superspiritual; and correspondingly,
on the law of analogy, in the First Race of the Fourth Round. In each of the
subsequent races and sub-races . . . he grows more and more into an encased or
incarnate being, but still preponderatingly ethereal. . . . He is sexless, and,
like the animal and vegetable he develops monstrous bodies correspondential
with his coarser surroundings.
"II. Round.
He (Man) is still gigantic and ethereal but growing firmer and more condensed
in body, a more physical man. Yet still less intelligent than spiritual (1),
for mind is a slower and more difficult evolution than is the physical frame .
. .
"III.
Round. He has now a perfectly concrete or compacted body, at first the form of
a giant-ape, and now more intelligent, or rather cunning, than spiritual. For,
on the downward arc, he has now reached a point where his primordial
spirituality is eclipsed and overshadowed by nascent mentality (2). In the last
half of the Third Round his gigantic stature decreases, and his body improves
in texture, and he becomes a more rational being, though still more an ape than
a
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Deva. . . . (All
this is almost exactly repeated in the third Root-Race of the Fourth Round.)
"IV. Round.
Intellect has an enormous development in this Round. The (hitherto) dumb races
acquire our (present) human speech on this globe, on which, from the Fourth
Race, language is perfected and knowledge increases. At this half-way point of
the Fourth Round (as of the Fourth Root, or Atlantean, race) humanity passes
the axial point of the minor Manvantara cycle . . . . the world teeming with
the results of intellectual activity and spiritual decrease . . . ."
This is from the
authentic letter; what follows are the later remarks and additional
explanations traced by the same hand in the form of footnotes.
(1.) " . .
. The original letter contained general teaching -- a 'bird's eye view' -- and
particularized nothing. . . . To speak of 'physical man' while limiting the
statement to the early Rounds would be drifting back to the miraculous and
instantaneous 'coats of skin.' . . . The first 'Nature,' the first 'body,' the
first 'mind' on the first plane of perception, on the first Globe in the first
Round, is what was meant. For Karma and evolution have --
' . . . centred
in our make such strange extremes!
From different
Natures* marvellously mixed . . .'
(2.)
"Restore: he has now reached the point (by analogy, and as the Third Root
Race in the Fourth Round) where his ("the angel"-man's) primordial
spirituality is eclipsed and overshadowed by nascent human mentality, and you
have the true version on your thumb-nail. . . ."
These are the
words of the Teacher -- text, words and sentences in brackets, and explanatory footnotes.
It stands to reason that there must be an enormous difference in such terms as
"objectivity" and "subjectivity," "materiality"
and "spirituality," when the same terms are applied to different
planes of being and perception. All this must be taken in its relative sense.
And therefore there is little to be wondered at, if, left to his own
speculations, an author, however eager to learn, yet quite inexperienced in
these abstruse teachings, has fallen
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Natures of
the seven hierarchies or classes of Pitris and Dhyan Chohans which compose our
nature and Bodies are here meant.
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into an error.
Neither was the difference between the "Rounds" and the
"Races" sufficiently defined in the letters received, nor was there
anything of the kind required before, as the ordinary Eastern disciple would
have found out the difference in a moment. Moreover, to quote from a letter of
the Master's (188-), "the teachings were imparted under protest. . . .
They were, so to say, smuggled goods . . . and when I remained face to face with
only one correspondent, the other, Mr. . . . ., had so far tossed all the cards
into confusion, that little remained to be said without trespassing upon
law." Theosophists, "whom it may concern," will understand what
is meant.
The outcome of
all this is that nothing had ever been said in the "letters" to
warrant the assurance that the Occult doctrine has ever taught, or any Adept
believed in, the preposterous modern theory of the descent of man from a common
ancestor with the ape -- an anthropoid of the actual animal kind, unless
metaphorically. To this day the world is more full of "ape-like men"
than the woods are of "men-like apes." The ape is sacred in India
because its origin is well known to the Initiates, though concealed under a
thick veil of allegory. Hanuman is the son of Pavana (Vayu, "the god of
the wind") by Anjana, a monster called Kesari, though his genealogy
varies. The reader who bears this in mind will find in Book II. passim, the
whole explanation of this ingenious allegory. The "Men" of the Third
Race (who separated) were "Gods" by their spirituality and purity,
though senseless, and as yet destitute of mind, as men.
These
"Men" of the Third Race -- the ancestors of the Atlanteans -- were
just such ape-like, intellectually senseless giants as were those beings, who,
during the Third Round, represented Humanity. Morally irresponsible, it was
these third Race "men" who, through promiscuous connection with
animal species lower than themselves, created that missing link which became
ages later (in the tertiary period only) the remote ancestor of the real ape as
we find it now in the pithecoid family.*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* And if this is
found clashing with that other statement which shows the animal later than man,
then the reader is asked to bear in mind that the placental mammal only is
meant. In those days there were animals of which zoology does not even dream in
our own; and the modes of reproduction were not identical with the notions which
modern physiology has upon the subject. It is not altogether convenient to
touch upon such questions in public, but there is no contradiction or
impossibility in this whatever.
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Thus the earlier
teachings, however unsatisfactory, vague and fragmentary, did not teach the
evolution of "man" from the "ape." Nor does the author of
"Esoteric Buddhism" assert it anywhere in his work in so many words;
but, owing to his inclination towards modern science, he uses language which
might perhaps justify such an inference. The man who preceded the Fourth, the
Atlantean race, however much he may have looked physically like a
"gigantic ape" -- "the counterfeit of man who hath not the life
of a man" -- was still a thinking and already a speaking man. The
"Lemuro-Atlantean" was a highly civilized race, and if one accepts
tradition, which is better history than the speculative fiction which now
passes under that name, he was higher than we are with all our sciences and the
degraded civilization of the day: at any rate, the Lemuro-Atlantean of the
closing Third Race was so.
And now we may
return to the Stanzas.
-------
STANZA VI. --
Continued.
5. AT THE FOURTH
(Round, or revolution of life and being around "the seven smaller
wheels") (a), THE SONS ARE TOLD TO CREATE THEIR IMAGES. ONE THIRD REFUSES.
TWO (thirds) OBEY.
The full meaning
of this sloka can be fully comprehended only after reading the detailed
additional explanations in the "Anthropogenesis" and its
commentaries, in Book II. Between this Sloka and the last, Sloka 4 in this same
Stanza, extend long ages; and there now gleams the dawn and sunrise of another
aeon. The drama enacted on our planet is at the beginning of its fourth act,
but for a clearer comprehension of the whole play the reader will have to turn
back before he can proceed onward. For this verse belongs to the general
Cosmogony given in the archaic volumes, whereas Book II. will give a detailed
account of the "Creation" or rather the formation, of the first human
beings, followed by the second humanity, and then by the third; or, as they are
called, "the first, second, and the third Root-Races." As the solid
Earth began by being a ball of liquid fire, of fiery dust and its protoplasmic
phantom, so did man.
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(a) That which
is meant by the qualification the "Fourth" is explained as the
"fourth Round" only on the authority of the Commentaries. It can
equally mean fourth "Eternity" as "Fourth Round," or even
the fourth (our) Globe. For, as will repeatedly be shown, it is the fourth
Sphere on the fourth or lowest plane of material life. And it so happens that
we are in the Fourth Round, at the middle point of which the perfect equilibrium
between Spirit and Matter had to take place.* Says the Commentary explaining
the verse:--
"The holy
youths (the gods) refused to multiply and create species after their likeness,
after their kind. They are not fit forms (rupas) for us. They have to grow. They
refuse to enter the chhayas (shadows or images) of their inferiors. Thus had
selfish feeling prevailed from the beginning, even among the gods, and they
fell under the eye of the Karmic Lipikas."
They had to
suffer for it in later births. How the punishment reached the gods will be seen
in the second volume.
-------
STANZA VI. --
Continued.
6. THE CURSE IS
PRONOUNCED (a): THEY WILL BE BORN IN THE FOURTH (Race), SUFFER AND CAUSE
SUFFERING (b). THIS IS THE FIRST WAR (c).
(a) It is a
universal tradition that, before the physiological "Fall,"
propagation of one's kind, whether human or animal, took place through the WILL
of the Creators, or of their progeny. It was the Fall of Spirit into
generation, not the Fall of mortal man. It has already been stated that, to
become a Self-Conscious Spirit, the latter must pass through every cycle of
being, culminating in its highest point on earth in Man.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It was, as we
shall see, at this period -- during the highest point of civilization and
knowledge, as also of human intellectuality, of the fourth, Atlantean Race --
that, owing to the final crisis of physiologico-spiritual adjustment of the
races, humanity branched off into its two diametrically opposite paths: the
RIGHT- and the LEFT-hand paths of knowledge or of Vidya. "Thus were the
germs of the White and the Black Magic sown in those days. The seeds lay latent
for some time, to sprout only during the early period of the Fifth (our Race)."
(Commentary.)
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Spirit per se is
an unconscious negative ABSTRACTION. Its purity is inherent, not acquired by
merit; hence, as already shown, to become the highest Dhyan Chohan it is
necessary for each Ego to attain to full self-consciousness as a human, i.e.,
conscious Being, which is synthesized for us in Man. The Jewish Kabalists
arguing that no Spirit could belong to the divine hierarchy unless Ruach
(Spirit) was united to Nephesh (living Soul), only repeat the Eastern Esoteric
teaching. "A Dhyani has to be an Atma-Buddhi; once the Buddhi-Manas breaks
loose from its immortal Atma of which it (Buddhi) is the vehicle, Atman passes
into NON-BEING, which is absolute Being." This means that the purely
Nirvanic state is a passage of Spirit back to the ideal abstraction of Be-ness
which has no relation to the plane on which our Universe is accomplishing its
cycle.
(b) "The
curse is pronounced" does not mean, in this instance, that any personal
Being, god, or superior Spirit, pronounced it, but simply that the cause which
could but create bad results had been generated, and that the effects of a
Karmic cause could lead the "Beings" that counteracted the laws of
Nature, and thus impeded her legitimate progress, only to bad incarnations,
hence to suffering.
(c) "There
were many wars" refers to several struggles of adjustment, spiritual,
cosmical, and astronomical, but chiefly to the mystery of the evolution of man
as he is now. Powers -- pure Essences -- "that were told to create"
is a sentence that relates to a mystery explained, as already said, elsewhere.
It is not only one of the most hidden secrets of Nature -- that of generation,
over whose solution the Embryologists have vainly put their heads together --
but likewise a divine function that involves that other religious, or rather
dogmatic, mystery, the "Fall" of the Angels, as it is called. Satan
and his rebellious host would thus prove, when the meaning of the allegory is
explained, to have refused to create physical man, only to become the direct
Saviours and the Creators of "divine Man." The symbolical teaching is
more than mystical and religious, it is purely scientific, as will be seen
later on. For, instead of remaining a mere blind, functioning medium, impelled
and guided by fathomless LAW, the "rebellious" Angel claimed and
enforced his right of independent judgment and will, his
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right of
free-agency and responsibility, since man and angel are alike under Karmic
Law.*
"And there
was war in Heaven. . . . Michael and his angels fought against the Dragon; and
the Dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place
found any more in Heaven. And the Dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called
the devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world."
The Kabalistic
version of the same story is given in the Codex Nazareus, the scripture of the
Nazarenes, the real mystic Christians of John the Baptist and the Initiates of
Christos. Bahak-Zivo, the "Father of the Genii," is ordered to
construct creatures (to create). But, as he is "ignorant of Orcus,"
he fails to do so, and calls in Fetahil, a still purer spirit, to his aid, who
fails still worse. This is a repetition of the failure of the
"Fathers," the lords of light who fail one after the other. (Book II,
Sloka 17.)
We will now
quote from our earlier Volumes:--
"Then steps
on the stage of creation the spirit** (of the Earth so-called, or the Soul,
Psyche, which St. James calls 'devilish') the lower portion the Anima Mundi or
Astral Light. (See the close of this Sloka). With the Nazarenes and the
Gnostics this Spirit was
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Explaining
Kabalistic views, the author of the "New Aspects of Life" says of the
Fallen Angels that, "According to the symbolical teaching, Spirit, from
being simply a functionary agent of God, became volitional in its developed and
developing action; and, substituting its own will for the Divine desire in its
regard, so fell. Hence the Kingdom and reign of Spirits and spiritual action,
which flow from and are the product of Spirit-volition, are outside, and
contrasted with, and in contradiction to the Kingdom of Souls and Divine
action." So far, so good; but what does the Author mean by saying,
"When man was created, he was human in constitution, with human
affections, human hopes and aspirations. From this state he fell -- into the
brute and savage"? This is diametrically opposite to our Eastern teaching,
and even to the Kabalistic notion so far as we understand it, and to the Bible
itself. This looks like Corporealism and Substantialism colouring positive
philosophy, though it is rather hard to feel quite sure of the Author's meaning
(see p. 235). A FALL, however, "from the natural into the supernatural and
the animal" -- supernatural meaning the purely spiritual in this case --
means what we suggest.
** On the
authority of Irenaeus, of Justin Martyr and the "Codex" itself,
Dunlap shows that the Nazarenes regarded "Spirit" as a female and
Evil Power in its connection with our Earth. (Dunlap: "Sod," the Son
of the Man, p. 52).
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feminine. Thus
the spirit of the Earth perceiving that for Fetahil,* the newest man (the latest),
the splendour was 'changed,' and that for splendour existed 'decrease and
damage,' she awakes Karabtanos,** 'who was frantic and without sense and
judgment,' and says to him:-- 'Arise, see, the splendour (light) of the newest
man (Fetahil) has failed (to produce or create men), the decrease of this
splendour is visible. Rise up, come with thy MOTHER (the Spiritus) and free
thee from limits by which thou art held, and those more ample than the whole
world.' After which follows the union of the frantic and blind matter, guided
by the insinuations of the spirit (not the Divine breath but the Astral spirit,
which by its double essence is already tainted with matter); and the offer of
the MOTHER being accepted, the Spiritus conceives "Seven Figures,"
and the seven stellars (planets) which represent also the seven capital sins,
the progeny of an astral soul separated from its divine source (spirit) and
matter, the blind demon of concupiscence. Seeing this, Fetahil extends his hand
towards the abyss of matter, and says:-- 'Let the Earth exist, just as the
abode of the powers has existed.' Dipping his hand in the chaos, which he
condenses, he creates our planet.***"
"Then the
Codex proceeds to tell how Bahak-Zivo was separated from the Spiritus, and the
Genii or angels from the rebels.**** Then Mano***** (the greatest), who dwells
with the greatest FERHO, call Kebar-Zivo (known also by the name of Nebat-Iavar
bar Iufin Ifafin), Helm and Vine of the food of life,****** he being the third
life, and commiserating the rebellious and foolish Genii, on account of the
magnitude of their ambition, says: 'Lord of the Genii******* (AEons), see what
the Genii, the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Fetahil is
identical with the host of the Pitris who "created Man" as only a
"shell." He was, with the Nazarenes, the king of light, and the
creator; but in this instance he is the unlucky Prometheus, who fails to get
hold of the Living Fire necessary for the formation of the divine Soul, as he
is ignorant of the secret name, the ineffable or incommunicable name of the
Kabalists.
** The spirit of
Matter and Concupiscence; "Kamarupa" minus "Manas," Mind.
*** See Franck's
"Codex Nazaraeus," and Dunlap's "Sod, the Son of the Man."
**** Codex Nazaraeus,
ii., 233.
***** This Mano
of the Nazarenes strangely resembles the Hindu Manu, the Heavenly Man of the
"Rig Vedas."
****** "I
am the true Vine, and my father is the husbandman." (John xv., 1.)
******* With the
Gnostics, Christ, as well as Michael who is identical with him in some
respects, was the "Chief of the AEons."
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rebellious
angels do, and about what they are consulting.* They say, 'Let us call for the
world, and let us call the 'powers' into existence." The Genii are the
Principes, the "Sons of Light," but thou art the "Messenger of
Life."**
And in order to
counteract the influence of the seven "badly disposed" principles,
the progeny of Spiritus, CABAR-ZIO, the mighty Lord of Splendor, produces seven
other lives (the cardinal virtues) who shine in their own form and light
"from on high"*** and thus re-establish the balance between good and
evil, light and darkness.
Here one finds a
repetition of the early allegorical, dual systems, as the Zoroastrian, and
detects a germ of the dogmatic and dualistic religions of the future, a germ
which has grown into such a luxuriant tree in ecclesiastical Christianity. It
is already the outline of the two "Supremes" -- God and Satan. But in
the Stanzas no such idea exists.
Most of the
Western Christian Kabalists -- pre-eminently Eliphas Levi -- in their desire to
reconcile the Occult Sciences with Church dogmas, did their best to make of the
"Astral Light" only and preeminently the Pleroma of early Church
Fathers, the abode of the Hosts of the Fallen Angels, of the "Archons"
and "Powers." But the Astral Light, while only the lower aspect of
the Absolute, is yet dual. It is the Anima Mundi, and ought never to be viewed
otherwise, except for Kabalistic purposes. The difference which exists between
its "light" and its "Living Fire" ought to be ever present
in the mind of the Seer and the "Psychic." The higher aspect, without
which only creatures of matter from that Astral Light can be produced, is this
Living Fire, and it is the Seventh Principle. It is said in "Isis
Unveiled," in a complete description of it:--
"The Astral
Light or Anima Mundi is dual and bisexual. The (ideal) male part of it is
purely divine and spiritual, it is the Wisdom, it is Spirit or Purusha; while
the female portion (the Spiritus of the Nazarenes) is tainted, in one sense,
with matter, is indeed matter, and therefore is evil already. It is the
life-principle of every living creature, and furnishes the astral soul, the
fluidic perisprit, to men, animals, fowls of the air, and everything living.
Animals have only the latent germ of the highest immortal soul in them. . . . .
This latter will develop
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Codex
Nazaraeus, i, 135.
** Ibid.
*** See the
Cosmogony of Pherecydes.
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only after a
series of countless evolutions; the doctrine of which evolution is contained in
the Kabalistic axiom: 'A stone becomes a plant; a plant, a beast; a beast, a
man; a man, a spirit; and the spirit, a god.'" (Vol. I., p. 301, note.)
The seven
principles of the Eastern Initiates had not been explained when
"Isis" was written, but only the three Kabalistic Faces of the
semi-exoteric Kabala.* But these contain the description of the mystic natures
of the first group of Dhyan Chohans in the regimen ignis, the region and
"rule (or government) of fire," which group is divided into three
classes, synthesized by the first, which makes four or the
"Tetraktis." (See Comments on Stanza VII. Book I.) If one studies the
Comments attentively he will find the same progression in the angelic natures,
viz., from the passive down to the active, the last of these Beings being as near
to the Ahamkara element (the region or plane wherein Egoship or the feeling of
I-am-ness is beginning to be defined) as the first ones are near to the
undifferentiated essence. The former are Arupa, incorporeal; the latter, Rupa,
corporeal.
In Volume II. of
Isis (p. 183 et seq.) the philosophical systems of the Gnostics and the
primitive Jewish Christians, the Nazarenes and the Ebionites, are fully
considered. They show the views held in those days -- outside the circle of
Mosaic Jews -- about Jehovah. He was identified by all the Gnostics with the
evil, rather than with the good principle. For them, he was Ilda-Baoth,
"the son of Darkness," whose mother, Sophia Achamoth, was the
daughter of Sophia, the Divine Wisdom (the female Holy Ghost of the early Christians)
-- Akasa;** while Sophia Achamoth personified the lower Astral Light or Ether.
Ilda-Baoth,*** or Jehovah, is simply one of the Elohim, the seven
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* They are
found, however, in the Chaldean Book of Numbers.
** The astral
light stands in the same relation to Akasa and Anima Mundi, as Satan stands to
the Deity. They are one and the same thing seen from two aspects: the spiritual
and the psychic -- the super-ethereal or connecting link between matter and
pure spirit, and the physical. See for the difference between nous, the higher
divine wisdom, and psyche, the lower and terrestrial (St. James iii. v. 15-17).
Vide "Demon est Deus inversus," Part II. of this volume.
*** Ilda-Baoth
is a compound name made up of Ilda, [[hebrew]], "a child," and Baoth;
both from [[hebrew]] the egg, and [[hebrew]] Baoth, "chaos,"
emptiness, void, or desolation; or the child born in the egg of Chaos, like
Brahma.
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creative
Spirits, and one of the lower Sephiroth. He produces from himself seven other
Gods, "Stellar Spirits" (or the lunar ancestors*), for they are all
the same.** They are all in his own image (the "Spirits of the
Face"), and the reflections one of the other, and have become darker and
more material as they successively receded from their originator. They also
inhabit seven regions disposed like a ladder, as its rungs slope up and down
the scale of spirit and matter.*** With Pagans and Christians, with Hindus and
Chaldeans, with the Greek as with the Roman Catholics -- with a slight
variation of the texts in their interpretations -- they all were the Genii of
the seven planets, as of the seven planetary spheres of our septenary chain, of
which Earth is the lowest. (See Isis, Vol. II. p. 186.) This connects the
"Stellar" and "Lunar" Spirits with the higher planetary
Angels and the Saptarishis (the seven Rishis of the Stars) of the Hindus -- as
subordinate Angels (Messengers) to these "Rishis," the emanations, on
the descending scale, of the former. Such, in the opinion of the philosophical
Gnostics, were the God and the Archangels now worshipped by the Christians! The
"Fallen Angels" and the legend of the "War in Heaven" is
thus purely pagan in its origin and comes from India via Persia and Chaldea. The
only reference to it in the Christian canon is found in Revelations xii., as
quoted a few pages back.
Thus
"SATAN," once he ceases to be viewed in the superstitious, dogmatic,
unphilosophical spirit of the Churches, grows into the grandiose image of one
who made of terrestrial a divine MAN; who gave him, throughout the long cycle
of Maha-kalpa the law of the Spirit of Life, and made him free from the Sin of
Ignorance, hence of death. (See the Section On Satan in Part II. Vol. II.)
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Jehovah's
connection with the moon in the Kabala is well known to students.
** About the
Nazarenes see Isis, Vol. II. p. 131 and 132; the true followers of the true
Christos were all Nazarenes and Christians, and were the opponents of the later
Christians.
*** Vide supra,
the diagram of the lunar ring of seven worlds, where, as in our or any other
chain, the upper worlds are spiritual, while the lowest, whether Moon, Earth,
or any planet, is dark with matter.
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STANZA VI. --
Continued.
6. THE OLDER
WHEELS ROTATED DOWNWARD AND UPWARD (a). . . . THE MOTHER'S SPAWN FILLED THE
WHOLE (Kosmos).* THERE WERE BATTLES FOUGHT BETWEEN THE CREATORS AND THE
DESTROYERS, AND BATTLES FOUGHT FOR SPACE; THE SEED APPEARING AND REAPPEARING
CONTINUOUSLY (b).**
(a) Here, having
finished for the time being with our side-issues -- which, however they may
break the flow of the narrative, are necessary for the elucidation of the whole
scheme -- the reader must return once more to Cosmogony. The phrase "Older
wheels" refers to the worlds or Globes of our chain as they were during
the "previous Rounds." The present Stanza, when explained
esoterically, is found embodied entirely in the Kabalistic works. Therein will
be found the very history of the evolution of those countless Globes which
evolve after a periodical Pralaya, rebuilt from old material into new forms.
The previous Globes disintegrate and reappear transformed and perfected for a
new phase of life. In the Kabala, worlds are compared to sparks which fly from
under the hammer of the great Architect -- LAW, the law which rules all the smaller
Creators.
The following
comparative diagram shows the identity between the two systems, the Kabalistic
and the Eastern. The three upper are the three higher planes of consciousness, revealed
and explained in both schools only to the Initiates, the lower ones represent
the four lower planes -- the lowest being our plane, or the visible Universe.
These seven
planes correspond to the seven states of consciousness in man. It remains with
him to attune the three higher states in himself to the three higher planes in
Kosmos. But before he can attempt to attune, he must awaken the three
"seats" to life and activity. And how many are capable of bringing
themselves to even a superficial comprehension of Atma-Vidya
(Spirit-Knowledge), or what is called by the Sufis, Rohanee! In Section the
VIIth of this Book, in Sub-section 3,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The reader is
reminded that Kosmos often means in our Stanzas only our own Solar System, not
the Infinite Universe.
** This is
purely astronomical.
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the reader will
find a still clearer explanation of the above in the Commentary upon Saptaparna
-- the man-plant. See also the Section of that name in Part II.
1st Plane
2nd P.
The Three higher
Planes of the Septenary Kosmos
The Divine &
Formless World of Spirit*
3rd Plane
Eastern Gupta
Vidya [[--]] Chaldean Kabala
1st P The
Archetypal World**
Globe A [[/]] G
[[--]] Geburah A [[/]] Chesed G or Z
[[--]] Tephireth
F
2nd Plane The
Intellectual World
B [[/]] F [[--]]
Hod B [[/]] Netzah E
3rd Plane The
Substantial or Formative World
C [[/]] E [[--]]
Yesod C
4th Plane The
Material*** World
The Earth Globe
D [[--]] The Earth Malkuth D
[[above is in
diagram format in the original text]]
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Arupa or
"formless," there where form ceases to exist, on the objective plane.
** The word
"Archetypal" must not be taken here in the sense that the Platonists
gave to it, i.e., the world as it existed in the Mind of the Deity; but in that
of a world made as a first model, to be followed and improved upon by the
worlds which succeed it physically -- though deteriorating in purity.
*** These are
the four lower planes of Cosmic Consciousness, the three higher planes being
inaccessible to human intellect as developed at present. The seven states of
human consciousness pertain to quite another question.
[[-------]]
(b) "The
Seed appears and disappears continuously." Here "Seed" stands
for "the World-germ," viewed by Science as material particles in a
highly attenuated condition, but in Occult physics as "Spiritual
particles," i.e., supersensuous matter existing in a state of primeval
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differentiation.*
In theogony, every Seed is an ethereal organism, from which evolves later on a
celestial being, a God.
In the
"beginning," that which is called in mystic phraseology "Cosmic
Desire" evolves into absolute Light. Now light without any shadow would be
absolute light -- in other words, absolute darkness -- as physical science
seeks to prove. That shadow appears under the form of primordial matter,
allegorized -- if one likes -- in the shape of the Spirit of Creative Fire or
Heat. If, rejecting the poetical form and allegory, science chooses to see in
this the primordial Fire-Mist, it is welcome to do so. Whether one way or the
other, whether Fohat or the famous FORCE of Science, nameless, and as difficult
of definition as our Fohat himself, that Something "caused the Universe to
move with circular motion," as Plato has it; or, as the Occult teaching
expresses it:
"The
Central Sun causes Fohat to collect primordial dust in the form of balls, to
impel them to move in converging lines and finally to approach each other and
aggregate." (Book of Dzyan) . . . . . "Being scattered in Space,
without order or system, the world-germs come into frequent collision until
their final aggregation, after which they become wanderers (Comets). Then the
battles and struggles begin. The older (bodies) attract the younger, while
others repel them. Many perish, devoured by their stronger companions. Those
that escape become worlds."**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* To see and
appreciate the difference -- the immense gulf that separates terrestrial matter
from the finer grades of supersensuous matter -- every astronomer, every
chemist and physicist ought to be a psychometer, to say the least; he ought to
be able to sense for himself that difference in which he now refuses to
believe. Mrs. Elizabeth Denton, one of the most learned, and also one of the
most materialistic and sceptical women of her age -- the wife of Professor
Denton, the well-known American geologist and the author of "The Soul of
Things" -- was, nevertheless, one of the most wonderful psychometers some
years ago. This is what she described in one of her experiments; with a
particle of a meteorite placed on her forehead, in an envelope, the lady, not
being aware of what it contained, said:
"What a
difference between that which we recognise as matter here and that which seems
like matter there! In the one, the elements are so coarse and so angular, I
wonder that we can endure it all, much more that we can desire to continue our
present relations to it; in the other, all the elements are so refined, they
are so free from those great, rough angularities, which characterize the
elements here, that I can but regard that as by so much the more than this, the
real existence." (Vol. III. p. 345-6.)
** When
carefully analysed and reflected upon, this will be found as scientific as
Science could make it, even at our late period.
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We have been
assured that there exist several modern works of speculative fancy upon such
struggles for life in sidereal heaven, especially in the German language. We
rejoice to hear it, for ours is an Occult teaching lost in the darkness of
archaic ages. We have treated of it fully in "Isis Unveiled," and the
idea of Darwinian-like evolution, of struggle for life and supremacy, and of
the "survival of the fittest" among the Hosts above as the Hosts
below, runs throughout both the volumes of our earlier work, written in 1876
(See Index in "Isis Unveiled" at the words "Evolution" --
"Darwin" -- "Kapila" -- "Battle of Life," etc.
etc.) But the idea was not ours, it is that of antiquity. Even the Puranic
writers have ingeniously interwoven allegory with Cosmic facts and human
events. Any symbologist may discern the astro-cosmical allusion even though he
be unable to grasp the whole meaning. The great "Wars in Heaven," in
the Puranas; the wars of the Titans, in Hesiod and other classical writers; the
"struggles," also in the Egyptian legend between Osiris and Typhon,
and even those in the Scandinavian legends, all refer to the same subject.
Northern Mythology refers to it as the battle of the Flames, the sons of Muspel
who fought on the field of Wigred. All these relate to Heaven and Earth, and
have a double and often even a triple meaning, and esoteric application to
things above as to things below. They relate severally to astronomical,
theogonical and human struggles; to the adjustment of orbs, and the supremacy
among nations and tribes. The "Struggle for Existence" and the
"Survival of the Fittest" reigned supreme from the moment that Kosmos
manifested into being, and could hardly escape the observant eye of the ancient
Sages. Hence the incessant fights of Indra, the god of the Firmament, with the
Asuras -- degraded from high gods into Cosmic demons; and with Vritri or Ah-hi;
the battles fought between stars and constellations, between Moon and planets
-- later on incarnated as kings and mortals. Hence also the War in Heaven of
Michael and his Host against the Dragon (Jupiter and Lucifer-Venus), when a
third of the stars of the rebellious host was hurled down into Space, and
"its place was found no more in Heaven." As said long ago --
"This is the basic and fundamental stone of the secret cycles. It shows
that the Brahmins and Tanaim . . . speculated on the creation and development
of the world quite in a Darwinian way, both anticipating him and his school in
the natural selection of species, the survival of the fittest,
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and
transformation. . . . There were old worlds that perished conquered by the
new," etc., etc. ("Isis Unveiled," Vol. II., p. 260.) The
assertion that all the worlds (Stars, planets, etc.) -- as soon as a nucleus of
primordial substance in the laya (undifferentiated) state is informed by the
freed principles, of a just deceased sidereal body -- become first comets, and
then Suns to cool down to inhabitable worlds, is a teaching as old as the
Rishis.
Thus the Secret
Books distinctly teach, as we see, an astronomy that would not be rejected even
by modern speculation could the latter thoroughly understand its teachings.
For, archaic
astronomy, and the ancient, physical and mathematical sciences, expressed views
identical with those of modern science, and many of far more momentous import.
A "struggle for life" as a "survival of the fittest" in the
worlds above, as on our planet here below, are distinctly taught. This
teaching, however, although it would not be "entirely rejected" by
Science, is sure to be repudiated as an integral whole. For it avers that there
are only seven Self-born primordial "gods" emanated from the
trinitarian ONE. In other words, it means that all the worlds or sidereal
bodies (always on strict analogy) are formed one from the other, after the
primordial manifestation at the beginning of the "Great Age" is
accomplished. The birth of the celestial bodies in Space is compared to a crowd
or multitude of "pilgrims" at the festival of the "Fires."
Seven ascetics appear on the threshold of the temple with seven lighted sticks
of incense. At the light of these the first row of pilgrims light their incense
sticks. After which every ascetic begins whirling his stick around his head in
space, and furnishes the rest with fire. Thus with the heavenly bodies. A
laya-centre is lighted and awakened into life by the fires of another
"pilgrim," after which the new "centre" rushes into space
and becomes a comet. It is only after losing its velocity, and hence its fiery
tail, that the "Fiery Dragon" settles down into quiet and steady life
as a regular respectable citizen of the sidereal family. Therefore it is
said:--
Born in the unfathomable
depths of Space, out of the homogeneous Element called the World-Soul, every
nucleus of Cosmic matter, suddenly launched into being, begins life under the
most hostile circumstances. Through a series of countless ages, it has to
conquer
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for itself a
place in the infinitudes. It circles round and round between denser and already
fixed bodies, moving by jerks, and pulling towards some given point or centre
that attracts it, trying to avoid, like a ship drawn into a channel dotted with
reefs and sunken rocks, other bodies that draw and repel it in turn; many
perish, their mass disintegrating through stronger masses, and, when born
within a system, chiefly within the insatiable stomachs of various Suns. (See
Comm. to Stanza IV). Those which move slower and are propelled into an elliptic
course are doomed to annihilation sooner or later. Others moving in parabolic
curves generally escape destruction, owing to their velocity.
Some very
critical readers will perhaps imagine that this teaching, as to the cometary
stage passed through by all heavenly bodies, is in contradiction with the
statements just made as to the moon being the mother of the earth. They will
perhaps fancy that intuition is needed to harmonize the two. But no intuition
is in truth required. What does Science know of Comets, their genesis, growth,
and ultimate behaviour? Nothing -- absolutely nothing! And what is there so
impossible that a laya centre -- a lump of cosmic protoplasm, homogeneous and
latent, when suddenly animated or fired up -- should rush from its bed in Space
and whirl throughout the abysmal depths in order to strengthen its homogeneous
organism by an accumulation and addition of differentiated elements? And why
should not such a comet settle in life, live, and become an inhabited globe!
"The abodes
of Fohat are many," it is said. "He places his four fiery
(electro-positive) Sons in the "Four circles"; these Circles are the
Equator, the Ecliptic, and the two parallels of declination, or the tropics --
to preside over the climates of which are placed the Four mystical Entities.
Then again: "Other seven (sons) are commissioned to preside over the seven
hot, and seven cold lokas (the hells of the orthodox Brahmins) at the two ends
of the Egg of Matter (our Earth and its poles). The seven lokas are also called
the "Rings," elsewhere, and the "Circles." The ancients
made the polar circles seven instead of two, as Europeans do; for Mount Meru,
which is the North Pole, is said to have seven gold and seven silver steps
leading to it.
The strange
statement made in one of the Stanzas: "The Songs of Fohat and his Sons
were radiant as the noon-tide Sun and the Moon combined;" and that the
four Sons on the middle four-fold
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Circle "saw
their father's songs and heard his Solar-selenic radiance;" is explained
in the Commentary in these words: "The agitation of the Fohatic Forces at
the two cold ends (North and South Poles) of the Earth which resulted in a
multicoloured radiance at night, have in them several of the properties of
Akasa (Ether) colour and sound as well." . . . . . . "Sound is the
characteristic of Akasa (Ether): it generates air, the property of which is Touch;
which (by friction) becomes productive of Colour and Light." . . . . . .
(Vishnu Purana.)
Perhaps the
above will be regarded as archaic nonsense, but it will be better comprehended,
if the reader remembers the Aurora Borealis and Australis, both of which take
place at the very centres of terrestrial electric and magnetic forces. The two
poles are said to be the store-houses, the receptacles and liberators, at the
same time, of Cosmic and terrestrial Vitality (Electricity); from the surplus
of which the Earth, had it not been for these two natural
"safety-valves," would have been rent to pieces long ago. At the same
time it is now a theory that has lately become an axiom, that the phenomenon of
polar lights is accompanied by, and productive of, strong sounds, like whistling,
hissing, and cracking. (But see Professor Trumholdt's works on the Aurora
Borealis, and his correspondence regarding this moot question.)
-------
STANZA VI. --
Continued.
7. MAKE THY
CALCULATIONS, O LANOO, IF THOU WOULDST LEARN THE CORRECT AGE OF THY SMALL WHEEL
(chain). ITS FOURTH SPOKE IS OUR MOTHER (Earth) (a). REACH THE FOURTH
"FRUIT" OF THE FOURTH PATH OF KNOWLEDGE THAT LEADS TO NIRVANA, AND
THOU SHALT COMPREHEND, FOR THOU SHALT SEE (b).
(a) The
"small wheel" is our chain of spheres, and the fourth spoke is our
Earth, the fourth in the chain. It is one of those on which the "hot
(positive) breath of the Sun" has a direct effect.*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The seven fundamental
transformations of the globes or heavenly spheres, or rather of their
constituent particles of matter, is described as follows: (1) The homogeneous;
(2) the aeriform and radiant (gaseous); (3) Curd-like (nebulous); (4) Atomic,
Ethereal [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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To calculate its
age, however, as the pupil is asked to do in the Stanza, is rather difficult,
since we are not given the figures of the Great Kalpa, and are not allowed to
publish those of our small Yugas, except as to the approximate duration of
these. "The older wheels rotated for one Eternity and one half of an
Eternity," it says. We know that by "Eternity" the seventh part
of 311,040,000,000,000 years, or an age of Brahma is meant. But what of that?
We also know that, to begin with, if we take for our basis the above figures,
we have first of all to eliminate from the 100 years of Brahma (or
311,040,000,000,000 years) two years taken up by the Sandhyas (twilights),
which leaves 98, as we have to bring it to the mystical combination 14 x 7. But
we have no knowledge at what time precisely the evolution and formation of our
little earth began. Therefore it is impossible to calculate its age, unless the
time of its birth is given -- which the TEACHERS refuse to do, so far. At the
close of this Book and in Book II., however, some chronological hints will be given.
We must remember, moreover, that the law of Analogy holds good for the worlds,
as it does for man; and that as "The ONE (Deity) becomes Two (Deva or
Angel) and Two becomes Three (or man)," etc., etc., so we are taught that
the Curds (world-stuff) become wanderers, (Comets), these become stars, and the
stars (the centres of vortices) our sun and planets -- to put it briefly.*
(b) There are
four grades of initiation mentioned in exoteric works, which are known
respectively in Sanskrit as "Srotapanna," "Sagardagan,"
"Anagamin," and "Arhan" -- the four paths to Nirvana, in
this, our fourth Round, bearing the same appellations. The Arhan, though he can
see the Past, the Present, and the Future, is not yet the highest Initiate; for
the Adept himself, the initiated candidate, becomes chela (pupil) to a higher
Initiate. Three further higher grades have to be conquered by the Arhan who
would reach the apex of the ladder of Arhatship. There are those who have
reached it even in this fifth race of ours, but the faculties necessary for the
attainment of these higher
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] (beginning of motion, hence of differentiation);
(5) Germinal, fiery, (differentiated, but composed of the germs only of the
Elements, in their earliest states, they having seven states, when completely
developed on our earth); (6) Four-fold, vapoury (the future Earth); (7) Cold
and depending (on the Sun for life and light).
* This cannot be
so very unscientific, since Descartes thought also that "the planets
rotate on their axes because they were once lucid stars, the centres of
Vortices."
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grades will be
fully developed in the average ascetic only at the end of this Root-Race, and
in the Sixth and Seventh. Thus there will always be Initiates and the Profane
till the end of this minor Manvantara, the present life-cycle. The Arhats of
the "fire-mist" of the 7th rung are but one remove from the Root-Base
of their Hierarchy -- the highest on Earth, and our Terrestrial chain. This
"Root-Base" has a name which can only be translated by several
compound words into English" -- "the ever-living-human-Banyan."
This "Wondrous Being" descended from a "high region," they
say, in the early part of the Third Age, before the separation of the sexes of
the Third Race.
This Third Race
is sometimes called collectively "the Sons of Passive Yoga," i.e., it
was produced unconsciously by the second Race, which, as it was intellectually
inactive, is supposed to have been constantly plunged in a kind of blank or
abstract contemplation, as required by the conditions of the Yoga state. In the
first or earlier portion of the existence of this third race, while it was yet
in its state of purity, the "Sons of Wisdom," who, as will be seen,
incarnated in this Third Race, produced by Kriyasakti a progeny called the
"Sons of Ad" or "of the Fire-Mist," the "Sons of Will
and Yoga," etc. They were a conscious production, as a portion of the race
was already animated with the divine spark of spiritual, superior intelligence.
It was not a Race, this progeny. It was at first a wondrous Being, called the
"Initiator," and after him a group of semi-divine and semi-human
beings. "Set apart" in Archaic genesis for certain purposes, they are
those in whom are said to have incarnated the highest Dhyanis, "Munis and
Rishis from previous Manvantaras" -- to form the nursery for future human
adepts, on this earth and during the present cycle. These "Sons of Will
and Yoga" born, so to speak, in an immaculate way, remained, it is
explained, entirely apart from the rest of mankind.
The
"BEING" just referred to, which has to remain nameless, is the Tree
from which, in subsequent ages, all the great historically known Sages and
Hierophants, such as the Rishi Kapila, Hermes, Enoch, Orpheus, etc., etc., have
branched off. As objective man, he is the mysterious (to the profane -- the
ever invisible) yet ever present Personage about whom legends are rife in the
East, especially among the Occultists and the students of the Sacred Science.
It is he who changes form, yet remains ever the same. And it is he again who
holds spiritual sway over the
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initiated Adepts
throughout the whole world. He is, as said, the "Nameless One" who
has so many names, and yet whose names and whose very nature are unknown. He is
the "Initiator," called the "GREAT SACRIFICE." For, sitting
at the threshold of LIGHT, he looks into it from within the circle of Darkness,
which he will not cross; nor will he quit his post till the last day of this
life-cycle. Why does the solitary Watcher remain at his self-chosen post? Why
does he sit by the fountain of primeval Wisdom, of which he drinks no longer,
as he has naught to learn which he does not know -- aye, neither on this Earth,
nor in its heaven? Because the lonely, sore-footed pilgrims on their way back
to their home are never sure to the last moment of not losing their way in this
limitless desert of illusion and matter called Earth-Life. Because he would
fain show the way to that region of freedom and light, from which he is a
voluntary exile himself, to every prisoner who has succeeded in liberating
himself from the bonds of flesh and illusion. Because, in short, he has
sacrificed himself for the sake of mankind, though but a few Elect may profit
by the GREAT SACRIFICE.
It is under the
direct, silent guidance of this MAHA -- (great) -- GURU that all the other less
divine Teachers and instructors of mankind became, from the first awakening of
human consciousness, the guides of early Humanity. It is through these
"Sons of God" that infant humanity got its first notions of all the
arts and sciences, as well as of spiritual knowledge; and it is they who have
laid the first foundation-stone of those ancient civilizations that puzzle so
sorely our modern generation of students and scholars.*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Let those who
doubt this statement explain the mystery of the extraordinary knowledge
possessed by the ancients -- alleged to have developed from lower and
animal-like savages, the cave-men of the Palaeolithic age -- on any other
equally reasonable grounds. Let them turn to such works as those of Vitruvius
Pollio of the Augustan age, on architecture, for instance, in which all the
rules of proportion are those taught anciently at initiations, if he would
acquaint himself with the truly divine art, and understand the deep esoteric
significance hidden in every rule and law of proportion. No man descended from
a Palaeolithic cave-dweller could ever evolve such a science unaided, even in
millenniums of thought and intellectual evolution. It is the pupils of those
incarnated Rishis and Devas of the third Root Race, who handed their knowledge
from one generation to another, to Egypt and Greece with its now lost canon of
proportion; as it is the Disciples of the Initiates of the 4th, the Atlanteans,
who handed it over to their Cyclopes, the "Sons of Cycles" or of the
"Infinite," from whom the name passed to the still later generations
of Gnostic priests. "It is owing to the divine perfection [[Footnote
continued on next page]]
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Although these
matters were barely hinted at in "Isis Unveiled," it will be well to
remind the reader of what was said in Vol. I., pp. 587 to 593, concerning a
certain Sacred Island in Central Asia, and to refer him for further details to
the chapter in Book II. on "The Sons of God and the Sacred Island." A
few more explanations, however, though thrown out in a fragmentary form, may help
the student to obtain a glimpse into the present mystery.
To state at
least one detail concerning these mysterious "Sons of God" in plain
words. It is from them, these Brahmaputras, that the high Dwijas, the initiated
Brahmins of old justly claimed descent, while the modern Brahmin would have the
lowest castes believe literally that they issued direct from the mouth of
Brahma. This is the esoteric teaching, which adds moreover that, although these
descendants (spiritually of course) from the "sons of Will and Yoga,"
became in time divided into opposite sexes, as their "Kriyasakti"
progenitors did themselves, later on; yet even their degenerate descendants
have down to the present day retained a veneration and respect for the creative
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] of those architectural proportions that the
Ancients could build those wonders of all the subsequent ages, their Fanes,
Pyramids, Cave-Temples, Cromlechs, Cairns, Altars, proving they had the powers
of machinery and a knowledge of mechanics to which modern skill is like a
child's play, and which that skill refers to itself as the 'works of
hundred-handed giants.'" (See "Book of God," Kenealy.) Modern
architects may not altogether have neglected those rules, but they have
superadded enough empirical innovations to destroy those just proportions. It
is Vitruvius who gave to posterity the rules of construction of the Grecian
temples erected to the immortal gods; and the ten books of Marcus Vitruvius
Pollio on Architecture, of one, in short, who was an initiate, can only be
studied esoterically. The Druidical circles, the Dolmen, the Temples of India,
Egypt and Greece, the Towers and the 127 towns in Europe which were found
"Cyclopean in origin" by the French Institute, are all the work of
initiated Priest-Architects, the descendants of those primarily taught by the
"Sons of God," justly called "The Builders." This is what
appreciative posterity says of those descendants. "They used neither
mortar nor cement, nor steel nor iron to cut the stones with; and yet they were
so artfully wrought that in many places the joints are not seen, though many of
the stones, as in Peru, are 18 ft. thick, and in the walls of the fortress of
Cuzco there are stones of a still greater size." (Acosta, vi., 14.)
"Again, the walls of Syene, built 5,400 years ago, when that spot was
exactly under the tropic, which it has now ceased to be, were so constructed
that at noon, at the precise moment of the solar solstice, the entire disc of
the Sun was seen reflected on their surface -- a work which the united skill of
all the astronomers of Europe would not now be able to effect." --
(Kenealy, "Book of God.")
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function, and
still regard it in the light of a religious ceremony, whereas the more
civilized nations consider it as a mere animal function. Compare the western
views and practice in these matters with the Institutions of Manu in regard to
the laws of Grihasta and married life. The true Brahmin is thus indeed "he
whose seven forefathers have drunk the juice of the moon-plant (Soma),"
and who is a "Trisuparna," for he has understood the secret of the
Vedas.
And, to this
day, such Brahmins know that, during its early beginnings, psychic and physical
intellect being dormant and consciousness still undeveloped, the spiritual
conceptions of that race were quite unconnected with its physical surroundings.
That divine man dwelt in his animal -- though externally human -- form; and, if
there was instinct in him, no self-consciousness came to enlighten the darkness
of the latent fifth principle. When, moved by the law of Evolution, the Lords
of Wisdom infused into him the spark of consciousness, the first feeling it
awoke to life and activity was a sense of solidarity, of one-ness with his
spiritual creators. As the child's first feeling is for its mother and nurse,
so the first aspirations of the awakening consciousness in primitive man were
for those whose element he felt within himself, and who yet were outside, and
independent of him. DEVOTION arose out of that feeling, and became the first
and foremost motor in his nature; for it is the only one which is natural in
our heart, which is innate in us, and which we find alike in human babe and the
young of the animal. This feeling of irrepressible, instinctive aspiration in
primitive man is beautifully, and one may say intuitionally, described by
Carlyle. "The great antique heart," he exclaims, "how like a
child's in its simplicity, like a man's in its earnest solemnity and depth!
heaven lies over him wheresoever he goes or stands on the earth; making all the
earth a mystic temple to him, the earth's business all a kind of worship.
Glimpses of bright creatures flash in the common sunlight; angels yet hover,
doing God's messages among men . . . . . Wonder, miracle, encompass the man; he
lives in an element of miracle* . . . . A great law of duty, high as these two
infinitudes (heaven and hell), dwarfing all else, annihilating all else -- it
was a reality, and it is one: the garment
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* That which was
natural in the sight of primitive man has become only now miracle to us; and
that which was to him a miracle could never be expressed in our language.
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only of it is
dead; the essence of it lives through all times and all eternity!"
It lives
undeniably, and has settled in all its ineradicable strength and power in the
Asiatic Aryan heart from the Third Race direct through its first
"mind-born" sons, -- the fruits of Kriyasakti. As time rolled on the
holy caste of Initiates produced but rarely, and from age to age, such perfect
creatures: beings apart, inwardly, though the same as those who produced them,
outwardly.
While in the
infancy of the third primitive race:--
"A creature
of a more exalted kind
Was wanting yet,
and therefore was designed;
Conscious of
thought, of more capacious breast
For empire
formed and fit to rule the rest. . . . ."
It was called
into being, a ready and perfect vehicle for the incarnating denizens of higher
spheres, who took forthwith their abodes in these forms born of Spiritual WILL
and the natural divine power in man. It was a child of pure Spirit, mentally
unalloyed with any tincture of earthly element. Its physical frame alone was of
time and of life, as it drew its intelligence direct from above. It was the
living tree of divine wisdom; and may therefore be likened to the Mundane Tree
of the Norse Legend, which cannot wither and die until the last battle of life
shall be fought, while its roots are gnawed all the time by the dragon Nidhogg;
for even so, the first and holy Son of Kriyasakti had his body gnawed by the
tooth of time, but the roots of his inner being remained for ever undecaying
and strong, because they grew and expanded in heaven not on earth. He was the
first of the FIRST, and he was the seed of all the others. There were other
"Sons of Kriyasakti" produced by a second Spiritual effort, but the
first one has remained to this day the Seed of divine Knowledge, the One and
the Supreme among the terrestrial "Sons of Wisdom." Of this subject
we can say no more, except to add that in every age -- aye, even in our own --
there have been great intellects who have understood the problem correctly.
How comes our
physical body to the state of perfection it is found in now? Through millions
of years of evolution, of course, yet never through, or from, animals, as
taught by materialism. For, as Carlyle says:-- ". . . The essence of our
being, the mystery in us that calls itself 'I,' -- what words have we for such
things? -- it is a breath of Heaven,
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the highest
Being reveals himself in man. This body, these faculties, this life of ours, is
it not all as a vesture for the UNNAMED?"
The breath of
heaven, or rather the breath of life, called in the Bible Nephesh, is in every
animal, in every animate speck as in every mineral atom. But none of these has,
like man, the consciousness of the nature of that highest Being,* as none has
that divine harmony in its form which man possesses. It is, as Novalis said,
and no one since has said it better, as repeated by Carlyle:--
"There is
but one temple in the universe, and that is the body of man. Nothing is holier
than that high form . . . . We touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human
body!" "This sounds like a mere flourish of rhetoric," adds
Carlyle, "but it is not so. If well meditated it will turn out to be a
scientific fact; the expression . . . of the actual truth of the thing. We are
the miracle of miracles, -- the great inscrutable Mystery."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* There is no
nation in the world in which the feeling of devotion or of religious mysticism
is more developed and prominent than in the Hindu people. See what Max Muller
says of this idiosyncracy and national feature in his works. This is direct
inheritance from the primitive conscious men of the Third Race.
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STANZA VII.
1. BEHOLD THE
BEGINNING OF SENTIENT FORMLESS LIFE (a).
FIRST, THE
DIVINE (vehicle) (b), THE ONE FROM THE MOTHER-SPIRIT (Atman); THEN THE
SPIRITUAL -- (Atma-Buddhi, Spirit-soul)* (c); (again) THE THREE FROM THE ONE
(d), THE FOUR FROM THE ONE (e), AND THE FIVE (f), FROM WHICH THE THREE, THE
FIVE AND THE SEVEN (g) -- THESE ARE THE THREE-FOLD AND THE FOUR-FOLD DOWNWARD;
THE "MIND-BORN SONS OF THE FIRST LORD (Avalokiteswara) THE SHINING SEVEN
(the "Builders").** IT IS THEY WHO ARE THOU, ME, HIM, O LANOO; THEY
WHO WATCH OVER THEE AND THY MOTHER, BHUMI (the Earth).
(a) The
hierarchy of Creative Powers is divided into seven (or 4 and 3) esoteric,
within the twelve great Orders, recorded in the twelve signs of the Zodiac; the
seven of the manifesting scale being connected, moreover, with the Seven
Planets. All this is subdivided into numberless groups of divine Spiritual,
semi-Spiritual, and ethereal Beings.
The Chief
Hierarchies among these are hinted at in the great Quaternary, or the
"four bodies and the three faculties" of Brahma exoterically, and the
Panchasyam, the five Brahmas, or the five Dhyani-Buddhas in the Buddhist
system.
The highest
group is composed of the divine Flames, so-called, also spoken of as the
"Fiery Lions" and the "Lions of Life," whose esotericism is
securely hidden in the Zodiacal sign of Leo. It is the nucleole of the superior
divine World (see Commentary in first pages of Addendum). They are the formless
Fiery Breaths, identical in one aspect with the upper Sephirothal TRIAD, which
is placed by the Kabalists in the "Archetypal World."
The same
hierarchy, with the same numbers, is found in the Japanese system, in the
"Beginnings" as taught by both the Shinto and the Buddhist sects. In
this system, Anthropogenesis precedes Cosmogenesis, as the Divine merges into
the human, and creates --
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This relates
to the Cosmic principles.
** The seven
creative Rishis now connected with the constellation of the Great Bear
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midway in its
descent into matter -- the visible Universe. The legendary personages --
remarks reverentially Omoie -- "having to be understood as the stereotyped
embodiment of the higher (secret) doctrine, and its sublime truths." To
state it at full length, however, would occupy too much of our space, but a few
words on this old system cannot be out of place. The following is a short synopsis
of this Anthropo-Cosmogenesis, and it shows how closely the most separated
notions echoed one and the same Archaic teaching.
When all was as
yet Chaos (Kon-ton) three spiritual Beings appeared on the stage of future
creation: (1) Ame no ani naka nushi no Kami, "Divine Monarch of the
Central Heaven"; (2) Taka mi onosubi no Kami, "Exalted, imperial
Divine offspring of Heaven and the Earth"; and (3) Kamu mi musubi no Kami,
"Offspring of the Gods," simply.
These were
without form or substance (our arupa triad), as neither the celestial nor the
terrestrial substance had yet differentiated, "nor had the essence of
things been formed."
In the Zohar --
which, as now arranged and re-edited by Moses de Leon, with the help of Syrian
and Chaldean Christian Gnostics in the XIIth century, and corrected and revised
still later by many Christian hands, is only a little less exoteric than the
Bible itself -- this divine "Vehicle" no longer appears as it does in
the "Chaldean Book of Numbers." True enough, Ain-Soph, the ABSOLUTE
ENDLESS NO-THING, uses also the form of the ONE, the manifested "Heavenly
man" (the FIRST CAUSE) as its chariot (Mercabah, in Hebrew; Vahan, in
Sanskrit) or vehicle to descend into, and manifest through, in the phenomenal
world. But the Kabalists neither make it plain how the ABSOLUTE can use
anything, or exercise any attribute whatever, since, as the Absolute, it is
devoid of attributes; nor do they explain that in reality it is the First Cause
(Plato's Logos) the original and eternal IDEA, that manifests through Adam
Kadmon, the Second Logos, so to speak. In the "Book of Numbers" it is
explained that EN (or Ain, Aior) is the only self-existent, whereas its
"Depth" (Bythos or Buthon of the Gnostics, called Propator) is only
periodical. The latter is Brahm as differentiated from Brahma or Parabrahm. It
is the Depth, the Source of Light, or Propator, which is the unmanifested Logos
or the abstract Idea, and not Ain-Soph, whose ray uses Adam-Kadmon or the
manifested Logos (the objective Universe) "male and female" -- as a
chariot through which to manifest. But in the Zohar we read the following
incongruity: "Senior
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occultatus est
et absconditus; Microprosopus manifestus est, et non manifestus."
(Rosenroth; Liber Mysterii, IV., 1.) This is a fallacy, since Microprosopus or
the microcosm, can only exist during its manifestations, and is destroyed
during the Maha-Pralayas. Rosenroth's Kabala is no guide, but very often a
puzzle.
(b) As in the
Japanese system, in the Egyptian, and every old cosmogony -- at this divine
FLAME, The "One," are lit the three descending groups. Having their
potential being in the higher group, they now become distinct and separate
Entities. These are called the "Virgins of Life," the "Great
Illusion," etc., etc., and collectively the "Six-pointed Star."
The latter is the symbol, in almost every religion, of the Logos as the first
emanation. It is that of Vishnu in India (the Chakra, or wheel), and the glyph
of the Tetragrammaton, the "He of the four letters" or --
metaphorically -- "the limbs of Microprosopos" in the Kabala, which
are ten and six respectively. The later Kabalists however, especially the
Christian mystics, have played sad havoc with this magnificent symbol.* For the
"ten limbs" of the Heavenly Man are the ten Sephiroth; but the first
Heavenly Man is the unmanifested Spirit of the Universe, and ought never to be
degraded into Microprosopus -- the lesser Face or Countenance, the prototype of
man on the terrestrial plane.** Of this, however, later on. The six-pointed
Star refers to the six Forces or Powers of Nature, the six planes, principles,
etc., etc., all synthesized by the seventh, or the central point in the Star.
All these, the upper and lower hierarchies included, emanate from the
"Heavenly or Celestial Virgin,"*** the great mother in all religions,
the Androgyne, the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Indeed, the
Microprosopus -- who is, philosophically speaking, quite distinct from the
unmanifested eternal Logos "one with the Father," -- has been finally
brought, by centuries of incessant efforts, of sophistry and paradoxes, to be
considered as one with Jehovah, or the ONE living God (!), whereas Jehovah is
no better than Binah, a female Sephiroth. This fact cannot be too frequently
impressed upon the reader.
** The
Microprosopus is, as just said, the Logos manifested, and of such there are
many.
*** Sephira is
the Crown, KETHER, in the abstract principle only, as a mathematical x (the
unknown quantity). On the plane of differentiated nature she is the female
counterpart of Adam Kadmon -- the first Androgyne. The Kabala teaches that the
word "Fiat Lux" (Genesis ch. i.) referred to the formation and
evolution of the Sephiroth, and not to light as opposed to darkness. Rabbi
Simeon says: "Oh com- [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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Sephira-Adam-Kadmon.
In its Unity, primordial light is the seventh, or highest, principle,
Daivi-prakriti, the light of the unmanifested Logos. But in its differentiation
it becomes Fohat, or the "Seven Sons." The former is symbolised by
the Central point in the double-Triangle; the latter by the hexagon itself, or
the "six limbs" of the Microprosopus the Seventh being Malkuth, the
"Bride" of the Christian Kabalists, or our Earth. Hence the
expressions:
"The first
after the 'One' is divine Fire; the second, Fire and AEther; the third is
composed of Fire, AEther and Water; the fourth of Fire, AEther, Water, and
Air."* The One is not concerned with Man-bearing globes, but with the
inner invisible Spheres. "The 'First-Born' are the LIFE, the heart and
pulse of the Universe; the Second are its MIND or Consciousness,"**
as said in the
Commentary.
(c) The second
Order of Celestial Beings, those of Fire and AEther (corresponding to Spirit
and Soul, or the Atma-Buddhi) whose names are legion, are still formless, but
more definitely "substantial." They are the first differentiation in
the Secondary Evolution or "Creation" -- a misleading word. As the
name shows, they are the prototypes of the incarnating Jivas or Monads, and are
composed of the Fiery Spirit of Life. It is through these that passes, like a
pure solar beam, the ray which is furnished by them with its future vehicle,
the Divine Soul, Buddhi. These are directly concerned with the Hosts of the
higher world of our system. From these twofold Units emanate the threefold.
In the cosmogony
of Japan, when, out of the chaotic mass, an egglike nucleus appears, having
within itself the germ and potency of all the universal as well as of all
terrestrial life, it is the "three-fold" just named, which
differentiates. "The male aethereal" (Yo) principle
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] panions, companions, man as an emanation was
both man and woman, Adam Kadmon verily, and this is the sense of the words 'Let
there be Light, and it was Light.' And this is the two-fold man." (Auszuge
aus dem Zohar, pp. 13-15.)
* See next
footnote. These elements of Fire, Air, etc., are not our compound elements.
** This
"Consciousness" has no relation to our consciousness. The
consciousness of the "One manifested," if not absolute, is still
unconditioned. Mahat (the Universal Mind) is the first production of the
Brahma-Creator, but also of the Pradhana (undifferentiated matter).
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ascends and the
female grosser or more material principle (In) is precipitated into the
Universe of substance, when a separation occurs between the celestial and the
terrestrial. From this the female, the mother, the first rudimentary objective
being is born. It is ethereal, without form or sex, and yet it is from this and
the mother that the Seven Divine Spirits are born, from whom will emanate the
seven creations, just as in the Codex Nazaraeus from Karabtanos and the Mother
Spiritus the seven evilly disposed (material) spirits are born. It would be too
long to give here the Japanese names, but once translated they stand in this
order:--
(1.) The
"Invisible Celibate," which is the creative logos of the noncreating
"father," or the creative potentiality of the latter made manifest.
(2.) "The
Spirit (or the God) of the rayless depths" (of Chaos); which becomes
differentiated matter, or the world-stuff; also the mineral realm.
(3.) "The
Spirit of the Vegetable Kingdom," of the "Abundant Vegetation."
(4.) This one is
of dual nature, being at the same time "The Spirit of the Earth" and
"the Spirit of the Sands," the former containing the potentiality of
the male element, the latter that of the female element, the two forming a
combined nature.
These two were
ONE; yet unconscious of being two.
In this duality
were contained (a) the male, dark and muscular Being, Isu no gai no Kami; and
(b) Eku gai no Kami, the female, fair and weaker or more delicate Being. Then,
the:--
(5th and 6th.)
Spirits who were androgynous or dual-sexed, and, finally:--
(7.) The Seventh
Spirit, the last emanated from the "mother," appears as the first
divine human form distinctly male and female. It was the seventh creation, as
in the Puranas, wherein man is the seventh creation of Brahma.
These,
Tsanagi-Tsanami, descended into the Universe by the celestial Bridge (the milky
way), and "Tsanagi, perceiving far below a chaotic mass of cloud and
water, thrust his jewelled spear into the depths, and dry land appeared."
Then the two separated to explore Onokoro, the newly-created island-world;
etc., etc. (Omoie).
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Such are the
Japanese exoteric fables, the rind that conceals the kernel of the same one
truth of the Secret Doctrine. Turning back to the esoteric explanations in
every cosmogony:--
(d) The Third
order corresponds to the Atma-Buddhi-Manas: Spirit, Soul and Intellect, and is
called the "Triads."
(e) The Fourth
are substantial Entities. This is the highest group among the Rupas (Atomic
Forms*). It is the nursery of the human, conscious, spiritual Souls. They are
called the "Imperishable Jivas," and constitute, through the order
below their own, the first group of the first septenary** host -- the great
mystery of human conscious and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is worthy
of notice that, while rejecting as a superstition of Occultism, and religion
too, the theory of substantial and invisible Beings called Angels, Elementals,
etc. -- without, of course, having ever looked into the philosophy of these
incorporeal Entities, or thought over them -- modern chemistry, owing to
observation and discovery, should have unconsciously been forced to adopt and
recognize the same ratio of progression and order in the evolution of chemical
atoms as Occultism does, both for its Dhyanis and Atoms -- analogy being its
first law. As seen above, the very first group of the Rupa Angels is
quaternary, an element being added to each in descending order. So are the
atoms, adopting the phraseology of chemistry, monatomic, diatomic, and
tetratomic, progressing downwards. Let it be remembered that Fire, Water, and
Air, or the "Elements of primary Creation" so-called, are not the
compound Elements they are on Earth, but noumenal homogeneous Elements -- the
Spirits thereof. Then follow the septenary groups or hosts. Placed on parallel
lines in a diagram with Atoms, the Natures of those Beings would be seen to
correspond in their downward scale of progression to composite elements in a
mathematically identical manner, as to analogy. This refers, of course, only to
diagrams made by the Occultists; for were the scale of Angelic Beings to be
placed on a parallel line with the scale of the chemical atoms of Science --
from the hypothetical Helium down to Uranium -- they would of course be found
to differ. For these have, as correspondents on the Astral plane, only the four
lowest orders -- the higher three principles in the atom, or rather molecule or
chemical element, being perceptible only to the initiated Dangma's eye. But then,
if Chemistry desired to find itself on the right path, it would have to correct
its tabular arrangement by that of the Occultists -- which it may refuse to do.
In Esoteric Philosophy, every physical particle corresponds to and depends on
its higher noumenon -- the Being to whose essence it belongs; and above as
below, the Spiritual evolves from the Divine, the psycho-mental from the
Spiritual -- tainted from its lower plane by the astral -- the whole animate
and (seemingly) inanimate Nature evolving on parallel lines, and drawing its
attributes from above as well as from below.
** The number
seven does not imply only seven Entities, but seven groups or Hosts, as
explained before. The highest group, the Asuras born in Brahma's first body --
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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intellectual
Being. For the latter are the field wherein lies concealed in its privation the
germ that will fall into generation. That germ will become the spiritual
potency in the physical cell that guides the development of the embryo, and
which is the cause of the hereditary transmission of faculties and all the
inherent qualities in man. The Darwinian theory, however, of the transmission
of acquired faculties, is neither taught nor accepted in Occultism. Evolution,
in it, proceeds on quite other lines; the physical, according to esoteric
teaching, evolving gradually from the spiritual, mental, and psychic. This
inner soul of the physical cell -- this "spiritual plasm" that
dominates the germinal plasm -- is the key that must open one day the gates of
the terra incognita of the Biologist, now called the dark mystery of
Embryology. (See text and note infra.)
(f) The Fifth
group is a very mysterious one, as it is connected with the Microcosmic
Pentagon, the five-pointed star representing man. In India and Egypt these
Dhyanis were connected with the Crocodile, and their abode is in Capricornus.
These are convertible terms in Indian astrology, as this (tenth) sign of the
Zodiac is called Makara, loosely translated "crocodile." The word
itself is occultly interpreted in various ways, as will be shown further on. In
Egypt the defunct man -- whose symbol is the pentagram or the five-pointed
star, the points of which represent the limbs of a man -- was shown
emblematically transformed into a crocodile: Sebakh or Sevekh "or
seventh," as Mr. Gerald Massey says, showing it as having been the type of
intelligence, is a dragon in reality, not a crocodile. He is the "Dragon
of Wisdom" or Manas, the "Human Soul," Mind, the Intelligent
principle, called in our esoteric philosophy the "Fifth" principle.
Says the defunct
"Osirified" in ch. lxxxviii., "Book of the Dead," or the
Ritual, under the glyph of a mummiform god with a crocodile's head:--
(1) "I am
the god (crocodile) presiding at the fear . . . at the arrival of his Soul
among men. I am the god-crocodile brought for destruction" (an allusion to
the destruction of divine spiritual purity
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] which turned into "Night" -- are
septenary, i.e., divided like the Pitris into seven classes, three of which are
arupa (bodiless) and four with bodies. (See Vishnu Purana, Book I.) They are in
fact more truly our Pitris (ancestors) than the Pitris who projected the first
physical men. (See Book II.)
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when man
acquires the knowledge of good and evil; also to the "fallen" gods,
or angels of every theogony).
(2) "I am
the fish of the great Horus (as Mankara is the "crocodile," the
vehicle of Varuna). I am merged in Sekten."
This last
sentence gives the corroboration of, and repeats the doctrine of, esoteric
Buddhism, for it alludes directly to the fifth principle (Manas), or the most
spiritual part of its essence rather, which merges into, is absorbed by, and
made one with Atma-Buddhi after the death of man. For Se-khen is the residence
or loka of the god Khem (Horus-Osiris, or Father and Son), hence the "Devachan"
of Atma-Buddhi. In the Ritual of the Dead the defunct is shown entering into
Sekhem with Horus-Thot and "emerging from it as pure spirit" (lxiv.,
29). Thus the defunct says (v. 130): "I see the forms of (myself, as
various) men transforming eternally . . . I know this (chapter). He who knows
it . . . takes all kinds of living forms." . . .
And in verse 35,
addressing in magic formula that which is called, in Egyptian esotericism, the
"ancestral heart," or the re-incarnating principle, the permanent EGO,
the defunct says:--
"Oh my
heart, my ancestral heart necessary for my transformations, . . . . . . do not
separate thyself from me before the guardian of the Scales. Thou art my
personality within my breast, divine companion watching over my fleshes (bodies).
. . . . . ."
It is in Sekhem
that lies concealed "the Mysterious Face," or the real man concealed
under the false personality, the triple-crocodile of Egypt, the symbol of the
higher Trinity or human Triad, Atma, Buddhi and Manas.* In all the ancient
papyri the crocodile is called Sebek (Seventh), while the water is the fifth
principle esoterically; and, as already stated, Mr. Gerald Massey shows that
the crocodile was "the Seventh Soul, the supreme one of seven -- the Seer
unseen." Even exoterically Sekhem is the residence of the god Khem, and
Khem is Horus avenging the death of his father Osiris, hence punishing the Sins
of man when he becomes a disembodied Soul. Thus the defunct
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* One of the
explanations of the real though hidden meaning of this Egyptian religious glyph
is easy. The crocodile is the first to await and meet the devouring fires of
the morning sun, and very soon came to personify the solar heat. When the sun
arose, it was like the arrival on earth and among men "of the divine soul
which informs the Gods." Hence the strange symbolism. The mummy donned the
head of a crocodile to show that it was a soul arriving from the earth.
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"Osirified"
became the god Khem, who "gleans the field of Aanroo," i.e., he
gleans either his reward or punishment, as that field is the celestial locality
(Devachan) where the defunct is given wheat, the food of divine justice. The
fifth group of the celestial Beings is supposed to contain in itself the dual
attributes of both the spiritual and physical aspects of the Universe; the two
poles, so to say, of Mahat the Universal Intelligence, and the dual nature of
man, the spiritual and the physical. Hence its number Five, multiplied and made
into ten, connecting it with Makara, the 10th sign of Zodiac.
(g) The sixth
and seventh groups partake of the lower qualities of the Quaternary. They are
conscious, ethereal Entities, as invisible as Ether, which are shot out like
the boughs of a tree from the first central group of the four, and shoot out in
their turn numberless side groups, the lower of which are the Nature-Spirits,
or Elementals of countless kinds and varieties; from the formless and
unsubstantial -- the ideal THOUGHTS of their creators -- down to the Atomic,
though, to human perception, invisible organisms. The latter are considered as
the "Spirits of Atoms" for they are the first remove (backwards) from
the physical Atom -- sentient, if not intelligent creatures. They are all
subject to Karma, and have to work it out through every cycle. For, as the doctrine
teaches, there are no such privileged beings in the universe, whether in our or
in other systems, in the outer or the inner worlds,* as the angels of the
Western Religion and the Judean. A Dhyan Chohan has to become one; he cannot be
born or appear suddenly on the plane of life as a full-blown angel. The
Celestial Hierarchy of the present Manvantara will find itself transferred in
the next cycle of life into higher, superior worlds, and will make room for a
new hierarchy, composed of the elect ones of our mankind. Being is an endless
cycle within the one absolute eternity, wherein move numberless inner cycles
finite and conditioned. Gods, created as such, would evince no personal merit
in being gods. Such a class of beings, perfect only by virtue of the special immaculate
nature inherent in them, in the face of suffering and struggling humanity, and
even of the lower creation, would be the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* A world when
called "a higher world" is not higher by reason of its location, but
because it is superior in quality or essence. Yet such a world is generally
understood by the profane as "Heaven," and located above our heads.
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symbol of an
eternal injustice quite Satanic in character, an ever present crime. It is an
anomaly and an impossibility in Nature. Therefore the "Four" and the
"Three" have to incarnate as all other beings have. This sixth group,
moreover, remains almost inseparable from man, who draws from it all but his
highest and lowest principles, or his spirit and body, the five middle human
principles being the very essence of those Dhyanis.* Alone, the Divine Ray (the
Atman) proceeds directly from the One. When asked how that can be? How is it
possible to conceive that those "gods," or angels, can be at the same
time their own emanations and their personal selves? Is it in the same sense in
the material world, where the son is (in one way) his father, being his blood,
the bone of his bone and the flesh of his flesh? To this the teachers answer
"Verily it is so." But one has to go deep into the mystery of BEING
before one can fully comprehend this truth.
-------
STANZA VII. --
Continued.
2. THE ONE RAY
MULTIPLIES THE SMALLER RAYS. LIFE PRECEDES FORM, AND LIFE SURVIVES THE LAST
ATOM (of Form, Sthula-sarira, external body). THROUGH THE COUNTLESS RAYS THE LIFE-RAY,
THE ONE, LIKE A THREAD THROUGH MANY BEADS (pearls) (a).
(a) This sloka
expresses the conception -- a purely Vedantic one, as already explained
elsewhere -- of a life-thread, Sutratma, running through successive
generations. How, then, can this be explained? By resorting to a simile, to a
familiar illustration, though necessarily imperfect, as all our available
analogies must be. Before resorting to it, however, I would ask whether it
seems unnatural, least of all "supernatural," to any one of us, when
we consider that process known as the growth and development of a foetus into a
healthy baby weighing several pounds evolves from what? From the segmentation
of an infinitesimally small ovum and a spermatozoon; and afterwards we see that
baby develop into a six-foot man! This refers to the atomic and physical
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Paracelsus
calls them the Flagae; the Christians, the "Guardian Angels;" the
Occultist, the "Ancestors, the Pitris;" they are the sixfold Dhyan
Chohans, having the six spiritual Elements in the composition of their bodies
-- in fact, men, minus the physical body.
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expansion from
the microscopically small into something very large, from the -- to the naked
eye -- unseen, into the visible and objective. Science has provided for all
this; and, I dare say, her theories, embryological, biological, and
physiological, are correct enough so far as exact observation of the material
goes. Nevertheless, the two chief difficulties of the science of embryology --
namely, what are the forces at work in the formation of the foetus, and the
cause of "hereditary transmission" of likeness, physical, moral or
mental -- have never been properly answered; nor will they ever be solved till
the day when scientists condescend to accept the Occult theories.* But if this physical
pheno-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The
materialists and the evolutionists of the Darwinian school would be ill-advised
to accept the newly worked-out theories of Professor Weissmann, the author of
Beitrage zur Descendenzlehre, with regard to one of the two mysteries of
Embryology, as above specified, which he seems to have solved -- as he thinks.
For, when it is solved, Science will have stepped over into the domain of the
truly occult, and stepped for ever out of the realm of transformation, as
taught by Darwin. The two are irreconcileable, from the standpoint of
materialism. Regarded from that of the Occultists, it solves all these
mysteries. Those who are not acquainted with the new discovery of Professor
Weissman -- at one time a fervent Darwinist -- ought to hasten to repair the
deficiency. The German Embryologist-philosopher shows -- thus stepping over the
heads of the Greek Hippocrates and Aristotle, right back into the teachings of
the old Aryans -- one infinitesimal cell, out of millions of others at work in
the formation of an organism, determining alone and unaided, by means of
constant segmentation and multiplication, the correct image of the future man
(or animal) in its physical, mental, and psychic characteristics. It is that
cell which impresses on the face and form of the new individual the features of
the parents or of some distant ancestor; it is that cell again which transmits
to him the intellectual and mental idiosyncracies of his sires, and so on. This
Plasm is the immortal portion of our bodies -- simply through the process of
successive assimilations. Darwin's theory, viewing the embryological cell as an
essence or the extract from all other cells, is set aside; it is incapable of
accounting for hereditary transmission. There are but two ways of explaining
the mystery of heredity; either the substance of the germinal cell is endowed
with the faculty of crossing the whole cycle of transformations that lead to
the construction of a separate organism and then to the reproduction of
identical germinal cells; or, those germinal cells do not have their genesis at
all in the body of the individual, but proceed directly from the ancestral
germinal cell passed from father to son through long generations. It is the
latter hypothesis that Weissmann accepted and has worked upon; and it is to
this cell that he traces the immortal portion of man. So far, so good; and when
this almost correct theory is accepted, how will Biologists explain the first
appearance of this everlasting cell? Unless man "grew" like the
"immortal Topsy," and was not born at all, but fell from the clouds,
how was that embryological cell born in him?
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menon astonishes
no one, except in so far as it puzzles the Embryologists, why should our
intellectual and inner growth, the evolution of the human-spiritual to the
Divine-Spiritual, be regarded as, or seem, more impossible than the other? Now
to the simile.
Complete the
physical plasm, mentioned in the last foot-note, the "Germinal Cell"
of man with all its material potentialities, with the "spiritual
plasm," so to say, or the fluid that contains the five lower principles of
the six-principled Dhyan -- and you have the secret, if you are spiritual
enough to understand it.
"When the
seed of the animal man is cast into the soil of the animal woman, that seed
cannot germinate unless it has been fructified by the five virtues (the fluid
of, or the emanation from the principles) of the six-fold Heavenly man.
Wherefore the Microcosm is represented as a Pentagon, within the Hexagon Star,
the "Macrocosm." ("[[Anthropos]],") a work on Occult
Embryology, Book I.). Then: "The functions of Jiva on this Earth are of a
five-fold character. In the mineral atom it is connected with the lowest
principles of the Spirits of the Earth (the six-fold Dhyanis); in the vegetable
particle, with their second -- the Prana (life); in the animal, with all these
plus the third and the fourth; in man, the germ must receive the fruition of
all the five. Otherwise he will be born no higher than an animal"; namely,
a congenital idiot. Thus in man alone the Jiva is complete. As to his seventh
principle, it is but one of the Beams of the Universal Sun. Each rational
creature receives only the temporary loan of that which has to return to its
source; while his physical body is shaped by the lowest terrestrial lives,
through physical, chemical, and physiological evolution. "The Blessed Ones
have nought to do with the purgations of matter." (Kabala, Chaldean Book
of Numbers).
It comes to
this: Mankind in its first prototypal, shadowy form, is the offspring of the Elohim
of Life (or Pitris); in its qualitative and physical aspect it is the direct
progeny of the "Ancestors," the lowest Dhyanis, or Spirits of the
Earth; for its moral, psychic, and spiritual nature, it is indebted to a group
of divine Beings, the name and characteristics of which will be given in Book
II. Collectively, men are the handiwork of hosts of various spirits;
distributively, the tabernacles of those hosts; and occasionally and singly,
the vehicles of some of them. In our present all-material Fifth Race, the
earthly Spirit of the
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Fourth is still
strong in us; but we are approaching the time when the pendulum of evolution
will direct its swing decidedly upwards, bringing Humanity back on a parallel
line with the primitive third Root-Race in Spirituality. During its childhood,
mankind was composed wholly of that Angelic Host, who were the indwelling
Spirits that animated the monstrous and gigantic tabernacles of clay of the
Fourth Race built by (as they are now also) and composed of countless myriads
of lives.* This sentence will be explained later on in the present Commentary.
The "tabernacles" have improved in texture and symmetry of form,
growing and developing with the globe that bore them; but the physical
improvement took place at the expense of the spiritual inner man and nature.
The three middle principles in earth and man became with every race more
material; the Soul stepping back to make room for the physical intellect; the
essence of elements becoming the material and composite elements now known.
Man is not, nor
could he ever be, the complete product of the "Lord God"; but he is
the child of the Elohim, so arbitrarily changed into the singular masculine
gender. The first Dhyanis, commissioned to "create" man in their
image, could only throw off their shadows, like a delicate model for the Nature
Spirits of matter to work upon. (See Book II.) Man is, beyond any doubt, formed
physically out of the dust of the Earth, but his creators and fashioners were
many. Nor can it be said that the "Lord God breathed into his nostrils the
breath of life," unless that God is identified with the "ONE
LIFE," Omnipresent though invisible, and unless the same operation is
attributed to "God" on behalf of every living Soul -- or Nephesch,
which is the vital Soul, not the divine Spirit or Ruach, which ensures to man
alone a divine degree of immortality, that no animal, as such, could ever
attain in this cycle of incarnation. It is the inadequate distinctions made by
the Jews, and now by our Western metaphysicians, who, not knowing of, and being
unable to understand, hence to accept, more than a triune man -- Spirit, Soul,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Science, dimly
perceiving the truth, may find Bacteria and other infinitesimals in the human
body, and see in them but occasional and abnormal visitors to which diseases
are attributed. Occultism -- which discerns a life in every atom and molecule,
whether in a mineral or human body, in air, fire or water -- affirms that our
whole body is built of such lives, the smallest bacteria under the microscope
being to them in comparative size like an elephant to the tiniest infusoria.
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Body -- thus
confuse the "breath of life" with immortal Spirit.* This applies also
directly to the Protestant theologians, who, in translating verse 8 of Ch. III.
in the Fourth Gospel, have entirely perverted the meaning. Indeed the verse is
made to say "The wind bloweth where it listeth," instead of "the
Spirit goeth where it willeth," as in the original and also in the
translation of the Greek Eastern Church.
Thus the
philosophy of psychic, spiritual, and mental relations with man's physical
functions is in almost inextricable confusion. Neither the old Aryan, nor the
Egyptian psychology are now properly understood. Nor can they be assimilated
without accepting the esoteric septenary, or, at any rate, the Vedantic
quinquepartite division of the human inner principles. Failing which, it will
be for ever impossible to understand the metaphysical and purely psychic and
even physiological relations between the Dhyan-Chohans, or Angels, on the one
plane, and humanity on the other. No Eastern (Aryan) esoteric works are so far
published, but we possess the Egyptian papyri which speak clearly
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The learned
and very philosophical author of "New Aspects of Life" would impress
upon his reader that the Nephesh chaiah (living soul), according to the
Hebrews, "proceeded from, or was produced by, the infusion of the Spirit
or Breath of Life into the quickening body of man, and was to supersede and
take the place of that spirit in the thus constituted self, so that the spirit
passed into, was lost sight of, and disappeared in the living Soul." The
human body, he thinks, ought to be viewed as a matrix in which, and from which,
the Soul (which he seems to place higher than the spirit) is developed -- considered
functionally and from the standpoint of activity, the Soul stands undeniably
higher in this finite and conditioned world of Maya -- the Soul, he says,
"is ultimately produced from the animated body of man." Thus the
author identifies "Spirit" (Atma) simply with "the breath of
life." The Eastern Occultists will demur to this statement, for it is
based on the erroneous conception that Prana and Atma or Jivatma are one and
the same thing. The author supports the argument by showing that with the
ancient Hebrews, Greeks and even Latins, Ruach, Pneuma and Spiritus -- with the
Jews undeniably, and with the Greeks and Romans very probably -- meant Wind;
the Greek word Anemos (wind) and the Latin Anima "Soul" having a
suspicious relation.
This is very far
fetched. A legitimate battle-field for deciding this question is hardly to be
found, since Mr. Pratt seems to be a practical, matter-of-fact metaphysician, a
kind of Kabalist-Positivist, and the Eastern metaphysicians, especially the
Vedantins, are all Idealists. The Occultists are also of the extreme esoteric
Vedantin school, and they call the One Life (Parabrahm), the Great Breath and
the Whirlwind; but they disconnect the seventh principle entirely from matter
or any relation to, or connection with it.
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of the seven
principles or the "Seven Souls of Man."* The Book of the Dead gives a
complete list of the "transformations" that every defunct undergoes,
while divesting himself, one by one, of all those principles -- materialised
for the sake of clearness into ethereal entities or bodies. We must, moreover,
remind those who try to prove that the ancient Egyptians knew nothing of and
did not teach Reincarnation, that the "Soul" (the Ego or Self) of the
defunct is said to be living in Eternity: it is immortal, "co-eval with,
and disappearing with the Solar boat," i.e., for the cycle of necessity.
This "Soul" emerges from the Tiaou (the realm of the cause of life)
and joins the living on Earth by day, to return to Tiaou every night. This
expresses the periodical existences of the Ego. (Book of the Dead, cvxliii.)
The shadow, the
astral form, is annihilated, "devoured by the Uraeus" (cxlix., 51),
the Manes will be annihilated; the two twins (the 4th and 5th principles) will
be scattered; but the Soul-bird, "the divine Swallow -- and the Uraeus of
Flame" (Manas and Atma-Buddhi) will live in the eternity, for they are
their mother's husbands.**
Like alone
produces like. The Earth gives Man his body, the gods (Dhyanis) his five inner
principles, the psychic Shadow, of which those gods are often the animating
principle. SPIRIT (Atman) is one -- and indiscrete. It is not in the Tiaou.
For what is the
Tiaou? The frequent allusion to it in the "Book of the Dead" contains
a mystery. Tiaou is the path of the Night Sun, the inferior hemisphere, or the
infernal region of the Egyptians, placed by them on the concealed side of the
moon. The human being, in their
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Vide in Part
II., Book II., "The Seven Souls of Man," the divisions made
respectively by Messrs. Gerald Massey and Franz Lambert.
** Another
suggestive analogy between the Aryan or Brahmanical and the Egyptian
esotericism. The former call the Pitris "the lunar ancestors" of men;
and the Egyptians made of the Moon-God, Taht-Esmun, the first human ancestor.
This "moon-god" "expressed the Seven nature-powers that were
prior to himself, and were summed up in him as his seven souls, of which he was
the manifestor as the eighth one (hence the eighth sphere). The seven rays of
the Chaldean Heptakis or Iao, on the Gnostic stones indicate the same septenary
of souls." . . . "The first form of the mystical SEVEN was seen to be
figured in heaven, by the seven large stars of the Great Bear, the
constellation assigned by the Egyptians to the Mother of Time, and of the seven
elemental powers." (See The Seven Souls, etc.) As well known to every
Hindu, this same constellation represents in India the Seven Rishis, and as
such is called Riksha, and Chitra-Sikhandinas.
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esotericism,
came out from the moon (a triple mystery -- astronomical, physiological, and
psychical at once); he crossed the whole cycle of existence and then returned
to his birth-place before issuing from it again. Thus the defunct is shown
arriving in the West, receiving his judgment before Osiris, resurrecting as the
god Horus, and circling round the sidereal heavens, which is an allegorical
assimilation to Ra, the Sun; then having crossed the Noot (the celestial
abyss), returning once more to Tiaou: an assimilation to Osiris, who, as the
God of life and reproduction, inhabits the moon. Plutarch (Isis and Osiris, ch.
xliii.) shows the Egyptians celebrating a festival called "The Ingress of
Osiris into the moon." In chapter xli. life is promised after death; and
the renovation of life is placed under the patronage of Osiris-Lunus, because
the moon was the symbol of life-renewals or reincarnations, owing to its growth,
waning, dying, and reappearance every month. In the Dankmoe, (iv. 5) it is
said:-- "Oh, Osiris-Lunus! That renews to thee thy renewal." And
Safekh says to Seti I. (Mariette's Abydos, plate 51), "Thou renewest
thyself as the god Lunus when a babe." It is still better explained in a
Louvre papyrus (P. Pierret, "Etudes Egyptologiques"): "Couplings
and conceptions abound when he (Osiris-Lunus) is seen in heaven on that
day." Says Osiris: "Oh, sole radiant beam of the moon! I issue from
the circulating multitudes (of stars) . . . . . . Open me the Tiaou, for Osiris
N. I will issue by day to do what I have to do amongst the living"
("Book of the Dead," ch. ii.), -- i.e., to produce conceptions.
Osiris was
"God manifest in generation," because the ancients knew, far better
than the moderns, the real occult influences of the lunar body upon the
mysteries of conception.* Later on, when the moon became connected with female
goddesses** -- with Diana, Isis, Artemis,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In the oldest
systems we find the Moon always male. Thus Soma is, with the Hindus, a kind of
sidereal Don Juan, a "King," and the father, albeit illegitimate, of
Buddha -- Wisdom, which relates to Occult Knowledge, a wisdom gathered through
a thorough acquaintance with lunar mysteries including those of sexual
generation. (See "Holy of Holies.")
** If instead of
being taught in Sunday Schools useless lessons from the Bible, the armies of
the ragged and the poor were taught Astrology -- so far, at any rate, as the
occult properties of the Moon and its hidden influences on generation are
concerned, then there would be little need to fear increase of the population
nor to resort to the questionable literature of the Malthusians for its arrest.
For it is the Moon and her [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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Juno, etc., that
connection was due to a thorough knowledge of physiology and female nature,
physical as much as psychic. But, primarily, the Sun and Moon were the only
visible and, so to say, tangible [by their effects] psychic and physiological
deities -- the Father and the Son, while Space and air in general, or that
expanse of Heaven called Noot by the Egyptians, was the concealed Spirit or
Breath of the two. These "Father and Son" were interchangeable in
their functions and worked harmoniously together in their effects upon
terrestrial nature and humanity; hence they were regarded as ONE, though TWO in
personified Entities. They were both males, and both had their distinct and
also collaborative work in the causative generation of Humanity. So much from
the astronomical and cosmic standpoints viewed and expressed in symbolical
language -- which became in our last races theological and dogmatic. But behind
this veil of Cosmic and Astrological symbols, there were the Occult mysteries
of Anthropography and the primeval genesis of man. And in this, no knowledge of
symbols -- or even the key to the post-diluvian symbolical language of the Jews
-- will, or can help, save only with reference to that which was laid down in
national scriptures for exoteric uses; the sum of which, however cleverly
veiled, was only the smallest portion of the real primitive history of each
people, often relating, moreover, -- as in the Hebrew Scriptures -- merely to
the terrestrial human, not divine life of that nation. That psychic and
spiritual element belonged to MYSTERY and INITIATION. There were things never
recorded in scrolls, but, as in Central Asia, on rocks and in subterranean
crypts.
Nevertheless,
there was a time when the whole world was "of one lip and of one
knowledge," and Man knew more of his origin than he does now, and thus
knew that the Sun and Moon, however large a part they do play in the
constitution, growth and development of the human body, were not the direct
causative agents of his appearance on Earth;
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] conjunctions that regulate conceptions, and
every astrologer in India knows it. During the previous and the present races,
at least at the beginning of this one, those who indulged in marital relations
during certain lunar phases that made those relations sterile were regarded as
sorcerers and sinners. But even now those sins of old, based on the Occult
knowledge and the abuse of it, would appear preferable to the crimes of to-day,
which are perpetrated because of the complete ignorance of, and disbelief in
all such occult influences.
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these agents
being, in truth, the living and intelligent Powers which the Occultists call
Dhyan Chohans.
As to this, a
very learned admirer of the Jewish Esotericism tells us that "the Kabala
says expressly that Elohim is a 'general abstraction'; what we call in
mathematics 'a constant co-efficient' or a 'general function' entering into all
construction, not particular; that is, by the general ratio 1 to 31415, (the
astro-Dhyanic and) Elohistic figures." To this the Eastern Occultist
replies: Quite so, it is an abstraction to our physical senses. To our
spiritual perceptions, however, and to our inner spiritual eye, the Elohim or
Dhyanis are no more an abstraction than our soul and spirit are to us. Reject
the one and you reject the other -- since that which is the surviving Entity in
us is partly the direct emanation from, and partly those celestial Entities
themselves. One thing is sure; the Jews were perfectly acquainted with sorcery
and various maleficent forces; but, with the exception of some of their great
prophets and seers like Daniel and Ezekiel (Enoch belonging to a far distant
race and not to any nation but to all, as a generic character), they knew
little of, nor would they deal with, the real divine Occultism, their national
character being averse to anything which had no direct bearing upon their own
ethnical, tribal, and individual benefits -- witness their own prophets, and
the curses thundered by them against the "stiff-necked race." But even
the Kabala plainly shows the direct relation between the Sephiroth, or Elohim,
and men.
Therefore, when
it is proved to us that the Kabalistic identification of Jehovah with Binah, a
female Sephiroth, has still another, a sub-occult meaning in it, then and then
only the Occultist will be ready to pass the palm of perfection to the
Kabalist. Until then, it is asserted that, as Jehovah is in the abstract sense
of a "one living God," a single number, a metaphysical figment, and a
reality only when put in his proper place as an emanation and a Sephiroth -- we
have a right to maintain that the Zohar (as witnessed by the BOOK OF NUMBERS,
at any rate), gave out originally, before the Christian Kabalists had
disfigured it, and still gives out the same doctrine that we do; i.e., it makes
Man emanate, not from one Celestial MAN, but from a Septenary group of
Celestial men or Angels, just as in "Pymander, the Thought Divine."
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STANZA VII. --
Continued.
(3) WHEN THE ONE
BECOMES TWO -- THE "THREE-FOLD" APPEARS (a). THE THREE ARE (linked
into) ONE; AND IT IS OUR THREAD, O LANOO, THE HEART OF THE MAN-PLANT, CALLED
SAPTAPARNA (b).
(a) "When
the ONE becomes two, the three-fold appears": to wit, when the One Eternal
drops its reflection into the region of Manifestation, that reflection,
"the Ray," differentiates the "Water of Space"; or, in the
words of the "Book of the Dead"; "Chaos ceases, through the
effulgence of the Ray of Primordial light dissipating total darkness by the
help of the great magic power of the WORD of the (Central) Sun." Chaos
becomes male-female, and Water, incubated through Light, and the
"three-fold being issues as its First-born." "Osiris-Ptah (or
RA) creates his own limbs (like Brahma) by creating the gods destined to
personify his phases" during the Cycle (xvii., 4). The Egyptian Ra, issuing
from the DEEP, is the Divine Universal Soul in its manifested aspect, and so is
Narayana, the Purusha, "concealed in Akasa and present in Ether."
This is the
metaphysical explanation, and refers to the very beginning of Evolution, or, as
we should rather say, of Theogony. The meaning of the Stanza when explained
from another standpoint in its reference to the mystery of man and his origin,
is still more difficult to comprehend. In order to form a clear conception of
what is meant by the One becoming two, and then being transformed into the
"three-fold," the student has to make himself thoroughly acquainted
with what we call "Rounds." If he refers to "Esoteric
Buddhism" -- the first attempt to sketch out an approximate outline of
archaic Cosmogony -- he will find that by a "Round" is meant the
serial evolution of nascent material nature, of the seven globes of our chain*
with their mineral,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Several
inimical critics are anxious to prove that no seven principles of man nor
septenary constitution of our chain were taught in our earlier volume,
"Isis Unveiled." Though in that work the doctrine could only be
hinted at, there are many passages, nevertheless, in which the septenary
constitution of both man and chain is openly mentioned. Speaking of the Elohim
in Vol. II., page 420, it is said: "They remain over the seventh heaven
(or spiritual world), for it is they who, according to the Kabalists, formed in
succession the six material worlds, or rather, attempts at worlds that preceded
our own, which, they say, is the seventh." Our globe is, of course, upon
the diagram representing the "chain," the seventh and the lowest;
though, [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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vegetable, and
animal kingdoms (man being there included in the latter and standing at the
head of it) during the whole period of a life-cycle. The latter would be called
by the Brahmins "a Day of Brahma." It is, in short, one revolution of
the "Wheel" (our planetary chain), which is composed of seven globes
(or seven separate "Wheels," in another sense this time). When
evolution has run downward into matter, from planet A to planet G, or Z, as the
Western students call it, it is one Round. In the middle of the Fourth
revolution, which is our present "Round": "Evolution has reached
its acme of physical development, crowned its work with the perfect physical
man, and, from this point, begins its work spirit-ward." All this needs
little repetition, as it is well explained in "Esoteric Buddhism."
That which was hardly touched upon, and of which the little that was said has
misled many, is the origin of man, and it is upon this that a little more light
may now be thrown, just enough to make the Stanza more comprehensible, as the
process will be fully explained only in its legitimate place, in Book II.
Now every
"Round" (on the descending scale) is but a repetition in a more
concrete form of the Round which preceded it, as every globe -- down to our
fourth sphere (the actual earth) -- is a grosser and more material copy of the
more shadowy sphere which precedes it in their successive order, on the three
higher planes. (See diagram in Stanza VI. Comm. 6). On its way upwards on the
ascending arc, Evolution spiritualises and etherealises, so to speak, the
general nature of all, bringing it on to a level with the plane on which the
twin globe on the opposite side is placed; the result being, that when the
seventh globe is reached (in whatever Round) the nature of everything that is
evolving returns to the condition it was in at its starting point -- plus,
every time, a new and superior degree in the states of consciousness. Thus it
becomes clear that the "origin of man," so-called, on this our
present
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] as the evolution on these globes is cyclic, it
is the fourth in descending the arc of matter. And again, on page 367, Vol.
II., it is written: "In the Egyptian notions, as in those of all other
faiths founded on philosophy, man was not merely . . . an union of soul and
body; he was a trinity when spirit was added to it; and besides that doctrine
made him consist of body, astral form, or shadow, the animal soul, the higher
soul, and terrestrial intelligence and a sixth principle, etc., etc. -- the
seventh -- SPIRIT." So clearly are these principles mentioned, that even
in the Index, one finds on page 683:-- "Six principles of man" -- the
seventh being the synthesis of the six, and not a principle but a ray of the
Absolute ALL -- in strict truth.
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Round, or
life-cycle on this planet, must occupy the same place in the same order -- save
details based on local conditions and time -- as in the preceding Round. Again,
it must be explained and remembered that, as the work of each Round is said to
be apportioned to a different group of so-called "Creators" or "Architects,"
so is that of every globe; i.e., it is under the supervision and guidance of
special "Builders" and "Watchers" -- the various
Dhyan-Chohans.
The group of the
hierarchy which is commissioned to "create"* men is a special group,
then; yet it evolved shadowy man in this cycle just as a higher and still more
spiritual group evolved him in the Third Round. But as it is the Sixth -- on
the downward scale of Spirituality -- the last and seventh being the
terrestrial Spirits (elementals) which gradually form, build, and condense his
physical body -- this Sixth group evolves no more than the future man's shadowy
form, a filmy, hardly visible transparent copy of themselves. It becomes the
task of the fifth Hierarchy -- the mysterious beings that preside over the constellation
Capricornus, Makara, or "Crocodile" in India as in Egypt -- to inform
the empty and ethereal animal form and make of it the Rational Man. This is one
of those subjects upon which very little may be said to the general public. It
is a MYSTERY, truly, but only to him who is prepared to reject the existence of
intellectual and conscious spiritual Beings in the Universe, limiting full
Consciousness to man alone, and that only as a "function of the
Brain." Many are those among the Spiritual Entities, who have incarnated
bodily in man, since the beginning of his appearance, and who, for all that,
still exist as independently as they did before, in the infinitudes of Space. .
. .
To put it more
clearly: the invisible Entity may be bodily present on earth without
abandoning, however, its status and functions in the supersensuous regions. If
this needs explanation, we can do no better than remind the reader of like
cases in Spiritualism, though such cases are very rare, at least as regards the
nature of the Entity incarnating,**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Creation is an
incorrect word to use, as no religion, not even the sect of the Visishta Adwaitees
in India -- one which anthropomorphises even Parabrahmam -- believes in
creation out of nihil as Christians and Jews do, but in evolution out of
preexisting materials.
** The so-called
"Spirits" that may occasionally possess themselves of the bodies of
mediums are not the Monads or Higher Principles of disembodied personalities.
Such a "Spirit" can only be either an Elementary, or -- a
Nirmanakaya.
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or taking
temporary possession of a medium. Just as certain persons -- men and women,
reverting to parallel cases among living persons -- whether by virtue of a
peculiar organization, or through the power of acquired mystic knowledge, can
be seen in their "double" in one place, while the body is many miles
away; so the same thing can occur in the case of superior Beings.
Man,
philosophically considered, is, in his outward form, simply an animal, hardly
more perfect than his pithecoid-like ancestor of the third round. He is a
living body, not a living being, since the realisation of existence, the
"Ego-Sum," necessitates self-consciousness, and an animal can only
have direct consciousness, or instinct. This was so well understood by the
Ancients that the Kabalist even made of soul and body two lives, independent of
each other.* The soul, whose body vehicle is the Astral, ethero-substantial
envelope, could die and man be still living on earth -- i.e., the soul could
free itself from and quit the tabernacle for various reasons -- such as
insanity, spiritual and physical depravity, etc.** Therefore, that which living
men (Initiates)
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* On p. 340-351
(Genesis of the Soul) in the "New Aspects of Life," the Author states
the Kabalistic teaching: "They held that, functionally, Spirit and Matter
of corresponding opacity and density tended to coalesce; and that the resultant
created Spirits, in the disembodied state, were constituted on a scale in which
the differing opacities and transparencies of Elemental or uncreated Spirit
were reproduced. And that these Spirits in the disembodied state attracted,
appropriated, digested and assimilated Elemental Spirit and Elemental Matter
whose condition was conformed to their own." "They therefore taught
that there was a wide difference in the condition of created Spirits; and that
in the intimate association between the Spirit-world and the world of Matter,
the more opaque Spirits in the disembodied state were drawn towards the more
dense parts of the material world, and therefore tended towards the centre of
the Earth, where they found the conditions most suited to their state; while the
more transparent Spirits passed into the surrounding aura of the planet, the
most rarified finding their home in its satellite."
This relates
exclusively to our Elementary Spirits, and has naught to do with either the
Planetary, Sidereal, Cosmic or Inter-Etheric Intelligent Forces or
"Angels" as they are termed by the Roman Church. The Jewish
Kabalists, especially the practical Occultists who dealt with ceremonial magic,
busied themselves solely with the spirits of the Planets and the "Elementals"
so-called. Therefore this covers only a portion of the Esoteric Teaching.
** The
possibility of the "Soul" (i.e., the eternal Spiritual Ego) dwelling
in the unseen worlds, while its body goes on living on Earth, is a
pre-eminently occult doctrine, especially in Chinese and Buddhist philosophy.
See "Isis Unveiled," vol. i., [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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can do, the
Dhyanis, who have no physical body to hamper them, can do still better. This
was the belief of the Antediluvians, and it is fast becoming that of modern
intellectual society, in Spiritualism, besides the Greek and Roman Churches,
which teach the ubiquity of their angels. The Zoroastrians regarded their
Amshaspends as dual entities (Ferouers), applying this duality -- in esoteric
philosophy, at any rate -- to all the spiritual and invisible denizens of the
numberless worlds in space which are visible to our eye. In a note of Damascius
(sixth century) on the Chaldean oracles, we have a triple evidence of the
universality of this doctrine, for he says: "In these oracles the seven
Cosmocratores of the world, ('The World-Pillars,') mentioned likewise by St.
Paul, are double -- one set being commissioned to rule the superior worlds the
spiritual and the sidereal, and the other to guide and watch over the worlds of
matter." Such is also the opinion of Jamblichus, who makes an evident
distinction between the archangels and the "Archontes." (See "De
Mysteriis," sec. ii., ch. 3.) The above may be applied, of course, to the
distinction made between the degrees or orders of spiritual beings, and it is
in this sense that the Roman Catholic Church tries to interpret and teach the
difference; for while the archangels are in her teaching divine and holy, their
doubles are denounced by her as devils.* But the word "ferouer" is
not to be understood in this sense, for it means simply the reverse or the
opposite side of some attribute or quality. Thus when the Occultist says that
the "Demon is the lining of God" (evil, the reverse of the medal), he
does not mean two separate
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] p. 602, for an illustration. Many are the
Soulless men among us, for the occurrence is found to take place in wicked
materialists as well as in persons "who advance in holiness and never turn
back." (See ibid and also "Isis," vol. ii., p. 369.)
* This identity
between the Spirit and its material "double" (in man it is the
reverse) explains still better the confusion, alluded to already in this work,
made in the names and individualities, as well as the numbers, of the Rishis
and the Prajapatis; especially between those of the Satyayuga and the
Mahabharatan period. It also throws additional light on what the Secret
Doctrine teaches with regard to the Root and the Seed Manus (see Book ii.
"On the primitive Manus of humanity"). Not only those progenitors of
our mankind, but every human being, we are taught, has its prototype in the
Spiritual Spheres; which prototype is the highest essence of his seventh
principle. Thus the seven Manus become 14, the Root Manu being the Prime Cause,
and the "Seed-Manu" its effect; and when the latter reach from
Satyayuga (the first stage) to the heroic period, these Manus or Rishis become
21 in number.
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actualities, but
the two aspects or facets of the same Unity. Now the best man living would
appear, side by side with an Archangel -- as described in Theology -- a fiend.
Hence a certain reason to depreciate a lower "double," immersed far
deeper in matter than its original. But there is still as little cause to
regard them as devils, and this is precisely what the Roman Catholics maintain
against all reason and logic.
(b) The
concluding sentence of this sloka shows how archaic is the belief and the
doctrine that man is seven-fold in his constitution. The thread of being which
animates man and passes through all his personalities, or rebirths on this
Earth (an allusion to Sutratma), the thread on which moreover all his
"Spirits" are strung -- is spun from the essence of the
"threefold," the "fourfold" and the "fivefold";
which contain all the preceding. Panchasikha, agreeably to Bhagavata Purana (V.
XX. 25-28), is one of the seven Kumaras who go to Sveta-Dvipa to worship
Vishnu. We shall see further on, what connection there is between the
"celibate" and chaste sons of Brahma, who refuse "to
multiply," and terrestrial mortals. Meanwhile it is evident that "the
Man-Plant," Saptaparna, thus refers to the seven principles, and man is
compared to the seven-leaved plant of this name* so sacred among Buddhists.
For further
details as to Saptaparna and the importance of the number seven in occultism,
as well as in symbology, the reader is referred to Part II., Book II., on
Symbolism: Sections on "Saptaparna," "The Septenary in the
Vedas," etc. etc.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Egyptian
allegory in the "Book of the Dead" already mentioned, the hymn that
relates to the reward "of the Soul," is as suggestive of our
Septenary Doctrine as it is poetical. The deceased is allotted a piece of land
in the field of Aanroo, wherein the Manes, the deified shades of the dead,
glean, as the harvest they have sown by their actions in life, the corn seven
cubits high, which grows in a territory divided into 14 and 7 portions. This
corn is the food on which they live and prosper, or that will kill them, in
Amenti, the realm of which the Aanroo field is a domain. For, as said in the
hymn, (see chap. xxxii. 9) the deceased is either destroyed therein, or becomes
pure spirit for the Eternity, in consequence of the "Seven times
seventy-seven lives" passed or to be passed on Earth. The idea of the corn
reaped as the "fruit of our actions" is very graphic.
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STANZA VII. --
Continued.
4. IT IS THE
ROOT THAT NEVER DIES, THE THREE-TONGUED FLAME OF THE FOUR WICKS* (a) . . . THE
WICKS ARE THE SPARKS, THAT DRAW FROM THE THREE-TONGUED FLAME (their upper
triad) SHOT OUT BY THE SEVEN, THEIR FLAME; THE BEAMS AND SPARKS OF ONE MOON
REFLECTED IN THE RUNNING WAVES OF ALL THE RIVERS OF THE EARTH
("Bhumi," or "Prithivi")** (b).
(a) The
"Three-tongued flame" that never dies is the immortal spiritual triad
-- the Atma-Buddhi and Manas -- the fruition of the latter assimilated by the
first two after every terrestrial life. The "four wicks" that go out
and are extinguished, are the four lower principles, including the body.
"I am the
three-wicked Flame and my wicks are immortal," says the defunct. "I
enter into the domain of Sekhem (the God whose arm sows the seed of action
produced by the disembodied soul) and I enter the region of the Flames who have
destroyed their adversaries," i.e., got rid of the sin-creating "four
wicks." (See chap. i., vii., "Book of the Dead," and the
"Mysteries of Ro-stan.")
(b) Just as milliards
of bright sparks dance on the waters of an ocean above which one and the same
moon is shining, so our evanescent personalities -- the illusive envelopes of
the immortal MONAD-EGO -- twinkle and dance on the waves of Maya. They last and
appear, as the thousands of sparks produced by the moon-beams, only so long as
the Queen of the Night radiates her lustre on the running waters of life: the
period of a Manvantara; and then they disappear, the beams -- symbols of our
eternal Spiritual Egos -- alone surviving, re-merged in, and being, as they
were before, one with the Mother-Source.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The
three-tongued flame of the four wicks corresponds to the four unities and the three
Binaries of the Sephirothal tree (see Commentary on Stanza VI.).
** Useless to
repeat again that the terms given here are Sanskrit translations; for the
original terms, unknown and unheard of in Europe, would only puzzle the reader
more, and serve no useful purpose.
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STANZA VII. --
Continued.
(5) THE SPARK
HANGS FROM THE FLAME BY THE FINEST THREAD OF FOHAT. IT JOURNEYS THROUGH THE
SEVEN WORLDS OF MAYA (a). IT STOPS IN THE FIRST (Kingdom), AND IS A METAL AND A
STONE; IT PASSES INTO THE SECOND (Kingdom), AND BEHOLD -- A PLANT; THE PLANT
WHIRLS THROUGH SEVEN FORMS AND BECOMES A SACRED ANIMAL; (the first shadow of
the physical man) (b).
FROM THE
COMBINED ATTRIBUTES OF THESE, MANU (man), THE THINKER, IS FORMED.
WHO FORMS HIM?
THE SEVEN LIVES; AND THE ONE LIFE (c). WHO COMPLETES HIM? THE FIVEFOLD LHA. AND
WHO PERFECTS THE LAST BODY? FISH, SIN, AND SOMA (the moon) (d).
(a) The phrase
"through the seven Worlds of Maya" refers here to the seven globes of
the planetary chain and the seven rounds, or the 49 stations of active
existence that are before the "Spark" or Monad, at the beginning of
every "Great Life-Cycle" or Manvantara. The "thread of
Fohat" is the thread of life before referred to.
This relates to
the greatest problem of philosophy -- the physical and substantial nature of
life, the independent nature of which is denied by modern science because that
science is unable to comprehend it. The reincarnationists and believers in
Karma alone dimly perceive that the whole secret of Life is in the unbroken
series of its manifestations: whether in, or apart from, the physical body. Because
if --
"Life, like
a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white
radiance of Eternity" --
yet it is itself
part and parcel of that Eternity; for life alone can understand life.
What is that
"Spark" which "hangs from the flame?" It is JIVA, the MONAD
in conjunction with MANAS, or rather its aroma -- that which remains from each
personality, when worthy, and hangs from Atma-Buddhi, the Flame, by the thread
of life. In whatever way interpreted, and into whatever number of principles
the human being is divided, it may easily be shown that this doctrine is
supported by all the ancient
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religions, from
the Vedic to the Egyptian, from the Zoroastrian to the Jewish. In the case of
the last-mentioned, the Kabalistic works offer abundant proof of this
statement. The entire system of the Kabalistic numerals is based on the divine
septenary hanging from the Triad (thus forming the Decade) and its permutations
7, 5, 4, and 3, which, finally, all merge into the ONE itself: an endless and
boundless Circle.
"The Deity
(the ever Invisible Presence)," says the Zohar, "manifests itself
through the ten Sephiroth which are its radiating witnesses. The Deity is like
the Sea from which outflows a stream called WISDOM, the waters of which fall
into a lake named Intelligence. From the basin, like seven channels, issue the
Seven Sephiroth. . . . . For ten equal seven: the Decade contains four Unities
and three Binaries." The ten Sephiroth correspond to the limbs of MAN.
"When I framed Adam Kadmon," the Elohim are made to say, "the
Spirit of the Eternal shot out of his Body like a sheet of lightning that
radiated at once on the billows of the Seven millions of skies, and my ten
splendours were his limbs." But neither the Head nor the shoulders of
Adam-Kadmon can be seen; therefore we read in the Sephra Dzenioutha (the "Book
of the Concealed Mystery"):--
"In the
beginning of Time, after the Elohim (the "Sons of Light and Life," or
the "Builders") had shaped out of the eternal Essence the Heavens and
the Earth, they formed the worlds six by six, the seventh being Malkuth, which
is our Earth (see Mantuan Codex) on its plane, and the lowest on all the other
planes of conscious existence. The Chaldean Book of Numbers contains a detailed
explanation of all this. "The first triad of the body of Adam Kadmon (the
three upper planes of the seven*) cannot be seen before the soul stands in the
presence of the Ancient of Days." The Sephiroth of this upper triad are:--
"1, Kether (the Crown) represented by the brow of Macroprosopos; 2,
Chochmah (Wisdom, a male Principle) by his right shoulder; and 3, Binah
(Intelligence, a female Principle) by the left shoulder." Then come the
seven limbs (or Sephiroth) on the planes of manifestation, the totality of
these four planes being represented by Microprosopus (the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The formation
of the "living Soul" or man, would render the idea more clearly.
"A Living Soul" is a synonym of man in the Bible. These are our seven
"Principles."
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lesser Face) or
Tetragrammaton, the "four-lettered" Mystery. "The seven
manifested and the three concealed limbs are the Body of the Deity."
Thus our Earth,
Malkuth, is both the Seventh and the Fourth world, the former when counting
from the first globe above, the latter if reckoned by the planes. It is
generated by the sixth globe or Sephiroth called Yezod, "foundation,"
or as said in the Book of Numbers "by Yezod, He (Adam Kadmon) fecundates
the primitive Heva" (Eve or our Earth). Rendered in mystic language this
is the explanation why Malkuth, called "the inferior Mother,"
Matrona, Queen, and the Kingdom of the Foundation, is shown as the Bride of
Tetragrammaton or Microprosopus (the 2nd Logos) the Heavenly Man. When free
from all impurity she will become united with the Spiritual Logos, i.e., in the
7th Race of the 7th Round -- after the regeneration, on the day of
"SABBATH." For the "seventh day" has again an occult
significance undreamt of by our theologians.
"When
Matronitha, the Mother, is separated and brought face to face with the King, in
the excellence of the Sabbath, all things become one body," says verse
746, in chapter xxii. of "Ha Idra Zuta Kadisha." "Becomes one
body" means that all is reabsorbed once more into the one element, the
spirits of men becoming Nirvanees and the elements of everything else becoming
again what they were before -- protyle or undifferentiated substance.
"Sabbath" means rest or Nirvana. It is not the seventh day after six
days but a period the duration of which equals that of the seven
"days" or any period made up of seven parts. Thus a pralaya is equal
in duration to the manwantara, or a night of Brahma is equal to this
"day." If the Christians will follow Jewish customs they ought to
adopt the spirit and not the dead letter thereof: i.e., to work one week of
seven days and rest seven days. That the word "Sabbath" had a mystic
significance is shown in the contempt shown by Jesus for the Sabbath day, and
by what is said in Luke xviii. 12. Sabbath is there taken for the whole week.
(See Greek text where the week is called Sabbath. "I fast twice in the
Sabbath.") Paul, an Initiate, knew it well when referring to the eternal
rest and felicity in heaven, as Sabbath; "and their happiness will be
eternal, for they will ever be (one) with the Lord and will enjoy an eternal
Sabbath." (Hebrew iv. 2.)
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The difference
between the two systems, taking the Kabala as contained in the Chaldean Book of
Numbers, not as misrepresented by its now disfigured copy, the Kabala of the
Christian mystics --the Kabala and the archaic esoteric Vidya, is very small
indeed, being confined to unimportant divergences of form and expression. Thus
Eastern occultism refers to our earth as the fourth world, the lowest of the
chain, above which run upward on both its sides the six globes, three on each
side. The Zohar, on the other hand, calls the earth the lower, or the Seventh,
adding that upon the six depend all things which are in it,
"Microprosopus." The "smaller face," smaller because
manifested and finite, "is formed of six Sephiroth," says the same
work. "Seven kings come and die in the thrice-destroyed world" --
(Malkuth our earth, destroyed after each of the three rounds which it has gone
through). "And their reign (of the seven kings) will be broken up."
(Book of Numbers, 1. viii., 3.) This relates to the Seven Races, five of which
have already appeared, and two more have still to appear in this Round.
The Shinto allegorical
accounts of Cosmogony and the origin of man in Japan hint at the same belief.
Captain C.
Pfoundes studied for nearly nine years in the monasteries of Japan the religion
underlying the various sects of the land. . . . . . "The Shinto idea of creation,"
he says, "is as follows: Out of chaos (Konton) the earth (in) was the
sediment precipitated, and the Heavens (yo) the ethereal essences which
ascended: Maa (jin) appeared between the two. The first man was called Kuni-to
ko tatchi-no-mikoto, and five other names were given to him, and then the human
race appeared, male and female. Isanagi and Isanami begat Tenshoko doijin, the
first of the five gods of the Earth." These "gods" are simply
our five races, Isanagi and Isanami being the two kinds of the
"ancestors," the two preceding races which give birth to animal and
to rational man.
It will be shown
(Vol. II. Pt. II.) that the number seven, as well as the doctrine of the
septenary constitution of man, was pre-eminent in all the secret systems. It plays
as important a part in Western Kabala as in Eastern Occultism. Eliphas Levi
calls the number seven "the key to the Mosaic creation and the symbols of
every religion." He shows the Kabala following faithfully even the
septenary division of man, as the diagram he gives in his "Clef des Grands
Mysteres" is septenary. This
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may be seen at a
glance on page 389, "Une prophetic et diverses pensees de Paracelse,"
however cleverly the correct thought is veiled. One needs also only to look at
the diagram (Plate VII. in Mr. Mathers' Kabala) "the formation of the
Soul"* from the same "Key of the Great Mysteries" by Levi to
find the same, though with a different interpretation.
Thus it stands
with both the Kabalistic and the Occult names attached:--
7 Neschanah
[[--]] Pure Spirit [[--]] Atma
6 Ruach [[--]]
Spiritual Soul [[--]] Buddhi
5 Nephesch
[[--]] Plastic Mediator [[--]] Manas
N. B. -- Please
remark that this triad is disconnected with the lower Quaternary, as it
disconnects itself always after death.
THE UPPER TRIAD
[[--]] The Immortal. E. Levi calls Nephesch what we name Manas, and vice
versa.*
4 Samael [[--]]
Seat of Passion & Animal Desires [[--]] Kama
3 Mikael [[--]]
the Sun Principle [[--]] whence Life Prana
2 Image of man
[[--]] Astral Body [[--]] or Linga Sarira
1 Image of the
Creators [[--]] Physical Body [[--]] Sthula Sarira [[--]] Rupa
The lower
Quarternary: the Transitory and the mortal.
Nephesch. -- The
Breath of animal life in man -- the breath of life instinctual in the animal:
and Manas is the 3rd Soul -- the human in its light side, -- animal, in its
connection with Samaelor Kama.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Nephesch is
the "breath of (animal) life" breathed into Adam, the man of dust; it
is consequently the Vital Spark, the informing element. Without Manas, or what
is miscalled in Levi's diagram Nephesch instead of Manas, "the reasoning
Soul," or mind, Atma-Buddhi are irrational on this plane and cannot act.
It is Buddhi which is the plastic mediator, not Manas, "the intelligent
medium between the upper Triad and the lower Quaternary." But there are
many such strange and curious transformations to be found in the Kabalistic
works -- a convincing proof that its literature has become a sad jumble. We do
not accept the classification except in this one particular, in order to show
the points of agreement.
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We will now give
in tabular form what the very cautious Eliphas Levi says in explanation of his
diagram, and what the Esoteric Doctrine teaches -- and compare the two. Levi,
too, makes a distinction between Kabalistic and Occult Pneumatics. (See
"Histoire de la Magic," pp. 388, 389.)
[[first column]]
Says Eliphas
Levi, the Kabalist:--
KABALISTIC
PNEUMATICS.
1. The Soul (or
EGO) is a clothed light; and this light is triple.
2. Neschamah --
"pure Spirit."
3. Ruach -- the
Soul or Spirit.
4. Nephesch --
plastic mediator.**
5. The garment
of the Soul is the rind (body) of the image (astral Soul).
6. The image is
double, because it reflects the good as the bad.
7. Imago, body.
-------
OCCULT
PNEUMATICS.
As given by
Eliphas Levi.
1. Nephesh is immortal
because it renews its life by the destruction of forms.
[But Nephesh,
the "breath of
[[first column
continued on next page]]
[[second
column]]
Say the
Theosophists:--
ESOTERIC
PNEUMATICS.
1. Ditto, for it
is Atma-Buddhi-Manas.
2. Ditto.*
3. Spiritual
Soul.
4. Mediator
between Spirit and its Man, the Seat of Reason, the Mind, in man.
5. Correct.
6. Too uselessly
apocalyptic. Why not say that the astral reflects the good as well as the bad
man; man, who is ever tending to the upper triangle, or else disappears with
the Quaternary.
7. Ditto, the
earthly image.
-------
OCCULT
PNEUMATICS.
As given by the
Occultists.
1. Manas is
immortal, because after every new incarnation it adds to Atma-Buddhi something
of itself, and
[[second column
continued on next page]]
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Eliphas Levi
has, whether purposely or otherwise, confused the numbers: with us his No. 2 is
No. 1. (Spirit); and by making of Nephesch both the plastic mediator and Life,
he thus makes in reality only six principles, because he repeats the first two.
** Esotericism
teaches the same. But Manas is not Nephesch; nor is the latter the astral, but
the 4th principle, if also the 2nd prana, for Nephesch is the "breath of
life" in man, as in beast or insect, of physical, material life, which has
no spirituality in it.
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[[first column
continued from previous page]]
life," is a
misnomer and a useless puzzle to the student.]
2. Ruach
progresses by the evolution of ideas (! ?).
3. Neschamah is
progressive without oblivion and destruction.
4. The soul has
three dwellings.
5. These
dwellings are: the plane of the mortals: the Superior Eden; and the Inferior
Eden.
6. The image
(man) is a sphinx that offers the riddle of birth.
7. The fatal
image (the astral) endows Nephesch with its aptitudes; but Ruach is able to
substitute for this (vitiated) Nephesch the image
[[first column
continued on next page]]
[[second column
continued from previous page]]
thus,
assimilating itself to the Monad, shares its immortality.
2. Buddhi becomes
conscious by the accretions it gets from Manas after every new incarnation and
the death of man.
3. Atma neither
progresses, forgets, nor remembers. It does not belong to this plane: it is but
the ray of light eternal which shines upon and through the darkness of matter
-- when the latter is willing.
4. The Soul
(collectively, as the upper Triad) lives on three planes, besides its fourth,
the terrestrial sphere; and it exists eternally on the highest of the three.
5. These
dwellings are: Earth for the physical man, or the animal Soul; Kama-loka
(Hades, the Limbo) for the disembodied man, or his Shell; Devachan for the
higher Triad.
6. Correct.
7. The astral
through Kama (desire) is ever drawing Manas down into the sphere of material
passions and desires. But if the better man
[[second column
continued on next page]]
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[[first column
continued from previous page]]
conquered in
accordance with the inspirations of Neschamah.
-------
[[second column
continued from previous page]]
or Manas tries
to escape the fatal attraction and turns its aspirations to Atma -- Spirit --
then Buddhi (Ruach) conquers, and carries Manas with it to the realm of eternal
Spirit.
-------
It is very
evident that the French Kabalist either did not know sufficiently the real
tenet, or distorted it to suit himself and his object. Thus he says again,
treating upon the same subject, and we, Occultists, answer the late Kabalist
and his admirers:--
[[first column]]
1. The body is
the mould of Nephesch; Nephesch the mould of Ruach; Ruach the mould of the
garments of Neschamah.
2. Light (the Soul)
personifies in clothing itself (with a body); and personality endures only when
the garment is perfect.
3. The angels
aspire to become men; a perfect man, a man-god is above all the angels.
4. Every 14,000
years the soul rejuvenates and rests in the jubilean sleep of oblivion.
[[second
column]]
1. The body
follows the whims, good or bad, of Manas; Manas tries to follow the light of
Buddhi, but often fails. Buddhi is the mould of the "garments" of
Atma, because Atma is no body, or shape, or anything, and because Buddhi is its
vehicle only figuratively.
2. The Monad
becomes a personal ego when it incarnates; and something remains of that
personality through Manas, when the latter is perfect enough to assimilate
Buddhi. 3. Correct.
4. Within a
period, "a great age" or a day of Brahrna, 14 Manus reign; after
which comes Pralaya when all the Souls rest in Nirvana. (Souls = Egos).
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Such are the
distorted copies of the esoteric doctrine in the Kabala. But see also "The
Primeval Manus of Humanity" in Book II.
To return to
Stanza VII.
(b) The
well-known Kabalistic aphorism runs:-- "A stone becomes a plant; a plant,
a beast; the beast, a man; a man a spirit; and the spirit a god." The
"spark" animates all the kingdoms in turn before it enters into and
informs divine man, between whom and his predecessor, animal man, there is all
the difference in the world. Genesis begins its anthropology at the wrong end
(evidently for a blind) and lands nowhere.* Had it begun as it ought, one would
have found in it, first, the celestial Logos, the "Heavenly Man,"
which evolves as a Compound Unit of Logoi, out of whom after their pralayic
sleep -- a sleep that gathers the cyphers scattered on the Mayavic plane into
One, as the separate globules of quicksilver on a plate blend into one mass --
the Logoi appear in their totality as the first "male and female" or
Adam Kadmon, the "Fiat Lux" of the Bible, as we have already seen.
But this transformation did not take place on our Earth, nor on any material
plane, but in the Spacial Depths of the first differentiation of the eternal
Root-matter. On our nascent globe things proceed differently. The Monad or
Jiva, as said in "Isis Unveiled," vol. i., p. 302, is, first of all,
shot down by the law of Evolution into the lowest form of matter -- the
mineral. After a sevenfold gyration encased in the stone (or that which will
become mineral and stone in the Fourth Round), it creeps out of it, say, as a
lichen. Passing thence, through all the forms of vegetable matter, into what is
termed animal matter, it has now reached the point in which it has become the
germ, so to speak, of the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The
introductory chapters of Genesis were never meant to represent even a remote
allegory of the creation of our Earth. They embrace a metaphysical conception
of some indefinite period in the eternity, when successive attempts were being
made by the law of evolution at the formation of universes. The idea is plainly
stated in the Zohar: "There were old worlds, which perished as soon as
they came into existence, were formless, and were called Sparks. Thus, the
smith, when hammering the iron, lets the sparks fly in all directions. The
sparks are the primordial worlds, which could not continue because the Sacred
Aged (Sephira) had not as yet assumed its form (of androgyne, or opposite
sexes) of King and Queen (Sephira and Kadmon), and the Master was not yet at
his work." See Zohar, "Idra Suta," Book iii., p. 292, b. The
Supreme consulting with the Architect of the world -- his Logos -- about
creation. ("Isis Unveiled," vol. ii., p. 421.)
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animal, that will
become the physical man. All this, up to the Third Round, is formless, as
matter, and senseless, as consciousness. For the Monad or Jiva per se cannot be
even called spirit: it is a ray, a breath of the ABSOLUTE, or the Absoluteness
rather, and the Absolute Homogeneity, having no relations with the conditioned
and relative finiteness, is unconscious on our plane. Therefore, besides the
material which will be needed for its future human form, the monad requires (a)
a spiritual model, or prototype, for that material to shape itself into; and
(b) an intelligent consciousness to guide its evolution and progress, neither
of which is possessed by the homogeneous monad, or by senseless though living
matter. The Adam of dust requires the Soul of Life to be breathed into him: the
two middle principles, which are the sentient life of the irrational animal and
the Human Soul, for the former is irrational without the latter. It is only
when, from a potential androgyne, man has become separated into male and female,
that he will be endowed with this conscious, rational, individual Soul, (Manas)
"the principle, or the intelligence, of the Elohim," to receive
which, he has to eat of the fruit of Knowledge from the Tree of Good and Evil.
How is he to obtain all this? The Occult doctrine teaches that while the monad
is cycling on downward into matter, these very Elohim -- or Pitris, the lower
Dhyan-Chohans -- are evolving pari passu with it on a higher and more spiritual
plane, descending also relatively into matter on their own plane of
consciousness, when, after having reached a certain point, they will meet the
incarnating senseless monad, encased in the lowest matter, and blending the two
potencies, Spirit and Matter, the union will produce that terrestrial symbol of
the "Heavenly Man" in space -- PERFECT MAN. In the Sankhya
philosophy, Purusha (spirit) is spoken of as something impotent unless he
mounts on the shoulders of Prakriti (matter), which, left alone, is --
senseless. But in the secret philosophy they are viewed as graduated. Though
one and the same thing in their origin, Spirit and Matter, when once they are
on the plane of differentiation, begin each of them their evolutionary progress
in contrary directions -- Spirit falling gradually into matter, and the latter
ascending to its original condition, that of a pure spiritual substance. Both
are inseparable, yet ever separated. In polarity, on the physical plane, two
like poles will always repel each other, while the negative and the positive
are mutually attracted, so do Spirit and Matter stand to each other -- the two
poles of the same homogeneous substance, the root-principle of the universe.
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Therefore, when
the hour strikes for Purusha to mount on Prakriti's shoulders for the formation
of the Perfect Man -- rudimentary man of the first 2 1/2 Races being only the
first, gradually evolving into the most perfect of mammals -- the Celestial
"Ancestors" (Entities from preceding worlds, called in India the
Sishta) step in on this our plane, as the Pitris had stepped in before them for
the formation of the physical or animal-man, and incarnate in the latter. Thus
the two processes -- for the two creations: the animal and the divine man --
differ greatly. The Pitris shoot out from their ethereal bodies, still more
ethereal and shadowy similitudes of themselves, or what we should now call
"doubles," or "astral forms," in their own likeness.* This
furnishes the Monad with its first dwelling, and blind matter with a model
around and upon which to build henceforth. But Man is still incomplete. From
Swayambhuva Manu (in Manu, Book I.), from whom descended the seven primitive
Manus or Prajapati, each of whom gave birth to a primitive race of men, down to
the Codex Nazareus, in which Karabtanos or Fetahil (blind concupiscent matter)
begets on his Mother, "Spiritus," seven figures, each of which stands
as the progenitor of one of the primaeval seven races -- this doctrine has left
its impress on every Archaic Scripture.
"Who forms
Manu (the Man) and who forms his body? The LIFE and the LIVES. Sin** and the
MOON." Here Manu stands for the spiritual, heavenly man, the real and
non-dying EGO in us, which is the direct emanation of the "One Life"
or the Absolute Deity. As to our outward physical bodies, the house of the
tabernacle of the Soul, the Doctrine teaches a strange lesson; so strange that
unless thoroughly explained and as rightly comprehended, it is only the exact
Science of the future that is destined to vindicate the theory fully.
It has been
stated before now that Occultism does not accept anything inorganic in the
Kosmos. The expression employed by Science, "inorganic substance,"
means simply that the latent life slumbering in the molecules of so-called
"inert matter" is incognizable. ALL IS LIFE, and every atom of even
mineral dust is a LIFE, though beyond our comprehension and perception, because
it is outside the range of the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Read in Isis,
vol. ii., pp. 297-303, the doctrine of the Codex Nazaraeus -- every tenet of
our teaching is found there under a different form and allegory.
** The word
"Sin" is curious, but has a particular Occult relation to the Moon,
besides being its Chaldean equivalent.
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laws known to
those who reject Occultism. "The very Atoms," says Tyndall,
"seem instinct with a desire for life." Whence, then, we would ask,
comes the tendency "to run into organic form"? Is it in any way explicable
except according to the teachings of Occult Science?
"The
worlds, to the profane," says a Commentary, "are built up of the
known Elements. To the conception of an Arhat, these Elements are themselves
collectively a divine Life; distributively, on the plane of manifestations, the
numberless and countless crores of lives.* Fire alone is ONE, on the plane of
the One
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Is Pasteur
unconsciously taking the first step toward Occult Science in declaring that, if
he dared express his full idea upon this subject, he would say that the Organic
cells are endowed with a vital potency that does not cease its activity with
the cessation of a current of Oxygen towards them, and does not, on that account,
break off its relations with life itself, which is supported by the influence
of that gas? "I would add," goes on Pasteur, "that the evolution
of the germ is accomplished by means of complicated phenomena, among which we
must class processes of fermentation"; and life, according to Claude
Bernard and Pasteur, is nothing else than a process of fermentation. That there
exist in Nature Beings or Lives that can live and thrive without air, even on
our globe, was demonstrated by the same men of science. Pasteur found that many
of the lower lives, such as Vibriones, and some microbes and bacteria, could
exist without air, which, on the contrary, killed them. They derived the oxygen
necessary for their multiplication from the various substances that surround
them. He calls them AErobes, living on the tissues of our matter when the
latter has ceased to form a part of an integral and living whole (then called
very unscientifically by science "dead matter"), and Anaerobes. The
one kind binds oxygen, and contributes vastly to the destruction of animal life
and vegetable tissues, furnishing to the atmosphere materials which enter later
on into the constitution of other organisms; the other destroys, or rather
annihilates finally, the so-called organic substance; ultimate decay being
impossible without their participation. Certain germ-cells, such as those of
yeast, develop and multiply in air, but when deprived of it, they will adapt
themselves to life without air and become ferments, absorbing oxygen from substances
coming in contact with them, and thereby ruining the latter. The cells in
fruit, when lacking free oxygen, act as ferments and stimulate fermentation.
"Therefore the vegetable cell manifests in this case its life as an
anaerobic being. Why, then, should an organic cell form in this case an
exception"? asks Professor Bogolubof. Pasteur shows that in the substance
of our tissues and organs, the cell, not finding sufficient oxygen for itself,
stimulates fermentation in the same way as the fruit-cell, and Claude Bernard
thought that Pasteur's idea of the formation of ferments found its application
and corroboration in the fact that Urea increases in the blood during
strangulation: LIFE therefore is everywhere in the Universe, and, Occultism
teaches us, it is also in the atom. Also see infra, at the close of this
Section.
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Reality: on that
of manifested, hence illusive, being, its particles are fiery lives which live
and have their being at the expense of every other life that they consume.
Therefore they are named the "DEVOURERS." . . . "Every visible
thing in this Universe was built by such LIVES, front conscious and divine
primordial man down to the unconscious agents that construct matter." . .
. "From the ONE LIFE formless and Uncreate, proceeds the Universe of
lives. First was manifested from the Deep (Chaos) cold luminous fire (gaseous
light?) which formed the curds in Space." (Irresolvable nebulae,
perhaps?). . . . . . ." . . . These fought, and a great heat was developed
by the encountering and collision, which produced rotation. Then came the first
manifested MATERIAL, Fire, the hot flames, the wanderers in heaven (comets);
heat generates moist vapour; that forms solid water (?); then dry mist, then
liquid mist, watery, that puts out the luminous brightness of the pilgrims
(comets?) and forms solid watery wheels (MATTER globes). Bhumi (the Earth)
appears with six sisters.* These produce by their continuous motion the
inferior fire, heat, and an aqueous mist, which yields the third World-Element
-- WATER; and from the breath of all (atmospheric) AIR is born. These four are
the four lives of the first four periods (Rounds) of Manvantara. The three last
will follow."
This means that
every new Round develops one of the Compound Elements, as now known to Science,
-- which rejects the primitive nomenclature, preferring to subdivide them into
constituents. If Nature is the "Ever-becoming" on the manifested
plane, then those Elements are to be regarded in the same light: they have to
evolve, progress, and increase to the Manvantaric end. Thus the First Round, we
are taught, developed but one Element, and a nature and humanity in what may be
called one aspect of Nature -- called by some, very unscientifically, though it
may be so de facto, "One-dimensional Space."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is a Vedic
teaching that "there are three Earths corresponding to three Heavens, and
our Earth (the fourth) is called Bhumi." This is the explanation given by
our exoteric Western Orientalists. But the esoteric meaning and allusion to it
in the Vedas is that it refers to our planetary chain, three "Earths"
on the descending arc, and three "heavens" which are the three Earths
or globes also, only far more ethereal, on the ascending or spiritual arc: by
the first three we descend into matter, by the other three we ascend into
Spirit; the lower one, Bhumi, our Earth, forming the turning point, so to say,
and containing potentially as much of Spirit as it does of Matter. We shall
treat of this hereafter.
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The Second Round
brought forth and developed two Elements -- Fire and Earth -- and its humanity,
adapted to this condition of Nature, if we can give the name Humanity to beings
living under conditions unknown to men, was -- to use again a familiar phrase
in a strictly figurative sense (the only way in which it can be used correctly)
-- "a two-dimensional species." The processes of natural development
which we are now considering will at once elucidate and discredit the fashion
of speculating on the attributes of the two, three, and four or more
"dimensional Space;" but in passing, it is worth while to point out
the real significance of the sound but incomplete intuition that has prompted
-- among Spiritualists and Theosophists, and several great men of Science, for
the matter of that* -- the use of the modern expression, "the fourth
dimension of Space." To begin with, of course, the superficial absurdity
of assuming that Space itself is measurable in any direction is of little
consequence. The familiar phrase can only be an abbreviation of the fuller form
-- the "Fourth dimension of MATTER in Space."** But it is an unhappy
phrase even thus expanded, because while it is perfectly true that the progress
of evolution may be destined to introduce us to new characteristics of matter,
those with which we are already familiar are really more numerous than the
three dimensions. The faculties, or what is perhaps the best available term,
the characteristics of matter, must clearly bear a direct relation always to
the senses of man. Matter has extension, colour, motion (molecular motion),
taste, and smell, corresponding to the existing senses of man, and by the time
that it fully develops the next characteristic -- let us call it for the moment
PERMEABILITY -- this will correspond to the next sense of man -- let us call it
"NORMAL CLAIRVOYANCE;" thus, when some bold thinkers have been thirsting
for a fourth dimension to explain the passage of matter through matter, and the
production of knots upon an endless cord, what they were really in want of, was
a sixth characteristic of matter. The three dimensions belong really but to one
attribute or characteristic of matter -- extension; and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Professor
Zollner's theory has been more than welcomed by several Scientists --who are
Spiritualists -- Professors Butlerof and Wagner, of St. Petersburg, for
instance.
** "The
giving reality to abstractions is the error of Realism. Space and Time are
frequently viewed as separated from all the concrete experiences of the mind,
instead of being generalizations of these in certain aspects." (Bain,
Logic, Part II., p. 389.)
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popular common
sense justly rebels against the idea that under any condition of things there
can be more than three of such dimensions as length, breadth, and thickness.
These terms, and the term "dimension" itself, all belong to one plane
of thought, to one stage of evolution, to one characteristic of matter. So long
as there are foot-rules within the resources of Kosmos, to apply to matter, so
long will they be able to measure it three ways and no more; and from the time
the idea of measurement first occupied a place in the human understanding, it
has been possible to apply measurement in three directions and no more. But
these considerations do not militate in any way against the certainty that in
the progress of time -- as the faculties of humanity are multiplied -- so will
the characteristics of matter be multiplied also. Meanwhile, the expression is
far more incorrect than even the familiar one of the "Sun rising or
setting."
We now return to
the consideration of material evolution through the Rounds. Matter in the
second Round, it has been stated, may be figuratively referred to as
two-dimensional. But here another caveat must be entered. That loose and
figurative expression may be regarded -- in one plane of thought, as we have
just seen -- as equivalent to the second characteristic of matter corresponding
to the second perceptive faculty or sense of man. But these two linked scales
of evolution are concerned with the processes going on within the limits of a
single Round. The succession of primary aspects of Nature with which the
succession of Rounds is concerned, has to do, as already indicated, with the
development of the "Elements" (in the Occult sense) -- Fire, Air,
Water,* Earth. We are only in the fourth Round, and our catalogue so far stops
short. The centres of consciousness (destined to develop into humanity as we
know it) of the third Round arrived at a perception of the third Element
Water.** Those of the fourth Round have added
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The order in
which these Elements are placed above is the correct one for esoteric purposes
and in the Secret Teachings. Milton was right when he spoke of the "Powers
of Fire, Air, Water, Earth"; the Earth, such as we know it now, had no
existence before the 4th Round, hundreds of million years ago, the commencement
of our geological Earth. The globe was "fiery, cool and radiant as its
ethereal men and animals during the first Round," says the Commentary,
uttering a contradiction or paradox in the opinion of our present Science;
"luminous and more dense and heavy during the second Round; watery during
the Third!" Thus are the elements reversed.
** If we had to
frame our conclusions according to the data furnished to us by the [[Footnote
continued on next page]]
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earth as a state
of matter to their stock as well as the three other elements in their present
transformation. In short, none of the so-called elements were, in the three
preceding Rounds, as they are now. For all we know, FIRE may have been pure
AKASA, the first Matter of the Magnum Opus of the Creators and
"Builders," that Astral Light which the paradoxical Eliphas Levi
calls in one breath "the body of the Holy Ghost," and in the next
"Baphomet," the "Androgyne Goat of Mendes"*; AIR, simply
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] geologists, then we would say that there was no
real water -- even during the Carboniferous period. We are told that gigantic
masses of carbon, which existed formerly spread in the atmosphere as Carbonic
Acid, were absorbed by plants, while a large proportion of that gas was mixed
in the water. Now, if this be so, and we have to believe that all the Carbonic
Acid which went to compose those plants that formed bituminous coal, lignite,
etc., and went towards the formation of limestone, and so on, that all this was
at that period in the atmosphere in gaseous form, then, there must have been
seas and oceans of liquid carbonic acid? But how then could the carboniferous
period be preceded by the Devonian and Silurian ages -- those of Fishes and
Molluscs -- on that assumption? Barometric pressure, moreover, must have
exceeded several hundred times the pressure of our present atmosphere. How
could organisms, even so simple as those of certain fishes and molluscs, stand
that? There is a curious work by Blanchard, on the Origin of Life, wherein he
shows some strange contradictions and confusions in the theories of his
colleagues, and which we recommend to the reader's attention.
* Eliphas Levi
shows it very truly "a force in Nature," by means of which "a single
man who can master it . . . might throw the world into confusion and transform
its face"; for it is the "great Arcanum of transcendent Magic."
Quoting the words of the great Western Kabalist in their translated form (see
The Mysteries of Magic, by A. E. Waite), we may explain them perhaps the better
by the occasional addition of a word or two to show the difference between
Western and Eastern explanations of the same subject. The Author says of the
great Magic Agent -- "This ambient and all-penetrating fluid, this ray
detached from the (Central or 'Spiritual') Sun's splendour . . . fixed by the
weight of the atmosphere (?!) and the power of central attraction . . . the
Astral Light, this electromagnetic ether, this vital and luminous caloric, is
represented on ancient monuments by the girdle of Isis which twines round two
poles and in ancient theogonies by the serpent devouring its own tail, emblem
of prudence and of Saturn" -- emblem of infinity, immortality, and Kronos
-- "Time" -- not the god Saturn or the planet. "It is the winged
dragon of Medea, the double serpent of the caduceus, and the tempter of
Genesis; but it is also the brazen snake of Moses encircling the Tau lastly, it
is the devil of exoteric dogmatism, and is really the blind force (it is not
blind, and Levi knew it), which souls must conquer in order to detach
themselves from the chains of Earth; 'for if they should not,' they will be
absorbed by the same power which first produced them and will return to the
central and eternal fire." This great archaeus is now discovered by, and
only for one man -- Mr. J. W. Keeley, of [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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Nitrogen,
"the breath of the Supporters of the Heavenly Dome," as the
Mohammedan mystics call it; WATER, that primordial fluid which was required,
according to Moses, to make a living soul with. And this may account for the
flagrant discrepancies and unscientific statements found in Genesis. Separate
the first from the second chapter; read the former as a scripture of the
Elohists, and the latter as that of the far younger Jehovists; still one finds,
if one reads between the lines, the same order in which things created appear
-- namely, Fire (light), Air, Water, and MAN (or the Earth). For the sentence:
"In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth" is a mistranslation;
it is not "Heaven and Earth," but the duplex or dual Heaven, the
upper and the lower Heavens, or the separation of primordial substance that was
light in its upper and dark in its lower portions -- or the manifested Universe
-- in its duality of the invisible (to the senses) and the visible to our perceptions.
God divided the light from the Darkness (v. 4); and then made the firmament,
air (5), "a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the
waters from the waters," (6), i.e., "the waters which were under the
firmament (our manifested visible Universe) from the waters above the
firmament," or the (to us) invisible planes of being. In the second
chapter (the Jehovistic), plants and herbs are created before water, just as in
the first, light is produced before the Sun. "God made the Earth and the
Heavens and every plant of the field before it was in the Earth and every herb
of the field before it grew; for the Elohim ('gods') had not caused it to rain
upon the earth, etc." (v. 5) -- an absurdity unless the esoteric
explanation is accepted. The plants were created before they were in the earth
-- for there was no earth then such as it is now; and the herb of the field was
in existence before it grew as it does now in the fourth Round.
Discussing and
explaining the nature of the invisible Elements and the "primordial
fire" mentioned above, Eliphas Levi calls it invariably the "Astral
Light." It is the "grand Agent Magique" with him; undeniably it
is so, but -- only so far as Black Magic is concerned, and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] Philadelphia. For others, however, it is
discovered, yet must remain almost useless. "So far shalt thou go. . .
."
All the above is
as practical as it is correct, save one error, which we will explain in the
text further on. Eliphas Levi commits a great blunder in always identifying the
Astral Light with what we call Akasa. What it really is will be given in Part
II. of Vol. II.
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on the lowest
planes of what we call Ether, the noumenon of which is Akasa; and even this
would be held incorrect by orthodox Occultists. The "Astral Light" is
simply the older "sidereal Light" of Paracelsus; and to say that
"everything which exists has been evolved from it, and it preserves and
reproduces all forms," as he writes, is to enunciate truth only in the
second proposition. The first is erroneous; for if all that exists was evolved
through (or via) it, it is not the astral light. The latter is not the
container of all things but only the reflector, at best, of this all. Eliphas
Levi writes:--
"The great
Magic agent is the fourth emanation of the life principle (we say -- it is the
first in the inner, and the second in the outer (our) Universe), of which the
Sun is the third form . . . for the day-star (the sun) is only the reflection
and material shadow of the Central Sun of truth, which illuminates the
intellectual (invisible) world of Spirit and which itself is but a gleam
borrowed from the ABSOLUTE."
So far he is
right enough. But when the great authority of the Western Kabalists adds that
nevertheless, "it is not the immortal Spirit as the Indian Hierophants
have imagined" -- we answer that he slanders the said Hierophants, as they
have said nothing of the kind; while even the Puranic exoteric writings flatly
contradict the assertion. No Hindu has ever mistaken Prakriti -- the Astral
Light being only above the lowest plane of Prakriti, the material Kosmos -- for
the "immortal Spirit." Prakriti is ever called Maya, illusion, and is
doomed to disappear with the rest, the gods included, at the hour of the
Pralaya; for it is shown that Akasa is not even the Ether, least of all then,
we imagine, can it be the Astral Light. Those unable to penetrate beyond the
dead letter of the Puranas, have occasionally confused Akasa with Prakriti,
with Ether, and even with the visible Sky! It is true also that those who have
invariably translated the term Akasa by "Ether" (Wilson, for
instance), finding it called "the material cause of sound"
possessing, moreover, this one single property (Vishnu Purana), have ignorantly
imagined it to be "material," in the physical sense. True, again,
that if the characteristics are accepted literally, then, since nothing
material or physical, and therefore conditioned and temporary can be immortal
-- according to metaphysics and philosophy -- it would follow that Akasa is
neither infinite nor immortal. But all this is erroneous, since both the words
Pradhana
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(primeval
matter) and sound, as a property, have been misunderstood; the former term
(Pradhana) being certainly synonymous with Mulaprakriti and Akasa, and the
latter (sound) with the Verbum, the Word or the Logos. This is easy to
demonstrate; for it is shown in the following sentences in Vishnu Purana:
"In the beginning there was neither day nor night, nor sky, nor earth, nor
darkness, nor light. . . . . Save only ONE, unapprehensible by intellect, or
that which is Brahma and Pums (Spirit) and Pradhana (primordial matter)."
. . . . (Book I., ch. ii.).
Now, what is
Pradhana, if it is not Mulaprakriti, the root of all, in another aspect? For
Pradhana, though said further on to merge into the Deity as everything else
does, in order to leave the ONE absolute during the Pralaya, yet is held as
infinite and immortal. The Commentator describes the Deity as: "One
Pradhanika Brahma Spirit: THAT, was," and interprets the compound term as
a substantive, not as a derivative word used attributively, i.e., like
something conjoined with Pradhana.* Hence Pradhana even in the Puranas is an
aspect of Parabrahmam, not an evolution, and must be the same as the Vedantic
Mulaprakriti. "Prakriti in its primary state is Akasa," says a
Vedantin scholar (see "Five Years of Theosophy," p. 169). It is
almost abstract Nature.
Akasa, then, is
Pradhana in another form, and as such cannot be Ether, the ever-invisible
agent, courted even by physical Science. Nor is it Astral Light. It is, as
said, the noumenon of the seven-fold differentiated Prakriti** -- the ever
immaculate "Mother" of the fatherless Son, who becomes
"Father" on the lower manifested plane. For MAHAT is the first
product of Pradhana, or Akasa, and Mahat -- Universal intelligence "whose
characteristic property is Buddhi" -- is no other than the Logos, for he
is called "Eswara" Brahma, Bhava, etc. (See Linga Purana, sec. lxx.
12 et seq.; and Vayu Purana, but especially the former Purana -- prior, section
viii., 67-74). He is, in short, the "Creator" or the divine mind in
creative operation, "the cause of all things." He is
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The student
has to note, moreover, that the Purana is a dualistic system, not evolutionary,
and that, in this respect, far more will be found, from an esoteric standpoint,
in Sankhya, and even in the Manava-dharma-Sastra, however much the latter
differs from the former.
** In the
Sankhya philosophy, the seven Prakritis or "productive productions"
are Mahat, Ahamkara, and the five tanmatras. See "Sankhya-karika,"
III., and the Commentary thereon.
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the
"first-born" of whom the Puranas tell us that "Mahat and matter
are the inner and outer boundaries of the Universe," or, in our language,
the negative and the positive poles of dual nature (abstract and concrete), for
the Purana adds: "In this manner -- as were the seven forms (principles)
of Prakriti reckoned from Mahat to Earth -- so at the time of pralaya
(pratyahara) these seven successively re-enter into each other. The egg of
Brahma (Sarva-mandala) is dissolved with its seven zones (dwipa), seven oceans,
seven regions, etc." (Vishnu Purana, Book vi., ch. iv.)*
These are the
reasons why the Occultists refuse to give the name of Astral Light to Akasa, or
to call it Ether. "In my Father's house are many mansions," may be
contrasted with the occult saying, "In our Mother's house there are seven
mansions," or planes, the lowest of which is above and around us -- the
Astral Light.
The elements,
whether simple or compound, could not have remained the same since the
commencement of the evolution of our chain. Everything in the Universe
progresses steadily in the Great Cycle, while incessantly going up and down in
the smaller cycles. Nature is never stationary during manvantara, as it is ever
becoming,** not simply being; and mineral, vegetable, and human life are always
adapting their organisms to the then reigning Elements, and therefore those
Elements were then fitted for them, as they are now for the life of present
humanity. It will only be in the next, or fifth, Round that the fifth Element,
Ether -- the gross body of Akasa, if it can be called even that --
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* No use to say
so to the Hindus, who know their Puranas by heart, but very useful to remind
our Orientalists and those Westerns who regard Wilson's translations as
authoritative, that in his English translation of the Vishnu Purana he is
guilty of the most ludicrous contradictions and errors. So on this identical
subject of the seven Prakritis or the seven zones of Brahma's egg, the two
accounts differ totally. In Vol. 1, page 40, the egg is said to be externally
invested by seven envelopes -- Wilson comments: "by Water, Air, Fire,
Ether, and Ahamkara" (which last word does not exist in the Sanskrit
texts); and in vol. v., p. 198, of the same Vishnu Purana it is written,
"in this manner were the seven forms of nature (Prakriti) reckoned from
Mahat to Earth" (?). Between Mahat or Maha-Buddhi and "Water,
etc.," the difference is very considerable.
** According to
the great metaphysician Hegel also. For him Nature was a perpetual becoming. A
purely esoteric conception. Creation or Origin, in the Christian sense of the
term, is absolutely unthinkable. As the above-quoted thinker said: "God
(the Universal Spirit) objectivises himself as Nature, and again rises out of
it."
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will, by
becoming a familiar fact of Nature to all men, as air is familiar to us now,
cease to be as at present hypothetical, and also an "agent" for so
many things. And only during that Round will those higher senses, the growth
and development of which Akasa subserves, be susceptible of a complete
expansion. As already indicated, a partial familiarity with the characteristic
of matter -- permeability -- which should be developed concurrently with the
sixth sense, may be expected to develop at the proper period in this Round. But
with the next element added to our resources in the next Round, permeability
will become so manifest a characteristic of matter, that the densest forms of
this will seem to man's perceptions as obstructive to him as a thick fog, and
no more.
Let us return to
the life-cycle now. Without entering at length upon the description given of
the higher LIVES, we must direct our attention at present simply to the earthly
beings and the earth itself. The latter, we are told, is built up for the first
Round by the "Devourers" which disintegrate and differentiate the
germs of other lives in the Elements; pretty much, it must be supposed, as in
the present stage of the world, the aerobes do, when, undermining and loosening
the chemical structure in an organism, they transform animal matter and
generate substances that vary in their constitutions. Thus Occultism disposes
of the so-called Azoic age of Science, for it shows that there never was a time
when the Earth was without life upon it. Wherever there is an atom of matter, a
particle or a molecule, even in its most gaseous condition, there is life in
it, however latent and unconscious. "Whatsoever quits the Laya State,
becomes active life; it is drawn into the vortex of MOTION (the alchemical
solvent of Life); Spirit and Matter are the two States of the ONE, which is
neither Spirit nor Matter, both being the absolute life, latent." (Book of
Dzyan, Comm. III., par. 18). . . . "Spirit is the first differentiation of
(and in) SPACE; and Matter the first differentiation of Spirit. That, which is
neither Spirit nor matter -- that is IT -- the Causeless CAUSE of Spirit and
Matter, which are the Cause of Kosmos. And THAT we call the ONE LIFE or the
Intra-Cosmic Breath."
Once more we
will say -- like must produce like. Absolute Life cannot produce an inorganic
atom whether single or complex, and there is life
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even in laya
just as a man in a profound cataleptic state -- to all appearance a corpse --
is still a living being.
When the
"Devourers" (in whom the men of science are invited to see, with some
show of reason, atoms of the Fire-Mist, if they will, as the Occultist will
offer no objection to this); when the "Devourers," we say, have
differentiated "the fire-atoms" by a peculiar process of segmentation,
the latter become life-germs, which aggregate according to the laws of cohesion
and affinity. Then the life-germs produce lives of another kind, which work on
the structure of our globes. * * * *
Thus, in the
first Round, the globe, having been built by the primitive fire-lives, i.e.,
formed into a sphere -- had no solidity, nor qualifications, save a cold
brightness, nor form nor colour; it is only towards the end of the First Round
that it developed one Element which from its inorganic, so to say, or simple
Essence became now in our Round the fire we know throughout the system. The
Earth was in her first rupa, the essence of which is the Akasic principle named
*** "that which is now known as, and very erroneously termed, Astral
Light, which Eliphas Levi calls "the imagination of Nature,"**
probably to avoid giving it its correct name, as others do.
"It is
through and from the radiations of the seven bodies of the seven orders of
Dhyanis, that the seven discrete quantities (Elements), whose motion and
harmonious Union produce the manifested Universe of Matter, are born."
(Commentary.)
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
** Speaking of
it in his Preface to the "History of Magic" Eliphas Levi says:
"It is through this Force that all the nervous centres secretly
communicate with each other; from it -- that sympathy and antipathy are born;
from it -- that we have our dreams; and that the phenomena of second sight and
extra-natural visions take place. . . . . Astral Light, acting under the
impulsion of powerful wills, destroys, coagulates, separates, breaks, gathers
in all things. . . . God created it on that day when he said: Fiat Lux, and it
is directed by the Egregores, i.e., the chiefs of the souls who are the spirits
of energy and action." Eliphas Levi ought to have added that the astral
light, or primordial substance, if matter at all, is that which, called Light,
LUX, esoterically explained, is the body of those Spirits themselves, and their
very essence. Our physical light is the manifestation on our plane and the
reflected radiance of the Divine Light emanating from the collective body of
those who are called the "LIGHTS" and the "FLAMES." But no
other Kabalist has ever had the talent of heaping up one contradiction on the
other, of making one paradox chase another in the same sentence and in such
flowing language, as Eliphas Levi. He leads his reader through the most lovely,
gorgeously blooming valleys, to strand him after all on a desert and barren
rocky island.
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The Second Round
brings into manifestation the second element AIR, that element, the purity of
which would ensure continuous life to him who would use it. There have been two
occultists only in Europe who have discovered and even partially applied it in
practice, though its composition has always been known among the highest Eastern
Initiates. The ozone of the modern chemists is poison compared with the real
universal solvent which could never be thought of unless it existed in nature.
"From the second Round, Earth -- hitherto a foetus in the matrix of Space
-- began its real existence: it had developed individual sentient life, its
second principle. The second corresponds to the sixth (principle); the second
is life continuous, the other, temporary."
The Third Round
developed the third Principle -- WATER; while the Fourth transformed the
gaseous fluids and plastic form of our globe into the hard, crusted, grossly
material sphere we are living on. "Bhumi" has reached her fourth
principle. To this it may be objected that the law of analogy, so much insisted
upon, is broken. Not at all. Earth will reach her true ultimate form --
(inversely in this to man) -- her body shell -- only toward the end of the
manvantara after the Seventh Round. Eugenius Philalethes was right when he
assured his readers on his word of honour that no one had yet seen the Earth
(i.e., MATTER in its essential form). Our globe is, so far, in its Kamarupic
state -- the astral body of desires of Ahamkara, dark Egotism, the progeny of
Mahat, on the lower plane. . . .
It is not
molecularly constituted matter -- least of all the human body (sthulasarira) --
that is the grossest of all our "principles," but verily the middle
principle, the real animal centre; whereas our body is but its shell, the
irresponsible factor and medium through which the beast in us acts all its life.
Every intellectual theosophist will understand my real meaning. Thus the idea
that the human tabernacle is built by countless lives, just in the same way as
the rocky crust of our Earth was, has nothing repulsive in it for the true
mystic. Nor can Science oppose the occult teaching, for it is not because the
microscope will ever fail to detect the ultimate living atom or life, that it
can reject the doctrine.
(c) Science
teaches us that the living as well as the dead organism of both man and animal
are swarming with bacteria of a hundred various
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kinds; that from
without we are threatened with the invasion of microbes with every breath we
draw, and from within by leucomaines, aerobes, anaerobes, and what not. But
Science never yet went so far as to assert with the occult doctrine that our
bodies, as well as those of animals, plants, and stones, are themselves
altogether built up of such beings; which, except larger species, no microscope
can detect. So far, as regards the purely animal and material portion of man,
Science is on its way to discoveries that will go far towards corroborating
this theory. Chemistry and physiology are the two great magicians of the
future, who are destined to open the eyes of mankind to the great physical
truths. With every day, the identity between the animal and physical man,
between the plant and man, and even between the reptile and its nest, the rock,
and man -- is more and more clearly shown. The physical and chemical
constituents of all being found to be identical, chemical science may well say
that there is no difference between the matter which composes the ox and that
which forms man. But the Occult doctrine is far more explicit. It says:--- Not
only the chemical compounds are the same, but the same infinitesimal invisible
lives compose the atoms of the bodies of the mountain and the daisy, of man and
the ant, of the elephant, and of the tree which shelters him from the sun. Each
particle -- whether you call it organic or inorganic -- is a life. Every atom
and molecule in the Universe is both life-giving and death-giving to that form,
inasmuch as it builds by aggregation universes and the ephemeral vehicles ready
to receive the transmigrating soul, and as eternally destroys and changes the
forms and expels those souls from their temporary abodes. It creates and kills;
it is self-generating and self-destroying; it brings into being, and
annihilates, that mystery of mysteries -- the living body of man, animal, or
plant, every second in time and space; and it generates equally life and death,
beauty and ugliness, good and bad, and even the agreeable and disagreeable, the
beneficent and maleficent sensations. It is that mysterious LIFE, represented
collectively by countless myriads of lives, that follows in its own sporadic
way, the hitherto incomprehensible law of Atavism; that copies family resemblances
as well as those it finds impressed in the aura of the generators of every
future human being, a mystery, in short, that will receive fuller attention
elsewhere. For the present, one instance may be cited in illustration. Modern
science begins to find out that ptomaine (the alkaloid poison generated by
decaying matter and corpses -- a life also) extracted
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with the help of
volatile ether, yields a smell as strong and equal to that of the freshest
orange-blossoms; but that free from oxygen, these alkaloids yield either a most
sickening, disgusting smell, or the most agreeable aroma which recalls that of
the most delicately scented flowers. And it is suspected that such blossoms owe
their agreeable smell to the poisonous ptomaine; the venomous essence of
certain mushrooms (fungi) being nearly identical with the venom of the cobra of
India, the most deadly of serpents.* Thus, having discovered the effects,
Science has to find their PRIMARY CAUSES; and this it can never do without the
help of the old sciences, of alchemy, occult botany and physics. We are taught
that every physiological change, in addition to pathological phenomena;
diseases -- nay, life itself -- or rather the objective phenomena of life,
produced by certain conditions and changes in the tissues of the body which allow
and force life to act in that body; that all this is due to those unseen
CREATORS and DESTROYERS that are called in such a loose and general way,
microbes.** Such
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The French
savants Arnaud, Gautier, and Villiers, have found in the saliva of living men
the same venomous alkaloid as in that of the toad, the salamander, the cobra,
and the trigonocephalus of Portugal. It is proven that venom of the deadliest
kind, whether called ptomaine, or leucomaine, or alkaloid, is generated by
living men, animals, and plants. The same savant, Gautier, discovered an
alkaloid in the fresh meat of an ox and in its brains, and a venom which he
calls Xanthocreatinine similar to the substance extracted from the poisonous
saliva of reptiles. It is the muscular tissues, as being the most active organ
in the animal economy, that are suspected of being the generators or factors of
venoms, having the same importance as carbonic acid and urea in the functions of
life, which venoms are the ultimate products of inner combustion. And though it
is not yet fully determined whether poisons can be generated by the animal
system of living beings without the participation and interference of microbes,
it is ascertained that the animal does produce venomous substances in its
physiological or living state.
** It might be
supposed that these "fiery lives" and the microbes of science are
identical. This is not true. The "fiery lives" are the seventh and
highest subdivision of the plane of matter, and correspond in the individual
with the One Life of the Universe, though only on that plane. The microbes of
science are the first and lowest sub-division on the second plane -- that of
material prana (or life). The physical body of man undergoes a complete change
of structure every seven years, and its destruction and preservation are due to
the alternate function of the fiery lives as "destroyers" and
"builders." They are "builders" by sacrificing themselves
in the form of vitality to restrain the destructive influence of the microbes,
and, by supplying the microbes with what is necessary, they compel them under
that restraint to build up the material body and its cells. They are
"destroyers" also when that restraint is [[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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experimenters as
Pasteur are the best friends and helpers of the Destroyers and the worst
enemies of the Creators -- if the latter were not at the same time destroyers
too. However it may be, one thing is sure in this: The knowledge of these
primary causes and of the ultimate essence of every element, of its lives,
their functions, properties, and conditions of change -- constitutes the basis
of MAGIC. Paracelsus was, perhaps, the only Occultist in Europe, during the
last centuries since the Christian era, who was versed in this mystery. Had not
a criminal hand put an end to his life, years before the time allotted him by
Nature, physiological Magic would have fewer secrets for the civilized world
than it now has.
(d) But what has
the Moon to do in all this? we may be asked. What have "Fish, Sin and
Moon" in the apocalyptic saying of the Stanza to do in company with the
"Life-microbes"? With the latter nothing, except availing themselves
of the tabernacle of clay prepared by them; with divine perfect man everything,
since "Fish, Sin and Moon" make conjointly the three symbols of the
immortal Being.
This is all that
can be given. Nor does the writer pretend to know more of this strange symbol
than may be inferred about it from exoteric religions; from the mystery
perhaps, which underlies the Matsya (fish)
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] removed and the microbes, unsupplied with vital
constructive energy, are left to run riot as destructive agents. Thus, during
the first half of a man's life (the first five periods of seven years each) the
"fiery lives" are indirectly engaged in the process of building up
man's material body; life is on the ascending scale, and the force is used in
construction and increase. After this period is passed the age of retrogression
commences, and, the work of the "fiery lives" exhausting their
strength, the work of destruction and decrease also commences.
An analogy
between cosmic events in the descent of spirit into matter for the first half
of a manvantara (planetary as human) and its ascent at the expense of matter in
the second half, may here be traced. These considerations have to do solely
with the plane of matter, but the restraining influence of the "fiery
lives" on the lowest sub-division of the second plane -- the microbes --
is confirmed by the fact mentioned in the foot-note on Pasteur (vide supra)
that the cells of the organs, when they do not find sufficient oxygen for
themselves, adapt themselves to that condition and form ferments, which, by absorbing
oxygen from substances coming in contact with them, ruin the latter. Thus the
process is commenced by one cell robbing its neighbour of the source of its
vitality when the supply is insufficient; and the ruin so commenced steadily
progresses.
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Avatar of
Vishnu, the Chaldean Oannes -- the Man-Fish, recorded in the imperishable sign
of the Zodiac, Pisces, and running throughout the two Testaments in the
personages of Joshua "Son of the Fish (Nun)" and Jesus; the
allegorical "Sin" or Fall of Spirit into matter, and the Moon -- in
so far as it relates to the "Lunar" ancestors, the Pitris.
For the present
it may be as well to remind the reader that while the Moon-goddesses were
connected in every mythology, especially the Grecian, with child-birth, because
of the lunar influence on women and conception, the occult and actual connection
of our satellite with fecundation is to this day unknown to physiology, which
regards every popular practice in this reference as gross superstition. As it
is useless to discuss them in detail, we may only stop at present to discuss
the lunar symbology casually, to show that the said superstition belongs to the
most ancient beliefs, and even to Judaism -- the basis of Christianity. With
the Israelites, the chief function of Jehovah was child-giving, and the
esotericism of the Bible, interpreted Kabalistically, shows undeniably the Holy
of Holies in the temple to be only the symbol of the womb. This is now proven
beyond doubt and cavil, by the numerical reading of the Bible in general, and
of Genesis especially. This idea must certainly have been borrowed by the Jews
from the Egyptians and Indians, whose Holy of Holies was, and with the latter
is to this day, symbolised by the King's chamber in the Great Pyramid (see
"Source of Measures") and the Yoni symbols of exoteric Hinduism. To
make the whole clearer and to show at the same time the enormous difference in
the spirit of interpretation and the original meaning of the same symbols
between the ancient Eastern Occultists and the Jewish Kabalists we refer the
reader to Book II., "The Holy of Holies."*
-------
STANZA VII. --
Continued.
6. FROM THE
FIRST-BORN (primitive, or the first man) THE THREAD BETWEEN THE SILENT WATCHER
AND HIS SHADOW BECOMES MORE
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Phallic
worship has developed only with the loss of the keys to the true meaning of the
symbols. It was the last and most fatal turning point from the highway of truth
and divine knowledge into the side path of fiction, raised into dogma through
human falsification and hierarchic ambition.
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STRONG AND
RADIANT WITH EVERY CHANGE (re-incarnation) (a). THE MORNING SUN-LIGHT HAS
CHANGED INTO NOON-DAY GLORY . . . .
(a) This
sentence: "The thread between the silent watcher and his shadow (man)
becomes stronger" -- with every re-incarnation -- is another psychological
mystery, that will find its explanation in Book II. For the present it will
suffice to say that the "Watcher" and his "Shadows" -- the
latter numbering as many as there are re-incarnations for the monad -- are one.
The Watcher, or the divine prototype, is at the upper rung of the ladder of
being; the shadow, at the lower. Withal, the Monad of every living being,
unless his moral turpitude breaks the connection and runs loose and
"astray into the lunar path" -- to use the Occult expression -- is an
individual Dhyan Chohan, distinct from others, a kind of spiritual
individuality of its own, during one special Manvantara. Its Primary, the
Spirit (Atman) is one, of course, with Paramatma (the one Universal Spirit),
but the vehicle (Vahan) it is enshrined in, the Buddhi, is part and parcel of
that Dhyan-Chohanic Essence; and it is in this that lies the mystery of that
ubiquity, which was discussed a few pages back. "My Father, that is in
Heaven, and I -- are one," -- says the Christian Scripture; in this, at
any rate, it is the faithful echo of the esoteric tenet.
-------
STANZA VII. --
Continued.
7. THIS IS THY
PRESENT WHEEL -- SAID THE FLAME TO THE SPARK. THOU ART MYSELF, MY IMAGE AND MY
SHADOW. I HAVE CLOTHED MYSELF IN THEE, AND THOU ART MY VAHAN (vehicle) TO THE
DAY, "BE WITH US," WHEN THOU SHALT RE-BECOME MYSELF AND OTHERS,
THYSELF AND ME (a), THEN THE BUILDERS, HAVING DONNED THEIR FIRST CLOTHING,
DESCEND ON RADIANT EARTH, AND REIGN OVER MEN -- WHO ARE THEMSELVES (b).
(a) The day when
"the spark will re-become the Flame (man will merge into his Dhyan Chohan)
myself and others, thyself and me," as the Stanza has it -- means this: In
Paranirvana -- when Pralaya will have reduced not only material and psychical
bodies, but even the spiritual Ego(s) to their original principle -- the Past,
Present, and even Future
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Humanities, like
all things, will be one and the same. Everything will have re-entered the Great
Breath. In other words, everything will be "merged in Brahma" or the
divine unity.
Is this
annihilation, as some think? Or Atheism, as other critics -- the worshippers of
a personal deity and believers in an unphilosophical paradise -- are inclined
to suppose? Neither. It is worse than useless to return to the question of
implied atheism in that which is spirituality of a most refined character. To
see in Nirvana annihilation amounts to saying of a man plunged in a sound
dreamless sleep -- one that leaves no impression on the physical memory and
brain, because the sleeper's Higher Self is in its original state of absolute
consciousness during those hours -- that he, too, is annihilated. The latter
simile answers only to one side of the question -- the most material; since
re-absorption is by no means such a "dreamless sleep," but, on the
contrary, absolute existence, an unconditioned unity, or a state, to describe
which human language is absolutely and hopelessly inadequate. The only approach
to anything like a comprehensive conception of it can be attempted solely in
the panoramic visions of the soul, through spiritual ideations of the divine
monad. Nor is the individuality -- nor even the essence of the personality, if
any be left behind -- lost, because re-absorbed. For, however limitless -- from
a human standpoint -- the paranirvanic state, it has yet a limit in Eternity.
Once reached, the same monad will re-emerge therefrom, as a still higher being,
on a far higher plane, to recommence its cycle of perfected activity. The human
mind cannot in its present stage of development transcend, scarcely reach this
plane of thought. It totters here, on the brink of incomprehensible Absoluteness
and Eternity.
(b) The
"Watchers" reign over man during the whole period of Satya Yuga and
the smaller subsequent yugas, down to the beginning of the Third Root Race;
after which it is the Patriarchs, Heroes, and the Manes (see Egyptian Dynasties
enumerated by the priests to Solon), the incarnated Dhyanis of a lower order,
up to King Menes and the human kings of other nations; all were recorded
carefully. In the views of symbologists this Mythopoeic Age is of course only
regarded as a fairy tale. But since traditions and even Chronicles of such
dynasties of divine Kings -- of gods reigning over men followed by dynasties of
Heroes or Giants -- exist in the annals of every nation, it is difficult to
understand how all the peoples under the sun, some of whom are separated by
vast
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oceans and
belong to different hemispheres, such as the ancient Peruvians and Mexicans, as
well as the Chaldeans, could have worked out the same "fairy tales"
in the same order of events.* However, as the Secret Doctrine teaches history
-- which, for being esoteric and traditional, is none the less more reliable
than profane history -- we are as entitled to our beliefs as anyone else,
whether religionist or sceptic. And that Doctrine says that the Dhyani-Buddhas
of the two higher groups, namely, the "Watchers" or the
"Architects," furnished the many and various races with divine kings
and leaders. It is the latter who taught humanity their arts and sciences, and
the former who revealed to the incarnated Monads that had just shaken off their
vehicles of the lower Kingdoms -- and who had, therefore, lost every
recollection of their divine origin -- the great spiritual truths of the
transcendental worlds. (See Book II., "Divine Dynasties.")
Thus, as
expressed in the Stanza, the Watchers descended on Earth and reigned over men
-- "who are themselves." The reigning kings had finished their cycle
on Earth and other worlds, in the preceding Rounds. In the future manvantaras
they will have risen to higher systems than our planetary world; and it is the
Elect of our Humanity, the Pioneers on the hard and difficult path of Progress,
who will take the places of their predecessors. The next great Manvantara will
witness the men of our own life-cycle becoming the instructors and guides of a
mankind whose Monads may now yet be imprisoned -- semi-conscious -- in the most
intellectual of the animal kingdom, while their lower principles will be
animating, perhaps, the highest specimens of the Vegetable world.
Thus proceed the
cycles of the septenary evolution, in Septennial nature; the Spiritual or
divine; the psychic or semi-divine; the intellectual, the passional, the
instinctual, or cognitional; the semi-corporeal and the purely material or
physical natures. All these evolve and progress cyclically, passing from one
into another, in a double, centrifugal and centripetal way, one in their
ultimate essence, seven in their aspects. The lowest, of course, is the one
depending upon and subservient to
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See the
"Sacred Mysteries among the Mayas and the Quiches, 11,500 years ago,"
by Auguste le Plongeon, who shows the identity between the Egyptian rites and
beliefs and those of the people he describes. The ancient hieratic alphabets of
the Maya and the Egyptians are almost identical.
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our five
physical senses.* Thus far, for individual, human, sentient, animal and
vegetable life, each the microcosm of its higher macrocosm. The same for the
Universe, which manifests periodically, for purposes of the collective progress
of the countless lives, the outbreathings of the One Life; in order that
through the Ever-Becoming, every cosmic atom in this infinite Universe, passing
from the formless and the intangible, through the mixed natures of the
semi-terrestrial, down to matter in full generation, and then back again,
reascending at each new period higher and nearer the final goal; that each atom,
we say, may reach through individual merits and efforts that plane where it
re-becomes the one unconditioned ALL. But between the Alpha and the Omega there
is the weary "Road" hedged in by thorns, that "goes down first,
then --
Winds up hill
all the way
Yes, to the very
end . . . . ."
Starting upon
the long journey immaculate; descending more and more into sinful matter, and
having connected himself with every atom in manifested Space -- the Pilgrim, having
struggled through and suffered in every form of life and being, is only at the
bottom of the valley of matter, and half through his cycle, when he has
identified himself with collective Humanity. This, he has made in his own
image. In order to progress upwards and homewards, the "God" has now
to ascend the weary uphill path of the Golgotha of Life. It is the martyrdom of
self-conscious existence. Like Visvakarman he has to sacrifice himself to
himself in order to redeem all creatures, to resurect from the many into the
One Life. Then he ascends into heaven indeed; where, plunged into the
incomprehensible absolute Being and Bliss of Paranirvana he reigns
unconditionally, and whence he will re-descend again a the next
"coming," which one portion of humanity expects in its dead-letter
sense as the second advent, and the other as the last "Kalki Avatar."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Which are in
truth seven as shown later, on the authority of the oldest Upanishads.
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SUMMING UP.
"The
History of Creation and of this world from its beginning up to the present time
is composed of seven chapters. The seventh chapter is not yet written."
(T. Subba Row,
Theosophist, 1881.)
THE first of
these Seven chapters has been attempted and is now finished. However incomplete
and feeble as an exposition, it is, at any rate, an approximation -- using the
word in a mathematical sense -- to that which is the oldest basis for all the
subsequent Cosmogonies. The attempt to render in a European tongue the grand
panorama of the ever periodically recurring Law -- impressed upon the plastic
minds of the first races endowed with Consciousness by those who reflected the
same from the Universal Mind -- is daring, for no human language, save the
Sanskrit -- which is that of the Gods -- can do so with any degree of adequacy.
But the failures in this work must be forgiven for the sake of the motive.
As a whole,
neither the foregoing nor what follows can be found in full anywhere. It is not
taught in any of the six Indian schools of philosophy, for it pertains to their
synthesis -- the seventh, which is the Occult doctrine. It is not traced on any
crumbling papyrus of Egypt, nor is it any longer graven on Assyrian tile or
granite wall. The Books of the Vedanta (the last word of human knowledge) give
out but the metaphysical aspect of this world-Cosmogony; and their priceless
thesaurus, the Upanishads -- Upa-ni-shad being a compound word meaning
"the conquest of ignorance by the revelation of secret, spiritual
knowledge" -- require now the additional possession of a Master-key to
enable the student to get at their full meaning. The reason for this I venture
to state here as I learned it from a Master.
The name,
"Upanishads," is usually translated "esoteric doctrine."
These treatises form part of the Sruti or "revealed knowledge,"
Revelation, in short, and are generally attached to the Brahmana
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portion of the
Vedas,* as their third division. There are over 150 Upanishads enumerated by,
and known to, Orientalists, who credit the oldest with being written probably
about 600 years B.C.; but of genuine texts there does not exist a fifth of the
number. The Upanishads are to the Vedas what the Kabala is to the Jewish Bible.
They treat of and expound the secret and mystic meaning of the Vedic texts.
They speak of the origin of the Universe, the nature of Deity, and of Spirit
and Soul, as also of the metaphysical connection of mind and matter. In a few
words: They CONTAIN the beginning and the end of all human knowledge, but they
have now ceased to REVEAL it, since the day of Buddha. If it were otherwise,
the Upanishads could not be called esoteric, since they are now openly attached
to the Sacred Brahmanical books, which have, in our present age, become
accessible even to the Mlechchhas (out-castes) and the European Orientalists.
One thing in them -- and this in all the Upanishads -- invariably and
constantly points to their ancient origin, and proves (a) that they were
written, in some of their portions, before the caste system became the
tyrannical institution which it still is; and (b) that half of their contents
have been eliminated, while some of them were rewritten and abridged. "The
great Teachers of the higher Knowledge and the Brahmans are continually
represented as going to Kshatriya (military caste) kings to become their
pupils." As Cowell pertinently remarks, the Upanishads "breathe an
entirely different spirit" (from other Brahmanical writings), "a
freedom of thought unknown in any earlier work except in the Rig Veda hymns
themselves." The second fact is explained by a tradition recorded in one
of the MSS. on Buddha's life. It says that the Upanishads were originally
attached to their Brahmanas after the beginning of a reform, which led to the
exclusiveness of the present caste system among the Brahmins, a few centuries
after the invasion of India by the "twice-born." They were complete
in those days, and were used for the instruction of the chelas who were
preparing for their initiation.
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* . . .
"The Vedas have a distinct dual meaning -- one expressed by the literal sense
of the words, the other indicated by the metre and the swara -- intonation --
which are as the life of the Vedas. . . . Learned pundits and philologists of
course deny that swara has anything to do with philosophy or ancient esoteric
doctrines; but the mysterious connection between swara and light is one of its
most profound secrets." (T. Subba Row, Five Years of Theosophy, p. 154.)
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This lasted so
long as the Vedas and the Brahmanas remained in the sole and exclusive keeping
of the temple-Brahmins -- while no one else had the right to study or even read
them outside of the sacred caste. Then came Gautama, the Prince of Kapilavastu.
After learning the whole of the Brahmanical wisdom in the Rahasya or the
Upanishads, and finding that the teachings differed little, if at all, from
those of the "Teachers of Life" inhabiting the snowy ranges of the
Himalaya,* the Disciple of the Brahmins, feeling indignant because the sacred
wisdom was thus withheld from all but the Brahmins, determined to save the
whole world by popularizing it. Then it was that the Brahmins, seeing that their
sacred knowledge and Occult wisdom was falling into the hands of the
"Mlechchhas," abridged the texts of the Upanishads, originally
containing thrice the matter of the Vedas and the Brahmanas together, without
altering, however, one word of the texts. They simply detached from the MSS.
the most important portions containing the last word of the Mystery of Being.
The key to the Brahmanical secret code remained henceforth with the initiates
alone, and the Brahmins were thus in a position to publicly deny the
correctness of Buddha's teaching by appealing to their Upanishads, silenced for
ever on the chief questions. Such is the esoteric tradition beyond the
Himalayas.
Sri
Sankaracharya, the greatest Initiate living in the historical ages, wrote many
a Bhashya on the Upanishads. But his original treatises, as there are reasons
to suppose, have not yet fallen into the hands of the Philistines, for they are
too jealously preserved in his maths (monasteries, mathams). And there are
still weightier reasons to believe that the priceless Bhashyas (Commentaries)
on the esoteric doctrine of the Brahmins, by their greatest expounder, will
remain for ages yet a dead letter to most of the Hindus, except the Smartava
Brahmins. This sect, founded by Sankaracharya, (which is still very powerful in
Southern India) is now almost the only one to produce students who have
preserved sufficient knowledge to comprehend the
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* Also called
"the Sons of Wisdom," and of the "Fire-Mist" and the
"Brothers of the Sun" in the Chinese records. Si-dzang (Tibet) is
mentioned in the MSS. of the sacred library of the province of Fo-Kien, as the
great seat of Occult learning from time immemorial, ages before Buddha. The
Emperor Yu, the "great" (2,207 years B.C.), a pious mystic and great
adept, is said to have obtained his knowledge from the "great teachers of
the Snowy Range" in Si-dzang.
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dead letter of
the Bhashyas. The reason of this is that they alone, I am informed, have
occasionally real Initiates at their head in their mathams, as for instance, in
the "Sringa-giri," in the Western Ghats of Mysore. On the other hand,
there is no sect in that desperately exclusive caste of the Brahmins, more
exclusive than is the Smartava; and the reticence of its followers to say what
they may know of the Occult sciences and the esoteric doctrine, is only
equalled by their pride and learning.
Therefore the
writer of the present statement must be prepared beforehand to meet with great
opposition and even the denial of such statements as are brought forward in
this work. Not that any claim to infallibility, or to perfect correctness in
every detail of all that which is herein said, was ever put forward. Facts are
there, and they can hardly be denied. But, owing to the intrinsic difficulties
of the subjects treated, and the almost insurmountable limitations of the
English tongue (as of all other European languages) to express certain ideas,
it is more than probable that the writer has failed to present the explanations
in the best and in the clearest form; yet all that could be done was done under
every adverse circumstance, and this is the utmost that can be expected of any
writer.
Let us
recapitulate and show, by the vastness of the subjects expounded, how
difficult, if not impossible, it is to do them full justice.
(1.) The Secret
Doctrine is the accumulated Wisdom of the Ages, and its cosmogony alone is the
most stupendous and elaborate system: e.g., even in the exotericism of the
Puranas. But such is the mysterious power of Occult symbolism, that the facts
which have actually occupied countless generations of initiated seers and
prophets to marshal, to set down and explain, in the bewildering series of
evolutionary progress, are all recorded on a few pages of geometrical signs and
glyphs. The flashing gaze of those seers has penetrated into the very kernel of
matter, and recorded the soul of things there, where an ordinary profane,
however learned, would have perceived but the external work of form. But modern
science believes not in the "soul of things," and hence will reject
the whole system of ancient cosmogony. It is useless to say that the system in
question is no fancy of one or several isolated individuals. That it is the
uninterrupted record covering thousands of generations of Seers whose
respective experiences were made to test and to verify the
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traditions passed
orally by one early race to another, of the teachings of higher and exalted
beings, who watched over the childhood of Humanity. That for long ages, the
"Wise Men" of the Fifth Race, of the stock saved and rescued from the
last cataclysm and shifting of continents, had passed their lives in learning,
not teaching. How did they do so? It is answered: by checking, testing, and
verifying in every department of nature the traditions of old by the
independent visions of great adepts; i.e., men who have developed and perfected
their physical, mental, psychic, and spiritual organisations to the utmost
possible degree. No vision of one adept was accepted till it was checked and
confirmed by the visions -- so obtained as to stand as independent evidence --
of other adepts, and by centuries of experiences.
(2.) The
fundamental Law in that system, the central point from which all emerged,
around and toward which all gravitates, and upon which is hung the philosophy
of the rest, is the One homogeneous divine SUBSTANCE-PRINCIPLE, the one radical
cause.
. . . "Some
few, whose lamps shone brighter, have been led
From cause to
cause to nature's secret head,
And found that
one first Principle must be. . . ."
It is called
"Substance-Principle," for it becomes "substance" on the
plane of the manifested Universe, an illusion, while it remains a
"principle" in the beginningless and endless abstract, visible and
invisible SPACE. It is the omnipresent Reality: impersonal, because it contains
all and everything. Its impersonality is the fundamental conception of the
System. It is latent in every atom in the Universe, and is the Universe itself.
(See in chapters on Symbolism, "Primordial Substance, and Divine
Thought.")
(3.) The
Universe is the periodical manifestation of this unknown Absolute Essence. To
call it "essence," however, is to sin against the very spirit of the
philosophy. For though the noun may be derived in this case from the verb esse,
"to be," yet IT cannot be identified with a being of any kind, that
can be conceived by human intellect. IT is best described as neither Spirit nor
matter, but both. "Parabrahmam and Mulaprakriti" are One, in reality,
yet two in the Universal conception of the manifested, even in the conception
of the One Logos, its first manifestation, to which, as the able lecturer in
the "Notes on the Bhagavadgita" shows, IT appears from the objective
standpoint of
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the One Logos as
Mulaprakriti and not as Parabrahmam; as its veil and not the one REALITY hidden
behind, which is unconditioned and absolute.
(4.) The
Universe is called, with everything in it, MAYA, because all is temporary
therein, from the ephemeral life of a fire-fly to that of the Sun. Compared to
the eternal immutability of the ONE, and the changelessness of that Principle,
the Universe, with its evanescent ever-changing forms, must be necessarily, in
the mind of a philosopher, no better than a will-o'-the-wisp. Yet, the Universe
is real enough to the conscious beings in it, which are as unreal as it is
itself.
(5.) Everything
in the Universe, throughout all its kingdoms, is CONSCIOUS: i.e., endowed with
a consciousness of its own kind and on its own plane of perception. We men must
remember that because we do not perceive any signs -- which we can recognise --
of consciousness, say, in stones, we have no right to say that no consciousness
exists there. There is no such thing as either "dead" or
"blind" matter, as there is no "Blind" or
"Unconscious" Law. These find no place among the conceptions of
Occult philosophy. The latter never stops at surface appearances, and for it
the noumenal essences have more reality than their objective counterparts; it
resembles therein the mediaeval Nominalists, for whom it was the Universals
that were the realities and the particulars which existed only in name and
human fancy.
(6.) The
Universe is worked and guided from within outwards. As above so it is below, as
in heaven so on earth; and man -- the microcosm and miniature copy of the
macrocosm -- is the living witness to this Universal Law, and to the mode of
its action. We see that every external motion, act, gesture, whether voluntary
or mechanical, organic or mental, is produced and preceded by internal feeling
or emotion, will or volition, and thought or mind. As no outward motion or
change, when normal, in man's external body can take place unless provoked by
an inward impulse, given through one of the three functions named, so with the
external or manifested Universe. The whole Kosmos is guided, controlled, and
animated by almost endless series of Hierarchies of sentient Beings, each
having a mission to perform, and who -- whether we give to them one name or
another, and call them Dhyan-Chohans or Angels -- are "messengers" in
the sense only that they are the agents of Karmic and Cosmic Laws. They vary
infinitely in their
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respective
degrees of consciousness and intelligence; and to call them all pure Spirits
without any of the earthly alloy "which time is wont to prey upon" is
only to indulge in poetical fancy. For each of these Beings either was, or
prepares to become, a man, if not in the present, then in a past or a coming
cycle (Manvantara). They are perfected, when not incipient, men; and differ
morally from the terrestrial human beings on their higher (less material)
spheres, only in that they are devoid of the feeling of personality and of the
human emotional nature -- two purely earthly characteristics. The former, or
the "perfected," have become free from those feelings, because (a)
they have no longer fleshly bodies -- an ever-numbing weight on the Soul; and
(b) the pure spiritual element being left untrammelled and more free, they are
less influenced by maya than man can ever be, unless he is an adept who keeps
his two personalities -- the spiritual and the physical -- entirely separated.
The incipient monads, having never had terrestrial bodies yet, can have no
sense of personality or EGO-ism. That which is meant by "personality,"
being a limitation and a relation, or, as defined by Coleridge,
"individuality existing in itself but with a nature as a ground," the
term cannot of course be applied to non-human entities; but, as a fact insisted
upon by generations of Seers, none of these Beings, high or low, have either
individuality or personality as separate Entities, i.e., they have no
individuality in the sense in which a man says, "I am myself and no one
else;" in other words, they are conscious of no such distinct separateness
as men and things have on earth. Individuality is the characteristic of their
respective hierarchies, not of their units; and these characteristics vary only
with the degree of the plane to which those hierarchies belong: the nearer to
the region of Homogeneity and the One Divine, the purer and the less
accentuated that individuality in the Hierarchy. They are finite, in all
respects, with the exception of their higher principles -- the immortal sparks
reflecting the universal divine flame -- individualized and separated only on
the spheres of Illusion by a differentiation as illusive as the rest. They are
"Living Ones," because they are the streams projected on the Kosmic
screen of illusion from the ABSOLUTE LIFE; beings in whom life cannot become
extinct, before the fire of ignorance is extinct in those who sense these
"Lives." Having sprung into being under the quickening influence of
the uncreated beam, the reflection of the great Central Sun that
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radiates on the
shores of the river of Life, it is the inner principle in them which belongs to
the waters of immortality, while its differentiated clothing is as perishable
as man's body. Therefore Young was right in saying that
"Angels are
men of a superior kind"
and no more.
They are neither "ministering" nor "protecting" angels; nor
are they "Harbingers of the Most High" still less the
"Messengers of wrath" of any God such as man's fancy has created. To
appeal to their protection is as foolish as to believe that their sympathy may
be secured by any kind of propitiation; for they are, as much as man himself
is, the slaves and creatures of immutable Karmic and Kosmic law. The reason for
it is evident. Having no elements of personality in their essence they can have
no personal qualities, such as attributed by men, in their exoteric religions,
to their anthropomorphic God -- a jealous and exclusive God who rejoices and
feels wrathful, is pleased with sacrifice, and is more despotic in his vanity
than any finite foolish man. Man, as shown in Book II., being a compound of the
essences of all those celestial Hierarchies may succeed in making himself, as
such, superior, in one sense, to any hierarchy or class, or even combination of
them. "Man can neither propitiate nor command the Devas," it is said.
But, by paralyzing his lower personality, and arriving thereby at the full knowledge
of the non-separateness of his higher SELF from the One absolute SELF, man can,
even during his terrestrial life, become as "One of Us." Thus it is,
by eating of the fruit of knowledge which dispels ignorance, that man becomes
like one of the Elohim or the Dhyanis; and once on their plane the Spirit of
Solidarity and perfect Harmony, which reigns in every Hierarchy, must extend
over him and protect him in every particular.
The chief
difficulty which prevents men of science from believing in divine as well as in
nature Spirits is their materialism. The main impediment before the
Spiritualist which hinders him from believing in the same, while preserving a
blind belief in the "Spirits" of the Departed, is the general
ignorance of all, except some Occultists and Kabalists, about the true essence
and nature of matter. It is on the acceptance or rejection of the theory of the
Unity of all in Nature, in its ultimate Essence, that mainly rests the belief
or unbelief in the existence around us of other conscious beings besides the
Spirits of the Dead.
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It is on the
right comprehension of the primeval Evolution of Spirit-Matter and its real
essence that the student has to depend for the further elucidation in his mind
of the Occult Cosmogony, and for the only sure clue which can guide his
subsequent studies.
In sober truth,
as just shown, every "Spirit" so-called is either a disembodied or a
future man. As from the highest Archangel (Dhyan Chohan) down to the last
conscious "Builder" (the inferior class of Spiritual Entities), all
such are men, having lived aeons ago, in other Manvantaras, on this or other
Spheres; so the inferior, semi-intelligent and non-intelligent Elementals --
are all future men. That fact alone -- that a Spirit is endowed with
intelligence -- is a proof to the Occultist that that Being must have been a
man, and acquired his knowledge and intelligence throughout the human cycle.
There is but one indivisible and absolute Omniscience and Intelligence in the
Universe, and this thrills throughout every atom and infinitesimal point of the
whole finite Kosmos which hath no bounds, and which people call SPACE,
considered independently of anything contained in it. But the first
differentiation of its reflection in the manifested World is purely Spiritual,
and the Beings generated in it are not endowed with a consciousness that has
any relation to the one we conceive of. They can have no human consciousness or
Intelligence before they have acquired such, personally and individually. This
may be a mystery, yet it is a fact, in Esoteric philosophy, and a very apparent
one too.
The whole order
of nature evinces a progressive march towards a higher life. There is design in
the action of the seemingly blindest forces. The whole process of evolution
with its endless adaptations is a proof of this. The immutable laws that weed
out the weak and feeble species, to make room for the strong, and which ensure
the "survival of the fittest," though so cruel in their immediate
action -- all are working toward the grand end. The very fact that adaptations
do occur, that the fittest do survive in the struggle for existence, shows that
what is called "unconscious Nature"* is in reality an aggregate of
forces mani-
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* Nature taken
in its abstract sense, cannot be "unconscious," as it is the emanation
from, and thus an aspect (on the manifested plane) of the ABSOLUTE
consciousness. Where is that daring man who would presume to deny to vegetation
and even to minerals a consciousness of their own. All he can say is, that this
consciousness is beyond his comprehension.
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pulated by
semi-intelligent beings (Elementals) guided by High Planetary Spirits, (Dhyan
Chohans), whose collective aggregate forms the manifested verbum of the
unmanifested LOGOS, and constitutes at one and the same time the MIND of the
Universe and its immutable LAW.
Three distinct
representations of the Universe in its three distinct aspects are impressed
upon our thought by the esoteric philosophy: the PRE-EXISTING (evolved from)
the EVER-EXISTING; and the PHENOMENAL -- the world of illusion, the reflection,
and shadow thereof. During the great mystery and drama of life known as the
Manvantara, real Kosmos is like the object placed behind the white screen upon
which are thrown the Chinese shadows, called forth by the magic lantern. The
actual figures and things remain invisible, while the wires of evolution are
pulled by the unseen hands; and men and things are thus but the reflections, on
the white field, of the realities behind the snares of Mahamaya, or the great
Illusion. This was taught in every philosophy, in every religion, ante as well
as post diluvian, in India and Chaldea, by the Chinese as by the Grecian Sages.
In the former countries these three Universes were allegorized, in exoteric
teachings, by the three trinities emanating from the Central eternal germ and forming
with it a Supreme Unity: the initial, the manifested, and the Creative Triad,
or the three in One. The last is but the symbol, in its concrete expression, of
the first ideal two. Hence Esoteric philosophy passes over the necessarianism
of this purely metaphysical conception, and calls the first one, only, the Ever
Existing. This is the view of every one of the six great schools of Indian
philosophy -- the six principles of that unit body of WISDOM of which the
"gnosis," the hidden knowledge, is the seventh.
The writer hopes
that, superficially handled as may be the comments on the Seven Stanzas, enough
has been given in this cosmogonic portion of the work to show Archaic teachings
to be more scientific (in the modern sense of the word) on their very face,
than any other ancient Scriptures left to be regarded and judged on their
exoteric aspect. Since, however, as confessed before, this work withholds far
more than it gives out, the student is invited to use his own intuitions. Our
chief care is to elucidate that which has already been given out, and, to our
regret, very incorrectly at times; to supplement the knowledge hinted at --
whenever and wherever possible -- by addi-
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tional matter;
and to bulwark our doctrines against the too strong attacks of modern
Sectarianism, and more especially against those of our latter-day Materialism,
very often miscalled Science, whereas, in reality, the words
"Scientists" and "Sciolists" ought alone to bear the
responsibility for the many illogical theories offered to the world. In its
great ignorance, the public, while blindly accepting everything that emanates
from "authorities," and feeling it to be its duty to regard every
dictum coming from a man of Science as a proven fact -- the public, we say, is
taught to scoff at anything brought forward from "heathen" sources.
Therefore, as materialistic Scientists can be fought solely with their own
weapons -- those of controversy and argument -- an Addendum is added to every
Book contrasting our respective views and showing how even great authorities
may often err. We believe that this can be done effectually by showing the weak
points of our opponents, and by proving their too frequent sophisms -- made to
pass for scientific dicta -- to be incorrect. We hold to Hermes and his
"Wisdom" -- in its universal character; they -- to Aristotle as against
intuition and the experience of the ages, fancying that Truth is the exclusive
property of the Western world. Hence the disagreement. As Hermes says,
"Knowledge differs much from sense; for sense is of things that surmount
it, but Knowledge (gyi) is the end of sense" -- i.e., of the illusion of
our physical brain and its intellect; thus emphasizing the contrast between the
laboriously acquired knowledge of the senses and mind (manas), and the
intuitive omniscience of the Spiritual divine Soul -- Buddhi.
Whatever may be
the destiny of these actual writings in a remote future, we hope to have proven
so far the following facts:
(1) The Secret
Doctrine teaches no Atheism, except in the Hindu sense of the word nastika, or
the rejection of idols, including every anthropomorphic god. In this sense
every Occultist is a Nastika.
(2) It admits a
Logos or a collective "Creator" of the Universe; a Demi-urgos -- in
the sense implied when one speaks of an "Architect" as the
"Creator" of an edifice, whereas that Architect has never touched one
stone of it, but, while furnishing the plan, left all the manual labour to the
masons; in our case the plan was furnished by the Ideation of the Universe, and
the constructive labour was left to the Hosts of intelligent Powers and Forces.
But that Demiurgos is no
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personal deity,
-- i.e., an imperfect extra-cosmic god, -- but only the aggregate of the
Dhyan-Chohans and the other forces.
As to the latter
--
(3) They are
dual in their character; being composed of (a) the irrational brute energy,
inherent in matter, and (b) the intelligent soul or cosmic consciousness which
directs and guides that energy, and which is the Dhyan-Chohanic thought
reflecting the Ideation of the Universal mind. This results in a perpetual
series of physical manifestations and moral effects on Earth, during
manvantaric periods, the whole being subservient to Karma. As that process is
not always perfect; and since, however many proofs it may exhibit of a guiding
intelligence behind the veil, it still shows gaps and flaws, and even results
very often in evident failures -- therefore, neither the collective Host
(Demiurgos), nor any of the working powers individually, are proper subjects
for divine honours or worship. All are entitled to the grateful reverence of
Humanity, however, and man ought to be ever striving to help the divine
evolution of Ideas, by becoming to the best of his ability a co-worker with
nature in the cyclic task. The ever unknowable and incognizable Karana alone,
the Causeless Cause of all causes, should have its shrine and altar on the holy
and ever untrodden ground of our heart -- invisible, intangible, unmentioned,
save through "the still small voice" of our spiritual consciousness.
Those who worship before it, ought to do so in the silence and the sanctified
solitude of their Souls*; making their spirit the sole mediator between them
and the Universal Spirit, their good actions the only priests, and their sinful
intentions the only visible and objective sacrificial victims to the Presence.
(See Part II., "On the Hidden Deity.")
(4) Matter is
Eternal. It is the Upadhi (the physical basis) for the One infinite Universal
Mind to build thereon its ideations. Therefore, the Esotericists maintain that
there is no inorganic or dead matter in nature, the distinction between the two
made by Science being as unfounded as it is arbitrary and devoid of reason.
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* "When
thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are . . . but enter into thine
inner chamber and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in
secret." Matt. vi.). Our Father is within us "in Secret," our
7th principle, in the "inner chamber" of our Soul perception.
"The Kingdom of Heaven" and of God "is within us" says Jesus,
not outside. Why are Christians so absolutely blind to the self-evident meaning
of the words of wisdom they delight in mechanically repeating?
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Whatever Science
may think, however -- and exact Science is a fickle dame, as we all know by
experience -- Occultism knows and teaches differently, from time immemorial --
from Manu and Hermes down to Paracelsus and his successors.
Thus Hermes, the
thrice great Trismegistus, says: "Oh, my son, matter becomes; formerly it
was; for matter is the vehicle of becoming."* Becoming is the mode of
activity of the uncreate deity. Having been endowed with the germs of becoming,
matter (objective) is brought into birth, for the creative force fashions it
according to the ideal forms. Matter not yet engendered had no form; it becomes
when it is put into operation." (The Definitions of Asclepios, p. 134,
"Virgin of the World.")
"Everything
is the product of one universal creative effort. . . . There is nothing dead,
in Nature. Everything is organic and living, and therefore the whole world
appears to be a living organism." (Paracelsus, "Philosophia ad
Athenienes," F. Hartmann's translations, p. 44.)
(5.) The
Universe was evolved out of its ideal plan, upheld through Eternity in the
unconsciousness of that which the Vedantins call Parabrahm. This is practically
identical with the conclusions of the highest Western Philosophy -- "the
innate, eternal, and self-existing Ideas" of Plato, now reflected by Von
Hartmann. The "unknowable" of Herbert Spencer bears only a faint
resemblance to that transcendental Reality believed in by Occultists, often
appearing merely a personification of a "force behind phenomena" --
an infinite and eternal Energy
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* To this the
late Mrs. (Dr.) Kingsford, the able translator and compiler of the Hermetic
Fragments (see "The Virgin of the World") remarks in a foot-note;
"Dr. Menard observes that in Greek the same word signifies to be born and
to become. The idea here is that the material of the world is in its essence
eternal, but that before creation or 'becoming' it is in a passive and
motionless condition. Thus it 'was' before being put into operation; now it
'becomes,' that is, it is mobile and progressive." And she adds the purely
Vedantic doctrine of the Hermetic philosophy that "Creation is thus the
period of activity (Manvantara) of God, who, according to Hermetic thought (or
which, according to the Vedantin) has two modes -- Activity or Existence, God
evolved (Deus explicitus); and Passivity of Being (Pralaya) God involved (Deus
implicitus). Both modes are perfect and complete, as are the waking and
sleeping states of man. Fichte, the German philosopher, distinguished Being
(Seyn) as One, which we know only through existence (Dasein) as the Manifold.
This view is thoroughly Hermetic. The 'Ideal Forms' are the archetypal or
formative ideas of the Neo-Platonists; the eternal and subjective concepts of
things subsisting in the divine mind prior to 'becoming'" (p. 134).
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from which all
things proceed, while the author of the "Philosophy of the
Unconscious" has come (in this respect only) as near to a solution of the
great Mystery as mortal man can. Few were those, whether in ancient or
mediaeval philosophy, who have dared to approach the subject or even hint at
it. Paracelsus mentions it inferentially. His ideas are admirably synthesized
by Dr. F. Hartmann, F.T.S., in his "Life of Paracelsus."
All the
Christian Kabalists understood well the Eastern root idea: The active Power,
the "Perpetual motion of the great Breath" only awakens Kosmos at the
dawn of every new Period, setting it into motion by means of the two contrary
Forces,* and thus causing it to become objective on the plane of Illusion. In
other words, that dual motion transfers Kosmos from the plane of the Eternal
Ideal into that of finite manifestation, or from the Noumenal to the Phenomenal
plane. Everything that is, was, and will be, eternally IS, even the countless
forms, which are finite and perishable only in their objective, not in their
ideal Form. They existed as Ideas, in the Eternity,** and, when they pass away,
will exist as reflections. Neither the form of man, nor that of any animal,
plant or stone has ever been created, and it is only on this plane of ours that
it commenced "becoming," i.e., objectivising into its present
materiality, or expanding from within outwards, from the most sublimated and supersensuous
essence into its grossest appearance. Therefore our human forms have existed in
the Eternity as astral or ethereal prototypes; according to which models, the
Spiritual Beings (or Gods) whose duty it was to bring them into objective being
and terrestrial Life, evolved the protoplasmic forms of the future Egos from
their own essence. After which, when this human Upadhi, or basic mould was
ready, the natural terrestrial Forces began to work on those supersensuous
moulds which contained, besides their own, the elements of all the past
vegetable and future animal forms of this globe in them. Therefore, man's
outward shell passed through every vegetable and animal body before it assumed
the human shape. As this will be fully
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* The
centripetal and the centrifugal forces, which are male and female, positive and
negative, physical and spiritual, the two being the one Primordial Force.
** Occultism teaches
that no form can be given to anything, either by nature or by man, whose ideal
type does not already exist on the subjective plane. More than this; that no
such form or shape can possibly enter man's consciousness, or evolve in his
imagination, which does not exist in prototype, at least as an approximation.
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described in
Book II., with the Commentaries thereupon, there is no need to say more of it
here.
According to the
Hermetico-Kabalistic philosophy of Paracelsus, it is Yliaster -- the ancestor
of the just-born Protyle, introduced by Mr. Crookes in chemistry -- or
primordial Protomateria that evolved out of itself the Kosmos.
"When
Evolution took place the Yliaster divided itself. . . . melted and dissolved,
developing from within itself the Ideos or Chaos, called respectively Mysterium
magnum, Iliados, Limbus Major, or Primordial Matter. This Primordial essence is
of a monistic nature, and manifests itself not only as vital activity, a
spiritual force, an invisible, incomprehensible, and indescribable power, but
also as vital matter of which the substance of living beings consists." In
this Ideos of primordial matter, or the proto-ilos -- which is the matrix of
all created things -- is contained the substance from which everything is
formed. It is the Chaos . . . out of which the Macrocosm, and, later on, by
evolution and division in Mysteria Specialia,* each separate being, came into
existence. "All things and all elementary substances were contained in it
in potentia but not in actu" -- which makes the translator, Dr. F.
Hartmann, justly observe that "it seems that Paracelsus anticipated the
modern discovery of the 'potency of matter' three hundred years ago" (P.
42).
This Magnus
Limbus, then, or Yliaster of Paracelsus, is simply our old friend
"Father-Mother," within, before it appeared in Space, of the second and
other Stanzas. It is the universal matrix of Kosmos, personified in the dual
character of Macro- and Microcosm (or the Universe and our Globe)** by
Aditi-Prakriti, the Spiritual and the physical nature. For we find it explained
in Paracelsus that "the Magnus Limbus is the nursery out of which all
creatures have grown, in the same sense as a tree grows out of a small seed;
with the difference, however, that the great Limbus takes its origin from the
Word, while the Limbus minor (the terrestrial seed or sperm) takes it from the
earth.
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* This word is
explained by Dr. Hartmann from the original texts of Paracelsus before him, as
follows. According to this great Rosicrucian: "Mysterium is everything out
of which something may be developed, which is only germinally contained in it.
A seed is the 'Mysterium' of a plant, an egg that of a living bird, etc."
** It is only
the mediaeval Kabalists who, following the Jewish and one or two Neo-Platonists,
applied the term Microcosm to man. Ancient philosophy called the Earth the
Microcosm of the Macrocosm, and man the outcome of the two.
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The great Limbus
is the seed out of which all beings have come, and the little Limbus is each
ultimate being that reproduces its form, and that has itself been produced by
the 'great.' The latter possesses all the qualifications of the great one, in
the same sense as a son has an organization similar to that of his
father." (See Comment. Book II. para. iii.) . . . "As Yliaster
dissolved, Ares, the dividing, differentiating, and individualising power
(Fohat, another old friend,) . . . began to act. All production took place in
consequence of separation. There were produced out of the Ideos, the elements
of Fire, Water, Air and Earth, whose birth, however, did not take place in a
material mode, or by simple separation," but by spiritual and dynamical,
not even complex, combinations -- e.g., mechanical mixture as opposed to
chemical combination -- just as fire may come out of a pebble, or a tree out of
a seed, although there is originally no fire in the pebble, nor a tree in the
seed. Spirit is living, and Life is Spirit, and Life and Spirit (Prakriti
Purusha) (?) produce all things, but they are essentially one and not two. . .
. The elements too, have each one its own Yliaster, because all the activity of
matter in every form is only an effluvium of the same fount. But as from the
seed grow the roots with their fibres, and after that the stalk with its
branches and leaves, and lastly the flowers and seeds; likewise all beings were
born from the elements, and consist of elementary substances out of which other
forms may come into existence, bearing the characteristics of their
parents." ("This doctrine, preached 300 years ago," remarks the
translator, "is identical with the one that has revolutionized modern
thought, after having been put into new shape and elaborated by Darwin. It was
still more elaborated by Kapila in the Sankhya philosophy") . . . . The
elements as the mothers of all creatures are of an invisible, spiritual nature,
and have souls.* They all spring from the "Mysterium Magnum."
(Philosophia ad Athenienses.)
Compare this
with Vishnu Purana.
"From
Pradhana (primordial substance) presided over by Kshetrajna (embodied Spirit?)
proceeds the evolution of those qualities. . . . From the great Principle Mahat
(Universal Intellect, or mind) . . . proceeds
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* The Eastern
Occultist says -- "are guided and informed by the Spiritual Beings" the
Workmen in the invisible worlds and behind the veil of Occult nature, or nature
in Abscondito.
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the origin of
the subtle elements and from these the organs of sense (Book I., ii.).
Thus it may be
shown that all the fundamental truths of nature were universal in antiquity,
and that the basic ideas upon spirit, matter, and the universe, or upon God,
Substance, and man, were identical. Taking the two most ancient religious
philosophies on the globe, Hinduism and Hermetism, from the scriptures of India
and Egypt, the identity of the two is easily recognisable.
This becomes
apparent to one who reads the latest translation and rendering of the
"Hermetic Fragments" just mentioned, by our late lamented friend, Dr.
Anna Kingsford. Disfigured and tortured as these have been in their passage
through Sectarian Greek and Christian hands, the translator has most ably and
intuitionally seized the weak points and tried to remedy them by means of
explanations and foot-notes. And she says:.......... The creation of the
visible world by the 'working gods' or Titans, as agents of the Supreme God,* is
a thoroughly Hermetic idea, recognisable in all religious systems, and in
accordance with modern scientific research (?), which shows us everywhere the
Divine power operating through natural Forces."
"That
Universal Being, that contains all, and which is all, put into motion the Soul
and the World, all that nature comprises, says Hermes. In the manifold unity of
universal life, the innumerable individualities distinguished by their
variations, are, nevertheless, united in such a manner that the whole is one,
and that everything proceeds from Unity." (Asclepios, Part I.)
"God is not
a mind, but the cause that the mind is; not a spirit, but the cause that the
Spirit is; not light, but the cause that the Light is." (Divine Pymander,
Book IX., v. 64.)
The above shows
plainly that "Divine Pyrnander," however much distorted in some
passages by Christian "smoothing," was nevertheless written by a
philosopher, while most of the so-called "hermetic Fragments" are the
production of sectarian pagans with a tendency towards an anthropomorphic
Supreme Being. Yet both are the echo of the Esoteric philosophy and the Hindu
Puranas.
Compare two
invocations, one to the Hermetic "Supreme All," the
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* A frequent
expression in the said Fragments, to which we take exception. The Universal
Mind is not a Being or "God."
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other to the
"Supreme All" of the later Aryans. Says a Hermetic Fragment cited by
Suidas (see Mrs. Kingsford's "The Virgin of the World"): -
"I adjure
thee, Heaven, holy work of the great God; I adjure thee, Voice of the Father,
uttered in the beginning when the universal world was framed; I adjure thee by
the word, only Son of the Father who upholds all things; be favourable, be
favourable."
This just
preceded by the following: "Thus the Ideal Light was before the Ideal Light,
and the luminous Intelligence of Intelligence was always, and its unity was
nothing else than the Spirit enveloping the Universe. Out of whom is neither
God nor Angels, nor any other essentials, for He (It?) is the Lord of all
things and the power and the Light; and all depends on Him (It) and is in Him
(It), etc." (Fragments of the writings of Hermes to Ammon.)
This is
contradicted by the very same Trismegistos, who is made to say: "To speak
of God is impossible. For corporeal cannot express the incorporeal. . . . .
That which has not any body nor appearance, nor form, nor matter, cannot be
apprehended by sense. I understand, Tatios, I understand, that which it is
impossible to define -- that is God." (Physical Eclogues, Florilegium of
Stobaeus.)
The
contradiction between the two passages is evident; and this shows (a) that
Hermes was a generic nom-de-plume used by a series of generations of mystics of
every shade, and (b) that a great discernment has to be used before accepting a
Fragment as esoteric teaching only because it is undeniably ancient. Let us now
compare the above with a like invocation in the Hindu Scriptures -- undoubtedly
as old, if not far older. Here it is Parasara, the Aryan "Hermes" who
instructs Maitreya, the Indian Asclepios, and calls upon Vishnu in his triple
hypostasis.
"Glory to
the unchangeable, holy, eternal Supreme Vishnu, of one universal nature, the
mighty over all; to him who is Hiranyagarbha, Hari, and Sankara (Brahma,
Vishnu, and Siva), the creator, the preserver, and the destroyer of the world;
to Vasudeva, the liberator (of his worshippers); to him whose essence is both
single and manifold; who is both subtile and corporeal, indiscreet and
discreet; to Vishnu the cause of final emancipation, the cause of the creation,
existence, the
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end of the
world; who is the root of the world, and who consists of the world."
(Vish. Purana, Book L.)
This is a grand
invocation, full of philosophical meaning underlying it; but, for the profane
masses, as suggestive as is the first of an anthropomorphic Being. We must
respect the feeling that dictated both; but we cannot help finding it in full
disharmony with its inner meaning, even with that which is found in the same
Hermetic treatise where it is said:
"Reality is
not upon the earth, my son, and it cannot be thereon. . . . Nothing on earth is
real, there are only appearances. . . He (man) is not real, my son, as man. The
real consists solely in itself and remains what it is. . . Man is transient,
therefore he is not real, he is but appearance, and appearance is the supreme
illusion.
Tatios: Then the
celestial bodies themselves are not real, my father, since they also vary?
Trismegistos:
That which is subject to birth and to change is not real. . . . . There is in
them a certain falsity, seeing that they too are variable.......
Tatios: And what
then is the primordial Reality?
Trismeg.: That
which is one and alone, 0 Tatios; That which is not made of matter, nor in any
body. Which has neither colour nor form, which changes not nor is transmitted
but which always is."
This is quite consistent
with the Vedantic teaching. The leading thought is Occult; and many are the
passages in the Hermetic Fragments that belong bodily to the Secret Doctrine.
The latter
teaches that the whole universe is ruled by intelligent and semi-intelligent Forces
and Powers, as stated from the very beginning. Christian Theology admits and
even enforces belief in such, but makes an arbitrary division and refers to
them as "Angels" and "Devils." Science denies the existence
of such, and ridicules the very idea. Spiritualists believe in the Spirits of
the Dead, and, outside these, deny entirely any other kind or class of
invisible beings. The Occultists and Kabalists are thus the only rational
expounders of the ancient traditions, which have now culminated in dogmatic
faith on the one hand, and dogmatic denials on the other. For, both belief and
unbelief embrace but one small corner each of the infinite horizons of
spiritual and physical manifestations; and thus both are right from
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their respective
standpoints, and both are wrong in believing that they can circumscribe the
whole within their own special and narrow barriers; for -- they can never do
so. In this respect Science, Theology, and even Spiritualism show little more
wisdom than the ostrich does, when it hides its head in the sand at its feet,
feeling sure that there can be thus nothing beyond its own point of observation
and the limited area occupied by its foolish head.
As the only
works now extant upon the subject under consideration within reach of the
profane of the Western "civilized" races are the above-mentioned
Hermetic Books, or rather Hermetic Fragments, we may contrast them in the
present case with the teachings of Esoteric philosophy. To quote for this
purpose from any other would be useless, since the public knows nothing of the
Chaldean works which are translated into Arabic and preserved by some Sufi
initiates. Therefore the "Definitions of Asclepios," as lately
compiled and glossed by Mrs. A. Kingsford, F.T.S., some of which sayings are in
remarkable agreement with the Esoteric Eastern doctrine, have to be resorted to
for comparison. Though not a few passages show a strong impression of some
later Christian hand, yet on the whole the characteristics of the genii* and
gods are those of eastern teachings, while concerning other things there are
passages which differ widely in our doctrines. The following are a few:--
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* The Hermetic
philosophers called Theoi, gods, Genii and Daimones (in the original texts),
those Entities whom we call Devas (gods), Dhyan Chohans, Chitkala (Kwan-yin,
the Buddhists call them), and by other names. The Daimones are -- in the
Socratic sense, and even in the Oriental and Latin theological sense -- the
guardian spirits of the human race; "those who dwell in the neighbourhood of
the immortals, and thence watch over human affairs," as Hermes has it. In
Esoteric parlance, they are called Chitkala, some of which are those who have
furnished man with his fourth and fifth Principles from their own essence; and
others the Pitris so-called. This will be explained when we come to the
production of the complete man. The root of the name is Chiti, "that by
which the effects and consequences of actions and kinds of knowledge are
selected for the use of the soul," or conscience the inner Voice in man.
With the Yogis, the Chiti is a synonym of Mahat, the first and divine
intellect; but in Esoteric philosophy Mahat is the root of Chiti, its germ; and
Chiti is a quality of Manas in conjunction with Buddhi, a quality that attracts
to itself by spiritual affinity a Chitkala when it develops sufficiently in
man. This is why it is said that Chiti is a voice acquiring mystic life and
becoming Kwan-Yin.
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EXTRACTS FROM A
PRIVATE COMMENTARY,* hitherto secret:--
(xvii.)
"The Initial Existence in the first twilight of the Maha-Manwantara (after
the MAHA-PRALAYA that follows every age of Brahma) is a CONSCIOUS SPIRITUAL
QUALITY. In the manifested WORLDS (solar systems) it is, in its OBJECTIVE
SUBJECTIVITY, like the film from a Divine Breath to the gaze of the entranced
seer. It spreads as it issues from LAYA** throughout infinity as a colourless
spiritual fluid. It is on the SEVENTH PLANE, and in its SEVENTH STATE in our
planetary world.***
(xviii.)
"It is Substance to OUR spiritual sight. It cannot be called so by men in
their WAKING STATE; therefore they have named it in their ignorance
'God-Spirit.'
(xix.) "It
exists everywhere and forms the first UPADHI (foundation) on which our World
(solar system) is built. Outside the latter it is to be found in its pristine
purity only between (the solar systems or) the Stars of the Universe, the worlds
already formed or forming; those in LAYA resting meanwhile in its bosom. As its
substance is of a different kind from that known on earth, the inhabitants of
the latter, seeing THROUGH IT, believe in their illusion and ignorance that it
is empty space. There is not one finger's breath (ANGULA) of void Space in the
whole Boundless (Universe).........
(xx.)
"Matter or Substance is septenary within our World, as it is so beyond it.
Moreover, each of its states or principles is graduated into seven degrees of
density. SURYA (the Sun), in its visible reflection, exhibits the first, or
lowest state of the seventh, the highest state of the Universal PRESENCE, the
pure of the pure, the first manifested Breath of the ever Unmanifested SAT
(Be-ness). All the Central physical or objective Suns are in their substance
the lowest state of the first Principle of the BREATH. Nor are any of these any
more than the REFLECTIONS of their PRIMARIES which are concealed from the gaze
of all but the Dhyan Chohans, whose Corporeal substance belongs to the fifth
division of the seventh Principle of the Mother substance, and is,
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* This (teaching)
does not refer to Prakriti-Purusha beyond the boundaries of our small universe.
** The ultimate
quiescent state: the Nirvana condition of the seventh Principle.
*** The teaching
is all given from our plane of consciousness.
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therefore, four
degrees higher than the solar reflected substance. As there are seven Dhatu
(principal substances in the human body) so there are seven Forces in Man and
in all Nature.
(xxi.) "The
real substance of the concealed (Sun) is a nucleus of Mother substance.* It is
the heart and the matrix of all the living and existing Forces in our solar
universe. It is the Kernel from which proceed to spread on their cyclic
journeys all the Powers that set in action the atoms in their functional
duties, and the focus within which they again meet in their SEVENTH ESSENCE
every eleventh year. He who tells thee he has seen the sun, laugh at him** as
if he had said that the sun moves really onward on his diurnal path . . . .
(xxiii).
"It is on account of his septenary nature that the Sun is spoken of by the
ancients as one who is driven by seven horses equal to the metres of the Vedas;
or, again, that, though he is identified with the SEVEN "Gaina"
(classes of being) in his orb, he is distinct from them,*** as he is, indeed;
as also that he has SEVEN RAYS, as indeed he has . . . .
(xxv.) "The
Seven Beings in the Sun are the Seven Holy Ones, Self-born from the inherent
power in the matrix of Mother substance. It is they who send the Seven
Principal Forces, called rays, which at the beginning of Pralaya will centre
into seven new Suns for the next Manvantara. The energy from which they spring
into conscious existence in every Sun, is what some people call Vishnu (see
foot-note below), which is the Breath of the ABSOLUTENESS.
We call it the
One manifested life -- itself a reflection of the Absolute.........
(xxvi.) "The
latter must never be mentioned in words or speech LEST IT SHOULD TAKE AWAY SOME
OF OUR SPIRITUAL ENERGIES THAT ASPIRE towards ITS state, gravitating ever
onward unto IT spiritually, as the whole physical universe gravitates towards
ITS manifested centre -- cosmically.
(xxvii.)
"The former -- the Initial existence -- which may be called while in
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* Or the
"dream of Science," the primeval really homogeneous matter, which no mortal
can make objective in this Race or Round either.
** "Vishnu
in the form of the Solar active energy, neither ever rises nor sets, and is at
once, the sevenfold Sun and distinct from it," says Vishnu Purana (Book
II., Chap. 11).
*** "In the
same manner as a man approaches a mirror placed upon a stand, beholds in it his
own image, so the energy or reflection of Vishnu (the Sun) is never disjoined
but remains in the Sun as in a mirror that is there stationed"
("Vishnu Purana").
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this state of
being the ONE LIFE, is, as explained, a FILM for creative or formative
Purposes. It manifests in seven states, which, with their septenary
sub-divisions, are the FORTY-NINE Fires* mentioned in sacred books . . . . . .
(xxix.)
"The first is the . . . . 'Mother' (prima MATERIA). Separating itself into
its primary seven states, it proceeds down cyclically; when** having
consolidated itself in its LAST principle as GROSS MATTER, it revolves around
itself and informs, with the seventh emanation of the last, the first and the
lowest element (the Serpent biting its own tail). In a hierarchy, or order of
being, the seventh emanation of her last principle is:--
(a) In the
mineral, the spark that lies latent in it, and is called to its evanescent
being by the POSITIVE awakening the NEGATIVE (and so forth) . . . .
(b) In the plant
it is that vital and intelligent Force which informs the seed and develops it
into the blade of grass, or the root and sapling. It is the germ which becomes
the UPADHI of the seven principles of the thing it resides in, shooting them
out as the latter grows and develops.
(c) In every
animal it does the same. It is its life principle and vital power; its instinct
and qualities; its characteristics and special idiosyncrasies . . . .
(d) To man, it
gives all that it bestows on all the rest of the manifested units in nature;
but develops, furthermore, the reflection of all its FORTY-NINE FIRES in him.
Each of his seven principles is an heir in full to, and a partaker of, the
seven principles of the "great Mother." The breath of her first
principle is his spirit (Atma). Her second principle is BUDDHI (soul). We call
it, erroneously, the seventh. The third furnishes him with (a) the brain stuff
on the physical plane, and (b) with the MIND that moves it [which is the human
soul. -- H. P. B.] -- according to his organic capacities.
(e) It is the
guiding Force in the Cosmic and terrestrial elements. It resides in the Fire
provoked out of its latent into active being; for the whole of the seven
subdivisions of the * * * principle reside in the terrestrial Fire. It whirls
in the breeze, blows with the hurricane, and sets the air in motion, which
element participates in one of its principles also. Proceeding cyclically, it
regulates the motion
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* In
"Vishnu" and other Puranas.
** See the
Hermetic "Nature," "Going down cyclically into matter when she
meets 'heavenly man.' "
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of the water,
attracts and repels the waves* according to fixed laws of which its seventh
principle is the informing soul.
(f) Its four
higher principles contain the germ that develops into the Cosmic Gods; its
three lower ones breed the lives of the Elements (Elementals).
(g) In our Solar
world, the One Existence is Heaven and the Earth, the Root and the flower, the
Action and the Thought. It is in the Sun, and is as present in the glow-worm.
Not an atom can escape it. Therefore, the ancient Sages have wisely called it
the manifested God in Nature. . . ."
It may be
interesting, in this connection, to remind the reader of what Mr. Subba Row
said of the Forces -- mystically defined. See "Five Years of
Theosophy" and "The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac." Thus he says:
"Kanya (the
sixth sign of the Zodiac, or Virgo) means a Virgin, and represents Sakti or
Mahamaya. The sign . . . is the 6th Rasi or division, and indicates that there
are six primary forces in Nature (synthesized by the Seventh)" . . . These
Sakti stand as follows: -
(1.) PARASAKTI.
Literally the great or Supreme Force or power. It means and includes the powers
of light and heat.
(2.) JNANASAKTI.
. . . The power of intellect, of real Wisdom or Knowledge. It has two aspects:
The following
are some of its manifestations when placed under the influence or control of
material conditions. (a) The power of the mind in interpreting our sensations.
(b) Its power in recalling past ideas (memory) and raising future expectation.
(c) Its power as exhibited in what are called by modern psychologists "the
laws of association," which enables it to form persisting connections
between various groups of sensations and possibilities of sensations, and thus
generate the notion or idea of an external object. (d) Its power in connecting
our ideas together by the mysterious link of memory, and thus generating the
notion of self or individuality; some of its manifestations when liberated from
the bonds of matter are -- (a) Clairvoyance, (b) Psychometry.
(3.) ITCHASAKTI
-- the power of the Will. Its most ordinary manifesta-
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* The writers of
the above knew perfectly well the physical cause of the tides, of the waves,
etc. It is the informing Spirit of the whole Cosmic solar body that is meant
here, and which is referred to whenever such expressions are used from the
mystic point of view.
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tion is the
generation of certain nerve currents which set in motion such muscles as are
required for the accomplishment of the desired object.
(4.) KRIYASAKTI.
The mysterious power of thought which enables it to produce external,
perceptible, phenomenal results by its own inherent energy. The ancients held
that any idea will manifest itself externally if one's attention is deeply
concentrated upon it. Similarly an intense volition will be followed by the
desired result.
A Yogi generally
performs his wonders by means of Itchasakti and Kriyasakti.
(5.) KUNDALINI
SAKTI. The power or Force which moves in a curved path. It is the Universal
life-Principle manifesting everywhere in nature. This force includes the two
great forces of attraction and repulsion. Electricity and magnetism are but
manifestations of it. This is the power which brings about that
"continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations"
which is the essence of life according to Herbert Spencer, and that
"continuous adjustment of external relations to internal relations"
which is the basis of transmigration of souls, punar janman (re-birth) in the
doctrines of the ancient Hindu philosophers. A Yogi must thoroughly subjugate
this power before he can attain Moksham. . . .
(6.)
MANTRIKA-SAKTI. The force or power of letters, speech or music. The Mantra
Shastra has for its subject-matter this force in all its
manifestations......... The influence of melody is one of its ordinary
manifestations. The power of the ineffable name is the crown of this Sakti.
Modern Science
has but partly investigated the first, second and fifth of the forces above
named, but is altogether in the dark as regards the remaining powers. The six
forces are in their unity represented by the "Daiviprakriti" (the
Seventh, the light of the LOGOS).
The above is
quoted to show the real Hindu ideas on the same. It is all esoteric, though not
covering the tenth part of what might be said. For one, the six names of the
Six Forces mentioned are those of the six Hierarchies of Dhyan Chohans
synthesized by their Primary, the seventh, who personify the Fifth Principle of
Cosmic Nature, or of the "Mother" in its Mystical Sense. The
enumeration alone of the yogi Powers would require ten volumes. Each of these
Forces has a living Conscious Entity at its head, of which entity it is an
emanation.
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But let us
compare with the commentary just cited the words of Hermes, the "thrice
great":--
"The
creation of Life by the Sun is as continuous as his light; nothing arrests or
limits it. Around him, like an army of Satellites, are innumerable choirs of
genii. These dwell in the neighbourhood of the Immortals, and thence watch over
human things. They fulfil the will of the gods (Karma) by means of storms,
tempests, transitions of fire and earthquakes; likewise by famines and wars,
for the punishment of impiety.* . . . It is the sun who preserves and nourishes
all creatures; and even as the Ideal World which environs the sensible world
fills this last with the plenitude and universal variety of forms, so also the
Sun, enfolding all in his light, accomplishes everywhere the birth and
development of creatures." . . . "Under his orders is the choir of
Genii, or rather the choirs, for there are many and diverse, and their number
corresponds to that of the stars. Every star has its genii, good and evil by
nature, or rather by their operation, for operation is the essence of the
genii. . . . All these Genii preside over mundane affairs,** they shake and
overthrow the constitution of States and of individuals; they imprint their
likeness on our Souls, they are present in our nerves, our marrow, our veins,
our arteries, and our very brain-substance . . . at the moment when each of us
receives life and being, he is taken in charge by the genii (Elementals) who preside
over births,*** and who are classed beneath the astral powers (Superhuman
astral Spirits.) They change perpetually, not always identically, but revolving
in circles.**** They permeate by the body two parts of the Soul, that it may
receive from each the impress of his own energy. But the reasonable part of the
Soul is not subject to the genii; it is designed
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* See Stanzas
III. and IV. and the Commentaries thereupon, especially the Comments on Stanza
IV. "the Lipika and the four Maharajas," the agents of Karma.
** And
"Gods" or Dhyanis, too, not only the genii or "guided
Forces."
*** The meaning
of this is that as man is composed of all the Great Elements: Fire, Air, Water,
Earth and Ether -- the ELEMENTALS which belong respectively to these Elements
feel attracted to man by reason of their co-essence. That element which
predominates in a certain constitution will be the ruling element throughout
life. For instance, if man has a preponderance of the Earthly, gnomic element,
the gnomes will lead him towards assimilating metals -- money and wealth, and
so on. "Animal man is the son of the animal elements out of which his Soul
(life) was born, and animals are the mirrors of man," says Paracelsus (De
Fundamento Sapientiae). Paracelsus was cautious, and wanted the Bible to agree
with what he said, and therefore did not say all.
**** Cyclic
progress in development.
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for the
reception of (the) God,* who enlightens it with a sunny ray. Those who are thus
illumined are few in number, and from them the genii abstain: for neither genii
nor Gods have any power in the presence of a single ray of God.** But all other
men, both soul and body, are directed by genii, to whom they cleave, and whose
operations they affect........... The genii have then the control of mundane
things and our bodies serve them as instruments...........
The above, save
a few sectarian points, represents that which was a universal belief common to
all nations till about a century or so back. It is still as orthodox in its
broad outlines and features among pagans and Christians alike, if one excepts a
handful of materialists and men of Science.
For whether one
calls the genii of Hermes and his "Gods," "Powers of
Darkness" and "Angels," as in the Greek and Latin Churches; or
"Spirits of the Dead," as in Spiritualism or, again, Bhoots and
Devas, Shaitan or Djin, as they are still called in India and Mussulman
countries -- they are all one and the same thing -- ILLUSION. Let not this,
however, be misunderstood in the sense into which the great philosophical
doctrine of the Vedantists has been lately perverted by Western schools.
All that which
is, emanates from the ABSOLUTE, which, from this qualification alone, stands as
the one and only reality -- hence, everything extraneous to this Absolute, the
generative and causative Element, must be an illusion, most undeniably. But
this is only so from the purely metaphysical view. A man who regards himself as
mentally sane, and is so regarded by his neighbours, calls the visions of an
insane brother -- whose hallucinations make the victim either happy or
supremely wretched, as the case may be -- illusions and fancies likewise. But,
where is that madman for whom the hideous shadows in his deranged mind, his
illusions, are not, for the time being, as actual and as real as the things
which his physician or keeper may see? Everything is relative in this Universe,
everything is an illusion. But
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* The God in man
and often the incarnation of a God, a highly Spiritual Dhyan Chohan in him,
besides the presence of his own seventh Principle.
** Now, what
"god" is meant here? Not God "the Father," the
anthropomorphic fiction; for that god is the Elohim collectively, and has no
being apart from the Host. Besides, such a god is finite and imperfect. It is
the high Initiates and Adepts who are meant here by those men "few in
number." And it is precisely those men who believe in "gods" and
know no "God," but one Universal unrelated and unconditioned Deity.
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the experience
of any plane is an actuality for the percipient being, whose consciousness is
on that plane; though the said experience, regarded from the purely
metaphysical standpoint, may be conceived to have no objective reality. But it
is not against metaphysicians, but against physicists and materialists that
Esoteric teachings have to fight, and for these Vital Force, Light, Sound,
Electricity, even to the objectively pulling force of magnetism, have no
objective being, and are said to exist merely as "modes of motion,"
"sensations and affections of matter."
Neither the Occultists
generally, nor the Theosophists, reject, as erroneously believed by some, the
views and theories of the modern scientists, only because these views are
opposed to Theosophy. The first rule of our Society is to render unto Caesar
what is Caesar's. The Theosophists, therefore, are the first to recognize the
intrinsic value of science. But when its high priests resolve consciousness
into a secretion from the grey matter of the brain, and everything else in
nature into a mode of motion, we protest against the doctrine as being
unphilosophical, self-contradictory, and simply absurd, from a scientific point
of view, as much and even more than from the occult aspect of the esoteric
knowledge.
For truly the astral
light of the derided Kabalists has strange and weird secrets for him who can
see in it; and the mysteries concealed within its incessantly disturbed waves
are there, the whole body of Materialists and scoffers notwithstanding.* These
secrets, along with
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* The astral
light of the Kabalists is very incorrectly translated by some
"AEther;" the latter is confused with the hypothetical Ether of
Science, and both are referred to by some theosophists as synonymous with
Akasa. This is a great mistake.
"A
characteristic of Akasa will serve to show how inadequately it is represented
by Ether," writes the author of Rational Refutations, thus unconsciously
helping Occultism. "In dimension it is infinite; it is not made up of
parts; and colour, taste, smell, and tangibility do not appertain to it. So far
forth it corresponds exactly to time, space, Isvara, ("The Lord," but
rather creative potency and soul -- anima mundi). Its speciality, as compared
therewith, consists in its being the material cause of sound. Except for its
being so, one might take it to be one with vacuity" (p. 120.)
It is vacuity,
no doubt, especially for Rationalists. At any rate Akasa is sure to produce
vacuity in the brain of a materialist. Nevertheless, though Akasa is not that
Ether of Science, not even the Ether of the Occultist, who defines the latter
as one of the principles of Akasa only, it is as certainly, together with its
primary, the cause of sound, only a physical and spiritual, not a material
cause by any means. The relations [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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many other
mysteries, will remain non-existent to the materialists of our age, in the same
way as America was a non-existent myth for Europeans during the early part of
the mediaeval ages, whereas Scandinavians and Norwegians had actually reached
and settled in that very old "New World" several centuries before.
But, as a Columbus was born to re-discover, and to force the Old World to
believe in Antipodal countries, so will there be born scientists who will
discover the marvels now claimed by Occultists to exist in the regions of
Ether, with their varied and multiform denizens and conscious Entities. Then,
nolens volens, Science will have to accept the old "Superstition," as
it has several others. And having been once forced to accept it -- judging from
past experience -- its learned professors will, in all probability, as in the
case of MESMERISM and Magnetism, now re-baptised Hypnotism, father the thing
and reject its name. The choice of the new appellation will depend, in its turn,
on the "modes of motion," the new name for the older "automatic
physical processes among the nerve fibrils of the (Scientific) brain" of
Moleschott; as also, very likely, upon the last meal of the namer; since,
according to the Founder of the new Hylo-Idealistic Scheme, "Cerebration
is generically the same as chylification."* Thus, were one to believe this
preposterous proposition, the new name of the archaic thing would have to take
its chance, on the inspiration of the namer's liver, and then only would these
truths have a chance of becoming scientific!
But TRUTH,
however distasteful to the generally blind majorities, has always had her
champions, ready to die for her, and it is not the Occultists who will protest
against its adoption by Science under whatever new name. But, until absolutely
forced on the notice and acceptance of Scientists, many an Occult truth will be
tabooed, as the phenomena of the Spiritualists and other psychic manifestations
were, to be finally appropriated by its ex-traducers without the least
acknowledgment or thanks. Nitrogen has added considerably to chemical
knowledge, but its discoverer, Paracelsus, is to this day called a
"quack."
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] of Ether to Akasa may be defined by applying to
both Akasa and Ether the words said of the god in the Vedas, "So himself
was indeed (his own) son," one being the progeny of the other and yet
itself. This may be a difficult riddle to the profane, but very easy to
understand for any Hindu -- though not even a mystic.
* National
Reformer, January 9th, 1887. Article "Phreno-Kosmo-Biology," by Dr.
Lewins.
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How profoundly
true are the words of H. T. Buckle, in his admirable "History of
Civilization" (Vol. I., p. 256), when he says:--
"Owing to
circumstances still unknown (Karmic provision, H.P.B.) there appear from time
to time great thinkers, who, devoting their lives to a single purpose, are able
to anticipate the progress of mankind, and to produce a religion or a
philosophy by which important effects are eventually brought about. But if we
look into history we shall clearly see that, although the origin of a new
opinion may be thus due to a single man, the result which the new opinion
produces will depend on the condition of the people among whom it is
propagated. If either a religion or a philosophy is too much in advance of a
nation it can do no present service but must bide its time* until the minds of
men are ripe for its reception. . . . Every science, every creed has had its
martyrs. According to the ordinary course of affairs, a few generations pass
away, and then there comes a period when these very truths are looked upon as
commonplace facts, and a little later there comes another period in which they
are declared to be necessary, and even the dullest intellect wonders how they
could ever have been denied."
It is barely
possible that the minds of the present generations are not quite ripe for the
reception of Occult truths. Such will be the retrospect furnished to the
advanced thinkers of the Sixth Root Race of the history of the acceptance of
Esoteric Philosophy -- fully and unconditionally. Meanwhile the generations of
our Fifth Race will continue to be led away by prejudice and preconceptions.
Occult Sciences will have the finger of scorn pointed at them from every street
corner, and everyone will seek to ridicule and crush them in the name, and for
the greater glory, of Materialism and its so-called Science. The Addendum which
completes the present Book shows, however, in an anticipatory answer to several
of the forthcoming Scientific objections, the true and mutual positions of the
defendant and plaintiff. The Theosophists and Occultists stand arraigned by
public opinion, which still holds high the banner of the inductive Sciences.
The latter have, then, to be examined; and it must be shown how far their
achievements and discoveries in the realm of natural laws are opposed, not so
much to our claims, as to the facts in nature. The hour has now struck to
ascertain whether the
[[Footnote(s)]]-------------------------------------------------
* This is Cyclic
law, but this law itself is often defied by human stubbornness.
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walls of the
modern Jericho are so impregnable that no blast of the Occult trumpet is ever
likely to make them crumble.
The so-called
Forces, with Light and Electricity heading them, and the constitution of the
Solar orb must be carefully examined; as also Gravitation and the Nebular
theories. The Natures of Ether and of other Elements must be discussed: thus
contrasting scientific with other Occult teachings, while revealing some of the
hitherto secret tenets of the latter. (Vide Addendum.)
Some fifteen
years ago, the writer was the first to repeat, after the Kabalists, the wise
Commandments in the Esoteric Catechism. "Close thy mouth, lest thou
shouldst speak of this (the mystery), and thy heart, lest thou shouldst think
aloud; and if thy heart has escaped thee, bring it back to its place, for such
is the object of our alliance." (Sepher Jezireh, Book of Creation.) And
again:-- "This is a secret which gives death: close thy mouth lest thou
shouldst reveal it to the vulgar; compress thy brain lest something should
escape from it and fall outside." (Rules of Initiation.)
A few years
later, a corner of the Veil of Isis had to be lifted; and now another and a
larger rent is made. . . .
But old and
time-honoured errors -- such as become with every day more glaring and
self-evident -- stand arrayed in battle-order now, as they did then. Marshalled
by blind conservatism, conceit and prejudice, they are constantly on the watch,
ready to strangle every truth, which, awakening from its age-long sleep,
happens to knock for admission. Such has been the case ever since man became an
animal. That this proves in every case moral death to the revealers, who bring
to light any of these old, old truths, is as certain as that it gives LIFE and
REGENERATION to those who are fit to profit even by the little that is now
revealed to them.
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BOOK I., PART
II.
THE
EVOLUTION OF
SYMBOLISM
IN ITS
APPROXIMATE ORDER.
---------------------
EXPLANATORY
SECTIONS.
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CONTENTS.
-------
§§. PAGE.
I. -- SYMBOLISM
AND IDEOGRAPHS ... 303
II. -- MYSTERY
LANGUAGE ... 310
III. --
PRIMORDIAL SUBSTANCE AND DIVINE THOUGHT ... 325
IV. -- CHAOS,
THEOS, KOSMOS ... 342
V. -- THE HIDDEN
DEITY AND ITS GLYPHS ... 349
VI. -- THE MUNDANE
EGG ... 359
VII. -- THE DAYS
AND NIGHTS OF BRAHMA ... 368
VIII. -- THE
LOTUS AS A UNIVERSAL SYMBOL ... 379
IX. -- DEUS
LUNUS ... 386
X. -- TREE AND
SERPENT AND CROCODILE WORSHIP ... 403
XI. -- DEMON EST
DEUS INVERSUS ... 411
XII. -- THEOGONY
OF THE CREATIVE GODS ... 424
XIII. -- THE
SEVEN CREATIONS ... 445
XIV. -- THE FOUR
ELEMENTS OF THE ANCIENTS ... 460
XV. -- ON
KWAN-SHI YIN AND KWAN-YIN ... 470
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BOOK I. -- PART
II.
(SECRET
DOCTRINE.)
§ I.
SYMBOLISM AND
IDEOGRAPHS.
"A symbol
is ever, to him who has eyes for it,
some dimmer or
clearer revelation of the God-like.
Through all there
glimmers something of a divine
idea; nay, the
highest ensign that men ever met and
embraced under
the cross itself, had no meaning, save
an accidental
extrinsic one." CARLYLE.
THE study of the
hidden meaning in every religious and profane legend, of whatsoever nation,
large or small -- pre-eminently the traditions of the East -- has occupied the
greater portion of the present writer's life. She is one of those who feel
convinced that no mythological story, no traditional event in the folk-lore of
a people has ever been, at any time, pure fiction, but that every one of such
narratives has an actual, historical lining to it. In this the writer disagrees
with those symbologists, however great their reputation, who find in every myth
nothing save additional proofs of the superstitious bent of mind of the
ancients, and believe that all mythologies sprung from and are built upon solar
myths. Such superficial thinkers were admirably disposed of by Mr. Gerald
Massey, the poet and Egyptologist, in a lecture on "Luniolatry, Ancient
and Modern." His pointed criticism is worthy of reproduction in this part
of this work, as it echoes so well our own feelings, expressed openly so far
back as 1875, when "Isis Unveiled" was written.
"For thirty
years past Professor Max Muller has been teaching in his books and lectures, in
the Times and various magazines, from the platform of the Royal Institution,
the pulpit of Westminster Abbey, and his chair at Oxford, that mythology is a
disease of language, and that the ancient symbolism was a result of something
like a primitive aberration.
"'We know,'
says Renouf, echoing Max Muller, in his Hibbert lectures, 'we know that
mythology is the disease which springs up at a peculiar stage of human
culture.' Such is the shallow explanation of the non-evolutionists, and such
explanations are still accepted by the British public, that gets its think-
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ing done by
proxy. Professor Max Muller, Cox, Gubernatis, and other propounders of the
Solar Mythos, have portrayed the primitive myth-maker for us as a sort of
Germanised-Hindu metaphysician, projecting his own shadow on a mental mist, and
talking ingeniously concerning smoke, or, at least, cloud; the sky overhead
becoming like the dome of dreamland, scribbled over with the imagery of
aboriginal nightmares! They conceive the early man in their own likeness, and
look upon him as perversely prone to self-mystification, or, as Fontenelle has
it, 'subject to beholding things that are not there.' They have misrepresented
primitive or archaic man as having been idiotically misled from the first by an
active but untutored imagination into believing all sorts of fallacies, which
were directly and constantly contradicted by his own daily experience; a fool
of fancy in the midst of those grim realities that were grinding his experience
into him, like the grinding icebergs making their imprints upon the rocks
submerged beneath the sea. It remains to be said, and will one day be
acknowledged, that these accepted teachers have been no nearer to the
beginnings of mythology and language than Burns' poet Willie had been near to
Pegasus. My reply is, 'Tis but a dream of the metaphysical theorist that
mythology was a disease of language, or of anything else except his own brain.
The origin and meaning of mythology have been missed altogether by these
solarites and weather-mongers! Mythology was a primitive mode of thinking the
early thought. It was founded on natural facts, and is still verifiable in
phenomena. There is nothing insane, nothing irrational in it, when considered
in the light of evolution, and when its mode of expression by sign-language is
thoroughly understood. The insanity lies in mistaking it for human history or
Divine Revelation.* Mythology is the repository of man's most ancient science,
and what concerns us chiefly is this -- when truly interpreted once more, it is
destined to be the death of those false theologies to which it has unwittingly
given birth.** In modern phraseology a statement is sometimes said to be
mythical in proportion to its being untrue; but the ancient mythology was not a
system or mode of falsifying in that sense. Its fables were the means of
conveying facts; they were neither forgeries nor fictions. . . . For example,
when the Egyptians portrayed the moon as a Cat, they were not ignorant enough
to suppose that the moon was a cat; nor did their wandering fancies see any
likeness in the moon to a cat; nor was a cat-myth any mere expansion of verbal
metaphor; nor had they any intention of making puzzles or riddles. . . . They
had observed the simple fact that the cat saw in the dark, and that her eyes became
full-orbed, and grew most luminous by night. The moon was the seer by night in
heaven, and the cat was its equivalent on the earth; and so the familiar cat
was adopted as a representative, a natural sign, a living pictograph of the
lunar orb. . . . And so it followed that the sun which saw down in the
under-world at night could also be called the cat, as it was, because it also
saw in the dark. The name of the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* As far as
divine revelation is concerned, we agree. Not so with regard to "human
history." . . . For there is "history" in most of the allegories
and "myths" of India, and events, real actual events, are concealed
under them.
** When the
"false theologies" disappear, then true prehistoric realities will be
found, contained especially in the mythology of the Aryans -- ancient Hindoos,
and even the pre-Homeric Hellenes.
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cat in Egyptian
is mau, which denotes the seer, from mau, to see. One writer on mythology
asserts that the Egyptians 'imagined a great cat behind the sun, which is the
pupil of the cat's eye.' But this imagining is all modern. It is the Mullerite
stock in trade. The moon as cat was the eye of the sun, because it reflected
the solar light, and because the eye gives back image in its mirror. In the
form of the goddess Pasht, the cat keeps watch for the sun, with her paw
holding down and bruising the head of the serpent of darkness, called his
eternal enemy. . . ."
This is a very
correct exposition of the lunar-mythos from its astronomical aspect.
Selenography, however, is the least esoteric of the divisions of lunar
Symbology. To master thoroughly -- if one is permitted to coin a new word --
Selenognosis, one must become proficient in more than its astronomical meaning.
The moon (vide § VII. Deus Lunus) is intimately related to the Earth, as shown
in Stanza VI. of Book I., and is more directly concerned with all the mysteries
of our globe than is even Venus-Lucifer, the occult sister and alter-ego of the
Earth.
The untiring
researches of Western, and especially German, symbologists, during the last and
the present centuries, have brought every Occultist and most unprejudiced
persons to see that without the help of symbology (with its seven departments,
of which the moderns know nothing) no ancient Scripture can ever be correctly
understood. Symbology must be studied from every one of its aspects, for each
nation had its own peculiar methods of expression. In short, no Egyptian
papyrus, no Indian tolla, no Assyrian tile, or Hebrew scroll, should be read
and accepted literally.
This every
scholar now knows. The able lectures of Mr. G. Massey alone are sufficient in
themselves to convince any fair-minded Christian that to accept the dead-letter
of the Bible is equivalent to falling into a grosser error and superstition
than any hitherto evolved by the brain of the savage South Sea Islander. But
the point to which even the most truth-loving and truth-searching Orientalists
-- whether Aryanists or Egyptologists -- seem to remain blind, is the fact that
every symbol in papyrus or olla is a many-faced diamond, each of whose facets
not merely bears several interpretations, but relates likewise to several
sciences. This is instanced in the just quoted interpretation of the moon
symbolized by the cat -- an example of sidero-terrestrial imagery; the moon
bearing many other meanings besides this with other nations.
As a learned
Mason and Theosophist, the late Mr. Kenneth Mackenzie, has shown in his Royal
Masonic Cyclopaedia, there is a great difference between emblem and symbol. The
former "comprises a larger series of thoughts than a symbol, which may be
said rather to illustrate some single special idea." Hence, the symbols
(say lunar, or solar) of several countries, each illustrating such a special
idea, or series of ideas, form collectively an esoteric emblem. The latter is
"a concrete visible
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picture or sign
representing principles, or a series of principles, recognizable by those who
have received certain instructions" (initiates). To put it still plainer,
an emblem is usually a series of graphic pictures viewed and explained
allegorically, and unfolding an idea in panoramic views, one after the other.
Thus the Puranas are written emblems. So are the Mosaic and Christian
Testaments, or the Bible, and all other exoteric Scriptures. As the same
authority shows:--
"All
esoteric Societies have made use of emblems and symbols, such as the
Pythagorean Society, the Eleusinian, the Hermetic Brethren of Egypt, the
Rosicrucians, and the Freemasons. Many of these emblems it is not proper to
divulge to the general eye, and a very minute difference may make the emblem or
symbol differ widely in its meaning. The magical sigillae, being founded on
certain principles of numbers, partake of this character, and although
monstrous or ridiculous in the eyes of the uninstructed, convey a whole body of
doctrine to those who have been trained to recognise them."
The above
enumerated societies are all comparatively modern, none dating back earlier
than the middle ages. How much more proper, then, that the students of the
oldest Archaic School should be careful not to divulge secrets of far more
importance to humanity (in the sense of being dangerous in the hands of the
latter) than any of the so-called "Masonic Secrets," which have now
become, as the French say, those of "Polichinelle!" But this
restriction can apply only to the psychological or rather psycho-physiological
and Cosmical significance of symbol and emblem, and even to that only
partially. An adept must refuse to impart the conditions and means that lead to
a correlation of elements, whether psychic or physical, that may produce a
hurtful result as well as a beneficent one. But he is ever ready to impart to
the earnest student the secret of the ancient thought in anything that regards
history concealed under mythological symbolism, and thus to furnish a few more
land-marks towards a retrospective view of the past, as containing useful
information with regard to the origin of man, the evolution of the races and
geognosy; yet it is the crying complaint of to-day, not only among
theosophists, but also among the few profane interested in the subject.
"Why do not the adepts reveal that which they know?" To this, one
might answer, "Why should they, since one knows beforehand that no man of
science will accept, even as an hypothesis, let alone as a theory or axiom, the
facts imparted. Have you so much as accepted or believed in the A B C of the
Occult philosophy contained in the Theosophist, "Esoteric Buddhism,"
and other works and periodicals? Has not even the little which was given, been
ridiculed and derided, and made to face the "animal" and "ape
theory" of Huxley -- Haeckel, on one hand, and the rib of Adam and the
apple on the other? Notwithstanding such an unenviable prospect, a mass of
facts is given in the present work. And now the origin of man, the evolution of
the globe and
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the races, human
and animal, are as fully treated here as the writer is able to treat them.
The proofs
brought forward in corroboration of the old teachings are scattered widely
throughout the old scriptures of ancient civilizations. The Puranas, the
Zendavesta, and the old classics are full of them; but no one has ever gone to the
trouble of collecting and collating together those facts. The reason for this
is, that all such events were recorded symbolically; and that the best
scholars, the most acute minds, among our Aryanists and Egyptologists, have
been too often darkened by one or another preconception; still oftener, by
one-sided views of the secret meaning. Yet even a parable is a spoken symbol: a
fiction or a fable, as some think; an allegorical representation, we say, of
life-realities, events, and facts. And, as a moral was ever drawn from a
parable, that moral being an actual truth and fact in human life, so an
historical, real event was deduced -- by those versed in the hieratic sciences
-- from certain emblems and symbols recorded in the ancient archives of the
temples. The religious and esoteric history of every nation was embedded in
symbols; it was never expressed in so many words. All the thoughts and
emotions, all the learning and knowledge, revealed and acquired, of the early
races, found their pictorial expression in allegory and parable. Why? Because
the spoken word has a potency unknown to, unsuspected and disbelieved in, by
the modern "sages." Because sound and rhythm are closely related to
the four Elements of the Ancients; and because such or another vibration in the
air is sure to awaken corresponding powers, union with which produces good or
bad results, as the case may be. No student was ever allowed to recite
historical, religious, or any real events in so many unmistakable words, lest
the powers connected with the event should be once more attracted. Such events
were narrated only during the Initiation, and every student had to record them
in corresponding symbols, drawn out of his own mind and examined later by his
master, before they were finally accepted. Thus was created in time the Chinese
Alphabet, as, before that, the hieratic symbols were fixed upon in old Egypt.
In the Chinese language, the alphabet of which may be read in any language,*
and which is only a little less ancient than the Egyptian alphabet of Thoth,
every word has its corresponding symbol conveying the word needed in a
pictorial form. The language possesses many thousands of such symbol letters,
or logograms, each meaning a whole word; for letters proper, or an alphabet, do
not exist in the Chinese language any more than they did in the Egyptian till a
far later period.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Thus, a
Japanese who does not understand one word of Chinese, meeting with a Chinaman
who has never heard the language of the former, will communicate in writing
with him, and they will understand each other perfectly -- because the writing
is symbolical.
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The explanation
of the chief symbols and emblems is now attempted, as Book II., which treats of
Anthropogenesis, would be most difficult to understand without a preparatory
acquaintance with the metaphysical symbols at least.
Nor would it be
just to enter upon an esoteric reading of symbolism without giving due honour
to one who has rendered it the greatest service in this century, by discovering
the chief key to ancient Hebrew symbology, interwoven strongly with metrology,
one of the keys to the once universal mystery language. Mr. Ralston Skinner, of
Cincinnati, the author of "The Hebrew-Egyptian Mystery and the Source of
Measures" has our thanks. A mystic and a Kabalist by nature, he has
laboured for many years in this direction, and his efforts were certainly
crowned with great success. In his own words:--
"The writer
is quite certain that there was an ancient language which modernly and up to
this time appears to have been lost, the vestiges of which, however, abundantly
exist. . . . The author discovered that this (integral ratio in numbers of
diameter to circumference of a circle) geometrical ratio was the very ancient,
and probably the divine origin of linear measures. . . . It appears almost
proven that the same system of geometry, numbers, ratio, and measures were
known and made use of on the continent of North America, even prior to the
knowledge of the same by the descending Semites. . . . ."
"The
peculiarity of this language was that it could be contained in another,
concealed and not to be perceived, save through the help of special
instruction; letters and syllabic signs possessing at the same time the powers
or meaning of numbers, of geometrical shapes, pictures, or ideographs and
symbols, the designed scope of which would be determinatively helped out by
parables in the shape of narratives or parts of narratives; while also it could
be set forth separately, independently, and variously, by pictures, in stone
work, or in earth construction."
"To clear
up an ambiguity as to the term language: Primarily the word means the
expression of ideas by human speech; but, secondarily, it may mean the
expression of ideas by any other instrumentality. This old language is so composed
in the Hebrew text, that by the use of the written characters, which will be
the language first defined, a distinctly separated series of ideas may be
intentionally communicated, other than those ideas expressed by the reading of
the sound signs. This secondary language sets forth, under a veil, series of
ideas, copies in imagination of things sensible, which may be pictured, and of
things which may be classed as real without being sensible; as, for instance,
the number 9 may be taken as a reality, though it has no sensible existence, so
also a revolution of the moon, as separate from the moon itself by which that
revolution has been made, may be taken as giving rise to, or causing a real
idea, though such a revolution has no substance. This idea-language may consist
of symbols restricted to arbitrary terms and signs, having a very limited range
of conceptions, and quite valueless, or it may be a reading of nature in some
of her manifestations of a value almost immeasurable, as regards human
civilization. A picture of something natural may give rise to ideas of
co-ordina-
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tive subject-matter,
radiating out in various and even opposing directions, like the spokes of a
wheel, and producing natural realities in departments very foreign to the
apparent tendency of the reading of the first or starting picture. Notion may
give rise to connected notion, but if it does, then, however apparently
incongruous, all resulting ideas must spring from the original picture and be
harmonically connected, or related. . . . Thus with a pictured idea radical
enough, the imagination of the Cosmos itself even in its details of
construction might result. Such a use of ordinary language is now obsolete, but
it has become a question with the writer whether at one time, far back in the
past, it, or such, was not the language of the world and of universal use, possessed,
however, as it became more and more moulded into its arcane forms, by a select
class or caste. By this I mean that the popular tongue or vernacular commenced
even in its origin to be made use of as the vehicle of this peculiar mode of
conveying ideas. Of this the evidences are very strong; and, indeed, it would
seem that in the history of the human race there happened, from causes which at
present, at any rate, we cannot trace, a lapse or loss from an original perfect
language and a perfect system of science -- shall we say perfect because they
were of divine origin and importation?"
"Divine
origin" does not mean here a revelation from an anthropomorphic god on a
mount amidst thunder and lightning; but, as we understand it, a language and a
system of science imparted to the early mankind by a more advanced mankind, so
much higher as to be divine in the sight of that infant humanity. By a
"mankind," in short, from other spheres; an idea which contains
nothing supernatural in it, but the acceptance or rejection of which depends
upon the degree of conceit and arrogance in the mind of him to whom it is
stated. For, if the professors of modern knowledge would only confess that,
though they know nothing of the future of the disembodied man -- or rather will
accept nothing -- yet this future may be pregnant with surprises and unexpected
revelations to them, once their Egos are rid of their gross bodies -- then
materialistic unbelief would have fewer chances than it has. Who of them knows,
or can tell, what may happen when once the life cycle of this globe is run down
and our mother earth herself falls into her last sleep? Who is bold enough to
say that the divine Egos of our mankind -- at least the elect out of the
multitudes passing on to other spheres -- will not become in their turn the
"divine" instructors of a new mankind generated by them on a new
globe, called to life and activity by the disembodied "principles" of
our Earth? (See Stanza VI., Book I., Part 1.) All this may have been the
experience of the PAST, and these strange records lie embedded in the
"Mystery language" of the prehistoric ages, the language now called
SYMBOLISM.
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§ II.
THE MYSTERY
LANGUAGE AND ITS KEYS.
RECENT
discoveries made by great mathematicians and Kabalists thus prove, beyond a
shadow of doubt, that every theology, from the earliest and oldest down to the
latest, has sprung not only from a common source of abstract beliefs, but from
one universal esoteric, or "Mystery" language. These scholars hold
the key to the universal language of old, and have turned it successfully, though
only once, in the hermetically closed door leading to the Hall of Mysteries.
The great archaic system known from prehistoric ages as the sacred Wisdom
Science, one that is contained and can be traced in every old as well as in
every new religion, had, and still has, its universal language -- suspected by
the Mason Ragon -- the language of the Hierophants, which has seven
"dialects," so to speak, each referring, and being specially
appropriated, to one of the seven mysteries of Nature. Each had its own
symbolism. Nature could thus be either read in its fulness, or viewed from one
of its special aspects.
The proof of
this lies, to this day, in the extreme difficulty which the Orientalists in
general, the Indianists and Egyptologists especially, experience in interpreting
the allegorical writings of the Aryans and the hieratic records of old Egypt.
This is because they will never remember that all the ancient records were
written in a language which was universal and known to all nations alike in
days of old, but which is now intelligible only to the few. Like the Arabic
figures which are plain to a man of whatever nation, or like the English word
and, which becomes et for the Frenchman, und for the German, and so on, yet
which may be expressed for all civilized nations in the simple sign & -- so
all the words of that mystery language signified the same thing to each man of
whatever nationality. There have been several men of note who have tried to
re-establish such a universal and philosophical tongue: Delgarme, Wilkins,
Leibnitz; but Demaimieux, in his Pasigraphie, is the only one who has proven
its possibility. The scheme of Valentinius, called the "Greek
Kabala," based on the combination of Greek letters, might serve as a
model.
The many-sided
facets of the mystery language have led to the adoption of widely varied dogmas
and rites in the exotericism of the Church rituals. It is they, again, which
are at the origin of most of the dogmas of the Christian Church, e.g., the
seven Sacraments, the Trinity, the Resurrection; the seven capital Sins and the
seven Virtues. The seven keys to the mystery tongue, however, having always
been in
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the keeping of
the highest among the initiated Hierophants of antiquity, it is only the
partial use of a few out of the seven which passed, through the treason of some
early Church Fathers -- ex-initiates of the Temples -- into the hands of the
new sect of the Nazarenes. Some of the early Popes were Initiates, but the last
fragments of their knowledge have now fallen into the power of the Jesuits, who
have turned them into a system of sorcery.
It is maintained
that INDIA (not in its present limits, but including its ancient boundaries) is
the only country in the world which still has among her sons adepts, who have
the knowledge of all the seven sub-systems and the key to the entire system.
Since the fall of Memphis, Egypt began to lose those keys one by one, and
Chaldea had preserved only three in the days of Berosus. As for the Hebrews, in
all their writings they show no more than a thorough knowledge of the
astronomical, geometrical and numerical systems of symbolizing all the human,
and especially the physiological functions. They never had the higher keys.
"Every time
I hear people talking of the religion of Egypt," writes M. Gaston Maspero,
the great French Egyptologist and the successor of Mariette Bey, "I am
tempted to ask which of the Egyptian religions they are talking about? Is it of
the Egyptian religion of the 4th Dynasty, or of the Egyptian religion of the
Ptolemaic period? Is it of the religion of the rabble, or of that of the
learned men? Of that which was taught in the schools of Heliopolis, or of that
other which was in the minds and conceptions of the Theban sacerdotal class?
For, between the first tomb of Memphis, which bears the cartouche of a king of
the third dynasty, and the last stones at Esneh under Caesar-Philippus, the
Arabian, there is an interval of at least five thousand years. Leaving aside
the invasion of the Shepherds, the Ethiopian and Assyrian dominions, the
Persian conquest, Greek colonization, and the thousand revolutions of its political
life, Egypt has passed during those five thousand years through many
vicissitudes of life, moral and intellectual. Chapter XVII. of the Book of the
Dead which seems to contain the exposition of the system of the world as it was
understood at Heliopolis during the time of the first dynasties, is known to us
only by a few copies of the eleventh and twelfth dynasties. Each of the verses
composing it was already at the time interpreted in three or four different
ways; so different, indeed, that according to this or another school, the
Demiurge became the solar fire -- Ra-shoo, or the primordial water. Fifteen
centuries later, the number of readings had increased considerably. Time had,
in its course, modified the ideas about the universe and the forces that ruled
it. During the hardly 18 centuries that Christianity exists, it has worked,
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developed and
transformed most of its dogmas; how many times, then, might not the Egyptian
clergy have altered its dogmas during those fifty centuries that separate
Theodosius from the King Builders of the Pyramids?"
Here we believe
the eminent Egyptologist is going too far. The exoteric dogmas may often have
been altered, the esoteric never. He does not take into account the sacred
immutability of the primitive truths, revealed only during the mysteries of
initiation. The Egyptian priests have forgotten much, they altered nothing. The
loss of a good deal of the primitive teaching was due to the sudden deaths of
the great Hierophants, who passed away before they had time to reveal all to
their successors; mostly, to the absence of worthy heirs to the knowledge. Yet
they have preserved in their rituals and dogmas the principal teachings of the
secret doctrine. Thus, in the seventeenth chapter mentioned by Maspero, one
finds (1) Osiris saying he is Toum (the creative force in nature, giving form
to all Beings, spirits and men), self-generated and self-existent, issued from
Noun, the celestial river, called Father-mother of the gods, the primordial
deity, which is chaos or the Deep, impregnated by the unseen spirit. (2) He has
found Shoo (solar force) on the staircase in the City of the Eight (the two
cubes of good and Evil), and he has annihilated the evil principles in Noun
(chaos) the children of Rebellion. (3) He is the Fire and Water, i.e., Noun the
primordial parent, and he created the gods out of his limbs -- 14 gods (twice
seven) seven dark and seven light gods (the seven Spirits of the Presence of
the Christians and the Seven dark Evil Spirits). (4) He is the Law of existence
and Being (v. 10), the Bennoo (or phoenix, the bird of resurrection in Eternity),
in whom night follows the day, and day the night -- an allusion to the
periodical cycles of cosmic resurrection and human re-incarnation; for what can
this mean? "The wayfarer who crosses millions of years, in the name of
One, and the great green (primordial water or Chaos) the name of the
other" (v. 17), one begetting millions of years in succession, the other
engulfing them, to restore them back. (5) He speaks of the Seven Luminous ones
who follow their Lord, who confers justice (Osiris in Amenti).
All this is now
shown to have been the source and origin of Christian dogmas. That which the
Jews had from Egypt, through Moses and other initiates, was confused and
distorted enough in later days; and that which the Church got from both, is still
more misinterpreted.
Yet their system
is now proven identical in this special department of symbology -- the key,
namely, to the mysteries of astronomy as connected with those of generation and
conception -- with those ideas of ancient religions, the theology of which has
developed the phallic element. The Jewish system of sacred measures applied to
religious symbols is the same,
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so far as
geometrical and numerical combinations go, as those of Chaldea, Greece, and
Egypt, having been adopted by the Jews during the centuries of their slavery
and captivity with those nations.* What was that system? It is the intimate
conviction of the author of "The Source of Measures" that "the
Mosaic Books were intended, by a mode of art speech, to set forth a geometrical
and numerical system of exact science, which should serve as an origin of
measures." Piazzi Smyth believes likewise. This system and these measures
are found by some scholars to be identical with those used in the construction
of the great pyramid -- but this is only partially so. "The foundation of
these measures was the Parker ratio," says Mr. R. Skinner, in "The
Source of Measures."
The author of
this very extraordinary work has found it out, he says, in the use of the
integral ratio in numbers of diameter to circumference of a circle, discovered
by John Parker, of New York. This ratio is 6,561 for diameter, and 20,612 for
circumference. Furthermore, that this geometrical ratio was the very ancient
(and probably) the divine origin of what have now become through exoteric
handling and practical application the British linear measures, "the
underlying unit of which, viz., the inch, was likewise the base of one of the
royal Egyptian cubits and of the Roman foot. He also found out that there was a
modified form of the ratio, viz., 113-355 (explained in his work); and that while
this last ratio pointed through its origin to the exact integral pi, or to
6,561 to 20,612, it also served as a base for astronomical calculations. The
author discovered that a system of exact science, geometrical, numerical, and
astronomical, founded on these ratios and to be found in use in the
construction of the Great Egyptian Pyramid, was in part the burden of this
language as contained in, and concealed under, the verbiage of the Hebrew text
of the Bible. The inch and the two-foot rule of 24 inches interpreted for use
through the elements of the circle (see first pages of Book I.) and the ratios
mentioned, were found to be at the basis or foundation of this natural and
Egyptian and Hebrew system of science, while, moreover, it seems evident enough
that the system itself was looked upon as of divine origin and of divine
revela-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* As we said in
Isis (Vol. II. p. 438-9), "To the present moment, in spite of all
controversies and researches, History and Science remain as much as ever in the
dark as to the origin of the Jews. They may be as well the exiled Tchandalas of
old India, the 'bricklayers' mentioned by Vina-Svata, Veda-Vyasa and Manu, as
the Phoenicians of Herodotus, or the Hyk-Sos of Josephus, or descendants of
Pali shepherds, or a mixture of all these. The Bible names the Tyrians as a
kindred people, and claims dominion over them. . . . Yet whatever they may have
been, they became a hybrid people, not long after Moses, as the Bible shows
them freely intermarrying not alone with the Canaanites, but with every other
nation or race they came in contact with."
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tion. . .
." But let us see what is said by the opponents of Prof. Piazzi Smyth's
measurements of the Pyramid.
Mr. Petrie seems
to deny them, and to have made short work altogether of Piazzi Smyth's calculations
in their Biblical connection. So does Mr. Proctor, the champion
"Coincidentalist" for many years past in every question of ancient
arts and sciences. Speaking of "the multitude of relations independent of
the Pyramid, which have turned up while the Pyramidalists have been
endeavouring to connect the pyramid with the solar system . . . . these
coincidences," he says, "are altogether more curious than any
coincidence between the Pyramid and astronomical numbers: the former are as
close and remarkable as they are real" (i.e., those
"coincidences" that would remain if even the pyramid had no
existence); "the latter which are only imaginary (?) have only been
established by the process which schoolboys call 'fudging,' and now new measures
have left the work to be done all over again" (Petrie's letter to the
Academy, Dec. 17, 1881.) To this Mr. Staniland Wake justly observes in his work
on "The Origin and Significance of the Great Pyramid" (London, 1882):
"They must, however, have been more than mere coincidences, if the
builders of the Pyramid had the astronomical knowledge displayed in its perfect
orientation and in its other admitted astronomical features."
They had it; and
it is on this "knowledge" that the programme of the MYSTERIES and of
the series of Initiations was based: thence, the construction of the Pyramids,
the everlasting record and the indestructible symbol of these Mysteries and
Initiations on Earth, as the courses of the stars are in Heaven. The cycle of
Initiation was a reproduction in miniature of that great series of Cosmic
changes to which astronomers have given the name of tropical or sidereal year.
Just as, at the close of the cycle of the sidereal year [25,868 years], the
heavenly bodies return to the same relative positions as they occupied at its
outset, so at the close of the cycle of Initiation the inner man has regained
the pristine state of divine purity and knowledge from which he set out on his
cycle of terrestrial incarnation.
Moses, an
Initiate into the Egyptian Mystagogy, based the religious mysteries of the new
nation which he created, upon the same abstract formula derived from this
sidereal cycle, which he symbolised under the form and measurements of the
tabernacle, that he is supposed to have constructed in the wilderness. On these
data, the later Jewish High Priests constructed the allegory of Solomon's
Temple -- a building which never had a real existence, any more than had King
Solomon himself, who is simply, and as much a solar myth as is the still later
Hiram Abif, of the Masons, as Ragon has well demonstrated. Thus, if the
measurements of this allegorical temple, the symbol of the cycle of
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Initiation,
coincide with those of the Great Pyramid, it is due to the fact that the former
were derived from the latter through the Tabernacle of Moses.
That our author
has undeniably discovered one and even two of the keys is fully demonstrated in
the work just quoted. One has but to read it to feel a growing conviction that
the hidden meaning of the allegories and parables of both Testaments is now
unveiled. But that he owes this discovery far more to his own genius than to
Parker and Piazzi Smyth, is as certain, if not more so. For, as just shown,
whether the measures of the great Pyramid taken and adopted as the correct ones
by the Biblical "Pyramidalists" are beyond suspicion, is not so sure.
A proof of this is the work called "The Pyramids and Temples of
Gizeh," by Mr. F. Petrie, besides other works written quite recently to
oppose the said calculations, which were called biassed. We gather that nearly
every one of Piazzi Smyth's measurements differs from the later and more
carefully made measurements of Mr. Petrie, who concludes the Introduction to
his work with this sentence:
"As to the
results of the whole investigation, perhaps many theories will agree with an American
who was a warm believer in Pyramid theories when he came to Gizeh. I had the
pleasure of his company there for a couple of days, and at our last meal
together he said to me in a saddened tone -- 'Well, Sir! I feel as if I had
been to a funeral. By all means let the old theories have a decent burial,
though we should take care that in our haste none of the wounded ones are
buried alive.'"
As regards the
late J. Parker's calculation in general, and his third proposition especially,
we have consulted some eminent mathematicians, and this is the substance of
what they say:
Parker's
reasoning rests on sentimental, rather than mathematical, considerations, and
is logically inconclusive.
Proposition
III., namely, that --
"The circle
is the natural basis or beginning of all area, and the square being made so in
mathematical science, is artificial and arbitrary --"
-- is an
illustration of an arbitrary proposition, and cannot safely be relied upon in
mathematical reasoning. The same observation applies, even more strongly, to
Proposition VII., which states that:
"Because
the circle is the primary shape in nature, and hence the basis of area; and
because the circle is measured by, and is equal to the square only in ratio of
half its circumference by the radius, therefore, circumference and radius, and
not the square of diameter, are the only natural and legitimate elements of
area, by which all regular shapes are made equal to the square, and equal to
the circle."
Proposition IX.
is a remarkable example of faulty reasoning, and it is the one on which Mr.
Parker's Quadrature mainly rests. Here it is:--
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"The circle
and the equilateral triangle are opposite to one another in all the elements of
their construction, and hence the fractional diameter of one circle, which is
equal to the diameter of one square, is in the opposite duplicate ratio to the
diameter of an equilateral triangle whose area is one," etc., etc.
Granting, for
the sake of argument, that a triangle can be said to have a radius in the sense
in which we speak of the radius of a circle, -- for what Parker calls the
radius of the triangle is the radius of a circle inscribed in the triangle and
therefore not the radius of the triangle at all, -- and granting for the moment
the other fanciful and mathematical propositions united in his premises, why
must we conclude that if the triangle and circle are opposite in all the
elements of their construction, the diameter of any defined circle is in the
opposite duplicate ratio of the diameter of any given equivalent triangle? What
necessary connection is there between the premises and the conclusion? The
reasoning is of a kind not known in geometry, and would not be accepted by
strict mathematicians.
Whether the
Archaic esoteric system originated the British inch or not, is of little
consequence, however, to the strict and true metaphysician. Nor does Mr.
Ralston Skinner's esoteric reading of the Bible become incorrect, merely
because the measurements of the Pyramid will not be found to agree with those
of Solomon's temple, the ark of Noah, etc.; or because Mr. Parker's Quadrature
of the Circle is rejected by mathematicians. For Mr. Skinner's reading depends
first of all on the Kabalistic methods and the Rabbinical value of the Hebrew
letters. But it is extremely important to ascertain whether the measures used
in the evolution and building of the Aryan symbolic religion, in the
construction of their temples, the figures given in the Puranas, and especially
in their chronology, their astronomical symbols, the duration of the cycles,
and other computations, were, or were not, the same as those used in the
Biblical measurements and glyphs. For this will prove that the Jews, unless
they took their sacred cubit and measurements from the Egyptians (Moses being
an initiate of the Priests) must have got those notions from India. At any rate
they passed them to the early Christians. Hence, it is the Occultists and
Kabalists who are the "true" heirs to the KNOWLEDGE, or the secret
wisdom which is still found in the Bible; for they alone now understand its
real meaning, whereas profane Jews and Christians cling to the husks and dead
letter thereof. That it is the system of measures which led to the invention of
the God-names Elohim and Jehovah, and their adaptation to phallicism, and that
Jehovah is a not very flattered copy of Osiris, is now demonstrated by the
author of the "Source of Measures." But the latter and Mr. Piazzi
Smyth both seem to labour under the impression that (a) the priority of the
system belongs to the Israelites,
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the Hebrew
language being the divine language, and that (b) this universal language
belongs to direct revelation!
The latter
hypothesis is correct only in the sense shown in the last paragraph of the
preceding §; but we have yet to agree as to the nature and character of the
divine "Revealer." With regard to priority, this, to the profane,
will of course depend on (a) the internal and external evidence of the
revelation, and (b) on each scholar's individual preconception. This, however,
cannot prevent either the theistic Kabalist, or the Pantheistic Occultist, from
believing each in his way; neither of the two convincing the other. The data
furnished by history are too meagre and unsatisfactory for either of them to
prove to the sceptic which of them is right.
On the other
hand, the proofs afforded by tradition are too constantly rejected for us to
hope to settle the question in our present age. Meanwhile, materialistic
science will be laughing impartially at both Kabalists and Occultists. But the
said vexed question of priority once laid aside, Science, in its departments of
philology and comparative religion, will find itself finally taken to task, and
be compelled to admit the common claim.* Its greatest scholars, instead of
pooh-poohing that supposed
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* One by one the
claims become admitted, as one Scientist after another is compelled to
recognize the facts given out from the Secret Doctrine -- though he rarely, if
ever, recognizes that he has been anticipated in his statements. Thus, in the
palmy days of Mr. Piazzi Smyth's authority on the Pyramid of Gizeh, his theory
was, that the porphyry sarcophagus of the King's Chamber "is the unit of
measure for the two most enlightened nations of the earth, England and
America," and was no better than a "corn bin." This was vehemently
denied by us in Isis Unveiled just published at that time. Then the New York
press arose in arms (the "Sun" and the "World" chiefly)
against our presuming to correct or find fault with such a star of learning. On
p. 519, vol. I., we had said, that Herodotus when treating of that Pyramid
"might have added that, externally it symbolized the creative principle of
Nature, and illustrated also the principles of geometry, mathematics,
astrology, and astronomy. Internally, it was a majestic fane, in whose sombre
recesses were performed the mysteries, and whose walls had often witnessed the
initiation-scenes of members of the royal family. The porphyry sarcophagus,
which Professor Piazzi Smyth, Astronomer Royal of Scotland, degrades into a
corn-bin, was the baptismal font, upon emerging from which the neophyte was
"born again" and became an adept."
Our statement
was laughed at in those days. We were accused of having got our ideas from the
"craze" of Shaw, an English writer who had maintained that the
Sarcophagus had been used for the celebration of the Mysteries of Osiris; (we
had never heard of that writer!). And now, six or seven years later, this is
what Mr. Staniland Wake writes on p. 93 of his paper, on "The Origin and
Significance of the Great Pyramid."
"The
so-called King's Chamber, of which an enthusiastic pyramidist says, 'The
polished walls, fine materials, grand proportions, and exalted place,
eloquently tell of glories yet to come -- if not, the chamber of perfections of
Cheops' tomb, was probably the place to which the initiant was admitted after
he had passed through the narrow upward passage and the grand gallery, with its
lowly termination, which gradually prepared him for the [[Footnote continued on
next page]]
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"farrago of
absurd fiction and superstitions," as the Brahminical literature is
generally termed, will endeavour to learn the symbolical universal language
with its numerical and geometrical keys. But here again they will hardly be
successful if they share the belief that the Jewish Kabalistic system contains
the key to the whole mystery: for, it does not. Nor does any other Scripture at
present possess it in its entirety, for even the Vedas are not complete. Every
old religion is but a chapter or two of the entire volume of archaic primeval
mysteries -- Eastern Occultism alone being able to boast that it is in
possession of the full secret, with its seven keys. Comparisons will be
instituted, and as much as possible will be explained in this work -- the rest
is left to the student's personal intuition. For in saying that Eastern
Occultism has the secret, it is not as if a "complete" or even an
approximate knowledge was claimed by the writer, which would be absurd. What I
know, I give out; that which I cannot explain, the student must find out for
himself.
But while
supposing that the whole cycle of the universal mystery language will not be mastered
for whole centuries to come, even that which has been hitherto discovered in
the Bible by some scholars is quite sufficient to demonstrate the claim --
mathematically. Judaism having availed itself of two keys out of the seven, and
these two keys having been now rediscovered, it becomes no longer a matter of
individual speculation and hypothesis, least of all of "coincidence,"
but one of a correct reading of the Bible texts, as anyone acquainted with
arithmetic reads and verifies an addition or total.* A few years longer and
this system will kill the dead letter of the Bible, as it will that of all the
other exoteric faiths, by showing the dogmas in their real, naked meaning.
And then this
undeniable meaning, however incomplete, will unveil the mystery of Being,
besides changing entirely the modern scientific systems of Anthropology,
Ethnology and especially that of Chronology. The element of Phallicism, found
in every God-name and narrative in the Old (and to some degree in the New)
Testament, may also in time considerably change modern materialistic views in
Biology and Physiology.
Divested of
their modern repulsive crudeness, such views of nature and man, on the
authority of the celestial bodies and their mysteries,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] final stage of the SACRED MYSTERIES." Had
Mr. Staniland Wake been a Theosophist, he might have added that the narrow
upward passage leading to the King's chamber had a "narrow gate"
indeed; the same "strait gate" which "leadeth unto life,"
or the new spiritual re-birth alluded to by Jesus in Matthew vii. 13 et seq;
and that it is this gate in the Initiation temple, that the writer who recorded
the words alleged to have been spoken by an Initiate, was thinking of.
* All we have
said in Isis is now found corroborated in the "Egyptian Mystery; or The
Source of Measures," by those readings of the Bible with the numerical and
geometrical keys thereto.
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will unveil the
evolutions of the human mind and show how natural was such a course of thought.
The so-called phallic symbols have become offensive only because of the element
of materiality and animality in them. As they originated with the archaic
races, which, issuing to their personal knowledge from an androgyne ancestry,
were the first phenomenal manifestations in their own sight of the separation
of sexes and the ensuing mystery of creating in their turn -- such symbols were
but natural. If later races have degraded them, especially the "chosen
people," this does not affect the origin of those symbols. The little
Semitic tribe -- one of the smallest branchlets from the commingling of the 4th
and 5th sub-races (the Mongolo-Turanian and the Indo-European, so-called, after
the sinking of the great Continent) -- could only accept its symbology in the
spirit which was given to it by the nations from which it was derived.
Perchance, in the Mosaic beginnings, that symbology was not as crude as it
became later under the handling of Ezra, who remodelled the whole Pentateuch.
For the glyph of Pharaoh's daughter (the woman), the Nile (the Great Deep and
Water), and the baby-boy found floating therein in the ark of rushes, has not
been primarily composed for, or by, Moses. It has been found anticipated in the
Babylonian fragments on the tiles, in the story of King Sargon,* who lived far
earlier than Moses. Now, what is the logical inference? Most assuredly that
which gives us the right to say that the story told of Moses by Ezra had been
learned by him while at Babylon,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* On page 224 of
Assyrian Antiquities Mr. George Smith says: "In the palace of Sennacherib
at Kouyunjik I found another fragment of the curious history of Sargon. . . .
published in my translation in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical
Archaeology, vol. I. part I. p. 46." The capital of Sargon, the Babylonian
Moses, "was the great city of Agadi, called by the Semitics Akkad --
mentioned in Genesis as the capital of Nimrod." (Gen. x. 10) . . .
"Akkad lay near the City of Sippara on the Euphrates and North of
Babylon." (See Isis, vol. II. p. 442-3,) Another strange coincidence is
found in the fact that the name of the neighbouring above-mentioned City of
Sippara is the same as the name of the wife of Moses -- Zipporah (Exodus ii.).
Of course the story is a clever addition by Ezra, who could not be ignorant of
it. This curious story is found on fragments of tablets from Kouyunjik, and
reads as follows:--
1. Sargona, the
powerful king, the king of Akkad am I.
2. My mother was
a princess, my father I did not know; a brother of my father ruled over the
country.
3. In the city
of Azupiran, which is by the side of the River Euphrates.
4. My mother,
the princess, conceived me; in difficulty she brought me forth.
5. She placed me
in an ark of rushes, with bitumen my exit she sealed up.
6. She launched
me in the river, which did not drown me.
7. The river
carried me, to Akki the water-carrier it brought me.
8. Akki, the
water-carrier, in tenderness of bowels, lifted me, etc., etc.
And now Exodus
(ii): "And when she (Moses' mother) could not longer hide him, she took
for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put
the child therein, and she laid it in the flags by the river's brink."
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and that he
applied the allegory told of Sargon to the Jewish lawgiver. In short, that
Exodus was never written by Moses, but re-fabricated from old materials by
Ezra.
And if so, then
why should not other symbols and glyphs far more crude in their phallic element
have been added by this adept in the later Chaldean and Sabaean phallic worship?
We are taught that the primeval faith of the Israelites was quite different
from that which was developed centuries later by the Talmudists, and before
them by David and Hezekiah.
All this,
notwithstanding the exoteric element, as now found in the two Testaments, is
quite sufficient to class the Bible among esoteric works, and to connect its
secret system with Indian, Chaldean, and Egyptian symbolism. The whole cycle of
biblical glyphs and numbers as suggested by astronomical observations -- astronomy
and theology being closely connected -- is found in Indian exoteric, as well as
esoteric, systems. These figures and their symbols, the signs of the Zodiac,
the planets, their aspects and nodes -- the last term having now passed even
into our modern botany to distinguish male and female plants (the unisexual,
polygamous, monoecious, dioecious, etc., etc.) -- are known in astronomy as
sextiles, quartiles and so on, and have been used for ages and aeons by the
archaic nations, and in one sense have the same meaning as the Hebrew numerals.
The earliest forms of elementary geometry must have certainly been suggested by
the observation of the heavenly bodies and their groupings. Hence the most
archaic symbols in Eastern Esotericism are a circle, a point, a triangle, a
plane, a cube, a pentacle, and a hexagon, and plane figures with various sides
and angles. This shows the knowledge and use of geometrical symbology to be as
old as the world.
Starting from
this, it becomes easy to understand how nature herself could have taught
primeval mankind, even without the help of its divine instructors, the first
principles of a numerical and geometrical symbol language.* Hence one finds
numbers and figures used as an
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] "The story," says Mr. G. Smith,
"is supposed to have happened about 1600 B.C. rather earlier than the
supposed age of Moses. As we know that the fame of Sargon reached Egypt, it is
quite likely that this account had a connection with the event related in
Exodus ii., for every action, when once performed, has a tendency to be
repeated." But now, when Professor Sayce has had the courage to push back
the dates of the Chaldean and Assyrian Kings by two thousand years more, Sargon
must have preceded Moses by 2,000 years at the least. (See Professor Sayce's
Lectures on the subject.) The confession is suggestive, but the figures lack a
cypher or two.
* As a reminder
how the Esoteric religion of Moses was crushed several times, and the worship
of Jehovah, as re-established by David, put in its place, by Hezekiah for one,
read pp. 436-42, vol. II., in Isis Unveiled. Surely there must have been some
very [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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expression and a
record of thought in every archaic symbolical Scripture. They are ever the same,
with only certain variations growing out of the first figures. Thus the
evolution and correlation of the mysteries of Kosmos, of its growth and
development -- spiritual and physical, abstract and concrete -- were first
recorded in geometrical changes of shape. Every Cosmogony began with a circle,
a point, a triangle, and a cube, up to number 9, when it was synthesized by the
first line and a circle -- the Pythagorean mystic Decade, the sum of all,
involving and expressing the mysteries of the entire Kosmos; recorded a hundred
times more fully in the Hindu system, for him who can understand its mystic
language. The numbers 3 and 4, in their blending of 7, as those of 5, 6, 9, and
10, are the very corner-stone of Occult Cosmogonies. This decade and its thousand
combinations are found in every portion of the globe. One recognizes them in
the caves and rock-cut temples of Hindostan and Central Asia, as in the
pyramids and lithoi of Egypt and America; in the Catacombs of Ozimandyas, in
the mounds of the Caucasian snowcapped fastnesses, in the ruins of Palenque, in
Easter Island, everywhere whither the foot of ancient man has ever journeyed.
The 3 and the 4, the triangle and the cube, or the male and female universal
glyph, showing the first aspect of the evolving deity, is stamped for ever in
the Southern Cross in the Heavens, as in the Egyptian Crux-Ansata. As well
expressed, "The Cube unfolded is in display a cross of the tau, or
Egyptian form, or of the Christian cross form. . . . A circle attached to the
first, gives the ansated cross. . . numbers 3 and 4 counted on the cross,
showing a form of the (Hebrew) golden candlestick (in the Holy of Holies), and
of the 3 + 4 = 7, and 6 + 1 = 7, days in the circle of the week, as 7 lights of
the sun. So also as the week of 7 lights gave origin to the month and year, so
it is the time marker of birth. . . . The cross form being shown, then, by the
connected use of the form 113 : 355, the symbol is completed by the attachment
of a man to the cross.* This kind of measure was made to co-ordinate with the
idea of the origin of human life, and hence the phallic form.**"
The Stanzas show
the cross and these numbers playing a prominent part in archaic cosmogony.
Meanwhile we may profit by the evidence collected by the same author to show
the identity of symbols and their esoteric meaning all over the globe, which he
calls rightly the "primordial vestiges of these symbols."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] good reasons why the Sadducees, who furnished
almost all the high Priests of Judea, held to the Laws of Moses and spurned the
alleged "Books of Moses," the Pentateuch of the Synagogue and the
Talmud.
* Once more, remember
the Hindu Wittoba crucified in space; the significance of the "sacred
sign," the Swastica; Plato's Decussated man in Space, etc., etc.
** "Source
of Measures."
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"Under the
general view taken of the nature of the number forms. . . . it becomes a matter
of research of the utmost interest as to when and where their existence and
their use first became known. Has it been a matter of revelation in what we
know as the historic age -- a cycle exceedingly modern when the age of the
human race is contemplated? It seems, in fact, as to the date of its possession
by man, to have been farther removed in the past from the old Egyptians than
are the old Egyptians from us.
"The Easter
Isles in 'mid Pacific' present the feature of the remaining peaks of the
mountains of a submerged continent, for the reason that these peaks are thickly
studded with Cyclopean statues, remnants of the civilization of a dense and
cultivated people, who must have of necessity occupied a widely extended area.
On the back of these images is to be found the 'ansated cross' and the same
modified to the outlines of the human form. A full description, with plate
showing the land, with the thickly planted statues, also with copies of the
images, is to be found in the January number 1870 of the London Builder.
"In the
'Naturalist,' published at Salem, Massachusetts, in one of the early numbers,
is to be found a description of some very ancient and curious carving on the
crest walls of the mountains of South America, older by far, it is averred,
than the races now living. The strangeness of these tracings is in that they exhibit
the outlines of a man stretched out on a cross,* by a series of drawings, by
which from the form of a man that of a cross springs, but so done that the
cross may be taken as the man, or the man as the cross; thus exhibiting a
symbolic display of the interdependency of the forms set forth.
"It is
known that tradition among the Aztecs has handed down a very perfect account of
the deluge. . . . Baron Humboldt says that we are to look for the country of
Aztalan, the original country of the Aztecs, as high up at least as the 42nd
parallel north; whence, journeying, they at last arrived in the vale of Mexico.
In that vale the earthen mounds of the far north become the elegant stone
pyramidal and other structures whose remains are now found. The correspondences
between the Aztec remains and those of the Egyptians are well known. . . .
Attwater, from examination of hundreds of them, is convinced that they had a
knowledge of astronomy. As to one of the most perfect of the pyramidal
structures among the Aztecs, Humboldt gives a description to the following
effect:
"The form
of this pyramid (of Papantla) which has seven stories, is more tapering than
any other monument of this kind yet discovered, but its height is not
remarkable, being but 57 feet, its base but 25 feet on each side. However, it
is remarkable on one account: it is built entirely of hewn stones, of an
extraordinary size, and very beautifully shaped. Three staircases lead to the
top, the steps of which are decorated with hieroglyphical sculptures and small
niches arranged with great symmetry. The number of these niches seems to allude
to the 318 simple and compound signs of the days of their civil calendar."
"318 is the
Gnostic value of Christ," remarks the author, "and the famous number
of the trained or circumcised servants of Abraham. When it is consi-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See farther on
the description given of the early Aryan initiation: of Visvakarma crucifying
the Sun, "Vikkartana," shorn of his beams -- on a cruciform lath.
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dered that 318
is an abstract value, and universal, as expressive of a diameter value to a
circumference of unity, its use in the composition of the civil calendar
becomes manifest."
Identical
glyphs, numbers and esoteric symbols are found in Egypt, Peru, Mexico, Easter Island,
India, Chaldea, and Central Asia. Crucified men, and symbols of the evolution
of races from gods; and yet behold Science repudiating the idea of a human race
other than one made in our image; theology clinging to its 6,000 years of
Creation; anthropology teaching our descent from the ape; and the Clergy
tracing it from Adam 4,004 years B.C.!!
Shall one, for
fear of incurring the penalty of being called a superstitious fool, and even a
liar, abstain from furnishing proofs -- as good as any -- only because that
day, when all the SEVEN KEYS shall be delivered unto Science, or rather the men
of learning and research in the symbological department, has not yet dawned? In
the face of the crushing discoveries of Geology and Anthropology with regard to
the antiquity of man, shall we -- in order to avoid the usual penalty that
awaits every one who strays outside the beaten paths of either Theology or
Materialism -- hold to the 6,000 years and "special creation," or
accept in submissive admiration our genealogy and descent from the ape? Not so,
as long as it is known that the secret records hold the said SEVEN keys to the
mystery of the genesis of man. Faulty, materialistic, and biassed as the
scientific theories may be, they are a thousand times nearer the truth than the
vagaries of theology. The latter are in their death agony for every one but the
most uncompromising bigot and fanatic.* Hence we have no choice but either to
blindly accept the deductions of Science, or to cut adrift from it, and
withstand it fearlessly to its face, stating what the Secret Doctrine teaches
us, being fully prepared to bear the consequences.
But let us see
whether Science in its materialistic speculations, and even theology in its
death-rattle and supreme struggle to reconcile the 6,000 years since Adam with
Sir Charles Lyell's "Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man,"
do not themselves give us unconsciously a helping hand. Ethnology, on the
confession of some of its very learned votaries, finds it already impossible to
account for the varieties in the human race, unless the hypothesis of the
creation of several Adams be accepted. They speak of "a white Adam and a
black Adam, a red
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Some of its
defenders must have lost their reason, one would rather say. For what can one
think when, in the face of the dead-letter absurdities of the Bible, these are
still supported, publicly and as fiercely as ever, and one finds its
theologians maintaining that though "the Scriptures carefully refrain (?)
from making any direct contribution to scientific knowledge, they have never
stumbled upon any statement which will not abide the light of ADVANCING
SCIENCE"!!! -- ("Primeval Man," p. 14).
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Adam and a
yellow Adam."* Were they Hindus enumerating the rebirths of Vamadeva from
the Linga Purana, they could say little more. For, enumerating the repeated
births of Siva, the latter show him in one Kalpa of a white complexion, in
another of a black colour, in still another of a red colour, after which the
Kumara becomes "four youths of a yellow colour." This strange
coincidence, as Mr. Proctor would say, speak only in favour of scientific
intuition, as Siva-Kumara represents only allegorically the human races during
the genesis of man. But it led to another intuitional phenomenon -- in the
theological ranks this time. The unknown author of "Primeval Man" in
a desperate effort to screen the divine Revelation from the merciless and
eloquent discoveries of geology and anthropology, remarking that "it would
be unfortunate if the defenders of the Bible should be driven into the position
of either surrendering the inspiration of Scripture, or denying the conclusions
of geologists" -- finds a compromise. Nay, he devotes a thick volume to
proving this fact: "Adam was not the first man** created upon this earth."
. . . The exhumed relics of pre-Adamic man, "instead of shaking our
confidence in Scripture, supply additional proof of its veracity" (p.
194). How so? In the simplest way imaginable; for the author argues that,
henceforth "we" (the clergy) "are enabled to leave scientific
men to pursue their studies without attempting to coerce them by the fear of
heresy" . . . (this must be a relief indeed to Messrs. Huxley, Tyndall,
and Sir C. Lyell). . . . "The Bible narrative does not commence with
creation, as is commonly supposed, but with the formation of Adam and Eve,
millions of years after our planet had been created. Its previous history, so
far as Scripture is concerned, is yet unwritten." . . . . . "There
may have been not one, but twenty different races upon the earth before the
time of Adam, just as there may be twenty different races of men on other
worlds" (p. 55). . . . Who, then, or what were those races, since the
author still maintains that Adam is the first man of our race? It was THE
SATANIC RACE AND RACES! "Satan (was) never in heaven, Angels and men
(being) one species." It was the pre-Adamic race of "Angels that
sinned." Satan was "the first Prince of this world," we read.
Having died in consequence of his rebellion, he remained on earth as a
disembodied Spirit, and tempted Adam and Eve. "The earlier ages of the
Satanic race, and more especially during the life-time of Satan (!!!) may have
been a period
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Primeval
Man Unveiled, or the Anthropology of the Bible"; author (unknown) of the
"Stars and the Angels" 1870, p. 195.
** Especially in
the face of the evidence furnished by the authorized Bible itself in ch. iv. of
Genesis, v. 16 and 17, which shows Cain going to the land of Nod and there marrying
a wife.
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of patriarchal
civilization and comparative repose -- a time of Tubal-Cains and Jubals, when
both Sciences and arts attempted to strike their roots into the accursed
ground. . . . . What a subject for an epic. . . . (when) there are inevitable
incidents which must have occurred. We see before us . . . . the gay primeval
lover wooing his blushing bride at dewy eve under the Danish oaks, that then
grew where now no oaks will grow . . . . the grey primeval patriarch . . . .
the primeval offspring innocently gambolling by his side. . . . . A thousand
such pictures rise before us"! . . . . (pp. 206-207).
The
retrospective glance at this Satanic "blushing bride" in the days of
Satan's innocence, does not lose in poetry as it gains in originality. Quite
the reverse. The modern Christian bride -- who does not often blush nowadays
before her gay modern lovers -- might even derive a moral lesson from this
daughter of Satan, in the exuberant fancy of her first human biographer. These
pictures -- and to appreciate them at their true value they must be examined in
the volume that describes them -- are all suggested with a view to reconcile
the infallibility of revealed Scripture with Sir C. Lyell's "Antiquity of
Man" and other damaging scientific works. But this does not prevent truth
and fact appearing at the foundation of these vagaries, which the author has
never dared to sign with his own, or even a borrowed name. For, his pre-Adamic
races -- not Satanic but simply Atlantic, and the Hermaphrodites before the
latter -- are mentioned in the Bible when read esoterically, as they are in the
Secret Doctrine. The SEVEN KEYS open the mysteries, past and future, of the
seven great Root Races, as of the seven Kalpas. Though the genesis of man, and
even the esoteric geology, will surely be rejected by Science just as much as
the Satanic and pre-Adamic races, yet if having no other way out of their
difficulties the Scientists have to choose between the two, we feel certain
that, Scripture notwithstanding, once the mystery language is approximately
mastered, it is the archaic teaching that will be accepted.
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§ III.
PRIMORDIAL
SUBSTANCE AND DIVINE THOUGHT.
"As it
would seem irrational to affirm that we already know all existing causes,
permission must be given to assume, if need be, an entirely new agent.
"Assuming, what
is not strictly accurate as yet, that the undulatory hypothesis accounts for
all the facts, we are called on to decide whether the existence of an
undulating Ether is thereby proved. We cannot positively affirm
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that no other
supposition will explain the facts. Newton's corpuscular hypothesis is admitted
to have broken down on Interference; and there is, at the present day, no
rival. Still, it is extremely desirable in all such hypotheses to find some
collateral confirmation, some evidence aliunde, of THE SUPPOSED ETHER. . . . .
Some Hypotheses consist of assumptions as to the minute structure and
operations of bodies. From the nature of the case, these assumptions can never
be proved by direct means. Their only merit is their suitability to express the
phenomena. They are REPRESENTATIVE FICTIONS." -- ("Logic," by Alexander
Bain, LL.D., Part II., p. 133)
Ether, this
hypothetical Proteus, one of the "representative Fictions" of modern
Science -- which, nevertheless, was so long accepted -- is one of the lower
"principles" of what we call PRIMORDIAL SUBSTANCE (Akasa, in
Sanskrit), one of the dreams of old, and which has now become again the dream
of modern science. It is the greatest, just as it is the boldest, of the
surviving speculations of ancient philosophers. For the Occultists, however,
both ETHER and the Primordial Substance are a reality. To put it plainly, ETHER
is the Astral Light, and the Primordial Substance is AKASA, the Upadhi of
DIVINE THOUGHT.
In modern
language, the latter would be better named COSMIC IDEATION -- Spirit; the
former, COSMIC SUBSTANCE, Matter. These, the Alpha and the Omega of Being, are
but the two facets of the one Absolute Existence. The latter was never
addressed, or even mentioned, by any name in antiquity, except allegorically.
In the oldest Aryan race, the Hindu, the worship of the intellectual classes
never consisted (as with the Greeks) in a fervent adoration of marvellous form
and art, which led later on to anthropomorphism. But while the Greek
philosopher adored form, and the Hindu sage alone "perceived the true
relation of earthly beauty and eternal truth" -- the uneducated of every
nation understood neither, at any time.
They do not
understand it even now. The evolution of the GOD-IDEA proceeds apace with man's
own intellectual evolution. So true it is that the noblest ideal to which the
religious Spirit of one age can soar, will appear but a gross caricature to the
philosophic mind in a succeeding epoch! The philosophers themselves had to be
initiated into perceptive mysteries, before they could grasp the correct idea
of the ancients in relation to this most metaphysical subject. Otherwise --
outside such initiation -- for every thinker there will be a "Thus far
shalt thou go and no farther," mapped out by his intellectual capacity, as
clearly and as unmistakeably as there is for the progress of any nation or race
in its cycle by the law of Karma. Outside of initiation, the ideals of
contemporary religious thought must always have their wings clipped and remain
unable to soar higher; for idealistic as well as realistic thinkers, and even
free-thinkers, are but the outcome and the natural product of their respective
environments and periods. The ideals of both are only
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the necessary
results of their temperaments, and the outcome of that phase of intellectual
progress to which a nation, in its collectivity, has attained. Hence, as already
remarked, the highest flights of modern (Western) metaphysics have fallen far
short of the truth. Much of current Agnostic speculation on the existence of
the "First Cause" is little better than veiled materialism -- the
terminology alone being different. Even so great a thinker as Mr. Herbert
Spencer speaks of the "Unknowable" occasionally in terms that
demonstrate the lethal influence of materialistic thought, which, like the
deadly Sirocco, has withered and blighted all current ontological speculation.*
From the early
ages of the Fourth Race, when Spirit alone was worshipped and the mystery was
made manifest, down to the last palmy days of Grecian art at the dawn of
Christianity -- the Hellenes alone had dared to raise publicly an altar to the
UNKNOWN GOD. Whatever St. Paul may have had in his profound mind when declaring
to the Athenians that this "unknown," ignorantly worshipped by them,
was the true God announced by himself -- that Deity was not "Jehovah"
(see "The Holy of Holies"), nor was he "The Maker of the world
and all things." For it is not the "God of Israel" but the
"Unknown" of the ancient and modern Pantheist that "dwelleth not
in temples made with hands" (Acts xviii., 23-4).
Divine thought
cannot be defined, or its meaning explained, except by the numberless
manifestations of Cosmic Substance in which the former is sensed spiritually by
those who can do so. To say this, after having defined it as the Unknown Deity,
abstract, impersonal, sexless, which must be placed at the root of every
Cosmogony and its subsequent evolution, is equivalent to saying nothing at all.
It is like attempting a transcendental equation of conditions for the true
values of a set, having in hand for deducing them only a number of unknown
quantities. Its place is found in the old primitive Symbolic charts, in which,
as shown in the text, it is represented by a boundless darkness, on the ground
of which appears the first central point in white -- thus symbolising coeval
and co-eternal SPIRIT-MATTER making its appearance in the phenomenal world,
before its first differentiation. When "the one becomes two," it may
then be
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* For instance,
when he terms the "First Cause" -- the UNKNOWABLE -- a "power
manifesting through phenomena," and "an infinite eternal Energy"
(?) it is clear that he has grasped solely the physical aspect of the mystery
of Being -- the Energies of Cosmic Substance only. The co-eternal aspect of the
ONE REALITY -- Cosmic Ideation -- (as to its noumenon, it seems non-existent in
the mind of the great thinker) is absolutely omitted from consideration.
Without doubt, this one-sided mode of dealing with the problem is due largely
to the pernicious Western practice of subordinating consciousness, or regarding
it as a "by-product" of molecular motion.
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referred to as
Spirit and matter. To "Spirit" is referable every manifestation of
consciousness, reflective or direct, and of unconscious purposiveness (to adopt
a modern expression used in Western philosophy, so-called) as evidenced in the
Vital Principle, and Nature's submission to the majestic sequence of immutable
law. "Matter" must be regarded as objectivity in its purest
abstraction -- the self-existing basis whose septenary manvantaric
differentiations constitute the objective reality underlying the phenomena of
each phase of conscious existence. During the period of Universal Pralaya,
Cosmic Ideation is nonexistent; and the variously differentiated states of
Cosmic Substance are resolved back again into the primary state of abstract
potential objectivity.
Manvantaric
impulse commences with the re-awakening of Cosmic Ideation (the "Universal
Mind") concurrently with, and parallel to the primary emergence of Cosmic
Substance -- the latter being the manvantaric vehicle of the former -- from its
undifferentiated pralayic state. Then, absolute wisdom mirrors itself in its
Ideation; which, by a transcendental process, superior to and incomprehensible
by human Consciousness, results in Cosmic Energy (Fohat). Thrilling through the
bosom of inert Substance, Fohat impels it to activity, and guides its primary
differentiations on all the Seven planes of Cosmic Consciousness. There are
thus Seven Protyles (as they are now called), while Aryan antiquity called them
the Seven Prakriti, or Natures, serving, severally, as the relatively
homogeneous basis, which in the course of the increasing heterogeneity (in the
evolution of the Universe) differentiate into the marvellous complexity
presented by phenomena on the planes of perception. The term
"relatively" is used designedly, because the very existence of such a
process, resulting in the primary segregations of undifferentiated Cosmic
Substance into its septenary bases of evolution, compels us to regard the
protyle* of each plane as only a mediate phase assumed by Substance in its
passage from abstract, into full objectivity.
Cosmic Ideation
is said to be non-existent during Pralayic periods, for the simple reason that
there is no one, and nothing, to perceive its effects. There can be no
manifestation of Consciousness, semi-consciousness, or even "unconscious
purposiveness," except through the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The term
Protyle is due to Mr. Crookes, the eminent chemist, who has given that name to
pre-Matter, if one may so call primordial and purely homogeneous substances,
suspected, if not actually yet found, by Science in the ultimate composition of
the atom. But the incipient segregation of primordial matter into atoms and
molecules takes its rise subsequent to the evolution of the Seven Protyles. It
is the last of these -- having recently detected the possibility of its
existence on our plane -- that Mr. Crookes is in search of.
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vehicle of
matter; that is to say, on this our plane, wherein human consciousness in its
normal state cannot soar beyond what is known as transcendental metaphysics, it
is only through some molecular aggregation or fabric that Spirit wells up in a
stream of individual or sub-conscious subjectivity. And as Matter existing
apart from perception is a mere abstraction, both of these aspects of the
ABSOLUTE -- Cosmic Substance and Cosmic Ideation -- are mutually
inter-dependent. In strict accuracy -- to avoid confusion and misconception --
the term "Matter" ought to be applied to the aggregate of objects of
possible perception, and "Substance" to noumena; for inasmuch as the
phenomena of our plane are the creation of the perceiving Ego -- the
modifications of its own subjectivity -- all the "states of matter
representing the aggregate of perceived objects" can have but a relative
and purely phenomenal existence for the children of our plane. As the modern
Idealists would say, the co-operation of Subject and Object results in the
Sense-object or phenomenon. But this does not necessarily lead to the
conclusion that it is the same on all other planes; that the co-operation of
the two on the planes of their septenary differentiation results in a septenary
aggregate of phenomena which are likewise non-existent per se, though concrete
realities for the Entities of whose experience they form a part, in the same
manner as the rocks and rivers around us are real from the stand-point of a
physicist, though unreal illusions of sense from that of the metaphysician. It
would be an error to say, or even conceive such a thing. From the stand-point
of the highest metaphysics, the whole Universe, gods included, is an illusion;
but the illusion of him who is in himself an illusion differs on every plane of
consciousness; and we have no more right to dogmatise about the possible nature
of the perceptive faculties of an Ego on, say, the sixth plane, than we have to
identify our perceptions with, or make them a standard for, those of an ant, in
its mode of consciousness. The pure object apart from consciousness* is unknown
to us, while living on the plane of our three-dimensional World; as we know
only the mental states it excites in the perceiving Ego. And, so long as the
contrast of Subject and Object endures -- to wit, as long as we enjoy our five
senses and no more, and do not know how to divorce our all-perceiving Ego (the
Higher Self) from the thraldom of these senses -- so long will it be impossible
for the personal Ego to break through the barrier which separates it from a
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Cosmic
Ideation focussed in a principle or upadhi (basis) results as the consciousness
of the individual Ego. Its manifestation varies with the degree of upadhi,
e.g., through that known as Manas it wells up as Mind-Consciousness; through
the more finely differentiated fabric (sixth state of matter) of the Buddhi
resting on the experience of Manas as its basis -- as a stream of spiritual
INTUITION.
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knowledge of
things in themselves (or Substance). That Ego, progressing in an arc of
ascending subjectivity, must exhaust the experience of every plane. But not
till the Unit is merged in the ALL, whether on this or any other plane, and
Subject and Object alike vanish in the absolute negation of the Nirvanic State
(negation, again, only from our plane), is scaled that peak of Omniscience --
the Knowledge of things-in-themselves; and the solution of the yet more awful
riddle approached, before which even the highest Dhyan Chohan must bow in
silence and ignorance -- the unspeakable mystery of that which is called by the
Vedantins, the PARABRAHMAM.
Therefore, such
being the case, all those who sought to give a name to the incognizable
Principle have simply degraded it. Even to speak of Cosmic Ideation -- save in
its phenomenal aspect -- is like trying to bottle up primordial Chaos, or to
put a printed label on ETERNITY.
What, then, is
the "primordial Substance," that mysterious object of which Alchemy
was ever talking, and which became the subject of philosophical speculation in
every age? What can it be finally, even in its phenomenal pre-differentiation?
Even that is ALL in manifested Nature and -- nothing to our senses. It is
mentioned under various names in every Cosmogony, referred to in every
philosophy, and shown to be, to this day, the ever grasp-eluding PROTEUS in
Nature. We touch and do not feel it; we look at it without seeing it; we
breathe it and do not perceive it; we hear and smell it without the smallest
cognition that it is there; for it is in every molecule of that which in our
illusion and ignorance we regard as Matter in any of its states, or conceive as
a feeling, a thought, an emotion. . . . In short, it is the "upadhi,"
or vehicle, of every possible phenomenon, whether physical, mental, or psychic.
In the opening sentences of Genesis, as in the Chaldean Cosmogony; in the
Puranas of India, and in the Book of the Dead of Egypt, it opens everywhere the
cycle of manifestation. It is termed "Chaos," and the face of the
waters, incubated by the Spirit proceeding from the Unknown, under whatever
name. (See "Chaos, Theos, Kosmos.")
The authors of
the sacred Scriptures in India go deeper into the origin of things evolved than
Thales or Job, for they say:--
"From
INTELLIGENCE (called MAHAT in the Puranas) associated with IGNORANCE (Iswar, as
a personal deity) attended by its projective power, in which the quality of
dulness (tamas, insensibility) predominates, proceeds Ether -- from ether, air;
from air, heat; from heat, water; and from water, earth "with everything
on it." "From THIS, from this same SELF, was the Ether
produced," says the Veda. (Taittiriya Upanishad II. 1).
It becomes thus
evident that it is not this Ether -- sprung at the fourth
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remove from an
Emanation of Intelligence "associated with Ignorance" -- which is the
high principle, the deific Entity worshipped by the Greeks and Latins under the
name of "Pater omnipotens AEther," and "Magnus AEther" in
its collective aggregates. The septenary gradation, and the innumerable
subdivisions and differences, made by the ancients between the powers of Ether
collectively, from its outward fringe of effects, with which our Science is so
familiar, up to the "Imponderable Substance," once admitted as the
"Ether of Space," now about to be rejected, has been ever a vexing
riddle for every branch of knowledge. The mythologists and symbologists of our
day, confused by this incomprehensible glorification, on the one hand, and
degradation on the other, of the same deified entity and in the same religious
systems, are often driven to the most ludicrous mistakes. The Church, firm as a
rock in each and all of her early errors of interpretation, has made of Ether
the abode of her Satanic legions.* The whole hierarchy of the
"Fallen" angels is there; the Cosmocratores -- or the "world
bearers," (according to Bossuet); Mundi Tenentes -- the "world
holders," as Tertullian calls them; and Mundi Domini "world
dominations," or rather dominators, the Curbati, or "Curved,"
etc., who thus make of the stars and celestial orbs in their course -- Devils!
The difference
made between the seven states of Ether (itself one of the Seven Cosmic
principles), while the AEther of the Ancients is universal Fire, may be seen in
the injunctions by Zoroaster and Psellus, respectively. The former said:
"Consult it only when it is without form or figure," absque forma et
figura, which means without flames or burning coals. "When it has a form
-- heed it not," teaches Psellus; "but when it is formless, obey it,
for it is then sacred fire, and all it will reveal thee, shall be true."**
This proves that Ether, itself an aspect of Akasa, has in its turn several
aspects or "principles."
All the ancient
nations deified AEther in its imponderable aspect and potency. Virgil calls
Jupiter, Pater omnipotens AEther, "the great AEther."*** The Hindus
have also placed it among their deities; under the name of Akasa (the synthesis
of AEther). And the author of the Homoiomerian
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* For it is thus
that the Church has interpreted verse 12 in the VI. Chapter to the Ephesians.
"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities,
against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world." Further
on St. Paul mentions the spiritual malices ("wickedness" in English
texts) SPREAD IN THE AIR -- "Spiritualia nequitiae coelestibus," the
Latin texts giving various names to these "malices," the innocent
"Elementals." But the Church is right this time, though wrong in
calling them all devils. The ASTRAL LIGHT or lower Ether is full of conscious
and semi-conscious and unconscious entities; only the church has less power
over them than over invisible microbes or mosquitoes.
** Effatum XVI.
"Oracles of Zoroaster."
*** Georgica.
Book II.
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System of
philosophy, Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, firmly believed that the spiritual
prototypes of all things, as well as their elements, were to be found in the
boundless Ether where they were generated, whence they evolved, and whither
they returned -- an Occult teaching.
It thus becomes
clear that it is from Ether in its highest synthetic aspect, once
anthropomorphised, that sprung the first idea of a personal creative deity.
With the philosophical Hindus the elements are Tamas, i.e., "unenlightened
by intellect, which they obscure."
We have now to
exhaust the question of the mystical meaning of "Primordial Chaos"
and of the Root-Principle, and show how they were connected in the ancient
philosophies with Akasa, wrongly translated AEther, and also with Maya
(illusion) -- of which Ishwara is the male aspect. We shall speak further on of
the intelligent "principle," or rather of the invisible immaterial
properties, in the visible and material elements, that "sprung from the
primordial Chaos."
For, "What
is the primordial Chaos but AEther?" it is asked in "ISIS
UNVEILED." Not the modern Ether; not such as is recognised now, but such
as was known to the ancient philosophers long before the time of Moses; but
AEther, with all its mysterious and occult properties, containing in itself the
germs of universal creation. Upper AEther or Akasa, is the celestial virgin and
mother of every existing form and being, from whose bosom, as soon as
"incubated" by the Divine Spirit, are called into existence Matter
and Life, Force and Action. AEther is the Aditi of the Hindus, and it is Akasa.
Electricity, magnetism, heat, light, and chemical action are so little
understood even now that fresh facts are constantly widening the range of our
knowledge. Who knows where ends the power of this protean giant -- AEther; or
whence its mysterious origin? Who, we mean, that denies the spirit that works
in it, and evolves out of it all visible forms?
It will be an
easy task to show that the cosmogonical legends all over the world are based on
a knowledge by the ancients of those sciences, which have allied themselves in
our days in support of the doctrine of evolution; and that further research may
demonstrate that those ancients were far better acquainted with the fact of
evolution itself, embracing both its physical and spiritual aspects, than we
are now. "With the old philosophers, evolution was a universal theorem, a
doctrine embracing the whole, and an established principle; while our modern
evolutionists are enabled to present us merely with speculative theoretics;
with particular, if not wholly negative theorems. It is idle for the
representatives of our modern wisdom to close the debate and pretend that the
question is settled, merely because the obscure phraseology of the Mosaic, far
later, account clashes with the definite exegesis of 'Exact Science'"
("Isis Unveiled").
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If one turns to
the "Laws (or Ordinances) of Manu," one finds the prototype of all
these ideas. Mostly lost (to the Western world) in their original form,
disfigured by later interpolations and additions, they have, nevertheless,
preserved quite enough of their ancient Spirit to show its character.
"Removing the darkness, the Self-existent Lord" (Vishnu, Narayana,
etc.) becoming manifest, and "wishing to produce beings from his Essence,
created, in the beginning, water alone. In that he cast seed. . . . . That
became a golden Egg." (V. 6, 7, 8, 9.) Whence this Self-existent Lord? It
is called THIS, and is spoken of as "Darkness, imperceptible, without
definite qualities, undiscoverable as if wholly in sleep." (V. 5.) Having
dwelt in that Egg for a whole divine year, he "who is called in the world
Brahma," splits that Egg in two, and from the upper portion he forms the
heaven, from the lower the earth, and from the middle the sky and "the
perpetual place of waters." (12, 13.)
But there is,
directly following these verses, something more important for us, as it
corroborates entirely our esoteric teachings. From verse 14 to 36, evolution is
given in the order described in the Esoteric philosophy. This cannot be easily
gainsaid. Even Medhatithi, the son of Viraswamin, and the author of the
Commentary, "the Manubhasya," whose date, according to the western
Orientalists, is 1,000 A.D., helps us with his remarks to the elucidation of
the truth. He showed himself either unwilling to give out more, because he knew
that truth which has to be kept from the profane, or else he was really
puzzled. Still, what he does give out makes the septenary principle in men and
nature plain enough.
Let us begin
with Chapter 1. of the "Ordinances" or "Laws" after the
Self-existent Lord, the unmanifesting Logos of the Unknown
"Darkness," becomes manifested in the golden Egg. It is from this
"Egg," from ----
(11.) That which
is the undiscrete (undifferentiated) cause, eternal, which Is and Is not, from
It issued that male who is called in the world Brahma. . . . .
Here we find, as
in all genuine philosophical systems, even the "Egg" or the Circle
(or Zero), boundless Infinity, referred to as IT,* and Brahma, the first unit
only, referred to as the male god, i.e., the fructifying Principle. It is [[diagram]]
or 10 (ten) the Decade. On the plane of the Septenary or our World only, it is
called Brahma. On that of the Unified Decade in the realm of Reality, this male
Brahma is an illusion.
(14.) "From
Self (atmanah) he created mind, (1) which is and is not;
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The ideal apex
of the Pythagorean triangle: vide Sections in Vol. II., "Cross and
Circle," and the "Earliest Symbolics of the Cross."
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(2) and from
mind, Ego-ism (Self-Consciousness) the ruler; (3) the Lord."
(1.) The mind is
Manas. Medhatithi, the commentator, justly observes here that it is the reverse
of this and shows already interpolation and rearranging; for it is Manas that
springs from Ahamkara or (Universal) Self-Consciousness, as Manas in the
microcosm springs from Mahat, or Maha-Buddhi (Buddhi, in man). For Manas is
dual, and as shown and translated by Colebrooke, "is serving both for
sense and action, is an organ by affinity, being cognate with the rest."
"The rest" means, here, that Manas, our fifth principle (the fifth,
because the body was named the first, which is the reverse of the true
philosophical order)* is in affinity both with Atma-Buddhi and with the lower
four principles. Hence, our teaching: namely, that Manas follows Atma-Buddhi to
Devachan, and that the lower (dregs, the residue of) Manas remains with Kama
rupa, in Limbus, or Kama-loka, the abode of the "Shells."
(2.) Such is the
meaning of Manas, which "is, and is not."
(3.) Medhatithi
translates it as "the one conscious of the I," or Ego, not
"ruler," as the Orientalists do. Thus they translate verse 16:
"He also, having made the subtile parts of those six (the Great Self and
the five organs of sense) of unmeasured brightness, to enter into the elements
of Self (Atmamatrasu) created all beings."
When, according
to Medhatithi, it ought to read matra-Chit instead of "Atmamatrasu,"
and thus be made to say:--
"He having
pervaded the subtile parts of those six, of unmeasured brightness, by elements
of self, created all beings."
This latter
reading must be the correct one, since he, the Self, is what we call Atma, and
thus constitutes the seventh principle, the synthesis of the "six."
Such is also the opinion of the editor of Manava-dharma Shastra, who seems to
have intuitionally entered far deeper into the spirit of the philosophy than
has the translator of the "Ordinances of Manu," the late Dr. Burnell.
For he hesitates little between the text of Kulluka and the Commentaries of
Medhatithi. Rejecting the tanmatra, or subtile elements, and the atmamatrasu of
Kulluka, he says, applying the principles to the Cosmic Self: "The six
appear rather to be the manas plus the five principles of Ether, air, fire,
water, earth"; "having united five portions of these six with the
spiritual element (the seventh) he (thus) created all existing things;"
atmamatra is therefore the spiritual atom as opposed to the elementary, not
reflective "elements of himself." Thus he corrects the translation of
verse -- "17. As the subtile elements of bodily forms of This One depend
on these six, so
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Vide A. Coke
Burnell's translation, edited by Ed. W. Hopkins, Ph.D.
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the wise call
his form carira" (sharira) -- and he says that "Elements" mean
here portions or parts (or principles), which reading is borne out by verse 19,
which says:--
"19. This non-eternal
(Universe) arises then from the Eternal, by means of the subtile elements of
forms of those seven very glorious principles" (purusha).
Commenting upon
which, according to Medhatithi, the Editor remarks that "the five elements
plus mind (Manas) and Self-Consciousness (Ahamkara)* are meant;"
"subtile elements," as before (meaning) "five portions of
form" (or principles). For verse 20 shows it, when saying of these (five
elements, or "five portions of form" (rupa, plus Manas and
Self-Consciousness) that they constitute the "seven purusha," or
principles, called in the Puranas the "Seven Prakritis."
Moreover, these
"five elements" or "five portions" are spoken of in verse
27 as "those which are called the atomic destructible portions" --
therefore "distinct from the atoms of the nyaya."
This creative
Brahma, issuing from the mundane or golden egg, unites in himself both the male
and the female principles. He is, in short, the same as all the creative
Protologoi. Of Brahma, however, it could not be said, as of Dionysos:
"[[protogonon diphue trigonon Baccheion Hanakta Hagrion arreton kruphion
dikerota dimorphon]]" -- a lunar Jehovah -- Bacchus truly, with David
dancing nude before his symbol in the ark -- because no licentious Dionysia were
ever established in his name and honour. All such public worship was exoteric,
and the great universal symbols were distorted universally, as those of Krishna
are now by the Vallabacharyas of Bombay, the followers of the infant god. But
are these popular gods the true Deity? Are they the Apex and synthesis of the
sevenfold creation, man included? Never! Each and all are one of the rungs of
that septenary ladder of Divine Consciousness, pagan as Christian. For Ain-Soph
also is said to manifest through the Seven Letters of Jehovah's name who,
having usurped the place of the Unknown Limitless, was given by his devotees
his Seven Angels of the Presence -- his Seven Principles. Yet they are
mentioned in almost every school. In the pure Sankhya philosophy mahat,
ahamkara and the five tanmatras are called the seven Prakritis (or Natures),
and they are counted from Maha-Buddhi or Mahat down to Earth. (See Sankhya
Karika III. and Commentaries.)
Nevertheless,
however disfigured for Rabbinical purposes is the original Elohistic version by
Ezra, however repulsive at times even the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Ahamkara, as
universal Self-Consciousness, has a triple aspect, as also Manas. For this
conception of "I," or one's Ego, is either sattwa, "pure
quietude," or appears as rajas, "active," or remains tamas,
"stagnant," in darkness. It belongs to Heaven and Earth, and assumes
the properties of either.
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esoteric meaning
in the Hebrew scrolls, which is far more so than its outward veil or cloaking
may be* -- once the Jehovistic portions are eliminated, the Mosaic books are
found full of purely occult and priceless knowledge, especially in the first
six chapters.
Read by the aid
of the Kabala one finds a matchless temple of occult truths, a well of deeply
concealed beauty hidden under a structure, the visible architecture of which,
its apparent symmetry notwithstanding, is unable to stand the criticism of cold
reason, or to reveal its age, for it belongs to all the ages. There is more
wisdom concealed under the exoteric fables of Puranas and Bible than in all the
exoteric facts and science in the literature of the world, and more OCCULT true
Science, than there is of exact knowledge in all the academies. Or, in plainer
and stronger language, there is as much esoteric wisdom in some portions of the
exoteric Puranas and Pentateuch, as there is of nonsense and of designed
childish fancy in it, when read only in the dead-letter murderous
interpretations of great dogmatic religions, and especially of sects.
Let anyone read
the first verses of chapter i. of Genesis and reflect upon them. There
"God" commands to another "god," who does his bidding --
even in the cautious English Protestant translation of James the First's
authorised edition.
In the
"beginning," the Hebrew language having no word to express the idea
of Eternity,** "God" fashions the heaven and the Earth; and the
latter is "without form and void," while the former is no Heaven in
fact, but the "Deep," Chaos, with darkness upon its face.***
"And the
Spirit of GOD moved upon the face of the Waters" (v. 2), or the great Deep
of the Infinite Space. And this Spirit is Nara-yana, or Vishnu.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "The
Holy of Holies."
** The word
"eternity," by which Christian theologians interpret the term
"for ever and ever," does not exist in the Hebrew tongue -- either as
a word or meaning. Oulam, says Le Clerc, only imports a time when beginning or
end is not known. It does not mean "infinite duration," and the word
for ever in the Old Testament, only signifies a "long time." Nor is
the term "eternity" used in the Christian sense in the Puranas. For
in Vishnu Purana, it is clearly stated that by Eternity and Immortality only
"existence to the end of the Kalpa" is meant (Book II. chap. viii.).
*** Orphic
theogony is purely Oriental and Indian in its Spirit. The successive
transformations it has undergone, have now separated it widely from the spirit
of ancient Cosmogony, as may be seen by comparing it even with Hesiod's
theogony. Yet the truly Aryan Hindu spirit breaks forth everywhere in both
Hesiod's and the Orphic theogony. (See the remarkable work of James
Darmesteter, Cosmogonies Aryennes, in his Essais Orientaux.) Thus the original
Greek conception of Chaos is that of the Secret Wisdom Religion. In Hesiod,
therefore, Chaos is infinite, boundless, endless and beginningless in duration,
an abstraction at the same time as a visible presence. SPACE filled with
darkness, which is primordial matter in its precosmic state. For in its
etymological sense, Chaos is Space, according to Aristotle, and Space is the
ever Unseen and Unknowable Deity in our philosophy.
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"And God
said, Let there be a firmament. . ." (v. 6), and "God," the
second, obeyed and "made the firmament" (v. 7). "And God said
let there be light," and "there was light." Now the latter does
not mean light at all, but in the Kabala, the androgyne "Adam
Kadmon," or Sephira (Spiritual light), for they are one; or, according to
the Chaldean "Book of Numbers," the secondary angels, the first being
the Elohim who are the aggregate of that "fashioning" god. For to whom
are those words of command addressed? And who is it who commands? That which
commands is the eternal Law, and he who obeys, the Elohim, the known quantity
acting in and with x, or the coefficient of the unknown quantity, the Forces of
the ONE Force. All this is Occultism, and is found in the archaic STANZAS. It
is perfectly immaterial whether we call these "Forces" the Dhyan
Chohans, or the Ophanim, as St. John does.
"The one
Universal Light, which to Man is Darkness, is ever existent," says the
Chaldean "Book of Numbers." From it proceeds periodically the ENERGY,
which is reflected in the "Deep" or Chaos, the store-house of future
worlds, and, once awakened, stirs up and fructifies the latent Forces, which
are the ever present eternal potentialities in it. Then awake anew the Brahmas and
Buddhas -- the co-eternal Forces -- and a new Universe springs into being. . .
. .
In the Sepher
Jezireh, the Kabalistic Book of Creation, the author has evidently repeated the
words of Manu. In it, the Divine Substance is represented as having alone existed
from the eternity, boundless and absolute; and as having emitted from itself
the Spirit.* "One is the Spirit of the living God, blessed be ITS name,
which liveth for ever! Voice, Spirit, and Word, this is the Holy
Spirit;"** and this is the Kabalistic abstract Trinity, so unceremoniously
anthropomorphised by the Christian Fathers. From this triple ONE emanated the
whole Kosmos. First from ONE emanated number TWO, or Air (the Father), the
creative element; and then number THREE, Water (the Mother), proceeded from the
air; Ether or Fire completes the mystic four, the Arba-il.*** "When the
Concealed of the Concealed wanted to reveal Himself, he first made a point
(primordial point, or the first Sephiroth, air, or Holy Ghost), shaped into a
sacred form (the ten Sephiroth, or the Heavenly man), and covered it with a
rich and splendid garment, that is the world."****
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The manifested
Spirit; Absolute, Divine Spirit is one with absolute Divine Substance:
Parabrahm and Mulaprakriti are one in essence. Therefore, Cosmic Ideation and
Cosmic Substance in their primal character are one also.
** "Sepher
Jezireh," chap. 1, Mishna ix.
*** Ibid. It is
from Arba that Abram is made to come.
**** "Zohar,"
I., 2a.
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"He maketh
the wind His messengers, flaming Fire His servants," says the Jezireh,
showing the cosmical character of the later euhemerised Elements,* and that the
Spirit permeates every atom in Kosmos.
This
"primordial Substance" is called by some Chaos: Plato and the
Pythagoreans named it the Soul of the World after it had been impregnated by
the Spirit of that which broods over the Primeval Waters, or Chaos. It is by
being reflected in it, say the Kabalists, that the brooding Principle created
the phantasmagoria of a visible, manifested Universe. Chaos, before -- Ether,
after, the "reflection;" it is still the deity that pervades all
Space and things. It is the invisible, imponderable Spirit of things and the
invisible, but too tangible fluid that radiates from the fingers of the healthy
magnetizer, for it is Vital Electricity -- LIFE itself. Called in derision by
the Marquis de Mirville "the nebulous Almighty," it is termed by the
Theurgists and Occultists to this day "the living Fire"; and there is
not a Hindu who practises at dawn a certain kind of meditation but knows its
effects.** It is the "Spirit of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Sepher
Jezireh," Mishna ix., 10. Everywhere throughout the Acts, Paul calls the
invisible Kosmic Beings the "Elements." (See Greek Texts.) But now
the Elements are degraded into and limited to atoms of which nothing is known,
so far, and which are only "children of necessity" as Ether is too --
as we said in "ISIS." "The poor primordial elements have long
been exiled, and our ambitious physicists run races to determine who shall add
one more to the fledgling brood of the sixty and odd elementary
substances." Meanwhile there rages a war in modern chemistry about terms.
We are denied the right to call these substances "chemical elements,"
for they are not "primordial principles of self-existing essences out of
which the universe was fashioned," according to Plato. Such ideas
associated with the word element were good enough for the "old Greek
philosophy," but modern science rejects them; for, as Professor Crookes
says, "they are unfortunate terms," and experimental science will
have "nothing to do with any kind of essences except those which it can
see, smell, or taste. It leaves others to the metaphysicians. . . ." We
must feel grateful even for so much.
** Writing upon
this subject in Isis Unveiled we said of it that it was: "The Chaos of the
ancients, the Zoroastrian sacred fire, or the Atash-Behram of the Parsees; the
Hermes-fire, the Elmes-fire of the ancient Germans; the lightning of Cybele; the
burning torch of Apollo; the flame on the altar of Pan; the inextinguishable
fire in the temple on the Acropolis, and in that of Vesta; the fire-flame of
Pluto's helm; the brilliant sparks on the hats of the Dioscuri, on the Gorgon
head, the helm of Pallas, and the staff of Mercury; the Egyptian Phtha-Ra; the
Grecian Zeus Cataibates (the descending) of Pausanias; the pentacostal
fire-tongues; the burning bush of Moses; the pillar of fire of the Exodus, and
the "burning lamp" of Abram, the eternal fire of the "bottomless
pit"; the Delphic oracular vapours; the Sidereal light of the
Rosicrucians; the AKASA of the Hindu adepts; the Astral Light of Eliphas Levi;
the nerve-aura and the fluid of the magnetists; the od of the Reichenbach; the
Psychod and ectenic force of Thury; the psychic force of Sergeant Cox, and the
atmospheric magnetism of some naturalists; galvanism; and finally, electricity
-- all these are but various names for many different manifestations or effects
of the same mysterious, all-pervading cause, the Greek Archeus." We now
add -- it is all this and much more.
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Light" and
Magnes. As truly expressed by an opponent, Magus and magnes are two branches
growing from the same trunk and shooting forth the same resultants. And in this
appellation of "living fire" we may also discover the meaning of the
puzzling sentence in the Zend-Avesta saying that there is "a fire that
gives knowledge of the future. Science and amiable speech," i.e., develops
an extraordinary eloquence in the sybil, the sensitive, and even some orators.
This
"fire" is spoken of in all the Hindu Books, as also in the Kabalistic
works. The Zohar explains it as the "white hidden fire, in the Resha
trivrah" (the White Head), whose Will causes the fiery fluid to flow in
370 currents in every direction of the universe. It is identical with the
"Serpent that runs with 370 leaps" of the Siphrah Dzenioota, which,
when the "Perfect Man," the Metatron, is raised, i.e., when the
divine man indwells in the animal man, it, the Serpent, becomes three spirits,
that is to say, is Atma-Buddhi-Manas, in our theosophical phraseology. (Vide
Part II. in Vol. II., §§ 3, "The Many Meanings of the War in
Heaven.")
Spirit, then, or
Cosmic Ideation, and Cosmic Substance -- one of whose principles is Ether --
are one, and include the ELEMENTS, in the sense St. Paul attaches to them.
These Elements are the veiled Synthesis standing for Dhyan Chohans, Devas,
Sephiroth, Amshaspends, Archangels, etc., etc. The Ether of science -- the Ilus
of Berosus, or the Protyle of Chemistry -- constitutes, so to speak, the rude
material (relatively) out of which the above-named "Builders,"
following the plan traced out for them eternally in the DIVINE THOUGHT, fashion
the systems in the Cosmos. They are "myths," we are told. "No
more so than Ether and the Atoms," we answer. The two latter are absolute
necessities of physical science; the "Builders" are as absolute a
necessity of metaphysics. We are twitted with: "You never saw them."
We ask the materialists: "Have you ever seen Ether, or your Atoms, or,
again, your FORCE?" Moreover, one of the greatest Western Evolutionists of
our modern day, the coadjutor of Darwin, Mr. A. R. Wallace, when discussing the
inadequacy of Natural Selection alone to account for the physical form of Man,
admits the guiding action of "higher intelligences" as a
"necessary part of the great laws which govern the material Universe"
("Contributions to Theory of Natural Selection").
These
"higher intelligences" are the Dhyan Chohans of the Occultists.
Indeed, there
are few Myths in any religious system worthy of the name, but have an historical
as well as a scientific foundation. "Myths," justly observes Pococke,
"are now proved to be fables, just in proportion as we misunderstand them;
truths, in proportion as they were once understood."
The one
prevailing, most distinct idea -- found in all ancient teaching,
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with reference
to Cosmic Evolution and the first "creation" of our Globe with all
its products, organic and inorganic (strange word for an Occultist to use) --
is that the whole Kosmos has sprung from the DIVINE THOUGHT. This thought
impregnates matter, which is co-eternal with the ONE REALITY; and all that
lives and breathes evolves from the emanations of the ONE Immutable --
Parabrahm = Mulaprakriti, the eternal one-root. The former of these is, so to
say, the aspect of the central point turned inward into regions quite
inaccessible to human intellect, and is absolute abstraction; whereas, in its
aspect as Mulaprakriti -- the eternal root of all, -- it gives one some hazy
comprehension at least of the Mystery of Being.
"Therefore,
it was taught in the inner temples that this visible universe of spirit and matter
is but the concrete image of the ideal abstraction; it was built on the model
of the first DIVINE IDEA. Thus our universe existed from Eternity in a latent
state. The soul animating this purely spiritual universe is the central sun,
the highest deity itself. It was not the One who built the concrete form of the
idea, but the first-begotten; and as it was constructed on the geometrical
figure of the dodecahedron,* the first-begotten 'was pleased to employ twelve
thousand years in its creation.' The latter number is expressed in the
Tyrrhenian cosmogony,** which shows man created in the sixth millennium. This
agrees with the Egyptian theory of 6,000 'years'*** and with the Hebrew
computation. But it is the exoteric form of it. The secret computation explains
that the 'twelve thousand and the 6,000 years' are YEARS OF BRAHMA -- one day
of Brahma being equal to 4,320,000,000 years. Sanchoniathon**** in his
Cosmogony, declares that when the wind (spirit) became enamoured of its own
principles (the chaos), an intimate union took place, which connection was
called pothos, and from this sprang the seed of all. And the chaos knew not its
own production, for it was senseless; but from its embrace with the wind was
generated Mot, or the ilus (mud).***** From this proceeded the spores of
creation and the generation of the universe.
"Zeus-Zen
(aether), and Chthonia (the chaotic earth) and Metis (the water), his wives;
Osiris and Isis-Latona -- the former god also representing ether -- the first
emanation of the Supreme Deity, Amun, the primeval source of light; the goddess
earth and water again; Mithras,****** the rock-born god, the symbol of the male
mundane-fire, or the personified primordial light, and Mithra, the
fire-goddess, at once his mother and his wife: the pure element of fire (the
active or male principle) regarded as light and heat, in conjunction with earth
and water, or matter (female, or passive, elements of Cosmical generation)
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Plato:
"Timaeus."
**
"Suidas" v. Tyrrhenia."
*** The reader
will understand that by "years" is meant "ages," not mere
periods of thirteen lunar months each.
**** See the
Greek translation by Philo Byblus.
***** Cory:
"Ancient Fragment."
****** Mithras
was regarded among the Persians as the Theos ekpetros -- god of the rock.
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Mithras is the
son of Bordj, the Persian mundane mountain,* from which he flashed out as a
radiant ray of light. Brahma, the fire-god, and his prolific consort; and the
Hindu Agni, the refulgent deity from whose body issue a thousand streams of
glory and seven tongues of flame, and in whose honour certain Brahmans preserve
to this day a perpetual fire; Siva, personated by the mundane mountain of the
Hindus, the Meru: these terrific fire-gods, who are said in the legend to have
descended from heaven, like the Jewish Jehovah, in a pillar of fire, and a
dozen other Archaic double-sexed deities, all loudly proclaim their hidden
meaning. And what could these dual myths mean but the psychochemical principle
of primordial creation? The first Evolution in its triple manifestation of
spirit, force and matter; the divine correllation at its starting point,
allegorized as the marriage of Fire and water, products of electrifying spirit,
union of the male active principle with the female passive element, which
become the parents of their tellurian child, cosmic matter, the prima materia,
whose soul is AEther, and whose shadow is the ASTRAL LIGHT!" (ISIS
UNVEILED).
The fragments of
the systems that have now reached us are rejected as absurd fables.
Nevertheless, occult Science -- having survived even the great Flood that
submersed the antediluvian giants and with them their very memory, save in the
Secret Doctrine, the Bible and other Scriptures -- still holds the Key to all
the world problems.
Let us apply
that Key to the rare fragments of long-forgotten cosmogonies and try by their
scattered parts to re-establish the once Universal Cosmogony of the Secret
Doctrine. The Key fits them all. No one can study ancient philosophies
seriously without perceiving that the striking similitude of conception between
all -- in their exoteric form very often, in their hidden spirit invariably --
is the result of no mere coincidence, but of a concurrent design: and that
there was, during the youth of mankind, one languages, one knowledge, one
universal religion, when there were no churches, no creeds or sects, but when
every man was a priest unto himself. And, if it is shown that already in those
ages which are shut out from our sight by the exuberant growth of tradition,
human religious thought developed in uniform sympathy in every portion of the
globe; then, it becomes evident that, born under whatever latitude, in the cold
North or the burning South, in the East or West, that thought was inspired by
the same revelations, and man was nurtured under the protecting shadow of the
same TREE OF KNOWLEDGE.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Bordj is
called a fire-mountain -- a volcano; therefore it contains fire, rock, earth
and water: the male, or active and the female, or passive, elements. The myth
is suggestive.
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§ IV.
CHAOS -- THEOS
-- KOSMOS.
THESE three are
the containment of Space; or, as a learned Kabalist has defined it,
"Space, the all containing uncontained, is the primary embodiment of
simply Unity. . . . boundless extension."* But, he asks again,
"boundless extension of what?" -- and makes the correct reply --
"The unknown container of all, the Unknown FIRST CAUSE." This is a
most correct definition and answer, most esoteric and true, from every aspect
of occult teaching.
SPACE, which, in
their ignorance and iconoclastic tendency to destroy every philosophic idea of
old, the modern wiseacres have proclaimed "an abstract idea" and a
void, is, in reality, the container and the body of the Universe with its seven
principles. It is a body of limitless extent, whose PRINCIPLES, in Occult
phraseology -- each being in its turn a septenary -- manifest in our phenomenal
world only the grossest fabric of their sub-divisions. "No one has ever
seen the Elements in their fulness," the Doctrine teaches. We have to
search for our Wisdom in the original expressions of the primeval people and in
their synonyms. Even the latest of them -- the Jews -- show in their Kabalistic
teachings this idea, e.g., the seven-headed Serpent of Space, called "the
great Sea." "In the beginning, the Alhim created the heavens and the
earth; the 6 (Sephiroth). . . . They created six, and on these all things are
based. And those (six) depend upon the seven forms of the cranium up to Dignity
of all Dignities (Siphrah Dzenioota, i, § 16), see part ii., vol. ii.
"Ancient Divisions and the Mystic Numbers."
Now Wind, Air
and Spirit have ever been synonymous with every nation. Pneuma (Spirit) and
Anemos (the wind) with the Greeks, Spiritus and Ventus with the Latins, were
convertible terms even if dissociated from the original idea of the breath of
life. In the "Forces" of Science we see but the material effect of
the spiritual affect of one or the other of the four primordial Elements,
transmitted to us by the 4th Race, as we shall transmit Ether (or rather the
gross subdivision of it) in its fulness to the Sixth Root Race. This is
explained in the text of this and the following Book.
"Chaos"
is called senseless by the ancients, because it represented and contained in
itself (Chaos and Space being synonymous) all the Elements in their
rudimentary, undifferentiated State. They made of Ether, the fifth element, the
synthesis of the other four; for the AEther of the Greek philosophers is not
its dregs -- of which indeed they knew more
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "New
Aspects of Life," by Henry Pratt, M.D.
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than science
does now -- which are rightly enough supposed to act as an agent for many
forces that manifest on Earth. Their AEther was the Akasa of the Hindus; the
Ether accepted in physics is but one of its subdivisions, on our plane, -- the
Astral Light of the Kabalists with all its evil as well as good effects.
On account of
the Essence of AEther, or the Unseen Space, being held divine as the supposed
veil of Deity, it was regarded as the medium between this life and the next
one. The ancients considered that when the directing active
"Intelligences" (the gods) retired from any portion of Ether in our
Space -- the four realms which they superintend -- then that particular place
was left in the possession of evil, so called by reason of the absence of the
Good from it.
"The
existence of spirit in the common mediator, the ether, is denied by
materialism; while theology makes of it a personal god. But the Kabalist holds
that both are wrong, saying that in ether, the elements represent but matter --
the blind cosmic forces of nature; while Spirit represents the intelligence
which directs them. The Aryan, Hermetic, Orphic, and Pythagorean cosmogonical
doctrines, as well as those of Sanchoniathon and Berosus, are all based upon
one irrefutable formula, viz., that the aether and chaos, or, in the Platonic
language, mind and matter, were the two primeval and eternal principles of the
universe, utterly independent of anything else. The former was the
all-vivifying intellectual principle; the chaos, a shapeless liquid principle,
without 'form or sense,' from the union of which two sprung into existence the
universe, or rather the universal world, the first androgynous deity -- the
chaotic matter becoming its body, and ether its soul. According to the
phraseology of a Fragment of Hermias, 'chaos, from this union with spirit,
obtaining sense, shone with pleasure, and thus was produced the Protogonos (the
first-born) light.'* This is the universal trinity, based on the metaphysical
conceptions of the ancients, who, reasoning by analogy, made of man, who is a
compound of intellect and matter, the microcosm of the macrocosm, or great
universe." (Isis Unveiled.)
"Nature
abhors Vacuum" said the Peripatetics, who comprehended perhaps, though
materialists in their way, why Democritus, with his instructor Leucippus,
taught that the first principles of all things contained in the Universe were
atoms and a vacuum. The latter means simply latent Deity or force; which,
before its first manifestation when it became WILL -- communicating the first
impulse to these atoms -- was the great Nothingness, Ain-Soph, or NO-THING;
was, therefore, to every sense, a Void -- or CHAOS.
That Chaos,
however, became the "Soul of the World," according to Plato and the
Pythagoreans. According to Hindu teaching, Deity in the shape of AEther (Akasa)
pervades all things; and it was called there-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Damascius, in
the "Theogony," calls it Dis, "the disposer of all things."
Cory, "Ancient Fragments," p. 314.
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fore by the
theurgists "the living fire," the "Spirit of Light," and
sometimes Magnes. It was the highest Deity itself which, according to Plato,
built the Universe in the geometrical form of the Dodecahedron; and its
"first begotten" was born of Chaos and Primordial Light (the Central
Sun). This "First-Born," however, was only the aggregate of the Host
of the "Builders," the first constructive Forces, who are called in
ancient Cosmogonies the Ancients (born of the Deep, or Chaos) and the
"First Point." He is the Tetragrammaton, so-called, at the head of
the Seven lower Sephiroth. This was the belief of the Chaldees. "These
Chaldeans," writes Philo, the Jew, speaking very flippantly of the first
instructors of his ancestors, "were of opinion that the Kosmos, among the
things that exist (?) is a single point, either being itself God (Theos) or
that in it is God, comprehending the soul of all things." (See his
"Migration of Abraham," 32.)
Chaos-Theos-Kosmos
are but the three aspects of their synthesis -- SPACE. One can never hope to
solve the mystery of this Tetraktis by holding to the dead-letter even of the
old philosophies, as now extant. But, even in these CHAOS-THEOS-KOSMOS = SPACE,
are identified in all Eternity, as the One Unknown Space, the last word about
which will, perhaps, never be known before our seventh Round. Nevertheless, the
allegories and metaphysical symbols about the primeval and perfect CUBE, are
remarkable even in the exoteric Puranas.
There, also,
Brahma is the Theos, evolving out of Chaos, or the great "Deep," the waters,
over which Spirit = SPACE, personified by ayana -- the Spirit moving over the
face of the future boundless Kosmos -- is silently hovering, in the first hour
of re-awakening. It is also Vishnu, sleeping on Ananta-Sesha, the great Serpent
of Eternity, of which Western theology, ignorant of the Kabala, the only key
that opens the secrets of the Bible, has made -- the Devil. It is the first
triangle or the Pythagorean triad, the "God of the three Aspects,"
before it is transformed through its perfect quadrature of the infinite Circle
into the "four-faced Brahma."
"Of him who
is and yet is not, from the not-being, Eternal Cause, is born the
Being-Purusha," says Manu, the legislator.
In Isis
Unveiled, it is said that:--
"In the
Egyptian mythology, Kneph, the Eternal Unrevealed God, is represented by a
snake emblem of Eternity encircling a water urn, with its head hovering over
the waters, which it incubates with its breath. In this case the serpent is the
Agathodaemon, the good spirit: in its opposite aspect, it is the Kakodaemon --
the bad one. In the Scandinavian Eddas, the honey dew, the fruit of the gods
and of the creative busy Yggdrasill (bees), falls during the hours of night,
when the atmosphere is impregnated with humidity; and in the Northern mythologies,
as the passive principle of creation, it typifies the
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creation of the universe
out of water; this dew is the astral light in one of its combinations, and
possesses creative as well as destructive properties. In the Chaldean legend of
Berosus, Oannes or Dagon, the man-fish, instructing the people, shows the
infant world created out of water, and all beings originating from this prima
materia. Moses teaches that only earth and water can bring a living soul: and
we read in the Scriptures that herbs could not grow until the Eternal caused it
to rain upon earth. In the Mexican Popol-Vuh, man is created out of mud or clay
(terre glaise), taken from under the water. Brahma creates the great Muni (or
first man) seated on his lotus, only after having called into being spirits who
thus enjoyed over mortals a priority of existence, and he creates him out of
water, air and earth. Alchemists claim that the primordial or pre-Adamic earth,
when reduced to its first substance, is in its second stage of transformation
like clear water, the first being the alkahest proper. This primordial substance
is said to contain within itself the essence of all that goes to make up man;
it has not only all the elements of his physical being, but even the
"breath of life" itself in a latent state, ready to be awakened. This
it derives from the "incubation" of the "Spirit of God"
upon the face of the waters -- CHAOS: in fact, this substance is chaos itself.
From this it was that Paracelsus claimed to be able to make his
"homunculi;" and this is why Thales, the great natural philosopher,
maintained that water was the principle of all things in nature.* . . . Job
says, in chap. xxvi. 5, that "dead things are formed from under the
waters, and inhabitants thereof." In the original text, instead of
"dead things," it is written dead Rephaim (giants or mighty primitive
men), from whom "Evolution" may one day trace our present race."
"In the
primordial state of the creation," says Polier's Mythologie des Indous,
"the rudimental universe, submerged in water, reposed in the bosom of
Vishnu. Sprung from this chaos and darkness, Brahma, the architect of the
world, poised on a lotus-leaf, floated (moved) upon the waters, unable to
discern anything but water and darkness." Perceiving such a dismal state
of things, Brahma soliloquises in consternation: "Who am I? Whence came I?"
Then he hears a voice:** "Direct your thoughts to Bhagavat." Brahma,
rising from his natatory position, seats himself upon the lotus in an attitude
of contemplation, and reflects upon the Eternal, who, pleased with this
evidence of piety, disperses the primeval darkness and opens his understanding.
"After this Brahma issues from the universal egg (infinite chaos) as
light, for his understanding is now opened, and he sets himself to work: he
moves on the eternal waters, with the spirit of God within himself; and in his
capacity of mover of the waters he is Vishnu, or Narayana." This is
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* With the
Greeks, the "River-gods," all of them the Sons of the primeval ocean
(Chaos in its masculine aspect), were the respective ancestors of the Hellenic
races. For them the OCEAN was the father of the Gods; and thus they had
anticipated in this connection the theories of Thales, as rightly observed by
Aristotle (Metaph. I., 3, 5).
** The
"Spirit," or hidden voice of the Mantras, the active manifestation of
the latent Force, or occult potency.
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exoteric, of
course, yet in its main idea as identical as possible with the Egyptian
cosmogony, which shows in its opening sentences Athtor,* or Mother Night (which
represents illimitable darkness), as the primeval element which covered the infinite
abyss, animated by water and the universal spirit of the Eternal, dwelling
alone in Chaos. Similarly in the Jewish Scriptures, the history of the creation
opens with the spirit of God and his creative emanation -- another Deity.**
The Zohar
teaches that it is the primordial elements -- the trinity of Fire, Air and
Water -- the four cardinal points, and all the Forces of Nature, which form
collectively the VOICE of the WILL Memrab, or the "Word," the Logos
of the Absolute Silent ALL. "The indivisible point, limitless and
unknowable" spreads itself over the endless space, and thus forms a veil
(the Mulaprakriti of Parabraham) which conceals this Absolute point. (Vide
infra).
In the
cosmogonies of all the nations it is the "Architects" synthesized by Demiurgos
(in the Bible the "Elohim"), who fashion Kosmos out of Chaos, and who
are the collective Theos, "male-female," Spirit and matter. "By
a series (yom) of foundations (hasoth) the Alhim caused earth and heaven to
be" (Gen. ii., 4). In the Bible it is first Alhim, then Jahva-Alhim, and
finally Jehovah --after the separation of the sexes in chapter iv. of Genesis.
It is noticeable that nowhere, except in the later, the last Cosmogonies of our
Fifth race, is the ineffable and unutterable NAME*** -- the symbol of the
Unknown Deity, which was used only in the MYSTERIES -- used in connection with
the "Creation" of the Universe. It is the "Movers," the
"Runners," the theoi (from [[theein]], "to run"), who do
the work of formation, the "Messengers" of the manvantaric law, who
have now become in Christianity the "messengers" (malachim); and it
seems the same in Hinduism or early Brahmanism. For it is not Brahma who
creates in the Rig Veda, but the Prajapati, the "Lords of Being," who
are the Rishis; the word Rishi (according to Professor Mahadeo Kunte) being
connected with the word to move, to lead on, applied to them in their
terrestrial character, when, as Patriarchs, they lead their hosts on the Seven
Rivers.
Moreover, the
very word "God" in the singular, embracing all the gods -- or theos
from theoi -- came to the "superior" civilized nations from a strange
source, one entirely and as pre-eminently phallic as the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Orthography of
the "Archaic Dictionary."
** We do not
mean the current or accepted Bible, but the real Jewish one, now explained
kabalistically.
*** It is
"unutterable" for the simple reason that it is non-existent. It never
was a name, nor any word at all, but an Idea that could not be expressed. A
substitute was created for it in the century preceding our era.
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sincere,
open-spoken lingham of India. The attempt to derive God from the Anglo-Saxon
synonym "good" is an abandoned idea, for in no other language, in all
of which the term varies more or less, from the Persian Khoda down to the Latin
Deus, has an instance been found of a name of God being derived from the
attribute of Goodness. To the Latin races it comes from the Aryan Dyaus (the
Day); to the Slavonian, from the Greek Bacchus (Bagh-bog); and to the Saxon
races directly from the Hebrew Yodh or Jod. The latter is [[diagram]], the
number-letter 10, male and female, and Jod the phallic hook:-- hence the Saxon
Godh, the Germanic Gott, and the English God. This symbolic term may be said to
represent the Creator of physical "Humanity," on the terrestrial plane;
but surely it had nothing to do with the formation or "Creation" of
Spirit, gods, or Kosmos!
Chaos-Theos-Kosmos,
the triple deity, is all in all. Therefore, it is said to be male and female,
good and evil, positive and negative: the whole series of contrasted qualities.
When latent (in pralaya) it is incognizable and becomes the unknowable Deity.
It can be known only in its active functions; hence as matter-Force and living
Spirit, the correlations and outcome, or the expression, on the visible plane,
of the ultimate and ever-to-be unknown UNITY.
In its turn this
triple unit is the producer of the four primary "Elements,"* which
are known in our visible terrestrial nature as the seven (so far the five)
Elements, each divisible into forty-nine (or seven times seven) sub-elements,
with about seventy of which Chemistry is acquainted. Every Cosmical Element
such as Fire, Air, Water, Earth, partaking of the qualities and defects of
their Primaries, are in their nature Good and Evil, Force (or Spirit) and Matter,
etc., etc.; and each, therefore, is at one and the same time Life and Death,
Health and Disease, Action and Reaction. (See Section XIV., "The Four
Elements.") They are ever and constantly forming matter under the
never-ceasing impulse of the ONE Element (the incognizable), represented in the
world of phenomena by 'AEther, or "the immortal gods who give birth and
life to all."
In "the
Philosophical writings of Solomon Ben Yehudah Ibn Gebirol" (translated in
Mr. Isaac Myer's Kabbalah, just published) it is said on the structure of the
Universe, "R. Yehudah began, it is written:-- 'Elohim said: Let there be a
firmament in the midst of the waters.' Come, see, at the time that the Holy. .
. . created the World, He
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Cosmic
Tabernacle of Moses, erected by him in the Desert, was square, representing the
four cardinal points and the four Elements, as Josephus tells his readers
(Antiq. 1, viii ch., xxii.) It is the idea taken from the pyramids in Egypt and
in Tyre, where the pyramids became pillars, the Genii, or Angels have their
abodes in the four respective points (See § xiv.; "The Four
Elements.")
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created 7
heavens above, 7 earths below, 7 seas, 7 days, 7 rivers, 7 weeks, 7 years, 7
times, and 7,000 years that the world has been. The Holy is the seventh of
all," etc. (p. 415).
This, besides
showing a strange identity with the cosmogony of the Puranas (e.g., Vishnu
Purana 1st Book), corroborates with regard to number seven, all our teachings
as briefly given in "Esoteric Buddhism."
The Hindus have
an endless series of allegories to express this idea. In the primordial Chaos,
before it became developed into the Seven Oceans (Sapta Samudra) --
emblematical of the seven gunas (conditioned qualities) composed of trigunas
(Satwa, Rajas and Tamas, see Puranas) -- lie latent both Amrita (immortality)
and Visha (poison, death, evil). This allegory is found in the "Churning
of the Ocean" by the gods. Amrita is beyond any guna, for it is
UNCONDITIONED per se; yet when fallen into the phenomenal creation it got mixed
up with EVIL, Chaos, with latent theos in it, and before Kosmos was evolved.
Hence, one finds Vishnu -- standing here for eternal Law -- periodically
calling forth Kosmos into activity -- "churning out of the primitive Ocean
(boundless Chaos) the Amrita of Eternity, reserved only for the gods and devas;
and he has to employ in the task Nagas and Asuras -- demons in exoteric
Hinduism. The whole allegory is highly philosophical, and we find it repeated
in every philosophical System. Plato, having fully embraced the ideas of
Pythagoras -- who had brought them from India -- compiled and published them in
a form more intelligible than the mysterious numerals of the Greek Sage. Thus
the Kosmos is "the Son" with Plato, having for his father and mother
the Divine Thought and Matter.*
"The
Egyptians," says Dunlap,** "distinguish between an older and younger
Horus; the former the brother of Osiris, the latter the son of Osiris and
Isis." The first is the Idea of the world remaining in the Demiurgic Mind,
"born in darkness before the creation of the world." The second Horus
is this "Idea" going forth from the Logos, becoming clothed with
matter, and assuming an actual existence.***
"The
Mundane God, eternal, boundless, young and old, of winding form,"**** say
the Chaldean oracles.
This
"winding form" is a figure to express the vibratory motion of the
Astral Light, with which the ancient priests were perfectly well acquainted,
though its name was invented by the Martinists.
Now Cosmolatry
has the finger of scorn pointed at its superstitions by modern Science, which
ought, however, as advised by a French
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Plutarch,
"Isis and Osiris," I., vi.
** "Spirit
History of Man," p. 88.
*** Mover's
"Phoinizer," 268.
**** Cory,
"Fragments," 240.
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savant, before
laughing at it "to remodel entirely its own system of
cosmo-pneumatological education." Satis eloquentiae, sapientiae parvum.
Cosmolatry like Pantheism may be made to yield in its ultimate expression the
words applied to Vishnu . . . . "He is only the ideal Cause of the
Potencies to be created in the work of creation; and from him proceed the
potencies to be created, after they have become the real cause. Save that one
ideal cause, there is no other to which the world can be referred. . . .
Through the potency of that cause, every created thing comes by its proper
nature." (Original Sanskrit Texts, Part iv., pp. 32, 33.)
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§ V.
ON THE HIDDEN
DEITY, ITS SYMBOLS AND GLYPHS.
THE Logos or
Creative deity, the "Word made Flesh," of every religion, has to be
traced to its ultimate source and Essence. In India, it is a Proteus of 1,008
divine names and aspects in each of its personal transformations, from
Brahma-Purusha down through the Seven divine Rishis and ten semi-divine
Prajapati (also Rishis) to the divine-human Avatars. The same puzzling problem
of the "One in many" and the multitude in One, is found in other
Pantheons, in the Egyptian, the Greek and the Chaldeo-Judaic, the latter having
made confusion still more confused by presenting its Gods as euhemerizations,
in the shapes of Patriarchs. The latter are now accepted by those who reject
Romulus as a myth, and are represented as living and historical Entities.
Verbum satis sapienti.
In the Zohar,
En-Soph is also the ONE, and the infinite Unity. This was known to the very few
learned Fathers of the Church, who were aware that Jehovah was but a third rate
potency and no "highest" God. But while complaining bitterly of the
Gnostics and saying . . . "our Heretics hold . . . that PROPATOR is known
but to the Only begotten Son* (who is Brahma among the rest) that is to the
mind" (nous), Irenaeus never mentioned that the Jews did the same in their
real secret books. Valentinus, "the profoundest doctor of the
Gnosis," held that "there was a perfect AION who existed before
Bythos, or Buthon (the first father of unfathomable nature, which is the second
Logos) called Propator." It is thus AION, who springs as a Ray from
Ain-Soph (who does not create), and AION, who creates, or through whom, rather,
everything is created, or evolves.
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* As
Mulaprakriti is known only to Iswar, the LOGOS, as he is called now by Mr. T.
Subba Row, of Madras. (See his Bhagavadgita Lectures.)
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For, as the
Basilidians taught, "there was a supreme god, Abraxas, by whom was created
mind" (Mahat, in Sanskrit, Nous in Greek). "From Mind proceeded the
word, Logos, from the word, Providence (Divine Light, rather), then from it
Virtue and Wisdom in Principalities, Powers, Angels, etc., etc." By these
(Angels) the 365 AEons were created. "Amongst the lowest, indeed, and
those who made this world, he (Basilides) sets last of all the God of the Jews,
whom he denies to be God (and very rightly), affirming he is one of the
angels" (Ibid.). Here, then, we find the same system as in the Puranas, wherein
the Incomprehensible drops a seed, which becomes the golden egg, from which
Brahma is produced. Brahma produces Mahat, etc., etc. True Esoteric philosophy,
however, speaks neither of "creation" nor of "evolution" in
the sense the exoteric religions do. All these personified Powers are not
evolutions from one another, but so many aspects of the one and sole
manifestation of the ABSOLUTE all. The same system as the gnostic prevails in
the Sephirothal aspects of Ain-Soph, yet, as these aspects are in Space and
Time, a certain order is maintained in their successive appearances. Therefore,
it becomes impossible not to take notice of the great changes that the Zohar
has undergone under the handling of generations of Christian Mystics. For, even
in the metaphysics of the Talmud, the "lower Face" (or "Lesser
Countenance"), the microprosopus, in fact, could never be placed on the
plane of the same abstract ideal as the Higher, or "Greater
Countenance," macroprosopus. The latter is, in the Chaldean Kabala, a pure
abstraction; the Word or LOGOS, or DABAR (in Hebrew), which Word, though it
becomes in fact a plural number, or "Words" -- D(a)B(a)RIM, when it
reflects itself, or falls into the aspect of a Host (of angels, or Sephiroth,
"numbers") is still collectively ONE, and on the ideal plane a nought
-- 0, a "No-thing." IT is without form or being, "with no
likeness with anything else." (Franck, "Die Kabbala," p. 126.)
And even Philo calls the Creator, the Logos who stands next God, "the
SECOND GOD," and "the second God who is his (Highest God's)
WISDOM" (Philo. Quaest. et Solut). Deity is not God. It is NOTHING, and
DARKNESS. It is nameless, and therefore called Ain-Soph -- "the word Ayin
meaning nothing." See Franck "Die Kabbala," p. 153. See also
Section XII., "Theogony of the Creative Gods." The "Highest
God" (the unmanifested LOGOS) is its Son.
Nor are most of
the gnostic systems, which come down to us mutilated by the Church Fathers,
anything better than the distorted shells of the original speculations. Nor
were they open to the public or reader, at any time; i.e., had their hidden
meaning or esotericism been revealed, it would have been no more an esoteric
teaching, and this could never be. Alone Marcus (the chief of the Marcosians,
2nd century), who taught
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that deity had
to be viewed under the symbol of four syllables, gave out more of the esoteric
truths than any other Gnostic. But even he was never well understood. For it is
only on the surface or dead letter of his Revelation that it appears that God
is a quaternary, to wit: "the Ineffable, the Silence, the Father, and
Truth," -- in reality it is quite erroneous, and divulges only one more
esoteric riddle. This teaching of Marcus was that of the early Kabalists and
ours. For he makes of Deity, the number 30 in 4 syllables, which, translated
esoterically, means a Triad or Triangle, and a Quaternary or a square, in all
seven, which, on the lower plane made the seven divine or secret letters of
which the God-name is composed. This requires demonstration. In his
"Revelation," speaking of divine mysteries expressed by means of
letters and numbers, Marcus narrates how the "Supreme Tetrad came down
unto me (him) from the region which cannot be seen nor named, in a female form,
because the world would have been unable to bear her appearing under a male
figure," and revealed to him "the generation of the universe, untold
before to either gods or men."
This first
sentence already contains a double meaning. Why should a female figure be more
easily borne or listened to by the world than a male figure? On the very face of
it this appears nonsensical. Withal it is quite simple and clear to one who is
acquainted with the mystery-language. Esoteric Philosophy, or the Secret
Wisdom, was symbolized by a female form, while a male figure stood for the
Unveiled mystery. Hence, the world not being ready to receive, could not bear
it, and the Revelation of Marcus had to be given allegorically. Then he writes:
"When first
the Inconceivable, the Beingless and Sexless (the Kabalistic Ain-Soph) began to
be in labour (i.e., when the hour of manifesting Itself had struck) and desired
that Its Ineffable should be born (the first LOGOS, or AEon, or Aion), and its
invisible should be clothed with form, its mouth opened and uttered the word
like unto itself. This word (logos) manifested itself in the form of the
Invisible One. The uttering of the (ineffable) name (through the word) came to
pass in this manner. He (the Supreme Logos) uttered the first word of his name,
which is a syllable of four letters. Then the second syllable was added, also
of four letters. Then the third, composed of ten letters; and after this the
fourth, which contains twelve letters. The whole name consists thus of thirty
letters and of four syllables. Each letter has its own accent and way of
writing, but neither understands nor ever beholds that form of the whole Name,
-- no; not even the power of the letter that stands next to Itself (to the
Beingless and the Inconceivable.)* All these sounds when united are the
collective Beingless,
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* Iswara, or the
Logos, cannot see Parabrahmam, but only Mulaprakriti, says the lecturer, in the
Four Lectures on Bhagavatgita. (See Theosophist, Feb., 1887.)
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unbegotten AEon,
and these are the Angels that are ever beholding the face of the Father* (the
Logos, the "second God," who stands next God, "the
Inconceivable," according to Philo).
This is as plain
as ancient esoteric secrecy would make it. It is as Kabalistic, but less veiled
than the Zohar in which the mystic names or attributes are also four syllabled,
twelve, forty-two, and even seventy-two syllabled words! The Tetrad shows to
Marcus the TRUTH in the shape of a naked woman, and letters every limb of that
figure, calling her head [[omega]], her neck [[psi]], shoulders and hands
[[gamma]], and [[chi]], etc., etc. In this Sephira is easily recognised, the
Crown (Kether) or head being numbered one; the brain or Chochmah, 2; the heart,
or Intelligence (Binah), 3; and the other seven Sephiroth representing the
limbs of the body. The Sephirothal Tree is the Universe, and Adam Kadmon
represents it in the West as Brahma represents it in India.
Throughout, the
10 Sephiroth are represented as divided into the three higher, or the spiritual
Triad, and the lower Septenary. The true Esoteric meaning of the sacred number
seven is cleverly veiled in the Zohar; yet was betrayed by the double way of
writing "in the beginning" or Be-resheeth, and Be-raishath, the
latter the "Higher, or Upper Wisdom." As shown by Mr. Macgregor
Mathers in his Kabbalah (p. 47), and in the Qabbalah of Mr. T. Myer (p. 233),
both of these Kabalists being supported by the best ancient authorities, these
words have a dual and secret meaning. Braisheeth bara Elohim means that the
six, over which stands the seventh Sephiroth, belong to the lower material
class, or, as the author says: "Seven . . . . are applied to the Lower
Creation, and three to the spiritual man, the Heavenly Prototypic or first
Adam."
When the
Theosophists and Occultists say that God is no BEING, for IT is nothing,
No-Thing, they are more reverential and religiously respectful to the Deity
than those who call God a HE, and thus make of Him a gigantic MALE.
He who studies
the Kabala will soon find the same idea in the ultimate thought of its authors,
the earlier and great Hebrew Initiates, who got this secret Wisdom at Babylonia
from the Chaldean Hierophants, while Moses got his in Egypt. The Zohar cannot
well be judged by its after translations in Latin and other tongues, as all
those ideas were, of course, softened and made to fit in with the views and
policy of its Christian arrangers; but in truth its ideas are identical with
those of all other religious systems. The various Cosmogonies show that the
Archaic Universal Soul was held by every nation as the "Mind" of the
Demiurgic Creator; and that it
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The
"Seven Angels of the Face," with the Christians.
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was called the
"Mother," Sophia with the Gnostics (or the female Wisdom), the
Sephira with the Jews, Saraswati or Vach, with the Hindus, the Holy Ghost being
a female Principle.
Hence, born from
it, the Kurios or Logos was, with the Greeks, the "God, mind" (nous).
"Now Koros (Kurios) signifies the pure and unmixed nature of intellect --
wisdom," says Plato in "Cratylus"; and Kurios is Mercury, the
Divine Wisdom, and "mercury is the Sol" (Sun) ("Arnobius"
vi., xii.), from whom Thot-Hermes received this divine Wisdom. While, then, the
Logoi of all countries and religions are correlative (in their sexual aspects)
with the female Soul of the World or the "Great Deep;" the deity,
from which these two in one have their being, is ever concealed and called the
"Hidden One," connected only indirectly with Creation,* as it can act
only through the Dual Force emanating from the Eternal Essence. Even
AEsculapius, called the "Saviour of all," is identical, according to
ancient classics, with Phta, the Egyptian Creative Intellect (or Divine
Wisdom), and with Apollo, Baal, Adonis and Hercules (see Dunlap's "Mystery
of Adonis," pp. 23 and 95); and Phta is, in one of its aspects, the
"Anima Mundi," the Universal Soul of Plato, the "Divine
Spirit" of the Egyptians, the "Holy Ghost" of the early
Christians and Gnostics, and the Akasa of the Hindus, and even, in its lower
aspect, the Astral Light. For Phta was originally the "God of the Dead,"
he in whose bosom they were received, hence the Limbus of the Greek Christians,
or the Astral Light. It is far later that Phta was classed with the Sun-gods,
his name signifying "he who opens," as he is shown to be the first to
unveil the face of the dead mummy, to call the soul to life in his bosom. (See
Maspero's "Bulaq Museum.") KNEPH, the Eternal Unrevealed, is
represented by the snake-emblem of eternity encircling a water-urn, with its
head hovering over the "waters" which it incubates with its breath --
another form of one and the same idea of "Darkness," its ray moving
on the waters, &c. As "Logos-Soul," this permutation is called
Phta; as Logos-Creator, he becomes Imhot-pou, his son, "the god of the
handsome face." In their primitive characters these two were the first Cosmic
Duad, Noot, "space or Sky," and Noo, "the primordial
Waters," the Androgyne Unity, above whom was the Concealed BREATH of
Kneph. And all of them had the aquatic animals and plants sacred to them, the
ibis, the swan, the goose, the crocodile, and the lotus.
Returning to the
Kabalistic deity, this Concealed Unity is then [[hebrew]] = [[to pan]] =
[[apeiros]], Endless, Boundless, non-Existent, [[hebrew]] so
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* We use the
term as one accepted and sanctioned by use, and therefore more comprehensible
to the reader.
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long as the
Absolute is within Oulom,* the boundless and termless time, as such, En-Soph
cannot be the Creator or even the modeller of the Universe, nor can he be Aur
(light). Therefore En-Soph is also Darkness. The immutably Infinite and the
absolutely Boundless can neither will, think, nor act. To do this it has to
become finite, and it does so, by its ray penetrating into the mundane egg --
infinite space -- and emanating from it as a finite god. All this is left to
the ray latent in the one. When the period arrives, the absolute will expands
naturally the force within it, according to the Law of which it is the inner
and ultimate Essence. The Hebrews did not adopt the egg as a symbol, but they
substituted for it the "Duplex heavens," for, translated correctly,
the sentence "God made the heavens and the earth" would read:--
"In and out of his own essence as a womb (the mundane egg), God created
the two heavens." But the Christians have chosen as the symbol of their
Holy Ghost, the dove.
"Whosoever
acquaints himself with [[hebrew]] the Mercaba and the lahgash (secret speech or
incantation), will learn the secret of secrets." Lahgash is nearly
identical in meaning with Vach, the hidden power of the Mantras.
When the active
period has arrived, from within the eternal essence of Ain-Soph, comes forth
Sephira, the active Power, called the Primordial Point, and the Crown, Kether.
It is only through her that the "Un-bounded Wisdom" could give a
concrete form to the abstract Thought. Two sides of the upper triangle by which
the ineffable Essence and the universe -- its manifested body -- are
symbolized, the right side and the base are composed of unbroken lines; the
third, the left side, is dotted. It is through the latter that emerges Sephira.
Spreading in every direction, she finally encompasses the whole triangle. In
this emanation the triple triad is formed. From the invisible Dew falling from
the higher Uni-triad (thus leaving 7 sephiroths only), the "Head"
Sephira creates primeval waters, i.e., Chaos takes shape. It is the first stage
towards the solidification of spirit which through various modifications will
produce earth. "It requires earth and water to make a living soul,"
says Moses. It requires the image of an aquatic bird to connect it with water,
the female element of procreation with the egg and the bird that fecundates it.
When Sephira
emerges like an active power from within the latent Deity, she is female; when
she assumes the office of a creator, she becomes a male; hence, she is
androgyne. She is the "Father and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* With the
ancient Jews, as shown by Le Clerc, the word Oulom meant only a time whose
beginning or end is not known. The term "eternity," properly
speaking, did not exist in the Hebrew tongue with the meaning, for instance,
applied by the Vedantins to Parabrahm.
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Mother
Aditi," of the Hindu Cosmogony and of the Secret Doctrine. If the oldest
Hebrew scrolls had been preserved, the modern Jehovah-worshipper would have found
that many and uncomely were the symbols of the creative god. The frog in the
moon, typical of his generative character, was the most frequent. All the birds
and animals now held "unclean" in the Bible had been the symbols of
the Deity in days of old. It was because they were too sacred that a mask of
uncleanness was placed over them, in order to preserve them from destruction.
The brazen serpent was not a bit more poetical than the goose or swan, if
symbols are to be accepted a la lettre.
In the words of
the Zohar: "The Indivisible Point, which has no limit and cannot be
comprehended because of its purity and brightness, expanded from without,
forming a brightness that served the indivisible Point as a veil;" yet the
latter also "could not be viewed in consequence of its immeasurable light.
It too expanded from without, and this expansion was its garment. Thus through
a constant upheaving (motion) finally the world originated" (Zohar I.
20a). The Spiritual substance sent forth by the Infinite Light is the first
Sephira or Shekinah: Sephira exoterically contains all the other nine
Sephiroths in her. Esoterically she contains but two,* Chochmah or Wisdom,
"a masculine, active potency whose divine name is Jah ([[diagram]]),"
and BINAH, a feminine passive potency, Intelligence, represented by the divine
name Jehovah ([[diagram]]); which two potencies form, with Sephira the third,
the Jewish trinity or the Crown, KETHER. These two Sephiroths called Father,
Abba, and Mother Amona, are the duad or the double-sexed logos from which
issued the other seven Sephiroths. (See Zohar.) This first Jewish triad
(Sephira, Chochmah, and Binah) is the Hindu Trimurti.* However veiled, even in
the Zohar, and more still in the exoteric Pantheon of India, every particular
connected with one is reproduced in the other. The Prajapati are the
Sephiroths. Ten with Brahma they dwindle to seven, when the Trimurti, and the
Kabalistic triad, are separated from the rest. The seven Builders (Creators)
become the seven Prajapati, or the seven Rishis, in the same order as the
Sephiroths become the Creators; then the Patriarchs, etc. In both Secret
Systems, the One Universal Essence is incomprehensible and inactive in its
absoluteness, and can be connected with the building of the Universe only in an
indirect way. In both, the primeval Malefemale or androgynous Principle, and
their ten and seven Emanations (Brahma-Viraj and Aditi-Vach on the one part and
the Elohim-Jehovah, or Adam-Adami (Adam Kadmon) and Sephira Eve on the
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* In the Indian
Pantheon the double-sexed Logos is Brahma, the Creator, whose seven "mind
born" sons are the primeval Rishis -- the "Builders."
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other), with
their Prajapati and Sephiroths, represent in their totality, first of all the
Archetypal man, the Proto-logos; and only in their secondary aspect do they
become Cosmic powers, and astronomical or sidereal bodies. If Aditi is the
mother of the gods, Deva-Matri, Eve is the mother of all living; they are the
Sakti or generative power in their female aspect of the "Heavenly man,"
and they are all compound Creators. Says a "Gupta Vidya" Sutra:
"In the beginning, a ray issuing from Paramarthika (the one and only true
existence), it became manifested in Vyavaharika (conventional existence) which
was used as a Vahan to descend into the Universal Mother, and to cause her to
expand (swell, brih)." And in the Zohar it is stated: "The Infinite
Unity, formless and without similitude, after the form of the heavenly man was
created, used it. The Unknown Light* (Darkness) used the [[hebrew]](heavenly form)
as a chariot [[hebrew]] through which to descend, and wished to be called by
this form, which is the sacred name Jehovah."
As the Zohar
says: "In the beginning was the Will of the King, prior to any other
existence. . . . It (the Will) sketched the forms of all things that had been
concealed but now came into view. And there went forth as a sealed secret from
the head of Ain Soph, a nebulous spark of matter, without shape or form. . . .
Life is drawn from below, and from above the source renews itself, the sea is
always full and spreads its waters everywhere." Thus the deity is compared
to a shoreless sea, to water which is "the fountain of life" (Zohar
iii., 290). "The seventh palace, the fountain of life, is the first in the
order from above" (ii. 261). Hence the Kabalistic tenet on the lips of the
very Kabalistic Solomon, who says in Proverbs ix., 1: "Wisdom hath builded
her house; it hath hewn out its seven pillars."
Whence then, all
this identity of ideas, if there was no primeval UNIVERSAL Revelation? The few
points shown are like a few straws in a hayrick, in comparison to that which
will be shown as the work proceeds. If we turn to that most hazy of all
Cosmogonies -- the Chinese, even there the same idea is found. Tsi-tsai (the
Self-Existent) is the unknown Darkness, the root of the Wuliang-sheu (Boundless
Age), Amitabhe, and Tien (heaven) come later on. The "great Extreme"
of Confucius gives the same idea, his "straws" notwithstanding. The
latter are a source of great amusement to the missionaries. These laugh at
every "heathen" religion, despise and hate that of their
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Says Rabbi
Simeon: "Ah, companions, companions, man as an emanation was both man and
woman, as well on the side of the 'Father' as on the side of the 'Mother.' And
this is the sense of the words: 'And Elohim spoke; Let there be Light, and it
was Light' . . . and this is the two-fold man." ("Auszuge aus dem
Sohar," p. 13, 15.) Light, then, in Genesis stood for the Androgyne Ray or
"Heavenly Man."
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brother
Christians of other denominations, and yet one and all accept a la lettre their
own Genesis. If we turn to Chaldea we find in it Anu, the concealed deity, the
One, whose name, moreover, shows it to be of Sanskrit origin. Anu, which means
in Sanskrit "atom," aniyamsam aniyasam (smallest of the small), is a
name of Parabrahm in the Vedantic philosophy; Parabrahm being described as
smaller than the smallest atom, and greater than the greatest sphere or
universe: "Anagraniyam and Mahatorvavat." This is what George Smith
gives as the first verses of the Akkadian Genesis as found in the Cuneiform
Texts on the "Lateras Coctiles." There also, we find Anu the passive
deity or En-Soph, Bel, the Creator, the Spirit of God (Sephira) moving on the
face of the waters, hence water itself, and Hea, the Universal Soul or wisdom
of the three combined.
The first eight
verses read thus:
1. When above,
were not raised the heavens;
2. And below on
the earth a plant had not grown up.
3. The abyss had
not broken its boundaries.
4. The chaos (or
water) Tiamat (the sea) was the producing mother of the whole of them. (This is
the Cosmical Aditi and Sephira.)
5. Those waters
at the beginning were ordained but --
6. A tree had
not grown, a flower had not unfolded.
7. When the gods
had not sprung up, any one of them.
8. A plant had
not grown, and order did not exist.
This was the
chaotic or ante-genetic period -- the double Swan and the Dark Swan, which
becomes white, when Light is created.*
The symbol
chosen for the majestic ideal of the Universal Principle will seem little
calculated to answer its sacred character. A goose, or even a swan, may appear
unfit, no doubt, to represent the grandeur of the Spirit. Nevertheless, it must
have had some deep occult meaning, since it figures not only in every cosmogony
and world religion, but even was chosen by the mediaeval Christians, the
Crusaders, as the vehicle of the Holy Ghost supposed to lead the army to
Palestine, to wrench the Tomb of the Saviour from the hands of the Saracen. If
we are to credit Professor Draper's statement in his "Intellectual
Development of Europe," the Crusaders, led on by Peter the Hermit, were
preceded, at the head of the army, by the Holy Ghost under the shape of a white
gander in company of a goat. The Egyptian God of Time, Seb, carries a goose on
his head. Jupiter assumes the form of a swan and Brahma also, because the root
of all this is that mystery of mysteries -- the MUNDANE EGG. (See preceding §).
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Seven
Swans that are believed to land from Heaven into Lake Mansarovara, are in the
popular fancy the Seven Rishis of the Great Bear, who assume that form to visit
the locality where the Vedas were written.
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One has to learn
the reason of a symbol before one depreciates it. The dual element of Air and
Water is that of the ibis, swan, goose and pelican, of crocodiles and frogs,
lotus flowers and water lilies, &c.; and the result is the choice of the
most unseemly symbols among the modern as much as the ancient mystics. Pan, the
great god of nature, was generally figured in connection with aquatic birds,
geese especially, and so were other gods. If, later on, with the gradual
degeneration of religion, the gods to whom geese were sacred, became Priapic
deities, it does not stand to reason that water fowls were made sacred to Pan
and other Phallic deities as some scoffers even of antiquity would have it (see
Petronii Satyrica, cxxxvi.); but that the abstract and divine power of
procreative nature had become grossly anthropomorphized. Nor does the Swan of
Leda show "Priapic doings and her enjoyment thereof," as Mr. Hargrave
Jennings chastely expresses it -- for the myth is but another version of the
same philosophical idea of cosmogony. Swans are frequently found associated
with Apollo, as they are the emblems of water and fire (sun-light also), before
the separation of the Elements.
Our modern
symbologists might profit by some remarks made by a well-known writer, Mrs.
Lydia Maria Child. "From time immemorial an emblem has been worshipped in
Hindostan as the type of creation, or the origin of life. . . . Siva or the
Mahadeva being not only the reproducer of human forms, but also the fructifying
principle, the generative power that pervades the Universe. The maternal emblem
is likewise a religious type. This reverence for the production of life,
introduced into the worship of Osiris the sexual emblems. Is it strange that
they regarded with reverence the great mystery of human birth? Were they impure
thus to regard it? Or are we impure that do not so regard it? But no clean and
thoughtful mind could so regard them. . . . We have travelled far, and unclean
have been the paths, since those old Anchorites first spoke of God and the soul
in the solemn depths of their first sanctuaries. Let us not smile at their mode
of tracing the infinite and the incomprehensible Cause throughout all the
mysteries of nature, lest by so doing we cast the shadow of our own grossness
on their patriarchal simplicity." ("Progress of Religious
Ideas," Vol. 1, p. 17, et seq.)
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§ VI.
THE MUNDANE EGG.
WHENCE this
universal symbol? The Egg was incorporated as a sacred sign in the cosmogony of
every people on the Earth, and was revered both on account of its form and its
inner mystery. From the earliest mental conceptions of man, it was known as
that which represented most successfully the origin and secret of being. The
gradual development of the imperceptible germ within the closed shell; the
inward working, without any apparent outward interference of force, which from
a latent nothing produced an active something, needing nought save heat; and
which, having gradually evolved into a concrete, living creature, broke its
shell, appearing to the outward senses of all a self-generated, and
self-created being -- must have been a standing miracle from the beginning.
The secret
teaching explains the reason for this reverence by the Symbolism of the prehistoric
races. The "First Cause" had no name in the beginnings. Later it was
pictured in the fancy of the thinkers as an ever invisible, mysterious Bird
that dropped an Egg into Chaos, which Egg becomes the Universe. Hence Brahm was
called Kalahansa, "the swan in (Space and) Time." He became the
"Swan of Eternity," who lays at the beginning of each Mahamanvantara
a "Golden Egg." It typifies the great Circle, or O, itself a symbol
for the universe and its spherical bodies.
The second
reason for its having been chosen as the symbolical representation of the
Universe, and of our earth, was its form. It was a Circle and a Sphere; and the
ovi-form shape of our globe must have been known from the beginning of
symbology, since it was so universally adopted. The first manifestation of the
Kosmos in the form of an egg was the most widely diffused belief of antiquity.
As Bryant shows (iii., 165), it was a symbol adopted among the Greeks, the
Syrians, Persians, and Egyptians. In chap. liv. of the Egyptian Ritual, Seb,
the god of Time and of the Earth, is spoken of as having laid an egg, or the
Universe, "an egg conceived at the hour of the great one of the Dual
Force" (Sec. V., 2, 3, etc.).
Ra is shown like
Brahma gestating in the Egg of the Universe. The deceased is "resplendent
in the Egg of the land of mysteries" (xxii., 1). For, this is "the
Egg to which is given life among the gods" (xlii., 11). "It is the
Egg of the great clucking Hen, the Egg of Seb, who issues from it like a hawk"
(lxiv., 1, 2, 3; lxxvii., 1).
With the Greeks
the Orphic Egg is described by Aristophanes, and was part of the Dionysiac and
other mysteries, during which
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the Mundane Egg
was consecrated and its significance explained; Porphyry showing it a
representation of the world, [[Ermenenei de to oon kosmon]]. Faber and Bryant
have tried to show that the egg typified the ark of Noah, which, unless the
latter is accepted as purely allegorical and symbolical, is a wild belief. It
can have typified the ark only as a synonym of the moon, the argha which
carries the universal seed of life; but had surely nothing to do with the ark
of the Bible. Anyhow, the belief that the universe existed in the beginning in
the shape of an egg was general. And as Wilson has it: "A similar account
of the first aggregation of the elements in the form of an egg is given in all
the (Indian) Puranas, with the usual epithet Haima or Hiranya, 'golden' as it
occurs in Manu." Hiranya, however, means "resplendent,"
"shining," rather than "golden," as proven by the great
Indian scholar, the late Swami Dayanand Sarasvati, in his unpublished polemics
with Professor Max Muller. As said in the Vishnu Purana: "Intellect
(Mahat) . . . the (unmanifested) gross elements inclusive, formed an egg . . .
and the lord of the Universe himself abided in it, in the character of Brahma.
In that egg, O Brahman, were the continents, and seas and mountains, the
planets and divisions of the universe, the gods, the demons and mankind."
(Book i., ch. 2.) Both in Greece and in India the first visible male being, who
united in himself the nature of either sex, abode in the egg and issued from
it. This "first born of the world" was Dionysius, with some Greeks;
the god who sprang from the mundane egg, and from whom the mortals and
immortals were derived. The god Ra is shown in the Ritual (Book of the Dead,
xvii., 50) beaming in his egg (the Sun), and he starts off as soon as the god
Shoo (the Solar energy) awakens and gives him the impulse. "He is in the
Solar egg, the egg to which is given life among the gods" (Ibid., xlii.,
13). The Solar god exclaims: "I am the creative soul of the celestial
abyss. None sees my nest, none can break my egg, I am the Lord!" (Ibid.,
LXXXV.).
In view of this
circular form, the "|" issuing from the "[[diagram]]," or
the egg, or the male from the female in the androgyne, it is strange to find a
scholar saying -- on the ground that the most ancient Indian MSS. show no trace
of it -- that the ancient Aryans were ignorant of the decimal notation. The 10,
being the sacred number of the universe, was secret and esoteric, both as the
unit and cipher, or zero, the circle. Moreover, Professor Max Muller says that
"the two words cipher and zero, which are but one, are sufficient to prove
that our figures are borrowed from the Arabs.* Cipher is the Arabic
"cifron," and means
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Max
Muller's "Our Figures."
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empty, a translation
of the Sanscrit name of nought "sunya," he says.* The Arabs had their
figures from Hindustan, and never claimed the discovery for themselves.** As to
the Pythagoreans, we need but turn to the ancient manuscripts of Boethius's
Geometry, composed in the sixth century, to find among the Pythagorean
numerals*** the 1 and the nought, as the first and final ciphers. And Porphyry,
who quotes from the Pythagorean Moderatus,**** says that the numerals of
Pythagoras were "hieroglyphical symbols, by means whereof he explained
ideas concerning the nature of things," or the origin of the universe.
Now, if, on the
other hand, the most ancient Indian manuscripts show as yet no trace of decimal
notation in them, and Max Muller states very clearly that until now he has
found but nine letters (the initials of the Sanscrit numerals) in them; on the
other hand, we have records as ancient to supply the wanted proof. We speak of
the sculptures and the sacred imagery in the most ancient temples of the far
East. Pythagoras derived his knowledge from India; and we find Professor Max
Muller corroborating this statement, at least so far as to allow the
Neo-Pythagoreans to have been the first teachers of "ciphering,"
among the Greeks and Romans; that "they at Alexandria, or in Syria, became
acquainted with the Indian figures, and adapted them to the Pythagorean
abacus" (our figures). This cautious admission implies that Pythagoras
himself was acquainted with but nine figures. Thus we might reasonably answer
that, although we possess no certain proof (exoterically) that the decimal
notation was known by Pythagoras, who lived on the very close of the archaic
ages,***** we have yet sufficient evidence to show that the full numbers, as
given by Boethius, were known to the Pythagoreans, even before Alexandria was
built.****** This evidence we find in Aristotle, who says that "some
philosophers hold that ideas and numbers are of the same nature, and amount to
TEN in all."******* This, we believe, will be sufficient to show that the
decimal notation was known among them at least as early as four centuries B.C.,
for Aristotle does not seem to treat the question as an innovation of the
"Neo-Pythagoreans."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* A Kabalist would
be rather inclined to believe that as the Arabic cifron was taken from the
Indian Synya, nought, so the Jewish Kabalistic Sephiroth (Sephrim) were taken
from the word cipher, not in the sense of emptiness but the reverse -- that of
creation by number and degrees in their evolution. And the Sephiroth are 10 or
[[diagram]].
** See Max
Muller's "Our Figures."
*** See King's
"Gnostics and their Remains," plate xiii.
**** "Vita
Pythag."
***** 608 B.C.
****** This city
was built 332 B.C.
*******
"Metaph." vii., F.
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But we know more
than that: we know that the decimal system must have been known to the mankind
of the earliest archaic ages, since the whole astronomical and geometrical
portion of the secret sacerdotal language was built upon the number 10, or the
combination of the male and female principles, and since the Pyramid of "Cheops"
is built upon the measures of this decimal notation, or rather upon the digits
and their combinations with the nought. Of this, however, sufficient was said
in Isis Unveiled, and it is useless to repeat and return to the same subject.
The symbolism of
the Lunar and Solar Deities is so inextricably mixed up, that it is next to
impossible to separate such glyphs as the egg, the lotus, and the
"sacred" animals from each other. The ibis, for instance, sacred to
Isis, who is often represented with the head of that bird, sacred also to
Mercury or Thoth, because that god assumed its form while escaping from Typhon,
-- the ibis was held in the greatest veneration in Egypt. There were two kinds
of ibises, Herodotus tells us (Lib. II. c. 75 et seq.) in that country: one
quite black, the other black and white. The former is credited with fighting
and exterminating the winged serpents which came every spring from Arabia and
infested the country. The other was sacred to the moon, because the latter
planet is white and brilliant on her external side, dark and black on that side
which she never turns to the earth. Moreover, the ibis kills land serpents, and
makes the most terrible havoc amongst the eggs of the crocodile, and thus saves
Egypt from having the Nile infested by those horrible Saurians. The bird is
credited with doing so in the moonlight, and thus being helped by Isis, as the
moon, her sidereal symbol. But the nearer esoteric truth underlying these
popular myths is, that Hermes, as shown by Abenephius (De cultu Egypt.),
watched under the form of that bird over the Egyptians, and taught them the
occult arts and sciences. This means simply that the ibis religiosa had and has
"magical" properties in common with many other birds, the albatross
pre-eminently, and the mythical white swan, the swan of Eternity or Time, the
KALAHANSA.
Were it
otherwise, indeed, why should all the ancient peoples, who were no more fools
than we are, have had such a superstitious dread of killing certain birds? In Egypt,
he who killed an ibis, or the golden hawk -- the symbol of the Sun and Osiris
-- risked and could hardly escape death. The veneration of some nations for
birds was such that Zoroaster, in his precepts, forbids their slaughter as a
heinous crime. We laugh in our age at every kind of divination. Yet why should
so many generations have believed in divination by birds, and even in zoomancy,
said by Suidas to have been imparted by Orpheus, who taught how to perceive in
the yoke and white of
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the egg, under
certain conditions, that which the bird born from it would have seen around it
during its short life. This occult art, which demanded 3,000 years ago the
greatest learning and the most abstruse mathematical calculations, has now
fallen into the depths of degradation: it is old cooks and fortune-tellers who
read their future to servant-girls in search of husbands, by means of the white
of an egg in a glass.
Nevertheless,
even Christians have to this day their sacred birds; for instance, the dove,
the symbol of the Holy Ghost. Nor have they neglected the sacred animals. The
Evangelical zoolatry -- the Bull, the Eagle, the Lion, and the Angel (in
reality the Cherub, or Seraph, the fiery-winged Serpent), is as much pagan as
that of the Egyptians or the Chaldeans. These four animals are, in reality, the
symbols of the four elements, and of the four lower principles in man.
Nevertheless, they correspond physically and materially to the four
constellations that form, so to speak, the suite or cortege of the Solar God,
and occupy during the winter solstice the four cardinal points of the zodiacal circle.
These four "animals" may be seen in many of the Roman Catholic New
Testaments where the portraits of the evangelists are given. They are the
animals of Ezekiel's Mercabah.
As truly stated
by Ragon, "the ancient Hierophants have combined so cleverly the dogmas
and symbols of their religious philosophies, that these symbols can be fully
explained only by the combination and knowledge of all the keys." They can
be only approximately interpreted, even if one finds out three out of these
seven systems: the anthropological, the psychic, and the astronomical. The two
chief interpretations, the highest and the lowest, the spiritual and the
physiological, they preserved in the greatest secrecy until the latter fell
into the dominion of the profane. Thus far, with regard only to the
pre-historic Hierophants, with whom that which has now become purely (or
impurely) phallic, was a science as profound and as mysterious as biology and
physiology are now. This was their exclusive property, the fruit of their studies
and discoveries. The other two were those which dealt with the creative gods
(theogony), and with creative man, i.e., the ideal and the practical mysteries.
These interpretations were so cleverly veiled and combined, that many were
those who, while arriving at the discovery of one meaning, were baffled in
understanding the significance of the others, and could never unriddle them
sufficiently to commit dangerous indiscretions. The highest, the first and the
fourth -- theogony in relation to anthropogony -- were almost impossible to
fathom. We find the proofs of this in the Jewish "Holy Writ."
It is owing to
the serpent being oviparous, that it became a symbol of wisdom and an emblem of
the Logoi, or the self-born. In the temple of Philoe in Upper Egypt, an egg was
artificially prepared of clay made of
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various
incenses, and it was made to hatch by a peculiar process, when a cerastes (the
horned viper) was born. The same was done in antiquity for the cobra in the
Indian temples. The creative God emerges from the egg that issues from the
mouth of Kneph -- as a winged serpent -- because the Serpent is the symbol of
the All-wisdom. With the Hebrews he is glyphed by the "flying or fiery
serpents" of the Wilderness and Moses, and with the Alexandrian mystics he
becomes the Ophio-Christos, the Logos of the Gnostics. The Protestants try to
show that the allegory of the Brazen Serpent and of the "fiery
serpents" has a direct reference to the mystery of Christ and
Crucifixion*; but it has a far nearer relation, in truth, to the mystery of
generation, when dissociated from the egg with the central germ, or the circle
with its central point. The brazen Serpent had no such holy meaning as that;
nor was it, in fact, glorified above the "fiery serpents" for the
bite of which it was only a natural remedy. The symbological meaning of the
word "brazen" being the feminine principle, and that of fiery, or
"gold," the male one.**
In the Book of
the Dead, as just shown, reference is often made to the Egg. Ra, the mighty
one, remains in his Egg, during the struggle between the "children of the
rebellion" and Shoo (the Solar Energy and the Dragon of Darkness) (ch.
xvii.). The deceased is resplendent in his
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* And this only
because the brazen serpent was lifted on a pole! It had rather a reference to
Mico the Egyptian egg standing upright supported by the sacred Tau; since the
Egg and the Serpent are inseparable in the old worship and symbology of Egypt,
and since both the Brazen and "fiery" serpents were Saraphs, the
"burning fiery" messengers, or the serpent Gods, the nagas of India.
It was a purely phallic symbol without the egg, while when associated with it
-- it related to cosmic creation.
** "Brass
was a metal symbolizing the nether world . . . . that of the womb where life
should be given . . . The word for serpent was in Hebrew Nakash, but this is
the same term for brass." It is said in Numbers (xxi.) that the Jews
complained of the Wilderness where there was no water (v. 5); after which
"the Lord sent fiery serpents" to bite them, when, to oblige Moses,
he gives him as a remedy the brazen serpent on a pole to look at; after which
"any man when he beheld the serpent of brass . . . . lived" (?).
After that the "Lord," gathering the people together at the well of
Beer, gives them water, (14-16), and grateful Israel sang this song,
"Spring up, O Well," (v. 17). When, after studying symbology, the
Christian reader comes to understand the innermost meaning of these three
symbols -- water, brazen, the serpent, and a few more -- in the sense given to
them in the Holy Bible, he will hardly like to connect the sacred name of his
Saviour with the "Brazen Serpent" incident. The Seraphim [[hebrew]]
(fiery winged serpents) are no doubt connected with, and inseparable from, the
idea "of the serpent of eternity -- God," as explained in Kenealy's
Apocalypse. But the word cherub also meant serpent, in one sense, though its
direct meaning is different; because the Cherubim and the Persian winged
[[gruphes]] "griffins" -- the guardians of the golden mountain -- are
the same, and their compound name shows their character, as it is formed of
[[hebrew]] (kr) circle, and [[hebrew]] "aub," or ob -- serpent --
therefore, a "serpent in a circle." And this settles the phallic
character of the Brazen Serpent, and justifies Hezekiah for breaking it. (See
II. Kings, 18, 4). Verbum sat. sapienti.
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Egg when he
crosses to the land of mystery (xxii. i.). He is the Egg of Seb (liv. 1-3). . .
. The Egg was the symbol of life in immortality and eternity; as also the glyph
of the generative matrix; and the tau, associated with it, only of life and
birth in generation. The Mundane Egg was placed in Khnoom, the "Water of
Space," or the feminine abstract principle (Khnoom becoming, with the fall
of mankind into generation and phallicism, Ammon, the creative God); and when
Phtah, the "fiery god," carries the Mundane egg in his hand, then the
symbolism becomes quite terrestrial and concrete in its significance. In
conjunction with the hawk, the symbol of Osiris-Sun, the symbol is dual: it
relates to both lives -- the mortal and the immortal. In Kircher's OEdipus Egyptiacus
(vol. iii., p. 124) one can see, on the papyrus engraved in it, an egg floating
above the mummy. This is the symbol of hope and the promise of a second birth
for the Osirified dead; his Soul, after due purification in the Amenti, will
gestate in this egg of immortality, to be reborn from it into a new life on
earth. For this Egg, in the esoteric Doctrine, is the Devachan, the abode of
Bliss; the winged scarabeus being alike a symbol of it. The "winged
globe" is but another form of the egg, and has the same significance as
the scarabeus, the Khopiroo (from the root Khoproo "to become,"
"to be reborn,") which relates to the rebirth of man, as well as to
his spiritual regeneration.
In the Theogony
of Mochus, we find AEther first, and then the air, from which Ulom, the
intelligible ([[noetos]]) deity (the visible Universe of Matter) is born out of
the Mundane Egg. (Mover's Phoinizer, p. 282.)
In the Orphic
Hymns, the Eros-Phanes evolves from the divine Egg, which the AEthereal Winds
impregnate, wind being "the Spirit of the unknown Darkness" --
"the spirit of God" (as explains K. O. Muller, 236); the divine
"Idea," says Plato, "who is said to move AEther."
In the Hindu
Katakopanishad, Purusha, the divine spirit, already stands before the original
matter, "from whose union springs the great soul of the world,"
Maha-Atma, Brahma, the Spirit of Life,* etc., etc.** Besides this there are
many charming allegories on this subject scattered through the sacred books of
the Brahmins. In one place it is the female creator who is first a germ, then a
drop of heavenly dew, a pearl, and then an egg. In such cases -- of which there
are too many to enumerate them separately -- the Egg gives birth to the four
elements within the fifth, Ether, and is covered with seven coverings, which
become later on the seven upper and the seven lower worlds. Breaking in two,
the shell becomes the heaven, and the meat in the egg the earth, the white
forming the terres-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The latter
appellations are all identical with Anima Mundi, or the "Universal
Soul," the astral light of the Kabalist and the Occultist, or the
"Egg of Darkness."
** Weber,
"Akad Vorles," pp. 213, 214 et seq.
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trial waters.
Then again, it is Vishnu who emerges from within the egg with a lotus in his
hand. Vinata, a daughter of Daksha and wife of Kasyapa ("the Self-born
sprung from Time," one of the seven "creators" of our world),
brought forth an egg from which was born Garuda, the vehicle of Vishnu, the
latter allegory having a relation to our Earth only, as Garuda is the Great Cycle.
The egg was
sacred to Isis; the priests of Egypt never ate eggs on that account.*
Diodorus Siculus
states that Osiris was born from an Egg, like Brahma. From Leda's Egg Apollo
and Latona were born, as also Castor and Pollux -- the bright Gemini. And
though the Buddhists do not attribute the same origin to their Founder, yet, no
more than the ancient Egyptians or the modern Brahmins, do they eat eggs, lest
they should destroy the germ of life latent in them, and commit thereby Sin.
The Chinese believe that their first man was born from an egg, which Tien, a
god, dropped down from heaven to earth into the waters.** This symbol is still
regarded by some as representing the idea of the origin of life, which is a
scientific truth, though the human ovum is invisible to the naked eye.
Therefore we see respect shown to it from the remotest past, by the Greeks,
Phoenicians, Romans, the Japanese, and the Siamese, the North and South
American tribes, and even the savages of the remotest islands.
With the Egyptians,
the concealed god was Ammon (Mon). All their gods were dual: the scientific
reality for the Sanctuary; its double, the fabulous and mythical Entity, for
the masses. For instance, as observed in "Chaos, Theos, Kosmos," the
older Horus was the Idea of the world remaining in the demiurgic mind
"born in Darkness before the creation of the world;" the second
Horus*** was the same Idea going forth from the Logos, becoming clothed with
matter and assuming an actual existence. (Compare Mover's "Phoinizer,"
p. 268.) The same with Khnoum and Ammon;**** both are represented ram-headed,
and both often confused, though their functions are different. Khnoum is
"the modeller of men," fashioning men and things out of the Mundane
Egg on a potter's wheel;
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Isis is almost
always represented holding a lotus in one hand and in the other a circle and
the Cross (crux ansata), the Egg being sacred to her.
** The Chinese
seem to have thus anticipated Sir William Thomson's theory that the first
living germ had dropped to the Earth from some passing comet. Query! why should
this be called scientific and the Chinese idea a superstitious, foolish theory?
*** Horus -- the
"older," or Haroiri, is an ancient aspect of the solar god,
contemporary with Ra and Shoo; Haroiri is often mistaken for Hor (Horsusi), Son
of Osiris and Isis. The Egyptians very often represented the rising Sun under
the form of Hor the older, rising from a full-blown lotus, the Universe, when
the solar disc is always found on the hawk-head of that god. Haroiri is Khnoum.
**** Ammon or
Mon, the "hidden," the Supreme Spirit.
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Ammon-Ra, the
generator, is the secondary aspect of the concealed deity. Khnoum was adored at
Elephanta and Philoe,* Ammon at Thebes. But it is Emepht, the One, Supreme
Planetary principle, who blows the egg out of his mouth, and who is, therefore,
Brahma. The shadow of the deity, Kosmic and universal, of that which broods
over and permeates the egg with its vivifying Spirit until the germ contained
in it is ripe, was the mystery god whose name was unpronounceable. It is Phtah,
however, "he who opens," the opener of life and Death,** who proceeds
from the egg of the world to begin his dual work. (Book of Numbers.)
According to the
Greeks, the phantom form of the Chemis (Chemi, ancient Egypt) which floats on
the ethereal waves of the Empyrean Sphere, was called into being by
Horus-Apollo, the Sun god, who caused it to evolve out of the Mundane egg.***
In the
Scandinavian Cosmogony -- placed by Professor Max Muller, in point of time, as
"far anterior to the Vedas" in the poem of Voluspa (the song of the
prophetess), the Mundane egg is again discovered in the phantom-germ of the
Universe, which is represented as lying in the Ginnungagap -- the cup of
illusion (Maya) the boundless and void abyss. In this world's matrix, formerly
a region of night and desolation, Nebelheim (the mist-place, the nebular as it
is called now, in the astral light) dropped a ray of cold light which
overflowed this cup and froze in it. Then the Invisible blew a scorching wind
which dissolved the frozen waters and cleared the mist. These waters (chaos),
called the streams of Elivagar, distilling in vivifying drops, fell down and
created the earth and the giant Ymir, who only had "the semblance of
man" (the Heavenly man), and the cow, Audhumla (the "mother" or
astral light, Cosmic Soul) from whose udder flowed four streams of milk (the
four cardinal points: the four heads of the four rivers of Eden, etc., etc.)
and which "four" allegorically are symbolized by the cube in all its
various and mystical meanings.
The Christians
-- especially the Greek and Latin Churches -- have fully adopted the symbol,
and see in it a commemoration of life eternal,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* His triadic
goddesses are Sati and Anouki.
** Phtah was
originally the god of death, of destruction, like Siva. He is a solar god only
by virtue of the sun's fire killing as well as vivifying. He was the national
god of Memphis, the radiant and "fair-faced God." (See Saqquarah
Bronzes, Saitic Epoch.)
*** The
Brahmanda Purana contains the mystery about Brahma's golden egg fully; and this
is why, perhaps, it is inaccessible to the Orientalists, who say that this
Purana, like the Skanda, is "no longer procurable in a collective
body," but "is represented by a variety of Khandas and Mahatmyas
professing to be derived from it." The "Brahmanda Purana" is
described as "that which is declared in 12,200 verses, the magnificence of
the egg of Brahma, and in which an account of the future Kalpas is contained as
revealed by Brahma." Quite so, and much more, perchance.
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of salvation and
of resurrection. This is found in and corroborated by the time-honoured custom
of exchanging "Easter Eggs." From the anguinum, the "Egg"
of the "pagan" Druid, whose name alone made Rome tremble with fear,
to the red Easter Egg of the Slavonian peasant, a cycle has passed. And yet,
whether in civilized Europe, or among the abject savages of Central America, we
find the same archaic, primitive thought; if we only search for it and do not
disfigure -- in the haughtiness of our fancied mental and physical superiority
-- the original idea of the symbol.
--------------
§ VII.
THE DAYS AND
NIGHTS OF BRAHMA.
THIS is the name
given to the Periods called MANVANTARA (Manuantara, or between the Manus) and
PRALAYA (Dissolution); one referring to the active periods of the Universe, the
other to its times of relative and complete rest -- according to whether they
occur at the end of a "Day," or an "Age" (a life) of
Brahma. These periods, which follow each other in regular succession, are also
called Kalpas, small and great, the minor and the Maha Kalpa; though, properly
speaking, the Maha Kalpa is never a "day," but a whole life or age of
Brahma, for it is said in the Brahma Vaivarta: "Chronologers compute a
Kalpa by the Life of Brahma; minor Kalpas, as Samvarta and the rest, are
numerous." In sober truth they are infinite; as they have never had a
commencement, i.e., there never was a first Kalpa, nor will there ever be a
last one, in Eternity.
One Parardha --
in the ordinary acceptation of this measure of time -- or half of the existence
of Brahma (in the present Maha Kalpa) has already expired; the last Kalpa was
the Padma, or that of the Golden Lotos; the present one being Varaha* (the
"boar" incarnation, or Avatar).
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* There is a
curious piece of information in the Buddhist esoteric traditions. The exoteric
or allegorical biography of Gautama Buddha shows this great Sage dying of an
indigestion of pork and rice, a very prosaic end, indeed, having little of the
solemn element in it. This is explained as an allegorical reference to his
having been born in the "Boar," or Varaha-Kalpa when Brahma assumed
the form of that animal to raise the Earth out of the "Waters of
Space." And as the Brahmins descend direct from Brahma and are, so to
speak, identified with him; and as they are at the same time the mortal enemies
of Buddha and Buddhism, we have the curious allegorical hint and combination.
Brahminism (of the Boar, or Varaha Kalpa) has slaughtered the religion of
Buddha in India, swept it away from its face; therefore Buddha, identified with
his philosophy, is said to have died from the effects of eating of the flesh of
a wild hog. [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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By the scholar
who studies the Hindu religion from the Puranas, one thing is to be especially
noted. He must not take literally, and in one sense only, the statements
therein found; since those which especially concern the Manvantaras or Kalpas
have to be understood in their several references. So, for instance, these
periods relate in the same language to both the great and the small periods, to
Maha Kalpas and to minor Cycles. The Matsya, or Fish Avatar, happened before
the Varaha or Boar Avatar; the allegories, therefore, must relate to both the
Padma and the present manvantara, and also to the minor cycles which took place
since the reappearance of our Chain of Worlds and Earth. And, as the Matsya
Avatar of Vishnu and Vaivasvata's Deluge are correctly connected with an event that
happened on our Earth during this Round, it is evident that while it may relate
to pre-cosmic events (in the sense of our Kosmos or Solar system) it has
reference in our case to a distant geological period. Not even Esoteric
philosophy can claim to know, except by analogical inference, that which took
place before the reappearance of our Solar System and previous to the last Maha
Pralaya. But it teaches distinctly that after the first geological disturbance
in the Earth's axis which ended in the sweeping down to the bottom of the Seas
of the whole second Continent, with its primeval races -- of which successive
"Earths" or Continents Atlantis was the fourth -- there came another
disturbance by the axis resuming as rapidly its previous degree of inclination;
when the Earth was indeed raised once more out of the Waters, and -- as above
so it is below; and vice versa. There were "gods" on Earth in those
days -- gods, and not men, as we know them now, says the tradition. As will be
shown in Book II., the computation of periods in exoteric Hinduism refers to
both the great cosmic and the small terrestrial events and cataclysms, and the
same may be shown for names. For instance Yudishthira -- the first King of the
Sacea, who opens the Kali Yuga era, which has to last 432,000 years -- "an
actual King and man who lived 3,102 years B.C.," applies also, name and
all, to the great Deluge at the time of the first sinking of Atlantis. He is
the "Yudishthira* born on the mountain of the hundred peaks at the
extremity of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] The idea alone of one who established the most
rigorous vegetarianism and respect for animal life -- even to refusing to eat
eggs as vehicles of a latent future life -- dying of a meat indigestion, is
absurdly contradictory and has puzzled more than one Orientalist. But this
explanation, unveiling the allegory, explains all the rest. The Varaha,
however, is no simple boar, and seems to have meant at first some antediluvian
lacustrine animal "delighting to sport in water." (Vayu Purana.)
* According to
Colonel Wilford, the conclusion of the "Great War" was B.C. 1370.
(See A. R., Vol.9, p. 116); according to Bentley, 575 B.C.!! We may hope,
perhaps, that before the end of this century, the Mahabharatean epics will be
found and proclaimed identical with the wars of the great Napoleon.
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the world beyond
which nobody can go" and "immediately after the flood." (See
Royal Asiat. Soc., Vol. 9, p. 364.) We know of no "Flood" 3,102 years
B.C. -- not even that of Noah, for, agreeably with Judaeo-Christian chronology,
it took place 2,349 years B.C.
This relates to
an esoteric division of time and a mystery explained elsewhere, and may
therefore be left aside for the present. Suffice to remark at this juncture
that all the efforts of imagination of the Wilfords, Bentleys, and other
would-be OEdipuses of esoteric Hindu Chronology have sadly failed. No
computation of either the Four Ages, or the Manvantaras, has ever been
unriddled by our very learned Orientalists, who have therefore cut the Gordian
Knot by proclaiming the whole "a figment of the Brahmanical brain."
So be it, and may the great scholars rest in peace. This "figment" is
given in the Preliminary Sections which preface Anthropogenesis in Book II.,
and with esoteric additions.
Let us see,
however, what were the three kinds of pralayas, and what is the popular belief
about them. For once it agrees with Esotericism.
Of the pralaya
before which fourteen Manvantaras elapse, having over them as many presiding
Manus, and at whose close occurs the "incidental" or Brahma's
dissolution, it is said in Vishnu Purana, in condensed form, that "at the
end of a thousand periods of four ages, which complete a day of Brahma, the
earth is almost exhausted. The eternal Avyaya (Vishnu) assumes then the
character of Rudra (the destroyer, Siva) and re-unites all his creatures to
himself. He enters the Seven rays of the Sun and drinks up all the waters of
the globe; he causes the moisture to evaporate, thus drying up the whole Earth.
Oceans and rivers, torrents and small streams, are all exhaled. Thus fed with
abundant moisture the seven solar rays become sevens suns by dilation, and they
finally set the world on fire. Hari, the destroyer of all things, who is 'the
flame of time, Kalagni,' finally consumes the Earth. Then Rudra, becoming
Janardana, breathes clouds and rain."
There are many
kinds of Pralaya, but three chief ones are specially mentioned in old Hindu
books; and of these, as Wilson shows:-- The first is called NAIMITTIKA*
"occasional" or "incidental," caused by the intervals of
"Brahma's Days;" it is the destruction of creatures, of all that
lives and has a form, but not of the substance which remains in statu quo till
the new DAWN in that "Night." The
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In the Vedanta
and Nyaya "nimitta" (from which "Naimittika") is rendered
as the efficient cause, when antithesized with upadana the physical or material
cause. In the Sankhya pradhana is a cause inferior to Brahma, or rather Brahma
being himself a cause, is superior to Pradhana. Hence "incidental" is
wrongly translated, and ought to be translated, as shown by some scholars,
"Ideal" cause, and even real cause would have been better.
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other is called
PRAKRITIKA -- and occurs at the end of the Age or Life of Brahma, when
everything that exists is resolved into the primal element, to be remodelled at
the end of that longer night. But the third, Atyantika, does not concern the
Worlds or the Universe, but only the individualities of some people; it is thus
individual pralaya or NIRVANA; after having reached which, there is no more
future existence possible, no rebirth till after the Maha Pralaya. The latter
night, lasting as it does 311,040,000,000,000 years, and having the possibility
of being almost doubled in case the lucky Jivanmukti reaches Nirvana at an
early period of a Manvantara, is long enough to be regarded as eternal, if not
endless. The Bhagavata (XII., iv, 35) speaks of a fourth kind of pralaya, the
Nitya or constant dissolution, and explains it as the change which takes place
imperceptibly in everything in this Universe from the globe down to the atom --
without cessation. It is growth and decay (life and death).
When the Maha
Pralaya arrives, the inhabitants of Swar-loka (the upper sphere) disturbed by
the conflagration, seek refuge "with the Pitris, their progenitors, the
Manus, the Seven Rishis, the various orders of celestial Spirits and the Gods,
in Maharloka." When the latter is reached also, the whole of the above
enumerated beings migrate in their turn from Maharloka, and repair to Jana-loka
in "their subtile forms, destined to become re-embodied, in similar
capacities as their former, when the world is renewed at the beginning of the
succeeding Kalpa;" (Vayu Purana).
" . . . .
These clouds, mighty in size, and loud in thunder, fill up all space
(Nabhas-tala)," goes on Vishnu Purana. -- (Book VI., ch. iii.)
"Showering down torrents of water, these clouds quench the dreadful fires,
and then they rain uninterruptedly for a hundred (divine) years, and deluge the
whole world (Solar System). Pouring down, in drops as large as dice, these
rains overspread the earth, and fill the middle region (Bhuvaloka) and inundate
heaven. The world is now enveloped in darkness, and all things animate, or
inanimate, having perished, the clouds continue to pour down their waters"
. . . "and the Night of Brahma reigns supreme over the scene of desolation
. . . . ."
This is what we
call in the Esoteric Doctrine a "Solar Pralaya" . . . When the waters
have reached the region of the Seven Rishis, and the world (our Solar System)
is one ocean, they stop. The breath of Vishnu becomes a strong wind, which
blows for another hundred (divine) years until all clouds are dispersed. The
wind is then reabsorbed: and "THAT, of which all things are made, the Lord
by whom all things exist, He who is inconceivable, without beginning, the
beginning of the universe, reposes, sleeping upon Sesha (the Serpent of
Infinity) in the midst of the deep. The Adikrit
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(Creator?) Hari,
sleeps upon the ocean of Space in the form of Brahma -- glorified by Sanaka*
and the Siddha (Saints) of Jana-loka, and contemplated by the holy denizens of
Brahma-loka, anxious for final liberation, involved in mystic slumber, the
celestial personification of his own illusions. . . ." This is the
Pratisanchara (dissolution?) termed incidental because Hari is its incidental
(ideal) Cause. . . . .** When the Universal Spirit wakes, the world revives;
when he closes his eyes, all things fall upon the bed of mystic slumber. In
like manner, as 1,000 great ages constitute a Day of Brahma (in the original it
is Padma-yoni, the same as Abjayoni -- "lotos-born," not Brahma), so
his Night consists of the same period. "Awaking at the end of his night,
the unborn . . . creates the Universe anew. . . ." (Vishnu Purana.)
This is
"incidental" pralaya; what is the Elemental Dissolution? "When
by dearth and fire," says Parasara to Maitreya, "all the worlds and
Patalas (hells) are withered up . . .*** the progress of elemental dissolution
is begun. Then, first the waters swallow up the property of Earth (which is the
rudiment of smell), and earth deprived of this property proceeds to destruction
-- and becomes one with water . . . . when the Universe is thus pervaded by the
waves of the watery Element, its rudimentary flavour is locked up by the
elements of fire . . . on account of which the waters themselves are destroyed
. . . and become one with fire; and the Universe is therefore, entirely filled
with flame (ethereal) which gradually overspreads the whole world. While Space
is one flame, the element of wind seizes upon the rudimental property or form,
which is the cause of light, and that being withdrawn (pralina) all becomes of
the nature of air. The rudiment of form being destroyed, and Vibhavasu (fire?)
deprived of its rudiment, air extinguishes fire and spreads over space, which
is deprived of light when fire merges into air. Air, then, accompanied by
sound, which is the source of Ether, extends everywhere throughout the ten
regions . . . . until Ether seizes upon cohesion (Sparsa -- Touch?) its
rudimental property, by the loss of which, air is destroyed, and KHA remains
unmodified; devoid of form, flavour, touch (Sparsa), and smell, it exists,
embodied (murttimat) and vast, and pervades the whole Space. Akasa, whose
characteristic property and rudiment is sound (the "Word"), occupies
the whole containment of Space. Then the origin (Noumenon?) of the Elements
(Bhutadi), devours sound (collective Demiurgos); and the hosts of Dhyan
Chohans, and all the existing
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The chief
Kumara or Virgin-god (a Dhyan Chohan) who refuses to create. A prototype of St.
Michael, who refuses to do the same.
** See
concluding lines in Section, "Chaos, Theos, Kosmos."
*** This
prospect would hardly suit Christian theology, which prefers an eternal,
everlasting hell for its followers.
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Elements* are at
once merged into their original. The primary Element, Consciousness, combined
with tamasa (spiritual darkness) is itself disintegrated by MAHAT (the
Universal Intellect), whose characteristic property is Buddhi, and earth and
Mahat are the inner and outer boundaries of the Universe." Thus as (in the
beginning) "were the seven forms of Prakriti (nature) reckoned from Mahat
to earth, so these seven successively re-enter into each other."**
"The Egg of
Brahma (Sarva-mandala) is dissolved in the waters that surround it, with its
seven zones (dwipas) seven oceans, seven regions, and their mountains; the
investure of water is drunk by the fire; the (stratum of) fire is absorbed by
(that of) air; air blends itself with ether (Akasa); the Bhutadi (the origin,
or rather the cause, of the primary element) devours the ether and is (itself)
destroyed by Mahat (the Great, the Universal mind), which along with all these
is seized upon by Prakriti and disappears. The Prakriti is essentially the
same, whether discrete or indiscrete; only that which is discrete is finally
absorbed by and lost in the indiscrete. PUMS (Spirit) also, which is one, pure,
imperishable, eternal, all-pervading, is a portion of that Supreme spirit which
is all things. That Spirit (Sarvesa) which is other than (embodied) Spirit, and
in which there are no attributes of name, species (naman and jati, or rupa,
hence body rather than species), or the like -- remains as the sole existence
(SATTA). . . Prakriti and Purusha both resolving finally into SUPREME SPIRIT. .
. ." (From Vishnu Purana, Wilson's mistakes being here corrected, and
original words put in brackets).
This is the
final PRALAYA*** -- the Death of Kosmos -- after which its Spirit rests in
Nirvana, or in THAT for which there is neither Day nor Night. All the other
pralayas are periodical and follow, in regular succession, the Manvantaras, as
the night follows the day of every human creature, animal, and plant. The cycle
of creation of the lives of Kosmos is run down, the energy of the manifested
"Word" having
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The term
"Elements" must be understood here to mean not only the visible and
physical Elements, but also that which St. Paul calls Elements -- the
spiritual, intelligent Potencies -- Angels and Demons in their Manvantaric
form.
** When this
description is correctly understood by Orientalists in its esoteric
significance then it will be found that this Cosmic correlation of
World-Elements may explain the correlation of physical forces better than those
now known. At any rate, theosophists will perceive that Prakriti has seven
forms, or principles, "reckoned from Mahat to Earth." The
"Waters" mean here the Mystic "mother"; the Womb of
abstract nature, in which the manifested Universe is conceived. The Seven
"zones" have reference to the Seven Divisions of that Universe, or
the Noumena of the Forces that bring it into being. It is all allegorical.
*** As it is the
Maha, the Great, or so-called final PRALAYA which is here described, every
thing is re-absorbed into its original ONE Element -- the "Gods
themselves, Brahma and the rest" being said to die and disappear during
that long NIGHT.
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its growth,
culmination, and decrease, as have all things temporary, however long their
duration. The Creative Force is Eternal as Noumenon; as a phenomenal
manifestation in its aspects, it has a beginning and must, therefore, have an
end. During that interval it has its periods of activity and its periods of
rest. And these are the "Days and the nights of Brahma." But Brahma,
the Noumenon, never rests, as IT never changes and ever IS, though IT cannot be
said to be anywhere. . . . .
The Jewish
Kabalists felt this necessity of immutability in an eternal, infinite Deity,
and therefore applied the same thought to the anthropomorphic god. The idea is
poetical and very appropriate in its application. In the Zohar we read as
follows:--
"As Moses
was keeping a vigil on Mount Sinai, in company with the deity, who was
concealed from his sight by a cloud, he felt a great fear overcome him, and suddenly
asked: 'Lord, where art thou . . . . sleepest thou, O Lord? . . .' And the
Spirit answered him: 'I never sleep: were I to fall asleep for a moment BEFORE
MY TIME, all the creation would crumble into dissolution in one instant.'
"
"Before my
time" is very suggestive. It shows the God of Moses to be only a temporary
substitute, like Brahma the male, a substitute and an aspect of THAT which is
immutable, and which therefore can take no part in the "days," or in
the "nights," nor have any concern whatever with reaction or
dissolution.
While the
Eastern Occultists have seven modes of interpretation, the Jews have only four
-- namely, the real-mystical; the allegorical; the moral; and the literal or
Pashut. The latter is the key of the exoteric Churches and not worth
discussion. Read in the first, or mystical key, here are several sentences
which show the identity of the foundations of construction in every Scripture.
It is given in Mr. T. Myer's excellent book on the Kabalistic works he seems to
have well studied. I quote verbatim. "B'raisheeth barah elohim ath hash
ama yem v'ath haa'retz -- i.e., 'In the beginning the God(s) created the
heavens and the earth;" (the meaning of which is:) the six Sephiroth of
Construction,* over which B'raisheeth stands, all belong Below. It created six
(and) on these stand all Things. And those depend upon the seven forms of the
Cranium up to the Dignity of all Dignities. And the second 'Earth' does not
come into calculation, therefore it has been said: 'And from it (that Earth)
which underwent the curse, came it forth.' . . . . 'It (the Earth) was without
form and void; and darkness was over the face of the Abyss, and the Spirit of
elohim . . . . was breathing (me' racha 'phath) -- i.e., hovering, brooding
over, moving. . . . . Thirteen depend on thirteen
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The
"Builders" of the Stanzas.
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(forms) of the
most worthy Dignity. Six thousand years hang (are referred to) in the first six
words. The seventh (thousand, the millennium) above it (the cursed Earth) is
that which is strong by Itself. And it was rendered entirely desolate during
twelve hours (one . . . . Day) as is written. . . . . In the thirteenth, It
(the Deity) shall restore all . . . . and everything shall be renewed as
before; and all those six shall continue . . . . etc." (Qabbalah, p. 233,
from Siphrah Dzeniuta, c. i., § 16, s. 9.)
The
"Sephiroth of Construction" are the six Dhyan Chohans, or Manus, or
Prajapati, synthesized by the seventh "B'raisheeth (the First Emanation or
Logos), and who are called, therefore, the Builders of the Lower or physical
Universe" all belong Below. These six [[diagram]] whose essence is of the
Seventh -- are the Upadhi, the base or fundamental stone on which the objective
Universe is built, the noumenoi of all things. Hence they are, at the same time,
the Forces of nature, the Seven Angels of the Presence, the sixth and seventh
principles in man; the spirito-psycho-physical spheres of the Septenary chain,
the Root Races, etc., etc. They all "depend upon the Seven forms of the
Cranium" up to the highest. The "second Earth" "does not
come into calculation" because it is no Earth, but the Chaos or Abyss of
Space in which rested the paradigmatic, or model universe in ideation of the
OVER-SOUL brooding over it. The term "Curse" is here very misleading,
for it means simply doom or destiny, or that fatality which sent it forth into
the objective state. This is shown by that "Earth" under the
"Curse" being described as "without form and void," in
whose abysmal depths the "Breath" of the Elohim (collective Logoi)
produced or photographed the first divine IDEATION of the things to be. This
process is repeated after every Pralaya before the beginnings of a new
Manvantara, or period of sentient individual being. "Thirteen depend on
thirteen forms," refers to the thirteen periods personified by the
thirteen Manus, with Swayambhuva the fourteenth (13, instead of 14, being an
additional veil): those fourteen Manus who reign within the term of a Mahayuga,
a "Day" of Brahma. These (thirteen-fourteen) of the objective Universe
depend on the thirteen (fourteen) paradigmatic, ideal forms. The meaning of the
"Six thousand years" which "hang in the first six words,"
has again to be sought in the Indian Wisdom. They refer to the primordial six
(seven) "Kings of Edom" who typify the worlds (or spheres) of our
chain during the first Round, as well as the primordial men of this Round. They
are the septenary pre-Adamic (or before the Third, Separated Race) first
Root-race. As they were shadows, and senseless (they had not eaten yet of the
fruit of the Tree of Knowledge), they could not see the
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Parguphim, or "Face
could not see Face" (primeval men were unconscious), "therefore, the
primordial (seven) Kings died," i.e., were destroyed (vide Sepherah
Djenioutha). Now, who are they? They are the Kings who are "the Seven
Rishis, certain (secondary) divinities, Sakra (Indra), Manu, and the Kings his
Sons, who are created and perish at one period," as said in Vishnu Purana
(Book I. chap. iii.). For the seventh ("thousand") (not the
millennium of exoteric Christianity, but that of Anthropogenesis) represents
both the "seventh period of creation," that of physical man (Vishnu
Purana), and the seventh Principle -- both macrocosmic and microcosmic, -- as
also the pralaya after the Seventh period, the "Night" which has the
same duration as the "Day" of Brahma. "It was rendered entirely
desolate during twelve hours, as is written." It is in the Thirteenth
(twice six and the Synthesis) that everything shall be restored "and the
six will continue."
Thus the author
of the Qabbalah remarks quite truly that "Long before his (Ibn Gebirol's)
time . . . many centuries before the Christian era, there was in Central Asia a
'Wisdom Religion;' fragments of which subsequently existed among the learned
men of the archaic Egyptians, the ancient Chinese, Hindus, etc. . . ." and
that . . . . . "The Qabbalah most likely originally came from Aryan
sources, through Central Asia, Persia, India and Mesopotamia, for from Ur and
Haran came Abraham and many others into Palestine" (p. 221). And such was
the firm conviction of C. W. King, the author of "The Gnostics and their
Remains."
Vamadeva
Modelyar (Modely) describes the coming "night" most poetically.
Though it is given in Isis Unveiled, it is worthy of repetition.
"Strange
noises are heard, proceeding from every point . . . These are the precursors of
the Night of Brahma; dusk rises at the horizon, and the Sun passes away behind
the thirteenth degree of Macara (sign of the Zodiac), and will reach no more
the sign of the Minas (zodiacal pisces, or fish). The gurus of the pagodas
appointed to watch the rasichakr (Zodiac), may now break their circle and
instruments, for they are henceforth useless.
"Gradually
light pales, heat diminishes, uninhabited spots multiply on the earth, the air
becomes more and more rarified; the springs of waters dry up, the great rivers
see their waves exhausted, the ocean shows its sandy bottom and plants die. Men
and animals decrease in size daily. Life and motion lose their force, planets
can hardly gravitate in space; they are extinguished one by one, like a lamp which
the hand of the chokra (servant) neglects to replenish. Surya (the Sun)
flickers and goes out, matter falls into dissolution (pralaya), and Brahma
merges back into Dayus, the Unrevealed God, and, his task being
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accomplished, he
falls asleep. Another day is passed, night sets in, and continues until the
future dawn.
"And now
again he re-enters into the golden egg of His Thought, the germs of all that
exist, as the divine Manu tells us. During His peaceful rest, the animated
beings, endowed with the principles of action, cease their functions, and all
feeling (manas) becomes dormant. When they are all absorbed in the SUPREME
SOUL, this Soul of all the beings sleeps in complete repose till the day when
it resumes its form, and awakes again from its primitive darkness."*
As the
"Satya-yuga" is always the first in the series of the four ages or
Yugas, so the Kali ever comes the last. The Kali yuga reigns now supreme in
India, and it seems to coincide with that of the Western age. Anyhow, it is
curious to see how prophetic in almost all things was the writer of Vishnu
Purana when foretelling to Maitreya some of the dark influences and sins of
this Kali Yug. For after saying that the "barbarians" will be masters
of the banks of the Indus, of Chandrabhaga and Kasmera, he adds:
"There will
be contemporary monarchs, reigning over the earth -- kings of churlish spirit,
violent temper, and ever addicted to falsehood and wickedness. They will
inflict death on women, children, and cows; they will seize upon the property
of their subjects, and be intent upon the wives of others; they will be of unlimited
power, their lives will be short, their desires insatiable. . . . People of
various countries intermingling with them, will follow their example; and the
barbarians being powerful (in India) in the patronage of the princes, while
purer tribes are neglected, the people will perish (or, as the Commentator has
it, 'The Mlechchhas will be in the centre and the Aryas in the end.')** Wealth
and piety will decrease until the world will be wholly depraved. Property alone
will confer rank; wealth will be the only source of devotion; passion will be
the sole bond of union between the sexes; falsehood will be the only means of
success in litigation; and women will be objects merely of sensual
gratification. . . . . . External types will be the only distinction of the
several orders of life; . . . . . a man if rich will be reputed pure;
dishonesty (anyaya) will be the universal means of subsistence, weakness the
cause of dependence, menace and presumption will be substituted for learning;
liberality will be devotion; mutual assent, marriage; fine clothes, dignity. He
who is the strongest will reign; the people, unable to bear the heavy burthen,
Khara bhara (the load of taxes) will take refuge among the valleys. . . . Thus,
in the Kali age will decay constantly proceed, until
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See
Jacquolliot's "Les Fils de Dieu"; l'Inde des Brahmes, p. 230.
** If this is
not prophetic, what is?
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the human race
approaches its annihilation (pralaya) . . . . When the close of the Kali age
shall be nigh, a portion of that divine being which exists, of its own
spiritual nature . . . shall descend on Earth . . . (Kalki Avatar) endowed with
the eight superhuman faculties. . . . He will re-establish righteousness on
earth, and the minds of those who live at the end of Kali Yuga shall be
awakened and become as pellucid as crystal. The men who are thus changed . . .
shall be the seeds of human beings, and shall give birth to a race who shall
follow the laws of the Krita age, the age of purity. As it is said, 'When the
sun and moon and the lunar asterism Tishya and the planet Jupiter are in one
mansion, the Krita (or Satya) age shall return.' "
". . . .
Two persons, Devapi, of the race of Kuru and Moru, of the family of Ikshwaku,
continue alive throughout the four ages, residing at Kalapa.* They will return
hither in the beginning of the Krita age . . . Moru** the son of Sighru through
the power of Yoga is still living . . . . and will be the restorer of the
Kshattriya race of the Solar dynasty."*** (Vayu Purana, Vol. III, p. 197).
Whether right or
wrong with regard to the latter prophecy, the blessings of Kali Yuga are well
described, and fit in admirably even with that which one sees and hears in
Europe and other civilized and Christian lands in full XIXth, and at the dawn
of the XXth century of our great era of ENLIGHTENMENT.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Matsya Purana
gives Katapa.
** Max Muller
translates the name as Morya, of the Morya dynasty, to which Chandragupta
belonged (see Sanscrit Literature). In Matsya Purana, chapter cclxxii, the
dynasty of ten Moryas (or Maureyas) is spoken of. In the same chapter, cclxxii,
it is stated that the Moryas will one day reign over India, after restoring the
Kshattriya race many thousand years hence. Only that reign will be purely
Spiritual and "not of this world." It will be the kingdom of the next
Avatar. Colonel Tod believes the name Morya (or Maureyas) a corruption of Mori,
a Rajpoot tribe, and the commentary on Mahavansa thinks that some princes have
taken their name Maurya from their town called Mori, or, as Professor Max
Muller gives it, Morya-Nagara, which is more correct, after the original
Mahavansa. Vachaspattya, we are informed by our Brother, Devan Badhadur R.
Ragoonath Rao, of Madras, a Sanscrit Encyclopedia, places Katapa (Kalapa) on
the northern side of the Himalayas, hence in Tibet. The same is stated in
chapter xii. (Skanda) of Bhagavat, Vol. III, p. 325.
*** The Vayu
Purana declares that Moru will re-establish the Kshattriya in the Nineteenth
coming Yuga. (See "Five years of Theosophy," p. 483. "The Moryas
and Koothoomi.")
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§ VIII.
THE LOTUS, AS A
UNIVERSAL SYMBOL.
THERE are no
ancient symbols, without a deep and philosophical meaning attached to them;
their importance and significance increasing with their antiquity. Such is the
LOTUS. It is the flower sacred to nature and her Gods, and represents the
abstract and the Concrete Universes, standing as the emblem of the productive
powers of both spiritual and physical nature. It was held sacred from the
remotest antiquity by the Aryan Hindus, the Egyptians, and the Buddhists after
them; revered in China and Japan, and adopted as a Christian emblem by the
Greek and Latin Churches, who made of it a messenger as the Christians do now,
who replace it with the water lily.* It had, and still has, its mystic meaning
which is identical with every nation on the earth. We refer the reader to Sir
William Jones.** With the Hindus, the lotus is the emblem of the productive
power of nature, through the agency of fire and water (spirit and matter).
"Eternal!" says a verse in the Bhagavad Gita, "I see Brahm the
creator enthroned in thee above the lotus!"; and Sir W. Jones shows, as
noted in the Stanzas, that the seeds of the lotus contain, even before they
germinate, perfectly-formed leaves, the miniature shapes of what one day, as
perfected plants, they will become. The lotus, in India, is the symbol of
prolific earth, and what is more, of Mount Meru. The four angels or genii of
the four quarters of Heaven (the Maharajahs, see Stanzas) stand each on a
lotus. The lotus is the two-fold type of the Divine and human hermaphrodite,
being of dual sex, so to say.
The spirit of
Fire (or Heat), which stirs up, fructifies, and develops into concrete form
everything (from its ideal prototype), which is born of WATER or primordial
Earth, evolved Brahma -- with the Hindus. The lotus flower, represented as
growing out of Vishnu's navel -- that God resting on the waters of space and
his Serpent of Infinity -- is the most graphic allegory ever made: the Universe
evolving from the central Sun, the POINT, the ever-concealed germ. Lakshmi, who
is the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In the
Christian religion Gabriel, the Archangel, holding in his hand a spray of water
lilies, appears to the Virgin Mary in every picture of the Annunciation. This
spray typifying fire and water, or the idea of creation and generation,
symbolizes precisely the same idea as the lotus in the hand of the Bodhisat who
announces to Maha-Maya, Gautama's mother, the birth of the world's Saviour,
Buddha. Thus also, Osiris and Horus were represented by the Egyptians
constantly in association with the lotus-flower, the two being Sun-gods or Fire
(the Holy Ghost being still typified by "tongues of fire"), (Acts).
** See Sir
William Jones' "Dissertations Relating to Asia."
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female aspect of
Vishnu,* and who is also called Padma, the lotus, is likewise shown floating at
"Creation," on a lotus flower, and during the "churning of the
ocean" of space, springing from the "sea of milk," like Venus from
the froth.
". . . Then seated on a lotus
Beauty's bright
goddess, peerless Sri, arose
Out of the waves
. . . "
sings an English
Orientalist and poet (Sir Monier Williams).
The underlying
idea in this symbol is very beautiful, and it shows, furthermore, its identical
parentage in all the religious systems. Whether in the lotus or water-lily
shape it signifies one and the same philosophical idea -- namely, the emanation
of the objective from the subjective, divine Ideation passing from the abstract
into the concrete or visible form. For, as soon as DARKNESS -- or rather that
which is "darkness" for ignorance -- has disappeared in its own realm
of eternal Light, leaving behind itself only its divine manifested Ideation,
the creative Logoi have their understanding opened, and they see in the ideal
world (hitherto concealed in the divine thought) the archetypal forms of all,
and proceed to copy and build or fashion upon these models forms evanescent and
transcendent.
At this stage of
action, the Demiurge** is not yet the Architect. Born in the twilight of
action, he has yet to first perceive the plan, to realise the ideal forms which
lie buried in the bosom of Eternal Ideation, as the future lotus-leaves, the
immaculate petals, are concealed within the seed of that plant. . . . .
In chapter
lxxxi. of the Ritual (Book of the Dead), called "Transformation into the
Lotus," a head emerging from this flower, the god exclaims: "I am the
pure lotus, emerging from the Luminous one. . . . . I carry the messages of
Horus. I am the pure lotus which comes from the Solar Fields. . . . ."
The lotus-idea
may be traced even in the Elohistic chapter, the 1st of Genesis, as stated in
Isis.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Lakshmi is Venus
-- Aphrodite, and, like the latter, she sprang from the froth of the ocean with
a lotus in her hand. In the Ramayana she is called Padma.
** In Esoteric
philosophy the Demiurge or Logos, regarded as the CREATOR, is simply an
abstract term, an idea, like "army." As the latter is the
all-embracing term for a body of active forces or working units -- soldiers --
so is the Demiurge the qualitative compound of a multitude of Creators or
Builders. Burnouf, the great Orientalist, has seized the idea perfectly when
saying that Brahma does not create the earth, any more than the rest of the
universe. "Having evolved himself from the soul of the world, once
separated from the first cause, he evaporates with, and emanates all nature out
of himself. He does not stand above it, but is mixed up with it; Brahma and the
universe form one Being, each particle of which is in its essence Brahma
himself, who proceeded out of himself."
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It is in this
idea that we must look for the origin and explanation of the verse in the
Jewish cosmogony, which reads: "And God said, Let the earth bring forth .
. . . the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in
itself." In all the primitive religions, the "Son of the Father"
is the creative God -- i.e., His thought made visible; and before the Christian
era, from the Trimurti of the Hindus down to the three kabalistic heads of the
scriptures as explained by the Jews, the triune godhead of each nation was
fully defined and substantiated in its allegories.
Such is the
cosmic and ideal significance of this great symbol with the Eastern peoples.
But, applied to practical and exoteric worship -- which had also its esoteric
symbology -- the lotus became in time the carrier and container of a more
terrestrial idea. No dogmatic religion has ever escaped the sexual element in
it; and to this day it soils the moral beauty of the root idea. The following
is quoted from the same Kabalistic MSS. already mentioned:--
"Pointing
to like signification was the lotus growing in the waters of the Nile. Its mode
of growth peculiarly fitted it as a symbol of the generative activities. The
flower of the lotus, which is the bearer of the seed for reproduction, as the
result of its maturing, is connected by its placenta-like attachment with
mother-earth, or the womb of Isis, through the water of the womb, that is, the
river Nile, by means of the long cord-like stalk, the umbilicus. Nothing can be
plainer than the symbol, and to make it perfect in its intended signification,
a child is sometimes represented as seated in or issuing from the flower.* Thus
Osiris and Isis, the children of Chronos, or time without end, in the
development of their nature-forces, in this picture become the parents of man
under the name Horus. . ." (See § X., "Deus Lunus.")
"We cannot
lay too great stress upon the use of this generative function as a basis for a
symbolical language and a scientific art-speech. Thought upon the idea leads at
once to reflection upon the subject of creative cause. In its workings Nature
is observed to have fashioned a wonderful piece of living mechanism governed by
an added living soul; the life development and history of which soul, as to its
whence, its present, and its whither, surpasses all efforts of the human
intellect.** The new born is an ever-recurring miracle, an evidence that
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In Indian
Puranas it is Vishnu, the first, and Brahma, the second logos, or the ideal and
practical creators, who are respectively represented, one as manifesting the
lotus, the other as issuing from it.
** Not the
"efforts" of the trained psychic faculties of an Initiate into
Eastern metaphysics, and the mysteries of creative Nature. It is the profane of
the past ages who have degraded the pure ideal of cosmic creation into an
emblem of mere human reproduction and sexual functions: it is the esoteric
teachings, and the initiates of the Future, whose mission it is, and will be,
to redeem and ennoble once more the primitive conception so sadly profaned by
its crude and gross application to exoteric dogmas and personations by
theological and ecclesiastical religionists. The silent worship of abstract or
noumenal Nature, the only divine manifestation, is the one ennobling religion
of Humanity.
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within the
workshop of the womb an intelligent creative power has intervened to fasten a
living soul to a physical machine. The amazing wonderfulness of the fact
attaches a holy sacredness to all connected with the organs of reproduction, as
the dwelling and place of evident constructive intervention of deity."
This is a
correct rendering of the underlying ideas of old, of the purely pantheistic
conceptions, impersonal and reverential, of the archaic philosophers of the
prehistoric ages. Not so, however, when applied to sinful humanity, to the
gross ideas attached to personality. Therefore, no pantheistic philosopher
would fail to find the remarks that follow the above and which represent the
anthropomorphism of Judean symbology, other than dangerous for the sacredness
of true religion, and fitting only our materialistic age, which is the direct
outcome and result of that anthropomorphic character. For this is the key-note
to the entire spirit and essence of the Old Testament. "Therefore,"
goes on the MSS., treating of the symbolism of art-speech of the Bible:--
"The
locality of the womb is to be taken as the MOST HOLY PLACE, the SANCTUM SANCTORUM,
and the veritable TEMPLE OF THE LIVING GOD.* With man the possession of the
woman has always been considered as an essential part of himself, to make one
out of two, and jealously guarded as sacred. Even the part of the ordinary
house or home consecrated to the dwelling of the wife was called the
penetralia, the secret or sacred, and hence the metaphor of the Holy of Holies
of sacred constructions taken from the idea of the sacredness of the organs of
generation. Carried to the extreme of description** by metaphor, this part of
the house is described in the Sacred Books as the "between the thighs of
the house," and sometimes the idea is carried out constructively in the
great door-opening of Churches placed inward between flanking buttresses."
No such thought
"carried to the extreme" ever existed among the old primitive Aryans.
This is proven by the fact that in the Vedic period their women were not placed
apart from men in penetralia, or "Zenanas." Their seclusion began
when the Mahomedans -- the next heirs to Hebrew symbolism after Christian
ecclesiasticism -- had conquered the land and gradually enforced their ways and
customs upon the Hindus. The pre- and post-Vedic woman was as free as man; and
no impure terrestrial thought was ever mixed with the religious symbo-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Surely the
words of the old Initiate into the primitive mysteries of Christianity,
"Know ye not ye are the Temple of God" (I Corinth. iii. 16) could not
be applied in this sense to men? The meaning may have been, and was so,
undeniably, in the minds of the Hebrew compilers of the Old Testament. And here
is the abyss that lies between the symbolism of the New Testament and the
Jewish canon. This gulf would have remained and ever widened, had not
Christianity -- especially and most glaringly the Latin Church -- thrown a
bridge over it? Modern Popery has now spanned it entirely, by its dogma of the
two immaculate conceptions, and the anthropomorphic and at the same time idolatrous
character it has conferred upon the Mother of its God.
** It was so
carried only in the Hebrew Bible, and its servile copyist, Christian theology.
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logy of the
early Aryans. The idea and application are purely Semitic. This is corroborated
by the writer of the said intensely learned and Kabalistic revelation himself,
when he closes the above-quoted passages by adding:--
"If to
these organs as symbols of creative cosmic agencies the idea of the origin of
measures as well as of time-periods can be attached, then indeed, in the
constructions of the Temples as Dwellings of Deity, or of Jehovah, that part
designated as the Holy of Holies, or the Most Holy place, should borrow its
title from the recognised sacredness of the generative organs, considered as
symbols of measures as well as of creative cause. With the ancient WISE, there
was no name and no idea, and no symbol of A FIRST CAUSE." . . . .
Most decidedly
not. Rather never give a thought to it and leave it for ever nameless, as the
early Pantheists did, than degrade the sacredness of that Ideal of Ideals, by
dragging down its symbols into such anthropomorphic forms! Here again one
perceives the immense chasm between Aryan and Semitic religious thought: two
opposite poles -- Sincerity and Concealment. With the Brahmins, who have never
invested with an "original Sin" element the natural procreative
functions of mankind, it is a religious duty to have a son. A Brahmin, in days
of old, having accomplished his mission of human creator, retired to the jungle
and passed the rest of his days in religious meditations. He had accomplished
his duty to nature as mortal man and its co-worker, and henceforth gave all his
thoughts to the spiritual immortal portion in himself, regarding the
terrestrial as a mere illusion, an evanescent dream -- which it is. With the
Semite, it was different. He invented a temptation of flesh in a garden of
Eden; showed his God (esoterically, the Tempter and the Ruler of Nature)
CURSING for ever an act, which was in the logical programme of that nature.*
All this exoterically, as in the cloak and dead letter of Genesis and the rest;
and at the same time esoterically he regarded the supposed sin and FALL as an
act so sacred, as to choose the organ, the perpetrator of the original sin, as
the fittest and most sacred symbol to represent that God, who is shown as
branding its entering into function as disobedience and everlasting SIN!
Who can ever
fathom the paradoxical depths of the Semitic mind? And this paradoxical
element, minus its innermost significance, has now passed entirely into
Christian theology and dogma!
Whether the
early Fathers of the Church knew the esoteric meaning of the Hebrew (Old)
Testament, or whether only a few of them were aware of it, while the others
remained ignorant of the secret, is for
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The same idea
is carried out exoterically in the incidents of Egypt. The Lord God tempts
sorely Pharaoh and "plagues him with great plagues," lest the king
should escape punishment, and thus afford no pretext for one more triumph to
his "Chosen people."
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posterity to decide.
One thing is certain, at any rate. As the esotericism of the New Testament
agrees perfectly with that of the Hebrew Mosaic Books; and since, at the same
time, a number of purely Egyptian symbols and pagan dogmas in general -- the
Trinity for example -- have been copied by, and incorporated into, the
Synoptics and St. John, it becomes evident that the identity of those symbols
was known to the writers of the New Testament, whoever they were. They must
have been aware also of the priority of the Egyptian esotericism, since they
have adopted several such symbols that typify purely Egyptian conceptions and
beliefs -- in their outward and inward meaning -- and which are not to be found
in the Jewish Canon. One of such is the water-lily in the hands of the
Archangel in the early representations of his appearance to the Virgin Mary;
and these symbolical images are preserved to this day in the iconography of the
Greek and Roman Churches. Thus water, fire, the Cross, as well as the Dove, the
Lamb, and other sacred animals, with all their combinations, yield esoterically
an identical meaning, and must have been accepted as an improvement upon
Judaism pure and simple.
For the Lotus
and Water are among the oldest symbols, and in their origin are purely Aryan,
though they became common property during the branching-off of the fifth race.
Let us give an example. Letters, as much as numbers, were all mystic, whether
in combination or each taken separately. The most sacred of all is the letter
M. It is both feminine and masculine, or androgyne, and is made to symbolize
WATER, the great deep, in its origin. It is mystic in all the languages,
Eastern and Western, and stands as a glyph for the waves, thus: [[diagram]]. In
the Aryan Esotericism, as in the Semitic, this letter has always stood for the
waters; e.g., in Sanskrit MAKARA -- the tenth sign of the Zodiac -- means a
crocodile, or rather an aquatic monster associated always with water. The
letter MA is equivalent to and corresponds with number 5 -- composed of a binary,
the symbol of the two sexes separated, and of the ternary, symbol of the third
life, the progeny of the binary. This, again, is often symbolised by a
Pentagon, the latter being a sacred sign, a divine Monogram. MAITREYA is the
secret name of the Fifth Buddha, and the Kalki Avatar of the Brahmins -- the
last MESSIAH who will come at the culmination of the Great Cycle. It is also
the initial letter of the Greek Metis or Divine Wisdom; of Mimra, the
"word" or Logos; and of Mithras (the Mihr), the Monad, Mystery. All
these are born in, and from, the great Deep, and are the Sons of Maya -- the
Mother; in Egypt, Mouth, in Greece Minerva (divine wisdom), Mary, or Miriam,
Myrrha, etc.; of the Mother of the Christian Logos, and of Maya, the mother of
Buddha. Madhava and Madhavi are the titles of the most important gods and
goddesses of the Hindu Pantheon. Finally, Mandala is in
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Sanskrit "a
circle," or an orb (the ten divisions of the Rig Veda). The most sacred
names in India begin with this letter generally -- from Mahat, the first
manifested intellect, and Mandara, the great mountain used by the gods to churn
the Ocean, down to Mandakin, the heavenly Ganga (Ganges), Manu, etc., etc.
Shall this be
called a coincidence? A strange one it is then, indeed, when we find even Moses
-- found in the water of the Nile -- having the symbolical consonant in his
name. And Pharaoh's daughter "called his name Moses . . . because,"
she said, "I drew him out of WATER" (Exod. ii., 10.)* Besides which
the Hebrew sacred name of God applied to this letter M is Meborach, the
"Holy" or the "Blessed," and the name for the water of the
Flood is M'bul. A reminder of the "three Maries" at the Crucifixion
and their connection with Mar, the Sea, or Water, may close this example. This
is why in Judaism and Christianity the Messiah is always connected with Water,
Baptism, the Fishes (the sign of the Zodiac called Meenam in Sanskrit), and
even with the Matsya (fish) Avatar, and the Lotus -- the symbol of the womb, or
the water-lily, which is the same.
In the relics of
ancient Egypt, the greater the antiquity of the votive symbols and emblems of
the objects exhumed, the oftener are the lotus flowers and the water found in
connection with the Solar Gods. The god Khnoom -- the moist power -- water, as
Thales taught it, being the principle of all things, sits on a throne enshrined
in a lotus (Saitic epoch, Serapeum). The god Bes stands on a lotus, ready to
devour his progeny. (Ibid, Abydos.) Thot, the god of mystery and Wisdom, the
sacred Scribe of Amenti, wearing the Solar disc as head gear, sits with a
bull's head (the sacred bull of Mendes being a form of Thot) and a human body,
on a full blown lotus. (IVth Dynasty.) Finally it is the goddess Hiquet, under
her shape of a frog, who rests on the lotus, thus showing her connection with
water. And it is this frog-symbol, undeniably the most ancient of their
Egyptian deities, from whose unpoetical shape the Egyptologists have been
vainly trying to unravel her mystery and functions. Its adoption in the Church
by the early Christians shows that they knew it better than our modern Orientalists.
The "frog or toad goddess" was one of the chief cosmic deities
connected with creation, on account of her amphibious nature, and chiefly
because of her apparent resurrection, after long ages of solitary life
enshrined in old walls, in rocks, etc. She not only participated in the
organization of the world, together with Khnoom, but was also connected with
the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Even to the
seven daughters of the Midian priest, who, coming to draw the water, had Moses
water their flock, for which service the Midian gives to Moses Zipporah
(sippara = the shining wave) as wife (Exod. ii.) All this has the same secret
meaning.
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dogma of
resurrection.* There must have been some very profound and sacred meaning
attached to this symbol, since, notwithstanding the risk of being charged with
a disgusting form of zoolatry, the early Egyptian Christians adopted it in
their Churches. A frog or toad enshrined in a lotus flower, or simply without
the latter emblem, was the form chosen for the Church lamps, on which were
engraved the words "I am the resurrection" "[[ego eimi
anastasis]]."** These frog goddesses are also found on all the mummies.
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§ IX
THE MOON, DEUS
LUNUS, PHOEBE.
THIS archaic
symbol is the most poetical of all symbols, as also the most philosophical. The
ancient Greeks brought it into prominence, and the modern poets have worn it
threadbare. The Queen of Night, riding in the majesty of her peerless light in
heaven, throwing all, even Hesperos, into darkness, and spreading her silver
mantle over the whole sidereal world, has ever been a favourite theme with all
the poets of Christendom, from Milton and Shakespeare down to the latest
versifier. But the refulgent lamp of night, with her suite of stars unnumbered,
spoke only to the imagination of the profane. Until lately, Religion and
Science had nought to do with the beautiful mythos. Yet, the cold chaste moon,
she, in the words of Shelley --
. . . .
"Who makes all beautiful on which she smiles
That wandering
shrine of soft, yet icy flame,
Which ever is
transformed, yet still the same,
And warms, but
not illumines." . . . .
stands in closer
relations to Earth than any other sidereal orb. The Sun is the giver of life to
the whole planetary system; the Moon is the giver of life to our globe; and the
early races understood and knew it, even in their infancy. She is the Queen and
she is the King, and was King Soma before she became transformed into Phoebe
and the chaste Diana. She is pre-eminently the deity of the Christians, through
the Mosaic and Kabalistic Jews, though the civilized world may have remained
ignorant of the fact for long ages; in fact, ever since the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* With the
Egyptians it was the resurrection in rebirth after 3,000 years of purification,
either in Devachan or "the fields of bliss."
** Such
"frog-goddesses" may be seen at Bulaq, in the Cairo Museum. For the
statement about the Church lamps and inscriptions it is the learned ex-director
of the Bulaq Museum, Mr. Gaston Maspero, who must be held responsible. (See his
"Guide du Visiteur au Musee de Bulaq," p. 146.)
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last initiated
Father of the Church died, carrying with him into his grave the secrets of the
pagan temples. For the "Fathers" -- such as Origen or Clemens
Alexandrinus -- the Moon was Jehovah's living symbol: the giver of Life and the
giver of Death, the disposer of being -- in our World. For, if Artemis was Luna
in Heaven, and, with the Greeks, Diana on Earth, who presided over child-birth
and life: with the Egyptians, she was Hekat (Hecate) in Hell, the goddess of
Death, who ruled over magic and enchantments. More than this: as the
personified moon, whose phenomena are triadic, Diana-Hecate-Luna is the three
in one. For she is Diva triformis, tergemina, triceps -- three heads on one
neck,* like Brahma-Vishnu-Siva. Hence she is the prototype of our Trinity,
which has not always been entirely male. The number seven, so prominent in the
Bible, so sacred in its seventh (Sabbath) day, came to the Jews from Antiquity,
deriving its origin from the four-fold number 7 contained in the 28 days of the
lunar month, each septenary portion thereof being typified by one quarter of
the moon.
It is worth the
trouble of presenting in this work a bird's-eye view of the origin and
development of the lunar myth and worship in historical antiquity, on our side
of the globe. Its earlier origin is untraceable by exact science, rejecting as
it does tradition; while for Theology, which, under the guidance of the crafty
Popes, has put a brand on every fragment of literature that does not bear the
imprimatur of the Church of Rome, its archaic history is a sealed book. Whether
the Egyptian or the Aryan Hindu religious philosophy is the more ancient -- and
the Secret Doctrine says it is the latter -- does not much matter in this
instance, as the lunar and solar "worship" are the most ancient in
the world. Both have survived, and prevail to this day throughout the whole
world, with some openly, with others -- e.g., in Christian symbolics --
secretly. The cat, a lunar symbol, was sacred to Isis, herself the Moon in one
sense, as Osiris was the Sun. The cat is often seen on the top of the Sistrum
in the hand of the goddess. This animal was held in great veneration in the
city of Bubaste, which went into deep mourning after the death of every sacred
cat, because Isis, as the Moon, was particularly worshipped in this city of
mysteries. The astronomical symbolism connected with it has already been given
in Section I. of "Symbolism," and no one has better described it than
Mr. G. Massey, in his Lectures and in "The Natural Genesis." The eye
of the cat, it is said, seems to follow the lunar phases in its growth and
decline, and its orbs shine like two stars in the darkness of night. Hence the
mythological allegory which shows Diana hiding under the shape of a cat in the
Moon, when, in company with other deities, she was seeking to
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The goddess
[[Trimorphos]] in the statuary of Alcamenes.
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escape the
pursuit of Typhon (Vide the Metamorphoses of Ovid). The moon in Egypt was both
the "Eye of Horus" and the "Eye of Osiris," the Sun.
The same with
the Cynocephalus. The dog-headed ape was a glyph to symbolise the sun and moon,
in turn, though the Cynocephalus is more a Hermetic than a religious symbol.
For it is the hieroglyph of Mercury, the planet, as of the Mercury of the Alchemical
philosophers, "as," say the Alchemists, "Mercury has to be ever
near Isis, as her minister, as without Mercury neither Isis nor Osiris can
accomplish anything in the GREAT WORK." Cynocephalus, whenever represented
with the Caduceus, the Crescent, or the Lotus, is a glyph of the
"philosophical" Mercury; but when seen with a reed, or a roll of
parchment, he stands for Hermes, the secretary and adviser of Isis, as Hanuman
filled the same office with Rama.
Though the
regular Sun-Worshippers, the Parsis, are few, yet not only is the bulk of the
Hindu mythology and history based upon and interblended with these two
worships, but so is also the Christian religion itself. From their origin down
to our modern day it has coloured the theologies of both the Roman Catholic and
Protestant Churches. The difference, indeed, between the Aryan Hindu and the
Aryan European faiths is very small, if only the fundamental ideas of both are
taken into consideration. Hindus are proud of calling themselves Suryas and Chandravansas
(of the Solar and Lunar dynasties). The Christians pretend to regard it as
idolatry, and yet they adhere to a religion entirely based upon the solar and
lunar worships. It is useless and vain for the Protestants to exclaim against
the Roman Catholics for their "Mariolatry," based on the ancient cult
of lunar goddesses, when they themselves worship Jehovah, pre-eminently a lunar
god, and when both Churches have accepted in their theologies the
"Sun"-Christ and the lunar trinity.
What is known of
Chaldaean Moon-Worship, of the Babylonian god, Sin, called by the Greeks
"Deus Lunus," is very little, and that little is apt to mislead the
profane student who fails to grasp the esoteric significance of the symbols. As
popularly known to the ancient profane philosophers and writers (for those who
were initiated were pledged to silence) the Chaldaea were the worshippers of
the moon under her (and his) various names, just as were the Jews, who came
after them.
In the
unpublished MSS. on the Art Speech, already mentioned, giving a key to the
formation of the ancient (symbolical) languages a logical raison d'etre is
brought forward for this double worship. It is written by a wonderfully
well-informed and acute scholar and Mystic, who gives it in the comprehensive
form of a hypothesis. The latter, however, becomes forcibly a proven fact in
the history of religious
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evolution in
human thought, to anyone who has ever had a glimpse into the secret of ancient
Symbology. Thus, he says:--
"One of the
first occupations among men, connected with those of actual necessity, would be
the perception of time periods,* marked on the vaulted arch of the heavens
sprung and rising over the level floor of the horizon, or the plain of still
water. These would come to be marked as those of day and night, of the phases
of the moon, of its stellar or synodic revolutions, and of the period of the
solar year with recurrence of the seasons, and with the application to such
periods of the natural measure of day or night, or of the day divided into the
light and the dark. It would also be discovered that there was a longest and
shortest solar day, and two solar days of equal day and night, within the
period of the solar year; and the points in the year of these could be marked
with the greatest precision in the starry groups of the heavens or the
constellations, subject to that retrograde movement thereof, which in time
would require a correction by intercalation, as was the case in the description
of the Flood, where correction of 150 days was made for a period of 600 years,
during which confusion of landmarks had increased. . . . This would naturally
come to pass . . . . with all races in all time; and such knowledge must be
taken to have been inherent in the human race, prior to what we call the
historic period. . . . ."
On this basis,
the author seeks for some natural physical function possessed in common by the
human race, and connected with the periodical manifestations, such that
"the connection between the two kinds of phenomena . . . became fixed in
popular usage." He finds it "(a) in the feminine physiological
phenomena every lunar month of 28 days, or" 4 weeks of 7 days each, so
that 13 occurrences of the period should happen in 364 days, which is the solar
week year of 52 weeks of 7 days each. (b) The quickening of the foetus is
marked by a period of 126 days, or 18 weeks of 7 days each. (c) That period
which is called "the period of viability" is one of 210 days, or 30
weeks of 7 days each. (d) The period of parturition is accomplished in 280
days, or a period of 40 weeks of 7 days each, or 10 lunar months of 28 days
each, or of 9 calendar months of 31 days each, counting on the royal arch of
heavens for the measure of the period of traverse from the darkness of the womb
to the light and glory of conscious existence, that continuing inscrutable
mystery and miracle . . . Thus the observed periods of time marking the
workings of the birth function would naturally become a basis of astronomical
calculation . . . We may almost affirm . . . that this was the mode of
reckoning among all nations, either independently, or intermediately and
indirectly by tuition. It was the mode with the Hebrews, for even to-day they
calculate the calendar by means of the 354 and 355 of the lunar year, and we
possess a special evidence that it was the mode with the ancient Egyptians, as
to which this is the proof:--
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Ancient
Mythology includes ancient Astronomy as well as Astrology. The planets were the
hands pointing out, on the dial of our solar system, the hours of certain
periodical events. Thus, Mercury was the messenger appointed to keep time
during the daily solar and lunar phenomena, and was otherwise connected with
the God and Goddess of Light.
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"The basic
idea underlying the religious philosophy of the Hebrews was that God contained
all things within himself*; and that man was his image, man including woman . .
. The place of the man and woman with the Hebrews was among the Egyptians
occupied by the bull and the cow, sacred to Osiris and Isis,** who were
represented, respectively, by a man having a bull's head, and a woman having
the head of a cow, which symbols were worshipped. Notoriously Osiris was the
Sun and the river Nile, the tropical year of 365 days, which number is the
value of the word Neilos, and the bull, as he was also the principle of fire
and of life-giving force, while Isis was the Moon, the bed of the river Nile,
or the Mother Earth, for the parturient energies of which water was a
necessity, the lunar year of 354-364 days, the time-maker of the periods of gestation,
and the cow marked by, or with, the crescent new moon." . . . .
"But the
use of the cow of the Egyptians for the women of the Hebrews was not intended
as of any radical difference of signification, but a concurrence in the
teaching intended, and merely as a substitution of a symbol of common import,
which was this, viz., the period of parturition with the cow and the woman was
held to be the same, or 280 days, or ten lunar months of four weeks each. And
in this period consisted the essential value of this animal symbol, whose mark
was that of the crescent moon.*** . . . These parturient and natural periods
are found to have been subjects of symbolism all over the world. They were thus
used by the Hindus, and are found to be most plainly set forth by the ancient
Americans, in the Richardson and Gest tablets, in the Palenque Cross; and
manifestly lay at the base of the formation of the calendar forms of the Mayas
of Yucatan, the Hindus, the Assyrians, and the ancient Babylonians, as well as
the Egyptians and old Hebrews. The natural symbols . . . would be either the
phallus or the phallus and yoni, . . . or male and female. Indeed, the words
translated by the generalizing terms male and female, in the 27th verse of the
1st chapter of Genesis are . . . sacr and n'cabrah, or literally, phallus and
yoni,**** while the representation of the phallic emblems would barely indicate
the genital members of the human body, when their functions and the development
of the seed-vesicles emanating from them was considered; then would come into
indication a mode of measures of lunar time, and, through lunar, of solar
time." . . .
This is the
physiological or anthropological key to the Moon symbol. The key that opens the
mystery of theogony, or the evolution of the Manvantaric gods, is more
complicated, and has nothing phallic in it. All is mystical and divine there.
But the Jews, beyond connecting Jehovah directly with the Moon as a generative
god, preferred to ignore the higher hierarchies, and have made of some of them
(zodiacal constellations and planetary gods) their Patriarchs, thus
euhemerizing the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* A caricatured
and dwarfed Vedantin notion of Parabrahmam containing within itself the whole
Universe as being that boundless Universe itself, and there existing nothing
outside of itself.
** Just as they
are to this day in India, the bull of Siva and the cow representing several
Sakti -- goddesses.
*** Hence the
worship of the moon by the Hebrews.
**** "Male
and female, created he them."
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purely
theosophical idea and dragging it down to the level of sinful humanity. (See
section "Holy of Holies" in the "Symbolism" of Book II.)
The MSS. from which the above is extracted explains very clearly to what
hierarchy of gods Jehovah belonged, and who this Jewish GOD was; for it shows
in clear language that which the writer has always insisted upon -- namely,
that the God with which the Christians have burdened themselves was no better
than the lunar symbol of the reproductive or generative faculty in nature. They
have ever ignored even the Hebrew secret god of the Kabalists, Ain-Soph, as
grand as Parabrahmam in the earliest Kabalistic and mystical conceptions. But
it is not the Kabala of Rosenroth that can ever give the true original
teachings of Simeon-Ben-Iochai, as metaphysical and philosophical as any. And
how many are there among the students of the Kabala who knew anything of them
except in their distorted Latin translations. Let us glance at the idea which
led the ancient Jews to adopt a substitute for the ever UNKNOWABLE, and which
has misled the Christians into mistaking the substitute for the reality.
"If to
these organs (phallus and yoni) as symbols of creative cosmic agencies the idea
of . . . . time periods can be attached, then, indeed, in the construction of
Temples as Dwellings of Deity, or of Jehovah, that post designated as the Holy
of Holies, or the most High Place, should borrow its title from the recognized
sacredness of the generative organs, considered as symbols of measures as well
as of creative Cause."
"With the
ancient wise, there was no name, and no idea, and no symbol, of a First Cause.*
With the Hebrews, the indirect conception of such was couched in a term of
negation of comprehension -- viz., Ain-Soph, or the Without Bounds. But the
symbol of its first comprehensible manifestation, was the conception of a
circle with its diameter line. . . . . (See the Proem of Book I., Part I.) to
carry at once a geometric, phallic, and astronomic idea . . . . for the one
takes its birth from the nought or the Circle, without which it could not be,
and from one, or primal one, spring the nine digits, and, geometrically, all
plane shapes. So in the Kabala this Circle, with its diameter line, is the
picture of the ten Sephiroth or Emanations, composing the Adam Kadmon, the
Archetypal Man, the creative origin of all things. . . . . This idea of
connecting the circle and its diameter line, that is, number ten, with the
signification of the reproductive organs, and the Most Holy Place, was carried
out constructively in the King's Chamber, or Holy of Holies, of the great
Pyramid, in the Tabernacle of Moses, and in the Holy of Holies of the Temple of
Solomon. . . . . It is the picture of a double-womb, for in Hebrew the letter
he [[diagram]] is at the same time the number 5 and symbol of the womb, and
twice 5 is 10, or the phallic number."
This
"double womb" also shows the duality of the idea carried from
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Because it was
too sacred. It is referred to as THAT in the Vedas: it is the "Eternal
Cause," and cannot, therefore, be spoken of as a "First Cause,"
a term implying the absence of any cause, at one time.
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the highest,
spiritual, down to the lowest or terrestrial plane; and by the Jews limited to
the latter. With them, therefore the number 7 has acquired the most prominent
place in their exoteric religion, a cult of external forms and empty rituals;
as their Sabbath, for instance, the seventh day sacred to their deity, the
moon, symbolical of the generative Jehovah. While with other nations the number
seven was typical of theogonic evolution, of cycles, cosmic planes, and the
Seven Forces and Occult Powers in Kosmos, as a boundless whole, whose first
upper triangle was unreachable to the finite intellect of man -- while other
nations, therefore, busied themselves, in their forcible limitation of Kosmos
in Space and Time, only with its septenary manifested plane, the Jews centred
this member solely in the moon, and based all their sacred calculations
thereupon. Hence we find the thoughtful author of the MSS. just quoted,
remarking, in reference to the metrology of the Jews that: "If 20,612 be
multiplied by 4/3 the product will afford a base for the ascertainment of the
mean revolution of the moon, and if this product be again multiplied by 4/3,
this continued product will afford a base for finding the exact period of the
mean solar year, . . . this form . . . becoming, for the finding of
astronomical periods of time, of very great service." This double number
(male and female) is symbolized also in some well-known idols: e.g.,
"Ardanari-Iswara, the Isis of the Hindus, Eridanus, or Ardan, or the
Hebrew Jordan, or source of descent. She is standing on a lotus-leaf flowing on
the water. But the signification is, that it is androgyne or hermaphrodite,
that is phallus and yoni combined, the number 10, the Hebrew letter Jod
[[diagram]], the containment of Jehovah. She, or rather she-he, gives the
minutes of the same circle of 360 degrees."
"Jehovah,"
in its best aspect is Binah, "the Upper mediating Mother, the Great Sea or
Holy Spirit;" therefore rather a synonym of Mary, the Mother of Jesus,
than of his Father; that "Mother, being the Latin Mare" the Sea is
here also, Venus, the Stella del Mare, or "Star of the Sea."
The ancestors of
the mysterious Akkadians -- the Chandra or Indovansas, the Lunar Kings whom
tradition shows reigning at Prayag (Allahabad) ages before our era -- had come
from India, and brought with them the worship of their forefathers, of Soma,
and his son Budha, which afterwards became that of the Chaldeans. Yet such
adoration, apart from popular Astrolatry and Heliolatry, was in no sense
idolatry. No more, at any rate, than the modern Roman Catholic symbolism which
connects their Virgin Mary -- the Magna Mater of the Syrians and Greeks -- with
the Moon.
Of this worship,
the most pious Roman Catholics feel quite proud,
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and loudly
confess to it. In a Memoire to the French Academy, the Marquis De Mirville
says:--
"It is only
natural that, as an unconscious prophecy, Ammon-Ra should be his mother's
husband, since the Magna Mater of the Christians is precisely the spouse of
that son she conceives. . . . We (Christians) can understand now why Neithis
throws radiance on the sun, while remaining the Moon, since the VIRGIN, who is
the QUEEN OF HEAVEN, as Neith was, clothes herself in her radiance, and clothes
in his turn the CHRIST-SUN. "Tu vestis solem et te sol vestit.". . .
is sung by the Roman Catholics during their service, and he adds:--
"We
(Christians) understand also how it is that the famous inscription at Sais
should have stated that 'none has ever lifted my peplum (veil),' considering
that this sentence, literally translated, is the summary of what is sung in the
Church on the day of the immaculate conception." (ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE
VIRGIN MOTHER," p. 117.)
Surely nothing
could be more sincere than this! It justifies entirely what Mr. Gerald Massey
has said in his Lecture on "Luniolatry, Ancient and Modern":--
"The man in
the moon (Osiris-Sut, Jehovah-Satan, Christ-Judas, and other Lunar twins) is
often charged with bad conduct. . . . In the lunar phenomena the moon was one
as the moon, which was two-fold in sex, and three-fold in character -- as
mother, child, and adult male. Thus the child of the moon became the consort of
his own mother! It could not be helped if there was to be any reproduction. He
was compelled to be his own father! These relationships were repudiated by
later sociology, and the primitive man in the moon got tabooed. Yet, in its
latest, most inexplicable phase, this has become the central doctrine of the
grossest superstition the world has seen, for these lunar phenomena and their
humanly represented relationships, the incestuous included, are the very
foundations of the Christian Trinity in Unity. Through ignorance of the
symbolism, the simple representation of early time has become the most profound
religious mystery in modern Luniolatry. The Roman Church, without being in any
wise ashamed of the proof, portrays the Virgin Mary arrayed with the sun, and
the horned moon at her feet, holding the lunar infant in her arms -- as child
and consort of the mother moon. The mother, child, and adult male, are
fundamental."
"In this
way it can be proved that our Christology is mummified mythology, and legendary
lore, which have been palmed off upon us in the Old Testament and the New, as divine
revelation uttered by the very voice of God."
A charming
allegory is found in the Zohar, one which unveils better than anything ever did
the true character of Jehovah or YHVH in the primitive conception of the Hebrew
Kabalists. It is now found in the philosophy of I'bn Gebirol's Kabbalah,
translated by Isaac Myer. "In the introduction written by R'Hez'quee-yah,
which is very old," says our author, "and forms part of our Brody
edition of the Zohar (I, 5b. sq.) is an account of a journey taken by R. El'azar,
son of R. Shim-on b. Io'hai, and Rabbi Abbah." They met a man with a heavy
burden and asked his name; but he refused to give it and proceeded to explain
to them Thorah
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(Law).
"They asked: 'Who caused thee thus to walk and carry such a heavy load?'
He answered: 'The letter [[diagram]], (Yod, which = 10, and is the symbolical letter
of Kether and the essence and germ of the Holy name [[diagram]] YHVH) . . . .
They said to him: 'If thou wilt tell us the name of thy father, we will kiss
the dust of thy feet.' He replied: 'As to my father, he had his dwelling in the
Great Sea, and was a fish therein' (like Vishnu and Dagon or Oannes), 'which
(first) destroyed the great sea' . . . . . and he was great and mighty and
'Ancient of Days,' until he swallowed all the other fishes in the (Great) Sea .
. . R. El'azar listened and said to him: 'Thou art the Son of the Holy Flame,
thou art the Son of Rab Ham -- 'nun-ah Sabah [the old: the fish in Aramaic or
Chaldee is nun (noon)] thou art the Son of the Light of the Thorah,"
(Dharma) etc. Then the author explains that the feminine Sephiroth, Binah, is
termed by the Kabalist the great sea: therefore Binah, whose divine names are
Jehovah, Yah, and Elohim, is simply the Chaldean Tiamat, the female power, the
Thalatth of Berosus, who presides over the Chaos, and was made out later by
Christian theology to be the serpent and the Devil. She-He (Yah-hovah) is the
supernal (Heh, and Eve). This Yah-hovah then or Jehovah, is identical with our
Chaos -- Father, Mother, Son, -- on the material plane and in the purely
physical World. Demon and Deus at one and the same time; the sun and moon, good
and evil, God and Demon.
Lunar magnetism
generates life, preserves and destroys it, psychically as well as physically.
And if, astronomically, she is one of the seven planets of the ancient world,
in theogony she is one of the regents thereof; with Christians now as much as
with Pagans, the former referring to her under the name of one of their
archangels, and the latter under that of one of their gods.
Therefore the
meaning of the "fairy tale" translated by Chwolson from an old
Chaldean MSS. translated into Arabic, about Qu-tamy being instructed by the
idol of the moon, is easily understood (vide Book III.) Seldenus tells us the
secret as well as Maimonides (More Nevochim, Book III., ch. xxx). The
worshippers of the Teraphim (the Jewish Oracles) "carved images and
claimed that the light of the principal stars (planets) permeating these
through and through, the angelic VIRTUES (or the regents of the stars and
planets) conversed with them, teaching them many most useful things and
arts." And Seldenus explains that the Teraphim were built and composed
after the position of certain planets, those which the Greeks called
[[stoicheia]], and according to figures that were located in the sky and called
[[alexeteroi]], or the tutelary gods. Those who traced out the [[stoicheia]]
were called [[stoicheiomatichoi]], or the diviners by the [[stoicheia]]. (De
Diis Syriis, Teraph, II. Synt. p. 31) vide infra, the Teraphim.
It is such
sentences, however, in the "Nabathean agriculture," that
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have frightened
the men of science and made them proclaim the work "either an apocrypha or
a fairy tale, unworthy of the notice of an Academician." At the same time,
as shown, zealous Roman Catholics and Protestants tore it metaphorically to
pieces; the former because "it described the worship of demons," the
latter because it is "ungodly." They are all wrong, once more. It is
not a fairy tale; and as far as regards pious Churchmen, the same worship may
be shown in the Scriptures, however disfigured by translation. Solar and Lunar
worship, as well as that of the Stars and Elements, are traced, and figure in
the Christian theology; defended by Papists, they are stoutly denied by the
Protestants only at their own risk and peril. Two instances may be given.
Ammianus
Marcellinus teaches that ancient divinations were always accomplished with the
help of the Spirits of the Elements, "Spiritus elementorum, and in Greek
[[pneumata ton stoicheion]]" (1. I., 21).
But it is found
now that the planets, the Elements, and the Zodiac, were figured not only in
Heliopolis by the twelve stones called "mysteries of the elements,"
elementorum arcana, but also in Solomon's temple, and, as pointed out by
various writers, in several old Italian churches and even at Notre Dame de
Paris where they can be seen to this day.
No symbol -- the
sun included -- was more complex in its manifold meanings than the lunar
symbol. The sex was, of course, dual. With some it was male, e.g., the Hindu
"King Soma," and the Chaldean Sin; with other nations it was female,
the beauteous goddesses Diana-Luna, I'lythia, Lucina. In Tauris, human victims
were sacrificed to Artemis, a form of the lunar goddess; the Cretans called her
Dictynna, and the Medes and Persians Anaitis, as shown by an inscription of
Koloe: '[[Artemidi 'Anaeiti]]. But, we are now concerned chiefly with the most
chaste and pure of the virgin goddesses, Luna-Artemis, to whom Pamphos was the
first to give the surname of [[Kalliste]], and of whom Hippolitus wrote:
[[Kallista polu parthenon]]. (See Pausanias viii., 35, 8.) This Artemis-Lochia,
the goddess that presided at conception and child-birth (Iliad, Pausanias,
etc., etc.), is, in her functions and as the triple Hecate, the Orphic deity,
the predecessor of the God of the Rabbins and pre-Christian Kabalists, and his
lunar type. The goddess [[Trimorphos]] was the personified symbol of the
various and successive aspects represented by the moon in each of her three
phases; and this interpretation was already that of the Stoics (Cornut. De Nat,
D. 34, 1), while the Orpheans explained the epithet ([[Trimorphos]]) by the
three kingdoms of nature over which she reigned. jealous, blood-thirsty,
revengeful and exacting, Hecate-Luna is a worthy counterpart of the
"Jealous God" of the Hebrew prophets.
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The whole riddle
of the solar and lunar worship, as now traced in the churches, hangs indeed on
this world-old mystery of lunar phenomena. The correlative forces in the
"Queen of Night," that lie latent for modern science, but are fully
active to the knowledge of Eastern adepts, explain well the thousand and one
images under which the moon was represented by the ancients. It also shows how
much more profoundly learned in the Selenic mysteries were the ancients than
are now our modern astronomers. The whole Pantheon of the lunar gods and
goddesses, Nephtys or Neith, Proserpina, Melytta, Cybele, Isis, Astarte, Venus,
and Hecate, on the one hand, and Apollo, Dionysius, Adonis, Bacchus, Osiris,
Atys, Thammuz, etc., etc., on the other, all show on the face of their names
and titles -- those of "Sons" and "Husbands" of their
mothers -- their identity with the Christian Trinity. In every religious system
the gods were made to merge their functions as Father, Son, and Husband, into
one, and the goddesses were identified as "Wife, Mother, and Sister"
of the male God; the former synthesizing the human attributes as the "Sun,
the giver of Life," the latter merging all the other titles in the grand
synthesis known as Maia, Maya, Maria, etc., a generic name. Maia, in its forced
derivation, has come to mean with the Greeks, "mother," from the root
ma (nurse), and even gave its name to the month of May, which was sacred to all
those goddesses before it became consecrated to Mary.* Its primitive meaning,
however, was Maya, Durga, translated by the Orientalists as
"inaccessible," but meaning in truth the "unreachable," in
the sense of illusion and unreality; as being the source and cause of spells,
the personification of ILLUSION.
In religious
rites the moon served a dual purpose. Personified as a female goddess for
exoteric purposes, or as a male god in allegory and symbol, in occult
philosophy our satellite was regarded as a sexless Potency to be well studied,
because it was to be dreaded. With the initiated Aryans, Khaldii, Greeks and
Romans, Soma, Sin, Artemis Soteira (the hermaphrodite Apollo, whose attribute
is the lyre, and the bearded Diana of the bow and arrow), Deus Lunus, and
especially Osiris-lunus and Thot-lunus,** were the occult potencies of the
moon. But whether male or female, whether Thot or Minerva, Soma or Astoreth,
the Moon is the Occult mystery of mysteries, and more a symbol of evil than of
good. Her seven phases (original, esoteric division) are divided into three
astronomical phenomena and four
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Roman
Catholics are indebted for the idea of consecrating the month of May to the
Virgin, to the pagan Plutarch, who shows that "May is sacred to Maia
([[Maia]]) or Vesta" (Aulus-Gellius, word Maia) -- our mother-earth, our
nurse and nourisher personified.
** Thot-Lunus is
"Budha-Soma" of India, or "Mercury and the Moon."
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purely psychic
phases. That the moon was not always reverenced is shown in the Mysteries, in
which the death of the moon-god (the three phases of gradual waning and final
disappearance) was allegorized by the moon standing for the genius of evil that
triumphs for the time over the light and life-giving god (the sun), and all the
skill and learning of the ancient Hierophants in Magic was required to turn
this triumph into a defeat.
It was the most
ancient worship of all, that of the third Race of our Round, the
Hermaphrodites, to whom the male-moon became sacred, when after the
"Fall" so-called, the sexes had become separated. "Deus
Lunus" then became an androgyne, male and female in turn; to serve
finally, for purposes of sorcery, as a dual power, to the Fourth Root-race, the
Atlanteans. With the Fifth (our own) the lunar-solar worship divided the
nations into two distinct, antagonistic camps. It led to events described aeons
later in the Mahabharatan War, which to the Europeans is the fabulous, to the
Hindus and Occultists the historical, strife between the Suryavansas and the
Indovansas. Originating in the dual aspect of the moon, the worship of the
female and the male principles respectively, it ended in distinct solar and
lunar cults. Among the Semitic races, the sun was for a very long time feminine
and the moon masculine -- the latter notion being adopted by them from the
Atlantean traditions. The moon was called "the Lord of the sun,"
Bel-Skemesh,* before the Shemesh worship. The ignorance of the incipient
reasons for such a distinction, and of occult principles, led the nations into
anthropomorphic idol-worship. But the religion of every ancient nation had been
primarily based upon the Occult manifestations of a purely abstract Force or
Principle now called "God." The very establishment of such worship
shows, in its details and rites, that the philosophers who evolved those
systems of nature, subjective and objective, possessed profound knowledge, and
were acquainted with many facts
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* During that
period which is absent from the Mosaic books -- from the exile of Eden to the
allegorical Flood -- the Jews worshipped with the rest of the Semites Dayanisi
[[hebrew]] "the Ruler of Men," the "Judge," or the SUN.
Though the Jewish canon and Christianism have made the sun become the
"Lord God" and Jehovah in the Bible, yet the latter is full of
indiscreet traces of the androgyne Deity, which was Jehovah the sun, and
Astoreth the moon in its female aspect, and quite free from the present metaphorical
element given to it. God is a "consuming fire," appears in, and is
encompassed by fire." It was not only in vision that Ezekiel (viii., 16)
saw the Jews "worshipping the sun." The Baal of the Israelites (the
Shemesh of the Moabites and the Moloch of the Ammonites) was the identical
"Sun-Jehovah," and he is till now "the King of the Host of
Heaven," the Sun, as much as Astoreth was the "Queen of Heaven"
-- or the moon. The "Sun of Righteousness" has become a metaphorical
expression only now.
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of a scientific
nature. For besides being purely Occult, the rites of lunar worship were based,
as just shown, upon a knowledge of physiology (quite a modern science with us),
psychology, sacred mathematics, geometry and metrology, in their right
applications to symbols and figures, which are but glyphs, recording observed
natural and scientific facts; in short, upon a most minute and profound
knowledge of nature. Lunar magnetism generates life, preserves and kills it.
Soma embodies the triple power of the Trimurti, though it passes unrecognized
by the profane to this day. The allegory that makes Soma, the moon, produced by
the churning of the Ocean of Life (Space) by the gods in another Manvantara
(i.e., in the pregenetic day of our planetary system), and that other allegory,
which shows "the Rishis milking the earth, whose calf was Soma, the
moon," has a deep cosmographical meaning; for it is neither our earth
which is milked, nor was the moon, which we know, the calf.* Had our wise men
of science known as much of the mysteries of nature as the ancient Aryans did,
they would surely never have imagined that the moon was projected from the
Earth. Once more, the oldest of permutations in theogony, the Son becoming his
own father and the mother generated by the Son, has to be remembered and taken
into consideration if the symbolical language of the ancients is to be
understood by us. Otherwise mythology will be ever haunting the Orientalists as
simply "the disease which springs up at a peculiar stage of human
culture!" -- as Renouf gravely observes in a Hibbert lecture.
The ancients
taught the, so to speak, auto-generation of the Gods: the one divine essence,
unmanifested, perpetually begetting a second-self, manifested, which
second-self, androgynous in its nature, gives birth in an immaculate way to
everything macro- and micro-cosmical in this universe. This was shown in the
Circle and the Diameter, or the Sacred 10, a few pages back.
But our
Orientalists, their extreme desire to discover one homogeneous element in
nature notwithstanding, will not see it; cramped in their researches by such ignorance,
they -- the Aryanists and Egyptologists -- are constantly led astray from truth
in their speculations. Thus, de Rouge is unable to understand, in the text
which he translates, the meaning of Ammon-Ra saying to King Amenophes (supposed
to be Memnon), "Thou art my Son, I have begotten thee"; and as he
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The earth
flees for her life in the allegory, before Prithu, who pursues her. She assumes
the shape of a cow, and, trembling with terror, runs away and hides even in the
regions of Brahma. Therefore, it is not our Earth. Again, in every Purana, the
calf changes name. In one it is Manu Swayambhuva, in another Indra, in a third
the Himavat (Himalayas) itself, while Meru was the milker. This is a deeper
allegory than one thinks.
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finds the same
idea in many a text and under various forms, this very Christian Orientalist is
finally compelled to exclaim that "for this idea to have entered the mind
of a hierogrammatist, there must have been in their religion a more or less
defined doctrine, indicating as a possible fact that might come to pass, a
divine and immaculate incarnation under a human form." Precisely. But why
throw the explanation on an impossible prophecy, when the whole secret is
explained by the later religion copying the earlier?
That doctrine
was universal, and it was not the mind of any one hierogrammatist that evolved
it; for the Indian avatars are a proof to the contrary. After which, having
come "to realize clearer"* what "the Divine Father and Son"
were with the Egyptians, de Rouge still fails to account for, and perceive what
were the functions attributed to the feminine principle in that primordial
generation. He does not find it in the goddess Neith, of Sais. Yet he quotes
the sentence of the Commander to Cambyses when introducing that king into the
Saitic temple: "I made known to his Majesty the dignity of Sais, which is
the abode of Neith, the great (female) producer, genitrix of the Sun, who is
the first-born, and who is not begotten, but only brought forth," and
hence is the fruit of an immaculate mother.
How much more
grandiose, philosophical and poetical is the real distinction -- for whoever is
able to understand and appreciate it -- made between the immaculate virgin of
the ancient Pagans and the modern Papal conception. With the former, the
ever-youthful mother nature, the antitype of her prototypes, the sun and moon,
generates and brings forth her "mind-born" son, the Universe. The Sun
and Moon, as male-female deities, fructify the earth, the microcosmical mother,
and the latter conceives and brings forth, in her turn. With the Christians,
"the first-born" (primogenitus) is indeed generated, i.e., begotten,
"genitum, non factum," and positively conceived and brought forth --
"Virgo pariet," explains the Latin Church. Thus, she drags down the
noble spiritual ideal of the Virgin Mary to the earth, and, making her "of
the earth earthy," degrades that ideal to the lowest of the
anthropomorphic goddesses of the rabble.
Truly, Neith,
Isis, Diana, etc., etc., were each of them "a demiurgical goddess, at once
visible and invisible, having her place in Heaven, and helping to the
generation of species" -- the moon, in short. Her occult aspects and
powers are numberless, and, in one of them, the moon becomes with
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* His clear
realization of it is, that the Egyptians prophesied Jehovah (!) and his
incarnated Redeemer (the good serpent), etc., etc.; even to identifying Typhon
with the wicked dragon of the garden of Eden, and this passes as serious and
sober science.
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the Egyptians
Hathor, another aspect of Isis,* and both of these goddesses are shown suckling
Horus. Behold in the Egyptian Hall of the British Museum, Hathor worshipped by
Pharaoh Thotmes, who stands between her and the Lord of Heavens. The monolith
was taken from Karnac; and the same goddess has the following legend inscribed
on her throne: "THE DIVINE MOTHER AND LADY, OR QUEEN OF HEAVEN"; also
"the MORNING STAR," and the "LIGHT OF THE SEA" (Stella
matutina and Lux maris). All the lunar goddesses had a dual aspect -- one divine,
the other infernal. All were the virgin mothers of an immaculately born Son --
the SUN. Raoul Rochetti shows the moon-goddess of the Athenians -- Pallas, or
Cybele, Minerva, or again Diana -- holding her child-son on the lap, invoked in
her festivals as [[Monogenes Theou]], "the one Mother of God,"
sitting on a lion, and surrounded by twelve personages; in whom the Occultist
recognises the twelve great gods, and the pious Christian Orientalist the
apostles, or rather the Grecian pagan prophecy thereof.
They are both
right, for the immaculate goddess of the Latin Church is a faithful copy of the
older pagan goddesses; the number (twelve) of the apostles is that of the
twelve tribes, and the latter are a personification of the twelve great gods,
and of the twelve signs of the Zodiac. Every detail almost in the Christian
dogma is borrowed from the heathens. Semele, the wife of Jupiter and mother of
Bacchus, the Sun, is, according to Nonnus, also "carried," or made to
ascend to heaven after her death, where she presides between Mars and Venus,
under the name of the Queen of the World, or the universe, [[panbasileia]];
"at the names of which, as at the names of Hathor, Hecate, and other
infernal goddesses," "tremble all the demons."**
"[[Semelen
premousi daimones]]." This Greek inscription on a small temple, reproduced
on a stone that was found by somebody, and copied by Montfaucon, as De Mirville
tells us (113, Archaeologie de la Vierge mere) informs us of the stupendous
fact, that the Magna Mater of the old world was an impudent plagiarism,
perpetrated by the Demon, of the Immaculate Virgin Mother of his Church.
Whether so, or vice versa, is of no importance. That which is interesting to
note is the perfect identity between the ARCHAIC COPY and the MODERN ORIGINAL.
Did space permit
we might show the inconceivable coolness and unconcern exhibited by certain
followers of the Roman Catholic Church, when made to face the revelations of
the Past. To Maury's remark that "the Virgin took possession of all the
Sanctuaries of Ceres and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Hathor is the
infernal Isis, the goddess pre-eminently of the West or the nether world.
** This is De
Mirville, who proudly confesses the similarity, and he ought to know.
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Venus, and that
the pagan rites, proclaimed and practised in honour of those goddesses, were in
a good measure transferred to the mother of Christ," the advocate of Rome
answers:--
"That such
is the fact, and that it is just as it should be and quite natural. As the
dogma, the liturgy, and the rites professed by the Roman Apostolical Church in
1862 are found engraved on monuments, inscribed on papyri, and cylinders hardly
posterior to the Deluge, it does seem impossible to deny the existence of a
FIRST ANTE-HISTORICAL (Roman) CATHOLICISM OF WHICH OUR OWN IS BUT THE FAITHFUL
CONTINUATION. . . . But while the former was the culmination, the summum of the
impudence of demons and Goetic necromancy . . . . the latter is divine. If in
our (Christian) Revelation (l'Apocalypse), Mary, clothed with the Sun and
having the moon under her feet, has nothing more in common with the humble
servant of Nazareth (sic.), it is because she has now become the greatest of
theological and cosmological powers in our universe." -- (Archaeol. de la
Vierge, pp. 116 and 119, and by the Marquis de Mirville).
Verily so, since
Pindar's Hymns to Minerva (p. 19) . . . "who sits at the right hand of her
Father Jupiter, and who is more powerful than all the other (angels or)
gods," are likewise applied to the Virgin. It is St. Bernard, who, quoted
by Cornelius a Lapide, is made to address the Virgin Mary in this wise:--
"The
Sun-Christ lives in thee and thou livest in him." (Sermon on the Holy
Virgin.) . . . .
Again the Virgin
is admitted to be the MOON by the same unsophisticated holy man. Being the
Lucina of the Church, that is in childbirth, the verse of Virgil -- "Casta
fove Lucina, tuus jam regnat Apollo" -- is applied to her. Like the moon,
the Virgin is the Queen of Heaven," adds the innocent saint; (Apocal., ch.
xii., Comm. by Cornelius a Lapide).
This settles the
question. The more similarity, according to such writers as De Mirville, there
exists between the pagan conceptions and the Christian dogmas, the more divine
appears the Christian religion, and the more is it seen to be the only truly
inspired one, especially in its Roman Catholic form. The unbelieving scientists
and the academicians who think they see in the Latin Church quite the opposite
of divine inspiration, and who will not believe in the satanic tricks of
plagiarism by anticipation, are severely taken to task. But then "they
believe in nothing and reject even the 'Nabathean Agriculture' as a romance and
a pack of superstitious nonsense," complains the memorialist. "In
their perverted opinion Qu-ta-my's 'idol of the moon' and the statue of the
Madonna are one!" A noble Marquis wrote twenty years ago six huge volumes,
or, as he calls them "Memoires to the French Academy," with the sole
object of showing Roman Catholicism an inspired and revealed faith. As a proof
thereof, he furnishes numberless facts, all tending to show that the entire
ancient world, ever since
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the deluge, had
been, with the help of the devil, systematically plagiarizing the rites,
ceremonies, and dogmas of the future Holy Church to be born ages later. What
would that faithful son of Rome have said had he heard his co-religionist -- M.
Renouf, the distinguished Egyptologist of the British Museum -- declaring, in
one of his learned lectures, that "neither Hebrews nor Greeks borrowed any
of their ideas from Egypt?"*
But perhaps it
is just this that M. Renouf intended to say namely -- that it is the Egyptians,
the Greeks, and the Aryans, who borrowed theirs from the Latin Church? And if
so, why, in the name of logic, do the Papists reject the additional information
which the Occultists may give them on Moon-worship, since it all tends to show
their (the Roman Catholic) worship as old as the world -- OF SABAEANISM AND
ASTROLATRY?
The reason of
early Christian and later Roman Catholic astrolatry, or the symbolical worship
of Sun and Moon -- identical with that of the Gnostics, though less
philosophical and pure than the "Sun worship" of the Zoroastrians --
is a natural consequence of its birth and origin. The adoption by the Latin
Church of such symbols as the water, fire, sun, moon and stars, and a good many
other things, is simply a continuation by the early Christians of the old
worship of Pagan nations. Thus Odin got his wisdom, power, and knowledge, by
sitting at the feet of Mimir, the thrice-wise Jotun, who passed his life by the
fountain of primeval Wisdom, the crystalline waters of which increased his
knowledge daily. Mimir "drew the highest knowledge from the fountain,
because the world was born of water; hence primeval wisdom was to be found in
that mysterious element" ("Asgard and the Gods," 86). The eye
which Odin had to pledge to acquire that knowledge may be "the Sun, which
enlightens and penetrates all things; his other eye being the moon, whose
reflection gazes out of the deep, and which at last, when setting, sinks into
the Ocean." (Ibid.) But it is something more, besides this. Loki, the fire-god,
is said to have hidden in the water, as well as in the moon, the light-giver,
whose reflection he found therein; and this belief that the fire finds refuge
in the water was not limited to the old Scandinavians. It was shared by all
nations and was finally taken up by the early Christians, who symbolized the
Holy Ghost under the shape of Fire, "cloven tongues like as fire" --
the breath of the Father-SUN. This "Fire" descends also into the
Water or the Sea: Mar, Mary. The dove was the symbol of the Soul with several
nations, it was sacred to Venus, the goddess born from the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Quoted in Mr.
G. Massey's Lecture.
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sea-foam, and it
became later the symbol of the Christian Anima Mundi, or the Holy Spirit.
One of the most
occult chapters in the "Book of the Dead" is ch. lxxx., entitled:
"To make the transformation into the god giving light to the path of
Darkness," wherein "Woman-light of the Shadow" serves Thot in
his retreat in the moon. Thot-Hermes is said to hide therein, because he is the
representative of the Secret Wisdom. He is the manifested logos of its light
side, the concealed deity or "Dark Wisdom" when he is supposed to
retire to the opposite hemisphere. Speaking of her power, the moon calls
herself repeatedly: "The Light which shineth in Darkness," the
"Woman-Light." Hence it became the accepted symbol of all the
Virgin-Mother goddesses. As the wicked "evil" spirits warred against
the moon in days of yore, so they are supposed to war now, without being able
to prevail, however, against the actual Queen of Heaven, Mary, the moon. Hence
also the moon was intimately connected in all the Pagan theogonies with the
Dragon, her eternal enemy; the Virgin, or Madonna, standing on the mythical
Satan under that form, crushed and made powerless, under her feet. This,
because the head and tail of the Dragon, which represent in Eastern astronomy
to this day the ascending and descending nodes of the moon, were also
symbolized in ancient Greece by the two serpents. Hercules kills them on the
day of his birth, and so does the babe in his virgin mother's arms. As Mr.
Gerald Massey aptly observes in this connection: "All such symbols figured
their own facts from the first, and did not pre-figure others of a totally
different order. The Iconography (and dogmas, too) had survived in Rome from a
period remotely pre-Christian. There was neither forgery nor interpolation of
types; nothing but a continuity of imagery with a perversion of its
meaning."
--------------
§ X.
TREE, SERPENT,
AND CROCODILE WORSHIP.
"Object of
horror or of adoration, men have for the serpent an implacable hatred, or
prostrate themselves before its genius. Lie calls it, Prudence claims it, Envy
carries it in its heart, and Eloquence on its caduceus. In hell it arms the
whip of the Furies; in heaven Eternity makes of it its symbol."
DE
CHATEAUBRIAND.
THE Ophites
asserted that there were several kinds of genii, from god to man; that the
relative superiority of these was ruled by the degree
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of light that
was accorded to each; and they maintained that the serpent had to be constantly
called upon and to be thanked for the signal service it had rendered humanity.
For it taught Adam that if he ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good
and evil, he would raise his being immensely by the learning and wisdom he
would thus acquire. Such was the exoteric reason given.
It is easy to
see whence the primal idea of this dual, Janus-like character of the Serpent:
the good and the bad. This symbol is one of the most ancient, because the
reptile preceded the bird, and the bird the mammal. Thence the belief, or
rather the superstition, of the savage tribes who think that the souls of their
ancestors live under this form, and the general association of the Serpent with
the tree. The legends about the various things it represents are numberless;
but, as most of them are allegorical, they have now passed into the class of
fables based on ignorance and dark superstition. For instance, when
Philostratus narrates that the natives of India and Arabia fed on the heart and
liver of serpents in order to learn the language of all the animals, the
serpent being credited with that faculty, he certainly never meant his words to
be accepted literally. (See De Vita Apollonii, lib. 1, c. xiv.) As will be
found more than once as we proceed, the "Serpent" and
"Dragon" were the names given to the "Wise Ones," the
initiated adepts of olden times. It was their wisdom and their learning that
were devoured or assimilated by their followers, whence the allegory. When the
Scandinavian Sigurd is fabled to have roasted the heart of Fafnir, the Dragon,
whom he had slain, becoming thereby the wisest of men, it meant the same thing.
Sigurd had become learned in the runes and magical charms; he had received the
"word" from an initiate of that name, or from a sorcerer, after which
the latter died, as many do, after "passing the word." Epiphanius
lets out a secret of the Gnostics while trying to expose their heresies. The
Gnostic Ophites, he says, had a reason for honouring the Serpent: it was
because he taught the primeval men the Mysteries (Adv. Haeres. 37). Verily so;
but they did not have Adam and Eve in the garden in their minds when teaching
this dogma, but simply that which is stated above. The Nagas of the Hindu and
Tibetan adepts were human Nagas (Serpents), not reptiles. Moreover, the Serpent
has ever been the type of consecutive or serial rejuvenation, of IMMORTALITY
and TIME.
The numerous and
extremely interesting readings, the interpretations and facts about Serpent
worship, given in "The Natural Genesis," are very ingenious and
scientifically correct. But they are far from covering the whole of the
meanings implied. They divulge only the astronomical and physiological
mysteries, with the addition of some cosmic phenomena. On the lowest plane of
materiality the Serpent was, no doubt,
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"the great
mystery in the mysteries," and was, very likely, "adopted as a type
of feminine pubescence, on account of its sloughing and self-renewal." It
was so, however, only with regard to mysteries concerning terrestrial animal
life, for as symbol of "reclothing and rebirth in the (universal)
mysteries" its "final phase"* -- or shall we rather say its
incipient and culminating phases -- they were not of this plane. They were
generated in the pure realm of ideal light, and having accomplished the round
of the whole cycle of adaptations and symbolism, the "mysteries"
returned from whence they had come -- into the essence of immaterial causality.
They belonged to the highest gnosis. And surely this could have never obtained
its name and fame solely on account of its penetration into physiological and
especially feminine functions!
As a symbol, the
Serpent had as many aspects and occult meanings as the Tree itself; the
"Tree of Life," with which it was emblematically and almost
indissolubly connected. Whether viewed as a metaphysical or a physical symbol,
the Tree and Serpent, jointly, or separately, have never been so degraded by
antiquity as they are now, in this our age of the breaking of idols, not for
truth's sake, but to glorify the more gross matter. The revelations and
interpretations in "The Rivers of Life" would have astounded the worshippers
of the Tree and Serpent in the days of archaic Chaldean and Egyptian wisdom;
and even the early Saivas would have recoiled in horror at the theories and
suggestions of the author of the said work. "The notion of Payne Knight
and Inman that the cross or Tau is simply a copy of the male organs in a
triadic form is radically false," writes Mr. G. Massey, who proves what he
says. But this is a statement that could be as justly applied to almost all the
modern interpretations of ancient symbols. "The Natural Genesis," a
monumental work of research and thought, the most complete on that subject that
has ever been published, covering as it does a wider field, and explaining much
more than all the symbologists who have hitherto written, does not yet go
beyond the "psycho-theistic" stage of ancient thought. Nor were Payne
Knight and Inman altogether wrong; except in entirely failing to see that their
interpretations of the "Tree of Life," as the cross and phallus,
fitted the symbol, and approximated it, only on the lowest and last stage of
the evolutionary development of the idea of the GIVER OF LIFE. It was the last
and the grossest physical transformation of nature, in animal, insect, bird,
and even plant; for biune, creative magnetism, in the form of the attraction of
the contraries, or sexual polarization, acts in the constitution of reptile and
bird as it does in that of man. Moreover, the modern symbologists and
Orientalists -- from first to last --
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Natural
Genesis, by Gerald Massey, Vol. 1, p. 340.
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being ignorant
of the real mysteries revealed by occultism, can necessarily see but this last
stage. If told that this mode of procreation, which the whole world of being
has now in common on this earth, is but a passing phase, a physical means of
furnishing the conditions to, and producing the phenomena of life which will
alter with this, and disappear with the next Root-Race -- they would laugh at
such a superstitious and unscientific idea. But the most learned Occultists
assert this because they know it. The universe of living beings, of all those
which procreate their species, is the living witness to the various modes of
procreation in the evolution of animal and human species and races; and the
naturalist ought to sense this truth intuitionally, even though he is yet unable
to demonstrate it. And how could he, indeed, with the present modes of thought!
The landmarks of the archaic history of the past are few and scarce, and those
that men of science come across are mistaken for finger-posts of our little
era. Even so-called "universal" (?) history embraces but a tiny field
in the almost boundless space of the unexplored regions of our latest, fifth
Root-Race. Hence, every fresh sign-post, every new glyph of the hoary Past that
is discovered, is added to the old stock of information, to be interpreted on
the same lines of pre-existing conceptions, and without any reference to the
special cycle of thought which that particular glyph may belong to. How can
Truth ever come to light if this method is never changed!
Thus, in the beginning
of their joint existence as a glyph of Immortal Being, the Tree and Serpent
were divine imagery, truly. The tree was reversed, and its roots were generated
in Heaven and grew out of the Rootless Root of all-being. Its trunk grew and
developed, crossing the planes of Pleroma, it shot out crossways its luxuriant
branches, first on the plane of hardly differentiated matter, and then downward
till they touched the terrestrial plane. Thus, the Asvattha, tree of Life and
Being, whose destruction alone leads to immortality, is said in the
Bhagavatgita to grow with its roots above and its branches below (ch. xv.). The
roots represent the Supreme Being, or First Cause, the LOGOS; but one has to go
beyond those roots to unite oneself with Krishna, who, says Arjuna (XI.), is
"greater than Brahman, and First Cause . . . the indestructible, that
which is, that which is not, and what is beyond them." Its boughs are
Hiranyagharba (Brahma or Brahman in his highest manifestations, say Sridhara
and Madhusudana), the highest Dhyan Chohans or Devas. The Vedas are its leaves.
He only who goes beyond the roots shall never return, i.e., shall reincarnate
no more during this "age" of Brahma.
It is only when
its pure boughs had touched the terrestrial mud of the garden of Eden, of our
Adamic race, that this Tree got soiled by the contact and lost its pristine
purity; and that the Serpent of
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Eternity -- the
heaven-born LOGOS -- was finally degraded. In days of old -- of the divine
Dynasties on Earth -- the now dreaded Reptile was regarded as the first beam of
light that radiated from the abyss of divine Mystery. Various were the forms
which it was made to assume, and numerous the natural symbols adapted to it, as
it crossed aeons of Time: as from Infinite Time itself -- Kala -- it fell into
the space and time evolved out of human speculation. These forms were Cosmic
and astronomical, theistic and pantheistic, abstract and concrete. They became
in turn the Polar Dragon and the Southern Cross, the Alpha Draconis of the
Pyramid, and the Hindu-Buddhist Dragon, which ever threatens, yet never
swallows the Sun during its eclipses. Till then, the Tree remained ever green,
for it was sprinkled by the waters of life; the great Dragon, ever divine, so
long as it was kept within the precincts of the sidereal fields. But the tree
grew and its lower boughs touched at last the infernal regions -- our Earth.
Then the great serpent Nidhogg -- he who devours the corpses of the evil-doers
in the "Hall of Misery" (human life), so soon as they are plunged
into "Hwergelmir," the roaring cauldron (of human passions) -- gnawed
the World-tree. The worms of materiality covered the once healthy and mighty
roots, and are now ascending higher and higher along the trunk; while the
Midgard-snake coiled at the bottom of the Seas, encircles the Earth, and,
through its venomous breath, makes her powerless to defend herself.
They are all
seven-headed, the dragons and serpents of antiquity -- "one head for each
race, and every head with seven hairs on it," as the allegory has it. Aye,
from Ananta, the Serpent of Eternity which carries Vishnu through the
Manvantara, from the original primordial Sesha, whose seven heads become
"one thousand heads" in the Puranic fancy, down to the seven-headed
Akkadian Serpent. This typifies the Seven principles throughout nature and man;
the highest or middle head being the seventh. It is not of the Mosaic, Jewish
Sabbath that Philo speaks in his Creation of the World, when saying that the
world was completed "according to the perfect nature of number 6."
For, "when that reason (nous) which is holy in accordance with the number
seven, has entered the soul (rather the living body), the number six is thus
arrested, and all the mortal things which that number makes." And again:
"Number 7 is the festival day of all the earth, the birthday of the world.
I know not whether any one would be able to celebrate the number 7 in adequate
terms." . . . (Par. pp. 30 and 419). The author of The Natural Genesis
thinks that "the Septenary of Stars seen in the great bear (the
Septarshis) and seven-headed Dragon furnished a visible origin for the symbolic
seven of time above. The goddess of the seven stars," he adds --
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"Was the
mother of time, as Kep; whence Kepti and Sebti for the two times and number
seven. So this is the star of the Seven by name. Sevekt (Kronos), the Son of
the goddess, has the name of the seven or seventh. So has Sefekh Abu who builds
the house on high, as Wisdom (Sophia) built hers with seven pillars. . . The
primary Kronotypes were seven, and thus the beginning of time in heaven is
based on the number and the name of seven, on account of the starry
demonstrators. The seven stars as they turned round annually kept pointing, as
it were, with the forefinger of the right hand, and describing a circle in the
upper and lower heaven.* The number seven naturally suggested a measure by
seven, that led to what may be termed Sevening, and to the marking and mapping
out of the circle in seven corresponding divisions which were assigned to the
seven great constellations; and thus was formed the celestial heptanomis of
Egypt in the heavens. . . . When the stellar heptanomis was broken up and
divided into four quarters, it was multiplied by four, and the twenty-eight
signs took the place of the primary seven constellations, the lunar zodiac of
twenty-eight days being the registered result.** . . . In the Chinese
arrangement the four sevens are given to four genii that preside over the four
cardinal points. . . ." (In Chinese Buddhism and Esotericism the genii are
represented by four Dragons -- the "Maharajahs" of the Stanzas.)
"The seven Northern constellations make up the Black Warrior; the seven
Eastern (Chinese autumn) constitute the White Tiger; the seven Southern are the
Vermilion Bird; and the seven Western (called Vernal) are the Azure Dragon.
Each of these four Spirits presides over its heptanomis during one lunar week.
The genetive of the first heptanomis (Typhon of the Seven Stars) now took a
lunar character; . . . in this phase we find the goddess Sefekh, whose name
signifies number 7, is the feminine word, or logos in place of the mother of
Time, who was the earlier Word, as goddess of the Seven Stars"
("Typology of Time," Vol. II. p. 313, Nat. Gen.).
The author shows
that it was the goddess of the Great Bear and mother of Time who was in Egypt
from the earliest times the "Living Word," and that
"Sevekh-Kronus, whose type was the Crocodile-Dragon, the pre-planetary
form of Saturn, was called her son and consort; he was her Word-Logos" (p.
321, Vol. I.).
The above is
quite plain, but it was not the knowledge of astronomy only that led the
ancients to the process of Sevening. The primal cause goes far deeper and will
be explained in its place.
The above
quotations are no digressions. They are brought forward as showing (a) the
reason why a full Initiate was called a "Dragon," a "Snake"
a "Naga"; and (b) that our septenary division was used by the priests
of the earliest dynasties in Egypt, for the same reason and on the same basis
as by us. This needs further elucidation, however. As already stated, that
which Mr. G. Massey calls the four genii of the four cardinal points; and the
Chinese, the Black Warrior, White Tiger, Ver-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* For the same
reason the division of the principles in man into seven are thus reckoned, as
they describe the same circle in the human higher and lower nature.
** Thus the
septenary division is the oldest and preceded the four-fold division. It is the
root of archaic classification.
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milion Bird, and
Azure Dragon, is called in the Secret Books, -- the "Four Hidden Dragons
of Wisdom" and the "Celestial Nagas." Now, as shown, the
seven-headed or septenary DRAGON-LOGOS had been in course of time split up, so
to speak, into four heptanomic parts or twenty-eight portions. Each lunar week
has a distinct occult character in the lunar month; each day of the twenty-eight
has its special characteristics; as each of the twelve constellations, whether
separately or in combination with other signs, has an occult influence either
for good or for evil. This represents the sum of knowledge that men can acquire
on this earth; yet few are those who acquire it, and still fewer are the wise
men who get to the root of knowledge symbolized by the great Root Dragon, the
spiritual LOGOS of these visible signs. But those who do, receive the name of
"Dragons," and they are the "Arhats of the Four Truths of the 28
Faculties," or attributes, and have always been so called.
The Alexandrian
Neo-Platonists asserted that to become real Chaldees or Magi, one had to master
the science or knowledge of the periods of the Seven Rectors of the world, in
whom is all wisdom. In "Proclus in Timaeus," b. 1, Jamblichus is
credited with another version, which does not however, alter, the meaning. He
says that "the Assyrians have not only preserved the records of seven and
twenty myriads of years, as Hipparchus says they have, but likewise of the
whole apocatastases and periods of the Seven Rulers of the World." The
legends of every nation and tribe, whether civilized or savage, point to the
once universal belief in the great wisdom and cunning of the Serpents. They are
"charmers." They hypnotise the bird with their eye, and man himself,
very often, does not feel above their fascinating influence; therefore the
symbol is a most fitting one.
The crocodile is
the Egyptian dragon. It was the dual symbol of Heaven and Earth, of Sun and
Moon, and was made sacred, in consequence of its amphibious nature, to Osiris
and Isis. According to Eusebius, the Egyptians represented the sun in a ship as
its pilot, this ship being carried along by a crocodile "to show the motion
of the Sun in the moyst (Space)", (Prepar. Evang., 1, 3, c. 3). The
crocodile was moreover, the symbol of Egypt herself -- the lower, as being the
more swampy of the two countries. The Alchemists claim another interpretation.
They say that the symbol of the sun in the ship on the Ether of Space meant
that the hermetic matter is the principle, or basis, of gold, or again the
philosophical sun; the water, within which the crocodile is swimming, is that
water or matter made liquid; the ship herself, finally, representing the vessel
of nature, in which the sun, or the sulphuric, igneous principle, acts as a
pilot: because it is the sun
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which conducts
the work by his action upon the moist or mercury. The above is only for the
Alchemists.
The Serpent
became the type and symbol of evil, and of the Devil, only during the middle
ages. The early Christians -- besides the Ophite Gnostics -- had their dual
Logos: the Good and the Bad Serpent, the Agathodaemon and the Kakodaemon. This
is demonstrated by the writings of Marcus, Valentinus, and many others, and
especially in Pistis Sophia -- certainly a document of the earliest centuries
of Christianity. On the marble sarcophagus of a tomb, discovered in 1852 near
the Porta Pia, one sees the scene of the adoration of the Magi, "or
else," remarks the late C. W. King in "The Gnostics," "the
prototype of that scene, the 'Birth of the New Sun.'" The mosaic floor
exhibited a curious design which might have represented either (a) Isis
suckling the babe Harpocrates, or (b) the Madonna nursing the infant Jesus. In
the smaller sarcophagi that surrounded the larger one, eleven leaden plates
rolled like scrolls were found, three of which have been deciphered. The
contents of these ought to be regarded as final proof of a much-vexed question,
for they show that either the early Christians, up to the VIth Century, were
bond fide pagans, or that dogmatic Christianity was borrowed wholesale, and
passed in full into the Christian Church -- Sun, Tree, Serpent, Crocodile and
all.
"On the
first is seen Anubis . . . holding out a scroll; at his feet are two female
busts; below all are two serpents entwined . . . a corpse swathed up like a
mummy. In the second scroll . . . is Anubis, holding out a cross, the
"Sign of Life." Under his feet lies the corpse encircled in the
numerous folds of a huge serpent, the Agathodaemon, guardian of the deceased. .
. . . In the third scroll, Anubis bears on his arm . . . . . the outline of . .
a complete Latin cross . . . At the god's foot is a rhomboid, the Egyptian 'Egg
of the World,' towards which crawls a serpent coiled into a circle . . . .
Under the busts is the letter [[omega]] repeated seven times in a line,
reminding one of the 'names' . . . Very remarkable also is the line of
characters, apparently Palmyrene, upon the legs of the first Anubis. As for the
figure of the serpent, supposing these talismans to emanate not from the Isiac
but the newer Ophite creed, it may well stand for that "True and perfect
Serpent," who leads forth the souls of all that put their trust in him out
of the Egypt of the body, and through the Red Sea of Death into the Land of
Promise, saving them on their way from the Serpents of the Wilderness, that is,
from the Rulers of the Stars." (King's "Gnostics," p. 366.)
And this
"True and Perfect Serpent" is the seven-lettered God who is now
credited with being Jehovah, and Jesus One with him. To this Seven-vowelled god
the candidate for initiation is sent by Christos, in the Pistis Sophia, a work
earlier than St. John's Revelation, and evidently of the same school. "The
(Serpent of the) Seven Thunders uttered
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these seven
vowels," but "Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered,
and write them not," says Revelation. "Do ye seek after these
mysteries?" inquiries Jesus in Pistis Sophia. "No mystery is more
excellent than they (the seven vowels): for they shall bring your souls unto
the Light of Lights" -- i.e., true Wisdom. "Nothing, therefore, is
more excellent than the mysteries which ye seek after, saving only the mystery
of the Seven Vowels and their FORTY AND NINE Powers, and the numbers
thereof."
In India, it was
the mystery of the Seven FIRES and their forty-nine fires or aspects, or
"the members thereof," just the same.
These seven
vowels are represented by the Swastika signs on the crowns of the seven heads
of the Serpent of Eternity, in India, among esoteric Buddhists, in Egypt, in
Chaldea, etc. etc., and among the Initiates of every other country. It is on
the Seven zones of post mortem ascent, in the Hermetic writings, that the
"mortal" leaves, on each, one of his "Souls" (or
Principles); until arrived on the plane above all zones he remains as the great
Formless Serpent of absolute wisdom -- or the Deity itself. The seven-headed
serpent has more than one signification in the Arcane teachings. It is the
seven-headed Draco, each of whose heads is a star of the Lesser Bear; but it
was also, and pre-eminently, the Serpent of Darkness (i.e., inconceivable and
incomprehensible) whose seven heads were the seven Logoi, the reflections of
the one and first manifested Light -- the universal LOGOS.
--------------
§ XI.
DEMON EST DEUS
INVERSUS.
THIS symbolical
sentence, in its many-sided forms, is certainly most dangerous and iconoclastic
in the face of all the dualistic later religions -- or rather theologies -- and
especially so in the light of Christianity. Yet it is neither just nor correct
to say that it is Christianity which has conceived and brought forth Satan. As
an "adversary," the opposing Power required by the equilibrium and
harmony of things in Nature -- like Shadow to throw off still brighter the
Light, like Night to bring into greater relief the Day, and like cold to make
one appreciate the more the comfort of heat -- SATAN has ever existed.
Homogeneity is one and indivisible. But if the homogeneous One and Absolute is
no mere figure of speech, and if heterogeneity in its dualistic aspect, is its
offspring -- its bifurcous shadow or reflection -- then even that divine
Homogeneity must contain in itself the essence of
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both good and
evil. If "God" is Absolute, Infinite, and the Universal Root of all
and everything in Nature and its universe, whence comes Evil or D'Evil if not
from the same "Golden Womb" of the absolute? Thus we are forced
either to accept the emanation of good and evil, of Agathodaemon and Kakodaemon
as offshoots from the same trunk of the Tree of Being, or to resign ourselves
to the absurdity of believing in two eternal Absolutes!
Having to trace
the origin of the idea to the very beginnings of human mind, it is but just,
meanwhile, to give his due even to the proverbial devil. Antiquity knew of no
isolated, thoroughly and absolutely bad "god of evil." Pagan thought
represented good and evil as twin brothers, born from the same mother --
Nature; so soon as that thought ceased to be Archaic, Wisdom too became
Philosophy. In the beginning the symbols of good and evil were mere
abstractions, Light and Darkness; then their types became chosen among the most
natural and ever-recurrent periodical Cosmic phenomena -- the Day and the
Night, or the Sun and Moon. Then the Hosts of the Solar and Lunar deities were
made to represent them, and the Dragon of Darkness was contrasted with the
Dragon of Light (See Stanzas V., VII. of Book I.) The Host of Satan is a Son of
God, no less than the Host of the B'ni Alhim, these children of God coming to
"present themselves before the Lord," their father (see Job ii.).
"The Sons of God" become the "Fallen Angels" only after perceiving
that the daughters of men were fair, (Genesis vi.) In the Indian philosophy,
the Suras are among the earliest and the brightest gods, and become Asuras only
when dethroned by Brahminical fancy. Satan never assumed an anthropomorphic,
individualized shape, until the creation by man, of a "one living personal
god," had been accomplished; and then merely as a matter of prime
necessity. A screen was needed; a scape-goat to explain the cruelty, blunders,
and but too-evident injustice, perpetrated by him for whom absolute perfection,
mercy, and goodness were claimed. This was the first Karmic effect of
abandoning a philosophical and logical Pantheism, to build, as a prop for lazy
man, "a merciful father in Heaven," whose daily and hourly actions as
Natura naturans, the "comely mother but stone cold," belie the
assumption. This led to the primal twins, Osiris-Typhon, Ormazd-Ahriman, and
finally Cain-Abel and the tutti-quanti of contraries.
Having commenced
by being synonymous with Nature, "God," the Creator, ended by being
made its author. Pascal settles the difficulty very cunningly: "Nature has
perfections, in order to show that she is the image of God: and defects, in
order to show that she is only his image," he says.
The further back
one recedes into the darkness of the prehistoric
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ages, the more
philosophical does the prototypic figure of the later Satan appear. The first
"Adversary" in individual human form that one meets with in old
Puranic literature is one of her greatest Rishis and Yogis -- Narada, surnamed
the "Strife-maker."
And he is a
Brahmaputra, a son of Brahma, the male. But of him later on. Who the great
"Deceiver" really is, one can ascertain by searching for him with
open eyes and an unprejudiced mind, in every old cosmogony and Scripture.
It is the
anthropomorphised Demiurge, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, when separated
from the collective Hosts of his fellow-Creators, whom, so to speak, he
represents and synthesizes. It is now the God of theologies. "The thought
is father to the wish." Once upon a time, a philosophical symbol left to
perverse human fancy; afterwards fashioned into a fiendish, deceiving, cunning,
and jealous God.
Dragons and
other fallen angels being described in other parts of this work, a few words
upon the much-slandered Satan will be sufficient. That which the student will
do well to remember is that, with every people except the Christian nations,
the Devil is to this day no worse an entity than the opposite aspect in the
dual nature of the so-called Creator. This is only natural. One cannot claim
God as the synthesis of the whole Universe, as Omnipresent and Omniscient and
Infinite, and then divorce him from evil. As there is far more evil than good
in the world, it follows on logical grounds that either God must include evil,
or stand as the direct cause of it, or else surrender his claims to absoluteness.
The ancients understood this so well that their philosophers -- now followed by
the Kabalists -- defined evil as the lining of God or Good: Demon est Deus
inversus, being a very old adage. Indeed, evil is but an antagonizing blind
force in nature; it is reaction, opposition, and contrast, -- evil for some,
good for others. There is no malum in se: only the shadow of light, without
which light could have no existence, even in our perceptions. If evil
disappeared, good would disappear along with it from Earth. The "Old
Dragon" was pure spirit before he became matter, passive before he became
active. In the Syro-Chaldean magic both Ophis and Ophiomorphos are joined in
the Zodiac, at the sign of the Androgyne Virgo-Scorpio. Before its fall on
earth the "Serpent" was Ophis-Christos, and after its fall it became
Ophiomorphos-CHRESTOS. Everywhere the speculations of the Kabalists treat of
Evil as a FORCE, which is antagonistic, but at the same time essential, to
Good, as giving it vitality and existence, which it could never have otherwise.
There would be no life possible (in the Mayavic sense) without Death, nor
regeneration and reconstruction without destruction. Plants would perish in
eternal sunlight, and so would man, who would become an automaton without the
exercise of his free will and aspirations
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after that sunlight,
which would lose its being and value for him had he nothing but light. Good is
infinite and eternal only in the eternally concealed from us, and this is why
we imagine it eternal. On the manifested planes, one equilibrates the other.
Few are those theists and believers in a personal God, who do not make of Satan
the shadow of God; or who, confounding both, do not believe they have a right
to pray to that idol asking its help and protection for the exercise and
impunity of their evil and cruel deeds. "Lead us not into Temptation"
is addressed daily to "our Father, which art in Heaven," and not to
the Devil, by millions of human Christian hearts. They do so, repeating the
very words put in the mouth of their Saviour, and do not give one thought to the
fact that their meaning is contradicted point blank by James "the brother
of the Lord." "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of
God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man." --
(The Gen. Ep. of James, i, 13). Why, then, say that it is the Devil who tempts
us, when the Church teaches us on the authority of Christ that it is God who
does so? Open any pious volume in which the word "temptation" is
defined in its theological sense, and forthwith you find two definitions: (1)
"Those afflictions and troubles whereby God tries his people;" (2)
Those means and enticements which the Devil makes use of to ensnare and allure
mankind. (St. James i., 2, 12, and Mat. vi., 13.) If accepted literally, the
two teachings of Christ and James contradict each other, and what dogma can
reconcile the two if the occult meaning is rejected?
Between the
alternative allurements, wise will be that philosopher who will be able to
decide where God disappears to make room for the Devil! Therefore when we read
that "the Devil is a liar and the father of it," i.e., INCARNATE LIE,
and are told in the same breath that Satan -- the Devil -- was a son of God and
the most beautiful of his archangels, rather than believe that Father and Son
are a gigantic, personified and eternal LIE, we prefer to turn to Pantheism and
to Pagan philosophy for information.
Once that the
key to Genesis is in our hands, it is the scientific and symbolical Kabala
which unveils the secret. The great Serpent of the Garden of Eden and the
"Lord God" are identical, and so are Jehovah and Cain ONE -- that
Cain who is referred to in theology as the "murderer" and the LIAR to
God! Jehovah tempts the King of Israel to number the people, and Satan tempts
him to do the same in another place. Jehovah turns into the fiery serpents to
bite those he is displeased with; and Jehovah informs the brazen serpent that
heals them.
These short, and
seemingly contradictory, statements in the Old Testament (contradictory because
the two Powers are separated instead of being regarded as the two faces of one
and the same thing) are the
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echoes --
distorted out of recognition by exotericism and theology -- of the universal
and philosophical dogmas in nature, so well understood by the primitive Sages.
We find the same groundwork in several personifications in the Puranas, only
far more ample and philosophically suggestive.
Thus Pulastya, a
"Son of God" -- one of the first progeny -- is made the progenitor of
Demons, the Rakshasas, the tempters and the Devourers of men. Pisacha (female
Demon) is a daughter of Daksha, a "Son of God" too, and a God, and
the mother of all the Pisachas (Padma Purana). The Demons, so called in the
Puranas, are very extraordinary devils when judged from the standpoint of
European and orthodox views about these creatures, since all of them --
Danavas, Daityas, Pisachas, and the Rakshasas -- are represented as extremely
pious, following the precepts of the Vedas, some of them even being great
Yogis. But they oppose the clergy and Ritualism, sacrifices and forms -- just
what the full-blown Yogins do to this day in India -- and are no less respected
for it, though they are allowed to follow neither caste nor ritual; hence all
those Puranic giants and Titans are called Devils. The Missionaries, ever on
the watch to show, if they can, the Hindu traditions no better than a
reflection of the Jewish Bible, have evolved a whole romance on the alleged
identity of Pulastya with Cain, and of the Rakshasas with the Cainites,
"the accursed," the cause of the Noachian Deluge. (See the work of
Abbe Gorresio, who "etymologises" Pulastya's name as meaning the
"rejected," hence Cain, if you please). Pulastya dwells in Kedara, he
says, which means a "dug-up place," a mine, and Cain is shown in
tradition and the Bible as the first worker in metals and a miner thereof!
While it is very
probable that the Gibborim (the giants) of the Bible are the Rakshasas of the
Hindus, it is still more certain that both are Atlanteans, and belong to the
submerged races. However it may be, no Satan could be more persistent in
slandering his enemy, or more spiteful in his hatred, than the Christian
theologians are in cursing him as the father of every evil. Compare their
vituperations and opinions given about the Devil with the philosophical views
of the Puranic sages and their Christ-like mansuetude. When Parasara, whose
father was devoured by a Rakshasa, was preparing himself to destroy (magically)
the whole race, his grandsire, Vasishta, says a few extremely suggestive words
to him. He shows the irate Sage, on his own confession, that there is Evil and
Karma, but no "evil spirits." "Let thy wrath be appeased,"
he says. "The Rakshasas are not culpable; thy father's death was the work
of Karma. Anger is the passion of fools; it becometh not a wise man. By whom,
it may be asked, is any one killed? Every man reaps the consequences of his own
acts. Anger, my son, is the destruction of
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all that man
obtains . . . and prevents the attainment of emancipation. The sages shun
wrath. Be not thou, my child, subject to its influence. Let not those
unoffending spirits of darkness be consumed; let thy sacrifice cease. Mercy is
the might of the righteous" (Vishnu Purana, Book i., ch. i.). Thus, every
such "sacrifice" or prayer to God for help is no better than an act
of black magic. That which Parasara prayed for, was the destruction of the
Spirits of Darkness, for his personal revenge. He is called a Pagan, and the
Christians have doomed him as such, to eternal hell. Yet, in what respect is
the prayer of sovereigns and generals, who pray before every battle for the
destruction of their enemy, any better? Such a prayer is in every case black
magic of the worst kind, concealed like a demon "Mr. Hyde" under a
sanctimonious "Dr. Jekyll."
In human nature,
evil denotes only the polarity of matter and Spirit, a struggle for life
between the two manifested Principles in Space and Time, which principles are
one per se, inasmuch they are rooted in the Absolute. In Kosmos, the
equilibrium must be preserved. The operations of the two contraries produce
harmony, like the centripetal and centrifugal forces, which are necessary to
each other -- mutually inter-dependent -- "in order that both should
live." If one is arrested, the action of the other will become immediately
self-destructive.
Since the
personification called Satan has been amply analyzed from its triple aspect --
in the Old Testament, Christian theology and the ancient Gentile attitude of
thought -- those who would learn more of it are referred to Vol. II. of ISIS
UNVEILED, chap. x. See also several sections in Book II., Part II. of this
work. The present subject is touched upon and fresh explanations attempted for
a very good reason. Before we can approach the evolution of physical and divine
man, we have first to master the idea of cyclic evolution, to acquaint
ourselves with the philosophies and beliefs of the four races which preceded
our present race, to learn what were the ideas of those Titans and giants --
giants, verily, mentally as well as physically. The whole of antiquity was
imbued with that philosophy which teaches the involution of spirit into matter,
the progressive, downward cyclic descent, or active, self-conscious evolution.
The Alexandrian Gnostics have sufficiently divulged the secret of initiations,
and their records are full of "the sliding down of AEons" in their
double qualification of Angelic Beings and Periods: the one the natural
evolution of the other. On the other hand, Oriental traditions on both sides of
the "black water" -- the oceans that separate the two Easts -- are as
full of allegories about the downfall of Pleroma, of that of the gods and
Devas. One and all, they allegorized and explained the FALL as the
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desire to learn
and acquire knowledge -- to KNOW. This is the natural sequence of mental
evolution, the spiritual becoming transmuted into the material or physical. The
same law of descent into materiality and re-ascent into spirituality asserted
itself during the Christian era, the reaction having stopped only just now, in
our own special sub-race.
That which,
perhaps ten millenniums ago, was allegorized in Pymander in a triune character
of interpretation, meant as a record of an astronomical, anthropological, and even
alchemical fact, namely, the allegory of the seven rectors breaking through the
seven circles of fire, was dwarfed into one material and anthropomorphic
interpretation -- the rebellion and Fall of the Angels. The multivocal,
profoundly philosophical narrative, under its poetical form of the
"Marriage of Heaven with Earth," the love of nature for Divine form
and the "Heavenly man," enraptured with his own beauty mirrored in
nature -- i.e., Spirit attracted into matter -- has now become, under
theological handling: "the seven Rectors disobeying Jehovah, self
admiration generating Satanic Pride, followed by their FALL, Jehovah permitting
no worship to be lost save upon himself." In short, the beautiful
Planet-Angels, the glorious cyclic aeons of the ancients, became henceforward
synthesized in their most orthodox shape in Samael, the chief of the Demons in
the Talmud, "That great serpent with twelve wings that draws down after
himself, in his Fall, the solar system, or the Titans." But Schemal, the
alter ego and the Sabean type of Samael, meant, in his philosophical and
esoteric aspect, the "year" in its astrological evil aspect, its
twelve months or wings of unavoidable evils, in nature; and in esoteric
theogony (see Chwolson in NABATHEAN AGRICULTURE, Vol. II., p. 217), both
Schemal and Samael represented a particular divinity. With the Kabalists they
are "the Spirit of the Earth," the personal god that governs it,
identical de facto with Jehovah. For the Talmudists admit themselves that
SAMAEL is a god-name of one of the seven Elohim. The Kabalists, moreover, show
the two, Schemal and Samael, as a symbolical form of Saturn, CHRONOS, the
twelve wings standing for the 12 months, and the symbol in its collectivity
representing a racial cycle. Jehovah and Saturn are also glyphically identical.
This leads in
its turn to a very curious deduction from a Roman Catholic dogma. Many renowned
writers belonging to the Latin Church admit that a difference exists, and
should be made, between the Uranian Titans, the antediluvian giants (also
Titans), and those post-diluvian giants in whom they (the Roman Catholics) will
see the descendants of the mythical Ham. In clearer words, there is a
difference to be made between the Cosmic, primordial opposing Forces -- guided
by cyclic law -- the Atlantean human giants, and the post-diluvian great
adepts, whether
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of the right or
the left hand. At the same time they show that Michael, "the
generalissimos of the fighting Celestial Host, the bodyguard of Jehovah,"
as it would seem (see de Mirville) is also a Titan, only with the adjective of
"divine" before the cognomen. Thus those "Uranides" who are
called everywhere "divine Titans," and who, having rebelled against
Kronos (Saturn), are therefore also shown to be the enemies of Samael (an
Elohim, also and synonymous with Jehovah in his collectivity), are identical with
Michael and his host. In short, the roles are reversed, all the combatants are
confused, and no student is able to distinguish clearly which is which.
Esoteric explanation may, however, bring some order into this confusion, in
which Jehovah becomes Saturn, and Michael and his army, Satan and the
rebellious angels, owing to the indiscreet endeavours of the too faithful
zealots to see in every pagan god a devil. The true meaning is far more
philosophical, and the legend of the first "Fall" (of the angels)
assumes a scientific colouring when correctly understood.
Kronos stands
for endless (hence immovable) Duration, without beginning, without an end,
beyond divided Time and beyond Space. Those "Angels," genii, or
Devas, who were born to act in space and time, i.e., to break through the seven
circles of the superspiritual planes into the phenomenal, or circumscribed,
super-terrestrial regions, are said allegorically to have rebelled against
Kronos and fought the (then) one living and highest God. In his turn, when
Kronos is represented as mutilating Uranus, his father, the meaning of this
mutilation is very simple: Absolute Time is made to become the finite and the
conditioned; a portion is robbed from the whole, thus showing that Saturn, the
father of the gods, has been transformed from Eternal Duration into a limited
Period. Chronos cuts down with his scythe even the longest and (to us)
seemingly endless cycles, yet, for all that, limited in Eternity, and puts down
with the same scythe the mightiest rebels. Aye, not one will escape the scythe
of Time! Praise the god or gods, or flout, one or both, and that scythe will
not be made to tremble one millionth of a second in its ascending or descending
course.
The Titans of
Hesiod's Theogony were copied in Greece from the Suras and Asuras of India.
These Hesiodic Titans, the Uranides, numbered once upon a time as only six,
have been recently discovered to be seven -- the seventh being called Phoreg --
in an old fragment relating to the Greek myth. Thus their identity with the
Seven rectors is fully demonstrated. The origin of the "War in
Heaven" and the FALL has, in our mind, to be traced unavoidably to India,
and perhaps far earlier than the Puranic accounts thereof. For TARAMAYA was in
a later age, and there are three accounts, each of a distinct war, to be traced
in almost every Cosmogony.
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The first war
happened in the night of time, between the gods the (A)-suras, and lasted for
the period of one "divine year."* On this occasion the deities were
defeated by the Daityas, under the leadership of Hrada. After that, owing to a
device of Vishnu, to whom the conquered gods applied for help, the latter
defeated the Asuras. In the Vishnu Purana no interval is found between the two
wars. In the Esoteric Doctrine, one war takes place before the building of the
Solar system; another, on earth, at the "creation" of man; and a
third "war" is mentioned as taking place at the close of the 4th
Race, between its adepts and those of the 5th Race, i.e., between the Initiates
of the "Sacred Island" and the Sorcerers of Atlantis. We shall notice
the first contest, as recounted by Parasara, while trying to separate the two
accounts, purposely blended together. It is there stated that as the Daityas
and Asuras were engaged in the duties of their respective orders (Varna) and
followed the paths prescribed by holy writ, practising also religious penance
(a queer employment for demons if they are identical with our devils, as it is
claimed) -- it was impossible for the gods to destroy them. The prayers
addressed by the gods to Vishnu are curious as showing the ideas involved in an
anthropomorphic deity. Having, after their defeat, "fled to the Northern
shore of the Milky Ocean (Atlantic Ocean),** the discomfited gods address many
supplications "to the first
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* One "Day
of Brahma" lasting 4,320,000,000 years -- multiply this by 365! The Asuras
here (no-gods, but demons) are still Suras, gods higher in hierarchy than such
secondary gods as are not even mentioned in the Vedas. The duration of the war shows
its significance, and that they are only the personified Cosmic powers. It is
evidently for sectarian purposes and out of odium theologicum that the illusive
form assumed by Vishnu Mayamoha, was attributed in later rearrangements of old
texts to Buddha and the Daityas, in the Vishnu Purana, unless it was a fancy of
Wilson himself. He also fancied he found an allusion to Buddhism in
Bhagavatgita, whereas, as proved by K. T. Telang, he had only confused the
Buddhists and the older Charvaka materialists. The version exists nowhere in
other Puranas if the inference does, as Professor Wilson claims, in the
"Vishnu Purana"; the translation of which, especially of Book iii.,
ch. xviii., where the reverend Orientalist arbitrarily introduces Buddha, and
shows him teaching Buddhism to Daityas -- led to another "great war"
between himself and Col. Vans Kennedy. The latter charged him publicly with
wilfully distorting Puranic texts. "I affirm," wrote the Colonel at
Bombay, in 1840, "that the Puranas do not contain what Professor Wilson
has stated is contained in them . . . until such passages are produced I may be
allowed to repeat my former conclusions, that Professor Wilson's opinion, that
the Puranas as now extant are compilations made between the eighth and
seventeenth centuries (A.D.!) rests solely on gratuitous assumptions and
unfounded assertions, and that his reasoning in support of it is either futile,
fallacious, contradictory, or improbable." (See Vishnu Purana, trans. by
Wilson, edit. by Fitzedward Hall, Vol. V., Appendix.)
** This
statement belongs to the third War, since the terrestrial continents, seas and
rivers are mentioned in connection with it.
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of beings, the
divine Vishnu," and among others this one: "Glory to thee, who art
one with the Saints, whose perfect nature is ever blessed. . . . Glory to thee,
who art one with the Serpent-race, double-tongued, impetuous, cruel, insatiate
of enjoyment and abounding with wealth. . . . Glory to thee, . . . . O Lord,
who hast neither colour nor extension, nor size (ghana), nor any predicable
qualities, and whose essence (rupa), purest of the pure is appreciable only by
holy Paramarshi (greatest of sages or Rishis). We bow to thee, in the nature of
Brahma uncreated, undecaying (avyaya), who art in our bodies and in all other
bodies, and in all living creatures, and beside whom nothing exists. We glorify
that Vasudeva, the lord of all, who is without soil, the seed of all things,
exempt from dissolution, unborn, eternal; being in essence Paramapadatmavat
(beyond the condition of spirit) and in essence and substance (rupa), the whole
of this (Universe)." (Book III., ch. xvii., Vish. Purana.)
The above is
quoted as an illustration of the vast field offered by the Puranas to adverse
and erroneous criticism, by every European bigot who forms an estimate of an
alien religion on mere external evidence. Any man accustomed to subject what he
reads to thoughtful analysis, will see at a glance the incongruity of
addressing the accepted "Unknowable," the formless, and attributeless
ABSOLUTE, such as the Vedantins define BRAHMA, as being "one with the serpent-race,
double-tongued, cruel and insatiable," thus associating the abstract with
the concrete, and bestowing adjectives on that which is freed from any
limitations, and conditionless. Even Dr. Wilson, who, after living surrounded
by Brahmins and Pundits in India for so many years, ought to have known better
-- even that scholar lost no opportunity to criticize the Hindu Scriptures on
this account. Thus, he exclaims:--*
"The
Puranas constantly teach incompatible doctrines! According to this passage, the
Supreme being is not the inert cause of creation only, but exercises the
functions of an active providence. The Commentator quotes a text of the Veda in
support of this view: 'Universal Soul entering into men, governs their
conduct.' Incongruities, however, are as frequent in the Vedas as in the
Puranas. . . . ."
Less frequent,
in sober truth, than in the Mosaic Bible. But prejudice is great in the hearts
of our Orientalists -- especially in those of "reverend" scholars.
UNIVERSAL SOUL is not the inert Cause of Creation or (Para) Brahma, but simply
that which we call the sixth principle of intellectual Kosmos, on the
manifested plane of being. It is Mahat, or Mahabuddhi, the great Soul, the
vehicle of Spirit, the first primeval reflection of the formless CAUSE, and
that which is even beyond SPIRIT.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In Book I.,
chap. xvii., narrating the story of Prahlada -- the Son of Hiranyakasipu, the
Puranic Satan, the great enemy of Vishnu, and the King of the three worlds --
into whose heart Vishnu entered.
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So much for
Professor Wilson's uncalled-for fling. As for the apparently incongruous appeal
to Vishnu by the defeated gods, the explanation is there, in the text of Vishnu
Purana, if Orientalists would only notice it.* There is Vishnu, as Brahma, and
Vishnu in his two aspects, philosophy teaches. There is but one Brahma,
"essentially prakriti and Spirit," &c.
Therefore, it is
not Vishnu -- "the inert cause of creation" -- which exercised the
functions of an active Providence, but the Universal Soul, that which E. Levi
calls Astral Light in its material aspect. And this "Soul" is, in its
dual aspect of spirit and matter, the true anthropomorphic God of the Theists;
as this God is a personification of that Universal Creative Agent, pure and
impure both, owing to its manifested condition and differentiation in this
Mayavic World -- God and Devil -- truly. But Dr. Wilson failed to see how
Vishnu, in this character, closely resembles the Lord God of Israel,
"especially in his policy of deception, temptation, and cunning."
In the Vishnu
Purana this is made as plain as can be. For it is said there, that "at the
conclusion of their prayers (stotra) the gods beheld the Sovereign Deity Hari
(Vishnu) armed with the conch, the discus, and the mace, riding on Garuda.
." Now "Garuda" is the manvantaric cycle, as will be shown in
its place. Vishnu, therefore, is the deity in space and time; the peculiar God
of the Vaishnavas (a tribal or racial God, as they are called in esoteric
philosophy): i.e., one of the many Dhyanis or Gods, or Elohim, one of whom was
generally chosen for some special reasons by a nation or a tribe, and thus
became gradually a "God above all Gods" (2 Chronicles ii. 5,) the
"highest God" as Jehovah, Osiris, Bel, or any other of the Seven Regents.
"The tree
is known by its fruit," -- the nature of a God by his actions. The latter,
we have either to judge by the dead-letter narratives, or to accept
allegorically. If we compare the two -- Vishnu, as the defender and champion of
the defeated gods; and Jehovah, the defender and champion of the
"chosen" people, so called by antiphrasis, no doubt, as it is the
Jews who had chosen that "jealous" God -- we shall find that both use
deceit and cunning. They do so on the principle of "the end justifying the
means," in order to have the best of their
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This ignorance
is truly and beautifully expressed in the praise of the Yogins to Brahma,
"the upholder of the earth" (in Book I., chap. iv. of V. P.), when
they say, "Those who have not practised devotion conceive erroneously of
the nature of the world. The ignorant who do not perceive that this Universe is
of the nature of wisdom, and judge of it as an object of perception only, are
lost in the ocean of spiritual ignorance. But they who know true wisdom, and
whose minds are pure, behold this whole world as one with divine knowledge, as
one with thee, O God! Be favourable, O universal Spirit!"
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respective
opponents and foes -- the demons. Thus while (according to the Kabalists)
Jehovah assumes the shape of the tempting Serpent in the Garden of Eden; sends
Satan with a special mission to tempt Job; and harasses and wearies Pharaoh
with Sarai, Abraham's wife, and "hardens" his heart against Moses,
lest there should be no opportunity for plaguing his victims "with great plagues"
(Genesis xii., Exodus) -- Vishnu is made in his Purana to resort to a trick no
less unworthy of any respectable god.
"Have
compassion upon us, O Lord, and protect us, who have come to thee for succour
from the Daityas (demons)!" pray the defeated Gods. "They have seized
upon the three worlds, and appropriated the offerings which are our portion,
taking care not to transgress the Precepts of the Veda. Although we, as well as
they, are parts of thee.* . . . . engaged as they are in the paths prescribed
by the holy writ . . . . it is impossible for us to destroy them. Do thou,
whose wisdom is immeasurable (Ameyatman) instruct us in some device by which we
may be able to exterminate the enemies of the gods!"
"When the
mighty Vishnu heard their request, he emitted from his body an illusory form
(Mayamoha, "the deluder by illusion") which he gave to the Gods and
thus spake: "This Mayamoha shall wholly beguile the Daityas, so that being
led astray from the path of the Vedas, they may be put to death. . . . Go then
and fear not. Let this delusive vision precede you. It shall this day be of
great service unto you, O Gods!"
"After
this, the great Delusion, Mayamoha, descending to earth, beheld the Daityas
engaged in ascetic penances, and approaching them, in the semblance of a
Digambara (naked mendicant) with his head shaven . . . he thus addressed them,
in gentle accents: "Ho, lords of the Daitya race, wherefore is it that you
practise these acts of penances?" etc., etc. (Book II., xviii.).
Finally the
Daityas were seduced by the wily talk of Mahamoha, as Eve was seduced by the
advice of the Serpent. They became apostates to the Vedas. As Dr. Muir
translates the passage:--
"The great
Deceiver, practising illusion, next beguiled other Daityas, by means of many
other sorts of heresy. In a very short time, these Asuras (-Daityas) deluded by
the Deceiver (who was Vishnu) abandoned the entire system founded on the
ordinances of the triple Veda. Some reviled the Vedas, others the Gods, others
the ceremonial of sacrifice, and others the Brahmans. This, they exclaimed, is
a doctrine which will not bear discussion. The slaughter of animals in
sacrifice is not conducive to religious merit. To say that oblations of butter
consumed in the fire produce any future reward, is the assertion of a child. .
. . If it be a fact that a beast slain in sacrifice is exalted to heaven, why
does not the worshipper slaughter his own father? . . . . Infallible utterances
do not, great Asuras, fall from the skies; it is only assertions founded on
reasoning that are accepted by me and by other intelligent persons like
yourselves! Thus by numerous methods the Daityas were unsettled by the great
Deceiver (Reason). . . . When
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "There
was a day when the Sons of God came before the Lord, and Satan came with his
brothers, also before the Lord" (Job ii., Abyss., Ethiopic text).
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they had entered
on the path of error, the gods mustered all their energies and approached to
battle. Then followed a combat between the gods and the Asuras; and the latter,
who had abandoned the right road, were smitten by the former. In previous times
they had been defended by the armour of righteousness which they bore, but when
that had been destroyed they, also, perished." (Journal of the Royal
Asiat. Society, Vol. XIX., p. 302.)
Whatever may be
thought of Hindus, no enemy of theirs can regard them as fools. A people whose
holy men and sages have left to the world the greatest and most sublime
philosophies that ever emanated from the minds of men, must have known the
difference between right and wrong. Even a savage can discern white from black,
good from bad, and deceit from sincerity and truthfulness. Those who had
narrated this event in the biography of their god, must have seen that in this
case it was that God who was the arch-Deceiver, and the Daityas, who
"never transgressed the precepts of the Vedas," who had the sunny
side in the transaction, and who were the true "Gods." Thence there
must have been, and there is a secret meaning hidden under this allegory. In no
class of Society, in no nation, are deceit and craft considered as Divine
virtues -- except perhaps in the clerical classes of theologians and modern
Jesuitism.
The Vishnu
Purana,* like all other works of this kind, has passed at a later period into
the hands of the temple-Brahmins, and the old MSS. have, no doubt, been once
more tampered with by sectarians. But there was a time when the Puranas were
esoteric works, and so they are still for the Initiates who can read them with
the key that is in their possession.
Whether the
Brahmin Initiates will ever give out the full meaning of these allegories, is a
question with which the writer is not concerned. The present object is to show
that, while honouring the creative Powers in their multiple forms, no
philosopher could, or ever has, accepted the allegory for the true Spirit,
except, perhaps, some philosophers belonging to the present "superior and
civilized" Christian races. For, as shown, Jehovah is not one whit the
superior of Vishnu on the plane of ethics. This is why the Occultists and even
some Kabalists, whether they regard or not those creative Forces as living and
conscious Entities -- and one does not see why they should not be so accepted
-- will never confuse the CAUSE with the effect, and accept the Spirit of the
Earth for Parabrahm or Ain-Soph. At all events they know well the true nature
of what was called Father-AEther by the Greeks, Jupiter-Titan, etc., etc. They
know that the soul of the ASTRAL LIGHT is divine, and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Wilson's
opinion that the "Vishnu Purana" is a production of our era, and that
in its present form it is not earlier than between the VIIIth and the XVIIth
(!!) century, is absurd beyond noticing.
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its body (the
light-waves on the lower planes) infernal. This Light is symbolized by the
"Magic Head" in the Zohar, the double Face on the double Pyramid: the
black pyramid rising against a pure white ground, with a white head and face
within its black triangle; the white pyramid, inverted -- the reflection of the
first in the dark waters, showing the black reflection of the white face. . . .
.
This is the
"Astral Light," or DEMON EST DEUS INVERSUS.
--------------
§ XII.
THE THEOGONY OF
THE CREATIVE GODS.
TO thoroughly
comprehend the idea underlying every ancient cosmology necessitates the study,
in a comparative analysis, of all the great religions of antiquity; as it is
only by this method that the root idea will be made plain. Exact science --
could the latter soar so high, while tracing the operations of nature to their
ultimate and original sources -- would call this idea the hierarchy of Forces.
The original, transcendental and philosophical conception was one. But as
systems began to reflect with every age more and more the idiosyncracies of
nations; and as the latter, after separating, settled into distinct groups,
each evolving along its own national or tribal groove, the main idea gradually
became veiled with the overgrowth of human fancy. While in some countries the
FORCES, or rather the intelligent Powers of nature, received divine honours
they were hardly entitled to, in others -- as now in Europe and the civilized
lands -- the very thought of any such Force being endowed with intelligence
seems absurd, and is proclaimed unscientific. Therefore one finds relief in
such statements as are found in the Introduction to "Asgard and the Gods:
Tales and Traditions of our Northern Ancestors," by W. S. W. Anson. The
author remarks, on p. 3: "Although in Central Asia, or on the banks of the
Indus, in the land of the Pyramids, and in the Greek and Italian peninsulas,
and even in the North, whither Kelts, Teutons and Slavs wandered, the religious
conceptions of the people have taken different forms, yet their common origin
is still perceptible. We point out this connection between the stories of the
gods, and the deep thought contained in them, and their importance, in order
that the reader may see that it is not a magic world of erratic fancy which
opens out before him, but that . . . Life and nature formed the basis of the
existence and action of these divinities." And though it is impossible for
any Occultist or student of Eastern Esotericism to concur in the strange idea
that "the religious con-
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ceptions of the
most famous nations of antiquity are connected with the beginnings of
civilization amongst the Germanic races," he is yet glad to find such
truths expressed as that: "These fairy tales are not senseless stories
written for the amusement of the idle; they embody the profound religion of our
forefathers . . . "
Precisely so.
Not only their religion, but likewise their History. For a myth, in Greek [[mythos]],
means oral tradition, passed from mouth to mouth from one generation to the
other; and even in the modern etymology the term stands for a fabulous
statement conveying some important truth; a tale of some extraordinary
personage whose biography has become overgrown, owing to the veneration of
successive generations, with rich popular fancy, but which is no wholesale
fable. Like our ancestors, the primitive Aryans, we believe firmly in the
personality and intelligence of more than one phenomenon-producing Force in
nature.
As time rolled
on, the archaic teaching grew dimmer; and those nations more or less lost sight
of the highest and One principle of all things, and began to transfer the
abstract attributes of the "causeless cause" to the caused effects --
become in their turn causative -- the creative Powers of the Universe: the
great nations, out of the fear of profaning the IDEA, the smaller, because they
either failed to grasp it or lacked the power of philosophic conception needed
to preserve it in all its immaculate purity. But one and all, with the
exception of the latest Aryans, now become Europeans and Christians, show this
veneration in their Cosmogonies. As Thomas Taylor,* the most intuitional of all
the translators of Greek Fragments, shows, no nation has ever conceived the One
principle as the immediate creator of the visible Universe, for no sane man
would credit a planner and architect with having built the edifice he admires
with his own hands. On the testimony of Damascius ([[Peri archon]]) they
referred to it as "the Unknown DARKNESS." The Babylonians passed over
this principle in silence: "To that god," says Porphyry, in [[Peri
apoches empsuchon]], "who is above all things, neither external speech
ought to be addressed, nor yet that which is inward. . . . ." Hesiod
begins his theogony with: "Chaos of all things was the first
produced,"** thus allowing the inference that its cause or producer must
be passed over in reverential silence. Homer in his poems ascends no higher
than Night, whom he represents Zeus as reverencing. According to all the
ancient theologists, and to the doctrines of Pythagoras and Plato, Zeus, or the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See
"Magazine" for April, 1797.
** [[Etoi men
protista chaos genet; geneto]] being considered in antiquity as meaning
"Was generated" and not simply was. (See "Taylor's Introd. to
the Parmenides of Plato," p. 260.
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immediate
artificer of the universe, is not the highest god; any more than Sir
Christopher Wren in his physical, human aspect is the MIND in him which
produced his great works of art. Homer, therefore, is not only silent with
respect to the first principle, but likewise with respect to those two
principles immediately posterior to the first, the AEther and Chaos of Orpheus
and Hesiod, and the bound and infinity of Pythagoras and Plato.* . . . .
Proclus says of this highest principle that it is. . . . "the Unity of
Unities, and beyond the first adyte. . . . . more ineffable than all silence,
and more occult than all Essence. . . . . concealed amidst the intelligible gods."
(Ibid.)
To what was
written by Thomas Taylor in 1797 -- namely, that the "Jews appear to have
ascended no higher. . . . than the immediate artificer of the universe";
as "Moses introduces a darkness on the face of the deep, without even
insinuating that there was any cause of its existence,"** one might add
something more. Never have the Jews in their Bible (a purely esoteric,
symbolical work) degraded so profoundly their metaphorical deity as have the
Christians, by accepting Jehovah as their one living yet personal God.
This first, or
rather ONE, principle was called "the circle of Heaven," symbolized
by the hierogram of a point within a circle or equilateral triangle, the point
being the LOGOS. Thus, in the Rig Veda, wherein Brahma is not even named,
Cosmogony is preluded with the Hiranyagharha, "the Golden Egg," and
Prajapati (Brahma later on), from whom emanate all the hierarchies of
"Creators." The Monad, or point, is the original and is the unit from
which follows the entire numeral system. This Point is the First Cause, but
THAT from which it emanates, or of which, rather, it is the expression, the
Logos, is passed over in silence. In its turn, the universal symbol, the point
within the circle, was not yet the Architect, but the cause of that Architect;
and the latter stood to it in precisely the same relation as the point itself
stood to the circumference of the Circle, which cannot be defined, according to
Hermes Trismegistus. Porphyry shows that the Monad and the Duad of Pythagoras
are identical with Plato's infinite and finite in "Philebus" -- or
what Plato calls the [[apeiron]] and [[peras]]. It is the latter only (the
mother) which is substantial, the former being the "cause of all unity and
measure of all things" (Vit. Pyth. p. 47); the Duad (Mulaprakriti, the
VEIL) being thus shown to be the mother of the Logos and, at the same time, his
daughter -- i.e., the object of his perception -- the produced
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is the
"bound" confused with the "Infinite," that Kapila
overwhelms with sarcasms in his disputations with the Brahman Yogis, who claim
in their mystical visions to see the "Highest One."
** See T.
Taylor's article in his Monthly Magazine quoted in the Platonist, edited by T.
M. Johnson, F.T.S., Osceola, Missouri. (Feb. Number of 1887.)
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producer and the
secondary cause of it. With Pythagoras, the MONAD returns into silence and
Darkness as soon as it has evolved the triad, from which emanate the remaining
seven numbers of the 10 (ten) numbers which are at the base of the manifested
universe.
In the Norse
cosmogony it is again the same. "In the beginning was a great abyss
(Chaos), neither day nor night existed; the abyss was Ginnungagap, the yawning
gulf, without beginning, without end. ALL FATHER, the Uncreated, the Unseen,
dwelt in the depth of the 'Abyss' (SPACE) and willed, and what was willed came
into being." (See "Asgard and the Gods.") As in the Hindu
cosmogony, the evolution of the universe is divided into two acts: called in
India the Prakriti and Padma Creations. Before the warm rays pouring from the
"Home of Brightness" awake life in the Great Waters of Space, the
Elements of the first creation come into view, and from them is formed the
Giant Ymir (also Orgelmir) -- primordial matter differentiated from Chaos
(literally seething clay). Then comes the cow Audumla, the nourisher,* from
whom is born Buri (the Producer) who, by Bestla, the daughter of the
"Frost-Giants" (the sons of Ymir) had three sons, Odin, Willi and We,
or "Spirit," "Will," and "Holiness." (Compare the
Genesis of the Primordial Races, in this work.) This was when Darkness still
reigned throughout Space, when the Ases, the creative Powers (Dhyan Chohans)
were not yet evolved, and the Yggdrasil, the tree of the universe of Time and
of Life, had not yet grown, and there was, as yet, no Walhalla, or Hall of
Heroes. The Scandinavian legends of creation, of our earth and world, begin
with time and human life. All that precedes it is for them
"Darkness," wherein All-Father, the cause of all, dwells. As observed
by the editor of "Asgard and the Gods," though these legends have in
them the idea of that ALL-FATHER, the original cause of all, "he is
scarcely more than mentioned in the poems," not because, as he thinks,
before the preaching of the gospel, the idea "could not rise to distinct
conceptions of the Eternal," but on account of its great esoteric
character. Therefore, all the creative gods, or personal Deities, begin at the
secondary stage of Cosmic evolution. Zeus is born in, and out of Kronos --
Time. So is Brahma the production and emanation of Kala, "eternity and
time," Kala being one of the names of Vishnu. Hence we find Odin, the
father of the gods and of the Ases, as Brahma is the father of the gods and of
the Asuras, and hence also the androgyne character of all the chief creative
gods, from the second MONAD of the Greeks down to the Sephiroth Adam Kadmon,
the Brahma or Prajapati-Vach of the Vedas, and the androgyne of Plato, which is
but another version of the Indian symbol.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Vach -- the
"melodious cow, who milks sustenance and water," and yields us
"nourishment and sustenance" as described in Rig-Veda.
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The best
metaphysical definition of primeval theogony in the spirit of the Vedantins may
be found in the "Notes on the Bhagavat-Gita," by Mr. T. Subba Row.
(See "Theosophist" for February, 1887.) Parabrahmam, the unknown and
the incognisable, as the lecturer tells his audience:
". . . . .
Is not Ego, it is not non-ego, nor is it consciousness . . . . . it is not even
Atma" . . . . . "but though not itself an object of knowledge, it is
yet capable of supporting and giving rise to every kind of object and every
kind of existence which becomes an object of knowledge. It is the one essence
from which starts into existence a centre of energy . . . . ." which he
calls Logos.
This Logos is
the Sabda Brahmam of the Hindus, which he will not even call Iswara (the
"lord" God), lest the term should create confusion in the people's
minds. But it is the Avalokiteswara of the Hindus, the Verbum of the Christians
in its real esoteric meaning, not in the theological disfigurement.
"It
is," he says, "the Gnatha or the Ego in the Kosmos, and every other
Ego . . . . . . is but its reflection and manifestation. . . . . . It exists in
a latent condition in the bosom of Parabrahmam at the time of Pralaya. . .
." (During Manvantara) "it has a consciousness and an individuality
of its own . . . . ." (It is a centre of energy, but) . . . . . such
centres of energy are almost innumerable in the bosom of Parabrahmam . . . .
." "It must not be supposed, that even the logos is the Creator, or
that it is but a single centre of energy . . . . . . their number is almost
infinite." "This Ego," he adds, "is the first that appears
in Kosmos, and is the end of all evolution. It is the abstract Ego" . . .
. . "this is the first manifestation (or aspect) of Parabrahmam."
"When once it starts into conscious being . . . . . . from its objective
standpoint, Parabrahmam appears to it as Mulaprakriti." "Please bear
this in mind," observes the lecturer, "for here is the root of the
whole difficulty about Purusha and Prakriti felt by the various writers on
Vedantic philosophy. This Mulaprakriti is material to it (the Logos), as any
material object is material to us. This Mulaprakriti is no more Parabrahmam
than the bundle of attributes of a pillar is the pillar itself; Parabrahmam is
an unconditioned and absolute reality, and Mulaprakriti is a sort of veil
thrown over it. Parabrahmam by itself cannot be seen as it is. It is seen by
the Logos with a veil thrown over it, and that veil is the mighty expanse of
Cosmic matter. . . ." "Parabrahmam, after having appeared on the one
hand as the Ego, and on the other as Mulaprakriti, acts as the one energy
through the Logos."
And the lecturer
explains what he means by this acting of something which is nothing, though it
is the ALL, by a fine simile. He compares the Logos to the sun through which
light and heat radiate, but whose energy, light and heat, exist in some unknown
condition in Space and are diffused in Space only as visible light and heat,
the sun being only the agent thereof. This is the first triadic hypostasis. The
quaternary is made up by the energizing light shed by the Logos.
The Hebrew
Kabalists give it in a shape which esoterically is
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identical with
the Vedantic. AIN-SOPH, they taught, could not be comprehended, could not be
located, nor named, though the causeless cause of all. Hence its name --
AIN-SOPH -- is a term of negation, "the inscrutable, the incognizable, and
the unnameable." They made of it, therefore, a boundless circle, a sphere,
of which human intellect, with the utmost stretch, could only perceive the
vault. In the words of one who has unriddled much in the Kabalistical system,
in one of its meanings thoroughly, in its numerical and geometrical
esotericism:-- "Close your eyes, and from your own consciousness of perception
try and think outward to the extremest limits in every direction. You will find
that equal lines or rays of perception extend out evenly in all directions, so
that the utmost effort of perception will terminate in the vault of a sphere.
The limitation of this sphere will, of necessity, be a great Circle, and the
direct rays of thought in any and every direction must be right line radii of
the circle. This, then, must be, humanly speaking, the extremest all-embracing
conception of the Ain-Soph manifest, which formulates itself as a geometrical
figure, viz., of a circle, with its elements of curved circumference and right
line diameter divided into radii. Hence, a geometrical shape is the first
recognisable means of connection between the Ain-Soph and the intelligence of
man."*
This great
circle (which Eastern Esotericism reduces to the point within the Boundless
Circle) is the Avalokiteswara, the Logos or Verbum of which Mr. Subba Row speaks.
But this circle or manifested God is as unknown to us, except through its
manifested universe, as the ONE, though easier, or rather more possible to our
highest conceptions. This Logos which sleeps in the bosom of Parabrahmam during
Pralaya, as our "Ego is latent (in us) at the time of sushupti,
sleep"; which cannot cognize Parabrahmam otherwise than as Mulaprakriti --
the latter being a cosmic veil which is "the mighty expanse of cosmic
matter" -- is thus only an organ in cosmic creation, through which radiate
the energy and wisdom of Parabrahmam, unknown to the Logos, as it is to
ourselves. Moreover, as the Logos is as unknown to us as Parabrahmam is unknown
in reality to the Logos, both Eastern Esotericism and the Kabala -- in order to
bring the Logos within the range of our conceptions -- have resolved the
abstract synthesis into concrete images; viz., into the reflections or
multiplied aspects of that Logos or Avalokiteswara, Brahma, Ormazd, Osiris,
Adam-Kadmon, call it by any of these names -- which aspects or Manvantaric
emanations are the Dhyan Chohans, the Elohim, the Devas, the Amshaspends,
&c., &c. Metaphysicians explain the root and germ of the latter,
according to Mr. Subba Row, as the first manifestation of Parabrahmam, "the
highest trinity that we
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* From the
Masonic Review for June, 1886.
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are capable of
understanding," which is Mulaprakriti (the veil), the Logos, and the
conscious energy "of the latter," or its power and light*; or --
"matter, force and the Ego, or the one root of self, of which every other
kind of self is but a manifestation or a reflection." It is then only in
this "light" (of consciousness) of mental and physical perception,
that practical Occultism can throw this into visibility by geometrical figures;
which, when closely studied, will yield not only a scientific explanation of
the real, objective, existence** of the "Seven sons of the divine
Sophia," which is this light of the Logos, but show by means of other yet
undiscovered keys that, with regard to Humanity, these "Seven Sons"
and their numberless emanations, centres of energy personified, are an absolute
necessity. Make away with them, and the mystery of Being and Mankind will never
be unriddled, not even closely approached.
It is through
this light that everything is created. This ROOT of mental SELF is also the
root of physical Self, for this light is the permutation, in our manifested
world, of Mulaprakriti, called Aditi in the Vedas. In its third aspect it
becomes Vach,*** the daughter and the mother of the Logos, as Isis is the
daughter and the mother of Osiris, who is Horus; and Mout, the daughter, wife,
and mother of Ammon, in the Egyptian Moon-glyph. In the Kabala, Sephira is the
same as Shekinah, and is, in another synthesis, the wife, daughter, and mother
of the "Heavenly man," Adam Kadmon, and is even identical with him,
just as Vach is identical with Brahma, and is called the female Logos. In the
Rig-Veda, Vach is "mystic speech," by whom Occult Knowledge and
Wisdom are communicated to man, and thus Vach is said to have "entered the
Rishis." She is "generated by the gods;" she is the divine Vach
-- the "Queen of gods"; and she is associated -- like Sephira with
the Sephiroth -- with the Prajapati in their work of creation. Moreover, she is
called "the mother of the Vedas," "since it is through her power
(as mystic speech) that Brahma revealed them, and also owing to her power that
he produced the universe" -- i.e., through speech, and words (synthesized
by the "WORD") and numbers.****
But Vach being
also spoken of as the daughter of Daksha -- "the god who lives in all the
Kalpas" -- her Mayavic character is thereby shown:
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Called, in the
Bhagavat-Gita, Daiviprakriti.
** Objective --
in the world of Maya, of course; still as real as we are.
*** "In the
course of cosmic manifestation, this Daiviprakriti, instead of being the mother
of the Logos, should, strictly speaking, be called his daughter."
("Notes on the Bhagavat-Gita," p. 305, Theosophist.)
**** The wise
men, like Stanley Jevons amongst the moderns, who invented the scheme which
makes the incomprehensible assume a tangible form, could only do so by
resorting to numbers and geometrical figures.
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during the
pralaya she disappears, absorbed in the one, all-devouring Ray.
But there are two
distinct aspects in universal Esotericism, Eastern and Western, in all those
personations of the female Power in nature, or nature -- the noumenal and the
phenomenal. One is its purely metaphysical aspect, as described by the learned
lecturer in his "Notes on the Bhagavat-Gita;" the other terrestrial
and physical, and at the same time divine from the stand-point of practical
human conception and Occultism. They are all the symbols and personifications
of Chaos, the "Great Deep" or the Primordial Waters of Space, the
impenetrable VEIL between the INCOGNISABLE and the LOGOS of Creation.
"Connecting himself through his mind with Vach, Brahma (the Logos) created
the primordial waters." In the Kathaka Upanishad it is stated still more
clearly: "Prajapati was this Universe. Vach was a second to him. He
associated with her . . . she produced these creatures and again re-entered
Prajapati."*
And here we may
incidentally point out one of the many unjust slurs thrown by the pious and
good missionaries in India on the religion of the land. This allegory -- in the
"Satapatha Brahmana" -- namely, that Brahma, as the father of men,
performed the work of procreation by incestuous intercourse with his own
daughter Vach, also called Sandhya (twilight), and Satarupa (the hundred
formed), is incessantly thrown into the teeth of the Brahmins, as condemning
their "detestable, false religion." Besides the fact, conveniently
forgotten by the Europeans, that the Patriarch Lot is shown guilty of the same
crime under the human form, whereas Brahma, or rather Prajapati, accomplished
the incest under the form of a buck with his daughter, who had that of a hind
(rohit), the esoteric reading of Genesis (ch. iii.) shows the same. Moreover,
there is certainly a cosmic, not a physiological meaning attached to the Indian
allegory, since Vach is a permutation of Aditi and Mulaprakriti (Chaos), and
Brahma a permutation of Narayana, the Spirit of God entering into, and
fructifying nature; therefore, there is nothing phallic in the conception at
all.
As already
stated, Aditi-Vach is the female Logos, or the "word," Verbum; and
Sephira in the Kabala is the same. These feminine Logoi are all correlations,
in their noumenal aspect, of Light, and Sound, and Ether, showing how
well-informed were the ancients both in
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This connects
Vach and Sephira with the goddess Kwan-Yin, the "merciful mother,"
the divine VOICE of the soul even in Exoteric Buddhism; and with the female
aspect of Kwan-Shai-yin, the Logos, the verbum of Creation, and at the same
time with the voice that speaks audibly to the Initiate, according to Esoteric
Buddhism. Bath Kol, the filia Vocis, the daughter of the divine voice of the
Hebrews, responding from the mercy seat within the veil of the temple is -- a
result.
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physical science
(as now known to the moderns), and as to the birth of that science in the
Spiritual and Astral spheres.
"Our old
writers said that Vach is of four kinds . . . . para, pasyanti, madhyama,
vaikhari (a statement found in the Rig-Veda and the Upanishads) . . . .
Vaikhari Vach is what we utter." It is sound, speech, that again which
becomes comprehensive and objective to one of our physical senses and may be
brought under the laws of perception. Hence: "Every kind of Vaikhari-Vach
exists in its Madhyama . . . . Pasyanti and ultimately in its Para form. . . .
. The reason why this Pranava* is called Vach is this, that these four
principles of the great Kosmos correspond to these four forms of Vach. . . . .
The whole Kosmos in its objective form is Vaikhari Vach; the light of the Logos
is the madhyama form; and the Logos itself the pasyanti form; while Parabrahmam
is the para (beyond the noumenon of all Noumena) aspect of that Vach."
(Notes on the Bhagavad-Gita).
Thus Vach,
Shekinah, or the "music of the spheres" of Pythagoras, are one, if we
take for our example instances in the three most (apparently) dissimilar
religious philosophies in the world -- the Hindu, the Greek and the Chaldean
Hebrew. These personations and allegories may be viewed under four (chief) and
three (lesser) aspects or seven in all, as in Esotericism. The para form is the
ever subjective and latent Light and Sound, which exist eternally in the bosom
of the INCOGNISABLE; when transferred into the ideation of the Logos, or its
latent light, it is called pasyanti, and when it becomes that light expressed,
it is madhyama.
Now the Kabala
gives the definition thus: "There are three kinds of light, and that
(fourth) which interpenetrates the others; (1) the clear and the penetrating,
the objective light, (2) the reflected light, and (3) the abstract light. The
ten Sephiroth, the three and the Seven, are called in the Kabala the 10 words,
D-BRIM (Dabarim), the numbers and the Emanations of the heavenly light, which
is both Adam Kadmon and Sephira, or (Brahma) Prajapati-Vach. Light, Sound,
Number, are the three factors of creation in the Kabala. Parabrahmam cannot be
known except through the luminous Point (the LOGOS), which knows not
Parabrahmam but only Mulaprakriti. Similarly Adam Kadmon knew only Shekinah, though
he was the vehicle of Ain-Soph. And, as Adam Kadmon, he is in the esoteric
interpretation the total of the number ten, the Sephiroth (himself a trinity,
or the three attributes of the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Pranava, like
Om, is a mystic term pronounced by the Yogis during meditation; of the terms
called, according to exoteric Commentators, Vyahritis, or "Om, Bhur,
Bhuva, Swar" (Om, earth, sky, heaven) -- Pranava is the most sacred,
perhaps. They are pronounced with breath suppressed. See Manu II. 76-81, and
Mitakshara commenting on the Yajnavahkya-Suriti, i. 23. But the esoteric
explanation goes a great deal further.
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incognisable
DEITY in One).* "When the Heavenly man (or LOGOS) first assumed the form
of the Crown** (Kether) and identified himself with Sephira, he caused seven
splendid lights to emanate from it (the Crown)," which made in their
totality ten; so the Brahma-Prajapati, once he became separated from, yet
identical with Vach, caused the seven Rishis, the seven Manus or Prajapatis to
issue from that crown. In Exotericism one will always find 10 and 7, of either
Sephiroth or Prajapati; in Esoteric rendering always 3 and 7, which yield also
10. Only when divided in the manifested sphere into 3 and 7, they form
[[diagram]], the androgyne, and [[diagram]], or the figure X manifested and
differentiated.
This will help
the student to understand why Pythagoras esteemed the Deity (the Logos) to be
the centre of unity and "Source of Harmony." We say this Deity was
the Logos, not the MONAD that dwelleth in Solitude and Silence, because
Pythagoras taught that UNITY being indivisible is no number. And this is also
why it was required of the candidate, who applied for admittance into his
school, that he should have already studied as a preliminary step, the Sciences
of Arithmetic, Astronomy, Geometry and Music, held as the four divisions of
Mathematics.*** Again, this explains why the Pythagoreans asserted that the
doctrine of Numbers -- the chief of all in Esotericism -- had been revealed to
man by the celestial deities; that the world had been called forth out of Chaos
by Sound or Harmony, and constructed according to the principles of musical
proportion; that the seven planets which rule the destiny of mortals have a
harmonious motion "and intervals corresponding to musical diastemes,
rendering various sounds, so perfectly consonant, that they produce the
sweetest melody, which is inaudible to us, only by reason of the greatness of
the sound, which our ears are incapable of receiving." (Censorinus.)
In the
Pythagorean Theogony the hierarchies of the heavenly Host and Gods were
numbered and expressed numerically. Pythagoras had studied Esoteric Science in
India; therefore we find his pupils saying "The monad (the manifested one)
is the principle of all things. From the Monad and the indeterminate duad
(Chaos), numbers; from
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is this
trinity that is meant by the "three steps of Vishnu"; which means:
(Vishnu being considered as the Infinite in exotericism) -- that from the
Parabrahm issued Mulaprakriti, Purusha (the Logos), and Prakriti: the four
forms (with itself, the synthesis) of Vach. And in the Kabala -- Ain-Soph,
Shekinah, Adam Kadmon and Sephirah, the four -- or the three emanations being
distinct -- yet ONE.
** Chaldean Book
of Numbers. In the current Kabala the name Jehovah replaces Adam Kadmon.
*** Justin
Martyr tells us that, owing to his ignorance of these four sciences, he was
rejected by the Pythagoreans as a candidate for admission into their school.
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numbers, Points;
from points, Lines; from lines, Superficies; from superficies, Solids; from
these, solid Bodies, whose elements are four -- Fire, Water, Air, Earth; of all
which transmuted (correlated), and totally changed, the world consists."
-- (Diogenes Laertius in Vit. Pythag.)
And this may
also, if it does not unriddle the mystery altogether, at any rate lift a corner
of the veil off those wondrous allegories that have been thrown upon Vach, the
most mysterious of all the Brahmanical goddesses, she who is termed "the
melodious cow who milked forth sustenance and water" (the Earth with all
her mystic powers); and again she "who yields us nourishment and
sustenance" (physical Earth). Isis is also mystic Nature and also Earth;
and her cow's horns identify her with Vach. The latter, after having been
recognised in her highest form as para, becomes at the lower or material end of
creation -- Vaikhari. Hence she is mystic, though physical, Nature, with all
her magic ways and properties.
Again, as
goddess of Speech and of Sound, and a permutation of Aditi -- she is Chaos, in
one sense. At any rate, she is the "Mother of the gods," and it is
from Brahma (Iswara, or the Logos) and Vach, as from Adam Kadmon and Sephira,
that the real manifested theogony has to start. Beyond, all is darkness and abstract
speculation. With the Dhyan Chohans, or the gods, the Seers, the Prophets and
the adepts in general are on firm ground. Whether as Aditi, or the divine
Sophia of the Greek Gnostics, she is the mother of the seven sons: the
"Angels of the Face," of the "Deep," or the "Great
Green One" of the "Book of the Dead." Says the Book of Dzyan
(Knowledge through meditation) --
"The great
mother lay with [[diagram]], and the |, and the [[diagram]], the second | and
the [[diagram]]* in her bosom, ready to bring them forth, the valiant sons of
the [[diagram]] [[diagram]] || (or 4,320,000, the Cycle) whose two elders are
the [[diagram]] and the (Point)."
At the beginning
of every cycle of 4,320,000, the Seven (or, as some nations had it, eight)
great gods, descended to establish the new order of things and give the impetus
to the new cycle. That eighth god was the unifying Circle or LOGOS, separated
and made distinct from its host, in exoteric dogma, just as the three divine
hypostases of the ancient Greeks are now considered in the Churches as three
distinct personae. "The MIGHTY ONES perform their great works, and leave
behind them everlasting monuments to commemorate their visit, every time they
penetrate within our mayavic veil (atmosphere)," says a
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 31415, or
[[pi]]. The synthesis, or the Host unified in the Logos and the Point called in
Roman Catholicism the "Angel of the Face," and in Hebrew [[hebrew]]
"who is (like unto, or the same) as God" -- the manifested
representation.
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Commentary.*
Thus we are taught that the great Pyramids were built under their direct
supervision, "when Dhruva (the then Pole-star) was at his lowest
culmination, and the Krittika (Pleiades) looked over his head (were on the same
meridian but above) to watch the work of the giants." Thus, as the first
Pyramids were built at the beginning of a Sidereal year, under Dhruva (Alpha
Polaris), it must have been over 31,000 years (31,105) ago. Bunsen was right in
admitting for Egypt an antiquity of over 21,000 years, but this concession
hardly exhausts truth and fact in this question. "The stories told by
Egyptian priests and others of time-keeping in Egypt, are now beginning to look
less like lies in the sight of all who have escaped from biblical
bondage," writes the author of "The Natural Genesis."
"Inscriptions have lately been found at Sakkarah, making mention of two
Sothiac cycles . . . registered at that time, now some 6,000 years ago. Thus
when Herodotus was in Egypt, the Egyptians had -- as now known -- observed at
least five different Sothiac cycles of 1,461 years. The priests informed the
Greek inquirer that time had been reckoned by them for so long that the sun had
twice risen where it then set, and twice set where it then arose. This . . .
can only be realized as a fact in nature by means of two cycles of Precession,
or a period of 51,736 years," (vol. ii, p. 318. But see in our Book II.,
"CHRONOLOGY OF THE BRAHMINS.")
Mor Isaac (See
Kircher's OEdipus, vol. ii., p. 425) shows the ancient Syrians defining their
world of the "Rulers" and "active gods" in the same way as
the Chaldeans. The lowest world was the SUBLUNARY -- our own -- watched by the
"Angels" of the first or lower order; the one that came next in rank,
was Mercury, ruled by the "ARCHANGELS"; then came Venus, whose gods
were the PRINCIPALITIES; the fourth was that of the SUN, the domain and region
of the highest and mightiest gods of our system, the solar gods of all nations;
the fifth was Mars, ruled by the "VIRTUES"; the sixth -- that of Bel or
Jupiter -- was governed by the DOMINIONS; the seventh -- the world of Saturn --
by the THRONES. These are the worlds of form. Above come the four higher ones,
making seven again, since the three highest are "unmentionable and
unpronounceable." The eighth, composed of 1,122 stars, is the domain of
the Cherubs; the ninth, belonging to the walking and numberless stars on
account of their distance, has the seraphs; as to the tenth -- Kircher, quoting
Mor Isaac, says that it is composed "of invisible stars that could be taken,
they said, for clouds -- so massed are they in the zone that we call Via
Straminis, the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Appearing at
the beginning of Cycles, as also of every sidereal year (of 25,868 years) therefore
the Kabeiri or Kabarim received their name in Chaldea, as it means the measures
of Heaven from Kob -- measure of, and Urim -- heavens.
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Milky Way";
and he hastens to explain that "these are the stars of Lucifer, engulfed
with him in his terrible shipwreck." That which comes after and beyond the
tenth world (our Quaternary, or the Arupa world), the Syrians could not tell.
"All they knew was that it is there that begins the vast and
incomprehensible ocean of the infinite, the abode of the true divinity without
boundary or end."
Champollion
shows the same belief among the Egyptians. Hermes having spoken of the
Father-Mother and Son, whose spirit (collectively the DIVINE FIAT) shapes the
Universe, says:-- "Seven Agents (mediums) were also formed, to contain the
material (or manifested) worlds, within their respective circles and the action
of these agents was named DESTINY." He further enumerates seven and ten
and twelve orders, which would take too long to detail here.
As the "Rig
Vidhana" together with the "Brahmanda Purana" and all such
works, whether describing the magic efficacy of the Rig-Vedic Mantras or the
future Kalpas, are declared by Dr. Weber and others to be modern compilations
"belonging probably only to the time of the Puranas," it is useless
to refer the reader to their mystic explanations; and one may as well quote simply
from the archaic books utterly unknown to the Orientalists. These works explain
that which so puzzles the scholars, namely that the Saptarshi, the
"mind-born sons" of Brahma, are referred to in the Satapatha Brahmana
under one set of names; in the Mahabharata under another set; and that the Vayu
Purana makes even nine instead of seven Rishis, by adding the names of Bhrigu
and Daksha to the list. But the same occurs in every exoteric Scripture. The
secret doctrine gives a long genealogy of Rishis, but separates them into many
classes. Like the Gods of the Egyptians, who were divided into seven, and even
twelve, classes, so are the Indian Rishis in their Hierarchies. The first three
groups are the Divine, the Cosmical and the Sub-lunary. Then come the Solar
Gods of our system, the Planetary, the Sub-Mundane, and the purely human -- the
heroes and the Manoushi.
At present,
however, we are only concerned with the pre-cosmic, divine gods, the Prajapati
or the "Seven Builders." This group is found unmistakably in every
Cosmogony. Owing to the loss of Egyptian archaic documents -- since, according
to M. Maspero, "the materials and historical data on hand to study the
history of the religious evolution in Egypt are neither complete nor very often
intelligible" -- in order to have the statements brought forward from the
Secret Doctrine corroborated partially and indirectly, the ancient hymns and
inscriptions on the tombs must be appealed to. One such, at any rate, shows
that Osiris was, like Brahma-Prajapati, Adam Kadmon, Ormazd, and so many other
Logoi, the chief and synthesis of the
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group of "Creators"
or Builders. Before Osiris became the "One" and the highest god of
Egypt he was worshipped at Abydos as the head or leader of the Heavenly Host of
the Builders belonging to the higher of the three orders. The hymn engraved on
the votive stela of a tomb from Abydos (3rd register) addresses Osiris thus:
"Salutations to thee, Osiris, elder son of Sib; thou the greatest over the
six gods issued from the goddess Noo (primordial Water), thou the great
favourite of thy father Ra; father of fathers, King of Duration, master in the
eternity . . . who, as soon as these issued from thy mother's bosom, gathered
all the crowns and attached the Uraeus (serpent or naja)* on thy head;
multiform god, whose name is unknown and who has many names in towns and provinces.
. ." Coming out from the primordial water crowned with the uraeus, which
is the serpent emblem of Cosmic fire, and himself the seventh over the six
primary gods issued from Father-Mother, Nou and Nout (the sky), who can Osiris
be, but the chief Prajapati, the chief Sephiroth, the chief Amshaspend-Ormazd!
That this latter solar and cosmic god stood, in the beginning of religious
evolution, in the same position as the archangel "whose name was
secret," is certain. This Archangel was the representative on earth of the
Hidden Jewish God, Michael, in short: it is his "Face" that is said
to have gone before the Jews like a "Pillar of Fire." Burnouf says,
"The seven Amshaspends, who are most assuredly our archangels, designate
also the personifications of the divine Virtues." (Comment on the Yacna,
p. 174.) And these archangels, therefore, are as "certainly" the
Saptarishi of the Hindus, though it is next to impossible to class each with
its pagan prototype and parallel, since, as in the case of Osiris, they have
all so "many names in towns and provinces." Some of the most
important, however, will be shown in their order.
One thing is
thus undeniably proven. The more one studies their Hierarchies and finds out
their identity, the more proofs one acquires that there is not one of the past
and present personal gods, known to us from the earliest days of History, that
does not belong to the third stage of Cosmic manifestation. In every religion
we find the concealed deity forming the ground work; then the ray therefrom,
that falls into primordial Cosmic matter (first manifestation); then the
androgyne result, the dual Male and Female abstract Force, personified (second
stage); this separates itself finally, in the third, into seven Forces, called
the creative Powers by all the ancient Religions, and the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This Egyptian
word Naja reminds one a good deal of the Indian Naga, the Serpent-God. Brahma
and Siva and Vishnu are all crowned with, and connected with Nagas -- a sign of
their cyclic and cosmic character.
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"Virtues of
God" by the Christians. The later explanation and metaphysical abstract
qualifications have never prevented the Roman and Greek Churches from
worshipping these "Virtues" under the personifications and distinct
names of the seven Archangels. In the Book of Druschim (p. 59, 1st Treatise) in
the Talmud, a distinction between these groups is given which is the correct
Kabalistical explanation. It says:
"There are
three groups (or orders) of Sephiroth. 1st. The Sephiroth called "the
divine attributes" (abstract). 2nd. The physical or sidereal Sephiroth
(personal) -- one group of seven, the other of ten. 3rd. The metaphysical
Sephiroth, or periphrasis of Jehovah, who are the first three Sephiroth
(Kether, Chochma and Binah), the rest of the seven being the (personal) seven
spirits of the Presence" (also of the planets).
The same
division has to be applied to the primary, secondary and tertiary evolution of
gods in every theogony, if one wishes to translate the meaning esoterically. We
must not confuse the purely metaphysical personifications of the abstract
attributes of Deity, with their reflection -- the sidereal gods. This
reflection, however, is in reality the objective expression of the abstraction:
living Entities and the models formed on that divine prototype. Moreover, the
three metaphysical Sephiroth or "the periphrasis of Jehovah" are not
Jehovah; it is the latter himself with the additional titles of Adonai, Elohim,
Sabbaoth, and the numerous names lavished on him, who is the periphrasis of the
Shaddai, [[hebrew]], the Omnipotent. The name is a circumlocution, indeed, a
too abundant figure of Jewish rhetoric, and has always been denounced by the
Occultists. To the Jewish Kabalists, and even the Christian Alchemists and
Rosicrucians, Jehovah was a convenient screen, unified by the folding of its
many flaps, and adopted as a substitute: one name of an individual Sephiroth
being as good as another name, for those who had the secret. The
Tetragrammaton, the Ineffable, the sidereal "Sum Total," was invented
for no other purpose than to mislead the profane and to symbolize life and
generation.* The real secret and unpronounceable name -- "the word that is
no word" -- has to be sought in the seven names of the first seven
emanations, or the "Sons of the Fire,"
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Says the
translator of Avicebron's "Qabbalah" (Mr. Isaac Myer, LL.B., of
Philadelphia) of this "Sum Total": "The letter of Kether is
[[hebrew]] (Yod), of Binah [[hebrew]](Heh), together YaH, the feminine Name;
the third letter, that of Hokhmah, is [[hebrew]] (Vau), making together,
[[hebrew]] YHV of [[hebrew]] YHVH, the Tetragrammaton, and really the complete
symbols of its efficaciousness. The last [[hebrew]](Heh) of this Ineffable Name
being always applied to the Six Lower and the last, together the Seven
remaining Sephiroth." . . . Thus the Tetragrammaton is holy only in its
abstract synthesis. As a quaternary containing the lower Seven Sephiroth, it is
phallic.
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in the secret
Scriptures of all the great nations, and even in the Zohar, the Kabalistic lore
of that smallest of all, the Jewish. This word, composed of seven letters in
each tongue, is found embodied in the architectural remains of every grand
building in the world; from the Cyclopean remains on Easter Island (part of a
continent buried under the seas nearer four million years ago* than 20,000)
down to the earliest Egyptian pyramids.
We shall have to
enter more fully upon this subject, and bring practical illustrations to prove
the statements made in the text.
For the present
it is sufficient to show, by a few instances, the truth of what was asserted at
the beginning of this Monograph, namely, that no Cosmogony, the world over,
with the sole exception of the Christian, has ever attributed to the One
Highest cause, the UNIVERSAL Deific Principle, the immediate creation of our
Earth, man, or anything connected with these. This statement holds as good for
the Hebrew or Chaldean Kabala as it does for Genesis, had the latter been ever
thoroughly understood, and -- what is still more important -- correctly
translated.** Everywhere there is either a LOGOS -- a "Light shining
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The statement
will, of course, be found preposterous and absurd, and simply laughed at. But
if one believes in the final submersion of Atlantis 850,000 years ago, as
taught in "Esoteric Buddhism" (the gradual first sinking having begun
during the Eocene age), one has to accept the statement for the so-called
Lemuria, the continent of the Third Root Race, first nearly destroyed by
combustion, and then submerged. This is what the Commentary says: "The
first earth having been purified by the forty-nine fires, her people, born of
Fire and Water, could not die . . . etc.; the Second Earth (with its race)
disappeared as vapour vanishes in the air . . . the Third Earth had everything
consumed on it after the separation, and went down into the lower Deep (the
Ocean). This was twice eighty-two cyclic years ago." Now a cyclic year is
what we call a sidereal year, and is founded on the precession of the
equinoxes, or 25,868 years each, and this is equal, therefore, in all to
4,242,352 years. More details will be found in the text of Book II. Meanwhile,
this doctrine is embodied in the "Kings of Edom."
** The same
reserve is found in the Talmud and in every national system of religion whether
monotheistic or exoterically polytheistical. From the superb religious poem by
the Kabalist Rabbi Solomon Ben Gabirol in "the Kether Malchuth," we
select a few definitions given in the prayers of Kippur. . . . "Thou art
one, the beginning of all numbers, and the foundation of all edifices; Thou art
One, and in the secret of Thy unity the wisest of men are lost, because they
know it not. Thou art one, and Thy Unity is never diminished, never extended,
and cannot be changed. Thou art one, but not as an element of numeration; for
Thy Unity admits not of multiplication, change or form. Thou art existent; but
the understanding and vision of mortals cannot attain to thy existence, nor
determine for thee the Where, the How, and the Why. Thou art Existent, but in
thyself alone, there being none other that can exist with thee. Thou art
Existent, before all time and without Place. Thou art Existent, and thy
existence is so profound and secret that none can penetrate and discover thy
secrecy. Thou art Living, but within no time that can be fixed or known; Thou
art Living, but not by a spirit or a soul, for Thou art thyself, THE SOUL OF
ALL SOULS," etc., etc. There is [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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in
DARKNESS," truly -- or the Architect of the Worlds is esoterically a
plural number. The Latin Church, paradoxical as ever, while applying the
epithet of Creator to Jehovah alone, adopts a whole Kyriel of names for the
working FORCES of the latter, those names betraying the secret. For if the said
Forces had nought to do with "Creation" so-called, why call them
Elohim (Alhim) in plural; "divine workmen" and Energies
([['Energeia]]), incandescent celestial stones (lapides igniti coelorum), and
especially, "supporters of the World" ([[Kosmokratores]]), governors
or RULERS of the World (rectores mundi), the "Wheels" of the World
(Rotae), Ophanim, Flames and POWERS, "Sons of God" (B'ne Alhim),
"Vigilant COUNSELLORS," etc., etc.
It was often
premised (and as unjustly as usual) that China, nearly as old a country as
India, had no cosmogony. "It was unknown to Confucius, and the Buddhists
extended their Cosmogony without introducing a personal God,"* it is
complained. The Yi-King, "the very essence of ancient thought and the
combined work of the most venerated sages, fails to show a distinct
cosmogony." Nevertheless, there is one, and a very distinct one. Only as
Confucius did not admit of a future life** and the Chinese Buddhists reject the
idea of One Creator, accepting one cause and its numberless effects, they are misunderstood
by the believers in a personal God. The "great Extreme" as the
commencement "of changes" (transmigrations) is the shortest and
perhaps the most suggestive of all Cosmogonies, for those who, like the
Confucianists, love virtue for its own sake, and try to do good unselfishly
without perpetually looking to reward and profit. The "great Extreme"
of Confucius produces "two figures." These "two" produce in
their turn "the four images"; these again "the eight
symbols." It is complained that though the Confucianists see in them
"Heaven, Earth and man in miniature," . . . we can see in them
anything we like. No doubt, and so it is with regard to many symbols,
especially in those of the latest religions. But they who know something of
Occult numerals, see in these "figures" the symbol, however rude, of
a harmonious progressive Evolution of Kosmos and its beings, both the Heavenly
and the Terrestrial. And any one who has studied the numerical evolution in the
primeval cosmogony of Pythagoras (a contemporary of Confucius) can never fail
to find in his Triad, Tetractis and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] a distance between this Kabalistical Deity and
the Biblical Jehovah, the spiteful and revengeful God of Abram, Isaac, and
Jacob, who tempted the former and wrestled with the last. No Vedantin but would
repudiate such a Parabrahm.
* Rev. Joseph
Edkins "On Cosmogony," p. 320. And very wisely they have acted.
** If he
rejected it, it was on the ground of what he calls the changes -- in other
words, rebirths -- of man, and constant transformations. He denied immortality
to the personality of man -- as we do -- not to MAN.
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Decade emerging
from the ONE and solitary Monad, the same idea. Confucius is laughed at by his
Christian biographer for "talking of divination" before and after
this passage, and is represented as saying: "The eight symbols determine
good and ill fortune, and these lead to great deeds. There are no imitable
images greater than heaven and earth. There are no changes greater than the
four seasons (meaning North, South, East and West, et seq.). There are no
suspended images brighter than the sun and moon. In preparing things for use,
there is none greater than the sage. In determining good and ill-luck there is
nothing greater than the divining straws and the tortoise."*
Therefore, the
"divining straws" and the "tortoise," the "symbolic
sets of lines," and the great sage who looks at them as they become one
and two, and two become four, and four become eight, and the other sets "three
and six," are laughed to scorn, only because his wise symbols are
misunderstood.
So the author
and his colleagues will scoff no doubt at the Stanzas given in our text, for
they represent precisely the same idea. The old archaic map of Cosmogony is full
of lines in the Confucian style, of concentric circles and dots. Yet all these
represent the most abstract and philosophical conceptions of the Cosmogony of
our Universe. At all events it may answer, perhaps, better to the requirements
and the scientific purposes of our age, than the cosmogonical essays of St.
Augustine and the "Venerable Bede," though these were published over
a millennium later than the Confucian.
Confucius, one
of the greatest sages of the ancient world, believed in ancient magic, and
practised it himself "if we take for granted the statements of
Kin-yu" . . . . and "he praised it to the skies in Yi-kin," we
are told by his reverend critic. Nevertheless, even in his age -- i.e., 600
B.C., Confucius and his school taught the sphericity of the Earth and even the
heliocentric system; while, at about thrice 600 years after the Chinese
philosopher, the Popes of Rome threatened and even burnt "heretics"
for asserting the same. He is laughed at for speaking of the "Sacred Tortoise."
No unprejudiced person can see any great difference between a tortoise and a
lamb as candidates for sacredness, as both are symbols and no more. The Ox, the
Eagle,** the Lion, and occasionally
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* He may be
laughed at by the Protestants; but the Roman Catholics have no right to mock
him, without becoming guilty of blasphemy and sacrilege. For it is over 200
years since Confucius was canonized as a Saint in China by the Roman Catholics,
who have thereby obtained many converts among the ignorant Confucianists.
** The animals
regarded as sacred in the Bible are not few: the goat for one, the Azaz-el, or
God of Victory. As Aben Ezra says: "If thou art capable of comprehending
the mystery of Azazel, thou wilt learn the mystery of His (God's) name, for it
has similar associates in Scriptures. I will tell thee by allusion one portion
of the mystery; [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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the Dove, are
"the sacred animals" of the Western Bible, the first three being
found grouped round the Evangelists; and the fourth (the human face) is a
Seraph, i.e., a fiery serpent, the Gnostic Agathodaemon probably.* As
explained, the "sacred animals" and the Flames or "Sparks"
within the "Holy Four" refer to the prototypes of all that is found
in the Universe in the Divine Thought, in the ROOT, which is the perfect cube,
or the foundation of the Kosmos collectively and individually. They have all an
occult reference to primordial Cosmic forms and its first concretions, work,
and evolution.
In the earliest
Hindu exoteric cosmogonies, it is not even the Demiurge who creates. For it is
said in one of the Puranas that: "The great Architect of the World gives
the first impulse to the rotatory motion of our planetary system by stepping in
turn over each planet and body." It is this action "that causes each
sphere to turn around itself, and all around the Sun." After which action,
"it is the Brahmandica, the Solar and Lunar Pitris (the
Dhyani-Chohans)" who take charge of their respective spheres (earths and
planets), to the end of the Kalpa." The Creators are the Rishis; most of
whom are credited with the authorship of the mantras or Hymns of the Rig Veda.
They are sometimes seven, sometimes ten, when they become prajapati, the
"Lord of Beings"; then they rebecome the seven and the fourteen
Manus, as the representatives of the seven and fourteen cycles of Existence
("Days of Brahma"); thus answering to the seven AEons, when at the
end of the first stage of Evolution they are transformed into the seven stellar
Rishis, the Saptarishis; while their human doubles appear as heroes, Kings and
Sages on this earth.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] when thou shalt have thirty three years of age
thou wilt comprehend me." So with the mystery of the tortoise. Rejoicing
over the poetry of Biblical metaphors, associating with the name of Jehovah,
"incandescent stones," "sacred animals," etc., and quoting
from the Bible de Vence (Vol. XIX. p. 318) a French pious writer says: "Indeed
all of them are Elohim like their God; for, these Angels assume, through a holy
usurpation, the very divine name of Jehovah each time they represent him."
(Pneumatologie, Vol. II., p. 294). No one ever doubted that the NAME must have
been assumed, when under the guise of the Infinite, One Incognizable, the
Malachim (messengers) descended to eat and drink with men. But if the Elohim
(and even lower Beings), assuming the god-name, were and are still worshipped,
why should the same Elohim be called devils, when appearing under the names of
other Gods?
* The choice is
curious, and shows how paradoxical were the first Christians in their
selections. For why should they have chosen these symbols of Egyptian paganism,
when the eagle is never mentioned in the New Testament save once, when Jesus
refers to it as a carrion eater? (Matt. xxiv. 28); and in the Old Testament it
is called unclean; that the Lion is made a point of comparison with Satan, both
roaring for men to devour; and the oxen are driven out of the Temple. On the
other hand the Serpent, brought as an exemplar of wisdom to follow, is now
regarded as the symbol of the Devil. The esoteric pearl of Christ's religion
degraded into Christian theology, may indeed be said to have chosen a strange
and unfitting shell to be born in and evolved from.
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The Esoteric doctrine
of the East having thus furnished and struck the key-note -- which is as
scientific as it is philosophical and poetical, as may be seen, under its
allegorical garb -- every nation has followed its lead. It is from the exoteric
religions that we have to dig out the root-idea before we turn to esoteric
truths, lest the latter should be rejected. Furthermore, every symbol -- in
every national religion -- may be read esoterically, and the proof furnished
for its being correctly read by transliterating it into its corresponding
numerals and geometrical forms -- by the extraordinary agreement of all --
however much the glyphs and symbols may vary among themselves. For in the
origin those symbols were all identical. Take, for instance, the opening sentences
in various cosmogonies: in every case it is either a circle, an egg, or a head.
DARKNESS is always associated with this first symbol and surrounds it, -- as
shown in the Hindu, the Egyptian, the Chaldeo-Hebrew and even the Scandinavian
systems -- hence black ravens, black doves, black waters and even black flames;
the seventh tongue of Agni, the fire-god being called "Kali,"
"the black," as it was a black flickering flame. Two black doves flew
from Egypt and settling on the oaks of Dodona, gave their names to the Grecian
gods. Noah lets out a black raven after the deluge, which is a symbol for the
Cosmic pralaya, after which began the real creation or evolution of our earth
and humanity. Odin's black ravens fluttered around the Goddess Saga and
"whispered to her of the past and of the future." What is the real
meaning of all those black birds? They are all connected with the primeval
wisdom, which flows out of the pre-cosmic Source of all, symbolised by the
Head, the Circle, the Egg; and they all have an identical meaning and relate to
the primordial Archetypal man (Adam Kadmon) the creative origin of all things,
which is composed of the Host of Cosmic Powers -- the Creative Dhyan-Chohans,
beyond which all is darkness.
Let us inquire
of the wisdom of the Kabala -- even veiled and distorted as it now is, -- to
explain in its numerical language an approximate meaning, at least of the word
"raven." This is its number value as given in the "Source of
Measures."
"The term
Raven is used but once, and taken as eth-h'orebv [[diagram]], = 678, or 113 x
6; while the Dove is mentioned five times. Its value is 71, and 71 x 5 = 355.
Six diameters, or the raven, crossing, would divide the circumference of a
circle of 355 into 12 parts or compartments; and 355 subdivided for each unit
by 6, would equal 213-0, or the head ("beginning") in the first verse
of Genesis. This divided or subdivided, after the same fashion, by 2, or the
355 by 12, would give 213-2, or the word B'rash, [[diagram]], or the first word
of Genesis, with its prepositional prefix, signifying the same concreted
general form
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astronomically,
with the one here intended." Now the secret reading of the first verse of
Genesis being: "In Rash (B'rash) or head, developed gods, the Heavens and
the Earth" -- it is easy to comprehend the esoteric meaning of the raven,
once that the like meaning of the Flood (or Noah's Deluge) is ascertained.
Whatever the many other meanings of this emblematical allegory may be, its
chief meaning is that of a new cycle and a new Round (our Fourth Round.)* The
"Raven," or the Eth-H'Orebv, yields the same numerical value as the
"Head," and returned not to the ark, while the dove returned,
carrying the olive-branch, when Noah, the new man of the new Race (whose
prototype is Vaivasvata Manu), prepared to leave the ark, the womb (or Argha)
of terrestrial nature, is the symbol of the purely spiritual, sexless and
androgyne man of the first three Races, who vanished from earth for ever.
Numerically Jehovah, Adam, Noah, are one in the Kabala: at best, then, it is
Deity descending on to Ararat (later on Sinai), to incarnate in man his image,
through the natural process, henceforth: the mother's womb, whose symbols are
the ark, the mount (Sinai), etc., in Genesis. The Jewish allegory is at once
astronomical, and purely physiological rather than anthropomorphic.
And here lies the
abyss between the two systems (Aryan and Semitic), though built on the same
foundation. As shown by an expounder of the Kabala, "the basic idea
underlying the philosophy of the Hebrews was that God contained all things
within himself and that man was his image; man, including woman (as
Androgynes);" and that "geometry and numbers (and measures applicable
to astronomy) are contained in the terms man and woman; and the apparent
incongruity of such a mode was eliminated by showing the connection of man and
woman with a particular system of numbers and measures and geometry, by the
parturient time-periods, which furnished the connecting link between the terms
and the facts shown, and perfected the mode used." It is argued that, the
primal cause being absolutely incognizable, "the symbol of its first
comprehensible manifestation was the conception of a circle with its diameter
line, so as at once to carry the idea of geometry, phallicism, and
astronomy;" and this was finally applied to the "signification of simply
human generative organs."** Hence the whole cycle of events
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Bryant is
right in saying "Druid Bardesin says of Noah that when he came out of the
ark (the birth of a new cycle), after a stay therein of a year and a day, that
364 + 1 = 365 days, he was congratulated by Neptune upon his birth from the
waters of the Flood, who wished him a happy New Year." The
"Year," or cycle, esoterically, was the new race of men born from
woman after the separation of the sexes, which is the secondary meaning of the
allegory: its primary meaning being the beginning of the Fourth Round, or the
new Creation.
** Unpubl. MSS.
(But see "Source of Measures.")
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from Adam and
the Patriarchs down to Noah is made to apply to phallic and astronomical uses,
the one regulating the other, as the lunar periods, for instance. Hence, too,
their genesis begins after their coming out of the Ark, and the close of the
flood -- at the Fourth Race. With the Aryan people it is different.
Eastern Esotericism
has never degraded the One Infinite Deity, the container of all things, to such
uses; and this is shown by the absence of Brahma from the Rig Veda and the
modest positions occupied therein by Rudra and Vishnu, who became the powerful
and great Gods, the "Infinites" of the exoteric creeds, ages later.
But even they, "Creators" as the three may be, are not the direct
creators and "forefathers of men." The latter are shown occupying a
still lower scale, and are called Prajapatis, the Pitris (our lunar ancestors),
etc., etc. -- never the "One Infinite God." Esoteric philosophy shows
only physical man as created in the image of the Deity: but the latter is but
"the minor gods." It is the HIGHER-SELF, the real EGO who alone is
divine and GOD.
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§ XIII.
THE SEVEN
CREATIONS.
"THERE was
neither day nor night, nor sky nor earth, nor darkness nor light, nor any other
thing save only ONE, unapprehensible by intellect, or THAT which is Brahma and
Pumis (Spirit) and Pradhana (crude matter)" (Veda: "Vishnu Purana
Commentary"); or literally: "One Pradhanika Brahma Spirit: THAT
was." The "Pradhanika Brahma Spirit" is Mulaprakriti and
Parabrahmam.
In Vishnu
Purana, Parasara says to Maitreya, his pupil:-- "I have thus explained to
you, excellent Muni, six creations. . . . the creation of the Arvaksrotas
beings was the seventh, and was that of man." Then he proceeds to speak of
two additional and very mysterious creations, variously interpreted by the
commentators.
Origen,
commenting upon the books written by Celsus, his opponent -- books which were
all destroyed by the prudent Church Fathers -- evidently answers the objections
of his contradictor and reveals his system at the same time. This was evidently
septenary. But his theogony, the genesis of the stars or planets, that of sound
and colour, all found as an answer satire, and no better. Celsus, you see,
"desiring to exhibit his learning," speaks of a ladder of creation
with seven gates, and on the top
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of it the eighth
-- ever closed. The mysteries of the Persian Mithras are explained and
"musical reasons, moreover, are added." . . . . And to these again he
strives "to add a second explanation connected also with musical
considerations,"* -- i.e., with the seven notes of the scale, the Seven
Spirits of the Stars, &c., &c.
Valentinus
expatiates upon the power of the great Seven, who were called to bring forth
this universe after Ar(r)hetos, or the Ineffable, whose name is composed of
seven letters, had represented the first hebdomad. This name (Ar(r)hetos) is
one to indicate the Sevenfold nature of the One (the logos). "The goddess
Rhea," says Proclus in Timaeus (p. 121), "is a Monad, Duad, and
Heptad," comprehending in herself all the Titanidae, "who are
seven."
The Seven
Creations are found in almost every Purana. They are all preceded by what
Wilson translates -- "the indiscrete Principle," absolute Spirit
independent of any relation with objects of sense. They are -- (1) Mahattattwa,
the Universal Soul, Infinite Intellect, or Divine Mind; (2) Bhuta or
Bhutasarga, elemental creation, the first differentiation of Universal
indiscrete Substance; (3) Indriya or Aindriyaka, organic evolution. "These
three were the Prakrita creations, the developments of indiscrete nature
preceded by indiscrete principle"; (4) Mukhya, the fundamental creation of
perceptible things, was that of inanimate bodies**; (5) Tairyagyonya, or
Tiryaksrotas, was that of animals; (6) Urdhwasrotas, or that of divinities***
(?); (7) Arvaksrotas, was that of man. (See Vishnu Purana.)
This is the
order given in the exoteric texts. According to esoteric teaching there are
seven primary, and seven secondary "creations;" the former being the
Forces self-evolving from the one causeless FORCE; the latter, showing the
manifested Universe emanating from the already differentiated divine elements.
Esoterically, as
well as exoterically, all the above enumerated Creations stand for the (7)
periods of Evolution, whether after an "Age" or a "Day" of
Brahma. This is the teaching par excellence of Occult Philosophy, which,
however, never uses the term "creation," nor even that of evolution,
"with regard to primary 'Creation':" but calls all such forces
"the aspects of the Causeless Force." In the Bible
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Origen contra
Celsum, b. vi., chap. xxii.
** The text
says: "And the fourth creation is here the primary, for things immovable are
emphatically known as primary." (See Fitzedward Hall's Corrections.)
*** How can
"divinities" have been created after the animals? The esoteric
meaning of the expression "animals" is the germs of all animal life
including man. Man is called a sacrificial animal, and an animal that is the
only one among animal creation who sacrifices to the gods. Moreover, by the
"sacred animals," the 12 signs of the zodiac are often meant in the
sacred texts, as already stated.
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the seven
periods are dwarfed into the six days of creation and the seventh day of rest,
and the Westerns adhere to the letter. In the Hindu philosophy, when the active
Creator has produced the world of gods, the germs of all the undifferentiated
elements and the rudiments of future senses (the world of noumena, in short),
the Universe remains unaltered for a "Day of Brahma," a period of
4,320,000,000 years. This is the seventh passive period or the "Sabbath
day" of Eastern philosophy, that follows six periods of active evolution.
In the Satapatha Brahmana "Brahma" (neuter), the absolute Cause of
all Causes, radiates the gods. Having radiated the gods (through its inherent
nature) the work is interrupted. In the 1st Book of Manu it is said, "At
the expiration of each night (pralaya) Brahma, having been asleep, awakes, and,
through the sole energy of the motion, CAUSES to emanate from itself the
spirit, which in its essence is, and yet is not."
In the Sepher
Jezirah, the Kabalistic Book of Creation, the author has evidently repeated the
words of Manu. In it the Divine Substance is represented as having alone
existed from the eternity, boundless and absolute; and as having emitted from
itself the Spirit. "One is the Spirit of the living God, blessed be his
Name, who liveth for ever! Voice, Spirit, and Word, this is the Holy
Spirit." (Sepher Jezireh, chap. 1, Mishna IX.) And this is the Kabalistic
abstract Trinity, so unceremoniously anthropomorphized by the Fathers. From
this triple ONE emanated the whole Kosmos. First from ONE emanated number TWO,
or Air, the creative element; and then number THREE, Water, proceeded from the
air; Ether or Fire complete the mystic four, the Arba-il. (Ibid.) In the
Eastern doctrine Fire is the first Element -- Ether, synthesizing the whole
(since it contains all of them).
In the Vishnu
Purana, the whole seven periods are given, and the progressive Evolution of
"Spirit-Soul," and of the seven forms of matter (or principles) are
shown. It is impossible to enumerate them in this work. The reader is asked to
peruse one of the Puranas.
"R. Yehudah
began, it is written: 'Elohim said: Let there be a firmament, in the midst of
waters. . . . . At the time that the Holy . . . created the world, He (they)
created seven heavens Above. He created seven earths Below, seven seas, seven
days, seven rivers, seven weeks, seven years, seven times, and 7,000 years that
the world has been. . . . . the seventh of all the millennium. So here are
seven earths Below, they are all inhabited except those which are above, and
those . . . . below. And . . . . between each earth, a heaven (firmament) is
spread out between each other. . . . . And there are in them (these earths)
creatures who look different from each other . . . . but if you object and say
that all the children of the world came out from Adam,
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it is not so. .
. . . And the lower earths, where do they come from? They are from the chain of
the earth, and from the heaven below," etc., etc.*
Irenaeus is our
witness (and a very unwilling one, too) that the Gnostics taught the same
system, veiling very carefully the true esoteric meaning. This
"veiling," however, is identical with that of the Vishnu Purana and
others. Thus Irenaeus writes of the Marcosians: "They maintain that first
of all the four elements, fire, water, earth and air, were produced after the
image of the primary tetrad above, and that then if we add their operations,
namely, heat, cold, dryness and moisture, an exact likeness of the ogdoad is
presented." (B. i. ch. xvii.)
Only this
"likeness" and the ogdoad itself is a blind, just as in the seven
creations of the Vishnu Puranas, to which two more are added of which the
eighth, termed Anugraha, "possesses both the qualities of goodness and
darkness," a Sankhyan more than a Puranic idea. For Irenaeus says again
(b. I. xxx. 6) that "they (the Gnostics) had a like eighth creation which
was good and bad, divine and human. They affirm that man was formed on the
eighth day. Sometimes they affirm that he was made on the sixth day, and at
others on the eighth; unless, perchance, they mean that his earthly part was
formed on the sixth day and his fleshly part (?) on the eighth day; these two
being distinguished by them."
They were so "distinguished,"
but not as Irenaeus gives it. The Gnostics had a superior Hebdomad, and an
inferior one, in Heaven; and a third terrestrial Hebdomad, on the plane of
matter. IAO, the mystery god and the Regent of the Moon, as given in Origen's
chart, was the chief of these superior "Seven Heavens,"** hence
identical with the chief of the lunar Pitris, that name being given by them to
the lunar Dhyan-Chohans. "They affirm that these seven heavens are
intelligent, and speak of them as being angels," writes the same Irenaeus;
and adds that on this account they termed Iao Hebdomas, while his mother was
called "Ogdoas," because, as he explains, "she preserved the
number of the first begotten and primary Ogdoad of the Pleroma." (Ibid. b.
I, v. 2).
This "first
begotten Ogdoad" was (a) in theogony the second Logos (the manifested)
because he was born of the Seven-fold first Logos, hence he is the eighth on
this manifested plane; and (b) in astrolatry, it was the Sun, Martanda -- the
eighth son of Aditi, whom she rejects while preserving her Seven Sons, the
planets. For the ancients have never regarded the Sun as a planet, but as a
central and fixed Star. This, then, is the second Hebdomad born of the
Seven-rayed one, Agni, the Sun
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Qabbalah, p.
415-16, by T. Myer, Philadelphia.
** Superior to
the Spirits or "Heavens" of the Earth only.
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and what not,
only not the seven planets, which are Surya's brothers, not his Sons. These
Astral gods, whose chief with the Gnostics was Ildabaoth* (from Ilda
"child," and Baoth "the egg"), the son of Sophia Achamoth,
the daughter of Sophia (Wisdom), whose region is the Pleroma, were his
(Ildabaoth's) sons. He produces from himself these six stellar spirits: Jove
(Jehovah), Sabaoth, Adonai, Eloi, Osraios, Astaphaios,** and it is they who are
the second, or inferior Hebdomad. As to the third, it is composed of the seven
primeval men, the shadows of the lunar gods, projected by the first Hebdomad.
In this the Gnostics did not, as seen, differ much from the esoteric doctrine
except that they veiled it. As to the charge made by Irenaeus, who was
evidently ignorant of the true tenets of the "Heretics," with regard
to man being created on the sixth day, and man being created on the eighth,
this relates to the mysteries of the inner man. It will become comprehensible
to the reader only after he has read Book II., and understood well the
Anthropogenesis of the Esoteric doctrine.
Ildabaoth is a
copy of Manu. The latter boasts, "Oh, best of twice-born men! Know that I
(Manu) am he, the creator of all this world, whom that male Viraj . . .
spontaneously produced" (I., 33). He first creates the ten lords of Being,
the Prajapatis, who, as verse 36 says . . . "produce seven other
Manus." (The Ordinances of Manu.) Ildabaoth does likewise: "I am
Father and God, and there is no one above me," he exclaims. For which his
mother coolly puts him down by saying, "Do not lie, Ildabaoth, for the
father of all, the first man (Anthropos) is above thee, and so is Anthropos,
the Son of Anthropos" (Irenaeus, b. I, ch. xxx., 6). This is a good proof
that there were three Logoi (besides the Seven born of the First), one of these
being the Solar Logos. And, again, who was that "Anthropos" himself,
so much higher than Ildabaoth? The Gnostic records alone can solve this riddle.
In Pistis Sophia the four-vowelled name IEOV is in each case accompanied by the
epithet of "the Primal, or First man." This shows again that the
gnosis was but an echo of our archaic doctrine. The names answering to
Parabrahm, to Brahm, and Manu (the first thinking man) are composed of
one-vowelled, three-vowelled and seven-vowelled sounds. Marcus, whose
philosophy was certainly more Pythagorean than anything else, speaks of a
revelation to him of the seven heavens sounding each one vowel as they
pronounced the seven names of the seven (angelic) hierarchies.
When spirit has
permeated every minutest atom of the seven principles of Kosmos, then the
secondary creation, after the above-mentioned period of rest, begins.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "Isis
Unveiled," Vol. II., p. 183.
** See also
King's Gnostics. Other sects regarded Jehovah as Ildabaoth himself King
identifies him with Saturn.
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"The
creators (Elohim) outline in the second 'hour' the shape of man," says
Rabbi Simeon (The Nuctameron of the Hebrews). "There are twelve hours in
the day," says the Mishna, "and it is during these that creation is
accomplished." The "twelve hours of the day" are again the
dwarfed copy, the faint, yet faithful, echo of primitive Wisdom. They are like
the 12,000 divine years of the gods, a cyclic blind. Every "Day of
Brahma" has 14 Manus, which the Hebrew Kabalists, following, however, in
this the Chaldeans, have disguised into 12 "Hours."* The Nuctameron
of Apollonius of Tyana is the same thing. "The Dodecahedron lies concealed
in the perfect Cube," say the Kabalists. The mystic meaning of this is,
that the twelve great transformations of Spirit into matter (the 12,000 divine
years) take place during the four great ages, or the first Mahayuga. Beginning
with the metaphysical and the supra-human, it ends in the physical and purely
human natures of Kosmos and man. Eastern philosophy can give the number of
mortal years that run along the line of spiritual and physical evolutions of
the seen and the unseen, if Western science fails to do so.
Primary Creation
is called the Creation of Light (Spirit); and the Secondary -- that of Darkness
(matter).** Both are found in Genesis, chap. i., v. 2, and at the beginning of
chapter ii. The first is the emanation of self-born gods (Elohim); the second
of physical nature.
This is why it
is said in the Zohar:-- "Oh, companions, companions, man as emanation was
both man and woman; as well on the side of the FATHER as on the side of the
MOTHER. And this is the sense of the words:-- And Elohim spoke: 'Let there be
Light and it was Light!' . . . And this is the 'two-fold man'" Light,
moreover, on our plane, is darkness in the higher spheres.
"Man and
woman on the side of the FATHER" (Spirit) refers to Primary Creation; and
on the side of the Mother (matter) to the secondary. The two-fold man is Adam
Kadmon, the male and female abstract prototype and the differentiated Elohim.
Man proceeds from the Dhyan Chohan, and is a "Fallen Angel," a god in
exile, as will be shown.
In India these
creations were described as follows:--
(I.) Mahat-tattwa
creation -- so-called because it was the primordial self-evolution of that
which had to become Mahat -- the "divine MIND, conscious and
intelligent"; esoterically, "the spirit of the Universal soul."
. . . "Worthiest of ascetics, through its potency (the potency of that
cause); every produced cause comes by its proper nature." (Vishnu Purana.)
"Seeing that the potencies of all beings are under-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Elsewhere,
however, the identity is revealed. See supra, the quotation from Ibn-Gabirol
and his 7 heavens, 7 earths, etc.
** This must not
be confused with precosmic "DARKNESS," the Divine ALL.
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stood only
through the knowledge of That (Brahma), which is beyond reasoning, creation,
and the like, such potencies are referable to Brahma." THAT, then,
precedes the manifestation. "The first was Mahat," says Linga Purana;
for the ONE (the That) is neither first nor last, but ALL. Exoterically,
however, this manifestation is the work of the "Supreme One" (a
natural effect, rather, of an Eternal Cause); or, as the Commentator says, it
might have been understood to mean that Brahma was then created (?), being
identified with Mahat, active intelligence or the operating will of the
Supreme. Esoteric philosophy renders it "the operating LAW."
It is on the
right comprehension of this tenet in the Brahmanas and Puranas that hangs, we
believe, the apple of discord between the three Vedantin Sects: the Advaita,
Dwaita, and the Visishtadvaitas. The first arguing rightly that Parabrahman,
having no relation, as the absolute all, to the manifested world -- the
Infinite having no connection with the finite -- can neither will nor create;
that, therefore, Brahma, Mahat, Iswara, or whatever name the creative power may
be known by, creative gods and all, are simply an illusive aspect of
Parabrahmam in the conception of the conceivers; while the other sects identify
the impersonal Cause with the Creator, or Iswara.
Mahat (or
Maha-Buddhi) is, with the Vaishnavas, however, divine mind in active operation,
or, as Anaxagoras has it, "an ordering and disposing mind, which was the
cause of all things," -- [[Nous o diakosmonte kai panton aitios]].
Wilson saw at a
glance the suggestive connection between Mahat and the Phoenician Mot, or Mut,
who was female with the Egyptians -- the Goddess Mout, the "Mother"
-- "which, like Mahat," he says, "was the first product of the
mixture (?) of Spirit and matter, and the first rudiment of Creation":
"Ex connexione autem ejus spiritus prodidit Mot . . . . . From whose seed
were created all living things" -- repeats Brucker (I., 240) -- giving it
a still more materialistic and anthropomorphic colouring.
Nevertheless,
the esoteric sense of the doctrine is seen through every exoteric sentence on
the very face of the old Sanscrit texts that treat of primordial Creation.
"The Supreme Soul, the all permeant (Sarvaga) Substance of the World,
having entered (been drawn) into matter (prakriti) and Spirit (purusha),
agitated the mutable and the immutable principles the season of Creation
(manvantara) having arrived."* . . .
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The nous of
the Greeks, which is (spiritual or divine) mind, or mens, "Mahat,"
operates upon matter in the same way; it "enters into" and agitates
it:
"Spiritus
intus alit, totamque infusa per artus,
Mens agitat
molem, et magno se corpore miscet."
In the
Phoenician Cosmogony, "Spirit mixing with its own principles gives rise to
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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Esoteric
doctrine teaches that the Dhyan Chohans are the collective aggregate of divine
Intelligence or primordial mind, and that the first Manus -- the seven
"mind-born" Spiritual Intelligences -- are identical with the former.
Hence the "Kwan-shi-yin" -- "the golden Dragon in whom are the
seven," of Stanza III. -- is the primordial Logos, or Brahma, the first
manifested creative Power; and the Dhyani-Energies are the Manus, or
Manu-Swayambhuva collectively. The direct connection, moreover, between the
"Manus" and "Mahat" is easy to see. Manu is from the root
man, "to think"; and thinking proceeds from the mind. It is, in
Cosmogony, the pre-nebular period.
(II.) "The
second Creation," "Bhuta," was of the rudimental principles
(Tanmatras), thence termed the elemental creation (Bhuta-sarga).* It is the
period of the first breath of the differentiation of the pre-Cosmic Elements or
matter. Bhutadi means literally "the origin of the Elements," and
precedes Bhuta-sarga -- the "creation" or differentiation of those
Elements in primordial "Akasa" (Chaos or Vacuity).** In the
"Vishnu Purana" it is said to proceed along, and belong to, the
triple aspect of Ahankara, translated Egotism, but meaning rather that
untranslateable term the "I-AM-NESS," that which first issues from
"Mahat," or divine mind; the first shadowy outline of Self-hood, for
"pure" Ahankara becomes "passionate" and finally
"rudimental"
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] creation" also; (Brucker, I., 240); the
Orphic triad shows an identical doctrine: for there Phanes (or Eros), Chaos,
containing crude undifferentiated Cosmic matter, and Chronos (time), are the
three co-operating principles, emanating from the Unknowable and concealed
point, which produce the work of "Creation." And they are the Hindu Purusha
(phanes), Pradhana (chaos), and Kala (Chronos) or time. The good Professor
Wilson does not like the idea, as no Christian clergyman, however liberal,
would. He remarks that "as presently explained,. the mixture (of the
Supreme Spirit or Soul) is not mechanical; it is an influence or effect exerted
upon intermediate agents which produce effects." The sentence in Vishnu
Purana: "As fragrance affects the mind from its proximity merely, and not
from any immediate operation upon mind itself, so the Supreme influenced the
elements of creation," the reverend and erudite Sanscritist correctly
explains . . . : "As perfumes do not delight the mind by actual contact,
but by the impression they make upon the sense of smelling, which communicates
it to the mind," adding: "The entrance of the Supreme into spirit, as
well as matter, is less intelligible than the view elsewhere taken of it, as
the infusion of spirit, identified with the supreme, into Prakriti or matter
alone." He prefers the verse in Padma Purana: "He who is called the
male (spirit) of Prakriti . . . that same divine Vishnu entered into
Prakriti." This "view" is certainly more akin to the plastic
character of certain verses in the Bible concerning the Patriarchs, such as Lot
(Gen. xix., 34-38) and even Adam (iv., v. 1), and others of a still more
anthropomorphic nature. But it is just that which led Humanity to Phallicism,
Christian religion being honeycombed with it, from the first chapter of Genesis
down to the Revelation.
* All these
sentences are quoted from "Vishnu Purana," Book I., ch. v.
** Vishnu is
both Bhutesa, "Lord of the Elements, and all things," and Viswarupa,
"Universal Substance or Soul."
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(initial); it is
"the origin of conscious as of all unconscious being," though the
Esoteric school rejects the idea of anything being "unconscious" --
save on this (our) plane of illusion and ignorance. At this stage of the Second
Creation, the second hierarchy of the Manus appear, the Dhyan Chohans or Devas,
who are the origin of Form (rupa): the Chitrasikhandina (bright-crested) or the
Riksha -- those Rishis who have become the informing souls of the seven stars
(of the Great Bear).* In astronomical and Cosmogonical language this Creation
relates to the first stage of Cosmic-life, the Fire-Mist Period after its
Chaotic stage,** when atoms issue from Laya.
(III.) The third
(the Indriya) was the modified form of Ahankara, the conception of
"I," (from "Aham," "I") termed the organic
Creation, or creation of the senses (Aindriyaka). "These three were the
Prakrita creation, the (discrete) developments of indiscrete nature preceded by
the indiscrete principle." "Preceded by," ought to be replaced
here with "beginning by," Buddhi; for the latter is neither a
discrete nor an indiscrete quantity, but partakes of the nature of both, in man
as in Kosmos: a unit -- a human MONAD on the plane of illusion -- when once
freed from the three forms of Ahankara and liberated from its terrestrial
manas, Buddhi becomes truly a continued quantity, both in duration and
extension, because eternal and immortal. Earlier it is stated, that the third
Creation "abounding with the quality of goodness, is termed
Urdhvasrotas"; and a page or two further the Urdhvasrotas creation is
referred to as "the sixth creation . . . that of the divinities" (p.
75). This shows plainly that earlier as well as later manvantaras have been
purposely confused, to prevent the pro-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See concerning
their post-types, the Treatise written by Trithemius (Agrippa's master, 16th
cent.). "Concerning the seven secondaries, or Spiritual Intelligences,
who, after God, actuate the Universe;" giving out, besides secret cycles
and several prophecies, certain facts and beliefs about the Genii, or the
Elohim, which preside over and guide the septenary stages of the World's Course.
** From the
first, the Orientalists have found themselves beset by great difficulties with
regard to any possible order in the Puranic Creations. Brahma is very often
confused with Brahm, by Wilson, for which he is criticised by his successors.
The "Original Sanscrit Texts" are preferred by Mr. Fitzedward Hall
for the translation of Vishnu Purana and texts, to those used by Wilson.
"Had Professor Wilson enjoyed the advantages which are now at the command
of the student of Indian philosophy, unquestionably he would have expressed
himself differently," as said by the editor of his works. This reminds one
of the answer given by one of Thomas Taylor's admirers to those scholars who
criticised his translations of Plato. "Thomas Taylor may have had less knowledge
of the Greek than his critics have, but he understood Plato far better than
they do," he said. Our present Orientalists disfigure the mystic sense of
the Sanskrit texts far more than Wilson ever did, though the latter is
undeniably guilty of very gross errors.
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fane from
perceiving the truth. This is called "incongruity" and
"contradictions" by the Orientalists.*
This
"creation" of the immortals, the "Deva-Sarga," is the last
of the first series, and has a universal reference; namely, to Evolutions in
general, not specifically to our Manvantara; but the latter begins with the
same over and over again, showing that it refers to several distinct Kalpas.
For it is said "at the close of the past (Padma) Kalpa the divine Brahma
awoke from his night of sleep and beheld the universe void." Then Brahma
is shown going once more over the "seven creations" in the secondary
stage of evolution, repeating the first three on the objective plane.
(IV.) The
Mukhya, the Primary as it begins the series of four. Neither the word
"inanimate" bodies nor yet immovable things, as translated by Wilson,
gives a correct idea of the Sanskrit terms used. Esoteric philosophy is not the
only one to reject the idea of any atom being inorganic, for it is found also
in orthodox Hinduism. Moreover, Wilson himself says (in his collected Works,
vol. iii., p. 381): "All the Hindu systems consider vegetable bodies as
endowed with life . . . " Charachara, or the synonymous sthavara and
jangama, is, therefore, inaccurately rendered by "animate and
inanimate," "sentient beings," and "unconscious," or
"conscious and unconscious beings," etc., etc. "Locomotive and
fixed" would be better, since trees are considered to possess souls."
Mukhya is the "creation" or organic evolution of the vegetable
kingdom. In this secondary Period, the three degrees of Elemental or Rudimental
Kingdoms are evolved in this world, corresponding inversely in order to the
three Prakritic creations during the Primary period of Brahma's activity. As in
that period, in the words of "Vishnu Purana": "The first
creation was that of Mahat (Intellect), the second, of Tanmatras (rudimental
principles), and the third, that of the senses (Aindriyaka)"; in this one,
the order of the Elemental Forces stands thus: (1) The nascent centres of Force
(intellectual and physical); (2) the rudimental principles -- nerve force, so to
say; and (3) nascent apperception, which is the Mahat of the lower kingdoms,
especially developed in the third order of Elementals; these are succeeded by
the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The
three Creations beginning with Intelligence are elemental, but the six
creations which proceed from the series of which Intellect is the first are the
work of Brahma" (Vayu-Purana). Here "creations" mean everywhere
stages of Evolution. Mahat, "Intellect" or mind (which corresponds
with Manas, the former being on the Cosmic, and the latter on the human plane)
stands here, too, lower than Buddhi or Supra-divine Intelligence. Therefore,
when we read in Linga Purana that "the first Creation was that of Mahat,
Intellect being the first in manifestation," we must refer that
(specified) creation to the first evolution of our system or even our Earth,
none of the preceding ones being discussed in the Puranas, but only
occasionally hinted at.
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objective
kingdom of minerals, in which latter that apperception is entirely latent, to re-develop
only in the plants). The mukhya "Creation," then, is the middle point
between the three lower and the three higher kingdoms, which represent the
seven esoteric kingdoms of Kosmos, as of Earth.
(V.) The
Tiryaksrotas (or Tairyagyonya) creation,* that of the "(sacred)
animals," corresponding only on Earth, to the dumb animal creation. That
which is meant by "animals," in primary Creation, is the germ of
awakening consciousness or of apperception, that which is faintly traceable in
some sensitive plants on Earth and more distinctly in the protistic monera.**
On our globe, during the first round, animal "creation" precedes that
of man, while the former (or mammal) evolves from the latter in our fourth
round -- on the physical plane: in Round I. the animal atoms are drawn into a
cohesion of human physical form; while in Round IV. the reverse occurs
according to magnetic conditions developed during life. And this is
metempsychosis (See "Mineral Monad" in "Five Years of
Theosophy," p. 276). This fifth stage of evolution, called exoterically
"Creation," may be viewed in both the Primary and Secondary periods,
one as the Spiritual and Cosmic, the other as the material and terrestrial. It
is Archibiosis, or life-origination -- "origination," so far, of
course, as the manifestation of life on all the seven planes is concerned. It
is at this period of Evolution that the absolutely eternal universal motion, or
vibration, that which is called in Esoteric language "the GREAT
BREATH," differentiates in the primordial, first manifested ATOM. More and
more, as chemical and physical sciences progress, does this occult axiom find
its corroboration in the world of knowledge: the scientific hypothesis, that
even the simplest elements of matter are identical in nature and differ from
each other only owing to the variety of the distributions of atoms in the
molecule or speck of substance, or by the modes of its atomic vibration, gains
every day more ground.
Thus, as the
differentiation of the primordial germ of life has to precede the evolution of
the Dhyan Chohan of the third group or hierarchy of Being in Primary Creation,
before those "gods" can become rupa (embodied in their first ethereal
form), so animal creation has to precede,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Professor
Wilson translates it, as though animals were higher on the scale of
"creation" than divinities, or angels, although the truth about the
devas is very plainly stated further on. This "creation," says the
text, is both primary (Prakrita) and secondary (Vaikrita). It is the latter, as
regards the origin of the gods from Brahma (the personal anthropomorphic
creator of our material universe); it is the former (primary) as affecting
Rudra, who is the immediate production of the first principle. Rudra is not
alone a title of Siva, but embraces agents of creation, angels and men, as will
be shown further on.
** Neither plant
nor animal, but an existence between the two.
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for that same
reason, divine MAN on earth. And this is why we find in the Puranas: "The
fifth, the Tairyagyonya creation, was that of animals, and --
(VI). The
Urdhvasrotas creation, or that of divinities (Vishnu Purana Book I. chap. i.).
But these (divinities) are simply the prototypes of the First Race, the fathers
of their "mind-born" progeny with the soft bones.* It is these who
became the Evolvers of the "Sweat-born" -- an expression explained in
Book II. Finally, the sixth "Creation" is followed, and
"Creation in general, closed by --
(VII.) The
evolution of the "Arvaksrotas beings, which was the seventh, and was that
of man" (Vishnu Purana, Book I.).
The "eighth
creation" mentioned is no Creation at all; it is a blind again, for it
refers to a purely mental process: the cognition of the "ninth"
creation, which, in its turn, is an effect, manifesting in the secondary of
that which was a "Creation" in the Primary (Prakrita) Creation.** The
Eighth, then, called Anugraha (the Pratyayasarga or the intellectual creation
of the Sankhyas, explained in Karika, v. 46, p. 146), is "that creation of
which we have a perception" -- in its esoteric aspect -- and "to
which we give intellectual assent (Anugraha) in contradistinction to organic
creation." It is the correct perception of our relations to the whole
range of "gods" and especially of those we bear to the Kumaras -- the
so-called "Ninth Creation" -- which is in reality an aspect of or
reflection of the sixth in our manvantara (the Vaivasvata). "There is a
ninth, the Kumara Creation, which is both primary and secondary," says
Vishnu Purana, the oldest of such texts.*** "The Kumaras," explains
an esoteric text,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Created
beings" -- explains Vishnu Purana -- "although they are destroyed (in
their individual forms) at the periods of dissolution, yet being affected by
the good or evil acts of former existences, are never exempted from their
consequences. And when Brahma produces the world anew, they are the progeny of
his will . . ." "Collecting his mind into itself (Yoga willing),
Brahma creates the four orders of beings, termed gods, demons, progenitors, and
MEN" . . . "progenitors" meaning the prototypes and Evolvers of
the first Root Race of men. The progenitors are the Pitris, and are of seven
classes. They are said in exoteric mythology to be born of Brahma's side, like
Eve from the rib of Adam.
** "These
notions," remarks Dr. Wilson, "the birth of Rudra and the saints,
seem to have been borrowed from the Saivas, and to have been awkwardly
engrafted upon the Vaishnava system." The esoteric meaning ought to have been
consulted before venturing such a hypothesis.
*** Parasara,
the Vedic Rishi, who received the Vishnu Purana from Pulastya and taught it to
Maitreya, is placed by the Orientalists at various epochs. As correctly
observed, in the Hindu Class. Dict:-- "Speculations as to his era differ
widely from 575 B.C. to 1391 B.C., and cannot be trusted." Quite so; but
no less, however, than any other date as assigned by the Sanskritists, so
famous in this department of arbitrary fancy.
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"are the
Dhyanis, derived immediately from the supreme Principle, who reappear in the
Vaivasvata Manu period, for the progress of mankind."* The commentator of
the Vishnu Purana corroborates it, by remarking that "these sages live as
long as Brahma; and they are only created by him in the first Kalpa, although
their generation is very commonly and inconsistently introduced in the Varaha,
or Padma Kalpa" (the secondary). Thus, the Kumaras are, exoterically,
"the creation of Rudra or Nilalohita, a form of Siva, by Brahma, and of
certain other mind-born sons of Brahma. But, in the esoteric teaching, they are
the progenitors of the true spiritual SELF in the physical man -- the higher
Prajapati, while the Pitris, or lower Prajapati, are no more than the fathers
of the model, or type of his physical form, made "in their image."
Four (and occasionally five) are mentioned freely in the exoteric texts, three
Kumaras being secret.** (Compare what is said of "The Fallen Angels"
in Book II.).
The Exoteric
four are: Sanat-Kumara, Sananda, Sanaka, and Sanatana; and the esoteric three
are: Sana, Kapila, and Sanat-sujata. Special attention is once more drawn to
this class of Dhyan Chohans, for herein lies the mystery of generation and
heredity hinted at in Book I. (See the four Orders of Angelic Beings; Comment
on Stanza VII.). Book II. explains their position in the divine Hierarchy.
Meanwhile, let us see what the exoteric texts say about them.
They do not say
much; nothing to him who fails to read between the lines. "We must have
recourse, here, to other Puranas for the elucidation of this term,"
remarks Wilson, who does not suspect for one moment that he is in the presence
of the "Angels of Darkness," the mythical "great enemy" of
his Church. Therefore, he contrives to elucidate no more than that these
(divinities) DECLINING TO CREATE PROGENY*** (and thus rebelling against Brahma),
remained, as the name
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* They may
indeed mark a "special" or extra creation, since it is they who, by
incarnating themselves within the senseless human shells of the two first
Root-races, and a great portion of the Third Root-race -- create, so to speak,
a new race: that of thinking, self-conscious and divine men.
** "The
four Kumaras (are) the mind-born Sons of Brahma. Some specify seven" (H.
Class. Dict.). All these seven Vaidhatra, the patronymic of the Kumaras,
"the Maker's Sons," are mentioned and described in Iswara Krishna's
"Sankhya Karika" with the Commentary of Gaudapadacharya
(Sankaracharya's Paraguru) attached to it. It discusses the nature of the Kumaras,
though it refrains from mentioning by name all the seven Kumaras, but calls
them instead "the seven sons of Brahma," which they are, as they are
created by Brahma in Rudra. The list of names it gives us is: Sanaka,
Sanandana, Sanatana, Kapila, Ribhu, and Panchasikha. But these are again all
aliases.
*** So
untrustworthy are some translations of the Orientalists that in the French
Translation of Hari-Vamsa, it is said "The seven Prajapati, Rudra, Skanda
(his son) [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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of the first
implies, ever boys, Kumaras: that is, ever pure and innocent, whence their
creation is also called the "Kumara." (Book I. chap. v., Vishnu
Purana.) The Puranas, however, may afford a little more light. "Being ever
as he was born, he is here called a youth; and hence his name is well known as
Sanat-Kumara" (Linga purana, prior section LXX. 174.) In the Saiva Purana,
the Kumaras are always described as Yogins. The Kurma Purana, after enumerating
them, says: "These five, O Brahmans, were Yogins, who acquired entire
exemption from passion." They are five, because two of the Kumaras fell.
Of all the seven
great divisions of Dhyan-Chohans, or Devas, there is none with which humanity
is more concerned than with the Kumaras. Imprudent are the Christian
Theologians who have degraded them into fallen Angels, and now call them
"Satan" and Demons; as among these heavenly denizens who refuse to
create, the Archangel Michael -- the greatest patron Saint of Western and
Eastern Churches, under his double name of St. Michael and his supposed copy on
earth, St. George conquering the DRAGON -- has to be allowed one of the most
prominent places. (See Book II., "The Sacred Dragons and their
Slayers.")
The Kumaras, the
"mind-born Sons" of Brahma-Rudra (or Siva)
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued
from previous page]] and Sanat-Kumara proceeded to create beings."
Whereas, as Wilson shows, the original is: "These seven . . . created
progeny; and so did Rudra, but Skanda and Sanat Kumara, restraining their
power, abstained from creation." The "four orders of beings" are
referred to sometimes as "Ambhamsi," which Wilson renders:
"literally Waters," and believes it "a mystic term." It is
one, no doubt; but he evidently failed to catch the real esoteric meaning.
"Waters" and "water" stand as the symbol for Akasa, the
"primordial Ocean of Space," on which Narayana, the self-born Spirit,
moves: reclining on that which is its progeny (See Manu). "Water is the
body of Nara; thus we have heard the name of water explained. Since Brahma
rests on the water, therefore he is termed Narayana" (Linga, Vayu, and
Markandeya Puranas) ". . . Pure, Purusha created the Waters pure . .
." at the same time Water is the third principle in material Kosmos, and
the third in the realm of the Spiritual: Spirit of Fire, Flame, Akasa, Ether,
Water, Air, Earth, are the cosmic, sidereal, psychic, spiritual and mystic
principles, pre-eminently occult, in every plane of being. "Gods, Demons,
Pitris and men," are the four orders of beings to whom the term Ambhamsi
is applied (in the Vedas it is a synonym of gods): because they are all the
product of WATERS (mystically), of the Akasic Ocean, and of the Third Principle
in nature. Pitris and men on earth are the transformations (rebirths) of gods
and demons (Spirits) on a higher plane. Water is, in another sense, the
feminine principle. Venus Aphrodite is the personified Sea, and the mother of
the god of love, the generator of all the gods as much as the Christian Virgin
Mary is Mare (the sea), the mother of the Western God of Love, Mercy and
Charity. If the student of Esoteric philosophy thinks deeply over the subject
he is sure to find out all the suggestiveness of the term Ambhamsi, in its
manifold relations to the Virgin in Heaven, to the Celestial Virgin of the
Alchemists, and even to the "Waters of Grace" of the modern Baptist.
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the howling and
terrific destroyer of human passions and physical senses, which are ever in the
way of the development of the higher spiritual perceptions and the growth of
the inner eternal man -- mystically,* are the progeny of Siva, the Mahayogi,
the great patron of all the Yogis and mystics of India. They themselves, being
the "Virgin-Ascetics," refuse to create the material being MAN. Well
may they be suspected of a direct connection with the Christian Archangel
Michael, the "Virgin Combatant" of the Dragon Apophis, whose victim
is every soul united too loosely to its immortal Spirit, the Angel who, as
shown by the Gnostics, refused to create just as the Kumaras did. (See Book
II., "The Mystic Dragons and their Slayers.") . . . Does not that
patron-Angel of the Jews preside over Saturn (Siva or Rudra), and the Sabbath,
the day of Saturn? Is he not shown of the same essence with his father
(Saturn), and called the "Son of Time," Kronos, or Kala (time), a
form of Brahma (Vishnu and Siva)?" And is not "Old Time" of the
Greeks, with its scythe and sand-glass, identical with the "Ancient of
Days" of the Kabalists, the latter "Ancient" being one with the
Hindu "Ancient of Days," Brahma (in his triune form), whose name is
also "Sanat," the Ancient? Every Kumara bears the prefix of Sanat and
Sana; and Sanaischara is Saturn, the planet (Sani and Sarra), the King Saturn
whose Secretary in Egypt was Thot-Hermes the first. They are thus identified
both with the planet and the god (Siva), who are, in their turn, shown the
prototypes of Saturn, who is the same as Bel, Baal, Siva, and Jehovah Sabbaoth,
The angel of whose face is MIKAEL ([[diagram]] "who is as God"). He
is the patron, and guardian Angel of the Jews, as Daniel tells us (v. 21); and,
before the Kumaras were degraded, by those who were ignorant of their very
name, into demons and fallen angels, the Greek Ophites, the occultly inclined
predecessors and precursors of the Roman Catholic Church after its secession
and separation from the primitive Greek Church, had identified Michael with
their Ophiomorphos, the rebellious and opposing spirit. This means nothing more
than the reverse aspect (symbolically) of Ophis -- divine Wisdom or Christos.
In the Talmud, Mikael (Michael) is "Prince of Water" and the chief of
the seven Spirits, for the same reason that his prototype (among many others)
Sanat-Sujata,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Siva-Rudra is
the Destroyer, as Vishnu is the preserver; and both are the regenerators of
spiritual as well as of physical nature. To live as a plant, the seed must die.
To live as a conscious entity in the Eternity, the passions and senses of man
must first DIE before his body does. "To live is to die and to die is to
live," has been too little understood in the West. Siva, the destroyer, is
the creator and the Saviour of Spiritual man, as he is the good gardener of
nature. He weeds out the plants, human and cosmic, and kills the passions of
the physical, to call to life the perceptions of the spiritual, man.
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-- the chief of
the Kumaras -- is called Ambhamsi, "Waters," -- according to the
commentary on Vishnu Purana. Why? Because the "Waters" is another
name of the "Great Deep," the primordial Waters of space or Chaos,
and also means "Mother," Amba, meaning Aditi and Akasa, the Celestial
Virgin-Mother of the visible universe. Furthermore, the "Waters of the
flood" are also called "the GREAT DRAGON," or Ophis,
Ophio-Morphos.
The Rudras will
be noticed in their Septenary character of "Fire-Spirits" in the
"Symbolism" attached to the Stanzas in Book II. There we shall also
consider the Cross (3 + 4) under its primeval and later forms, and shall use
for purposes of comparison the Pythagorean numbers side by side with Hebrew
Metrology. The immense importance of the number seven will thus become evident,
as the root number of nature. We shall examine it from the standpoints of the
Vedas and the Chaldean Scriptures, as it existed in Egypt thousands of years
B.C., and as treated in the Gnostic records; we shall show how its importance
as a basic number has gained recognition in physical Science; and we shall endeavour
to prove that the importance attached to the number seven throughout all
antiquity was due to no fanciful imaginings of uneducated priests, but to a
profound knowledge of natural law.
--------------
§ XIV.
THE FOUR
ELEMENTS.
METAPHYSICALLY
and esoterically there is but One ELEMENT in nature, and at the root of it is
the Deity; and the so-called seven elements, of which five have already
manifested and asserted their existence, are the garment, the veil, of that
deity; direct from the essence whereof comes MAN, whether physically,
psychically, mentally or spiritually considered. Four elements only are
generally spoken of in later antiquity, five admitted only in philosophy. For
the body of ether is not fully manifested yet, and its noumenon is still
"the Omnipotent Father -- AEther, the synthesis of the rest." But
what are these "ELEMENTS" whose compound bodies have now been
discovered by Chemistry and Physics to contain numberless sub-elements, even
the sixty or seventy of which no longer embrace the whole number suspected.
(Vide Addenda, §§ XI. and XII., quotations from Mr. Crookes' Lectures.) Let us
follow their evolution from the historical beginnings, at any rate.
The four
Elements were fully characterized by Plato when he said that they were that
"which composes and decomposes the compound bodies."
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Hence Cosmolatry
was never, even in its worst aspect, the fetishism which adores or worships the
passive external form and matter of any object, but looked ever to the noumenon
therein. Fire, Air, Water, Earth, were but the visible garb, the symbols of the
informing, invisible Souls or Spirits -- the Cosmic gods to whom worship was
offered by the ignorant, and simple, respectful recognition by the wiser. In
their turn the phenomenal subdivisions of the noumenal Elements were informed
by the Elementals, so called, the "Nature Spirits" of lower grades.
In the Theogony
of Mochus, we find Ether first, and then the air; the two principles from which
Ulom the intelligible ([[noetos]]) God (the visible universe of matter) is born.*
In the Orphic
hymns, the Eros-Phanes evolves from the Spiritual Egg, which the AEthereal
winds impregnate, Wind being "the Spirit of God," who is said to move
in AEther, "brooding over the chaos" -- the Divine "Idea."
In the Hindu Katakopanisad, Purusha, the Divine Spirit, already stands before
the original matter, from whose union springs the great Soul of the World,
"Maha = Atma, Brahm, the Spirit of Life;"** these latter appellations
being again identical with the Universal Soul, or Anima Mundi, the Astral Light
of the Theurgists and Kabalists, being its last and lowest division."
The
[[stoicheia]], (Elements) of Plato and Aristotle, were thus the incorporeal
principles attached to the four great divisions of our Cosmic World, and it is
with justice that Creuzer defines those primitive beliefs . . . as a species of
magism, a psychic paganism, and a deification of potencies; a spiritualization
which placed the believers in a close community with these potencies,"
(Book IX, p. 850). So close, indeed, that the hierarchies of those potencies or
Forces have been classified on a graduated scale of seven from the ponderable
to the imponderable. They are Septenary, -- not as an artificial aid to
facilitate their comprehension -- but in their real Cosmic gradation, from
their chemical (or physical) to their purely spiritual composition. Gods --
with the ignorant masses -- gods independent and supreme; daemons with the
fanatics, who, intellectual as they often may be, are unable to understand the
Spirit of the philosophical sentence, in pluribus unum. With the hermetic
philosopher they are FORCES relatively "blind," or
"intelligent," according to which of the principles in them he deals
with. It required long millenniums before they found themselves, in our cultured
age, finally degraded into simple chemical elements.
At any rate,
good Christians, and especially the Biblical Protestants,
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* Movers:
"Phoinizer," 282.
** Weber:
"Akad. Vorles," 213, 214, etc.
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ought to show
more reverence for the four Elements, if they would show any for Moses. For the
Bible manifests the consideration and mystic significance in which they were
held by the Hebrew Lawgiver, on every page of the Pentateuch. The tent which
contained the Holy of Holies " was a Cosmic Symbol, sacred, in one of its
meanings, to the Elements, the four cardinal points, and ETHER. Josephus shows
it built in white, the colour of Ether. And this explains also why, in the
Egyptian and the Hebrew temples -- according to Clemens Alexandrinus -- a
gigantic curtain, supported by five pillars, separated the sanctum sanctorum
(now represented by the altar in Christian churches) wherein the priests alone
were permitted to enter, from the part accessible to the profane. By its four
colours the curtain symbolized the four principal Elements, and signified the
knowledge of the divine that the five senses of men can enable man to acquire
with the help of the four Elements. (See Stromata I., v. § 6).
In Cory's
Ancient Fragments, one of the "Chaldean Oracles" expresses ideas
about the elements and Ether in language singularly like that of the Unseen
Universe, written by two eminent scientists of our day.
It states that
"from ether have come all things, and to it all will return; that the images
of all things are indelibly impressed upon it; and that it is the store-house
of the germs or of the remains of all visible forms, and even ideas. It appears
as if this case strangely corroborates our assertion that whatever discoveries
may be made in our days will be found to have been anticipated by many thousand
years by our 'simple-minded ancestors.' " -- (Isis Unveiled.)
Whence came the
four elements and the malachim of the Hebrews? They have been made to merge, by
a theological sleight-of-hand on the part of the Rabbins and the later Fathers
of the Church into Jehovah, but their origin is identical with that of the
Cosmic gods of all other nations. Their symbols, whether born on the shores of
the Oxus, on the burning sands of Upper Egypt, or in the wild forests, weird
and glacial, which cover the slopes and peaks of the sacred snowy mountains of
Thessaly, or again, in the pampas of America, their symbols, we repeat, when
traced to their source, are ever one and the same. Whether Egyptian or Pelasgian,
Aryan or Semitic, the genius loci, the local god, embraced in its unity all
nature; but not especially the four elements any more than one of their
creations, such as trees, rivers, mounts or stars. The genius loci -- a very
late after-thought of the last sub-races of the Fifth Root-race, when the
primitive and grandiose meaning had become nearly lost -- was ever the
representative in his accumulated titles of all his colleagues. It was the god
of fire, symbolised by thunder, as Jove or Agni; the god of water, symbolised
by the fluvial bull or some sacred river or fountain, as Varuna, Neptune, etc.;
the god of air, manifesting in the hurricane and tempest, as Vayu and Indra;
and the god or spirit
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of the earth,
who appeared in earthquakes, like Pluto, Yama, and so many others.
These were the
Cosmic gods, ever synthesizing all in one, as found in every cosmogony or
mythology. Thus, the Greeks had their Dodonean Jupiter, who included in himself
the four elements and the four cardinal points, and who was recognized,
therefore, in old Rome under the pantheistic title of Jupiter Mundus; and who
now, in modern Rome, has become the Deus Mundus, the one mundane god, who is
made to swallow all others in the latest theology -- by the arbitrary decision
of his special ministers.
As gods of Fire,
Air, Water, they were celestial gods; as gods of the lower region, they were
infernal deities: the latter adjective applying simply to the Earth. They were
"Spirits of the Earth" under their respective names of Yama, Pluto,
Osiris, the "Lord of the lower kingdom, etc., etc.," and their
tellurial character proves it sufficiently.* The ancients knew of no worse
abode after death than the Kamaloka, the limbus on this Earth. If it is argued
that the Dodonean Jupiter was identified with Aidoneus, the king of the
subterranean world, and Dis, or the Roman Pluto and the Dionysius Chthonios,
the subterranean, wherein, according to Creuzer (I, vi., ch. 1), oracles were
rendered, then it will become the pleasure of the Occultists to prove that both
Aidoneus and Dionysius are the bases of Adonai, or "Jurbo Adonai," as
Jehovah is called in Codex Nazaraeus. "Thou shalt not worship the Sun, who
is named Adonai, whose name is also Kadush and El-El" (Cod. Naz., I, 47;
see also Psalm lxxxix., 18), and also "Lord Bacchus." Baal-Adonis of
the Sods or Mysteries of the pre-Babylonian Jews became the Adonai by the
Massorah, the later-vowelled Jehovah. Hence the Roman Catholics are right. All
these Jupiters are of the same family; but Jehovah has to be included therein
to make it complete. Jupiter-Aerios or Pan, the Jupiter Ammon, and the
Jupiter-Bel-Moloch, are all correlations and one with Yurbo-Adonai, because
they are all one cosmic nature. It is that nature and power which create the
specific terrestrial symbol, and the physical and material fabric of the
latter, which proves the Energy manifesting through it as extrinsic.
For primitive
religion was something better than simple pre-occupation about physical
phenomena, as remarked by Schilling; and principles, more elevated than we
modern Sadducees know of, "were hidden under the transparent veil of such
merely natural divinities as thunder,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Gehenna of
the Bible was a valley near Jerusalem, where the monotheistic Jews immolated
their children to Moloch, if the prophet Jeremiah is to be believed on his
word. The Scandinavian Hel or Hela was a frigid region -- again Kamaloka -- and
the Egyptian Amenti a place of purification. (See Isis Unveiled, Vol. II., p.
11.)
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the winds, and
rain." The ancients knew and could distinguish the corporeal from the
spiritual elements, in the forces of nature.
The four-fold
Jupiter, as the four-faced Brahma -- the aerial, the fulgurant, the
terrestrial, and the marine god -- the lord and master of the four elements,
may stand as a representative for the great Cosmic gods of every nation. While
passing power over the fire to Hephaistos-Vulcan, over the sea, to
Poseidon-Neptune, and over the Earth, to Pluto-Aidoneus -- the AERIAL Jove was
all these; for AETHER, from the first, had pre-eminence over, and was the
synthesis of, all the elements.
Tradition points
to a grotto, a vast cave in the deserts of Central Asia, whereinto light pours
through its four seemingly natural apertures or clefts placed crossways at the
four cardinal points of the place. From noon till an hour before sunset that
light streams in, of four different colours, as averred -- red, blue,
orange-gold, and white -- owing to some either natural or artificially prepared
conditions of vegetation and soil. The light converges in the centre around a
pillar of white marble with a globe upon it, which represents our earth. It is
named the "grotto of Zaratushta."
When included
under the arts and sciences of the fourth race, the Atlanteans, the phenomenal
manifestation of the four elements, justly attributed by the believers in Cosmic
gods to the intelligent interference of the latter, assumed a scientific
character. The magic of the ancient priests consisted, in those days, in
addressing their gods in their own language. "The speech of the men of the
earth cannot reach the Lords. Each must be addressed in the language of his
respective element" -- is a sentence which will be shown pregnant with
meaning. "The Book of Rules" cited adds as an explanation of the
nature of that Element-language: "It is composed of sounds, not words; of
sounds, numbers and figures. He who knows how to blend the three, will call
forth the response of the superintending Power" (the regent-god of the
specific element needed).
Thus this
"language" is that of incantations or of MANTRAS, as they are called
in India, sound being the most potent and effectual magic agent, and the first
of the keys which opens the door of communication between Mortals and the
Immortals. He who believes in the words and teachings of St. Paul, has no right
to pick out from the latter those sentences only that he chooses to accept, to
the rejection of others; and St. Paul teaches most undeniably the existence of
cosmic gods and their presence among us. Paganism preached a dual and
simultaneous evolution: "creation" -- "spiritualem ac
mundanum," as the Roman Church has it -- ages before the advent of that
Roman Church. Exoteric phraseology has changed little with respect to divine
hierarchies since the most palmy days of Paganism, or "Idolatry."
Names alone have changed,
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along with
claims which have now become false pretences. For when Plato put in the mouth
of the Highest Principle -- "Father AEther" or Jupiter -- these
words, for instance: "The gods of the gods of whom I am the maker (opifex)
as I am the father of all their works (operumque parens)"; he knew the
spirit of this sentence as fully, we suspect, as St. Paul did, when saying:
"For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth,
as there be gods many and lords many," . . . . etc. (1 Cor. viii. 5.)*
Both knew the sense and the meaning of what they put forward in such guarded
terms.
Says Sir W.
Grove, F.R.S., speaking of the correlation of forces, "The ancients when
they witnessed a natural phenomenon, removed from ordinary analogies, and
unexplained by any mechanical action known to them, referred it to a soul, a
spiritual or preternatural power. . . . Air and gases were also at first deemed
spiritual, but subsequently they became invested with a more material
character; and the same words [[pneuma]], spirit, etc., were used to signify
the soul or a gas; the very word gas, from geist, a ghost or spirit, affords us
an instance of the gradual transmutation of a spiritual into a physical
conception . . . . . ." (P. 89.) This, the great man of science (in his
preface to the fifth edition of "Correlation of Physical Forces")
considers as the only concern of exact science, which has no business to meddle
with the CAUSES. "Cause and effect," he explains, "are
therefore, in their abstract relation to these forces, words solely of
convenience. We are totally unacquainted with the ultimate generating power of
each and all of them, and probably shall ever remain so; we can only ascertain
the norma of their actions; we must humbly refer their causation to one
omnipresent influence, and content ourselves with studying their effects and
developing, by experiment, their mutual relations" (p. xiv.).
This policy once
accepted, and the system virtually admitted in the above-quoted words, namely,
the spirituality of the "ultimate generating power," it would be more
than illogical to refuse to recognise this quality which is inherent in the
material elements, or rather, in their com-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* We cannot be
taken to task by the Protestants for interpreting the verse from the
Corinthians as we do; for, if the translation in the English Bible is made
ambiguous, it is not so in the original texts, and the Roman Catholic Church
accepts the words of the Apostle in their true sense. For a proof see the
Commentaries on St. Paul's Epistles, by St. John Chrysostom "directly
inspired by the Apostle," and "who wrote under his dictation,"
as we are assured by the Marquis de Mirville, whose works are approved by Rome.
And St. Chrysostom says, commenting on that special verse, "And, though
there are (in fact) they who are called gods . . . . -- for it seems, there are
really several gods -- withal, and for all that, the God-principle and the
Superior God ceasing to remain essentially one and indivisible." . . .
Thus spoke the old Initiates also, knowing that the worship of minor gods could
never affect the "God Principle" (See de Mirville, "Des
Esprits," vol. ii., 322).
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pounds -- as
present in the fire, air, water or earth. The ancients knew these powers so
well, that, while concealing their true nature under various allegories, for
the benefit (or to the detriment) of the uneducated rabble, they never departed
from the multiple object in view, while inverting them. They contrived to throw
a thick veil over the nucleus of truth concealed by the symbol, but they ever
tried to preserve the latter as a record for future generations, sufficiently
transparent to allow their wise men to discern that truth behind the fabulous
form of the glyph or allegory. They are accused of superstition and credulity,
those ancient sages; and this by those very nations, which, learned in all the
modern arts and sciences, cultured and wise in their generation, accept to this
day as their one living and infinite God, the anthropomorphic
"Jehovah" of the Jews.
What were some
of the alleged "superstitions"? Hesiod believed, for instance, that
"the winds were the sons of the giant Typhoeus," who were chained and
unchained at will by AEolus, and the polytheistic Greeks accepted it along with
Hesiod. Why should not they, since the monotheistic Jews had the same beliefs,
with other names for their dramatis personae, and since Christians believe in
the same to this day? The Hesiodic AEolus, Boreas, etc., etc., were named
Kadim, Tzaphon, Daren, and Ruach Hajan by the "chosen people" of
Israel. What is, then, the fundamental difference? While the Hellenes were taught
that AEolus tied and untied the winds, the Jews believed as fervently that
their Lord God, "with smoke coming out of his nostrils and fire out of his
mouth, rode upon a cherub and did fly; and was seen upon the wings of the
wind" (II. Sam., xxii. 9 and 11). The expressions of the two nations are
either both figures of speech, or both superstitions. We think they are
neither; but only arise from a keen sense of oneness with nature, and a
perception of the mysterious and the intelligent behind every natural phenomenon,
which the moderns no longer possess. Nor was it "superstitious" in
the Greek pagans to listen to the oracle of Delphi, when, at the approach of
the fleet of Xerxes, that oracle advised them to "sacrifice to the
Winds," if the same has to be regarded as Divine Worship in the
Israelites, who sacrificed as often to the wind and fire -- especially to the
latter element. Do they not say that their "God is a consuming fire"
(Deut. iv., 24), who appeared generally as Fire and "encompassed by fire"?
and did not Elijah seek for him (the Lord) in the "great strong wind, and
in the earthquake"? Do not the Christians repeat the same after them? Do
not they, moreover, sacrifice to this day, to the same "God of Wind and
Water?" They do; because special prayers for rain, dry weather,
trade-winds and the calming of storms on the seas exist to this hour in the
prayer-books of the three Christian churches; and the several hundred sects of
the Protestant religion
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offer them to
their God upon every threat of calamity? The fact that they are no more answered
by Jehovah, than they were, probably, by Jupiter Pluvius, does not alter the
fact of these prayers being addressed to the Power or Powers supposed to rule
over the Elements, or of these Powers being identical in Paganism and
Christianity; or have we to believe that such prayers are crass idolatry and
absurd "superstition" only when addressed by a Pagan to his idol, and
that the same superstition is suddenly transformed into praiseworthy piety and
religion whenever the name of the celestial addressee is changed? But the tree
is known by its fruit. And the fruit of the Christian tree being no better than
that of the tree of Paganism, why should the former command more reverence than
the latter.
Thus, when we
are told by the Chevalier Drach, a converted Jew, and the Marquis de Mirville,
a Roman Catholic fanatic of the French aristocracy, that in Hebrew lightning is
a synonym of fury, and is always handled by an evil Spirit; that Jupiter Fulgur
or Fulgurans is also called by the Christians oelicius, and denounced as the
soul of lightning, its daemon*; we have either to apply the same explanation
and definitions to the "Lord God of Israel," under the same
circumstances, or renounce our right of abusing the gods and creeds of other
nations.
The foregoing statements
emanating as they do from two ardent and learned Roman Catholics, are, to say
the least, dangerous, in the presence of the Bible and its prophets. Indeed, if
Jupiter, the "chief Daemon of the Pagan Greeks," hurled his deadly
thunder-bolts and lightnings at those who excited his wrath, so did the Lord
God of Abraham and Jacob. We find in I. Samuel, that "the Lord thundered
from heaven, and the most High uttered his voice, and he sent out arrows
(thunder bolts) and scattered them (Saul's armies) with lightning, and
discomforted them." (Chap. xxii. 14, 15.)
The Athenians
are accused of having sacrificed to Boreas; and this "Demon" is
charged with having submerged and wrecked 400 ships of the Persian fleet on the
rocks of Mount Pelion, and of having become so furious "that all the Magi
of Xerxes could hardly counteract it by offering contra-sacrifices to
Tethys" [Herodotus "Polym." cxc]. Very fortunately, no
authenticated instance is on the records of Christian wars showing a like
catastrophe on the same scale happening to one Christian fleet owing to the
"prayers" of its enemy -- another Christian nation. But this is from
no fault of theirs, for each prays as ardently to Jehovah for the destruction
of the other, as the Athenians prayed to Boreas. Both resorted to a neat little
piece of black magic con amore. Such abstinence from divine interference being
hardly due to lack of
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* Cosmolatry, p.
415.
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prayers, sent to
a common Almighty God for mutual destruction, where, then, shall we draw the
line between Pagan and Christian? And who can doubt that all Protestant England
would rejoice and offer thanks to the Lord, if, during some future war, 400
ships of the hostile fleet were to be wrecked owing to such holy prayers. What
is, then, the difference, we ask again, between a Jupiter, a Boreas, and a
Jehovah? No more than this: The crime of one's own next-of-kin -- say of one's
"father" -- is always excused and often exalted, whereas the crime of
our neighbour's parent is ever gladly punished by hanging. Yet the crime is the
same.
So far the
"blessings of Christianity" do not seem to have made any appreciable
advance on the morals of the converted Pagans.
The above is not
a defence of Pagan gods, nor is it an attack on the Christian deity, nor does
it mean belief in either. The writer is quite impartial, and rejects the
testimony in favour of either, neither praying to, believing in, nor dreading
any such "personal" and anthropomorphic God. The parallels are
brought forward simply as one more curious exhibition of the illogical and
blind fanaticism of the civilized theologian. For, so far, there is not a very
great difference between the two beliefs, and there is none in their respective
effects upon morality, or spiritual nature. The "light of Christ"
shines upon as hideous features of the animal-man now, as the "light of
Lucifer" did in days of old.
"Those
unfortunate heathens in their superstition regard even the Elements as
something that has comprehension! . . . . They still have faith in their idol
Vayu -- the god or, rather, Demon of the Wind and Air . . . they firmly believe
in the efficacy of their prayers, and in the powers of their Brahmins over the
winds and storms. . . . ." (The Missionary Lavoisier, of Cochin, in the
Journal des Colonies.) In reply to this, we may quote from Luke viii., 24:
"And he (Jesus) arose and rebuked the Wind and the raging of the Water,
and they ceased and there was a calm." And here is another quotation from
a prayer book: . . . "Oh, Virgin of the Sea, blessed Mother and Lady of
the Waters, stay thy waves . . ." etc., etc. (prayer of the Neapolitan and
Provencal sailors, copied textually from that of the Phoenician mariners to
their Virgingoddess Astarte.) The logical and irrepressible conclusion arising
from the parallels brought forward, and the denunciation of the Missionary is
this: The commands of the Brahmins to their element-gods not remaining
"ineffectual," the power of the Brahmins is thus placed on a par with
that of Jesus. Moreover, Astarte is shown not a whit weaker in potency than the
"Virgin of the Sea" of Christian sailors. It is not enough to give a
dog a bad name, and then hang him; the dog has to be proven guilty. Boreas and
Astarte may be devils in theological
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fancy, but, as
just remarked, the tree has to be judged by its fruit. And once the Christians
are shown as immoral and wicked as the pagans ever were, what benefit has
humanity derived from its change of gods and idols?
That, however,
which God and the Christian Saints are justified in doing, becomes a crime, if
successful, in simple mortals. Sorcery and incantations are regarded as fables
now; yet from the day of the Institutes of Justinian down to the laws against
witchcraft of England and America -- obsolete but not repealed to this day --
such incantations, even when only suspected, were punished as criminal. Why
punish a chimera? And still we read of Constantine, the Emperor, sentencing to
death the philosopher Sopatrus for unchaining the winds, and thus preventing
ships loaded with grain from arriving in time to put an end to famine.
Pausanias, when affirming that he saw with his own eyes "men who by simple
prayers and incantations" stopped a strong hail-storm, is derided. This
does not prevent modern Christian writers from advising prayer during storm and
danger, and believing in its efficacy. Hoppo and Stadlein two magicians and
sorcerers -- were sentenced to death for throwing charms on fruit and
transferring a harvest by magic arts from one field to another, hardly a
century ago, if we can believe Sprenger, the famous writer, who vouches for it:
"Qui fruges excantassent segetem pellicentes incantando."
Let us close by
reminding the reader that, without the smallest shadow of superstition, one may
believe in the dual nature of every object on Earth -- in the spiritual and the
material, the visible and the invisible nature, and that science virtually
proves this, while denying its own demonstration. For if, as Sir William Grove
has it, the electricity we handle is but the result of ordinary matter affected
by something invisible, the "ultimate generating power" of every
Force, the "one omnipresent influence," then it only becomes natural
that one should believe as the ancients did; namely, that every Element is dual
in its nature. "ETHEREAL fire is the emanation of the KABIR proper; the
aerial is but the union (correlation) of the former with terrestrial fire, and
its guidance and application on our earthly plane belongs to a Kabir of a
lesser dignity" -- an Elemental, perhaps, as an Occultist would call it;
and the same may be said of every Cosmic Element.
No one will deny
that the human being is possessed of various forces: magnetic, sympathetic,
antipathetic, nervous, dynamical, occult, mechanical, mental -- every kind of
force; and that the physical forces are all biological in their essence, seeing
that they intermingle with, and often merge into, those forces that we have
named intellectual and moral -- the first being the vehicles, so to say, the
upadhi, of the second. No one, who does not deny soul in man, would hesitate in
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saying that
their presence and commingling are the very essence of our being; that they
constitute the Ego in man, in fact. These potencies have their physiological,
physical, mechanical, as well as their nervous, ecstatic, clairaudient, and
clairvoyant phenomena, which are now regarded and recognised as perfectly
natural, even by science. Why should man be the only exception in nature, and
why cannot even the ELEMENTS have their vehicles, their "Vahans" in
what we call the PHYSICAL FORCES? And why, above all, should such beliefs be
called "superstition" along with the religions of old?
--------------
§ XV.
ON KWAN-SHI-YIN
AND KWAN-YIN.
LIKE
Avalokiteshwara, Kwan-shi-yin has passed through several transformations, but
it is an error to say of him that he is a modern invention of the Northern
Buddhists, for under another appellation he has been known from the earliest
times. The Secret Doctrine teaches that "He who is the first to appear at
Renovation will be the last to come before Re-absorption (pralaya)." Thus
the logoi of all nations, from the Vedic Visvakarma of the Mysteries down to
the Saviour of the present civilised nations, are the "Word" who was
"in the beginning" (or the reawakening of the energising powers of
Nature) with the One ABSOLUTE. Born of Fire and Water, before these became
distinct elements, IT was the "Maker" (fashioner or modeller) of all
things; "without him was not anything made that was made"; "in
whom was life, and the life was the light of men"; and who finally may be
called, as he ever has been, the Alpha and the Omega of manifested Nature.
"The great Dragon of Wisdom is born of Fire and Water, and into Fire and
Water will all be re-absorbed with him" (Fa-Hwa-King). As this Bodhisatva
is said "to assume any form he pleases" from the beginning of a
Manvantara to its end, though his special birthday (memorial day) is celebrated
according to the Kin-kwang-ming-King ("Luminous Sutra of Golden
Light") in the second month on the nineteenth day, and that of
"Maitreya Buddha" in the first month on the first day, yet the two
are one. He will appear as Maitreya Buddha, the last of the Avatars and
Buddhas, in the seventh Race. This belief and expectation are universal
throughout the East. Only it is not in the Kali yug, our present terrifically
materialistic age of Darkness, the "Black Age," that a new Saviour of
Humanity can ever appear. The Kali yug is
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"l'Age
d'Or" (!) only in the mystic writings of some French pseudo-Occultists.
(See "La Mission des Juifs.")
Hence the ritual
in the exoteric worship of this deity was founded on magic. The Mantras are all
taken from special books kept secret by the priests, and each is said to work a
magical effect; as the reciter or reader produces, by simply chanting them, a
secret causation which results in immediate effects. Kwan-Shi-Yin is
Avalokiteshwara, and both are forms of the seventh Universal Principle; while
in its highest metaphysical character this deity is the synthetic aggregation
of all the planetary Spirits, Dhyani Chohans. He is the
"Self-manifested;" in short, the "Son of the Father."
Crowned with seven dragons, above his statue there appears the inscription
Pu-Tsi-K'iun-ling, "the universal Saviour of all living beings."
Of course the
name given in the archaic volume of the Stanzas is quite different, but
Kwan-Yin is a perfect equivalent. In a temple of Pu'to, the sacred island of
the Buddhists in China, Kwan-Shi-Yin is represented floating on a black aquatic
bird (Kala-Hansa), and pouring on the heads of mortals the elixir of life,
which, as it flows, is transformed into one of the chief Dhyani-Buddhas -- the
Regent of a star called the "Star of Salvation." In his third
transformation Kwan-Yin is the informing spirit or genius of Water. In China
the Dalai-Lama is believed to be an incarnation of Kwan-Shi-Yin, who in his
third terrestrial appearance was a Bodhisattva, while the Teshu Lama is an
incarnation of Amitabha Buddha, or Gautama.
It may be
remarked en passant that a writer must indeed have a diseased imagination to
discover phallic worship everywhere, as do the authors of "China
Revealed" (McClatchey) and "Phallicism." The first discovers
"the old phallic gods, represented under two evident symbols -- the Khan
or Yang, which is the membrum virile, and the Kwan or Yin, the pudendum
muliebre." (See "Phallicism," p. 273.) Such a rendering seems
the more strange as Kwan-Shi-Yin (Avalokiteswara) and Kwan-Yin, besides being
now the patron deities of the Buddhist ascetics, the Yogis of Thibet, are the
gods of chastity, and are, in their esoteric meaning, not even that which is
implied in the rendering of Mr. Rhys Davids' "Buddhism," (p. 202):
"The name Avalokiteshwara . . . means 'the Lord who looks down from on
high.' "Nor is Kwan-Shi-Yin "the Spirit of the Buddhas present in the
Church," but, literally interpreted, it means "the Lord that is
seen," and in one sense, "the divine SELF perceived by Self"
(the human) -- the Atman or seventh principle merged in the Universal,
perceived by, or the object of perception to, Buddhi, the sixth principle or
divine Soul in man. In a still higher sense, Avalokiteshwara = Kwan-Shi-Yin,
referred to as the seventh Universal principle, is the Logos
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perceived by the
Universal Buddhi -- or Soul, as the synthetic aggregate of the Dhyani-Buddhas:
and is not the "Spirit of Buddha present in the Church," but the
omnipresent universal Spirit manifested in the temple of Kosmos or Nature. This
Orientalistic etymology of Kwan and Yin is on a par with that of
"Yogini," which, we are told by Mr. Hargrave Jennings, "is a Sanskrit
word, in the dialects pronounced Yogi or Zogee (!), and is equivalent to Sena,
and exactly the same as Duti or Duti-Ca' -- i.e., a sacred prostitute of the
temple, worshipped as Yoni or Sakti" (p. 60). "The books of
morality," in India, "direct a faithful wife to shun the society of
Yogini or females who have been adored as Sakti . . . amongst the votaries of a
most licentious description." Nothing should surprise us after this. And
it is, therefore, with hardly a smile that we find another preposterous
absurdity quoted about "Budh," as being a name "which signifies
not only the sun as the source of generation but also the male organ (Round
Towers of Ireland; quoted by Mr. Hargrave Jennings in "Phallicism,"
p. 264). Max Muller, in his "False Analogies," says that "the most
celebrated Chinese scholar of his time, Abel Remusat," maintains
"that the three syllables I Hi Wei (in the fourteenth chapter of the
Tao-te-king) were meant for Je-ho-vah (Science of Religion, p. 332); and again,
Father Amyot, who "feels certain that the three persons of the Trinity
could be recognised" in the same work. And if Abel Remusat, why not
Hargrave Jennings? Every scholar will recognise the absurdity of ever seeing in
Budh, "the enlightened" and "the awakened," a "phallic
symbol."
Kwan-shi-yin,
then, is "the Son identical with his Father" mystically, or the Logos
-- the word. He is called the "Dragon of Wisdom" in Stanza III., as
all the Logoi of all the ancient religious systems are connected with, and
symbolised by, serpents. In old Egypt, the God Nahbkoon, "he who unites
the doubles," (astral light re-uniting by its dual physiological and
spiritual potency the divine human to its purely divine Monad, the prototype
"in heaven" or Nature) was represented as a serpent on human legs,
either with or without arms. It was the emblem of the resurrection of Nature,
as also of Christ with the Ophites, and of Jehovah as the brazen serpent
healing those who looked at him; the serpent being an emblem of Christ with the
Templars also, (see the Templar degree in Masonry). The symbol of Knouph (Khoum
also), or the soul of the world, says Champollion (Pantheon, text 3), "is
represented among other forms under that of a huge serpent on human legs; this
reptile, being the emblem of the good genius and the veritable Agathodaemon, is
sometimes bearded." The sacred animal is thus identical with the serpent
of the Ophites, and is figured on a great number of engraved stones, called
Gnostic or Basilidean gems. This serpent appears with various heads (human and animal),
but its gems
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are always found
inscribed with the name [[CHNOUBIS]] (Chnoubis). This symbol is identical with
one which, according to Jamblichus and Champollion, was called "the first
of the celestial gods"; the god Hermes, or Mercury with the Greeks, to
which god Hermes Trismegistos attributes the invention of, and the first
initiation of men into, magic; and Mercury is Budh, Wisdom, Enlightenment, or
"Re-awakening" into the divine Science.
To close,
Kwan-Shi-Yin and Kwan-Yin are the two aspects (male and female) of the same
principle in Kosmos, Nature and Man, of divine wisdom and intelligence. They
are the "Christos-Sophia" of the mystic Gnostics -- the Logos and its
Sakti. In their longing for the expression of some mysteries never to be wholly
comprehended by the profane, the Ancients, knowing that nothing could be preserved
in human memory without some outward symbol, have chosen the (to us) often
ridiculous images of the Kwan-Yins to remind man of his origin and inner
nature. To the impartial, however, the Madonnas in crinolines and the Christs
in white kid gloves must appear far more absurd than the Kwan-Shi-Yin and
Kwan-Yin in their dragon garb. The subjective can hardly be expressed by the
objective. Therefore, since the symbolic formula attempts to characterise that
which is above scientific reasoning, and as often far beyond our intellects, it
must needs go beyond that intellect in some shape or other, or else it will
fade out from human remembrance.
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BOOK I. -- PART
III.
ADDENDA.
SCIENCE AND THE
SECRET
DOCTRINE
CONTRASTED.
"The
knowledge of this nether world --
Say, friend,
what is it, false or true?
The false, what
mortal cares to know?
The true, what
mortal ever knew?"
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CONTENTS.
--------------
PAGE
I. REASONS FOR
THESE ADDENDA ... 477
II.MODERN
PHYSICISTS ARE PLAYING AT BLIND MAN'S BUFF ... 482
III. "AN
LUMEN SIT CORPUS, NEC NON" ... 483
IV. IS
GRAVITATION A LAW? ... 490
V. THE THEORIES
OF ROTATION IN SCIENCE ... 500
VI. THE MASKS OF
SCIENCE ... 506
VII. AN ATTACK
ON THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF FORCE BY A MAN OF SCIENCE ... 523
VIII. LIFE,
FORCE, OR GRAVITY? ... 529
IX. THE SOLAR
THEORY ... 540
X. THE COMING
FORCE ... 554
XI. ON THE
ELEMENTS AND ATOMS ... 566
XII. ANCIENT
THOUGHT IN MODERN DRESS ... 579
XIII. THE MODERN
NEBULAR THEORY ... 588
XIV. FORCES --
MODES OF MOTION OR INTELLIGENCES? ... 601
XV. GODS, MONADS,
AND ATOMS ... 610
XVI. CYCLIC
EVOLUTION AND KARMA ... 634
XVII. THE ZODIAC
AND ITS ANTIQUITY ... 647
XVIII. SUMMARY
OF THE MUTUAL POSITION ... 668
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ADDENDA TO BOOK
I.
--------------
I.
REASONS FOR
THESE ADDENDA.
MANY of the
doctrines contained in the foregoing Seven Stanzas and Commentaries having been
studied and critically examined by some Western Theosophists, certain of the
occult teachings have been found wanting from the ordinary stand-point of
modern scientific knowledge. They seemed to encounter insuperable difficulties
in the way of their acceptance, and to require reconsideration in view of
scientific criticism. Some friends have already been tempted to regret the
necessity of so often calling in question the assertions of modern Science. It
appeared to them -- and I here repeat only their arguments -- that "to run
counter to the teachings of its most eminent exponents, was to court a
premature discomfiture in the eyes of the Western World."
It is,
therefore, desirable to define once and for all the position which the writer,
who does not agree in this with her friends, intends to maintain. So far as
Science remains what in the words of Prof. Huxley it is, viz., "organized
common sense"; so far as its inferences are drawn from accurate premises
-- its generalizations resting on a purely inductive basis -- every Theosophist
and Occultist welcomes respectfully and with due admiration its contributions
to the domain of cosmological law. There can be no possible conflict between
the teachings of occult and so-called exact Science, where the conclusions of
the latter are grounded on a substratum of unassailable fact. It is only when
its more ardent exponents, over-stepping the limits of observed phenomena in
order to penetrate into the arcana of Being, attempt to wrench the formation of
Kosmos and its living Forces from Spirit, and attribute all to blind matter,
that the Occultists claim the right to dispute and call in question their
theories. Science cannot, owing to the very nature of things, unveil the
mystery of the universe around us. Science can, it is true, collect, classify,
and generalize upon phenomena; but the occultist, arguing from admitted
metaphysical data, declares that the daring explorer, who would probe the
inmost secrets of Nature, must transcend the narrow limitations of sense, and transfer
his consciousness into the region of noumena and the sphere of primal causes.
To effect this, he must develop faculties which are absolutely
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dormant -- save
in a few rare and exceptional cases -- in the constitution of the off-shoots of
our present Fifth Root-race in Europe and America. He can in no other
conceivable manner collect the facts on which to base his speculations. Is this
not apparent on the principles of Inductive Logic and Metaphysics alike?
On the other
hand, whatever the writer may do, she will never be able to satisfy both Truth
and Science. To offer the reader a systematic and uninterrupted version of the
Archaic Stanzas is impossible. A gap of 43 verses or Slokas has to be left
between the 7th (already given) and the 51st, which is the subject of Book II.,
though the latter are made to run from 1 et seq. for easier reading and
reference. The appearance of man on Earth alone occupies as many stanzas, which
describe minutely his primal evolution from the human Dhyan Chohans; the state
of the globe at that time, etc., etc. A great number of names referring to chemical
substances and other compounds, which have now ceased to combine together, and
are therefore unknown to the later offshoots of our Fifth Race, occupy a
considerable space. As they are simply untranslateable, and would remain in
every case inexplicable, they are omitted, along with those which cannot be
made public. Nevertheless, even the little that is given will irritate any
follower and defender of dogmatic materialistic Science who happens to read
this.
Before
proceeding to other Stanzas, it is proposed, therefore, to defend those already
given. They are not in perfect accord or harmony with modern Science -- this we
all know. Had they been, however, as much in agreement with the views of modern
knowledge as a lecture by Sir W. Thomson, they would have been rejected all the
same. For they teach belief in conscious Powers and Spiritual Entities; in
terrestrial, semi-intelligent, and highly intellectual Forces on other planes*;
and in Beings that dwell around us in spheres imperceptible, whether through
telescope or microscope. Hence the necessity of examining the beliefs of
materialistic Science: of comparing its views about the "Elements"
with the opinions of the ancients, and of analysing the physical Forces as they
exist in modern perception before the Occultists admit themselves to be in the
wrong. We shall touch upon the constitution of the Sun and planets, and the
occult characteristics of what are called Devas and Genii, and are now termed
by Science, Force, or "modes of motion," and see whether esoteric
belief is defensible or not (Vide infra, "Gods, Monads, and Atoms)".
Notwithstanding the efforts made to the contrary, an unprejudiced mind will
discover
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Their
intellection, of course, being of quite a different nature to any we can
conceive of on Earth.
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under Newton's
"agent, material or immaterial" (of his third letter to Bentley), the
agent which causes gravity, and, in his personal working God, one finds just as
much of the metaphysical devas and genii, as in Kepler's angelus rector
conducting each planet, and the species immateriata by which the celestial
bodies were carried along in their courses, according to that astronomer.
We shall have,
in Book II., to openly approach dangerous subjects. We must bravely face
Science and declare, in the teeth of materialistic learning, of Idealism,
Hylo-Idealism, Positivism and all-denying modern Psychology, that the true
Occultist believes in "Lords of Light;" that he believes in a Sun,
which, far from being simply "a lamp of day" moving in accordance
with physical law, and far from being merely one of those Suns, which according
to Richter -- ". . . . are Sun-flowers of a higher light" -- is, like
milliards of other Suns, the dwelling or the vehicle of a god, and a host of gods.
In this
question, of course, it is the Occultists who will be worsted. They will be
considered on the prima facie aspect of the dispute to be ignoramuses, and
labelled with more than one of the usual epithets given to those whom the
superficially judging public, itself ignorant of the great underlying truths in
nature, accuses of believing in mediaeval superstitions. Let it be so.
Submitting beforehand to every criticism in order to go on with their task,
they only claim the privilege of showing that the physicists are as much at
loggerheads among themselves in their speculations, as the latter are with the
teachings of Occultism.
The Sun is
matter, and the Sun is Spirit. Our ancestors -- the "heathen," --
along with their modern successors, the Parsis -- were, and are, wise enough in
their generation to see in it the symbol of Divinity, and at the same time to
sense within, concealed by the physical Symbol, the bright God of Spiritual and
terrestrial Light. Such belief is now regarded as a superstition only by rank
materialism, which denies Deity, Spirit, Soul, and admits no intelligence
outside the mind of man. But if too much of wrong superstition bred by
"Churchianity" -- as Lawrence Oliphant calls it -- "renders a
man a fool," too much scepticism makes him mad. We prefer the charge of
folly in believing too much, to that of a madness which denies everything, as
do Materialism and Idealism. Hence, the Occultists are fully prepared to
receive their dues from Materialism, and to meet the adverse criticism which will
be poured on this work, not for writing it, but for believing in that which it
contains.
Therefore the
discoveries, hypotheses, and unavoidable objections which will be brought
forward by the scientific critics must be anticipated and disposed of. It has
also to be shown how far the
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occult teachings
depart from real science, and whether the ancient or the modern theories are
the most logically and philosophically correct. The unity and mutual relations
of all parts of Kosmos were known to the ancients, before they became evident
to modern astronomers and philosophers. And if even the external and visible
portions of the Universe and their mutual relations cannot be explained in any
other terms than those used by the adherents of the mechanical theory of the
Universe in physical science, it follows that no materialist, who denies that
the Soul of Kosmos (which appertains to metaphysical philosophy) exists, has
the right to trespass upon that metaphysical domain. That physical science is
trying to, and actually does, encroach upon it, is only one more proof that
"might is right," and no more.
Another good
reason for these Addenda is this. Since only a certain portion of the Secret
teachings can be given out in the present age, if they were published without
any explanations or commentary, the doctrines would never be understood even by
theosophists. Therefore they must be contrasted with the speculations of modern
science. Archaic axioms must be placed side by side with modern hypotheses and
comparison left to the sagacious reader.
On the question
of the "Seven Governors," as Hermes calls the "Seven
Builders," the Spirits which guide the operations of nature, the animated
atoms of which are the shadows, in their world, of their Primaries in the
astral realms -- this work will, of course, besides the men of Science, have
every materialist against it. But this opposition can, at most, be only
temporary. People have laughed at everything and scouted every unpopular idea
at first, and then ended by accepting it. Materialism and scepticism are evils
that must remain in the world as long as man has not quitted his present gross
form to don the one he had during the first and second races of this Round.
Unless scepticism and our present natural ignorance are equilibrated by
intuition and a natural spirituality, every being afflicted with such feelings
will see in himself no better than a bundle of flesh, bones, and muscles, with
an empty garret inside him which serves the purpose of storing his sensations
and feelings. Sir Humphry Davy was a great scientist, as deeply versed in
physics as any theorist of our day, yet he loathed materialism. "I heard
with disgust," he says, "in the dissecting-rooms, the plan of the
physiologist, of the gradual secretion of matter, and its becoming endued with
irritability, ripening into sensibility, and acquiring such organs as were
necessary, by its own inherent forces, and at last rising into intellectual
existence." Nevertheless, physiologists are not the most to be blamed for
speaking of that only which they can see and estimate on the evidence of their
physical senses. Astronomers
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and physicists
are, we consider, far more illogical in their materialistic views than even
physiologists, and this has to be proved. Milton's --
. . . . . . . .
. . . . "Light
Ethereal, first
of things, quintessence pure,"
has become with
the materialists only --
. . . . . .
Prime cheerer, light,
Of all material
beings, first and best.
For the
occultists it is both Spirit and Matter. Behind the "mode of motion,"
now regarded as "the property of matter" and nothing more, they
perceive the radiant noumenon. It is the "Spirit of Light," the first
born of the Eternal pure Element, whose energy (or emanation) is stored in the
Sun, the great Life-Giver of the physical world, as the hidden Concealed
Spiritual Sun is the Light- and Life-Giver of the Spiritual and Psychic Realms.
Bacon was one of the first to strike the key-note of materialism, not only by
his inductive method (renovated from ill-digested Aristotle), but by the
general tenor of his writings. He inverts the order of mental Evolution when
saying that "the first Creation of God was the light of the sense; the
last was the light of the reason; and his Sabbath work ever since is the
illumination of the Spirit." It is just the reverse. The light of Spirit
is the eternal Sabbath of the mystic or occultist, and he pays little attention
to that of mere sense. That which is meant by the allegorical sentence,
"Fiat Lux" is,-- when esoterically rendered -- "Let there be the
'Sons of Light,' " or the noumena of all phenomena. Thus the Roman
Catholics rightly interpret the passage as referring to Angels, and wrongly as
meaning Powers created by an anthropomorphic God, whom they personify in the
ever thundering and punishing Jehovah.
These beings are
the "Sons of Light," because they emanate from, and are
self-generated in, that infinite Ocean of Light, whose one pole is pure Spirit
lost in the absoluteness of Non-Being, and the other, the matter in which it
condenses, crystallizing into a more and more gross type as it descends into
manifestation. Therefore matter, though it is, in one sense, but the illusive
dregs of that Light whose limbs are the Creative Forces, yet has in it the full
presence of the Soul thereof, of that Principle, which none -- not even the
"Sons of Light," evolved from its ABSOLUTE DARKNESS -- will ever
know. The idea is as beautifully, as it is truthfully, expressed by Milton, who
hails the holy Light, which is the --
". . . . .
Offspring of Heaven, first-born,
And of th'
Eternal co-eternal beam;
. . . . . Since
God is light,
And never but in
unapproached Light
Dwelt from
Eternity,. dwelt then in thee
Bright
effluence, of bright essence increate."
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II.
MODERN
PHYSICISTS ARE PLAYING AT BLIND MAN'S BUFF.
AND now
Occultism puts to Science the question: "Is light a body, or is it
not?" Whatever the answer of the latter, the former is prepared to show
that, to this day, the most eminent physicists know neither one way nor the
other. To know what is light, and whether it is an actual substance or a mere
undulation of the "ethereal medium," Science has first to learn what
are in reality Matter, Atom, Ether, Force. Now, the truth is, that it knows
nothing of any of these, and admits it. It has not even agreed what to believe
in, as dozens of hypotheses emanating from various and very eminent Scientists
on the same subject, are antagonistic to each other and often
self-contradictory. Thus their learned speculations may, with a stretch of
good-will, be accepted as "working hypotheses" in a secondary sense,
as Stallo puts it. But being radically inconsistent with each other, they must
finally end by mutually destroying themselves. As declared by the author of
"Concepts of Modern Physics":--
"It must
not be forgotten that the several departments of Science are simply arbitrary
divisions of labour. In these several departments the same physical object may
be considered under different aspects. The physicist may study its molecular
relations, while the chemist determines its atomic constitution. But when they
both deal with the same element or agent, it cannot have one set of properties
in physics, and another set contradictory of them, in chemistry. If the
physicist and chemist alike assume the existence of ultimate atoms absolutely
invariable in bulk and weight, the atom cannot be a cube or oblate spheroid for
physical, and a sphere for chemical purposes. A group of constant atoms cannot
be an aggregate of extended and absolutely inert and impenetrable masses in a
crucible or retort, and a system of mere centres of force as part of a magnet
or of a Clamond battery. The universal Ether cannot be soft and mobile to
please the chemist, and rigid-elastic to satisfy the physicist; it cannot be
continuous at the command of Sir William Thomson and discontinuous on the
suggestion of Cauchy or Fresnel."*
The eminent
physicist, G. A. Hirn, may likewise be quoted saying the same in the 43rd
Volume of the Memoires de l'Academie Royale de Belgique, which we translate
from the French, as cited: "When one sees the assurance with which are
to-day affirmed doctrines which attribute the collectivity, the universality of
the phenomena to the motions alone of the atom, one has a right to expect to
find likewise unanimity on the qualities described to this unique being, the
foundation of all that exists. Now, from the first examination of the
particular systems proposed, one feels the strangest deception; one perceives
that the atom of the chemist, the atom of the physicist, that of the
metaphysician, and that of the mathematician . . . . have absolutely nothing in
common but the name! The inevitable result is the existing
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Concepts
of Modern Physics," p. xi-xii., Introd. to the 2nd Edit.
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subdivision of
our sciences, each of which, in its own little pigeon-hole, constructs an atom
which satisfies the requirements of the phenomena it studies, without troubling
itself in the least about the requirements proper to the phenomena of the
neighbouring pigeon-hole. The metaphysician banishes the principles of
attraction and repulsion as dreams; the mathematician, who analyses the laws of
elasticity and those of the propagation of light, admits them implicitly,
without even naming them. . . . The chemist cannot explain the grouping of the
atoms, in his often complicated molecules, without attributing to his atoms
specific distinguishing qualities; for the physicist and the metaphysician,
partisans of the modern doctrines, the atom is, on the contrary, always and
everywhere the same. What am I saying? THERE IS NO AGREEMENT EVEN IN ONE AND
THE SAME SCIENCE AS TO THE PROPERTIES OF THE ATOM. Each constructs an atom to
suit his own fancy, in order to explain some special phenomenon with which he
is particularly concerned."*
The above is the
photographically correct image of modern Science and physics. The
"pre-requisite of that incessant play of the 'scientific imagination,'
" which is so often found in Professor Tyndall's eloquent discourses, is
vivid indeed, as shown by Stallo, and for contradictory variety leaves far
behind it any "phantasies" of occultism. However it may be, if
physical theories are confessedly "mere formal, explanatory, didactic
devices," and if "atomism is only a symbolical graphic system,"**
then the occultist can hardly be regarded as assuming too much, when he places
alongside of these devices and "symbolical systems" of modern
Science, the symbols and devices of Archaic teachings.
--------------
III.
"AN LUMEN
SIT CORPUS, NEC NON?"
MOST decidedly
Light is not a body, we are told. Physical Sciences say Light is a Force, a
vibration, the undulation of ether. It is the property or quality of matter, or
even an affection thereof -- never a body!
Just so. For
this discovery, the knowledge -- whatever it may be worth -- that light or
caloric is not a motion of material particles, Science is chiefly indebted, if
not solely, to Sir W. Grove. It was he who was the first in a lecture at the
London Institution, in 1842, to show that
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
*
"Recherches experimentales sur la relation qui existe entre la resistance
de Pair et sa temperature," p. 68.
** From the
criticism of "Concepts of Modern Physics" in Nature. See Stallo's
work, p. xvi. of Introduction.
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"light, heat,
etc., etc.* are affections of matter itself, and not a distinct ethereal,
'imponderable,' fluid, (a state of matter now) permeating it." (See
"Correlation of the Physical Forces," Preface). Yet, perhaps, for
some physicists -- as for Oersted, a very eminent Scientist -- FORCE and FORCES
were tacitly "Spirit (and hence Spirits) in Nature." What several
rather mystical Scientists taught was that light, heat, magnetism, electricity
and gravity, etc., were not the final causes of the visible phenomena, including
planetary motion, but themselves the Secondary effects of other Causes, for
which Science in our day cares very little, but in which Occultism believes,
for the Occultists have exhibited proofs of the validity of their claims in
every age. And in what age were there no Occultists and no ADEPTS?
Sir Isaac Newton
held to the Pythagorean corpuscular theory, and was also inclined to admit its
consequences; which made the Count de Maistre hope, at one time, that Newton
would ultimately lead Science back to the recognition of the fact that Forces
and the Celestial bodies were propelled and guided by Intelligences (Soirees,
vol. ii.). But de Maistre counted without his host. The innermost thoughts and
ideas of Newton were perverted, and of his great mathematical learning only the
mere physical husk was turned to account. Had poor Sir Isaac foreseen to what
use his successors and followers would apply his " gravity,"** that
pious and religious man would surely have quietly eaten his apple, and never
breathed a word about any mechanical ideas connected with its fall.
Great contempt
is shown for metaphysics generally and for onto-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Mr. Robert
Ward, discussing the questions of Heat and Light in the November Journal of
Science, 1881, shows us how utterly ignorant is Science about one of the
commonest facts of nature -- the heat of the sun. He says:-- "The question
of the temperature of the sun has been the subject of investigation with many
scientists: Newton, one of the first investigators of this problem, tried to
determine it, and after him all the scientists who have been occupied with
calorimetry have followed his example. All have believed themselves successful,
and have formulated their results with great confidence. The following, in the
chronological order of the publication of the results, are the temperatures (in
centigrade degrees) found by each of them: Newton, 1,699,300 deg.; Pouillet,
1,461 deg.; Tollner, 102,200 deg.; Secchi, 5,344,840 deg.; Ericsson, 2,726,700
deg.; Fizeau, 7,500 deg.; Waterston, 9,000,000 deg.; Spoeren, 27,000 deg.;
Deville, 9,500 deg.; Soret, 5,801,846 deg.; Vicaire, 1,500 deg.; Rosetti,
20,000 deg. The difference is as 1,400 deg. against 9,000,000 deg., or no less
than 8,998,600 deg.!! There probably does not exist in science a more
astonishing contradiction than that revealed in these figures. And yet without
doubt if an Occultist were to give out an estimate, each of these gentlemen
would vehemently protest in the name of 'EXACT' Science at the rejection of his
special result." (From the Theosophist.)
** According to
one atheistic idealist -- Dr. Lewins -- "When Sir Isaac, in 1687 . . . .
showed mass and atom acted upon . . . . by innate activity . . . . he effectually
disposed of Spirit, Anima, or Divinity, as supererogatory."
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logical
metaphysics especially. But we see, whenever the Occultists are bold enough to
raise their diminished heads, that materialistic, physical science is
honey-combed with metaphysics;* that its most fundamental principles, while
inseparably wedded to transcendentalism, are nevertheless, in order to show
modern science divorced from such "dreams," tortured and often
ignored in the maze of contradictory theories and hypotheses. A very good
corroboration of this charge lies in the fact that Science finds itself
absolutely compelled to accept the "hypothetical" Ether and to try to
explain it on the materialistic grounds of atomo-mechanical laws. This attempt
has led directly to the most fatal discrepancies and radical inconsistencies
between the assumed nature of Ether and its physical actions. A second proof is
found in the many contradictory statements about the atom -- the most
metaphysical object in creation.
Now, what does
the modern science of physics know of AEther, the first concept of which belongs
undeniably to ancient philosophers, the Greeks having borrowed it from the
Aryans, and the origin of modern AEther being found in, and disfigured from,
AKASA? This disfigurement
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Stallo's
above-cited work, "Concepts of Modern Physics," a volume which has
called forth the liveliest protests and criticisms, is recommended to anyone
inclined to doubt this statement. "The professed antagonism of Science to
metaphysics," he writes, "has led the majority of scientific
specialists to assume that the methods and results of empirical research are
wholly independent of the control of the laws of thought. They either silently
ignore, or openly repudiate, the simplest canons of logic, including the laws
of non-contradiction and . . . resent with the utmost vehemence, every
application of the rule of consistency to their hypotheses and theories . . . .
and they regard an examination (of these) . . . . in the light of these laws as
an impertinent intrusion of 'a priori principles and methods' into the domains
of empirical science. Persons of this cast of mind find no difficulty in
holding that atoms are absolutely inert, and at the same time asserting that
these atoms are perfectly elastic; or in maintaining that the physical
universe, in its last analysis, resolves itself into 'dead' matter and motion,
and yet denying that all physical energy is in reality kinetic; or in
proclaiming that all phenomenal differences in the objective world are ultimately
due to the various motions of absolutely simple material units, and,
nevertheless, repudiating the proposition that these units are equal" . .
. . (p. xix.) "The blindness of eminent physicists to some of the most
obvious consequences of their own theories is marvellous . . . . When Prof.
Tait, in conjunction with Prof. Stewart, announces that 'matter is simply
passive' (The Unseen Universe, sec. 104), and then, in connection with Sir W.
Thomson, declares that 'matter has an innate power of resisting external
influences' (Treat. on Nat. Phil., Vol. I., sec. 216), it is hardly impertinent
to inquire how these statements are to be reconciled. When Prof. Du Bois
Reymond . . . . insists upon the necessity of reducing all the processes of
nature to motions of a substantial, indifferent substratum, wholly destitute of
quality ('Ueber die Grenzen des Naturerkennens,' p. 5), having declared shortly
before in the same lecture that 'resolution of all changes in the material
world into motions of atoms caused by their constant central forces would be
the completion of natural science,' we are in a perplexity from which we have
to be relieved." (Pref. xliii.)
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is claimed to be
a modification and refinement of the idea of Lucretius. Let us then examine the
modern concept from several scientific volumes containing the admissions of the
physicists themselves.
The existence of
Ether is accepted by physical astronomy, in ordinary physics, and in chemistry.
Astronomers, who first began by regarding it as a fluid of extreme tenuity and
mobility, offering no sensible resistance to the motions of celestial bodies,
never gave a thought to its continuity or discontinuity. "Its main
function in modern astronomy has been to serve as a basis for hydrodynamical
theories of gravitation. In physics this fluid appeared for some time in
several roles in connection with the 'imponderables'" -- so cruelly put to
death by Sir W. Grove. Some physicists have even identified the ether of space
with those "imponderables." Then came their Kinetic theories; and
from the date of the dynamical theory of heat, it was chosen in optics as a
substratum for luminous undulations. Then, in order to explain the dispersion
and polarization of light, physicists had to resort once more to their
"scientific imagination" and forthwith endowed the Ether with (a)
atomic or molecular structure, and (b) with an enormous elasticity, "so
that its resistance to deformation far exceeded that of the most rigid elastic
bodies" (Stallo). This necessitated the theory of the essential
discontinuity of matter, hence of Ether. After having accepted this
discontinuity, in order to account for dispersion and polarization, theoretical
impossibilities were discovered with regard to such dispersions. Cauchy's
"scientific imagination" saw in atoms "material points without
extension," and he proposed, in order to obviate the most formidable
obstacles to the undulatory theory (namely, some well-known mechanical theorems
which stood in the way), to assume that the ethereal medium of propagation,
instead of being continuous, should consist of particles separated by sensible
distances. Fresnel rendered the same service to the phenomena of polarization.
E. B. Hunt upset the theories of both (Silliman's Journal, vol. viii., p. 364
et seq.) There are now men of Science who proclaim them "materially
fallacious," while others -- the "atomo-mechanicalists" -- cling
to to them with desperate tenacity. The supposition of an atomic or molecular
constitution of ether is upset, moreover, by thermodynamics, for Clerk Maxwell
showed that such a medium would be simply gas.* The hypothesis of "finite
intervals" is thus proven of no avail as a supplement to the undulatory
theory. Besides, eclipses fail to reveal any such variation of colour as
supposed by Cauchy (on the assumption that the chromatic rays are propagated
with different velocities).
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Clerk
Maxwell's "Treatise on Electricity of Magnetism" and compare with
Cauchy's "Memoire sur la Dispersion de la lumiere."
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Astronomy has
pointed out more than one phenomenon absolutely at variance with this doctrine.
Thus, while in
one department of physics the atomo-molecular constitution of the ether is
accepted in order to account for one set of special phenomena, in another
department such a constitution is found quite subversive of a number of
well-ascertained facts, Hirn's charges being thus justified (vide supra).
Chemistry deemed it impossible to concede enormous elasticity to the ether
without depriving it of other properties, upon the assumption of which the
construction of its modern theories depended. This ended in a final transformation
of ether. The exigencies of the atomo-mechanical theory have led distinguished
mathematicians and physicists to attempt to substitute for the traditional
atoms of matter, peculiar forms of vortical motion in a "universal
homogeneous, incompressible, and continuous material medium," or AEther.
(See Stallo.)
The present
writer, claiming no great scientific education, but only a tolerable
acquaintance with modern theories, and a better one with Occult Sciences, picks
up weapons against the detractors of the esoteric teaching in the very arsenal
of modern Science. The glaring contradictions, the mutually-destructive
hypotheses of world-renowned Scientists, their mutual accusations,
denunciations and disputes, show plainly that, whether accepted or not, the
Occult theories have as much right to a hearing as any of the so-called learned
and academical hypotheses. Thus whether the followers of the Royal Society
choose to accept ether as a continuous or a discontinuous fluid matters little,
and is indifferent to the present purpose. It simply points to one certainty:
Official Science knows nothing to this day of the constitution of ether. Let
Science call it matter, if it likes; only neither as akasa nor as the one
sacred AEther of the Greeks, is it to be found in any of the states of matter
known to modern physics. It is MATTER on quite another plane of perception and
being, and it can neither be analyzed by scientific apparatus, appreciated, nor
even conceived by "scientific imagination," unless the possessors
thereof study the Occult Sciences. That which follows proves this statement.
It is clearly
demonstrated by Stallo as regards the crucial problems of modern physics (as
was done by De Quatrefages and several others in those of anthropology,
biology, etc., etc.) that, in their efforts to support their individual
hypotheses and systems, the majority of the eminent and learned materialists
very often utter the greatest fallacies. Let us take the following case. Most
of them reject actio in distans (one of the fundamental principles in the
question of AEther or Akasa in Occultism), while, as Stallo justly observes,
there is no physical action,
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"which, on
close examination, does not resolve itself into actio in distans"; and he
proves it.
Now,
metaphysical arguments, according to Professor Lodge (Nature, vol. xxvii., p.
304), are "unconscious appeals to experience." And he adds that if
such an experience is not conceivable, then it does not exist, etc. In his own
words:-- ". . . If a highly-developed mind or set of minds, find a
doctrine about some comparatively simple and fundamental matter absolutely
unthinkable, it is an evidence . . . that the unthinkable state of things has
no existence, etc."
And thereupon,
toward the end of his lecture, Professor Lodge indicates that the explanation
of cohesion, as well as of gravity, "is to be looked for in the
vortex-atom theory of Sir William Thomson" (Stallo).
It is needless
to stop to inquire whether it is to this vortex-theory, also, that we have to
look for the dropping down on earth of the first life-germ by a passing meteor
or comet (Sir W. Thomson's hypothesis). But Mr. Lodge might be reminded of the
wise criticism on his lecture in the same "Concepts of Modern
Physics." Noticing the above-quoted declaration by the London Professor,
the author asks "whether . . . the elements of the vortex-theory are
familiar, or even possible, facts of experience? For, if they are not, clearly
that theory is obnoxious to the same criticism which is said to invalidate the
assumption of ACTIO IN DISTANS" (p. xxiv). And then the able critic shows
clearly what the Ether is not, nor can ever be, notwithstanding all scientific
claims to the contrary. And thus he opens widely, if unconsciously, the
entrance door to our occult teachings. For, as he says:--
"The medium
in which the vortex-movements arise is, according to Professor Lodge's own
express statement (NATURE, vol. xxvii., p. 305), 'a perfectly homogeneous,
incompressible, continuous body, incapable of being resolved into simple
elements or atoms: it is, in fact, continuous, not molecular.' And after making
this statement Professor Lodge adds: 'There is no other body of which we can
say this, and hence the Properties of the aether must be somewhat DIFFERENT
from those of ordinary matter.' It appears, then, that the whole vortex-atom
theory, which is offered to us as a substitute for the 'metaphysical theory' of
actio in distans, rests upon the hypothesis of the existence of a material
medium which is utterly unknown to experience, and which has properties somewhat
different* from those of ordinary matter. Hence this theory, instead of being,
as is claimed, a reduction of an unfamiliar fact of experience to a familiar
fact, is,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Somewhat
different!" exclaims Stallo. "The real import of this 'somewhat' is,
that the medium in question is not, in any intelligible sense, material at all,
having none of the properties of matter." All the properties of matter
depend upon differences and changes, and the "hypothetical" aether
here defined is not only destitute of differences, but incapable of difference
and change -- (in the physical sense let us add). This proves that if aether is
"matter" it is so only as something visible, tangible and existing, for
spiritual senses alone; that it is a Being indeed -- but not of our plane:
Pater AEther, or Akasa.
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on the contrary,
a reduction of a fact which is perfectly familiar, to a fact which is not only
unfamiliar, but wholly unknown, unobserved and unobservable. Furthermore, the
alleged vortical motion of, or rather in, the assumed ethereal medium is . . .
impossible, because "motion in a perfectly homogeneous, incompressible,
and therefore continuous fluid, is not sensible motion." . . . . It is
manifest, therefore, that wherever the vortex-atom theory may lead us, it certainly
does not lead us anywhere in the region of physics, or in the domain of verae
causae.* And I may add that, inasmuch as the hypothetical undifferentiated**
and undifferentiable medium is clearly an involuntary re-ification of the old
ontological concept pure being, the theory under discussion has all the
attributes of an inapprehensible metaphysical phantom."
A
"phantom" indeed, which can be made apprehensible only by Occultism.
From such scientific metaphysics to Occultism there is hardly one step. Those
physicists who hold the view that the atomic constitution of matter is
consistent with its penetrability, need not go far out of their way to be able
to account for the greatest phenomena of Occultism, now so derided by physical
scientists and materialists. Cauchy's "material points without
extension" are Leibnitz's monads, and at the same time the materials out
of which the "Gods" and other invisible powers clothe themselves in
bodies (vide infra, "Gods, Monads and Atoms"). The disintegration and
reintegration of "material" particles without extension as a chief
factor in phenomenal manifestations ought to suggest themselves very easily as
a clear possibility, at any rate to those few scientific minds which accept M.
Cauchy's views. For, disposing of that property of matter which they call
impenetrability by simply regarding the atoms as "material points exerting
on each other attractions and repulsions which vary with the distances that
separate them" -- the French theorist explains that: "From this it
follows that, if it pleased the author of nature*** simply to modify the laws
according to which the atoms attract or repel each other, we might instantly
see the hardest bodies penetrating each other, the smallest particles of matter
occupying immense spaces, or the largest masses reducing themselves to the
smallest volumes, the entire universe concentrating itself, as it were, in a
single point." (Sept lecons de physique Generale, p. 38 et seq., ed.
Moigno.)
And that
"point," invisible on our plane of perception and matter, is quite
visible to the eye of the adept who can follow and see it present on other
planes.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Verae causae
for physical science are mayavic or illusionary causes to the Occultist, and
vice versa.
** Very much
"differentiated," on the contrary, since the day it left its laya
condition.
*** For the
Occultists who say that the author of nature is nature itself, something
indistinct and inseparable from the Deity, it follows that those who are
conversant with the occult laws of nature, and know how to change and provoke
new conditions in ether, may -- not modify the laws, but work and do the same
in accordance with those immutable laws.
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IV.
IS GRAVITATION A
LAW?
THE corpuscular
theory has been unceremoniously put aside; but gravitation -- the principle
that all bodies attract each other with a force proportional directly to their
masses, and inversely to the squares of the distances between them -- survives
to this day and reigns, supreme as ever, in the alleged ethereal waves of
Space. As a hypothesis, it had been threatened with death for its inadequacy to
embrace all the facts presented to it; as a physical law, it is the King of the
late and once all-potent "Imponderables." "It is little short of
blasphemy . . . . an insult to Newton's grand memory to doubt it, . . . ."
is the exclamation of an American reviewer of "Isis Unveiled." Well;
what is finally that invisible and intangible God in whom we should believe on
blind faith? Astronomers who see in gravitation an easy-going solution for many
things, and an universal force which allows them to calculate thereby planetary
motions, care little about the Cause of Attraction. They call Gravity a law, a
cause in itself. We call the forces acting under that name effects, and very
secondary effects, too. One day it will be found that the scientific hypothesis
does not answer after all; and then it will follow the corpuscular theory of
light and be consigned to rest for many scientific aeons in the archives of all
exploded speculations. Has not Newton himself expressed grave doubts about the
Nature of Force and the corporeality of the "Agents," as they were
then called? So has Cuvier, another scientific light shining in the night of
research. He warns his readers, in the Revolution du Globe, about the doubtful
nature of the so-called Forces, saying that "it is not so sure whether
those agents were not Spiritual Powers after all (des agents spirituels). At
the outset of his "Principia," Sir Isaac Newton took the greatest
care to impress upon his school that he did not use the word
"attraction" with regard to the mutual action of bodies in a physical
sense. To him it was, he said, a purely mathematical conception involving no
consideration of real and primary physical causes. In one of the passages of
his "Principia" (Defin. 8, B. I. Prop. 69, "Scholium"), he
tells us plainly that, physically considered, attractions are rather impulses.
In section XI. (Introduction) he expresses the opinion that "there is some
subtle spirit by the force and action of which all movements of matter are
determined" (see Mod. Mater., by Rev. W. F. Wilkinson); and in his third
Letter to Bentley he says: "It is inconceivable that inanimate brute
matter should, without the mediation of something else which is not material,
operate upon and affect other matter, without mutual contact, as it must do if
gravi-
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tation, in the
sense of Epicurus, be essential and inherent in it. . . . That gravity should
be innate, inherent and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon
another at a distance, through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else
by and through which their action may be conveyed from one to another, is to me
so great an absurdity that I believe no man, who has in philosophical matters a
competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it. Gravity must be caused by
an agent acting constantly according to certain laws; but whether this agent be
material or immaterial I have left to the consideration of my readers."
At this, even
Newton's contemporaries got frightened -- at the apparent return of occult
causes into the domain of physics. Leibnitz called his principle of attraction
"an incorporeal and inexplicable power." The supposition of an
attractive faculty and a perfect void was characterized by Bernoulli as
"revolting," the principle of actio in distans finding thus no more
favour then than it does now. Euler, on the other hand, thought the action of
gravity was due to either a Spirit or some subtle medium. And yet Newton knew
of, if he did not accept, the Ether of the Ancients. He regarded the
intermediate space between the sidereal bodies as vacuum. Therefore he believed
in "subtle spirit" and Spirits as we do, guiding the so-called
attraction. The above-quoted words of the great man have produced poor results.
The "absurdity" has now become a dogma in the case of pure materialism,
which repeats, "No matter without force, no force without matter; matter
and force are inseparable, eternal and indestructible (true); there can be no
independent force, since all force is an inherent and necessary property of
matter (false); consequently, there is no immaterial creative power." Oh,
poor Sir Isaac!
If, leaving
aside all the other eminent men of Science who shared in the same opinion as
Euler and Leibnitz, the Occultists claim as their authorities and supporters
only Sir Isaac Newton and Cuvier, as above cited, they need fear little from
modern Science, and may loudly and proudly proclaim their beliefs. But, the
hesitation and doubts of the two before cited authorities, and of many others,
too, whom we could name, did not in the least prevent scientific speculation
from wool-gathering on the fields of brute matter just as before. First it was
matter and an imponderable fluid distinct from it; then came the imponderable
fluid so much criticised by Grove; and AEther, which was at first discontinuous
and then became continuous; after which came the "mechanical" Forces.
These have now settled in life as "modes of motion" and the aether
has become more mysterious and problematical than ever. More than one man of
Science objects to such crude materialistic views. But then since the days of
Plato, who repeatedly asks his readers not to confuse incorporeal Elements with
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their PRINCIPLES
-- transcendental or spiritual Elements; from those of the great Alchemists,
who, like Paracelsus, made a great difference between phenomenon and its cause,
or the Noumenon; and Grove, who, though he sees "no reason to divest
universally diffused matter of the functions common to all matter," yet
uses the term Forces where his critics, "who do not attach to the word any
idea of a specific action," say Force -- from those days to this nothing
has proved competent to stem the tide of brutal materialism. Gravitation is the
sole cause, the acting God, and matter is its prophet, said the men of science
only a few years ago.
They have
changed their views several times since then. But do the men of Science understand
the innermost thought of Newton, one of the most spiritual-minded and religious
men of his day, any better now than they did then? It is certainly to be
doubted. Newton is credited with having given the death-blow to the Elemental
Vortices of Descartes (the idea of Anaxagoras, resurrected, by-the-bye), though
the last modern "vortical atoms" of Sir W. Thomson do not, in truth,
differ much from the former. Nevertheless, when his disciple Forbes wrote in
the Preface to the chief work of his Master a sentence declaring that
"attraction was the cause of the System," Newton was the first to
solemnly protest. That which in the mind of the great mathematician assumed the
shadowy, but firmly rooted image of God, as the noumenon of all,* was called more
philosophically by the ancient (and modern) philosophers and Occultists --
"Gods," or the creative fashioning Powers. The modes of expression
may have been different, and the ideas more or less philosophically enunciated
by all sacred and profane Antiquity; but the fundamental thought was the
same.** For Pythagoras the Forces were Spiritual Entities, Gods inde-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
*
"Attraction," Le Couturier, a materialist, writes, "has now
become for the public that which it was for Newton himself -- a simple word, an
idea" (Panorama des Mondes), since its cause is unknown. Herschell
virtually says the same, when remarking, that whenever studying the motion of
the heavenly bodies, and the phenomena of attraction, he feels penetrated at
every moment with the idea of "the existence of causes that act for us
under a veil, disguising their direct action." (Musee des Sciences,
August, 1856.)
** If we are
taken to task for believing in operating "Gods" and
"Spirits" while rejecting a personal God, we answer to the Theists
and Monotheists: "Admit that your Jehovah is one of the Elohim, and we are
ready to recognise him. Make of him, as you do, the Infinite, the ONE and the
Eternal God, and we will never accept him in this character." Of tribal
Gods there were many; the One Universal Deity is a principle, an abstract
Root-Idea which has nought to do with the unclean work of finite Form. We do
not worship the Gods, we only honour Them, as beings superior to ourselves. In this
we obey the Mosaic injunction, while Christians disobey their Bible --
Missionaries foremost of all. "Thou shalt not revile the gods," says
one of them -- (Jehovah) -- in Exodus xxii. 28); but at the same time in verse
20 it is commanded, "He that sacrificeth to any God, save unto the Lord,
he shall be utterly destroyed." Now in the [[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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pendent of
planets and Matter as we see and know them on Earth, who are the rulers of the
Sidereal Heaven. Plato represented the planets as moved by an intrinsic Rector,
one with his dwelling, like "A boatman in his boat." As for
Aristotle, he called those rulers "immaterial substances;"* though as
one who had never been initiated, he rejected the gods as Entities (See
Vossius, Vol. II., p. 528). But this did not prevent him from recognising the
fact that the stars and planets "were not inanimate masses but acting and
living bodies indeed. . . . . . ." As if "sidereal spirits were the
divine portion of their phenomena, [[ta theoitera pon phaneron]]" (De
Caelo. I. 9).
If we look for
corroboration in more modern and Scientific times, we find Tycho Brahe
recognising in the stars a triple force, divine, spiritual and vital. Kepler,
putting together the Pythagorean sentence, "The Sun, guardian of
Jupiter," and the verses of David, "He placed his throne in the
Sun," and "The Lord is the Sun," etc., said that he understood
perfectly how the Pythagoreans could believe that all the globes disseminated
through Space were rational Intelligences, facultates ratiocinativae,
circulating around the Sun, "in which resides a pure Spirit of fire; the
source of the general harmony" (De Motibus planetarum harmonicis, p. 248).
When an
Occultist speaks of Fohat -- the energising and guiding intelligence in the
Universal Electric or Vital Fluid, -- he is laughed at. Withal, as now shown,
neither the nature of electricity, nor of Life nor even of Light, are to this
day understood. The Occultist sees in the manifestation of every force in
Nature, the action of the quality, or the special characteristic of its
noumenon; which noumenon is a distinct and intelligent Individuality on the
other side of the manifested mechanical Universe. Now the Occultist does not
deny -- on the contrary he will support the claim -- that light, heat,
electricity and so on are affections (not properties or qualities) of matter.
To put it more clearly: matter is the condition -- the necessary basis or
vehicle, a sine qua non -- for the manifestation of these forces, or agents, on
this plane.
But in order to
gain the point the Occultists have to examine the credentials of the law of
gravity, first of all, of "Gravitation, the King
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] original texts it is not "god" but
Elohim, -- and we challenge contradiction -- and Jehovah is one of the Elohim,
as proved by his own words in Genesis iii. 22, when "the Lord God said:
Behold the Man has become as one of us," etc. Hence both those who worship
and sacrifice to the Elohim, the angels, and to Jehovah, those who revile the
gods of their fellow-men, are far greater transgressors than the Occultists or
any Theosophist. Meanwhile many of the latter prefer believing in some one
"Lord" or other, and are quite welcome to do as they like.
* To liken the
"immateriate species to wooden iron," and laugh at Spiller referring
to them as "incorporeal matter" does not solve the mystery (See
"Concepts of Modern Physics," p. 165 et infra).
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and Ruler of
Matter," under every form. To do so effectually, the hypothesis in its
earliest appearance has to be recalled to mind. To begin with, is it Newton who
was the first to discover it? The Athenaeum of Jan. 26, 1867, has some curious
information upon this subject. It says that "positive evidence can be
adduced that Newton derived all his knowledge of gravitation and its laws from
Boehme, with whom gravitation or ATTRACTION is the first property of
Nature." . . . For with him "his (Boehme's) system, shows us the
inside of things, while modern physical science is content with looking at the
outside." Then again, "the science of electricity, which was not yet
in existence when he (Boehme) wrote, is there anticipated (in his writings);
and not only does Boehme describe all the now known phenomena of that force,
but he even gives us the origin, generation, and birth of electricity, itself,
etc."
Thus Newton,
whose profound mind read easily between the lines, and fathomed the spiritual
thought of the great Seer in its mystic rendering, owes his great discovery to
Jacob Boehme, the nursling of the genii (Nirmanakayas) who watched over and
guided him, of whom the author of the article in question so truly remarks,
that "every new scientific discovery goes to prove his profound and
intuitive insight into the most secret workings of nature." And having
discovered gravity, Newton, in order to render possible the action of attraction
in space, had, so to speak, to annihilate every physical obstacle capable of
impeding its free action; ether among others, though he had more than a
presentiment of its existence. Advocating the corpuscular theory, he made an
absolute vacuum between the heavenly bodies. . . . Whatever may have been his
suspicions and inner convictions about Ether; however many friends he may have
unbosomed himself to -- as in the case of his correspondence with Bentley --
his teachings never showed that he had any such belief. If he was
"persuaded that the power of attraction could not be exerted by matter
across a vacuum,"* how is it that so late as 1860, French astronomers (Le
Couturier, for instance), combated "the disastrous results of the theory
of vacuum established by the great man?"** Professor Winchell writes,
"These passages (letter to Bentley) show what were his views respecting
the nature of the interplanetary medium of communication. Though declaring that
the heavens 'are void of sensible matter,' he elsewhere excepted 'perhaps
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* World-Life.
Prof. Winchell, LL.D (pp. 49 and 50).
** "Il
n'est plus possible aujourd'hui, de soutenir comme Newton, que les corps
celestes se mouvent au milieu du VIDE immense des espaces. . . . Parmi les
consequences de la theorie du vide etablie par ce grand homme, il ne reste plus
debout que le mot 'attraction,' et nous verrons le jour ou ce dernier mot
disparaitra du vocabulaire scientifique." ("Panorama des
mondes," pp. 47 and 53.)
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some very thin
vapours, streams, and effluvia, arising from the atmospheres of the earth,
planets, and comets, and from such an exceedingly rare ethereal medium as we
have elsewhere described." (Newton, Optics, III., query 28, 1704; quoted
in "World-Life.")
This only shows
that even such great men as Newton have not always the courage of their
opinions. Dr. T. S. Hunt "called attention to some long-neglected passages
in Newton's works, from which it appears that a belief in such universal,
intercosmical medium gradually took root in his mind." (Ibid.) But such
attention was never called to the said passages before Nov. 28, 1881, when Dr.
Hunt read his "Celestial Chemistry, from the time of Newton."
"Till then the idea was universal, even among the men of Science, that
Newton had, while advocating the corpuscular theory, preached a void," as
Le Couturier says. The passages had been "long neglected," no doubt
because they contradicted and clashed with the preconceived pet theories of the
day, till finally the undulatory theory imperiously required the presence of an
"ethereal medium" to explain it. This is the whole secret.
Anyhow, it is
from that theory of Newton's of a universal void -- taught, if not believed in
by himself, -- that dates the immense scorn now shown by modern for ancient
physics. The old sages had maintained that "Nature abhorred vacuum,"
and the greatest mathematicians of the world (read of the Western races) had
discovered the antiquated "fallacy" and exposed it. And now modern science
vindicates, however ungracefully, archaic knowledge, having, moreover, to
vindicate Newton's character and powers of observation at this late hour, after
having neglected for one century and a half to pay any attention to such very
important passages -- perchance, because it was wiser not to attract any notice
to them. Better late than never.
And now Father
AEther is re-welcomed with open arms; and wedded to gravitation; linked to it
for weal or woe, until the day when it, or both, shall be replaced by something
else. Three hundred years ago it was plenum everywhere, then it became one
dismal vacuity; later still the sidereal ocean-beds, dried up by science,
rolled onward once more their ethereal waves. Recede ut procedes must become
the motto of exact Science -- "exact," chiefly, in finding itself
inexact every leap-year.
But we will not
quarrel with the great men. They had to go back to the earliest "Gods of
Pythagoras and old Kanada" for the very backbone and marrow of their
correlations and "newest" discoveries, and this may well afford good
hope to the Occultists, for their minor gods. For we believe in Le Couturier's
prophecy about gravitation. We know the day is approaching when an absolute
reform will be demanded in the present modes of Science by the scientists themselves
-- as was done by Sir W. Grove, F.R.S. Till that day there is nothing to be
done. For if gravitation
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were dethroned
to-morrow, the day after the Scientists would discover some other new mode of
mechanical motion.* Rough and up-hill is the path of true Science, and its days
are full of vexation of Spirit. But in the face of its "thousand"
contradictory hypotheses to explain physical phenomena, there never was yet a
better one than that of "motion" -- however paradoxically interpreted
by materialism. As may be found on the first pages of Book I., Occultists have
nothing surely against motion** the GREAT BREATH of Mr. Herbert Spencer's
"UNKNOWN." But, believing that everything on Earth is the shadow of
something in space -- they believe in smaller "Breaths," which,
living, intelligent and independent of all but Law, blow in every direction
during Manvantaric periods. These Science will reject. But whatever replaces
attraction, alias gravitation, the result will be the same. Science will be as
far from the solution of its difficulties as it is now, unless it comes to some
compromise with Occultism and even with Alchemy -- which supposition will be
regarded as an impertinence, but remains a fact, nevertheless. As Faye says:
"Il manque quelque chose aux geologues pour faire la geologie de la Lune,
c'est d'etre astronomes. A la verite il manque aussi quelquechose aux
astronomes pour aborder avec fruit cette etude, c'est d'etre geologues."
But he might have added, with still more pointedness, "Ce qui manque a
tous les deux, c'est l'intuition du mystique."
Let us remember
Sir William Grove's wise "concluding remarks," on the ultimate
structure of matter, or the minutiae of molecular actions, which, he thought,
man will never know.
"Much harm
has already been done by attempting hypothetically to dissect matter and to
discuss the shapes, sizes, and numbers of atoms, and their atmospheres of heat,
ether, or electricity. . . . . Whether the regarding electricity, light,
magnetism, etc., as simply motions of ordinary matter, be or be not admissible,
certain it is that all past theories have resolved, and all existing theories
do resolve, the action of these forces into motion. Whether it be that, on
account of our familiarity with motion, we refer other affections to it, as to
a language which is most easily construed, and most capable of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* When read in a
fair and unprejudiced spirit, Sir Isaac Newton's works are an ever ready
witness to show how he must have hesitated between gravitation and attraction,
impulse and some other unknown cause to explain the regular course of the
planetary motion. But see Treatise on Colour (Vol. III., question 31.) We are
told by Herschell that Newton left with his successors the duty of drawing all
the scientific conclusions from his discovery. How modern Science abused the
privilege of building its newest theories upon the law of gravitation, may be
realised when one remembers how profoundly religious was that great man.
** The
materialistic notion that because, in physics real or sensible motion is
impossible in pure space or vacuum, therefore, the eternal MOTION of and in
Cosmos (regarded as infinite Space) is a fiction -- only shows once more that
such words as "pure space," "pure Being," "the
Absolute," etc., of Eastern metaphysics have never been understood in the
West.
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explaining them,
or whether it be that it is in reality the only mode in which our minds as
contra-distinguished from our senses, are able to conceive material agencies,
certain it is that since the period at which the mystic notions of spiritual or
preternatural powers were applied to account for physical phenomena, all
hypotheses framed to explain them have resolved them into MOTION."
And then the
learned gentleman states a purely occult tenet:--
"The term
perpetual motion, which I have not infrequently used in these pages, is itself
equivocal. If the doctrines here advanced be well founded, all motion is, in
one sense, perpetual. In masses, whose motion is stopped by mutual concussion,
heat or motion of the particles is generated; and thus the motion continues, so
that if we could venture to extend such thoughts to the universe, we should
assume the same amount of motion affecting the same amount of matter for
ever."*
Thus, supposing
attraction or gravitation should be given up in favour of the Sun being a huge
magnet -- which is a theory already accepted by some physicists -- a magnet
that acts on the planets as attraction is now supposed to do, whereto, or how
much farther would it lead the astronomers from where they are now? Not an inch
farther. Kepler came to this "curious hypothesis" nearly 300 years
ago. He had not discovered the theory of attraction and repulsion in Kosmos,
for it was known from the days of Empedocles, the two opposite forces being
called by him "hate" and "love" -- which comes to the same
thing. But Kepler gave a pretty fair description of cosmic magnetism. That such
magnetism exists in nature, is as certain as that gravitation does not; not at
any rate, in the way in which it is taught by Science, which never took into
consideration the different modes in which the dual Force -- that Occultism
calls attraction and repulsion -- may act within our solar system, the earth's
atmosphere, and beyond in the Kosmos.** This was proven by Newton himself; for
there are many phenomena in our
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Correl.
Phys. Forces," p. 173. This is precisely what Occultism maintains, and on
the same principle that "where force is made to oppose force, and produce
static equilibrium, the balance of pre-existing equilibrium is affected, and
fresh motion is started equivalent to that which is withdrawn into a state of
abeyance." This process finds intervals in the pralaya, but is eternal and
ceaseless as the "Breath," even when the manifested Kosmos rests.
**
"Trans-solar space," writes the great Humboldt, "does not
hitherto show any phenomenon analogous to our solar system. It is a peculiarity
of our System, that matter should have condensed within it in nebulous rings,
the nuclei of which condense into earths and moons. I say again, heretofore,
nothing of the kind has ever been observed beyond our planetary system."
(See Revue Germanique of the 31st Dec. 1860, art. "Lettres et
conversations d'Alexandre Humboldt.") True, that since 1860 the nebular
theory has sprung up, and being better known, a few identical phenomena were
supposed to be observed beyond the solar system. Yet the great man is quite
right; and no earths or moons can be found -- except in appearance -- beyond,
or of the same order of matter as found in our system. Such is the Occult
teaching.
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Solar system,
which he confessed his inability to explain by the law of gravitation.
"Such were the uniformity in the directions of planetary movements, the
nearly circular forms of the orbits, and their remarkable conformity to one
plane" (Prof. Winchell). And if there is one single exception, then the
law of gravitation has no right to be referred to as an universal law.
"These adjustments," we are told, "Newton, in his general
Scholium, pronounces to be 'the work of an intelligent and all-powerful Being.'
" Intelligent that "Being" may be; as to
"all-powerful" there would be every reason to doubt the claim. A poor
"God" he, who would work upon minor details and leave the most
important to secondary forces! The poverty of the argument and logic in this
case, is surpassed only by that of Laplace, who, seeking very correctly to
substitute motion for Newton's "all-powerful Being," and ignorant of
the true nature of that eternal motion, saw in it a blind physical law.
"Might not those arrangements be an effect of the laws of motion?" he
asks, forgetting, as all our modern Scientists do, that this law and this
motion are a vicious circle, so long as the nature of both remains unexplained.
His famous answer to Napoleon: "Dieu est devenu une hypothese
inutile," would be correctly stated only by one who adhered to the
philosophy of the Vedantins. It becomes a pure fallacy, if we exclude the
interference of operating, intelligent, powerful (never
"all-powerful") Beings, who are called "gods."
But we would ask
the critics of the mediaeval astronomers why should Kepler be denounced as most
unscientific, for offering just the same solution as Newton did -- only showing
himself more sincere, more consistent and even more logical. Where may be the
difference between Newton's "all-powerful Being" and Kepler's
Rectores, his sidereal and Cosmic Forces, or Angels? Kepler is again criticised
for his "curious hypothesis which made use of a vortical movement within
the solar system;" for his theories in general, for his favouring
Empedocles' idea of attraction and repulsion, and "Solar magnetism"
in particular. Yet several modern men of Science, as will be shown -- Hunt (if
Metcalfe is to be excluded), Dr. Richardson, etc. -- favour the idea very
seriously. He is half excused, however, on the plea that "to the time of
Kepler no interaction between masses of matter had been distinctly recognized
which was generically different from magnetism" (World-Life). Is it
distinctly recognised now? Does Prof. Winchell claim for Science any serious
knowledge whatever of the natures of either electricity or magnetism -- except
that both seem to be the effects of some result arising from an undetermined
cause.
The ideas of
Kepler, weeded from their theological tendencies, are purely occult. He saw
that:
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(I.) The Sun is
a great Magnet.* This is what some eminent modern scientists and also the Occultists
believe in.
(II.) The Solar
substance is immaterial.** (See "Isis Unveiled," Vol. I. pp. 270 to
271.)
(III.) He
provided, for the constant motion and restoration of the Sun's energy and
planetary motion, the perpetual care of a spirit, or spirits. The whole of
Antiquity believed in this idea. The Occultists do not use the word Spirit, but
say Creative Forces, which they endow with intelligence. But we may call them
spirits also.
This theory is
tabooed a great deal more on account of the "Spirit" that is given
room in it, than of anything else. Herschell, the elder, believed in it
likewise, and so do several modern scientists also. Nevertheless Professor
Winchell declares that "a hypothesis more fanciful, and less in accord
with the requirements of physical principles, has not been offered in ancient
or modern times." (World-Life, p. 554.)
The same was
said, once upon a time, of the universal Ether, and now it is not only accepted
perforce but advocated as the only possible theory to explain away certain
mysteries.
Grove's ideas,
when he first enunciated them in London about 1840, were called as unscientific
as the above; nevertheless, his views on the correlation of forces are now
universally accepted. It would, very likely, require one more conversant with
science than is the writer, to combat with any success some of the now
prevailing ideas about gravitation and other similar "solutions" of
Cosmic Mysteries. But, let us recall a few objections that came from recognized
men of Science; from astronomers and physicists of eminence, who rejected the
theory of rotation, as well as that of gravitation. Thus one reads in the
French Encyclopaedia that "Science agrees, in the face of all its
representatives, that it is impossible to explain the physical origin of the
rotatory motion of the solar system."
If the question
is asked, "what causes rotation?" we are answered: "It is the
centrifugal Force." "And this force, what is it that produces
it?" "The force of rotation," is the grave answer. (Godefroy,
Cosmogonie de la Revelation.***) It will be well, perhaps, to examine both
these theories as being directly or indirectly connected.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* But see
Astronomie du Moyen Age, by Delambre.
** In the sense,
of course, of matter existing in states unknown to Science.
*** We shall be
taken to task for contradiction. It will be said that while we deny God, we
admit Souls and operative Spirits, and quote from Roman Catholic bigoted
writers in support of our argument. To this we reply: "We deny the
anthropomorphic god of the Monotheists, but never the Divine Principle in
nature. We combat Protestants and Roman Catholics on a number of dogmatic
theological beliefs of human and sectarian origin. We agree with them in their
belief in Spirits and intelligent operative powers, though we do not worship
"Angels" as the Roman Latinists do."
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V.
THE THEORIES OF
ROTATION IN SCIENCE.
CONSIDERING that
"final cause is pronounced a chimera, and the first Great Cause is
remanded to the Sphere of the Unknown," as a reverend gentleman justly complains,
the number of hypotheses put forward, a nebula in itself, is most remarkable.
The profane student is perplexed, and does not know in which of the theories of
exact science he has to believe. Here we have hypotheses enough for every taste
and power of brain. They are all extracted from a number of scientific volumes.
CURRENT
HYPOTHESES EXPLAINING THE ORIGIN OF ROTATION.
Rotation has
originated either --
(a) By the
collision of nebular masses wandering aimlessly in space; or by attraction,
"in cases where no actual impact takes place."
(b) "By the
tangential action of currents of nebulous matter (in the case of an amorphous
nebula) descending from higher to lower levels,* or simply by the action of the
central gravity of the mass."**
"It is a fundamental
principle in physics that no rotation could be generated in such a mass by the
action of its own parts. As well attempt to change the course of a steamer by
pulling at the deck railing," remarks to this Prof. Winchell in
"World-Life."
HYPOTHESES OF
THE ORIGIN OF THE SEVEN PLANETS AND COMETS.
(a) We owe the
birth of the Planets (1) to an explosion of the Sun -- a parturition of its
central mass;*** or (2) to some kind of disruption of the nebular rings.
(b) "The
Comets are strangers to our planetary system" (La Place). "The Comets
are undeniably generated in our Solar system" (Faye).
(c) The
"fixed stars are motionless" says one authority. . . . "All the
stars are actually in motion" answers another authority. . .
"Undoubtedly every star is in motion" (Wolf).
(d) "For
over 350,000,000 years, the slow and majestic movement of the Sun around its
axis has never for a moment ceased" (Panorama des Mondes, Le Couturier.)
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The terms "high"
and "low" being only relative to the position of the observer in
Space, any use of those terms tending to convey the impression that they stand
for abstract realities, is necessarily fallacious.
** Jacob Ennis,
"The Origin of the Stars," p. 221 et seq.
*** If such is
the case, how does Science explain the comparatively small size of the planets
nearest the Sun? The theory of meteoric aggregation is only a step farther from
truth than the nebular conception, and has not even the quality of the latter
-- its metaphysical element.
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(e) And
"the Sun having Alcyone in the Pleiades for the centre of its orbit,
consumes 180,000,000 of years in completing its revolution" (Maedler). And
also,
(f) That,
"the Sun has existed no more than 15,000,000 of years, and will emit heat
for no longer than 10,000,000 years more" (Sir W. Thomson's lecture on
"the latent dynamical theory regarding the probable origin, total amount
of heat, and duration of the Sun," 1887).
A few years ago
this eminent Scientist was telling the world that the time required for the
earth to cool from incipient incrustation to its present state, could not
exceed 80,000,000 years*; (Thomson and Tait, Natural Philosophy.) If the
encrusted age of the world is only 40 millions, or the half of the duration
once allowed, and the Sun's age only 15 millions, have we to understand that
the earth was at one time independent of the Sun?
Since the ages
of the Sun, planets, and the Earth, as stated in the many scientific hypotheses
of the astronomers and physicists, are given elsewhere (infra), we have said
enough to show the disagreement between the ministers of modern Science.
Whether we accept the fifteen million years of Sir W. Thomson or the thousand
millions of Mr. Huxley, for the rotational evolution of our solar system, it
will always come to this; by accepting self-generated rotation for the heavenly
bodies composed of inert matter and yet moved by their own internal motion, for
millions of years, this teaching of Science amounts to --
(a) An evident
denial of that fundamental physical law, which states that "a body in
motion tends constantly to inertia, (i.e., to continue in the same state of
motion or rest), unless it is stimulated into further action by a superior
active force."
(b.) To an
original impulse, which culminates in an unalterable motion, within a resisting
ether that NEWTON had declared incompatible with that motion.
(c.) Universal
gravity, which, we are taught, always tends to a centre in rectilinear descent
-- alone the cause of the revolution of the whole solar system, which is
performing an eternal double gyration, each body around its axis and orbit.
Another occasional version is:--
(d.) A magnet in
the Sun; or, the said revolution due to a magnetic force, which acts, just as
gravitation does, in a straight line -- varying inversely as the square of the
distance. (Coulomb's Law.)
(e.) The whole
acting under invariable and changeless laws, which are, nevertheless, often
shown variable, as during some well-known freaks
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* And even on
these figures Bischof disagrees with Thomson, and calculates that 350 million
years would be required for the earth to cool from a temperature of 20,000
degrees to 200 degrees centigrade. This is, also, the opinion of Helmholtz.
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of planets and
other bodies, as also when the Comets approach to or recede from the Sun.
(f.) A MOTOR
FORCE always proportionate to the mass it is acting upon; but independent of
the specific nature of that mass, to which it is proportionate; which amounts
to saying, as Le Couturier does, that, "without that Force independent
from and of quite another nature than the said mass, the latter, were it as
huge as Saturn, or as tiny as Ceres, would always fall with the same
rapidity" (Musee des Sciences, 15 August, 1857). A mass, furthermore,
which derives its weight from the body on which it weighs.
Thus neither
Laplace's perceptions of a solar atmospheric fluid, which would extend beyond
the orbits of the planets, nor Le Couturier's electricity, nor Foucault's heat
(Panorama des Mondes, p. 55), nor this, nor the other, can ever help any of the
numerous hypotheses about the origin and permanency of rotation to escape from
this squirrel's wheel, any more than the theory of gravity itself. This mystery
is the Procrustean bed of physical Science. If matter is, as now taught,
passive, the simplest movement cannot be said to be an essential property of
matter -- if the latter is simply an inert mass. How, then, can such a
complicated movement, compound and multiple, harmonious and equilibrated,
lasting in the eternities for millions and millions of years, be attributed
simply to its own inherent Force, unless the latter is an intelligence? A
physical will is something new -- a conception that the ancients would have
never entertained, indeed!*
"We talk of
the weight of the heavenly bodies," says an astronomer; "but since it
is recognised that weight decreases in proportion to the distance from the
centre, it becomes evident that, at a certain distance, that weight must be
forcibly reduced to Zero? Were there any attraction there would be equilibrium .
. . . And since the modern school recognizes neither a beneath nor an above in
universal space, it is not clear what should cause the Earth to fall, were
there even no gravitation, nor attraction." (Cosmographie.)
Methinks the
Count de Maistre was right in solving the question in his own theological way.
He cuts the Gordian knot by saying:-- "The
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* For over a
century all distinction between body and force is made away with. "Force
is but the property of a body in motion," say the physicists; and
"life -- the property of our animal organs -- is but the result of their
molecular arrangement," answer the physiologists. "In the bosom of
that aggregate which is named planet," teaches Littre, "are developed
all the forces immanent to matter . . . i.e., that matter possesses in itself
and through itself the forces that are proper to it . . . and which are
primary, not secondary. Such forces are the property of weight, the property of
electricity, of terrestrial magnetism, the property of life. . . . Every planet
can develop life . . . as earth, for instance, which had not always mankind on
it, and now bears (produit) men" . . . (Revue des Deux Mondes, July 15,
1860.)
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planets rotate
because they are made to rotate . . . . . and the modern physical system of the
universe is a physical impossibility." (Soirees.) For did not Herschell
say the same thing when he remarked that there is a will needed to impart a
circular motion, and another will to restrain it? (Discours, 165.) This shows
and explains how a retarded planet is cunning enough to calculate so well its
time as to hit off its arrival at the fixed minute. For, if Science sometimes
succeeds with its great ingenuity in explaining some of such stoppages,
retrograde motions, angles outside the orbits, &c., &c., by appearances
resulting from the inequality of their progress and ours in the course of our
mutual and respective orbits, we still know that there are others, and
"very real and considerable deviations," according to Herschell,
"which cannot be explained except by the mutual and irregular action of
those planets and by the perturbing influence of the Sun."
We understand,
however, that there are, besides those little and accidental perturbations,
continuous perturbations called "secular" -- because of the extreme
slowness with which the irregularity increases and affects the relations of the
elliptic movement -- and that these perturbations can be corrected. From
Newton, who found that this world needed repairing very often, down to Reynaud,
all say the same. In his Ciel et Terre (p. 28), the latter speaks of --
". . . . .
The orbits described by the planets as being very far from immutable; on the
contrary, subject to a perpetual mutation in their position and form," --
all prove gravitation and the peripatetic laws to be as negligent as they are
quick to repair their mistakes. The charge as it stands seems to be that
"they (the orbits) are alternately widening and narrowing, their great
axis lengthens and diminishes, or oscillates at the same time from right to
left around the Sun, the plane itself, in which they are situated, raising and
lowering itself periodically while pivoting around itself with a kind of
tremor. . . ."
To this, De
Mirville, who believes in intelligent "workmen" ruling invisibly the
solar system -- as we do -- observes very wittily* . . . . . "Voila
certes, a voyage which has little in it of mechanical rigour; at the utmost,
one could compare it to a steamer, pulled to and fro and tossed on the waves,
retarded or accelerated, all and each of which impediments might put off its
arrival indefinitely, were there not the intelligences of a pilot and engineers
to catch up the time lost, and to repair the damages. . . . ."
The law of
gravity, however, seems to be becoming an obsolete law in starry heaven. At any
rate those long-haired sidereal radicals, called comets, appear to be very poor
respecters of the majesty of that law,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Deuxieme
memoire, "Manifestations Historiques," p. 272.
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and to beard it
quite impudently. Nevertheless, and though presenting in nearly every respect
"phenomena not yet fully understood," comets and meteors are credited
by the believers in modern Science with obeying the same laws and consisting of
the same matter, "as the Suns, stars and nebulae," and even "the
earth and its inhabitants." (Laing's "Modern Science and Modern
Thought.")
This is what one
might call taking things on trust, aye, even to blind faith. But exact Science
is not to be questioned, and he who rejects the hypotheses imagined by her
students -- gravitation, for instance -- would be regarded as an ignorant fool
for it; yet we are told by the just cited author a queer legend from the
scientific annals. "The comet of 1811 had a tail 120 millions of miles in
length and 25 millions of miles in diameter at the widest part, while the
diameter of the nucleus was about 127,000 miles, more than ten times that of
the earth." He tells us, "in order that bodies of this magnitude,
passing near the earth, should not affect its motion or change the length of
the year by even a single second, their actual substance must be inconceivably
rare. . . ." It must be so indeed, yet:--
". . . . .
The extreme tenuity of a comet's mass is also proved by the phenomenon of the
tail, which, as the comet approaches the sun, is thrown out sometimes to a
length of 90 millions of miles in a few hours. And what is remarkable, THIS
TAIL IS THROWN OUT AGAINST THE FORCE OF GRAVITY by some repulsive force,
probably electrical, so that it always points away from the Sun (!!!) And yet,
thin as the matter of comets must be, IT OBEYS THE COMMON LAW OF GRAVITY (!?),
and whether the comet revolves in an orbit within that of the outer planets, or
shoots off into the abysses of Space, and returns only after hundreds of years,
its path is, at each instant, regulated by the same force as that which causes
an apple to fall to the ground." (Ibid, p. 17.)
Science is like
Caesar's wife, and must not be suspected -- this is evident. But it can be
respectfully criticised, nevertheless. At all events, it may be reminded that
"the apple" is a dangerous fruit. For the second time in the history
of mankind, it may become the cause of the FALL -- this time, of
"exact" Science. A comet whose tail defies the law of gravity right
in the Sun's face can hardly be credited with obeying that law.
In a series of
scientific works on Astronomy and the nebular theory, written between 1865 and
1866, the present writer, a poor tyro in Science, has counted in a few hours,
no less than thirty-nine contradictory hypotheses offered as explanations for
the self-generated, primitive rotatory motion of the heavenly bodies. The
writer is no astronomer, no mathematician, no scientist; but was obliged to
examine these errors in defence of Occultism, in general, and what is still
more
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important, in
order to support the occult teachings concerning astronomy and Cosmology.
Occultists were threatened with terrible penalties for questioning scientific
truths. But now they feel braver -- Science is less secure in its
"impregnable" position than they were led to expect, and many of its
strongholds are built on very shifting sands.
Thus, even this
poor and unscientific examination of it was useful, and it was certainly very
instructive. We have learned a good many things, in fact, having studied with
particular care especially those astronomical data that would be the most
likely to clash with our heterodox and "superstitious" beliefs.
So, for
instance, we have found there, concerning gravitation, the axial and orbital
motions, that synchronous movement having been once overcome, in the early
stage -- it was enough to originate a rotatory motion till the end of
Manvantara. We have also come to know in all the aforesaid combinations of
possibilities with regard to incipient rotation -- most complicated in every
case, -- some of the causes to which it may have been due, as well as some others
to which it ought and should have been due, but, in some way or other, was not.
Among other things, we were informed that incipient rotation may be provoked
with equal ease in a mass in igneous fusion, and in one that is characterised
by glacial opacity ("Heaven and Earth"). That gravitation is a law
which nothing can overcome, but which, nevertheless, is overcome in and out of
season by the most ordinary celestial or terrestrial bodies -- the tails of
impudent comets, for instance. That we owe the universe to the holy creative
Trinity, called Inert Matter, Senseless Force and Blind Chance. Of the real
essence and nature of any of these three, Science knows nothing, but this is a
trifling detail. Ergo, we are told that, when a mass of cosmic or nebular matter
-- whose nature is unknown (entirely so), and which may be in a state of fusion
(Laplace), or dark and cold (Thomson), for "this intervention of heat is
itself a pure hypothesis" (Faye) -- decides to exhibit its mechanical
energy under the form of rotation, it acts in this wise. It (the mass) either
bursts into spontaneous conflagration, or it remains inert, tenebrous, and
frigid, both states being equally capable of sending it, without any adequate
cause, spinning through space for millions of years. Its movements may be
retrograde and they may be direct, about a hundred various reasons being
offered for both motions, in about as many hypotheses. Anyhow, joining the maze
of stars, whose origin belongs to the same miraculous and spontaneous order --
for "the nebular theory does not profess to discover the origin of things,
but only a stadium in material history" (Winchell: World-Life) -- those
millions of suns, planets, and satellites, composed of inert matter, will whirl
on in most impressive and majestic symmetry around the firmament, moved
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and guided only,
their inertia notwithstanding, "by their own internal motion."
Shall we wonder
after this if learned mystics, pious Roman Catholics, and even such learned
astronomers as were Chaubard and Godefroy,* have preferred the Kabala and the
ancient systems to the modern dreary and contradictory exposition of the
Universe? The Zohar makes a distinction, at any rate, between "the
hajaschar ("the light Forces"), the hachoser ("Reflected
Lights"), and the simple phenomenal exteriority of their spiritual
types." (See Kabala Denudata, II, 67.)
The question of
"gravity" may now be dismissed, and other hypotheses examined. That
physical Science knows nothing of "Forces" is clear. We may close the
argument, however, by calling to our help one more man of Science -- Professor
Jaumes, Member of the Academy of Medicine at Montpellier. Says this learned
man, speaking of Forces:--
"A cause is
that which is essentially acting in the genealogy of phenomena, in every
production as in every modification. I said that activity (or Force) was
invisible. . . . To suppose it corporeal and residing in the properties of
matter would be a gratuitous hypothesis. . . To reduce all the causes to God. .
. . would amount to embarrassing oneself with a hypothesis hostile to many
verities. But to speak of a plurality of forces proceeding from the Deity and
possessing inherent powers of their own, is not unreasonable. . . . and I am
disposed to admit phenomena produced by intermediate agents called Forces or
Secondary Agents. The distinction of Forces is the principle of the division of
Sciences; so many real and separate forces, so many mother-Sciences. . . . No:
Forces are not suppositions and abstractions, but realities, and the only
acting realities whose attributes can be determined with the help of direct
observation and induction." ("Sur la distinction des Forces,"
published in the Memoires de l'Academie des Sciences de Montpellier, Vol. II.,
fasc. I., 1854.)
--------------
VI.
THE MASKS OF
SCIENCE.
PHYSICS OR
METAPHYSICS?
IF there is
anything on earth like progress, Science will some day have to give up, nolens
volens, such monstrous ideas as her physical, self-guiding laws -- void of soul
and Spirit, -- and then turn to the occult teachings.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* L'Univers
explique par la Revelation, and Cosmogonie de la Revelation. But see De
Mirville's Deuxieme Memoire. The author, a terrible enemy of Occultism, was yet
one who wrote great truths.
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It has done so
already, however altered are the title-page and revised editions of the
Scientific Catechism. It is now over half a century since, in comparing modern
with ancient thought, it has been found that, however different our philosophy
may appear from that of our ancestors, it is, nevertheless, composed only of
additions and subtractions taken from the old philosophy and transmitted drop
by drop through the filter of antecedents.
This fact was
well known to Faraday, and other eminent men of Science. Atoms, Ether,
evolution itself -- all comes to modern Science from ancient notions, all is based
on the conceptions of the archaic nations. "Conceptions" for the
profane, under the shape of allegories; plain truths taught during the
Initiations to the elect, which truths have been partially divulged through
Greek writers and have descended to us. This does not mean that Occultism has
ever had the same views on matter, atoms and ether as found in the exotericism
of the classical Greek writers. Yet, if we believe Mr. Tyndall, even Faraday
was an Aristotelean, and an Agnostic more than a materialist. In his
"Faraday, as a Discoverer" (p. 123) the author shows the great
physicist using "old reflections of Aristotle" which are
"concisely found in some of his works." Faraday, Boscovitch, and all
others, however, who see, in the atoms and molecules, "centres of
force," and in the corresponding element force, an ENTITY BY ITSELF, are
far nearer the truth, perchance, than those, who, denouncing them, denounce at
the same time the "old corpuscular Pythagorean theory" (one, by the
way, which has never passed to posterity as the great philosopher really taught
it), on the ground of its "delusion that the conceptual elements of matter
can be grasped as separate and real entities."
The chief and
most fatal mistake and fallacy made by Science, in the view of the Occultists,
lies in the idea of the possibility of such a thing as inorganic, or dead
matter, in nature. Is anything dead or inorganic capable of transformation or
change? Occultism asks. And is there anything under the sun which remains
immutable or changeless?
This fallacy is
nowhere better illustrated than in the scientific work of a German savant,
Professor Philip Spiller (Der Weltaether als Kosmische Kraft). In this
cosmological treatise, the author attempts to prove that "no material
constituent of a body, no atom, is in itself originally endowed with force, but
that every such atom is absolutely dead,* and without any power to act at a
distance" (p. 4).
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Something dead
implies that it had been at some time living. When, at what period of
cosmogony? Occultism says that in all cases when matter appears inert, it is
the most active. A wooden or a stone block is motionless and impenetrable to
all intents and purposes. Nevertheless, and de facto, its particles are in
ceaseless eternal vibration which is so rapid that to the physical eye the body
seems absolutely devoid of motion; [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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This statement,
however, does not prevent Spiller from enunciating an occult doctrine and
principle. He asserts the independent substantiality of force, and shows it as
an "incorporeal stuff" (unkoerperlicher stoff) or substance. Now
substance is not matter in metaphysics, and for argument's sake it may be
granted that it is a wrong expression to use. But this is due to the poverty of
European languages, and especially to that of scientific terms. Then this
"stuff" is identified and connected by Spiller with the aether.
Expressed in occult language it might be said with more correctness that this
"force-substance" is the ever-active phenomenal positive aether --
prakriti; while the omnipresent all pervading ether is the noumenon of the
former, the substratum of all, or Akasa. Nevertheless, Stallo falls foul of
Spiller, as he does of the materialists. He is accused of "utter disregard
of the fundamental correlation of force and matter" (of neither of which
Science knows anything certain). For this "hypostasized half-concept"
is, in the view of all other physicists, not only imponderable, but destitute
of cohesive, chemical, thermal, electric, and magnetic forces -- of all of
which forces -- according to occultism -- aether is the source and cause.
Therefore
Spiller, with all his mistakes, exhibits more intuition than any other modern
Scientist, with the exception of Dr. Richardson, perhaps, the theorist on the "nerve
force," or Nervous Ether, also on "Sun Force and Earth Force."*
For AETHER, in Esotericism, is the very quintessence of all possible energy,
and it is certainly to this universal agent (composed of many agents) that all
the manifestations of energy in the material, psychic and spiritual worlds are
due.
What are
Electricity and Light, in fact? How can Science know that one is a fluid and
the other a "mode of motion"? Why is it not made clear why a
difference should be made between them, since both are considered
force-correlations. Electricity is a fluid, we are told, immaterial and
non-molecular (though Helmholtz thinks otherwise), and the proof of it is that
we can bottle it up, accumulate and store it away. Then, it must be simply
matter, and no peculiar "fluid." Nor is it only "a mode of
motion," for motion could hardly be stored in a Leyden jar. As for light,
it is a still more extraordinary "mode of motion;" since,
"marvellous as it may appear, light (also) can actually be stored up for
use," as demonstrated by Professor Grove nearly half a century ago.
"Take an
engraving which has been kept for some days in the dark, expose it to full
sunshine -- that is, insulate it for 15 minutes; lay it on
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] and the spacial distance between those particles
in their vibratory motion is -- considered from another plane of being and
perception -- as great as that which separates snow flakes or drops of rain.
But to physical science this will be an absurdity.
* See
"Popular Science Review," Vol. V., pp. 329-34.
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sensitive paper
in a dark place, and at the end of 24 hours it will have left an impression of
itself on the sensitive paper, the whites coming out as blacks. . . . There
seems to be no limit for the reproduction of engravings, etc., etc. . . .
."
What is it that
remains fixed, nailed, so to say, on the paper? It is a Force certainly, that
fixed the thing, but what is that thing, the residue of which remains on the
paper?
Our learned men
will get out of this through some scientific technicality; but what is it that
is intercepted, so as to imprison a certain quantity of it on glass, paper, or
wood? Is it "Motion" or is it "Force"? Or shall we be told
that what remains behind is the effect only of the force or Motion? Then what
is this Force? Force or energy is a quality; but every quality must belong to a
something, or a somebody. In Physics, Force is defined as "that which
changes or tends to change any physical relation between bodies, whether
mechanical, thermal, chemical, electrical, magnetic, etc." But it is not
that "Force" or that "Motion" which remains behind on the
paper, when the Force or Motion has ceased to act; and yet something, which our
physical senses cannot perceive, has been left there to become a cause in its
turn and produce effects. What is it? It is not matter, as defined by Science
-- i.e., matter in any of its known states. An Alchemist would say it was a
spiritual secretion -- and would be laughed at. But yet, when the physicist
said that Electricity, stored up, was a fluid, or that light fixed on paper is
still Sunlight -- this is Science.* In the opinion of an experienced Occultist,
one who has verified the whole series of Nidanas, of causes and effects that
finally project their last effect on to this our plane of manifestations; one
who has traced matter back to its noumenon, the explanation of the physicist is
like calling anger, or its effects -- the exclamation provoked by it -- a
secretion or a fluid, and man, the cause of it -- its material conductor. But,
as Grove prophetically remarked, that day is fast approaching when it will be
confessed that the "forces" we know of are but the phenomenal
manifestations of realities we know nothing about, -- but which were known to
the ancients and -- by them worshipped.
He made one
still more suggestive remark, however, which ought to have become the motto of
Science, but has not. Sir W. Grove said that "SCIENCE SHOULD HAVE NEITHER
DESIRES NOR PREJUDICES. TRUTH SHOULD BE HER SOLE AIM."
Meanwhile, in our
days, Scientists are more self-opinionated and bigoted than even the clergy.
For they minister to, if they do not actually worship,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The newest
Authorities have rejected these explanations as "exploded theories,"
and have now deified "Motion" as their sole Idol. But, surely, they
and their idol will one day share the fate of their predecessors.
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"Force-Matter,"
which is their Unknown God. And how unknown it is may be inferred from the many
confessions of the most eminent physicists and biologists, with Faraday at their
head. Not only, he said, could he never presume to pronounce whether Force was
a property or function of Matter, but he actually did not know what was meant
by the word matter.
There was a
time, he added, when he believed he knew something of matter. But the more he
lived, and the more carefully he studied it, the more he became convinced of
his utter ignorance of the nature of matter.* (See Buckwell's "Electric
Science.")
The Occultists
are often misunderstood because, for lack of better terms, they apply to the
essence of Force under certain aspects the descriptive epithet of substance.
Now the names for the varieties of "substance" on different planes of
perception and being are legion. Eastern Occultism has a special appellation
for each kind; but Science -- like England, in the recollection of a witty
Frenchman, blessed with thirty-six religions and only one fish-sauce -- has but
one name for all, namely, "Substance." Moreover, neither the orthodox
physicists nor their critics seem to be very certain of their premises, and are
as apt to confuse the effects as they do the causes. It is incorrect, for
instance, to say, as Stallo does, that "matter can no more be realized or
conceived as mere spacial presence than as a concretion of forces," or
that "force is nothing without mass, and mass is nothing without
force" -- for one is the noumenon and the other the phenomenon. Again;
Schelling, when saying that "It is a mere delusion of the phantasy that
something, we know not what, remains after we have denuded an object of all the
predicates belonging to it"** -- could never have applied the remark to
the realm of transcendental metaphysics. It is true that pure force is nothing
in the world of physics; it is ALL in the domain of Spirit. Says Stallo: "If
we reduce the mass upon which a given force, however small, acts to its limit
zero -- or, mathematically expressed, until it becomes infinitely small -- the
consequence is that the velocity of the resulting motion is infinitely great,
and that the 'thing' . . . is at any given moment neither here nor there, but
everywhere -- that there is no
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This ominous
confession was made, we believe, at a Scientific Congress at Swansea. Faraday
held a similar opinion, however, as stated by Tyndall: "What do we know of
the atom apart from its force? You imagine a nucleus which may be called a and
surround it by forces which may be called m; to my mind the a or nucleus
vanishes and the substance consists of the powers m. And, indeed, what notion
can we form of the nucleus independent of its powers? What thought remains on
which to hang the imagination of an a independent of the acknowledged
forces?"
** Schelling,
"Ideen," etc., p. 18.
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real presence;
it is impossible, therefore, to construct matter by a synthesis of forces"
(p. 161).
This may be true
in the phenomenal world, inasmuch as the illusive reflection of the one reality
of the supersensual world may appear true to the dwarfed conceptions of a
materialist. It is absolutely incorrect when the argument is applied to things,
in what the Kabalists call the supermundane spheres. Inertia, so called,
"is force" according to Newton (Princ. Def. iii.), and for the
student of Esoteric Sciences the greatest of the occult forces. A body may be
considered divorced from its relations with other bodies -- which, according to
physical and mechanical sciences, give rise to its attributes -- only
conceptually, only on this plane of illusion. In fact, it can never be so
detached: death itself being unable to detach it from its relation with the
Universal forces, of which the one FORCE or LIFE is the synthesis: but simply
continues such inter-relation on another plane. But what, if Stallo is right,
can Dr. James Croll mean when, in speaking "On the Transformation of
Gravity" (Philosophical Magazine, Vol. II., p. 252), he brings forward the
views advocated by Faraday, Waterston, and others? For he says very plainly
that gravity --
". . . . .
is a force pervading Space external to bodies, and that, on the mutual approach
of the bodies, the force is not increased, as is generally supposed, but the
bodies merely pass into a place where the force exists with greater intensity.
. . . ."
No one will deny
that a force (whether gravity, electricity, or any other force) which exists
outside of the bodies and in open space -- be it ether or vacuum -- must be
something, and not a pure nothing, when conceived apart from a mass? Otherwise
it could hardly exist in one place with a greater and in another with reduced
"intensity." G. A. Hirn declares the same in his Theorie Mecanique de
l'Univers. He tries to demonstrate that the atom of the chemists is not an
entity of pure convention, or simply an explicative device, but that it exists
really, that its volume is unalterable, and that consequently it is not elastic
(!!). "Force, therefore, is not in the atom; it is in the space which
separates the atoms from each other."
The above-cited
views, expressed by two men of Science of great eminence in their respective
countries, show that it is not in the least unscientific to speak of the
substantiality of the so-called Forces. Subject to some future specific name,
this force is substance of some kind, and can be nothing else; and perhaps one
day Science will be the first to re-adopt the derided name of phlogiston.
Whatever may be the future name given to it, to maintain that force does not
reside in the atoms, but only in "space between them," may be
scientific enough; nevertheless it is not true. To the mind of an Occultist it
is like saying
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that water does
not reside in the drops of which the ocean is composed, but only in the space
between those drops!
The objection
made that there are two distinct schools of physicists, by one of which
"the force is assumed to be an independent substantial entity, which is
NOT a property of matter nor is it essentially related to matter,"* is
hardly likely to help the profane to any clearer understanding. It is, on the
contrary, still more calculated to throw the question into greater confusion
than ever. For Force is, then, neither this nor the other. By viewing it as
"an independent substantial entity," the theory extends the right
hand of fellowship to Occultism, while the strange contradictory idea that it
is not related to matter "otherwise than by its power to act upon
it,"** leads physical science to the most absurd contradictory hypotheses.
Whether "force" or "motion," (Occultism, seeing no
difference between the two, never attempts to separate them) it cannot act for
the adherents of the atomo-mechanical theory one way, and for those of the
rival school in another way. Nor can the atoms be, in one case, absolutely
uniform in size and weight, and in another, vary in their weight (Avogadro's
law). For, in the words of the same able critic,
. . .
"While the absolute equality of the primordial units of mass is thus an
essential part of the very foundations of the mechanical theory, the whole
modern Science of chemistry is based upon a principle directly subversive of it
-- a principle of which it has recently been said that 'it holds the same place
in chemistry that the law of gravitation does in astronomy.'*** This principle
is known as the law of Avogadro or Ampere."****
This shows that
either modern chemistry or modern physics is entirely wrong in its respective
fundamental principles. For if the assumption of atoms of different specific
gravities on the basis of the atomic theory in physics is deemed absurd, and
chemistry meets, nevertheless, on its opposite basis (in the question of the
formation and transformation of chemical compounds) with "unfailing
experimental verification,"
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Concepts
of Modern Physics," xxxi., Introductory to the 2nd edition.
** Loc. cit.
*** J. P. Cooke,
The New Chemistry, p. 13.
**** "It imports
that equal volumes of all substances, when in the gaseous state, and under like
conditions of pressure and temperature, contain the same number of molecules --
whence it follows that the weights of the molecules are proportional to the
specific gravities of the gases; that therefore, these being different, the
weights of the molecules are different also; and inasmuch as the molecules of
certain elementary substances are monatomic (consist of but one atom each)
while the molecules of various other substances contain the same number of
atoms, that the ultimate atoms of such substances are of different
weights" (Concepts of Modern Physics, p. 34). As shown further on in the
same volume, this cardinal principle of modern theoretical chemistry is in
utter and irreconcilable conflict with the first proposition of the
atomo-mechanical theory -- namely, the absolute equality of the primordial
units of mass.
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then it becomes
apparent that it is the atomo-mechanical theory which is untenable. The
explanations of the latter, that "the differences of weight are only
differences of density, and differences of density are differences of distance
between the particles contained in a given space," are not really valid,
because, before a physicist can argue in his defence that, "as in the atom
there is no multiplicity of particles and no void space: hence differences of
density or weight are impossible in the case of atoms," he must first know
what an atom is, in reality, and that he cannot know. He must bring it under
the observation of at least one of his physical senses -- and that he cannot do:
for the simple reason that no one has ever seen, smelt, heard, touched or
tasted an "atom." The atom belongs wholly to the domain of
metaphysics. It is an entified abstraction -- at any rate for physical Science
-- and has nought to do with physics, strictly speaking, as it can never be
brought to the test of retort or balance. The mechanical conception, therefore,
becomes a jumble of the most conflicting theories and dilemmas, in the minds of
the many Scientists who disagree on this, as on other subjects; the evolution
of which the Eastern Occultist, who follows this scientific strife, beholds in
the greatest bewilderment.
To conclude on
the question of gravity. How can Science presume to know anything certain of
it? How can it maintain its position and its hypotheses against those of the
Occultists, who see in gravity only sympathy and antipathy, or attraction and
repulsion, caused by physical polarity on our terrestrial plane, and by
spiritual causes outside of its influence? How can they disagree with the
Occultists before they agree among themselves? Indeed one hears of the
conservation of energy, and in the same breath of the perfect hardness and
inelasticity of the atoms; of the Kinetic theory of gases being identical with
"potential energy," so called; and, at the same time, of the
elementary units of mass being absolutely hard and inelastic! An Occultist
opens a scientific work and reads as follows:--
"Physical
atomism derives all the qualitative properties of matter from the forms of
atomic motion. The atoms themselves remain as elements utterly devoid of
property." (Wundt, "Die Theorie der Materie," p. 381.)
And further:
"Chemistry
in its ultimate form must be atomic mechanics." (Nazesmann,
"Thermochemie," p. 150.)
And a moment
after he is told that:
"Gases
consist of atoms which behave like solid, perfectly elastic spheres."
(Kroenig, Clausius, Maxwell, etc., Philosophical Magazine, Vol. XIX., p. 18.)
Finally, to
crown all, Sir W. Thomson is found declaring that:
"We are forbidden
by the modern theory of the conservation of
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energy to assume
inelasticity, or anything short of perfect elasticity of the ultimate molecules
whether of ultra mundane or mundane matter." (!!!) ("Philosophical
Magazine," p. 321, loc. cit.)
But what do the
men of true Science say to all this? By the "men of true Science" we
mean those who care too much for truth and too little for their personal vanity
to dogmatise on anything, as the majority do. There are several among them --
perhaps more than dare publish openly their secret conclusions for fear of the
cry "Stone him to death!" -- men, whose intuitions have made them
span the abyss that lies between the terrestrial aspect of matter, and the --
to us, on our plane of illusion -- subjective, i.e., TRANSCENDENTALLY OBJECTIVE
SUBSTANCE, and led them to proclaim the existence of the latter. Matter, to the
Occultist, it must be remembered, is that totality of existences in the Kosmos,
which falls within any of the planes of possible perception. We are but too
well aware that the orthodox theories of sound, heat and light, are against the
occult doctrines. But, it is not enough for the men of Science, or their
defenders, to say that they do not deny dynamic power to light and heat; and
urge as a proof the fact that Mr. Crookes' radiometer has unsettled no views.
If they would fathom the ultimate nature of these Forces, they have first to
admit their substantial nature, however supersensuous. Neither do the
Occultists deny the correctness of the vibratory theory.* Only they limit its
functions to our Earth -- declaring its inadequacy on other planes than ours,
since "Masters" in the Occult Sciences perceive the CAUSES that
produce ethereal vibrations. Were all these only the fictions of the
alchemists, or dreams of the Mystics, such men as Paracelsus, Philalethes, Van
Helmont, and so many others, would have to be regarded as worse than
visionaries: they would become impostors and deliberate mystificators.
The Occultists
are taken to task for calling the Cause of light, heat, sound, cohesion,
magnetism, etc., etc., a substance.** Mr. Clerk Maxwell has stated that the
pressure of strong sunlight on a square mile is about 3 1/4 lbs. It is, they
are told, "the energy of the myriad ether waves;" and when they call
it a "substance" impinging on that area, their explanation is proclaimed
unscientific.
There is no
justification for such an accusation. In no way -- as stated
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Referring to
the Aura, one of the Masters says in the "Occult World," "How
could you make yourself understood by, command in fact, those semi-intelligent
forces, whose means of communication with us are not through spoken words but
through sounds and colours in correlation between the vibrations of the
two." It is this "correlation" that is unknown to modern
Science, yet was many times explained by the Alchemists.
** The
"substance" of the Occultist, however, is to the most refined
substance of the physicist, what radiant matter is to the leather of the
Chemist's boots.
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more than once
before now -- do the Occultists dispute the explanations of Science, as
affording a solution of the immediate objective agencies at work. Science only
errs in believing that, because it has detected in vibratory waves the
proximate cause of these phenomena, it has, therefore, revealed ALL that lies
beyond the threshold of Sense. It merely traces the sequence of phenomena on a
plane of effects, illusory projections from the region that Occultism has long
since penetrated. And the latter maintains that those etheric tremors, are not,
as asserted by Science, set up by the vibrations of the molecules of known
bodies -- the matter of our terrestrial objective consciousness, -- but that we
must seek for the ultimate causes of light, heat, etc., etc., in MATTER
existing in super-sensuous states -- states, however, as fully objective to the
spiritual eye of man, as a horse or a tree is to the ordinary mortal. Light and
heat are the ghost or shadow of matter in motion. Such states can be perceived
by the SEER or the Adept during the hours of trance, under the Sushumna ray --
the first of the Seven Mystic rays of the Sun.*
Thus, we put
forward the Occult teaching which maintains the reality of a supersubstantial
and supersensible essence of that Akasa (not ether, which is only an aspect of
the latter), the nature of which cannot be inferred from its remoter
manifestations -- its merely phenomenal phalanx of effects -- on this terrene
plane. Science, on the contrary, informs us that heat can never be regarded as
matter in any conceivable state.** We are also told that the two great
obstacles to the fluid (?) theory of heat undoubtedly are:--
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The names of
the Seven Rays -- which are, Sushumna, Harikesa, Viswakarman, Viswatryarchas,
Sannaddha, Sarvavasu and Swaraj -- are all mystical, and each has its distinct
application in a distinct state of consciousness, for occult purposes. The
Sushumna, which, as said in the Nirukta (11, 6), is only to light up the moon,
is the ray nevertheless cherished by the initiated Yogis. The totality of the
Seven Rays spread through the Solar system constitute, so to say, the physical
Upadhi (basis) of the Ether of Science; in which Upadhi, light, heat,
electricity, etc., etc., -- the forces of orthodox science -- correlate to
produce their terrestrial effects. As psychic and spiritual effects, they
emanate from, and have their origin in, the supra-solar Upadhi, in the ether of
the Occultist -- or Akasa.
** To cite a
most impartial critic, one whose authority no one can call in question, as a
reminder to Western Dogmatists, that the question cannot be in any way
considered as settled: "There is no fundamental difference between light
and heat . . . each is merely a metamorphosis of the other. . . . Heat is light
in complete repose. Light is heat in rapid motion. Directly light is combined
with a body, it becomes heat; but when it is thrown off from that body it again
becomes light." (Leslie's Fluid Theory of Light and Heat.) "Whether
this is true or false we cannot tell, and many years, perhaps many generations,
will have to elapse before we shall be able to tell." (Buckle's History of
Civilization, Vol. III., p. 384.)
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(1.) The
production of heat by friction -- excitation of molecular motions.
(2.) The
conversion of heat into mechanical motion.
The answer given
is: There are fluids of various kinds. Electricity is called a fluid, and so
was heat quite recently, but it was on the supposition that heat was some
imponderable substance. This was during the supreme and autocratic reign of
matter. When the latter was dethroned, and MOTION was proclaimed the sole
sovereign ruler of the Universe, heat became "a mode of motion." We
need not despair: it may become something else to-morrow. Like the Universe
itself, Science is ever becoming, and can never say, "I am that I
am." On the other hand, Occult Science has its changeless traditions from
prehistoric times. It may err in particulars; it can never become guilty of a
mistake in questions of Universal laws, simply because that Science, justly
referred to by philosophy as the "divine," was born on higher planes,
and was brought on Earth by beings who were wiser than man will be, even in the
seventh Race of his Seventh Round. And that Science maintains that Forces are
not what modern learning would have them; e.g., Magnetism is not a "mode
of motion"; and, in this particular case, at least, exact "modern Science"
is sure to come to grief some day. Nothing, at the first blush, can appear more
ridiculous, more outrageously absurd than to say, for instance: "the Hindu
initiated Yogi knows really ten times more than the greatest European physicist
of the ultimate nature and constitution of light -- both solar and lunar."
Yet why is the Sushumna ray believed to be that ray which furnishes the moon
with its borrowed light? Why is it "the ray cherished by the initiated
Yogi?" Why is the moon held as the deity of the mind, by those Yogis? We
say, because light, or rather all its occult properties, every combination and
correlation of it with other forces, mental, psychic, and spiritual, were
perfectly known to the old adepts.
Therefore,
although, in its knowledge of the ultimate constitution of matter, or in the
so-called ultimate analysis as opposed to the proximate in chemistry, occult
science may be less well-informed as to the behaviour of compound elements in
various cases of physical correlations: still, it is immeasurably higher in its
knowledge of the ultimate occult states of matter, and of the true nature of
matter, than all the physicists and chemists of our modern day put together.
Now, if we state
the truth openly and in full sincerity, namely, that the ancient Initiates had
a far wider knowledge of physics -- as a Science of Nature -- than our
Academies of Science, all taken together, possess, the statement will be
characterized as an impertinence and an absurdity; for physical sciences are
considered to have been carried in our age to the apex of perfection. Hence,
the twitting query -- "Can
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the Occultists
meet successfully the two points, namely (a) the production of heat by friction
-- excitation of molecular motions; and (b) the conversion of heat into
mechanical force, if they hold to the old "exploded" theory of heat
being a substance or a fluid?"
To answer the
question, it must first be observed that the Occult Sciences do not regard
either electricity or any of the forces supposed to be generated by it, as
matter, in any of the states known to physical Science; to put it more clearly,
none of these "forces," so-called, are either solids, gases, or
fluids. If it did not look pedantic, an Occultist would even object to
electricity being called a fluid -- as it is an effect and not a cause. But its
noumenon, he would say, is a conscious cause. The same in the cases of
"Force" and the "Atom." Let us see what an eminent
Academician, Butlerof, the chemist, had to say about these two abstractions.
--------------
"What is
Force?" argues this great man of Science, "what is it from a strictly
scientific stand-point, and as warranted by the law of conservation of energy?
Conceptions of Force are resumed by our conceptions of this, that, or another
mode of motion." Force is thus simply the passage of one state of motion
into another state of the same: of electricity, into heat and light, of heat
into sound or some mechanical function, and so on.* The first time electric
fluid was produced by man on earth it must have been by friction; hence, as
well-known, it is heat that produces it by disturbing its laya state,** and
electricity exists no more on earth per se than heat or light, or any other
force. They are all correlations, as science says. "When a given quantity
of heat, assisted by a steam engine, is transformed into mechanical work, we
speak of steam power (or force). When a falling body strikes an obstacle in its
way, thereby generating heat and sound -- we call it the power of collision.
When electricity decomposes water or heats a platinum wire, we speak of the
force of the electric fluid. When the rays of the sun are intercepted by the
thermometer bulb and its quicksilver expands, we speak of the calorific energy
of the sun. In short, when one state of a determined quantity of motion ceases,
another state of motion equivalent to the preceding takes its place, and the
result of such a transformation or correlation is -- force. In all cases where
such a transformation, or the passage of one state of motion into another, is
entirely absent, there no force is possible. Let us admit for a moment an
absolutely homogeneous state of the Universe, and our conception of force falls
down to nought."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* On the plane
of manifestation and illusionary matter it may be so; not that it is nothing
more, for it is vastly more.
** Neutral, or
zero.
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"Therefore
it becomes evident that the force, which materialism considers as the cause of
the diversity that surrounds us, is in sober reality only an effect, a result
of that diversity. From such point of view force is not the cause of motion,
but a result, while the cause of that force, or forces, is not the substance or
matter, but motion itself. Matter thus must be laid aside and with it the basic
principle of materialism, which has become unnecessary, as force brought down
to a state of motion can give no idea of the substance. If force is the result
of motion, then it becomes incomprehensible why that motion should become
witness to matter and not to Spirit or a Spiritual essence. True, our reason cannot
conceive of a motion minus something moving (and our reason is right); but the
nature or esse of that something moving remains to Science entirely unknown;
and the Spiritualist, in such case, has as much right to attribute it to a
"Spirit," as a Materialist to creative and all-potential matter. A
Materialist has no special privileges in this instance, nor can he claim any.
The law of the conservation of energy, as thus seen, is shown to be
illegitimate in its pretensions and claims in this case. The "great
dogma" -- no force without matter and no matter without force -- falls to
the ground, and loses entirely the solemn significance with which materialism
has tried to invest it. The conception of force still gives no idea of matter
and compels us in no way to see in it "the origin of all origins."
("Scientific Letters," Professor Butlerof.)
We are assured
that real science is not materialistic; and our own conviction tells us that it
cannot be so, when its learning is real. There is a good reason for it, well
defined by some physicists and chemists themselves. Natural sciences cannot go
hand in hand with materialism. To be at the height of their calling, men of
science have to reject the very possibility of materialistic doctrines having
aught to do with the atomic theory; and we find that Lange, Butlerof, Du Bois
Reymond, -- the latter probably unconsciously -- and several others, have
proved it. And it is, furthermore, demonstrated by the fact, that Kanada in
India, and Leucippus, Democritus, and after them Epicurus -- the earliest
atomists in Europe -- while propagating their doctrine of definite proportions,
believed in Gods or supersensuous entities, at the same time. Their ideas upon
matter thus differed from those now prevalent. We must be allowed to make our
statement clearer in a short synopsis of the ancient and modern views of
philosophy upon atoms, and thus prove that the atomic theory kills Materialism.
From the
standpoint of Materialism, which reduces the beginnings of all to matter, the
Universe consists, in its fullness, of atoms and vacuity. Even leaving aside
the axiom -- now absolutely demonstrated by telescope and microscope -- taught
by the ancients, that nature abhors
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vacuum, what is
an atom? "It is, we are answered by Science," writes Professor
Butlerof, "the limited division of substance, the indivisible particle of
matter. To admit the divisibility of the atom, amounts to an admission of an
infinite divisibility of substance, which is equivalent to reducing substance
to nihil, a nothingness. Owing to a feeling of self-preservation alone,
materialism cannot admit infinite divisibility; otherwise, it would have to bid
farewell for ever to its basic principle and thus sign its own
death-warrant." Buchner, for instance, like a true dogmatist in
materialism, declares that "to accept infinite divisibility is absurd, and
amounts to doubting the very existence of matter." The Atom is indivisible
then, saith Materialism? Very well.
"See now
what a curious contradiction this fundamental principle of the materialists is
leading them into," writes Butlerof. "The atom is indivisible, and at
the same time we know it to be elastic. An attempt to deprive it of elasticity
is unthinkable; it would amount to an absurdity. Absolutely non-elastic atoms
could never exhibit a single one of those numerous phenomena that are attributed
to their correlations. Without any elasticity, the atoms could not manifest
their energy, and the substance of the materialists would remain weeded of
every force. Therefore, if the Universe is composed of atoms, then those atoms
must be elastic. It is here that we meet with an insuperable obstacle. For,
what are the conditions requisite for the manifestation of elasticity? An
elastic ball, when striking against an obstacle, is flattened and contracts,
which it would be impossible for it to do, were not that ball to consist of
particles, the relative position of which experiences at the time of the blow a
temporary change. This may be said of elasticity in general; no elasticity is
possible without change with respect to the position of the compound particles
of an elastic body. This means that the elastic body is changeful and consists
of particles, or, in other words, that elasticity can pertain only to those
bodies that are divisible. And the atom is elastic."
This is
sufficient to show how absurd are the simultaneous admissions of the
non-divisibility and elasticity of the atom. The atom is elastic, ergo, the
atom is divisible, and must consist of particles, or of sub-atoms. And these
sub-atoms? They are either non-elastic, and in such case they represent no
dynamic importance, or, they are elastic also; and in that case, they, too, are
subject to divisibility. And thus ad infinitum. But infinite divisibility of
atoms resolves matter into simple centres of force, i.e., precludes the
possibility of conceiving matter as an objective substance.
This vicious
circle is fatal to materialism. It finds itself caught in its own nets, and no
issue is possible for it out of the dilemma. If it says that the atom is
indivisible, then it will have mechanics asking it the awkward question:
"How does the Universe move in this case, and how do its forces correlate?
A world built on absolutely non-elastic atoms, is like an engine without steam,
it is doomed to eternal inertia."*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
*
"Scientific Letters," Butlerof.
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Accept the explanations
and teachings of Occultism, and, the blind inertia of physical Science being
replaced by the intelligent active Powers behind the veil of matter, motion and
inertia become subservient to those Powers. It is on the doctrine of the
illusive nature of matter, and the infinite divisibility of the atom, that the
whole science of Occultism is built. It opens limitless horizons to substance
informed by the divine breath of its soul in every possible state of tenuity,
states still undreamt of by the most spiritually disposed chemists and
physicists.
The above views
were enunciated by an Academician, the greatest chemist in Russia, and a
recognised authority even in Europe -- the late Professor Butlerof. True, he
was defending the phenomena of the Spiritualists, the materializations, so
called, in which he believed as Professors Zollner, and Hare did, as Mr. A.
Russell Wallace, Mr. W. Crookes, and many another Fellow of the Royal Society,
do still, whether openly or secretly. But his argument with regard to the
nature of the essence that acts behind the physical phenomena of light, heat,
electricity, etc., is no less scientific and authoritative for all that, and
apply admirably to the case in hand. Science has no right to deny to the
Occultists their claim to a more profound knowledge of the so-called Forces;
which, they say, are only the effects of causes generated by Powers,
substantial, yet supersensuous, and beyond any kind of matter with which they
(the Scientists) have hitherto become acquainted. The most science can do is to
assume the attitude of agnosticism and to maintain it. Then it can say:
"Your case is no more proven than is ours; but we confess to knowing
nothing in reality either about Force or matter, or that which lies at the
bottom of the so-called correlations of Forces. Therefore, time alone can prove
who is right and who is wrong. Let us wait patiently, and meanwhile show
courtesy instead of scoffing at each other."
But to do this
requires a boundless love of truth and the surrender of that prestige --
however false -- of infallibility, which the men of Science have acquired among
the ignorant and flippant, though cultured, masses of the profane. To blend the
two sciences, the archaic and the modern, requires first of all the abandonment
of the actual materialistic lines. It necessitates a kind of religious
mysticism and even the study of old magic, which our Academicians will never
take up. The necessity is easily explained. Just as in old alchemical works the
real meaning of the substances and elements meant are concealed under the most
ridiculous metaphors, so are the physical, psychic, and spiritual natures of
the Elements (say of fire) concealed in the Vedas, and especially in the
Puranas, under allegories comprehensible only to the Initiates. Had they no
meaning, then indeed all those long legends and allegories about the sacredness
of the three types of fire, and the forty-nine original fires --
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personified by
the Sons of Daksha's daughters and the Rishis, their husbands, "who with
the first son of Brahma and his three descendants constitute the forty-nine
fires" -- would be idiotic verbiage and no more. But it is not so. Every
fire has a distinct function and meaning in the worlds of the physical and the
spiritual. It has, moreover, in its essential nature a corresponding relation
to one of the human psychic faculties, besides its well determined chemical and
physical potencies when coming in contact with the terrestrially differentiated
matter. Science has no speculations to offer upon fire per se; Occultism and
ancient religious science have. This is shown even in the meagre and purposely
veiled phraseology of the Puranas, where (as in the Vayu Purana) many of the
qualities of the personified fires are explained. Thus, Pavaka is electric, or
Vaidyuta, fire; Pavamana, the fire produced by friction, (or Nirmathya): and
Suchi is solar (or Saura) fire* -- all these three being the sons of Abhimanin,
the Agni (fire), eldest son of Brahma and of Swaha. Pavaka, moreover, is made
parent to Kavyavahana, the fire of the Pitris: Suchi to Havyavahana -- the fire
of the gods; and Pavamana, to Saharaksha, the fire of the Asuras. Now all this
shows that the writers of the Puranas were perfectly conversant with the
"Forces" of Science and their correlations; moreover, with the
various qualities of the latter in their bearing upon those psychic and
physical phenomena which receive no credit and are unknown to physical science
now. Very naturally, when an Orientalist, -- especially one with materialistic
tendencies -- reads that these are only appellations of fire employed in the
invocations and rituals, he calls this "Tantrika superstition and
mystification"; and he becomes more careful to avoid errors in spelling,
than to give attention to the secret meaning attached to the personifications,
or to seek their explanation in the physical correlations of forces, so far as
known. So little credit, indeed, is given to the ancient Aryans for knowledge,
that even such glaring passages as in Book I. chap. ii, Vishnu Purana, are left
without any notice. Nevertheless, what can this sentence mean? -- "Then
Ether, air, light, water, and earth, severally united with the properties of
sound and other qualities, existed as distinguishable according to their
properties, . . . . but possessing many and various energies and being
unconnected, they could not, without combination, create living beings, not
having blended with each other. . . . Having combined . . . they assumed
through mutual association, the character of one mass of entire unity; and
directed by Spirit . . ." etc. This means, of course, that the writers
were perfectly acquainted with correlation and were well posted about the
origin of Kosmos from the "undiscrete Principle" -- Avyaktanugrahena,
as applied
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Called the
"drinker of waters," solar heat causing water to evaporate.
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to Parabrahmam
and Mulaprakriti conjointly, and not to "Avyakta, either First Cause, or
matter," as Wilson gives it. The old Initiates knew of no "miraculous
creation," but taught the evolution of atoms (on our physical plane), and
their first differentiation from laya into the protyle, as Mr. Crookes has
suggestively named matter, or primordial substance beyond the zero-line:--
there where we place Mulaprakriti, the "root-Principle" of the world
stuff and of all in the world.
This can be
easily demonstrated. Take, for instance, the newly-published catechism of the
Visishtadwaita Vedantins, an orthodox and exoteric system, yet fully enunciated
and taught in the XIth century (its founder, Ramanujacharya, being born in A.D.
1017), at a time when European "Science" still believed in the
squareness and flatness of the Earth, of Cosmas-Indicopleustes of the VIth
century. It teaches that before evolution began, Prakriti (Nature) was in a
condition of laya or absolute homogeneity, as "matter exists in two
conditions, the sukshma, or latent and undifferentiated, and the sthula or
differentiated condition." Then it became anu, atomic. It teaches of
Sudda-satwa -- "a substance not subject to the qualities of matter, from
which it is quite different," and adds that out of that substance the bodies
of the inhabitants of Vaikuntaloka (the heaven of Vishnu), the gods, are
formed. That every particle or atom of Prakriti contains Jiva (divine life),
and is the sarira (body) of that Jiva which it contains, while every Jiva is in
its turn the sarira of the supreme spirit, as "Parabrahm pervades every
Jiva, as well as every particle of matter." Dualistic and anthropomorphic
as may be the philosophy of the Visishtadwaita, when compared with that of the
Adwaita -- the non-dualists, -- it is yet supremely higher in logic and
philosophy than the cosmogony accepted by either Christianity, or its great
opponent, modern Science. The followers of one of the greatest minds that ever
appeared on Earth, the Adwaita Vedantins are called Atheists, because they regard
all save Parabrahm, the secondless, or Absolute Reality -- as an illusion. Yet
the wisest Initiates came from their ranks, as also the greatest Yogis. The
Upanishads show that they most assuredly knew not only what is the causal
substance in the effects of friction, and that their forefathers were
acquainted with the conversion of heat into mechanical force, but that they
were acquainted with the noumena of every spiritual as well as of every cosmic
phenomenon.
Truly the young
Brahmin who graduates in the universities and colleges of India with the
highest honours; who starts in life as an M.A. and an LL.B., with a tail
initialed from Alpha to Omega after his name, and a contempt for his national
gods proportioned to the honours received in his education in physical
sciences; truly he has but to read in the light of the latter, and with an eye
to the correlation of
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physical Forces,
certain passages in his Puranas, if he would learn how much more his ancestors
knew than he will ever know -- unless he becomes an occultist. Let him turn to
the allegory of Pururavas and the celestial Gandharva,* who furnished the
former with a vessel full of heavenly fire. The primeval mode of obtaining fire
by friction has its scientific explanation in the Vedas, and is pregnant with
meaning for him who reads between the lines. The Tretagni (sacred triad of
fires) obtained by the attrition of sticks made of the wood of the Aswattha
tree (the Bo-tree, of Wisdom and Knowledge) -- sticks "as many
finger-breaths long as there are syllables in the gayatri" must have a
secret meaning, or else the writers of the Vedas and Puranas were no sacred
writers but mystificators. That it has such a meaning, the Hindu Occultists are
a proof, and they alone are able to enlighten Science, as to why and how,
"the fire, that was primevally one, was made threefold (treta) in our
present Manvantara, by the Son of Ila (Vach), the primeval woman after the
Deluge, the wife and daughter of Vaivasvata Manu. The allegory is suggestive,
in whatever Purana it may be read and studied.
--------------
VII.
AN ATTACK ON THE
SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF FORCE BY A MAN OF SCIENCE.
THE wise words
of several (English) men of Science have now to be quoted in our favour.
Ostracised for "principle's sake" by the few, they are tacitly
approved of by the many. That one of them preaches almost Occult doctrines, in
some things identical with, and often amounting to a public recognition of our
"Fohat and his seven Sons" --
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Gandharva
of the Veda is the deity who knows and reveals the secrets of heaven and divine
truths to mortals. Cosmically -- the Gandharvas are the aggregate powers of the
solar-fire, and constitute its Forces; psychically -- the intelligence residing
in the Sushumna, Solar ray, the highest of the seven rays; mystically -- the
occult force in the Soma (the moon, or lunar plant) and the drink made of it;
physically -- the phenomenal, and spiritually -- the noumenal causes of Sound
and the "Voice of Nature." Hence, they are called the 6,333
"heavenly Singers" and musicians of Indra's loka who personify (even
in number) the various and manifold sounds in Nature, both above and below. In
the latter allegories they are said to have mystic power over women, and to be
fond of them. The esoteric meaning is plain. They are one of the forms, if not
the prototypes, of Enoch's angels, the Sons of God, who saw that the daughters
of men were fair (Gen. vi.) who married them, and taught the daughters of the
Earth the secrets of Heaven.
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the Occult
Gandharva of the Vedas -- will be recognised by every Occultist, and even by
some profane readers.
If the latter
open Volume V. of the Popular Science Review (pp. 329-334), they will find in
it an article on "Sun Force and Earth Force," by Dr. B. W.
Richardson, F.R.S., which reads as follows:--
"At this
moment, when the theory of mere motion as the origin of all varieties of force
is again becoming the prevailing thought, it were almost heresy to re-open a
debate, which for a period appears, by general consent, to be virtually closed;
but I accept the risk, and shall state, therefore, what were the precise views
of the immortal heretic, whose name I have whispered to the readers, (Samuel
Metcalfe), respecting Sun Force. Starting with the argument on which nearly all
physicists are agreed, that there exist in nature two agencies -- matter which
is ponderable, visible, and tangible, and a something which is imponderable,
invisible, and appreciable only by its influence on matter -- Metcalfe
maintains that the imponderable and active agency which he calls 'caloric' is
not a mere form of motion, not a vibration amongst the particles of ponderable
matter, but itself a material substance flowing from the Sun through Space,*
filling the voids between the particles of solid bodies, and conveying by
sensation the property called heat. The nature of caloric, or Sun-Force, is
contended for by him on the following grounds:--
"(i.) That
it may be added to, and abstracted from other bodies and measured with
mathematical precision.
"(ii.) That
it augments the volume of bodies, which are again reduced in size by its
abstraction.
"(iii.) That
it modifies the forms, properties, and conditions of all other bodies.
"(iv.) That
it passes by radiation through the most perfect vacuum** that can be formed, in
which it produces the same effects on the thermometer as in the atmosphere.
"(v.) That
it exerts mechanical and chemical forces which nothing can restrain, as in
volcanoes, the explosion of gunpowder, and other fulminating compounds.
"(vi.) That
it operates in a sensible manner on the nervous system, producing intense pain;
and when in excess, disorganization of the tissues.
"As against
the vibratory theory, Metcalfe further argues that if caloric were a mere
property or quality, it could not augment the volume of other bodies; for this
purpose it must itself have volume, it must occupy space, and it must,
therefore, be a material agent. If caloric were only the effect of vibratory
motion amongst the particles of ponderable matter, it could not radiate from
hot bodies without the simultaneous transition of the vibrating particles; but
the fact stands out that heat can radiate from material ponderable substance
without
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Not only
"through space," but filling every point of our solar system, for it
is the physical residue, so to say, of Ether, its lining on our plane; Ether
having to serve other cosmic and terrestrial purposes besides being the
"agent" for transmitting light. It is the astral fluid or
"Light" of the Kabalists, and the "Seven rays" of
Sun-Vishnu.
** What need, then,
of etheric waves for the transmission of light, heat, etc., if this substance
can pass through vacuum?
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loss of weight
of such substance. . . . With this view as to the material nature of caloric or
sun-force; with the impression firmly fixed on his mind that 'everything in
Nature is composed of two descriptions of matter, the one essentially active
and ethereal, the other passive and motionless,'* Metcalfe based the hypothesis
that the Sun-force, or caloric, is a Self-active principle. For its own
particles, he holds, it has repulsion; for the particles of all ponderable matter
it has affinity; it attracts the particles of ponderable matter with forces
which vary inversely as the squares of the distance. It thus acts through
ponderable matter. If universal space were filled with caloric, sun-force,
alone (without ponderable matter), caloric would also be inactive and would
constitute a boundless Ocean of powerless or quiescent ether, because it would
then have nothing on which to act, while ponderable matter, however inactive of
itself, has 'certain properties by which it modifies and controls the actions
of caloric, both of which are governed by immutable laws that have their origin
in the mutual relations and specific properties of each.'
"And he
lays down a law which he believes is absolute, and which is thus expressed:--
" 'By the
attraction of caloric for ponderable matter, it unites and holds together all
things; by its self-repulsive energy it separates and expands all things.'
"
This, of course,
is almost the occult explanation of cohesion. Dr. Richardson continues:--
"As I have
already said, the tendency of modern teaching is to rest upon the hypothesis .
. . that heat is motion, or, as it would, perhaps, be better stated, a specific
force or form of motion.**
"But this
hypothesis, popular as it is, is not one that ought to be accepted to the
exclusion of the simpler views of the material nature of sun-force, and of its
influence in modifying the conditions of matter. We do not yet know sufficient
to be dogmatic."***
. . . "The
hypothesis of Metcalfe respecting sun-force and earth-force is not only very
simple, but most fascinating. . . . Here are two elements in the Universe, the
one is ponderable matter . . . The second element is the all-pervading Ether,
solar-fire. It is without weight, substance, form, or colour; it is matter
infinitely divisible, and its particles repel each other; its rarity
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* And how can it
be otherwise? Gross ponderable matter is the body, the Shell of matter or
Substance, the female passive principle; and this Fohatic force is the second
principle, prana -- the male and the active? On our globe this Substance is the
second principle of the septenary Element -- Earth; in the atmosphere, it is
that of air, which is the cosmic gross body; in the Sun it becomes the Solar
body and that of the Seven rays; in sidereal space it corresponds with another
principle, and so on. The whole is a homogeneous Unity alone, the parts are all
differentiations.
** Or the
reverberation, and for sound, repercussion on our plane of that which is a
perpetual motion of that Substance on higher planes. Our world and senses are
victims of Maya, ceaselessly.
*** An honest
admission, that.
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is such that we
have no word, except ether,* by which to express it. It pervades and fills space,
but alone it too is quiescent -- dead.** We bring together the two elements,
the inert matter, the self-repulsive Ether (?) and thereupon dead (?)
ponderable matter is vivified"; [Ponderable matter may be inert but never
dead -- this is Occult Law. -- H.P.B.] . . . "through the particles of the
ponderable substance the ether [Ether's second principle. -- H.P.B.]
penetrates, and, so penetrating, it combines with the ponderable particles and
holds them in mass, holds them together in bond of union; they are dissolved in
the Ether."
"This
distribution of solid ponderable matter through ether extends, according to the
theory before us, to everything that exists at this moment. The ether is
all-pervading. The human body itself is charged with the ether [Say astral
light. -- H.P.B.]; its minute particles are held together by it; the plant is
in the same condition; the most solid earth, rock, adamant, crystal, metal, all
are the same. But there are differences in the capacities of different kinds of
ponderable matter to receive sun-force, and upon this depends the various
changing conditions of matter; the solid, the liquid, the gaseous condition.
Solid bodies have attracted caloric in excess over fluid bodies, and hence
their firm cohesion; when a portion of molten zinc is poured upon a plate of
solid zinc, the molten zinc becomes as solid because there is a rush of caloric
from the liquid to the solid, and in the equalization the particles, previously
loose or liquid, are more closely brought together. . . . Metcalfe himself,
dwelling on the above-named phenomena, and accounting for them by the unity of
principle of action, which has already been explained, sums up his argument in
very clear terms, in a comment on the densities of various bodies. 'Hardness
and softness' (he says), 'solidity and liquidity, are not essential conditions
of bodies, but depend on the relative proportions of ethereal and ponderable
matter of which they are composed. The most elastic gas may be reduced to the
liquid form by the abstraction of caloric, and again converted into a firm
solid, the particles of which would cling together with a force proportional to
their augmented affinity for caloric. On the other hand, by adding a sufficient
quantity of the same principle to the densest metals, their attraction for it
is diminished when they are expanded into the gaseous state, and their cohesion
is destroyed.' "
Having thus
quoted at length the heterodox views of the great "heretic" -- views
that need only a little alteration of terms here and there, the same eminent
scientist -- an original and liberal thinker, undeniably -- proceeds to sum up
those views, and continues:--
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Yet it is not
Ether, but only one of the principles of Ether, the latter being itself one of
the principles of Akasa.
** And so does
prana (Jiva) pervade the whole living body of man; but alone, without having an
atom to act upon, it would be quiescent -- dead; i.e., would be in laya, or as
Mr. Crookes has it, "locked in protyle." It is the action of Fohat
upon a compound or even a simple body that produces life. When a body dies it
passes into the same polarity as its male energy and repels therefore the
active agent, which, losing hold of the whole, fastens on the parts or
molecules, this action being called chemical. Vishnu, the Preserver, transforms
himself into Rudra-Siva, the Destroyer -- a correlation seemingly unknown to
Science.
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"I shall
not dwell at great length on this unity of sun-force and earth, which this
theory implies. But I may add that out of it, or out of the hypothesis of mere
motion as force, and of virtue without substance, we may gather, as the nearest
possible approach to the truth on this, the most complex and profound of all
subjects, the following inferences:--
"(a) Space,
inter-stellary, inter-planetary, inter-material, inter-organic, is not a
vacuum, but is filled with a subtle fluid or gas, which for want of a better
term* we may still call, as the ancients did, Aith-ur -- Solar fire, AETHER.
This fluid, unchangeable in composition, indestructible, invisible,** pervades
everything and all [ponderable. -- H. P. B.] matter,*** the pebble in the
running brook, the tree overhanging, the man looking on, is charged with the
ether in various degree; the pebble less than the tree, the tree less than man.
All in the planet is in like manner so charged! A world is built up in ethereal
fluid, and moving through a sea of it.
"(b) The
Ether, whatever its nature is, is from the sun and from the suns**** the suns
are the generators of it, the store-houses of it, the diffusers of it.*****
"(c.)
Without the ether there could be no motion; without it particles of ponderable
matter could not glide over each other; without it there could be no impulse to
excite those particles into action.
"(d.) Ether
determines the constitution of bodies. Were there no ether there could be no
change of constitution in substance; water, for instance, could only exist as a
substance, compact and insoluble beyond any conception we could form of it. It
could never even be ice, never flint, never vapour, except for ether.
"(e.) Ether
connects sun with planet, planet with planet, man with planet, man with man.
Without ether there could be no communication in the Universe; no light, no
heat, no phenomenon of motion."
Thus we find
that Ether and elastic atoms are, in the alleged mechanical conception of the
Universe, the Spirit and Soul of Kosmos, and that the theory -- put it any way
and under whatever disguise -- always leaves a more widely opened issue for men
of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Verily, unless
the occult terms of the Kabalists are adopted!
**
"Unchangeable" only during Manvantaric periods, after which it merges
once more into Mulaprakriti; "invisible" for ever, in its own essence,
but seen in its reflected coruscations, called the Astral light by the modern
Kabalists. Yet, conscious and grand Beings clothed in that same Essence move in
it.
*** One has to
add (ponderable), to distinguish it from that Ether which is matter still,
though a substratum.
**** The Occult
Sciences reverse the statement, and say that it is the sun, and all the suns
that are from it, which emanate at the Manvantaric dawn from the Central Sun.
***** Here, we
decidedly beg to differ with the learned gentleman. Let us remember that this
AEther, whether Akasa is meant by the term, or its lower principle, Ether -- is
septenary. Akasa is Aditi in the allegory, and the mother of Martanda (the
sun), the Deva-matri -- "Mother of the gods." In the solar system,
the sun is her Buddhi and Vahan, the Vehicle, hence the 6th principle; in
Kosmos all the suns are the Kama rupa of Akasa and so is ours. It is only when
regarded as an individual Entity in his own Kingdom that Surya (the sun) is the
7th principle of the great body of matter.
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Science to speculate
beyond the line drawn by modern materialism -- or call it agnosticism rather,
to be more correct* -- than the majority avails itself of. Atoms, Ether, or
both, modern speculation cannot get out of the circle of ancient thought; and
the latter was soaked through with archaic occultism. Undulatory or corpuscular
theory -- it is all one. It is speculation from the aspects of phenomena, not
from the knowledge of the essential nature of the cause and causes. When modern
Science has explained to its audience the late achievements of Bunsen and
Kirchoff, and shown the seven colours, the "primary" of a ray which
is decomposed in a fixed order on a screen; and described the respective
lengths of luminous waves, what has it proved? It has justified its reputation
for exactness in mathematical achievement by measuring even the length of a
luminous wave -- "varying from about seven hundred and sixty millionths of
a millimetre at the red end of the spectrum to about three hundred and
ninety-three millionths of a millimetre at the violet end." But when the
exactness of the calculation with regard to the effect on the light-wave is
thus vindicated, Science is forced to admit that the force (which is the
supposed cause) is believed to produce "inconceivably minute undulations"
in some medium -- "generally regarded as identical with the ethereal
medium"** -- and that medium itself is still only -- a "hypothetical
agent!"
Auguste Comte's
pessimism with respect to the impossibility of knowing some day the chemical
composition of the sun, has not been belied thirty years later by Kirchoff, as
claimed. The spectroscope has helped us to see that the elements, with which
the modern chemist is familiar, must in all probability be present in the sun's
outward robes -- not in the sun itself; and, taking these "robes,"
the solar cosmic veil, for the sun itself, the physicists have declared its
luminosity to be due to combustion and flame, and have mistaken the vital
principle of that luminary for a purely material thing, and called it
"chromosphere."*** We have hypotheses and theories only so far, not
law -- by any means.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Brutal but
frank materialism is more honest than Janus-faced agnosticism in our days.
Monism is the Pecksniff of modern philosophy, turning a pharisaical face to
psychology and idealism, and its natural face of a Roman Augur, swelling his
cheek with his tongue -- to Materialism. The Monists are worse than the
Materialists; because, while looking at the Universe and psycho-spiritual man
from the same negative stand-point, the latter put their case far less
plausibly than sceptics of Mr. Tyndall's or even Mr. Huxley's stamp. Herbert
Spencer, Bain and Lewes are more dangerous to universal truths than Buchner.
**
"Geology," by Professor A. Winchell.
*** See Five
Years of Theosophy -- Articles: "Do the Adepts deny the nebular
theory?" and "Is the Sun merely a cooling mass?" -- for the true
Occult teaching.
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VIII.
LIFE, FORCE, OR
GRAVITY.
THE imponderable
fluids have had their day; "mechanical Forces" are less talked about;
Science has put on a new face for this last quarter of a century; but
gravitation has remained, owing its life to new combinations after the old ones
had nearly killed it. It may answer scientific hypotheses very well, but the
question is whether it answers as well to truth, and represents a fact in
nature. Attraction by itself is not sufficient to explain merely planetary
motion; how can it presume to explain the rotatory motion in the infinitudes of
Space? Attraction alone will never fill all the gaps, unless a special impulse
is admitted for every sidereal body, and the rotation of every planet with its
satellites is shown to be due to some one cause combined with attraction. And
even then, says an astronomer ("Philosophie Naturelle," art. 142), Science
would have to name that cause.
Occultism has
named it for ages, and so have all the ancient philosophers; but then all such
beliefs are now proclaimed exploded superstitions. The "extra cosmic"
God has killed every possibility of belief in intra cosmic intelligent Forces,
yet who, or what is the original pusher in that motion? "When we have
learned the cause, unique et speciale, that pushes, we will be ready to combine
it with the one which attracts," says Francoeur ("Astronomie,"
p. 342). And again -- "Attraction between the celestial bodies is only
repulsion: it is the Sun that drives them incessantly onward; for otherwise,
their motion would stop."
If ever this
theory of the Sun-Force being the primal cause of all life on earth and motion in
heaven is accepted, and if that other far bolder one of Herschell -- about
certain organisms in the Sun -- is accepted even as a provisional hypothesis,
then will our teachings be vindicated, and esoteric allegory shown to have
anticipated Modern Science by millions of years, probably, for these are the
Archaic teachings. Martanda (the Sun) watches and threatens -- without
abandoning the central position to which his Mother, Aditi, relegated him --
his seven brothers, the planets; "he pursues them, turning slowly around
himself . . . and follows them from afar, moving in the same direction that
they do, on the path that encircles their houses" -- or the orbit. (See
Comment to Stanza IV., Book I.) It is the Sun-fluids or Emanations that impart
all motion and awaken all into life, in the Solar System. It is attraction and
repulsion, but not as understood by modern physics and according to the law of
gravity; but in harmony with the laws of Manvantaric motion de-
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signed from the
early Sandhya, the Dawn of the rebuilding and higher reformation of the System.
These laws are immutable; but the motion of all the bodies, which motion is
diverse and alters with every minor Kalpa -- is regulated by the Movers, the
Intelligences within the Cosmic Soul. Are we so very wrong in believing all
this? Well, here is a modern and a great man of Science who, speaking of vital
electricity, uses language far more akin to Occultism than to modern
materialistic thought. We refer the sceptical reader to an article on "The
Source of Heat in the Sun," by Robert Hunt, F.R.S., (in "Popular
Science Review," Vol. IV., p. 148), who, speaking of the luminous envelope
of the Sun and its "peculiar curdy appearance," says:--
"Arago
proposed that this envelope should be called the Photosphere, a name now
generally adopted. By the elder Herschell, the surface of this photosphere was
compared to mother-of-pearl. . . . . It resembles the Ocean on a tranquil
summer-day, when its surface is slightly crisped by a gentle breeze. . . . Mr.
Nasmyth has discovered a more remarkable condition than any that had previously
been suspected . . . objects which are peculiarly lens-shaped . . . . like
'willow leaves' . . . . different in size . . . . . not arranged in any order
crossing each other in all directions . . . . . with an irregular motion among
themselves . . . . . . . They are seen approaching to and receding from each
other, and sometimes assuming new angular positions, so that the appearance . .
. . . has been compared to a dense shoal of fish, which, indeed, they resemble
in shape. . . . The size of these objects gives a grand idea of the gigantic
scale upon which physical (?) operations are carried out in the Sun. They
cannot be less than 1,000 miles in length, and from two to three hundred miles
in breadth. The most probable conjecture which has been offered respecting
those leaf or lens-like objects, is that the photosphere* is an immense ocean
of gaseous matter (what kind of "matter?") . . . in a state of
intense (apparent) incandescence, and that they are perspective projections of
the sheets of flame. . . ."
Solar
"flames" seen through telescopes are reflections, says Occultism. But
see what Occultists have to say to this in Book I.
"Whatever
they may be (those sheets of flame), it is evident they are the immediate
sources of solar heat and light. Here we have a surrounding envelope of
photogenic matter,** which pendulates with mighty energies, and by
communicating its motion to the ethereal medium in stellar space, produces heat
and light in far distant worlds. We have said that those forms have been
compared to certain organisms, and Herschell says, 'Though it would be too
daring to speak of such organizations as partaking of life [why not?],*** yet
we do not know that vital action is competent to develop heat, light, and
electricity.' . . . Can it be that there is truth in this fine thought? May the
pulsing of vital matter
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* And the
central mass, too, as will be found, or rather the centre of the reflection.
** That
"matter" is just like the reflection in a mirror of the flame from a
"photogenic" lamp-wick.
*** See
"Five Years of Theosophy," p. 258 -- answer to this speculation of
Herschell's.
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in the central
Sun of our System be the source of all that life which crowds the earth, and
without doubt overspreads the other planets, to which the Sun is the mighty
Minister?" . . .
Occultism
answers these queries in the affirmative; and Science will find this to be the
case, one day.
Again, on p.
156, Mr. Hunt writes:--
"But
regarding Life -- Vital Force -- as a power far more exalted than either light,
heat, or electricity, and indeed capable of exerting a controlling power over
them all" (this is absolutely occult). . . . . "we are certainly
disposed to view with satisfaction that speculation which supposes the
photosphere to be the primary seat of vital power, and to regard with a poetic
pleasure that hypothesis which refers the Solar energies to Life."
Thus, we have an
important scientific corroboration for one of our fundamental dogmas -- namely,
that (a) the Sun is the store-house of Vital Force, which is the Noumenon of
Electricity; and (b) that it is from its mysterious, never-to-be-fathomed
depths, that issue those life currents which thrill through Space, as through
the organisms of every living thing on Earth. For see what another eminent physician
says, who calls this (our life-fluid) "nervous Ether." Change a few
sentences in the article, extracts from which now follow, and you have another
quasi-Occult treatise on Life Force. This once, it is again Dr. B. W.
Richardson, F.R.S., who gives his views in the "Popular Science
Review," Vol. X., p. 380-3, on "Nervous Ether," as he has on
"Sun-Force" and "Earth-Force":--
"The idea
attempted to be conveyed by the theory is, that between the molecules of the
matter, solid or fluid, of which the nervous organisms, and, indeed, of which
all the organic parts of a body are composed, there exists a refined subtle
medium, vaporous or gaseous, which holds the molecules in a condition for
motion upon each other, and for arrangement and rearrangement of form; a medium
by and through which all motion is conveyed; by and through which the one organ
or part of the body is held in communion with the other parts, by which and
through which the outer living world communicates with the living man: a
medium, which, being present, enables the phenomena of life to be demonstrated,
and which, being universally absent, leaves the body actually dead. . . . .
."
And the whole
Solar System falls into Pralaya -- the author might have added. But let us read
further:
. . . "I
use the word Ether in its general sense as meaning a very light, vaporous or
gaseous matter; I use it, in short, as the astronomer uses it when he speaks of
the Ether of Space, by which he means a subtle but material medium. . . . .
When I speak of a nervous Ether, I do not convey that the ether is existent in
nervous structure only: I believe truly that it is a special part of the
nervous organization; but, as nerves pass into all structures that have
capacities for movement and sensibilities, so the nervous ether passes into all
such parts; and as the nervous ether is, according to my view, a direct product
from blood, so we may look upon it as a part of the atmosphere of the blood.
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. . . The
evidence in favour of the existence of an elastic medium pervading the nervous
matter and capable of being influenced by simple pressure is all-convincing. .
. . In nervous structure there is, unquestionably, a true nervous fluid, as our
predecessors taught* The precise chemical (?)** composition of this fluid is
not yet well known; the physical characters of it have been little studied.
Whether it moves in currents, we do not know; whether it circulates, we do not
know; whether it is formed in the centres and passes from them to the nerves,
or whether it is formed everywhere where blood enters nerve, we do not know.
The exact uses of the fluid we do not consequently know. It occurs to my mind,
however, that the veritable fluid of nervous matter is not of itself sufficient
to act as the subtle medium that connects the outer with the inner universe of
man and animal. I think -- and this is the modification I suggest to the older
theory -- there must be another form of matter present during life; a matter
which exists in the condition of vapour or gas, which pervades the whole
nervous organism, surrounds as an enveloping atmosphere*** each molecule of nervous
structure, and is the medium of all motion, communicated to and from the
nervous centres. . . . When it is once fairly presented to the mind that during
life there is in the animal body a finely diffused form of matter, a vapour
filling every part -- and even stored in some parts; a matter constantly
renewed by the vital chemistry; a matter as easily disposed of as the breath,
after it has served its purpose -- a new flood of light breaks on the
Intelligence ." . . . .
A new flood of
light is certainly thrown on the wisdom of ancient and mediaeval Occultism and
its votaries. For Paracelsus wrote the same thing more than three hundred years
ago, namely, in the sixteenth century, as follows:--
"The whole
of the Microcosm is potentially contained in the Liquor Vitae, a nerve fluid .
. . in which is contained the nature, quality, character, and essence of
beings." . . . (De Generatione Hominis). . . . "The Archaeus or
Liquor Vitae is an essence that is equally distributed in all parts of the human
body. . . . The Spiritus Vitae takes its origin from the Spiritus Mundi. Being
an emanation of the latter, it contains the elements of all cosmic influences,
and is therefore the cause by which the action of the stars (cosmic forces)
upon the invisible body of man (his vital lingasharira) may be explained."
(De Viribus Membrorum. See "Life of Paracelsus" by Franz Hartmann,
M.D., F.T.S.)
Had Dr.
Richardson studied all the secret works of Paracelsus, he would not have been
obliged to confess so often -- "we do not know" . . . . "it is
not known to us" . . . . etc., etc. Nor would he have ever pronounced the
following sentence, recanting the best portions of his independent rediscovery,
in which he says (p. 384):--
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Paracelsus for
one, who called it liquor vitae, and Archaeus.
** Rather
alchemical -- "composition."
*** "This
vital force . . . radiates around man like a luminous sphere" . . . says
Paracelsus in Paragranum.
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"It may be
urged that in this line of thought is included no more than the theory of the
existence of the ether . . . . supposed to pervade space. . . . . It may be
said that this universal ether pervades all the organism of the animal body as
from without, and as part of every organization. This view would be Pantheism
physically discovered if it were true (!!) It fails to be true because it would
destroy the individuality of every individual sense. . . . ."
We fail to see
it, and we know it is not so. Pantheism may be "physically
rediscovered." It was known, seen, and felt by the whole of antiquity.
Pantheism manifests itself in the vast expanse of the starry heavens, in the
breathing of the seas and oceans and the quiver of life of the smallest blade
of grass. Philosophy rejects one finite and imperfect God in the universe, as the
anthropomorphic deity of the monotheist is represented by his followers. It
repudiates in its name of Philo-Theo-Sophia the grotesque idea that Infinite,
Absolute Deity should, or rather could, have any, whether direct or indirect,
relation to finite illusive evolutions of matter, and therefore cannot imagine
a universe outside that Deity, or the latter absent from the smallest speck of
animate or inanimate substance.* Why either the Ether of Space, or
"nervous Ether" should "destroy the individuality of every
sense" seems incomprehensible for one acquainted with the real nature of
that "nervous ether" under its Sanskrit, or rather esoteric and
Kabalistic name. Dr. Richardson agrees that --
"If we did
not individually produce the medium of communication between ourselves and the
outer world, if it were produced from without and adapted to one kind of
vibration alone, there were fewer senses required than we possess: for, taking
two illustrations only -- ether of light is not adapted for sound, and yet we hear
as well as see; while air, the medium of motion of sound, is not the medium of
light, and yet we see and hear."
This is not so.
The opinion that "Pantheism fails to be true because it would destroy the
individuality of every individual sense" shows that all the conclusions of
the learned doctor are based on the modern physical theories, though he would
fain reform them. But he will find it impossible to do this unless he allows
the existence of spiritual senses to replace the gradual atrophy of the physical.
"We see and hear," in accordance (of course in Dr. Richardson's mind)
with the explanations of the phenomena of sight and hearing, by that same
materialistic
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This does not
mean that every bush, tree or stone is God or a god; but only that every speck
of the manifested material of Kosmos belongs to and is the substance of
"God," however low it may have fallen in its cyclic gyration through
the Eternities of the ever becoming,; and also that every such speck
individually, and Kosmos collectively, is an aspect and a reminder of that
universal One Soul -- which philosophy refuses to call God, thus limiting the
eternal and ever-present root and essence.
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science which
postulates that we cannot see and hear otherwise. The Occultists and mystics
know better. The Vedic Aryans were as familiar with the mysteries of sound and
colour as our physiologists are on the physical plane, but they had mastered
the secrets of both on planes inaccessible to the materialist. They knew of a
double set of senses; spiritual and material. In a man who is deprived of one
or more senses, the remaining become the more developed: e.g., the blind man
will recover his sight through the senses of touch, of hearing, etc., and he
who is deaf will be able to hear through sight, by seeing audibly the words
uttered by the lips and mouth of the speaker. But these are cases that belong
to the world of matter still. The spiritual senses, those that act on a higher
plane of consciousness are rejected a priori by physiology because the latter
is ignorant of the sacred science. It limits the action of ether to vibrations,
and, dividing it from air -- though air is simply differentiated and compound
ether -- makes it assume functions to fit in with the special theories of the
physiologist. But there is more real science in the teachings of the Upanishads
when these are correctly understood, than the Orientalists, who do not
understand them at all, are ready to admit. Mental as well as physical
correlations of the seven senses (seven on the physical and seven on the mental
planes) are clearly explained and defined in the Vedas, and especially in the
Upanishad called Anugita: "The indestructible and the destructible, such
is the double manifestation of the Self. Of these the indestructible is the
existent (the true essence or nature of Self, the underlying principles). The
manifestation as an individual (or entity) is called the destructible."
Thus speaks the ASCETIC in Anugita; and also: "Every one who is twice-born
(initiated) knows such is the teaching of the ancients. . . . . Space is the
first entity. . . . . Now Space (Akasa, or the noumenon of Ether) has one
quality . . . and that is sound only . . . and the qualities of sound are
Shadga, Rishabha, Gandhara, Madhyama, Panchama, and beyond these five Nishada and
Dhaivata"; (the Hindu gamut). These seven notes of the scale are the
principles of sound. (Vide ch. xxxvi. of Anugita.) The qualities of every
Element, as of every sense, are septenary, and to judge and dogmatize on them
from their manifestation (likewise sevenfold in itself) on the material or
objective plane above is quite arbitrary. For it is only by the SELF
emancipating itself from these (seven) causes of illusion that one acquires the
knowledge (secret wisdom) of the qualities of objects of sense on their dual
plane of manifestation -- the visible and the invisible. Thus it is said:--
"State this
wonderful mystery . . . . . Hear the assignment of causes exhaustively. The
nose, and the tongue, and the eye, and the
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skin, and the
ear as the fifth (organ of sense) Mind and Understanding,* these seven (senses)
should be understood to be the causes of (the knowledge of their) qualities.
Smell, and taste, and colour, sound, and touch as the fifth, the object of the
mental operation, and the object of the Understanding (the highest spiritual
sense or perception), these seven are causes of action. He who smells, he who
eats, he who sees, he who speaks, and he who hears as the fifth, he who thinks,
and he who understands, these seven should be regarded as the causes of the
agents.** These (the agents) being possessed of qualities (sattwa, rajas,
tamas), enjoy their own qualities, agreeable and disagreeable" (Anugita).
Then one reads
in the Bhagavadgita (chap. vii.) the Deity (or Krishna) saying:--
". . . .
Only some know me truly. Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Space (or Akasa, AEther),
Mind, Understanding and Egoism (or the perception of all the former on the
illusive plane). . . This is a lower form of my nature. Know (that there is)
another (form of my) nature, and higher than this, which is animate, O you of
mighty arms! and by which this Universe is upheld. . . . All this is woven upon
me, like numbers of pearls upon a thread (Mundakopanishad, p. 298). . . . I am
the taste in the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The division
of the physical senses into five, comes to us from great antiquity. But while
adopting the number, no modern philosopher has asked himself how these senses
could exist, i.e., be perceived and used in a self-conscious way, unless there
was the sixth sense, mental perception to register and record them; and (this
for the Metaphysicians and Occultists) the SEVENTH to preserve the spiritual
fruition and remembrance thereof, as in a Book of Life which belongs to Karma.
The ancients divided the senses into five, simply because their teachers (the
Initiates) stopped at the hearing, as being that sense which developed in the
physical plane (got dwarfed rather, limited to this plane) only at the
beginning of the Fifth Race. (The Fourth Race already had begun to lose the spiritual
condition, so pre-eminently developed in the Third Race.)
** The modern
commentators, failing to comprehend the subtle meaning of the ancient
Scholiasts, take this sentence, "causes of the agents," to mean
"that the powers of smelling, etc., when attributed to the Self, make him
appear as an agent, as an active principle" (!), which is entirely
fanciful. These "seven" are understood to be the causes of the
Agents, because "the objects are causes, as their enjoyment causes an impression."
It means esoterically that they, these seven senses, are caused by the AGENTS,
which are the "deities," for what does, or can, the sentence which
follows this one mean? "Thus," it is said, "these seven (senses)
are the causes of emancipation" (i.e., when these causes are made
ineffectual). "And among the learned (the wise Initiates) who understand
the qualities which are in the position (in the nature, rather) of the deities,
each in its place," means simply that the "learned" understand
the nature of the noumenoi of the various phenomena; and that
"qualities," in this instance, mean the qualities of the high
planetary or Elementary gods or Intelligences, which rule the elements and
their products, and not at all "the senses," as the modern commentator
thinks. For the "learned do not suppose their senses to have aught to do
with them, any more than with their SELF." (Vide pp. 278 and 279 of the
VIII. Vol. of "The Sacred Books of the East." Anugita.)
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water, O son of
Kunti! I am the light of the sun and moon. I am . . . sound ('i.e., the Occult
essence which underlies all these and the other qualities of the various things
mentioned,' Transl.), in space . . . the fragrant smell in the earth,
refulgence in the fire . . . etc., etc."
Truly, then, one
should study Occult philosophy before one begins to verify and seek the
mysteries of nature on its surface alone, as he alone "who knows the truth
about the qualities of nature, who understands the creation of all entities . .
. is emancipated" from error. Says the "preceptor":
"Accurately understanding the great tree of which the unperceived (Occult
nature, the root of all) is the sprout from the seed (Parabrahmam) which
consists of the understanding (Mahat, or the universal intelligent Soul) as its
trunk, the branches of which are the great egoism,* in the holes of which are
the sprouts, namely, the senses, of which the great (Occult, or invisible)
elements are the flower-bunches,** the gross elements (the gross objective
matter), the smaller boughs, which are always possessed of leaves, always
possessed of flowers . . . . which is eternal and the seed of which is the
Brahman (the deity); and cutting it with that excellent sword -- knowledge
(secret wisdom) -- one attains immortality and casts off birth and death."
This is the Tree
of Life, the Asvattha tree, only after the cutting of which the slave of life
and death, MAN, can be emancipated.
But the men of
Science know nought, nor will they hear of the "Sword of Knowledge"
used by the adepts and ascetics. Hence the one-sided remarks of the most
liberal among them, based on and flowing from undue importance given to the
arbitrary divisions and classification of physical science. Occultism heeds
them very little, and nature still less. The whole range of physical phenomena
proceed from the Primary of Ether -- Akasa, as dual-natured Akasa proceeds from
undifferentiated Chaos, so-called, the latter being the primary aspect of
Mulaprakriti, the root-matter and the first abstract Idea one can form of
Parabrahmam. Modern Science may divide its hypothetically conceived ether in as
many ways as it likes; the real AEther of Space will remain as it is
throughout. It has its seven principles, as all the rest of nature has, and
where there was no Ether there would be no sound, as it is the vibrating
sound-board in nature in all of its seven differentiations. This is the first
mystery the Initiates of old have learned. Our present normal physical senses
were (from our present point of view) abnormal in those days of slow and
progressive downward evolution and fall into matter. And there was a day when
all that which in our modern times is regarded as phenomena, so puzzling to the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Ahamkara, I
suppose, that Egoship (or Ahamship) which leads to every error.
** The elements
are the five tanmatras of earth, water, fire, air and ether, the producers of
the grosser elements.
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physiologists
now compelled to believe in them -- such as thought transference, clairvoyance,
clairaudience, etc.; in short, all that which is called now "wonderful and
abnormal" -- all that and much more belonged to the senses and faculties
common to all humanity. We are, however, cycling back and cycling forward;
i.e., having lost in spirituality that which we acquired in physical
development until almost the end of the Fourth Race, we (mankind) are as
gradually and imperceptibly losing now in the physical all that we regain once
more in the spiritual re-evolution. This process must go on until the period
which will bring the Sixth Root-Race on a parallel line with the spirituality
of the Second, long extinct mankind.
But this will
hardly be understood at present. We must return to Dr. Richardson's hopeful
though somewhat incorrect hypothesis about "nervous ether." Under the
misleading translation of the word as "Space" (Akasa), it has just
been shown in the ancient Hindu system as the "first born" of the One,
having but one quality, SOUND (which is septenary). In esoteric language this
"One" is the "Father" Deity, and "Sound" is
synonymous with Logos (Verbum, or the Son). Whether consciously or otherwise,
it must be the latter; and Dr. Richardson, while preaching an Occult doctrine
-- chooses the lowest form of the septenary nature of that "SOUND"
and speculates upon it, adding:--
"The
theory, I offer, is that the nervous Ether is an animal product. In different
classes of animals it may differ in physical quality so as to be adapted to the
special wants of the animal, but essentially it plays one part in all animals,
and is produced, in all, in the same way. . . ."
Herein lies the
nucleus of error leading to all the resultant mistaken views. This
"Nervous Ether" is the lowest principle of the Primordial Essence
which is Life. It is animal vitality diffused in all nature and acting
according to the conditions it finds for its activity. It is not an
"animal product," but the living animal, the living flower or plant
are its products. The animal tissues only absorb it according to their more or
less morbid or healthy state -- as do physical materials and structures (in
their primogenial State -- nota bene) -- and henceforward, from the moment of
the birth of the Entity, are regulated, strengthened, and fed by it. It
descends in a larger supply to vegetation in the Sushumna sun-ray which lights
and feeds the moon, and it is through her beams that it pours its light upon,
and penetrates man and animal, more during their sleep and rest, than when they
are in full activity. Therefore Dr. Richardson errs again in stating that:--
"The
nervous ether is not, according to my idea of it, in itself active, nor an
excitant of animal motion in the sense of a force; but it is essential as
supplying the conditions by which the motion is rendered possible." (It is
just the reverse.) . . . . "It is the conductor of all vibrations of heat,
of light, of sound, of electrical action, of mechanical
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friction.* It
holds the nervous system throughout in perfect tension, during states of life
(true). By exercise it is disposed of (rather generated) . . . and when demand
for it is greater than the supply, its deficiency is indicated by nervous
collapse or exhaustion.** It accumulates in the nervous centres during sleep,
bringing them, if I may so speak, to their due tone, and therewith raising the
muscles to awakening and renewed life. . . ."
Just so; this is
quite correct, and as comprehensible. Therefore, "The body fully renewed
by it, presents capacity for motion, fulness of form, life. The body bereft of
it presents inertia, the configuration of shrunken death, the evidence of
having lost something physical that was in it when it lived."
Modern Science
denies the existence of a "vital principle." This extract is a clear
proof of its grand mistake. But this "physical something," that we
call life-fluid -- the Liquor Vitae of Paracelsus -- has not deserted the body,
as Dr. Richardson thinks. It has only changed its state from activity to
passivity, and become latent owing to the too morbid state of the tissues, on which
it has no more hold. Once the rigor mortis absolute, the "Liquor
Vitae" will re-awaken into action, and begin its work on the atoms
chemically. Brahma-Vishnu -- the creator and the Preserver of Life -- will have
transformed himself into Siva the Destroyer.
Lastly he writes
on p. 387:--
"The
nervous Ether may be poisoned; it may, I mean, have diffused through it, by
simple gaseous diffusion, other gases or vapours derived from without; it may
derive from within products of substances swallowed and ingested, or gases of
decomposition produced during disease in the body itself."
And the learned
gentleman might have added on the same Occult principle: "That the
'nervous Ether' of one person can be poisoned by the 'nervous Ether' of another
person or his auric emanations. But see what Paracelsus said of 'Nervous
Ether'":--
"The
Archaeus is of a magnetic nature, and attracts or repels other sympathetic or
antipathetic forces belonging to the same plane. The less power of resistance for
astral influences a person possesses, the more will he be subject to such
influences. The vital force is not enclosed in man, but radiates (within) and
around him like a luminous sphere (aura) and it may be made to act at a
distance. . . . It may poison the essence of life (blood) and cause diseases,
or it may purify it after
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The conductor
in the sense of Upadhi -- a material or physical basis; but, as the second
principle of the universal Soul and Vital Force in Nature, it is intelligently
guided by the fifth principle thereof.
** And too great
an exuberance of it in the nervous system leads as often to disease and death.
If it were the animal system which generated it, such would not be the case,
surely. Hence, the latter emergency shows its independence of the system, and
connection with the Sun-Force, as Metcalfe and Professor Hunt explain it.
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it has been made
impure, and restore the health" (Paragranum; "Life of
Paracelsus," by Dr. F. Hartmann.)
That the two,
Archaeus and "nervous Ether," are identical, is shown by the English
Scientist, who says that the tension of it generally may be too high or too
low; that it may be so "owing to local changes in the nervous matter it
invests." . . . "Under sharp excitation it may vibrate as if in a
storm and plunge every muscle under cerebral or spinal control into
uncontrolled motion --unconscious convulsions."
This is called
nervous excitation, but no one, except Occultists, knows the reason of such
nervous perturbation or explains the primary causes of it. The "principle
of Life" may kill when too exuberant, as also when there is too little of
it. But this principle on the manifested (or our) plane is but the effect and
the result of the intelligent action of the "Host" -- collectively,
Principle -- the manifesting LIFE and LIGHT. It is itself subordinate to, and
emanates from the ever-invisible, eternal and Absolute ONE LIFE in a descending
and a re-ascending scale of hierarchic degrees -- a true septenary ladder, with
SOUND (or the Logos) at the upper end and the Vidyadharas* (the inferior
Pitris) at the lower.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In a recent
work on the Symbolism in Buddhism and Christianity (in Buddhism and Roman
Catholicism, rather, many later rituals and dogmas in Northern Buddhism in its
popular exoteric form, being identical with those of the Latin Church) some
curious facts are to be found. The author of this volume, with more pretensions
than erudition, has indiscriminately crammed into his work ancient and modern
Buddhist teachings, and sorely confused Lamaism with Buddhism. On page 404 of
this volume, called "Buddhism in Christendom, or Jesus the Essene,"
our pseudo-Orientalist devotes himself to criticizing the "Seven
Principles" of the Esoteric Buddhists, and attempts to ridicule them. On
page 405, the closing page, he speaks enthusiastically of the Vidyadharas,
"the seven great legions of dead men made wise." Now, these
"Vidyadharas," whom some Orientalists call "demi-gods," are
in fact, exoterically, a kind of Siddhas, "affluent in devotion,"
and, esoterically, they are identical with the seven classes of Pitris, one
class of which endow man in the Third Race with Self-Consciousness by
incarnating in the human shells. The "Hymn to the Sun," at the end of
his queer volume of mosaic, which endows Buddhism with a personal god (!!), is
an unfortunate thrust at the very proofs so elaborately collected by the
unlucky author.
Theosophists are
fully aware that Mr. Rhys Davids has expressed his opinion on their beliefs
likewise. He said that the theories propounded by the author of Esoteric
Buddhism "were not Buddhism, and were not Esoteric." The remark is
the result of (a) the unfortunate mistake of writing "Buddhism"
instead of "Budhaism," or Budhism, i.e., of connecting the system
with Gautama's religion instead of with the Secret Wisdom taught by Krishna,
Sankaracharya, and by many others, as much as by Buddha; and (b) of the
impossibility of Mr. Rhys Davids knowing anything of true esoteric teachings.
But he is, at all events, the greatest Pali and Buddhist scholar of the day,
and whatever he may say is entitled to respectful hearing. But when one who
knows no more of exoteric Buddhism on scientific and materialistic lines, than
he knows of esoteric philosophy, defames those whom he honours with his spite,
and assumes with the Theosophists the airs of a profound scholar, one can only
smile and -- heartily laugh at him.
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Of course, the
Occultists are fully aware of the fact that the Vitalist "fallacy,"
so derided by Vogt and Huxley, is, nevertheless, still countenanced in very
high scientific quarters, and, therefore, they are happy to feel that they do
not stand alone. Thus, Professor de Quatrefages writes:--
"It is very
true we do not know what life is; but no more do we know what the force is that
set the stars in motion. . . . . Living beings are heavy, and therefore subject
to gravitation; they are the seat of numerous and various physico-chemical
phenomena which are indispensable to their existence, and which must be
referred to the action of etherodynamy (electricity, heat, etc.). But these
phenomena are here manifested under the influence of another force. . . . .
Life is not antagonistic to the inanimate forces, but it governs and rules
their action by its laws."*
--------------
IX.
THE SOLAR
THEORY.
A SHORT ANALYSIS
OF THE COMPOUND AND SINGLE ELEMENTS OF SCIENCE AS AGAINST THE OCCULT TEACHINGS.
HOW FAR SCIENTIFIC IS THIS THEORY, AS GENERALLY ACCEPTED.
IN his reply to
Dr. Gull's attack on the theory of vitality (connected inseparably with the
Elements of the ancients in the Occult philosophy), Professor Beale, the great
physiologist, has a few words as suggestive as they are beautiful:--
"There is a
mystery in life -- a mystery which has never been fathomed, and which appears
greater, the more deeply the phenomena of life are studied and contemplated. In
living centres -- far more central than the centres seen by the highest
magnifying powers, in centres of living matter, where the eye cannot penetrate,
but towards which the understanding may tend -- proceed changes of the nature
of which the most advanced physicists and chemists fail to afford us the
conception: nor is there the slightest reason to think that the nature of these
changes will ever be ascertained by physical investigation, inasmuch as they
are certainly of an order or nature totally distinct from that to which any
other phenomenon known to us can be relegated."
This
"mystery," or the origin of the LIFE ESSENCE, Occultism locates in
the same centre as the nucleus of prima materia (for they are one) of our Solar
system.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The
Human Species," p. 11.
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"The Sun is
the heart of the Solar World (System) and its brain is hidden behind the
(visible) Sun. From thence, sensation is radiated into every nerve-centre of
the great body, and the waves of the life-essence flow into each artery and
vein. . . . The planets are its limbs and pulses. . . ." (Commentary.)
It was stated
elsewhere (in the Theosophist) that Occult philosophy denies that the Sun is a
globe in combustion, but defines it simply as a world, a glowing sphere, the
real Sun being hidden behind, and the visible being only its reflection, its
shell. The Nasmyth willow leaves, mistaken by Sir J. Herschell for "Solar
inhabitants," are the reservoirs of solar vital energy, "the vital
electricity that feeds the whole system. . . . . The Sun in abscondito being
thus the storehouse of our little Kosmos, self-generating its vital fluid, and
ever receiving as much as it gives out," and the visible Sun only a window
cut into the real Solar palace and presence, which reflects, however,
faithfully the interior work.
Thus, there is a
regular circulation of the vital fluid throughout our system, of which the Sun
is the heart -- the same as the circulation of the blood in the human body -- during
the manvantaric solar period, or life; the Sun contracting as rhythmically at
every return of it, as the human heart does. Only, instead of performing the
round in a second or so, it takes the solar blood ten of its years, and a whole
year to pass through its auricles and ventricles before it washes the lungs and
passes thence to the great veins and arteries of the system.
This, Science
will not deny, since Astronomy knows of the fixed cycle of eleven years when the
number of solar spots increases,* which is due to the contraction of the Solar
HEART. The universe (our world in this case) breathes, just as man and every
living creature, plant, and even mineral does upon the earth; and as our globe
itself breathes every twenty-four hours. The dark region is not due "to
the absorption exerted by the vapours issuing from the bosom of the sun and
interposed between the observer and the photosphere," as Father Secchi
would have it ("Le Soleil" II., 184), nor are the spots formed
"by the matter (heated gaseous matter) which the irruption projects upon
the solar disc" (ibid). It is similar to the regular and healthy pulsation
of the heart, as the life fluid passes through its hollow muscles. Could the
human heart be made luminous, and the living and throbbing organ be made
visible, so as to have it reflected upon a screen, such as
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Not only does
it not deny the occurrence, though attributing it to a wrong cause, as always,
each theory contradicting every other, (see the theories of Secchi, of Faye,
and of Young), the spots depending on the superficial accumulation of vapours
cooler than the photosphere (?), etc., etc., but we have men of science who
astrologize upon the spots. Professor Jevons attributes all the great
periodical commercial crises to the influence of the Sun spots every eleventh
cyclic year. (See his "Investigations into Currency and Finance.")
This is worthy of praise and encouragement surely.
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used by the
astronomers in their lectures -- say for the moon -- then every one would see
the Sun-spot phenomenon repeated every second -- due to its contraction and the
rushing of the blood.
It is said in a
work on Geology that it is the dream of Science that "all the recognized
chemical elements will one day be found but modifications of a single material
element." ("World-Life," p. 48.)
Occult
philosophy has taught this since the existence of human speech and languages,
adding only, on the principle of the immutable law of analogy -- "as it is
above, so it is below" -- that other axiom, that there is neither Spirit
nor matter, in reality, but only numberless aspects of the One ever-hidden IS
(or Sat). The homogeneous primordial Element is simple and single only on the
terrestrial plane of consciousness and sensation, since matter, after all, is
nothing else than the sequence of our own states of consciousness, and Spirit
an idea of psychic intuition. Even on the next higher plane, that single
element which is defined on our earth by current science, as the ultimate
undecomposable constituent of some kind of matter, would be pronounced in the
world of a higher spiritual perception as something very complex indeed. Our
purest water would be found to yield, instead of its two declared simple
elements of oxygen and hydrogen, many other constituents, undreamt of by our
terrestrial modern chemistry. As in the realm of matter, so in the realm of
Spirit, the shadow of that which is cognized on the plane of objectivity exists
on that of pure subjectivity. The speck of the perfectly homogeneous substance,
the sarcode of the Haeckelian monera, is now viewed as the archebiosis of
terrestrial existence (Mr. Huxley's "protoplasm")*; and Bathybius
Haeckelii has to be traced to its pre-terrestrial archebiosis. This is first
perceived by the astronomers at its third stage of evolution, and in the
"secondary creation," so-called. But the students of Esoteric
philosophy understand too well the secret meaning of the stanza: "Brahma
has essentially the aspect of prakriti, both evolved and unevolved . . . .
Spirit, O twice-born, (Initiate) is the leading aspect of Brahma. The next is a
two-fold aspect -- of Prakriti and Purusha, both evolved and unevolved; and
time is the last! Anu is one of the names of Brahma (as distinct from Brahma
neuter), and it means "atom": Aniyamsam aniyasam, "the most
atomic of the atomic," the "immutable and imperishable (achyuta)
Purushottama."
Surely, then,
the elements now known to us -- be their number whatever it may -- as they are
understood and defined at present, are not,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Unfortunately,
as these pages are being written the "archebiosis of terrestrial
existence" has turned, under a somewhat stricter chemical analysis, into a
simple precipitate of sulphate of lime -- hence from the scientific standpoint
not even an organic substance!!! Sic transit gloria mundi!
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nor can they be,
the primordial elements. Those were formed from "the curds of the cold
radiant mother" and "the fire-seed of the hot Father" who
"are one," or, to express it in the plainer language of modern
science, those elements had their genesis in the depths of the primordial
fire-mist -- the masses of incandescent vapour of the irresolvable nebulae; for
as Professor Newcomb shows (in his "Popular Astronomy," on page 444),
resolvable nebulae are not a class of proper nebulae.
More than half
of those which were at first mistaken for nebulae -- he thinks -- are what he
calls "starry clusters." The elements now known, have arrived at
their state of permanency in this 4th Round and 5th Race. They have a short
period of rest before they are propelled once more on their upward spiritual
evolution; when the "living fire of Orcus" will dissociate the most
irresolvable and scatter them into the primordial ONE -- again.
Meanwhile the Occultist
goes further, as has been shown in the Commentaries on the Seven Stanzas. Hence
he can hardly hope for any help or recognition from science, which will reject
both his "aniyamsam aniyasam" (the absolutely spiritual atom) and his
Manasaputras -- "mind-born men." By resolving the "single
material element" into one absolute irresolvable element -- Spirit, or
"Root-matter," thus placing it at once outside the reach and province
of physical philosophy -- he has, of course but little in common with the orthodox
men of science. He maintains that Spirit and Matter are two FACETS of the
unknowable UNITY, their apparently contrasted aspects depending, (a) on the
various degrees of differentiation of the latter, and (b) on the grades of
consciousness attained by man himself. This is, however, metaphysics, and has
little to do with physics -- however great in its own terrestrial limitation
that physical philosophy may now be.
Nevertheless,
once that Science admits, if not the actual existence, at any rate, the
possibility of the existence, of a Universe with its numberless forms,
conditions, and aspects built out of a "single Substance,"* it has
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In his
"World-Life" -- page 48 -- in the appended foot notes, Professor
Winchell says:-- "It is generally admitted that at excessively high
temperatures matter exists in a state of dissociation -- that is, no chemical
combination can exist;" and would appeal, to prove the unity of matter, to
the spectrum, which in every case of homogeneity will show a bright line,
whereas in the case of several molecular arrangements existing -- in the
nebulae say, or a star -- "the spectrum should consist of two or three
bright lines!" This would be no proof either way to the
physicist-Occultist, who maintains that beyond a certain limit of visible
matter, no spectrum, no telescope and no microscope are of any use. The unity
of matter, of that which is real cosmic matter to the Alchemist, or
"Adam's Earth" as the Kabalists call it, can hardly be proved or
disproved, by either the French savant Dumas, who suggests "the composite
nature of the "elements" on certain relations of atomic
weights," or even by Mr. Crookes's "radiant matter," though his
experiments may seem [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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to go further.
Unless it also admits the possibility of One Element, or the ONE LIFE of the
Occultists. It will have to hang up that "single substance,"
especially if limited to only the solar nebulae, like the coffin of Mahomet, in
mid air, though minus the attractive magnet that sustains that coffin.
Fortunately for the speculative physicists, if unable to state with any degree
of precision what the nebular theory does imply, we have, thanks to Professor
Winchell, and several disagreeing astronomers, been able to learn what it does
not imply.* (Vide Supra.)
Unfortunately,
this is far from clearing even the most simple of the problems that have vexed,
and still do vex, the men of learning in their research after truth. We have to
proceed with our inquiries, starting with the earliest hypotheses of modern
science, if we would discover where and why it sins. Perchance it may be found
that Stallo is right, after all. That the blunders, contradictions, and
fallacies made by the most eminent men of learning are simply due to their
abnormal attitude. They are, and want to remain materialistic quand meme, and
yet "the general principles of the atomo-mechanical theory -- the basis of
modern physics -- are substantially identical with the cardinal doctrines of
ontological metaphysics." Thus, "the fundamental errors of ontology
become apparent in proportion to the advance of physical Science." (Int.
p. VI., "Concepts of Modern Physics.") Science is honeycombed with
metaphysical conceptions, but the Scientists will not admit the charge and
fight desperately to put atomo-mechanical masks on purely incorporeal and
spiritual laws in nature, on our plane -- refusing to admit their
substantiality even on other planes, the bare existence of which they reject a
priori.
It is easy to
show, however, how Scientists, wedded to their materialistic views, have
endeavoured, ever since the day of Newton, to put false masks on fact and
truth. But their task is becoming with every year more difficult; and with
every year also, Chemistry, above all the other sciences, approaches nearer and
nearer the realm of the Occult in nature. It is assimilating the very truths
taught by the Occult Sciences
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] "to be best understood on the hypothesis of
the homogeneity of the elements of matter, and the continuity of the states of
matter." For all this does not go beyond MATERIAL matter, so to say, even
in what is shown by the spectrum, that modern "eye of Siva" of
physical experiments. It is of this matter only, that H. St. Claire Deville
could say that "when bodies, deemed to be simple, combine with one
another, they vanish, they are individually annihilated"; simply because
he could not follow those bodies in their further transformation in the world
of spiritual cosmic matter. Verily modern science will never be able to dig
deep enough into the cosmological formations to find the roots of the
world-stuff or matter, unless she works on the same lines of thought as the
medieval alchemist did.
*
"World-Life," Ibid.
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for ages, but
hitherto bitterly derided. "Matter is eternal," says the Esoteric
Doctrine. But the matter the Occultists conceive of in its laya, or zero state,
is not the matter of modern science; not even in its most rarefied gaseous
state. Mr. Crookes' "radiant matter" would appear matter of the
grossest kind in the realm of the beginnings, as it becomes pure spirit before
it has returned back even to its first point of differentiation. Therefore,
when the adept or alchemist adds that, though matter is eternal, for it is
PRADHANA, yet atoms are born at every new manvantara, or reconstruction of the
universe, it is no such contradiction as a materialist, who believes in nothing
beyond the atom, might think. There is a difference between manifested and
unmanifested matter, between pradhana, the beginningless and endless cause, and
prakriti, or the manifested effect. Says the sloka; --
"That which
is the unevolved cause is emphatically called by the most eminent sages,
pradhana, original base, which is subtile prakriti, viz., that which is
eternal, and which at once is, and is not, a mere process."*
That which in
modern phraseology is respectively referred to as Spirit and Matter, is ONE in
eternity as the perpetual cause, and it is neither Spirit nor matter, but IT --
rendered in Sanskrit TAD ("that"), -- all that is, was, or will be,
all that the imagination of man is capable of conceiving. Even the exoteric
Pantheism of Hinduism renders it as no monotheistic philosophy ever did, for in
superb phraseology its cosmogony begins with the well-known words:--
"There was
neither day nor night, neither heaven nor earth, neither darkness nor light.
And there was not ought else apprehensible by the senses or by the mental
faculties. There was then one Brahma, essentially prakriti (Nature) and Spirit.
For the two aspects of Vishnu which are other than his supreme essential aspect
are prakriti and Spirit, and Brahman. When these two other ASPECTS of his no
longer subsist, but are dissolved, then that aspect whence form and the rest,
i.e., creation, proceed anew, is denominated time, O twice-born."
It is that which
is dissolved, or the illusionary dual aspect of That, the essence of which is
eternally ONE, that we call eternal matter or Substance (Vide in Part II.,
"Primordial Substance and Divine Thought"), formless, sexless,
inconceivable, even to our sixth sense or mind,** in which, therefore, we
refuse to see that which Monotheists call a personal, anthropomorphic God.
How are these
two propositions -- "that matter is eternal," and "the atom
periodical, and not eternal" -- viewed by modern exact Science? The
materialistic physicist will criticize and laugh them to scorn. The
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Book I. ch.
II. Vishnu Purana, Fitzedward Hall's Translation.
** Vide
preceding Section IX., "Life, Force, and Gravity," quotation from
Anugita.
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liberal and
progressive man of Science, however, the true and earnest scientific searcher
after truth -- e.g., the eminent chemist, Mr. Crookes, will corroborate the
probability of the two statements. For, hardly has the echo of his lecture on
the "Genesis of the Elements" died away --the lecture which,
delivered by him before the Chemical Section of the British Association, at the
last Birmingham meeting, so startled every evolutionist who heard or read it --
than there came another one in March last, 1888. Once more the President of the
Chemical Society brings before the world of Science and the public the fruits
of some new discoveries in the realm of atoms, and these discoveries justify
the occult teachings in every way. They are more startling even than the
statements made by him in the first lecture (quoted later) and deserve well the
attention of every Occultist, Theosophist, and Metaphysician. This is what he
says in his "Elements and Meta-Elements," thus justifying Stallo's
charges and prevision with the fearlessness of a scientific mind which loves
science for truth's sake, regardless of any consequences to his own glory and
reputation. We quote his own words:
Permit me,
gentlemen, now to draw your attention for a short time to a subject which concerns
the fundamental principles of chemistry, a subject which may lead us to admit
the possible existence of bodies which, though neither compounds nor mixtures,
are not elements in the strictest sense of the word -- bodies which I venture
to call "meta-elements." To explain my meaning it is necessary for me
to revert to our conception of an element. What is the criterion of an element?
Where are we to draw the line between distinct existence and identity? No one
doubts that oxygen, sodium, chlorine, sulphur are separate elements; and when
we come to such groups as chlorine, bromine, iodine, &c., we still feel no
doubt, although were degrees of "elementicity" admissible -- and to
that we may ultimately have to come -- it might be allowed that chlorine approximates
much more closely to bromine than to oxygen, sodium, or sulphur. Again, nickel
and cobalt are near to each other, very near, though no one questions their
claim to rank as distinct elements. Still I cannot help asking what would have
been the prevalent opinion among chemists had the respective solutions of these
bodies and their compounds presented identical colours, instead of colours
which, approximately speaking, are mutually complementary. Would their distinct
nature have even now been recognised? When we pass further and come to the
so-called rare earths the ground is less secure under our feet. Perhaps we may
admit scandium, ytterbium, and others of the like sort to elemental rank; but
what are we to say in the case of praseo- and neo-dymium, between which there
may be said to exist no well-marked chemical difference, their chief claim to
separate individuality being slight differences in basicity and crystallizing
powers, though their physical distinctions, as shown by spectrum observations, are
very strongly marked? Even here we may imagine the disposition of the majority
of chemists would incline toward the side of leniency, so that they would admit
these two bodies within the charmed circle. Whether in so doing they would be
able to appeal to any broad principle is an open question. If we admit these
candidates
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how in justice
are we to exclude the series of elemental bodies or meta-elements made known to
us by Kruss and Nilson? Here the spectral differences are well marked, while my
own researches on didymium show also a slight difference in basicity between
some at least of these doubtful bodies. In the same category must be included
the numerous separate bodies into which it is probable that yttrium, erbium,
samarium, and other "elements" -- commonly so-called -- have been and
are being split up. Where then are we to draw the line? The different groupings
shade off so imperceptibly the one into the other that it is impossible to
erect a definite boundary between any two adjacent bodies and to say that the
body on this side of the line is an element, while the one on the other side is
non-elementary, or merely something which simulates or approximates to an
element. Wherever an apparently reasonable line might be drawn it would no
doubt be easy at once to assign most bodies to their proper side, as in all
cases of classification the real difficulty comes in when the border-line is
approached. Slight chemical differences, of course, are admitted, and, up to a
certain point, so are well-marked physical differences. What are we to say,
however, when the only chemical difference is an almost imperceptible tendency
for the one body -- of a couple or of a group -- to precipitate before the
other? Again, there are cases where the chemical differences reach the
vanishing point, although well-marked physical differences still remain. Here
we stumble on a new difficulty: in such obscurities what is chemical and what
is physical? Are we not entitled to call a slight tendency of a nascent
amorphous precipitate to fall down in advance of another a "physical
difference?" And may we not call coloured reactions depending on the
amount of some particular acid present and varying, according to the
concentration of the solution and to the solvent employed, "chemical
differences?" I do not see how we can deny elementary character to a body
which differs from another by well-marked colour, or spectrum-reactions, while
we accord it to another body whose only claim is a very minute difference in
basic powers. Having once opened the door wide enough to admit some spectrum
differences, we have to inquire how minute a difference qualifies the candidate
to pass? I will give instances from my own experience of some of these doubtful
candidates.
And here the
great chemist gives several cases of the very extraordinary behaviour of molecules
and earths, apparently the same, and which yet, when examined very closely,
were found to exhibit differences which, however imperceptible, still show that
none of them are simple bodies, and that the 60 or 70 elements accepted in
chemistry, can no longer cover the ground. Their name, apparently, is legion,
but as the so-called "periodic theory" stands in the way of an
unlimited multiplication of elements, Mr. Crookes is obliged to find some means
of reconciling the new discovery with the old theory. "That theory,"
he says:--
"Has
received such abundant verification that we cannot lightly accept any
interpretation of phenomena which fails to be in accordance with it. But if we
suppose the elements reinforced by a vast number of bodies slightly differing
from each other in their properties, and forming, if I may use the expression,
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aggregations of
nebulae where we formerly saw, or believed we saw, separate stars, the periodic
arrangement can no longer be definitely grasped. No longer, that is, if we
retain our usual conception of an element. Let us, then, modify this conception.
For "element" read "elementary group" -- such elementary
groups taking the place of the old elements in the periodic scheme -- and the
difficulty falls away. In defining an element, let us take not an external
boundary, but an internal type. Let us say, e.g., the smallest ponderable
quantity of yttrium is an assemblage of ultimate atoms almost infinitely more
like each other than they are to the atoms of any other approximating element.
It does not necessarily follow that the atoms shall all be absolutely alike
among themselves. The atomic weight which we ascribed to yttrium, therefore,
merely represents a mean value around which the actual weights of the
individual atoms of the "element" range within certain limits. But if
my conjecture is tenable, could we separate atom from atom, we should find them
varying within narrow limits on each side of the mean. The very process of
fractionation implies the existence of such differences in certain
bodies."
Thus fact and
truth have once more forced the hand of "exact" Science, and
compelled it to enlarge its views and change its terms which, masking the
multitude, reduced them to one body -- like the Septenary Elohim and their
hosts transformed by the materialistic religionists into one Jehovah. Replace
the chemical terms "Molecule," "atom,"
"particle," etc., by the words "Hosts," "Monads,"
"Devas," etc., and one might think the genesis of gods, the primeval
evolution of manvantaric intelligent Forces, was being described. But the
learned lecturer adds something still more suggestive to his descriptive
remarks; whether consciously or unconsciously, who knoweth? For he says the
following:--
"Until
lately such bodies passed muster as elements. They had definite properties,
chemical and physical; they had recognised atomic weights. If we take a pure
dilute solution of such a body, yttrium for instance, and if we add to it an
excess of strong ammonia, we obtain a precipitate which appears perfectly
homogeneous. But if instead we add very dilute ammonia in quantity sufficient
only to precipitate one-half of the base present, we obtain no immediate
precipitate. If we stir up the whole thoroughly so as to insure a uniform
mixture of the solution and the ammonia, and set the vessel aside for an hour,
carefully excluding dust, we may still find the liquid clear and bright,
without any vestige of turbidity. After three or four hours, however, an
opalescence will declare itself, and the next morning a precipitate will have
appeared. Now let us ask ourselves, What can be the meaning of this phenomenon?
The quantity of precipitant added was insufficient to throw down more than half
the yttria present, therefore a process akin to selection has been going on for
several hours. The precipitation has evidently not been effected at random,
those molecules of the base being decomposed which happened to come in contact
with a corresponding molecule of ammonia, for we have taken care that the
liquids should be uniformly mixed, so that one molecule of the original salt
would not be more exposed to decomposition
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than any other.
If, further, we consider the time which elapses before the appearance of a
precipitate, we cannot avoid coming to the conclusion that the action which has
been going on for the first few hours is of a selective character. The problem
is not why a precipitate is produced, but what determines or directs some atoms
to fall down and others to remain in solution. Out of the multitude of atoms
present, what power is it that directs each atom to choose the proper path? We
may picture to ourselves some directive force passing the atoms one by one in
review, selecting one for precipitation and another for solution till all have
been adjusted."
The italics in
the above passage are ours. Well may a man of science ask himself, "What
power is it that directs each atom," and what is it that its character
should be selective? Theists would solve the question by answering
"God"; and would solve nothing philosophically. Occultism answers on
its own pantheistic grounds, and refers the reader to a subsequent section,
"Gods, Monads, and Atoms." The learned lecturer sees in it that which
is his chief concern: the finger-posts and the traces of a path which may lead
to the discovery, and the full and complete demonstration of an homogeneous
element in nature. He remarks:--
"In order
that such a selection can be effected there evidently must be some slight
differences between which it is possible to select, and this difference almost
certainly must be one of basicity, so slight as to be imperceptible by any test
at present known, but susceptible of being nursed and encouraged to a point
when the difference can be appreciated by ordinary tests."
Occultism, which
knows of the existence and presence in Nature of the One eternal element at the
first differentiation of which the roots of the tree of life are periodically
struck, needs no scientific proofs. It says:-- Ancient Wisdom has solved the
problem ages ago. Aye; earnest, as well as mocking reader, Science is slowly
but as surely approaching our domains of the Occult. It is forced by its own
discoveries to adopt nolens volens our phraseology and symbols. Chemical
Science is now compelled, by the very force of things, to accept even our
illustration of the evolution of the gods and atoms, so suggestively and
undeniably figured in the caduceus of Mercury, the God of Wisdom, and in the
allegorical language of the Archaic Sages. Says a commentary in the esoteric
doctrine:--
. . . . The
trunk of the ASVATTHA (the tree of Life and Being, the ROD of the caduceus)
grows from and descends at every Beginning (every new manvantara) from the two
dark wings of the Swan (HANSA) of Life. The two Serpents, the ever-living and
its illusion (Spirit and matter) whose two heads grow from the one head between
the wings, descend along the trunk, interlaced in close embrace. The two tails
join on earth (the manifested Universe) into one, and this is the great
illusion, O Lanoo!"
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Every one knows
what the caduceus is, already modified by the Greeks. The original symbol --
with the triple head of the serpent -- became altered into a rod with a knob,
and the two lower heads were separated, thus disfiguring somewhat the original
meaning. Yet it is as good an illustration as can be for our purpose, this laya
rod entwined by two serpents. Verily the wonderful powers of the magic caduceus
were sung by all the ancient poets, with a very good reason for those who
understood the secret meaning.
[[diagram]]
Now what says
the learned President of the Chemical Society of Great Britain, in that same
lecture, which has any reference to, or bearing upon, our above-mentioned
doctrine. Very little; only this -- and nothing more:--
"In the
Birmingham address already referred to I asked my audience to picture the
action of two forces on the original protyle --- one being time, accompanied by
a lowering of temperature; the other, swinging to and fro like a mighty
pendulum, having periodic cycles of ebb and swell, rest and activity, being
intimately connected with the imponderable matter, essence, or source of energy
we call electricity. Now, a simile like this effects its object if it fixes in
the mind the particular fact it is intended to emphasize, but it must not be
expected necessarily to run parallel with all the facts. Besides the lowering
of temperature with the periodic ebb and flow of electricity, positive or
negative, requisite to confer on the newly-born elements their particular
atomicity, it is evident that a third factor must be taken into account. Nature
does not act on a flat plane; she demands space for her cosmogenic operations,
and if we introduce space as the third factor, all appears clear. Instead of a
pendulum, which, though to a certain extent a good illustration, is impossible
as a fact, let us seek some more satisfactory way of representing what I
conceive may have taken place. Let us suppose the zigzag diagram not drawn upon
a plane, but projected in space of three dimensions. What figure can we best
select to meet all the conditions involved? Many of the facts can be well
explained by supposing the projection in space of Professor Emerson Reynolds'
zigzag curve to be a spiral. This figure is, however, inadmissible, inasmuch as
the curve has to pass through a point neutral as to electricity and chemical
energy twice in each cycle. We must, therefore, adopt some other figure. A
figure of eight (8), or lemniscate, will foreshorten into a zigzag just as well
as a spiral, and it fulfils every condition of the problem."
A lemniscate for
the evolution downward, from Spirit into matter;
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another form of
a spiral, perhaps, in its reinvolutionary path onward, from matter into Spirit,
and the necessary gradual and final reabsorption into the laya state, that
which Science calls in her own way "the point neutral as to
electricity" etc., or the zero point. Such are the Occult facts and
statement. They may be left with the greatest security and confidence to
Science, to be justified some day. Let us hear some more, however, about this
primordial genetic type of the symbolical caduceus.
"Such a
figure will result from three very simple simultaneous motions. First, a simple
oscillation backwards and forwards (suppose east and west); secondly, a simple
oscillation at right angles to the former (suppose north and south) of half the
periodic time -- i.e., twice as fast; and thirdly, a motion at right angles to
these two (suppose downwards), which, in its simplest form, would be with
unvarying velocity. If we project this figure in space we find on examination
that the points of the curves, where chlorine, bromine, and iodine are formed,
come close under each other; so also will sulphur, selenium, and tellurium;
again, phosphorus, arsenic, and antimony; and in like manner other series of
analogous bodies. It may be asked whether this scheme explains how and why the
elements appear in this order? Let us imagine a cyclical translation in space,
each evolution witnessing the genesis of the group of elements which I
previously represented as produced during one complete vibration of the
pendulum. Let us suppose that one cycle has thus been completed, the centre of
the unknown creative force in its mighty journey through space having scattered
along its track the primitive atoms -- the seeds, if I may use the expression
-- which presently are to coalesce and develop into the groupings now known as
lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine, sodium,
magnesium, aluminium, silicon, phosphorus, sulphur, and chlorine. What is most
probably the form of track now pursued? Were it strictly confined to the same
plane of temperature and time, the next elementary groupings to appear would
again have been those of lithium, and the original cycle would have been
eternally repeated, producing again and again the same 14 elements. The
conditions, however, are not quite the same. Space and electricity are as at
first, but temperature has altered, and thus, instead of the atoms of lithium
being supplemented with atoms in all respects analogous with themselves, the
atomic groupings which come into being when the second cycle commences form,
not lithium, but its lineal descendant, potassium. Suppose, therefore, the vis
generatrix travelling to and fro in cycles along a lemniscate path, as above
suggested, while simultaneously temperature is declining and time is flowing on
-- variations which I have endeavoured to represent by the downward sink --
each coil of the lemniscate track crosses the same vertical line at lower and
lower points. Projected in space, the curve shows a central line neutral as far
as electricity is concerned, and neutral in chemical properties -- positive
electricity on the north, negative on the south. Dominant atomicities are
governed by the distance east and west from the neutral centre line, monatomic
elements being one remove from it, diatomic two removes, and so on. In every
successive coil the same law holds good."
And, as if to
prove the postulate of Occult Science and Hindu philos-
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ophy, that, at
the hour of the Pralaya, the two aspects of the unknowable deity, "the
Swan in darkness" -- Prakriti and Purusha, nature or matter in all its forms
and Spirit -- "no longer subsist but are (absolutely) dissolved," we
learn the conclusive scientific opinion of the great English chemist, who caps
his proofs by saying:-- "We have now traced the formation of the chemical
elements from knots and voids in a primitive, formless fluid. We have shown the
possibility, nay, the probability that the atoms are not eternal in existence,
but share with all other created beings the attributes of decay and
death."
Occultism says
amen to this, as the Scientific "possibility" and
"probability" are for it facts demonstrated beyond the necessity of
further proof or any extraneous physical evidence. Nevertheless, it repeats
with as much assurance as ever: "MATTER IS ETERNAL, becoming atomic (its
aspect) only periodically." This is as sure as that the other proposition,
which is almost unanimously accepted by astronomers and physicists -- namely,
that the wear and tear of the body of the Universe is steadily going on, and
that it will finally lead to the extinction of the Solar fires and the
destruction of the Universe -- is quite erroneous on the lines traced by Men of
Science. There will be, as there ever were in time and eternity, periodical
dissolutions of the manifested Universe, but (a) a partial pralaya after every "Day
of Brahma;" and (b) an Universal pralaya -- the MAHA-PRALAYA -- only after
the lapse of every Brahma's age. But the scientific causes for such
dissolution, as brought forward by exact Science, have nothing to do with the
true causes. However that may be, Occultism is once more justified by Science,
for Mr. Crookes said:--
"We have
shown, from arguments drawn from the chemical laboratory, that in matter which
has responded to every test of an element, there are minute shades of difference
which may admit of selection. We have seen that the time-honoured distinction
between elements and compounds no longer keeps pace with the developments of
chemical science, but must be modified to include a vast array of intermediate
bodies -- "meta-elements." We have shown how the objections of
Clerk-Maxwell, weighty as they are, may be met; and finally, we have adduced
reasons for believing that primitive matter was formed by the act of a
generative force, throwing off at intervals of time atoms endowed with varying
quantities of primitive forms of energy. If we may hazard any conjectures as to
the source of energy embodied in a chemical atom, we may, I think, premise that
the heat radiations propagated outwards through the ether from the ponderable
matter of the universe, by some process of nature not yet known to us, are
transformed at the confines of the universe into the primary -- the essential
-- motions of chemical atoms, which, the instant they are formed, gravitate
inwards, and thus restore to the universe the energy which otherwise would be
lost to it through radiant heat. If this conjecture be well founded, Sir
William Thomson's startling prediction of the final decrepitude of the universe
through the dissipation of its energy falls to the ground. In this
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fashion,
gentlemen, it seems to me that the question of the elements may be
provisionally treated. Our slender knowledge of these first mysteries is
extending steadily, surely, though slowly."
By a strong and
curious coincidence even our "septenary" doctrine seems to force the
hand of Science. If we understand rightly, Chemistry speaks of fourteen
groupings of primitive atoms -- lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen,
oxygen, fluorine, sodium, magnesium, aluminium, silicon, phosphorus, sulphur
and chlorine; and Mr. Crookes, speaking of the "dominant atomicities,"
enumerates seven groups of these, for he says:--
"As the
mighty focus of creative energy goes round, we see it in successive cycles
sowing in one tract of space seeds of lithium, potassium, rubidium, and
caesium; in another tract, chlorine, bromine, and iodine; in a third, sodium,
copper, silver, and gold; in a fourth, sulphur, selenium, and tellurium; in a
fifth, beryllium, calcium, strontium, and barium; in a sixth, magnesium, zinc,
cadmium, and mercury; in a seventh, phosphorus, arsenic, antimony, and
bismuth" -- which makes seven groupings on the one hand. And after showing
"in other tracts the other elements -- namely, aluminium, gallium, indium,
and thallium; silicon, germanium, and tin; carbon, titanium, and
zirconium."
He adds:
"While a natural position near the neutral axis is found for the three
groups of elements relegated by Professor Mendeleeff to a sort of Hospital for
Incurables -- his eighth family." It might be interesting to compare these
"seven of the eighth family of 'incurables'" with the allegories
concerning the seven primitive sons of "Mother, Infinite Space," or
Aditi, and the eighth son rejected by her. Many a strange coincidence may thus
be found between "those intermediate links . . . named 'meta-elements or
elementoids and those whom occult science names their noumenoi,' the
intelligent minds and rulers of those groupings of Monads and Atoms. But this
would lead us too far. Let us be content with finding the confession of the
fact that "this deviation from absolute homogeneity should mark the
constitution of these molecules or aggregations of matter which we designate
elements and will perhaps be clearer if we return in imagination to the
earliest dawn of our material universe, and, face to face with the Great
Secret, try to consider the processes of elemental evolution." Thus
finally Science, in the person of its highest representatives, in order to make
itself clearer to the profane, adopts the phraseology of such old adepts as
Roger Bacon, and returns to the "protyle." All this is hopeful and
suggestive of the "signs of the times."
Indeed these
"signs" are many and multiply daily; but none are more important than
those just quoted. For now the chasm between the occult "superstitious and
unscientific" teachings and "exact" science is completely
bridged, and one, at least, of the few eminent chemists of the day is in the
realm of the infinite possibilities of occultism. Every new
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step he will
take will bring him nearer and nearer to that mysterious centre, from which
radiate the innumerable paths that lead down Spirit into matter, and which
transform the gods and the living monads into man and sentient nature.
But we have
something more to say on this subject in the following section.
-------
X.
THE COMING
FORCE.
ITS
POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES.
Shall we say
that Force is "moving matter," or "matter in motion," and a
manifestation of energy; or that matter and force are the phenomenal
differentiated aspects of the one primary, undifferentiated Cosmic Substance?
This query is
made with regard to that Stanza which treats of FOHAT and his "Seven
brothers or Sons," in other words, of the cause and the effects of Cosmic
Electricity, the latter called, in Occult parlance, the seven primary forces of
Electricity, whose purely phenomenal, and hence grossest effects are alone
cognizable by physicists on the cosmic and especially on the terrestrial plane.
These include, among other things, Sound, Light, Colour, etc., etc. Now what
does physical Science tell us of these "Forces"? SOUND, it says, is a
sensation produced by the impact of atmospheric molecules on the tympanum,
which, by setting up delicate tremors in the auditory apparatus, thus
communicate themselves to the brain. LIGHT is the sensation caused by the
impact of inconceivably minute vibrations of ether on the retina of the eye.
So, too, we say.
But this is simply the effect produced in our atmosphere and its immediate
surroundings, all, in fact, which falls within the range of our terrestrial
consciousness. Jupiter Pluvius sent his symbol in drops of rain, of water
composed, as is believed, of two "elements," which chemistry
dissociates and recombines. The compound molecules are in its power, but their
atoms still elude its grasp. Occultism sees in all these Forces and
manifestations a ladder, the lower rungs of which belong to exoteric physics,
and the higher are traced to a living, intelligent, invisible Power, which is,
as a rule, the unconcerned, and exceptionally, the conscious cause of the
sense-born phenomenon designated as this or another natural law.
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We say and
maintain that SOUND, for one thing, is a tremendous Occult power; that it is a
stupendous force, of which the electricity generated by a million of Niagaras
could never counteract the smallest potentiality when directed with occult
knowledge. Sound may be produced of such a nature that the pyramid of Cheops
would be raised in the air, or that a dying man, nay, one at his last breath,
would be revived and filled with new energy and vigour.
For Sound
generates, or rather attracts together, the elements that produce an ozone, the
fabrication of which is beyond chemistry, but within the limits of Alchemy. It
may even resurrect a man or an animal whose astral "vital body" has
not been irreparably separated from the physical body by the severance of the
magnetic or odic chord. As one saved thrice from death by that power, the
writer ought to be credited with knowing personally something about it.
And if all this
appears too unscientific to be even noticed, let Science explain to what
mechanical and physical laws known to it, is due the recently produced
phenomena of the so-called "Keely motor?" What is it that acts as the
formidable generator of invisible but tremendous force, of that power which is
not only capable of driving an engine of 25 horse-power, but has even been
employed to lift the machinery bodily? Yet this is done simply by drawing a
fiddle-bow across a tuning fork, as has been repeatedly proven. For the etheric
Force, discovered by the well-known (in America and now in Europe) John Worrell
Keely, of Philadelphia, is no hallucination. Notwithstanding his failure to
utilize it, a failure prognosticated and maintained by some Occultists from the
first, the phenomena exhibited by the discoverer during the last few years have
been wonderful, almost miraculous, not in the sense of the supernatural* but of
the superhuman. Had Keely been permitted to succeed, he might have reduced a
whole army to atoms in the space of a few seconds as easily as he reduced a
dead ox to the same condition.
The reader is
now asked to give a serious attention to that newly-discovered potency which
the discoverer has named "Inter-Etheric Force and Forces."
In the humble
opinion of the Occultists, as of his immediate friends,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The word
"supernatural" implies above or outside of nature. Nature and Space
are one. Now Space for the metaphysician exists outside of any act of
sensation, and is a purely subjective representation; materialism, which would
connect it forcibly with one or the other datum of sensation, notwithstanding.
For our senses, it is fairly subjective when independent of anything within it.
How then can any phenomenon, or anything else, step outside of or be performed
beyond that which has no limits? But when spacial extension becomes simply
conceptual, and is thought of in an idea connected with certain actions, as by
the materialists and the physicists, then again they have hardly a right to
define and claim that which can or cannot be produced by Forces generated
within even limited spaces, as they have not even an approximate idea of what
those forces are.
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Mr. Keely, of
Philadelphia, was, and still is, at the threshold of some of the greatest
secrets of the Universe; of that chiefly on which is built the whole mystery of
physical Forces, and the esoteric significance of the "Mundane Egg"
symbolism. Occult philosophy, viewing the manifested and the unmanifested
Kosmos as a UNITY, symbolizes the ideal conception of the former by that
"Golden Egg" with two poles in it. It is the positive pole that acts
in the manifested world of matter, while the negative is lost in the unknowable
absoluteness of SAT -- "Be-ness."* Whether this agrees with the
philosophy of Mr. Keely, we cannot tell, nor does it really much matter.
Nevertheless, his ideas about the ethero-material construction of the Universe
look strangely like our own, being in this respect nearly identical. This is
what we find him saying in an able pamphlet compiled by Mrs. Bloomfield-Moore,
an American lady of wealth and position, whose incessant efforts in the pursuit
of truth can never be too highly appreciated:-- "Mr. Keely, in explanation
of the working of his engine, says: 'In the conception of any machine
heretofore constructed, the medium for inducing a neutral centre has never been
found. If it had, the difficulties of perpetual-motion seekers would have
ended, and this problem would have become an established and operating fact. It
would only require an introductory impulse of a few pounds, on such a device,
to cause it to run for centuries. In the conception of my vibratory engine, I
did not seek to attain perpetual motion; but a circuit is formed that actually
has a neutral centre, which is in a condition to be vivified by my vibratory
ether, and, while under operation by said substance, is really a machine that
is virtually independent of the mass (or globe),** and it is the wonderful
velocity of the vibratory circuit which makes it so. Still, with all its
perfection, it requires to be fed with the vibratory ether to make it an
independent motor . . . ."
"All
structures require a foundation in strength according to the weight of the mass
they have to carry, but the foundations of the universe rest on a vacuous point
far more minute than a molecule; in fact, to express this truth properly, on an
inter-etheric point, which requires an infinite mind to understand it. To look
down into the depths of an etheric centre is precisely the same as it would be
to search into the broad space of heaven's ether to find the end, with this
difference: that one is the positive field, while the other is the negative
field . . . ."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is not
correct, when speaking of idealism, to show it based upon "the old
ontological assumptions that things or entities exist independently of each
other, and otherwise than as terms of relations" (Stallo). At any rate, it
is incorrect to say so of idealism in Eastern philosophy and its cognition, for
it is just the reverse.
** Independent,
in a certain sense, but not disconnected with it.
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This, as easily
seen, is precisely the Eastern doctrine. His inter-etheric point is the
laya-point of the Occultists, which, however, does not require "an
infinite mind to understand it," but only a specific intuition and ability
to trace its hiding-place in this world of matter. Of course, the laya centre
cannot be produced, but an inter-etheric vacuum can -- as proved in the
production of bell-sounds in space. Mr. Keely speaks as an unconscious
Occultist, nevertheless, when he remarks in his theory of planetary
suspension:--
"As regards
planetary volume, we would ask in a scientific point of view, How can the
immense difference of volume in the planets exist without disorganising the
harmonious action that has always characterised them? I can only answer this
question properly by entering into a progressive analysis, starting on the
rotating etheric centres that were fixed by the Creator* with their attractive
or accumulative power. If you ask what power it is that gives to each etheric
atom its inconceivable velocity of rotation (or introductory impulse), I must
answer that no finite mind will ever be able to conceive what it is. The
philosophy of accumulation is the only proof that such a power has been given.
The area, if we can so speak, of such an atom, presents to the attractive or
magnetic, the elective or propulsive, all the receptive force and all the
antagonistic force that characterises a planet of the largest magnitude;
consequently, as the accumulation goes on, the perfect equation remains the
same. When this minute centre has once been fixed, the power to rend it from
its position would necessarily have to be so great as to displace the most
immense planet that exists. When this atomic neutral centre is displaced, the
planet must go with it. The neutral centre carries the full load of any
accumulation from the start, and remains the same, for ever balanced in the
eternal space."
Mr. Keely
illustrates his idea of "a neutral centre" in this way:--
"We will
imagine that, after an accumulation of a planet of any diameter, say, 20,000
miles, more or less, for the size has nothing to do with the problem; there
should be a displacement of all the material, with the exception of a crust
5,000 miles thick, leaving an intervening void between this crust and a centre
of the size of an ordinary billiard ball, it would then require a force as
great to move this small central mass as it would to move the shell of 5,000
miles thickness. Moreover, this small central mass would carry the load of this
crust for ever, keeping it equidistant; and there could be no opposing power,
however great, that could bring them together. The imagination staggers in contemplating
the immense load which bears upon this point of centre, where weight ceases. .
. . This is what we understand by a neutral centre."
And what
Occultists understand by a "laya centre."
The above is
pronounced "unscientific" by many. But so is everything that is not
sanctioned and kept on strictly orthodox lines by physical science. Unless the
explanation given by the inventor himself is accepted -- and his explanations,
being, as observed, quite orthodox from
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "By
Fohat, more likely," would be an Occultist's reply.
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the spiritual
and the Occult stand-points, if not from that of materialistic speculative
(called exact) Science, are therefore ours in this particular -- what can
science answer to facts already seen which it is no longer possible for anyone
to deny? Occult philosophy divulges few of its most important vital mysteries.
It drops them like precious pearls, one by one, far and wide apart, and only
when forced to do so by the evolutionary tidal wave that carries on humanity slowly,
silently, but steadily toward the dawn of the Sixth-Race mankind. For once out
of the safe custody of their legitimate heirs and keepers, those mysteries
cease to be occult: they fall into the public domain and have to run the risk
of becoming in the hands of the selfish -- of the Cains of the human race --
curses more often than blessings. Nevertheless, whenever such individuals as
the discoverer of Etheric Force -- John Worrell Keely -- men with peculiar
psychic and mental capacities* are born, they are generally and more frequently
helped than allowed to go unassisted; groping on their way, though, if left to
their own resources, falling very soon victims to martyrdom and unscrupulous
speculators. Only they are helped on the condition that they should not become,
whether consciously or unconsciously, an additional peril to their age: a
danger to the poor, now offered in daily holocaust by the less wealthy to the
very wealthy.** This necessitates a short digression and an explanation.
Some twelve years
back, during the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, the writer, in answering
the earnest queries of a theosophist, one of the earliest admirers of Mr.
Keely, repeated to him what she had heard in quarters, information from which
she could never doubt.
It had been
stated that the inventor of the "Self-Motor" was what is called, in
the jargon of the Kabalists, a "natural-born magician." That he was
and would remain unconscious of the full range of his powers, and would work
out merely those which he had found out and ascertained in his own nature --
firstly, because, attributing them to a wrong source, he could never give them
full sway; and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The reason for
such psychic capacities is given farther on.
** The above was
written two years ago, at a time when hopes of success for the "Keely
Motor" were at their highest. What was then said by the writer proved
true, in every word, and now only a few remarks are added to it with regard to
the failure of his expectations, so far, which has now been admitted by the
discoverer himself. Though, however, the word failure is here used the reader
should understand it in a relative sense, for as Mrs. Bloomfield-Moore
explains: "What Mr. Keely does admit is that, baffled in applying
vibratory force to mechanics, upon his first and second lines of experimental
research, he was obliged either to confess a commercial failure, or to try a
third departure from his base or principle; seeking success through another
channel."
. . And this
"channel" is on the physical plane.
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secondly,
because it was beyond his power to pass to others that which was a capacity
inherent in his special nature. Hence the whole secret could not be made over
permanently to anyone for practical purposes or use.*
Individuals born
with such a capacity are not very rare. That they are not heard of more
frequently is due to the fact that they live and die, in almost every case, in
utter ignorance of being possessed of abnormal powers at all. Mr. Keely
possesses powers which are called "abnormal" just because they happen
in our day to be as little known as blood circulation was before Harvey's time.
Blood existed, and it behaved as it does at present in the first man born from
woman; and so does that principle in man which can control and guide etheric
vibratory force. At any rate it exists in all those mortals whose inner selves
are primordially connected, by reason of their direct descent, with that group
of Dhyan-Chohans who are called "the first-born of Ether." Mankind,
psychically considered, is divided into various groups, each of which is
connected with one of the Dhyanic groups that first formed psychic man; (see
paragraphs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in the Commentary to Stanza VII.) Mr. Keely being
greatly favoured in this respect, and moreover, besides his psychic temperament,
being intellectually a genius in mechanics, may thus achieve most wonderful
results. He has achieved some already -- more than any mortal man, not
initiated into the final mysteries, has achieved in this age up to the present
day. What he has done is certainly quite sufficient "to demolish with the
hammer of Science the idols of Science" -- the idols of matter with the
feet of clay -- as his friends justly predict and say of him. Nor would the
writer for a moment think of contradicting Mrs. Bloomfield-Moore, when in her
paper on "Psychic Force and Etheric Force," she states that Mr.
Keely, as a philosopher, "is great enough in soul, wise enough in mind,
and sublime enough in courage to overcome all difficulties, and to stand at
last before the world as the greatest discoverer and inventor in the
world."
And again she
writes:-- "Should Keely do no more than lead scientists from the dreary
realms where they are groping into the open field of elemental force, where
gravity and cohesion are disturbed in their haunts and diverted to use; where,
from unity of origin, emanates infinite energy in diversified forms, he will
achieve immortal fame. Should he demonstrate, to the destruction of
materialism, that the universe is animated by a mysterious principle to which
matter, however perfectly organized, is absolutely subservient, he will be a
greater spiritual benefactor to our race than the modern world has yet found in
any man. Should he be able to substitute, in the treatment of disease,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* We learn that
these remarks are not applicable to Mr. Keely's latest discovery; time alone
can show the exact limit of his achievements.
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the finer forces
of nature for the grossly material agencies which have sent more human beings
to their graves than war, pestilence and famine combined, he will merit and
receive the gratitude of mankind. All this and more will he do, if he and those
who have watched his progress, day by day for years, are not too sanguine in
their expectations."
Writing in the
T. P. S. ("Theosophical Publication Society") series (No. 9), the
same lady, in her pamphlet, "Keely's Secrets," brings forward a
passage from an article, written a few years ago by the writer of the present
volume, in her journal, the Theosophist, in these words:--
"The author
of No. 5 of the pamphlets issued by the Theosophical Publication Society, 'What
is Matter and What is Force,' says therein, 'The men of science have just found
out "a fourth state of matter," whereas the Occultists have
penetrated years ago beyond the sixth, and therefore do not infer, but know of,
the existence of the seventh, the last.' This knowledge comprises one of the
secrets of Keely's so-called 'compound secret.' It is already known to many
that his secret includes 'the augmentation of energy,' the insulation of the
ether, and the adaptation of dynaspheric force to machinery."
It is just
because Keely's discovery would lead to a knowledge of one of the most occult
secrets, a secret which can never be allowed to fall into the hands of the
masses, that his failure to push his discoveries to their logical end seems
certain to Occultists. But of this more presently. Even in its limitations this
discovery may prove of the greatest benefit. For:--
"Step by
step, with a patient perseverance which some day the world will honour, this
man of genius has made his researches, overcoming the colossal difficulties
which again and again raised up in his path what seemed to be (to all but
himself) insurmountable barriers to further progress: but never has the world's
index finger so pointed to an hour when all is making ready for the advent of
the new form of force that mankind is waiting for. Nature, always reluctant to
yield her secrets, is listening to the demands made upon her by her master,
necessity. The coal mines of the world cannot long afford the increasing drain
made upon them. Steam has reached its utmost limits of power, and does not
fulfil the requirements of the age. It knows that its days are numbered.
Electricity holds back, with bated breath, dependent upon the approach of her
sister colleague. Air ships are riding at anchor, as it were, waiting for the
force which is to make aerial navigation something more than a dream. As easily
as men communicate with their offices from their homes by means of the
telephone, so will the inhabitants of separate continents talk across the
ocean. Imagination is palsied when seeking to foresee the grand results of this
marvellous discovery, when once it is applied to art and mechanics. In taking
the throne which it will force steam to abdicate, dynaspheric force will rule
the world with a power so mighty in the interests of civilization, that no
finite mind can conjecture the results. Laurence Oliphant, in his preface to
'Scientific Religion,' says: 'A new moral future is dawning upon the human race
-- one, certainly, of which it stands much in need.' In no way could this
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new moral future
be so widely, so universally, commenced as by the utilizing of dynaspheric
force to beneficial purposes in life. . . . ."
The Occultists
are ready to admit all this with the eloquent writer. Molecular vibration is,
undeniably, "Keely's legitimate field of research," and the
discoveries made by him will prove wonderful -- yet only in his hands and
through himself. The world so far will get but that with which it can be safely
entrusted. The truth of this assertion has, perhaps, not yet quite dawned upon
the discoverer himself, since he writes that he is absolutely certain that he
will accomplish all that he has promised, and will then give it out to the
world; but it must dawn upon him, and at no very far distant date. And what he
says in reference to his work is a good proof of it:--
"In
considering the operation of my engine, the visitor, in order to have even an
approximate conception of its modus operandi, must discard all thought of
engines that are operated upon the principle of pressure and exhaustion, by the
expansion of steam or other analogous gas which impinges upon an abutment, such
as the piston of a steam-engine. My engine has neither piston nor eccentrics,
nor is there one grain of pressure exerted in the engine, whatever may be the
size or capacity of it.
"My system,
in every part and detail, both in the developing of my power and in every
branch of its utilization, is based and founded on sympathetic vibration. In no
other way would it be possible to awaken or develop my force, and equally
impossible would it be to operate my engine upon any other principle. . . . . .
.This, however, is the true system; and henceforth all my operations will be
conducted in this manner -- that is to say, my power will be generated, my
engines run, my cannon operated, through a wire.
"It has
been only after years of incessant labour, and the making of almost innumerable
experiments, involving not only the construction of a great many most peculiar
mechanical structures, and the closest investigation and study of the
phenomenal properties of the substance 'ether,' per se, produced, that I have
been able to dispense with complicated mechanism, and to obtain, as I claim,
mastery over the subtle and strange force with which I am dealing."
The passages
underlined by us, are those which bear directly on the occult side of the
application of the vibratory force, or what Mr. Keely calls "sympathetic
vibration." The "wire" is already a step below, or downward from
the pure etheric plane into the terrestrial. The discoverer has produced
marvels -- the word "miracle" is not too strong -- when acting
through the inter-etheric Force alone, the fifth and sixth principles of Akasa.
From a "generator" six feet long, he has come down to one "no
larger than an old-fashioned silver watch;" and this by itself is a
miracle of mechanical (but not spiritual) genius. But, as well expressed by his
great patroness and defender, Mrs. Bloomfield-Moore, "the two forms of
force which he has been experimenting with, and the phenomena attending them,
are the very antithesis of each other." One was generated and acted upon
by and
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through himself.
No one, who should have repeated the thing done by himself, could have produced
the same results. It was "Keely's ether" that acted truly, while
"Smith's or Brown's" ether would have remained for ever barren of
results. For Keely's difficulty has hitherto been to produce a machine which
would develop and regulate the "force" without the intervention of
any "will power" or personal influence, whether conscious or unconscious
of the operator. In this he has failed, so far as others were concerned, for no
one but himself could operate on his "machines." Occultly this was a
far more advanced achievement than the "success" which he anticipates
from his "wire," but the results obtained from the fifth and sixth
planes of the etheric (or Astral) Force, will never be permitted to serve for
purposes of commerce and traffic. That Keely's organism is directly connected
with the production of the marvellous results is proven by the following
statement emanating from one who knows the great discoverer intimately.
At one time the
shareholders of the "Keely Motor Co." put a man in his workshop for
the express purpose of discovering his secret. After six months of close
watching, he said to J. W. Keely one day: "I know how it is done,
now." They had been setting up a machine together, and Keely was
manipulating the stop-cock which turned the force on and off. "Try it,
then," was the answer. The man turned the cock, and nothing came.
"Let me see you do it again," the man said to Keely. The latter
complied, and the machinery operated at once. Again the other tried, but
without success. Then Keely put his hand on his shoulder and told him to try
once more. He did so, with the result of an instantaneous production of the
current. This fact, if true, settles the question.
We are told that
Mr. Keely defines electricity "as a certain form of atomic
vibration." In this he is quite right; but this is electricity on the
terrestrial plane, and through terrestrial correlations. He estimates --
Molecular
vibrations at 100,000,000 per second.
Inter-molecular
vibrations at 300,000,000 per second
Atomic
vibrations at 900,000,000 per second
Inter-atomic
vibrations at 2,700,000,000 per second
AEtheric vibrations
at 8,100,000,000 per second
Inter-AEtheric
vibrations at 24,300,000,000 per second
This proves our
point. There are no vibrations that could be counted or even estimated at an
approximate rate beyond "the realm of the fourth son of Fohat," using
an occult phraseology, or that motion which corresponds to the formation of Mr.
Crookes' radiant matter, or lightly called some years ago the "fourth
state of matter" -- on this our plane.
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If the question
is asked why Mr. Keely was not allowed to pass a certain limit, the answer is
easy; because that which he has unconsciously discovered, is the terrible
sidereal Force, known to, and named by the Atlanteans MASH-MAK, and by the
Aryan Rishis in their Ashtar Vidya by a name that we do not like to give. It is
the vril of Bulwer Lytton's "Coming Race," and of the coming races of
our mankind. The name vril may be a fiction; the Force itself is a fact doubted
as little in India as the existence itself of their Rishis, since it is
mentioned in all the secret works.
It is this
vibratory Force, which, when aimed at an army from an Agni Rath fixed on a
flying vessel, a balloon, according to the instructions found in Ashtar Vidya,
reduced to ashes 100,000 men and elephants, as easily as it would a dead rat.
It is allegorised in the Vishnu Purana, in the Ramayana and other works, in the
fable about the sage Kapila whose glance made a mountain of ashes of King
Sagara's 60,000 sons, and which is explained in the esoteric works, and
referred to as the Kapilaksha -- "Kapila's Eye."
And is it this
Satanic Force that our generations were to be allowed to add to their stock of
Anarchist's baby-toys, known as melenite, dynamite clock-works, explosive
oranges, "flower baskets," and such other innocent names? Is it this
destructive agency, which, once in the hands of some modern Attila, e.g., a blood-thirsty
anarchist, would reduce Europe in a few days to its primitive chaotic state
with no man left alive to tell the tale -- is this force to become the common
property of all men alike?
What Mr. Keely
has already done is grand and wonderful in the extreme; there is enough work
before him in the demonstration of his new system to "humble the pride of
those scientists who are materialistic, by revealing those mysteries which lie
behind the world of matter," without revealing it nolens volens to all.
For surely Psychists and Spiritualists -- of whom there are a good number in
the European armies -- would be the first to experience personally the fruits
of such mysteries revealed. Thousands of them would find themselves (and
perhaps with the populations of whole countries to keep them company) in blue
Ether very soon, were such a Force to be even entirely discovered, let alone
made publicly known. The discovery in its completeness is by several thousand
-- or shall we say hundred thousand? -- years too premature. It will be at its
appointed place and time only when the great roaring flood of starvation,
misery, and underpaid labour ebbs back again -- as it will when happily at last
the just demands of the many are attended to; when the proletariat exists but
in name, and the pitiful cry for bread, that rings throughout the world
unheeded, has died away. This may be hastened by the spread of learning,
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and by new
openings for work and emigration, with better prospects than exist now, and on
some new continent that may appear. Then only will "Keely's Motor and
Force," as originally contemplated by himself and friends, be in demand,
because it will be more needed by the poor than by the wealthy.
Meanwhile the
force discovered by him will work through wires, and this, if he succeeds, will
be quite sufficient in the present generation to make of him the greatest
discoverer of this age.
What Mr. Keely
says of Sound and Colour is also correct from the Occult stand-point. Hear him
talk as though he were the nursling of the "Gods-revealers," and had
gazed all his life into the depths of Father-Mother AEther.
In comparing the
tenuity of the atmosphere with that of the etheric flows, obtained by him from
his invention for breaking up the molecules of air by vibration, Keely says
that:--
. . . "It
is as platina to hydrogen gas. Molecular separation of air brings us to the
first sub-division only; inter-molecular, to the second; atomic, to the third;
inter-atomic, to the fourth; etheric, to the fifth; and inter-etheric, to the
sixth sub-division, or positive association with luminiferous ether.* In my
introductory argument I have contended that this is the vibratory envelope of
all atoms. In my definition of atom I do not confine myself to the sixth
sub-division where this luminiferous ether is developed in its crude form as
far as my researches prove.** I think this idea will be pronounced by the
physicists of the present day, a wild freak of the imagination. Possibly, in
time, a light may fall upon this theory that will bring its simplicity forward
for scientific research. At present I can only compare it to some planet in a
dark space, where the light of the sun of science has not yet reached it. .
."
"I assume
that sound, like odour, is a real substance of unknown and wonderful tenuity,
emanating from a body where it has been induced by percussion and throwing out
absolute corpuscles of matter, inter-atomic particles, with velocity of 1,120
feet per second; in vacuo 20,000. The substance which is thus disseminated is a
part and parcel of the mass agitated, and, if kept under this agitation
continuously, would, in the course of a certain cycle of time, become
thoroughly absorbed by the atmosphere; or, more truly, would pass through the
atmosphere to an elevated point of tenuity corresponding to the condition of
sub-division that governs its liberation from its parent body." . . .
"The sounds
from vibratory forks, set so as to produce etheric chords, while disseminating
their tones (compound), permeate most thoroughly all substances that come under
the range of their atomic bombardment. The clapping of a bell in vacuo
liberates these atoms with the same velocity and volume as one in the open air;
and were the agitation of the bell kept up continuously for a few millions of
centuries it would
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This also is
the division, made by the Occultists, under other names.
** Quite so,
since there is the seventh beyond, which begins the same enumeration, from the
first to the last, on another and higher plane.
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thoroughly return
to its primitive element; and, if the chamber were hermetically sealed, and
strong enough, the vacuous volume surrounding the bell would be brought to a
pressure of many thousands of pounds to the square inch, by the tenuous
substance evolved. In my estimation, sound truly defined is the disturbance of
atomic equilibrium, rupturing actual atomic corpuscles; and the substance thus
liberated must certainly be a certain order of etheric flow. Under these
conditions, is it unreasonable to suppose that, if this flow were kept up, and
the body thus robbed of its element, it would in time disappear entirely? All
bodies are formed primitively from this highly tenuous ether, animal,
vegetable, and mineral, and they are only returned to their high gaseous condition
when brought under a state of differential equilibrium." . . .
"As regards
odour, we can only get some definite idea of its extreme and wondrous tenuity
by taking into consideration that a large area of atmosphere can be impregnated
for a long series of years from a single grain of musk; which, if weighed after
that long interval, will be found to be not appreciably diminished. The great
paradox attending the flow of odorous particles is that they can be held under
confinement in a glass vessel! Here is a substance of much higher tenuity than
the glass that holds it, and yet it cannot escape. It is as a sieve with its
meshes large enough to pass marbles, and yet holding fine sand which cannot
pass through; in fact, a molecular vessel holding an atomic substance. This is
a problem that would confound those who stop to recognize it. But infinitely
tenuous as odour is, it holds a very crude relation to the substance of
sub-division that governs a magnetic flow (a flow of sympathy, if you please to
call it so). This sub-division comes next to sound, but is above sound. The
action of the flow of a magnet coincides somewhat to the receiving and
distributing portion of the human brain, giving off at all times a depreciating
ratio of the amount received. It is a grand illustration of the control of mind
over matter, which gradually depreciates the physical till dissolution takes
place. The magnet on the same ratio gradually loses its power and becomes
inert. If the relations that exist between mind and matter could be equated and
so held, we would live on in our physical state eternally, as there would be no
physical depreciation. But this physical depreciation leads, at its terminus,
to the source of a much higher development -- viz., the liberation of the pure
ether from the crude molecular; which, in my estimation, is to be much
desired." -- (From Mrs. Bloomfield-Moore's paper, "The New
Philosophy.")
It may be
remarked that, save a few small divergencies, no Adept nor Alchemist could have
explained the above any better, in the light of modern Science, however much
the latter may protest against the novel views. This is, in all its fundamental
principles, if not details, Occultism pure and simple, yet withal, modern
natural philosophy as well.
This "New
Force," or whatever Science may call it, the effects of which are
undeniable -- admitted by more than one naturalist and physicist who has
visited Mr. Keely's laboratory and witnessed personally its tremendous effects
-- what is it? Is it a "mode of motion," also, "in Vacuo,"
since there is no matter to generate it except Sound -- another "mode of
motion," no doubt, a sensation caused like
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colour by
vibrations? Fully as we believe in these vibrations as the proximate -- the
immediate -- cause of such sensations, we as absolutely reject the one-sided
scientific theory that there is no factor to be considered as external to us,
other than etheric or atmospheric vibrations.*
There is a
transcendental set of causes put in motion -- so to speak -- in the occurrence
of these phenomena, which, not being in relation to our narrow range of
cognition, can only be traced to their source and their nature, and understood
by the Spiritual faculties of the Adept. They are, as Asclepios puts it to the
King, "incorporeal corporealities" -- such as "appear in the
mirror," and "abstract forms" that we see, hear, and smell, in
our dreams, and visions. What have the "modes of motion," light, and
ether to do with these? Yet we see, hear, and smell, and touch them, ergo they
are as much realities to us in our dreams, as any other thing on this plane of
Maya.
-------
XI.
ON THE ELEMENTS
AND ATOMS.
FROM THE
STAND-POINT OF SCIENCE AND THAT OF OCCULTISM.
WHEN the
Occultist speaks of "Elements," and of human Beings who lived during
those geological ages, the duration of which it is found as impossible to
determine, according to the opinion of one of the best
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In this case
the American "Substantialists" are not wrong (though too
anthropomorphic and material in their views to be accepted by the Occultists)
when arguing through Mrs. M. S. Organ, M.D., that "there must be positive
entitative properties in objects which have a constitutional relation to the
nerves of animal sensations, or there can be no perception. No impression of
any kind can be made upon brain, nerve, or mind -- no stimulus to action --
unless there is an actual and direct communication of a substantial
force." ("Substantial" as far as it appears in the usual sense
of the word in this universe of illusion and MAYA, of course; not so in reality.)
"That force may be the most refined and sublimated immaterial Entity (?).
Yet it must exist; for no sense, element, or faculty of the human being can
have a perception, or be stimulated into action, without some substantial force
coming in contact with it. This is the fundamental law pervading the whole
organic and mental world. In the true philosophical sense there is no such
thing as independent action: for every force or substance is correlated to some
other force or substance. We can with just as much truth and reason assert that
no substance possesses any inherent gustatory property or any olfactory
property -- that taste and odour are simply sensations caused by vibrations;
and hence mere illusions of animal perceptions. . . ."
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English
geologists*, as the nature of matter, it is because he knows what he is talking
about. When he says "Man" and Elements, he neither means
"man" in his present physiological and anthropological form, nor the
elemental atoms, those hypothetical conceptions, the entitative abstractions of
matter in its highly attenuated state, as existing at present in scientific
minds; nor, again, the compound Elements of antiquity. In Occultism the word
Element means "rudiment" in every case. When we say "Elementary
Man," we mean either the proemial, incipient sketch of man, in its
unfinished and undeveloped condition, hence in that form which now lies latent
in physical man during his life-time, and takes shape only occasionally and
under certain conditions; or that form which for a time survives the material
body, and which is better known as an "Elementary."** With regard to
"Element," when the term is used metaphysically, it means, in
distinction to the mortal, the incipient divine man; and, in its physical
usage, inchoate matter in its first undifferentiated condition, or in the laya
state, which is the eternal and the normal condition of substance,
differentiating only periodically, and is during that differentiation in an
abnormal state -- in other words, a transitory illusion of the senses.
As to the
"elemental atoms," so called, the Occultists refer to them by that
name with a meaning analogous to that which is given by the Hindu to Brahma
when he calls him ANU, the "Atom." Every elemental atom, in search of
which more than one Chemist has followed the path indicated by the Alchemists,
is, in their firm belief (when not knowledge), a SOUL; not necessarily a
disembodied soul, but a jiva, as the Hindus call it, a centre of POTENTIAL
VITALITY, with latent intelligence in it, and, in the case of compound Souls --
an intelligent active EXISTENCE, from the highest to the lowest order, a form
composed of more or less differentiations. It requires a metaphysician -- and
an Eastern metaphysician -- to understand our meaning. All those atom-Souls are
differentiations from the ONE, and in the same relation to it as the divine
Soul -- the Buddhi -- to its informing and inseparable Spirit, or Atman.
Modern physics,
while borrowing from the ancients their atomic theory, forgot one point, the
most important of the doctrine; hence they got only the husks and will never be
able to get at the kernel. They left behind, in the adoption of physical atoms,
the suggestive fact that
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In answer to a
friend, that eminent geologist writes: . . . ."I can only say, in reply to
your letter, that it is at present, and perhaps always will be, IMPOSSIBLE to
reduce, even approximately, geological time into years, or even into
millenniums." (Signed William Pengelly, F.R.S.)
** Plato
speaking of the irrational, turbulent Elements "composed of fire, air,
water, and earth," means Elementary Daemons. (See Timaeus.)
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from Anaxagoras
down to Epicurus, the Roman Lucretius, and finally even to Galileo, all those
Philosophers believed more or less in ANIMATED atoms, not in invisible specks
of so-called "brute" matter. Rotatory motion was generated in their
views, by larger (read, more divine and pure) atoms forcing downwards other
atoms; the lighter ones being thrust simultaneously upward. The esoteric
meaning of this is the ever cyclic curve downward and upward of differentiated
elements through intercyclic phases of existence, until each reaches again its
starting point or birthplace. The idea was metaphysical as well as physical;
the hidden interpretation embracing "gods" or souls, in the shape of
atoms, as the causes of all the effects produced on Earth by the secretions
from the divine bodies.* No ancient philosopher, not even the Jewish Kabalists,
ever dissociated Spirit from matter or vice versa. Everything originated in the
ONE, and, proceeding from the one, must finally return to the One. "Light
becomes heat, and consolidates into fiery particles; which, from being ignited,
become cold, hard particles, round and smooth. And this is called Soul,
imprisoned in its robe of matter;"** Atoms and Souls having been
synonymous in the language of the Initiates. The "whirling Souls,"
Gilgoolem, a doctrine in which so many learned Jews have believed (See
Mackenzie's Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia), had no other meaning esoterically. The
learned Jewish Initiates never meant by the "Promised land" Palestine
alone, but the same Nirvana as the learned Buddhist and Brahmin do -- the bosom
of the ETERNAL ONE, symbolized by that of Abraham, and by Palestine as its
substitute on Earth.*** The passage of the SOUL-ATOM "through the Seven
Planetary Chambers" had the same metaphysical and also physical meaning.
It had the latter when it was said to dissolve into Ether (See Isis Unveiled,
Vol. I., p. 297.) Even Epicurus, the model Atheist and materialist, knew and
believed so much in the ancient Wisdom, that he taught that the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Plato uses the
words "secretions" of turbulent Elements (Timaeus).
** Valentinus'
Esoteric Treatise on the Doctrine of Gilgul.
*** Surely no
educated Jew ever believed the literal sense of this allegory -- namely, that
"the bodies of Jews deposited in foreign lands contain within them a
principle of Soul which cannot rest, until by a process called the
"whirling of the Soul" the immortal particle reaches once more the
sacred Soil of the "Promised land." The meaning is evident to an
occultist. The process was supposed to be accomplished by a kind of
metempsychosis, the psychic spark being conveyed through bird, beast, fish, and
the most minute insect. (See Royal Masonic Cyclo. Mackenzie.) The Allegory
relates to the atoms of the body, which have each to pass through every form
before all reach the final state, which is the first starting point of the
departure of every atom -- its primitive Laya State. But the primitive meaning
of Gilgoolem, or "Revolution of Souls," was the idea of the
re-incarnating Souls or Egos. "All the Souls go into the gilgoolah,"
into a cyclic or revolving process; i.e., they all proceed on the cyclic path
of re-births. Some Kabalists interpret this doctrine to mean only a kind of
purgatory for the souls of the wicked. But this is not so.
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Soul (entirely
distinct from immortal Spirit when the former is enshrined latent in it, as it
is in every atomic speck), was composed of a fine, tender essence, formed from
the smoothest, roundest, and finest atoms.
And this shows
that the ancient Initiates, who were followed more or less closely by all
profane antiquity, meant by the term "ATOM," a Soul, a Genius or
Angel, the first-born of the ever-concealed CAUSE of all causes; and in this
sense their teachings become comprehensible. They claimed, as do their
successors, the existence of Gods and Genii, angels or "demons," not
outside, or independent of, the Universal Plenum, but within it. Only this
Plenum, during the life-cycles, is infinite. They admitted and taught a good
deal of that which modern Science teaches now --namely, the existence of a
primordial "World-stuff or Cosmic Substance," from which worlds are
formed, ever and eternally homogeneous, except during its periodic existence,
when it differentiates its universal diffusion throughout infinite space; and
the gradual formation of sidereal bodies from it. They taught the revolution of
the Heavens, the Earth's rotation, the Heliocentric System, and the Atomic
Vortices -- Atoms -- in reality Souls and intelligences. But those
"Atomists" were spiritual, most transcendental, and philosophical
Pantheists. It is not they who would have ever conceived, or dreamt that
monstrous contrasted progeny, the nightmare of our modern civilized Race; namely
-- inanimate material, self-guiding atoms, on the one hand, and an extra-Cosmic
God on the other.
It may be useful
to show what, in the teachings of the old Initiates, the Monad was, and what
its origin.
Modern exact
Science, as soon as it began to grow out of its teens, perceived the great,
and, to it, hitherto esoteric axiom, that nothing -- whether in the spiritual,
psychic, or physical realm of being -- could come into existence out of
nothing. There is no cause in the manifested universe without its adequate effects,
whether in space or time; nor can there be an effect without its primal cause,
which itself owes its existence to a still higher one -- the final and absolute
cause having to remain to man for ever an incomprehensible CAUSELESS CAUSE. But
even this is no solution, and must be viewed, if at all, from the highest
philosophical and metaphysical standpoints, otherwise the problem had better be
left unapproached. It is an abstraction, on the verge of which human reason --
however trained to metaphysical subtleties -- trembles, threatening to
collapse. This may be demonstrated to any European who would undertake to solve
the problem of existence by the articles of faith of the true Vedantin, for
instance. Let him read and study the sublime teachings on the subject of Soul
and Spirit, of
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Sankaracharya
(Viveka Chudamani)*, and the reader will realize what is now said.
While the
Christian is taught that the human soul is a breath of God -- being created by
him for sempiternal existence, i.e., having a beginning, but no end (and
therefore never to be called eternal) -- the Occult teaching says,
"Nothing is created, but is only transformed. Nothing can manifest itself
in this universe -- from a globe down to a vague, rapid thought -- that was not
in the universe already; everything on the subjective plane is an eternal IS;
as everything on the objective plane is an ever becoming -- because
transitory."
The monad -- a
truly "indivisible thing," as defined by Good, who did not give it
the sense we now do -- is here rendered as the Atma in conjunction with Buddhi
and the higher Manas. This trinity is one and eternal, the latter being
absorbed in the former at the termination of all conditioned and illusive life.
The monad, then, can be traced through the course of its pilgrimage and its
changes of transitory vehicles only from the incipient stage of the manifested
Universe. In Pralaya, or the intermediate period between two manvantaras, it
loses its name, as it loses it when the real ONE self of man merges into Brahm
in cases of high Samadhi (the Turiya state) or final Nirvana; "when the
disciple" in the words of Sankara, "having attained that primeval
consciousness, absolute bliss, of which the nature is truth, which is without
form and action, abandons this illusive body that has been assumed by the atma
just as an actor (abandons) the dress (put on)." For Buddhi (the
Anandamaya sheath) is but a mirror which reflects absolute bliss; and,
moreover, that reflection itself is yet not free from ignorance, and is not the
Supreme Spirit, being subject to conditions, being a spiritual modification of Prakriti,
and an effect; Atma alone is the one real and eternal substratum of all -- the
essence and absolute knowledge -- the Kshetragna.** It is called in the
Esoteric philosophy "the One Witness,"
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Translated for
the Theosophist, by Mohini M. Chatterji as "Crest Jewel of Wisdom,"
1886. (See Theosophist, July and August numbers).
** Now that the
revised version of the gospels has been published and the most glaring
mistranslations of the old versions are corrected, one will understand better
the words in St. John v., vi., and vii.: "It is the Spirit that beareth
witness because the Spirit is the truth." The words that follow in the
mistranslated version about the "three witnesses," -- hitherto
supposed to stand for "the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost" --
show the real meaning of the writer (St. John) very clearly, thus still more
forcibly identifying his teaching in this respect with that of Sankaracharya.
For what can the sentence, "there are three who bear witness: the Spirit
and the Water and the Blood" -- mean, if they bear no relation to, or
connection with, the more philosophical statement of the great Vedanta teacher,
who, speaking of the sheaths (the principles in man) Jiva, Vignanamaya, etc.,
which are, in their physical manifestation, "water and blood" or
life, adds that atma (spirit) alone is what remains after the [[Footnote
continued on next page]]
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and, while it
rests in Devachan, is referred to as "the Three Witnesses to Karma."
Atma (our seventh
principle) being identical with the universal Spirit, and man being one with it
in his essence, what is then the Monad proper? It is that homogeneous spark
which radiates in millions of rays from the primeval "Seven;" -- of
which seven further on. It is the EMANATING spark from the UNCREATED Ray -- a
mystery. In the esoteric, and even exoteric Buddhism of the North, Adi Buddha
(Chogi dangpoi sangye), the One unknown, without beginning or end, identical
with Parabrahm and Ain-Soph, emits a bright ray from its darkness.
This is the
Logos (the first), or Vajradhara, the Supreme Buddha (also called Dorjechang).
As the Lord of all Mysteries he cannot manifest, but sends into the world of
manifestation his heart -- the "diamond heart," Vajrasattva (Dorjesempa).
This is the second logos of creation, from whom emanate the seven (in the
exoteric blind the five) Dhyani Buddhas, called the Anupadaka, "the
parentless." These Buddhas are the primeval monads from the world of
incorporeal being, the Arupa world, wherein the Intelligences (on that plane
only) have neither shape nor name, in the exoteric system, but have their
distinct seven names in esoteric philosophy. These Dhyani Buddhas emanate, or
create from themselves, by virtue of Dhyana, celestial Selves -- the
super-human Bodhisattvas. These incarnating at the beginning of every human
cycle on earth as mortal men, become occasionally, owing to their personal
merit, Bodhisattvas among the Sons of Humanity, after which they may re-appear
as Manushi (human) Buddhas. The Anupadaka (or Dhyani-Buddhas) are thus
identical with the Brahminical Manasaputra, "mind-born sons" --
whether of Brahma or either of the other two Trimurtian Hypostases, hence
identical also with the Rishis and Prajapatis. Thus, a passage is found in
Anugita, which, read esoterically, shows plainly, though under another imagery,
the same idea and system. It says: "Whatever entities there are in this
world, moveable or immoveable, they are the very first to be dissolved (at
pralaya); and next the developments produced from the elements (from which the
visible Universe is fashioned); and, after these developments (evolved
entities), all the elements. Such is the upperward gradation among entities.
Gods, Men, Gandharvas, Pisachas, Asuras, Rakshasas, all have been created by
Svabhava (Prakriti, or plastic nature), not by actions, nor by a cause" --
i.e., not by any physical cause.
"These
Brahmanas (the Rishi Prajapati?), the creators of the world, are born here (on
earth) again and again. Whatever is produced from
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] subtraction of the sheaths and that it is the
ONLY witness, or synthesized unity. The less spiritual and philosophical
school, solely with an eye to a trinity made three witnesses out of
"one," thus connecting it more with earth than with heaven.
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them is
dissolved in due time in those very five great elements (the five, or rather
seven, Dhyani Buddhas, also called "Elements" of Mankind), like
billows in the ocean. These great elements are in every way beyond the elements
that make up the world (the gross elements). And he who is released even from
these five elements (the tanmatras)* goes to the highest goal." "The
Lord Prajapati (Brahma) created all this by the mind only," i.e., by
Dhyana, or abstract meditation and mystic powers like the Dhyani Buddhas (vide
supra). Evidently then, these "Brahmanas" are identical with the
Bodhisattvas (the terrestrial) of the heavenly Dhyani Buddhas. Both, as
primordial, intelligent "Elements," become the creators or the
emanators of the monads destined to become human in that cycle; after which
they evolve themselves, or, so to say, expand into their own selves as
Bodhisattvas or Brahmanas, in heaven and earth, to become at last simple men
--"the creators of the world are born here, on earth again and again"
-- truly. In the Northern Buddhist system, or the popular exoteric religion, it
is taught that every Buddha, while preaching the good law on earth, manifests
himself simultaneously in three worlds: in the formless, as Dhyani Buddha, in
the World of forms, as a Bodhisattva, and in the world of desire, the lowest
(or our world) as a man. Esoterically the teaching differs: The divine, purely
Adi-Buddhic monad manifests as the universal Buddhi (the Maha-buddhi or Mahat
in Hindu philosophies) the spiritual, omniscient and omnipotent root of divine
intelligence, the highest anima mundi or the Logos. This descends "like a
flame spreading from the eternal Fire, immoveable, without increase or
decrease, ever the same to the end" of the cycle of existence, and becomes
universal life on the Mundane Plane. From this Plane of conscious Life shoot
out, like seven fiery tongues, the Sons of Light (the logoi of Life); then the
Dhyani-Buddhas of contemplation: the concrete forms of their formless Fathers
-- the Seven Sons of Light, still themselves, to whom may be applied the
Brahmanical mystic phrase: "Thou art 'THAT' -- Brahm." It is from
these Dhyani-Buddhas that emanate their chhayas (Shadows) the Bodhisattvas of
the celestial realms, the prototypes of the super-terrestrial Bodhisattvas, and
of the terrestrial Buddhas, and finally of men. The "Seven Sons of
Light" are also called "Stars."
The star under
which a human Entity is born, says the Occult teaching, will remain for ever
its star, throughout the whole cycle of its incarnations in one Manvantara. But
this is not his astrological star. The latter is concerned and connected with
the personality, the former with
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Tanmatras
are literally the type or rudiment of an element devoid of qualities; but
esoterically, they are the primeval noumenoi of that which becomes in the
progress of evolution a Cosmic element in the sense given to the term in
antiquity, not in that of physics. They are the logoi, the seven emanations or
rays of the logos.
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the INDIVIDUALITY.
The "Angel" of that Star, or the Dhyani-Buddha will be either the
guiding or simply the presiding "Angel," so to say, in every new
rebirth of the monad, which is part of his own essence, though his vehicle,
man, may remain for ever ignorant of this fact. The adepts have each their
Dhyani-Buddha, their elder "twin Soul," and they know it, calling it
"Father-Soul," and "Father-Fire." It is only at the last
and supreme initiation, however, that they learn it when placed face to face
with the bright "Image." How much has Bulwer Lytton known of this
mystic fact when describing, in one of his highest inspirational moods, Zanoni
face to face with his Augoeides?
The Logos, or both
the unmanifested and the manifested WORD, is called by the Hindus, Iswara,
"the Lord," though the Occultists give it another name. Iswara, say
the Vedantins, is the highest consciousness in nature. "This highest
consciousness," answer the Occultists, "is only a synthetic unit in
the world of the manifested Logos -- or on the plane of illusion; for it is the
sum total of Dhyan-Chohanic consciousnesses." "Oh, wise man, remove
the conception that not-Spirit is Spirit," says Sankaracharya. Atma is
not-Spirit in its final Parabrahmic state, Iswara or Logos is Spirit; or, as
Occultism explains, it is a compound unity of manifested living Spirits, the
parent-source and nursery of all the mundane and terrestrial monads, plus their
divine reflection, which emanate from, and return into, the Logos, each in the
culmination of its time. There are seven chief groups of such Dhyan Chohans,
which groups will be found and recognised in every religion, for they are the
primeval SEVEN Rays. Humanity, occultism teaches us, is divided into seven
distinct groups and their sub-divisions, mental, spiritual, and physical.* The
monad, then, viewed as ONE, is above the seventh principle (in Kosmos and man),
and as a triad, it is the direct radiant progeny of the said compound UNIT, not
the breath (and special creation out of nihil) of "God," as that unit
is called; for such an idea is quite unphilosophical, and degrades Deity,
dragging it down to a finite, attributive condition. As well expressed by the
translator of the "Crest-Jewel of Wisdom" -- though Iswara is
"God" "unchanged in the profoundest depths of pralayas and in
the intensest activity of the manvantaras" . . ., still "beyond (him)
is
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Hence the
seven chief planets, the spheres of the indwelling seven spirits, under each of
which is born one of the human groups which is guided and influenced thereby.
There are only seven planets (specially connected with earth), and twelve
houses, but the possible combinations of their aspects are countless. As each
planet can stand to each of the others in twelve different aspects, their
combinations must, therefore, be almost infinite; as infinite, in fact, as the
spiritual, psychic, mental, and physical capacities in the numberless varieties
of the genus homo, each of which varieties is born under one of the seven
planets and one of the said countless planetary combinations. See Theosophist,
for August, 1886.
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'ATMA,' round
whose pavilion is the darkness of eternal MAYA."* The "triads"
born under the same Parent-planet, or rather the radiations of one and the same
Planetary Spirit (Dhyani Buddha) are, in all their after lives and rebirths,
sister, or "twin-souls," on this Earth.**
This was known
to every high Initiate in every age and in every country: "I and my Father
are one," said Jesus (John x. 30).*** When He is made to say, elsewhere
(xx. 17): "I ascend to my Father and your Father," it meant that
which has just been stated. It was simply to show that the group of his
disciples and followers attracted to Him belonged to the same Dhyani Buddha,
"Star," or "Father," again of the same planetary realm and
division as He did. It is the knowledge of this occult doctrine that found
expression in the review of "The Idyll of the White Lotus," when Mr.
T. Subba Row wrote: "Every Buddha meets at his last initiation all the
great adepts who reached Buddhahood during the preceding ages . . . every class
of adepts has its own bond of spiritual communion which knits them together. .
. . . The only possible and effectual way of entering into such brotherhood . .
. . is by bringing oneself within the influence of the Spiritual light which
radiates from one's own Logos. I may further point out here . . . . that such
communion is only possible between persons whose souls derive their life and
sustenance from the same divine RAY, and that, as seven distinct rays radiate
from the 'Central Spiritual Sun,' all adepts and Dhyan Chohans are divisible
into seven classes, each of which is guided, controlled, and overshadowed by
one of the seven forms or manifestations of the divine Wisdom."
("Theosophist," Aug., 1886.)
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The now
universal error of attributing to the ancients the knowledge of only seven
planets, simply because they mentioned no others, is based on the same general
ignorance of their occult doctrines. The question is not whether they were, or
were not, aware of the existence of the later discovered planets; but whether
the reverence paid by them to the four exoteric and three secret great gods --
the star-angels, had not some special reason. The writer ventures to say there
was such a reason, and it is this. Had they known of as many planets as we do
now (and this question can hardly be decided at present, either way), they
would have still connected with their religious worship only the seven, because
these seven are directly and specially connected with our earth, or, using
esoteric phraseology, with our septenary ring of spheres. (See supra.)
** It is the
same, only still more metaphysical idea, as that of the Christian Trinity --
"Three in One" -- i.e., the Universal "over-Spirit,"
manifesting on the two higher planes, those of Buddhi and Mahat; and these are
the three hypostases, metaphysical, but never personal.
*** The
identity, and at the same time the illusive differentiation of the Angel-Monad
and the Human-Monad is shown by the following sentences: "My Father is
greater than I" (John xiv. 26); "Glorify your Father who is in
Heaven" (Matt. v. 16); "The righteous will shine in the kingdom of
their Father" (not our Father) (Matt. xiii. 43) "Know ye not ye are a
temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? (I Cor. iii. 16);
"I ascend to my Father," etc., etc.
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It is then the
"Seven Sons of Light" -- called after their planets and (by the
rabble) often identified with them -- namely Saturn, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars,
Venus, and -- presumably for the modern critic, who goes no deeper than the
surface of old religions* -- the Sun and Moon, which are, according to the
Occult teachings, our heavenly Parents, or "Father," synthetically.
Hence, as already remarked, polytheism is really more philosophical and
correct, as to fact and nature, than anthropomorphic monotheism. Saturn,
Jupiter, Mercury, and Venus, the four exoteric planets, and the three others,
which must remain unnamed, were the heavenly bodies in direct astral and
psychic communication with the Earth, its Guides, and Watchers -- morally and
physically; the visible orbs furnishing our Humanity with its outward and
inward characteristics, and their "Regents" or Rectors with our
Monads and spiritual faculties. In order to avoid creating new misconceptions,
let it be stated that among the three secret orbs (or star-angels) neither
Uranus nor Neptune entered; not only because they were unknown under these
names to the ancient Sages, but because they, as all other planets, however
many there may be, are the gods and guardians of other septenary chains of
globes within our systems.
Nor do the two
last discovered great planets depend entirely on the Sun like the rest of the
planets. Otherwise, how explain the fact that Neptune receives 900 times less
light than our Earth, and Uranus 390 times less, and that their satellites show
a peculiarity of inverse rotation found in no other planets of the Solar
System. At any rate, what we say applies to Uranus, though recently the fact
begins again to be disputed.
This subject
will, of course, be considered mere vagary by all those who confuse the
universal order of being with their own systems of classification. Here, however,
simple facts from Occult teachings are stated, to be either accepted or
rejected, as the case may be. There are details which, on account of their
great metaphysical abstractions, cannot be entered upon. Hence, we merely state
that only seven of our planets are as intimately related to our globe, as the
Sun is to all
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* These are
planets accepted for purposes of judicial astrology only. The astrotheogonical
division differed from this one. The Sun, being a central star and no planet,
stands in more occult and mysterious relations with its seven planets of our
globe than is generally known. The Sun was, therefore, considered the great
Father of all the Seven "Fathers," which accounts for the variations
found between seven and eight great gods of the Chaldean and other countries.
Neither the earth nor the moon -- its satellite -- nor yet stars, for another
reason -- were anything else than substitutes for esoteric purposes. Yet, even with
the Sun and the Moon thrown out of the calculation, the ancients seem to have
known of seven planets. How many more are known to us, so far, if we throw out
the Earth and Moon? Seven, and no more: Seven primary or principal planets, the
rest planetoids rather than planets.
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the bodies
subject to him in his system. Of these bodies the poor little number of primary
and secondary planets known to astronomy, looks wretched enough, in truth.*
Therefore, it stands to reason that there are a great number of planets, small
and large, that have not been discovered yet, but of the existence of which
ancient astronomers -- all of them initiated adepts -- must have certainly been
aware. But, as their relation to the gods was sacred, it had to remain arcane,
as also the names of various other planets and stars.
Besides which,
even the Roman Catholic theology speaks of "seventy planets that preside
over the destinies of the nations of this globe"; and, save the erroneous
application, there is more truth in this tradition than in exact modern
astronomy. The seventy planets are connected with the seventy elders of the
people of Israel (Numb. 11, 16) because the regents of these planets are meant,
not the orbs themselves; and the word seventy is a play and a blind upon the 7
x 7 of the subdivisions. Each people and nation, as said already, has its direct
Watcher, Guardian and Father in Heaven -- a Planetary Spirit. We are willing to
leave their own national God, Jehovah, to the descendants of Israel, the
worshippers of Sabaoth or SATURN; for, indeed, the monads of the people chosen
by him are his own, and the Bible has never made a secret of it. Only the text
of the English (Protestant) Bible is, in disagreement, as usual, with those of
the Septuagint and the Vulgate. Thus, while in the former one reads (in Deuter.
xxxii., 8 and 9) "When the MOST HIGH (not Jehovah) divided to the nations
their inheritance . . . he set the bounds of the people according to the number
of the children of Israel," in the Septuagint the text reads
"according to the number of the Angels" (Planet-Angels), which is
more concordant with truth and fact. Moreover, all the texts agree that
"the Lord's (Jehovah) portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his
inheritance" (Deut. xxxii. 9); and this settles the question. The
"Lord" Jehovah took for his portion Israel -- what have other nations
to do with that particular national Deity? Let then, the "angel
Gabriel" watch over Iran and "Mikael-Jehovah" over the Hebrews.
These are not the gods of other nations, and it is difficult to see why
Christians
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* When one
remembers that under the powerful telescope of Sir W. Herschell, that eminent
astronomer, gauging merely that portion of heaven in the equatorial plane, the
approximate centre of which is occupied by our Earth -- saw pass in one quarter
of an hour, 16,000 stars; and applying this calculation to the totality of the
"Milky Way" he found in it no less than 18 (eighteen) millions of
SUNS -- one wonders no longer that Laplace, in conversation with Napoleon I.
should have called God a HYPOTHESIS -- perfectly useless to speculate upon for
exact physical Science, at any rate. Occult metaphysics and transcendental
philosophy will alone be able to lift the smallest corner of the impenetrable
veil in this direction.
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should have
selected a god against whose commandments Jesus was the first one to rise in
rebellion.
The Planetary
origin of the Monad (Soul) and of its faculties was taught by the Gnostics. On
its way to the Earth, as on its way back from the Earth, each soul born in, and
from, the "Boundless Light,"* had to pass through the seven planetary
regions both ways. The pure Dhyani and Devas of the oldest religions had
become, in course of time, with the Zoroastrians, the Seven Devs, the ministers
of Ahriman, "each chained to his planet" (see Origen's Copy of the
Chart); with the Brahmins, the Asuras and some of its Rishis -- good, bad and
indifferent; and among the Egyptian Gnostics it was Thoth or (Hermes) who was
the chief of the seven whose names are given by Origen as Adonai, genius of the
Sun; Tao, of the Moon; Eloi, of Jupiter; Sabao, of Mars; Orai, of Venus;
Astaphai, of Mercury; and Ildabaoth (Jehovah), of Saturn. Finally, the
Pistis-Sophia, which the greatest modern authority on exoteric Gnostic beliefs,
the late Mr. C. W. King, refers to as "that precious monument of
Gnosticism," -- this old document echoes, while distorting it to sectarian
purposes, the archaic belief of the ages. The Astral Rulers of the Spheres (the
planets) create the monads (the Souls) from their own substance out of the
"tears of their eyes, and the sweat of their torments," endowing the
monads with a spark of the Divine Light, which is their substance. It will be
shown in Book II. why these "Lords of the Zodiac and Spheres" have
been transformed by sectarian theology into the rebellious angels of the
Christians, who took them from the Seven Devs of the Magi, without
understanding the significance of the allegory. (Vide Part II., "On the
Seven Souls," and Section xv. in this Part, "GODS, MONADS AND
ATOMS").
As usual, that
which is and was from its beginning divine, pure, and spiritual in its earliest
unity, became, by reason of its differentiation by the distorted prism of man's
conceptions, human and impure, as reflecting man's own sinful nature. Thus, in
time, the planet Saturn became reviled by the worshippers of other
"gods." The nations born under Saturn -- the Jewish, for instance --
with whom he had become Jehovah, after having been held as a son of Saturn, or
Ilda-Baoth, by the Ophites, and in the book of Jasher -- were eternally
fighting with those born under Jupiter, Mercury, or any other planet, except
Saturn-Jehovah; genealogies and prophecies notwithstanding, Jesus the initiate
(or Jehoshua) -- the type from whom the "historical" Jesus was
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* C. W. King,
identifies it with "that summum bonum of Oriental aspiration, the Buddhist
Nirvana," perfect repose, the Epicurean Indolentia, which looks flippant
enough in its expression, though not quite untrue.
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copied -- was
not of pure Jewish blood, and thus recognised no Jehovah; nor did he worship
any planetary god beside his own "Father," whom he knew, and with
whom he communed as every high initiate does, "Spirit to Spirit and Soul
to Soul." This can hardly be taken exception to, unless the critic
explains to every one's satisfaction the strange sentences put in the mouth of
Jesus by the author of the Fourth Gospel (chapter viii.) during his disputes
with the Pharisees.
"I know ye
are Abraham's seed* . . . I speak the things which I have seen with my Father;
and ye do the things which ye heard from your Father. . . . . Ye do the works
of your Father. . . . . Ye are of your Father, the Devil. . . . . He was a
murderer from the beginning, and stood not in the truth, because there is no
truth in him. When one speaketh a lie he speaketh of his own; for his father
also is a liar and the father thereof," etc., etc.
That
"Father" of the Pharisees was Jehovah, because identical with Cain,
Saturn, Vulcan, etc. -- the planet under which they were born, and the God whom
they worshipped. Evidently there must be an occult meaning sought in these
words and admonitions, however mistranslated, since they are pronounced by one
who threatened with hell-fire anyone who says simply raca (fool) to his brother
(Matthew v., 22). And evidently, again, the planets are not merely spheres,
twinkling in Space, and made to shine for no purpose, but the domains of
various beings with whom the profane are so far unacquainted; nevertheless,
having a mysterious, unbroken, and powerful connection with men and globes.
Every heavenly body is the temple of a god, and these gods themselves are the
temples of GOD, the Unknown "Not Spirit." There is nothing profane in
the Universe. All Nature is a consecrated place, as Young says:--
"Each of
these Stars is a religious house." . . . .
Thus can all
exoteric religions be shown the falsified copies of the esoteric teaching. It
is the priesthood which has to be held responsible for the reaction in favour
of materialism of our day. It is by worshiping and enforcing on the masses the
worship of the shells -- personified for purposes of allegory -- of pagan
ideals, that the latest exoteric religion has made of Western lands a
Pandemonium, in which the higher classes worship the golden calf, and the lower
and ignorant masses are made to worship an idol with feet of clay.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Abraham and
Saturn are identical in astro-symbology, and he is the forefather of the
Jehovistic Jews.
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XII.
ANCIENT THOUGHT
IN MODERN DRESS.
MODERN SCIENCE
IS ANCIENT THOUGHT DISTORTED, and no more. We have seen, however, WHAT
INTUITIONAL SCIENTISTS THINK, and are busy about; and now the reader may be
given a few more proofs of the fact that more than one F.R.S. is unconsciously
approaching the derided Secret Sciences.
With regard to
cosmogony and primeval matter, modern speculations are undeniably ancient thought,
improved by contradictory theories of recent origin. But the whole foundation
belongs to Grecian and Indian Archaic astronomy and physics, in those days
always called philosophy. In all the Aryan and Greek speculations, one meets
with the conception of an all-pervading, unorganized, and homogeneous matter,
or Chaos, re-named by modern scientists "Nebular condition of the
world-stuff." What Anaxagoras called "Chaos" in his Homoiomeria
is now called "primitive fluid" by Sir W. Thomson. The Hindu and Greek
Atomists -- Kanada, Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius, etc., etc., are
now reflected as in a clear mirror, in the supporters of the atomic theory of
our modern days, beginning with Leibnitz's Monads, and ending with the
"Vortical Atoms" of Sir W. Thomson.* True, the corpuscular theory of
old is rejected, and the undulatory theory has taken its place. But the
question is, whether the latter is so firmly established as not to be liable to
be dethroned as was its predecessor? Light from its metaphysical aspect was
fully treated of in "Isis Unveiled":--
"Light is
the first begotten, and the first emanation of the Supreme, and Light is Life,
says the Evangelist and the Kabalist. Both are electricity -- the life
principle, the anima mundi, pervading the universe, the electric vivifier of
all things. Light is the great Protean magician, and under the divine will of
the architect,** or rather the architects, the "Builders" (called One
collectively), its multifarious, omnipotent waves gave birth to every form as
well as to every living being. From its swelling electric bosom, spring matter
and spirit. Within its beams lie the beginnings of all physical and chemical
action, and of all cosmic and spiritual phenomena; it vitalizes and
disorganizes; it gives life and produces death, and from its primordial point
gradually emerged into existence the myriads of worlds, visible and invisible
celestial bodies. It was at the ray of this First mother, one in three, that
"God," according to
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Elemental
Vortices inaugurated by the Mind have not been improved by their modern
transformation.
** I have been
often taken to task for using expressions in Isis denoting belief in a personal
and anthropomorphic God. This is not my idea. Kabalistically speaking, the
"Architect" is the generic name for the Sephiroth, the Builders of
the Universe, as the "Universal Mind" represents the collectivity of
the Dhyan Chohanic Minds.
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Plato, lighted a
fire which we now call the sun,"* and which is not the cause of either
light or heat, but merely the focus, or, as we might say, the lens, by which
the rays of the primordial light become materialised, are concentrate upon our
Solar System, and produce all the correlations of forces."
This is the
Ether, as just explained in the views of Metcalfe, repeated by Dr. Richardson,
save the submission of the former to some details of the modern undulatory
theory. We do not say that we deny the theory, but assert only that it needs
completion and re-arrangement. But the Occultists are by no means the only heretics
in this respect; for Mr. Robert Hunt, F.R.S., remarks, in his Researches on
Light in its Chemical Relations, that:--
. . . .
"the undulatory theory does not account for the results of his
experiments. Sir David Brewster, in his Treatise on Optics, showing 'that the
colours of vegetable life arise . . . . from a specific attraction which the
particles of these bodies exercise over the differently-coloured rays of
light,' and that 'it is by the light of the sun that the coloured juices of
plants are elaborated, that the colours of bodies are changed, etc. . . . .'
remarks that it is not easy to allow 'that such effects can be produced by the
mere vibration of an ethereal medium.' And he is forced, he says, 'by this
class of facts, to reason as if light was material (?).' Professor Josiah P.
Cooke, of Harvard University, says that he 'cannot agree . . . . with those who
regard the wave-theory of light as an established principle of science.'**
Herschell's doctrine, that the intensity of light, in effect of each
undulation, 'is inversely as the square of the distance from the luminous
body,' if correct, damages a good deal, if it does not kill the undulatory
theory. That he is right, was proved repeatedly by experiments with
photometers; and though it begins to be much doubted, the undulatory theory is
still alive." ("Isis Unveiled.")
To this remark
of Sir W. Brewster -- "forced to reason as if light was material" --
there is a good deal to reply. Light, in one sense, is certainly as material as
electricity itself is. And if electricity is not material, if it is only
"a mode of motion," how is it that it can be stored up in Faure's
accumulators? Helmholtz says that electricity must be as atomic as matter; and
Mr. W. Crookes, F.R.S., supported the view in his address to the Chemical
Section of the British Association, of which he was President (at Birmingham,
1886). This is what Helmholtz says (in his Faraday Lectures, 1881):--
"If we
accept the hypothesis that the elementary substances are composed of atoms, we
cannot avoid concluding that electricity also, positive as well as negative, is
divided into definite elementary portions, which behave like atoms of
electricity."
Here we have to
repeat that which was already said in Section IX: there is but one science that
can henceforth direct modern research into the one path which will lead to the
discovery of the whole, hitherto
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
*
"Timaeus."
** Modern
Chemistry.
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occult, truth,
and it is the youngest of all -- chemistry, as it now stands reformed. There is
no other, not excluding astronomy, that can so unerringly guide scientific
intuition, as chemistry can. Two proofs of it are to be found in the world of
Science -- two great chemists, each among the greatest in his own country, and
these are Mr. Crookes and the late Professor Butlerof: one, a thorough believer
in abnormal phenomena; the other, as fervid a Spiritualist as he was great in
natural Sciences. It becomes evident that while pondering over the ultimate
divisibility of matter, and in the hitherto fruitless chase after the element
of negative atomic weight, the scientifically trained mind of the chemist must
feel irresistibly drawn towards those ever-shrouded worlds, to the mysterious
beyond, whose measureless depths seem to close against the approach of the too
materialistic hand that would fain draw aside its veil. "It is the unknown
and the ever unknowable," warns the Monist-Agnostic. Not so; answers the
persevering chemist:-- "We are on the track and are not daunted, and fain
would we enter the mysterious region which ignorance tickets unknown."*
A few lines at
the very close of his lecture on the Genesis of the Elements -- two or three
sentences -- showed the eminent Scientist to be on the royal road to the
greatest discoveries. He has been overshadowing for some time "the
original protyle," and came to the conclusion that "he who grasps the
Key will be permitted to unlock some of the deepest mysteries of
creation." The protyle, as that great chemist explains:--
". . . is a
word analogous to protoplasm, to express the idea of the original primal matter
existing before the evolution of the chemical elements. The word I have
ventured to use for this purpose is compounded of [[pro]] (earlier than) and
[[hyle]] (the stuff of which things are made). The word is scarcely a new
coinage, for 600 years ago Roger Bacon wrote in his Arte Chymiae, "The
elements are made out of [[hyle]] and every element is converted into the
nature of another element."
The Knowledge of
Roger Bacon did not come to this wonderful old magician** by inspiration, but
because he studied ancient works on
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Mr. Crookes'
"Presidential Address" at Birmingham. "There is but one unknown
-- the ultimate substratum of Spirit (Space). That which is not the Absolute
and the One is, in virtue of that very differentiation, however far removed
from the physical senses, always accessible to the spiritual human mind, which
is a coruscation of the undifferentiable Integral." -- (Practical Lessons
on the Occult.)
** Thus, what
the writer of the present work said ten years ago in "Isis Unveiled"
(Vol. I.) was prophetic, it seems. These are the words: "Many of these
mystics, by following what they were taught by some treatises, secretly
preserved from one generation to another, achieved discoveries which would not
be despised even in our modern days of exact sciences. Roger Bacon, the friar,
was laughed at as a quack, and is now generally numbered among 'pretenders' to
magic art; but his discoveries were nevertheless accepted, and are now used by
those who ridicule him the most. Roger Bacon belonged by right, if not by fact,
to that Brotherhood which includes all those who [[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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magic and
alchemy, having a key to the real meaning of words. But see what Mr. Crookes
says of protyle, next neighbour to the unconscious Mulaprakriti of the
Occultists:--
. . . . .
"Let us start at the moment when the first element came into existence.
Before this time, matter, as we know it, was not. It is equally impossible to
conceive of matter without energy, as of energy without matter; from one point
of view both are convertible terms. Before the birth of atoms, all those forms
of energy, which become evident when matter acts upon matter, could not have
existed* -- they were locked up in the protyle as latent potentialities only.
Coincident with the creation of atoms, all those attributes and properties,
which form the means of discriminating one chemical element from another, start
into existence fully endowed with energy." (Presidential Address, p. 16.)
With every
respect due to the great knowledge of the lecturer, the Occultist would put it
otherwise. They would say that no atom is ever "created," for the
atoms are eternal within the bosom of the One Atom, -- "the atom of
atoms" -- viewed during Manvantara as the Jagad-Yoni the material
causative womb of the world. Pradhana (unmodified matter), that which is the
first form of Prakriti, or material visible, as well as invisible nature, and
Purusha, spirit, are eternally one; and they are Nirupadhi, (without
adventitious qualities or attributes) only during Pralaya, and when beyond any
of the planes of consciousness of existence. The atom, as known to modern
science, is inseparable from Purusha, which is spirit, but is now called "Energy"
in Science. The protyle atom has not been comminuted or subtilized: it has
simply passed into that plane, which is no plane, but the eternal state of
everything beyond the planes of illusion. Both Purusha and Pradhana are
immutable and unconsumable, or Aparinamin and Avyaya, in eternity; and both
during the Mayavic periods may be referred to as Vyaya and Parinamin, or that
which can expand, pass away and disappear, and is "modifiable." In
this sense Purusha, must of course, be held distinct in our conceptions from
Parabrahmam. Nevertheless that, which is called "energy" or
"force" in Science and has been explained as a dual Force by
Metcalfe, is never, in fact, and cannot be energy alone; for it is the
substance of the world, its soul, the all-permeant "Sarvaga," in
conjunction with Kala "time." The three are the trinity in one,
during Manvantara, the all-potential Unity, which acts on the plane of illusion
(Maya) as three distinct things. In Orphic
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] study the occult sciences. Living in the
thirteenth century, almost a contemporary, therefore, of Albertus Magnus and
Thomas Aquinas, his discoveries -- such as gunpowder and optical glasses, and
his mechanical achievements -- were considered by everyone as so many miracles.
He was accused of having made a compact with the Evil One."
* Just so;
"those forms of energy . . . which become evident . . ." in the
laboratory of the chemist and physicist; but there are other forms of energy
wedded to other forms of matter, -- which are supersensuous, yet known to the
adepts.
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philosophy in
Greece they were called Phanes, Chaos, and Chronos -- the triad of the Occult
philosophers of that period.
But see how
closely Mr. Crookes brushes by the "Unknowable," and what
"potentialities" there are for the acceptance of Occult truths in his
discoveries. He continues, speaking of the evolution of atoms:--
". . . .
Let us pause at the end of the first complete vibration and examine the result.
We have already found the elements of water, ammonia, carbonic acid, the
atmosphere, plant and animal life, phosphorus for the brain, salt for the seas,
clay for the solid earth . . . phosphates and silicates sufficient for a world
and inhabitants not so very different from what we enjoy at the present day.
True the human inhabitants would have to live in a state of more than Arcadian
simplicity, and the absence of calcic phosphate would be awkward as far as the
bone is concerned* . . . At the lower end of our curve . . . we see a great
hiatus . . . This oasis, and the blanks which precede and follow it, may be
referred with much probability to the particular way in which our Earth
developed into a member of our solar system. If this be so, it may be that on
our Earth only these blanks occur, and not generally throughout the
universe."
This justifies
several assertions in the Occult works.
Firstly,
"that neither stars nor the sun can be said to be constituted of those
terrestrial elements with which the chemist is familiar, though they are all
present in the sun's outward robes -- and a host more of elements so far
unknown to science."
Secondly, that
our globe has its own special laboratory on the far-away outskirts of its
atmosphere, crossing which, every atom and molecule change and differentiate
from their primordial nature.
And Thirdly,
that though no element present on our earth could ever be possibly found
wanting in the sun, there are many others which have either not reached, or not
as yet been discovered on, our globe. "Some may be missing in certain
stars and heavenly bodies in the process of formation; or, though present in
them, these elements, on account of their present state, may not respond as yet
to the usual scientific tests."** Mr. Crookes speaks of an element of
still lower atomic weight than hydrogen, an element purely hypothetical as far
as our earth is concerned . . . though existing in abundance in the
chromosphere of the Sun -- the helium. Occult Science adds that not one of the
elements regarded by chemistry as such really deserves the name.
Again we find
Mr. Crookes speaking with approbation of "Dr. Carnelly's weighty argument
in favour of the compound nature of the so-called elements, from their analogy
to the compound radicles! " Hitherto,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is just the
existence of such worlds in other planes of consciousness that is claimed by
the Occultist. The secret science teaches that the primitive race was boneless.
(See Book II.); and that there are (to us) invisible worlds, peopled as our
own, besides the populations of Dhyan Chohans.
** "Five
Years of Theosophy," p. 258 et seq.
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alchemy alone
succeeded within the historical periods, and in the so-called civilized
countries, in obtaining a real element, or a particle of homogeneous matter,
the Mysterium Magnum of Paracelsus. But then it was before Lord Bacon's day.*
". . . Let
us now turn to the upper portion of the scheme. With hydrogen of atomic weight
= 1, there is little room for other elements, save, perhaps, for hypothetical
Helium. But what if we get 'through the looking-glass,' and cross the zero line
in search of new principles -- what shall we find on the other side of zero?
Dr. Carnelly asks for an element of negative atomic weight; here is ample room
and verge enough for a shadow series of such unsubstantialities. Helmholtz says
that electricity is probably as atomic as matter; is electricity one of the
negative elements, and the luminiferous ether another? Matter, as we now know
it, does not here exist; the forms of energy which are apparent in the motions
of matter are as yet only latent possibilities. A substance of negative weight
is not inconceivable.** But can we form a clear conception of a body which
combines with other bodies in proportions expressible by negative qualities?"***
"A genesis
of the elements such as is here sketched out would not be confined to our
little solar system, but would probably follow the same general sequence of
events in every centre of energy now visible as a star."
"Before the
birth of atoms to gravitate towards one another, no pressure could be
exercised; but at the outskirts of the fire-mist sphere, within which all is
protyle -- at the shell on which the tremendous forces involved in the birth of
a chemical element exert full sway -- the fierce heat would be accompanied by
gravitation sufficient to keep the newly-born elements from flying off into
space. As temperature increases, expansion and molecular motion increase,
molecules tend to fly asunder, and their chemical affinities become deadened;
but the enormous pressure of the gravitation of the mass of atomic matter,
outside what I may for brevity call the birth-shell, would counteract the
action of heat."
"Beyond the
birth-shell would be a space in which no chemical action could take place,
owing to the temperature there being above what is called the
dissociation-point for compounds. In this space the lion and the lamb would lie
down together; phosphorus and oxygen would mix without union; hydrogen and
chlorine would show no tendency to closer bonds; and even fluorine, that
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Says Mr.
Crookes in the same address: "The first riddle which we encounter in
chemistry is: 'What are the elements?' Of the attempts hitherto made to define
or explain an element, none satisfy the demands of the human intellect. The
text books tell us that an element is 'a body which has not been decomposed
''that it is 'a something to which we can add, but from which we can take
nothing,' or 'a body which increases in weight with every chemical change.'
Such definitions are doubly unsatisfactory: they are provisional, and may cease
to-morrow to be applicable in any given case. They take their stand, not on any
attribute of the things to be defined, but on the limitations of human power:
they are confessions of intellectual impotence."
** And the
lecturer quotes Sir George Airy, who says (in Faraday's Life and Letters Vol.
II., p. 354), "I can easily conceive that there are plenty of bodies about
us not subject to this intermutual action, and therefore not subject to the law
of gravitation."
*** The Vedantic
philosophy conceives of such; but then it is not physics, but metaphysics,
called by Mr. Tyndall "poetry" and "fiction."
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energetic gas
which chemists have only isolated within the last month or two, would float about
free and uncombined."
"Outside
this space of free atomic matter would be another shell, in which the formed
chemical elements would have cooled down to the combination point, and the
sequence of events so graphically described by Mr. Mattieu Williams in
"The Fuel of the Sun" would now take place, culminating in the solid
earth and the commencement of geological time" (p. 19).
This is, in a
strictly scientific, but beautiful language, the description of the evolution
of the differentiated Universe in the secret teachings. The learned gentleman
closes his address in words, every sentence of which is like a flash of light
from beyond the dark veil of materiality, hitherto thrown upon the exact
sciences, and a step forward towards the Sanctum Sanctorum of the Occult. (Vide
§ XV., "Gods, Monads, and Atoms.") Thus he says:--
"We have
glanced at the difficulty of defining an element; we have noticed, too, the
revolt of many leading physicists and chemists against the ordinary acceptation
of the term element; we have weighed the improbability of their eternal
existence,* or their origination by chance. As a remaining alternative, we have
suggested their origin by a process of evolution like that of the heavenly
bodies according to Laplace, and the plants and animals of our globe according
to Lamarck, Darwin, and Wallace.** In the general array of the elements, as
known to us, we have seen a striking approximation to that of the organic
world.*** In lack of direct evidence of the decomposition of any element, we
have sought and found indirect evidence . . . . We have next glanced at the
view of the genesis of the elements; and lastly we have reviewed a scheme of
their origin suggested by Professor Reynold's method of illustrating the
periodic classification**** . . . Summing up all the above considerations we
cannot,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In the form
they are now, we conceive?
** And to Kapila
and Manu -- especially and originally.
*** Here is a
scientific corroboration of the eternal law of correspondences and analogy.
**** This method
of illustrating the periodic law in the classification of elements is, in the
words of Mr. Crookes, proposed by Professor Emerson Reynolds, of Dublin
University, who . . . . "points out that in each period, the general
properties of the elements vary from one to another, with approximate
regularity until we reach the seventh member, which is in more or less striking
contrast with the first element of the same period, as well as with the first
of the next. Thus chlorine, the seventh member of Mendeleef's third period,
contrasts sharply with both sodium, the first member of the same series, and
with potassium, the first member of the next series; whilst on the other hand,
sodium and potassium are closely analogous. The six elements, whose atomic
weights intervene between sodium and potassium, vary in properties, step by
step, until chlorine, the contrast to sodium, is reached. But from chlorine to
potassium, the analogue of sodium, there is a change in properties per saltum.
. . . . If we thus recognise a contrast in properties -- more or less decided
-- between the first and the last members of each series, we can scarcely help
admitting the existence of a point of mean variation within each system. In
general the fourth element of each series possesses the property we might
expect a transition-element to exhibit. . . . . Thus for the purpose of graphic
translation, Professor Reynolds considers that the fourth member of a period --
silicon, for example -- may be placed at the apex of a symmetrical [[Footnote
continued on next page]]
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indeed, venture
to assert positively that our so-called elements have been evolved from one
primordial matter; but we may contend that the balance of evidence, I think,
fairly weighs in favour of this speculation."
Thus inductive
Science, in its Branches of Astronomy, Physics, and Chemistry, while advancing
timidly towards the conquest of Nature's secrets in her final effects on our
terrestrial plane, recedes to the days of Anaxagoras and the Chaldees in its
discoveries of (a) the origin of our phenomenal world, and (b) the modes of
formation of the bodies that compose the universe. And having to turn back for
their cosmogonical hypotheses to the beliefs of the earliest philosophers, and
the systems of the latter -- systems that were all based on the teachings of a
universal secret doctrine with regard to the primeval matter with its
properties, functions, and laws, -- have we not the right to hope that the day
is not far off when Science will show a better appreciation of the wisdom of the
ancients than it has hitherto done?
No doubt Occult
philosophy could learn a good deal from exact modern science; but the latter,
on the other hand, might profit by ancient learning in more than one way, and
chiefly in Cosmogony. For
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] curve, which shall represent for that particular
period, the direction in which the properties of the series of elements vary
with rising atomic weights.
Now, the writer
humbly confesses complete ignorance of modern chemistry and its mysteries. But
she is pretty well acquainted with the Occult doctrine with regard to
correspondences of types and antitypes in nature, and perfect analogy as a
fundamental law in Occultism. Hence she ventures a remark which will strike
every Occultist, however it may be derided by orthodox Science. This method of
illustrating the periodic law in the behaviour of elements, whether or not
still a hypothesis in chemistry, is a law in Occult Sciences. Every well-read
Occultist knows that the seventh and fourth members -- whether in a septenary
chain of worlds, the septenary hierarchy of angels, or in the constitution of
man, animal, plant, or mineral atom -- that the seventh and fourth members, we
say, in the geometrically and mathematically uniform workings of the immutable
laws of Nature, always play a distinct and specific part in the septenary
system. From the stars twinkling high in heaven, to the sparks flying asunder
from the rude fire built by the savage in his forest; from the hierarchies and
the essential constitution of the Dhyan Chohans -- organized for diviner
apprehensions and a loftier range of perception than the greatest Western
psychologist ever dreamed of, down to Nature's classification of species among
the humblest insects; finally from worlds to atoms, everything in the universe,
from great to small, proceeds in its spiritual and physical evolution,
cyclically and septennially, showing its seventh and fourth number (the latter
the turning point) behaving in the same way as shown in that periodic law of
atoms. Nature never proceeds per saltum. Therefore, when Mr. Crookes remarks to
this that he does not "wish to infer that the gaps in Mendeleef's table,
and in this graphic representation of it (the diagram showing the evolution of
atoms) necessarily mean that there are elements actually existing to fill up
the gaps; these gaps may only mean that at the birth of the elements there was
an easy potentiality of the formation of an element which would fit into the
place" -- an Occultist would respectfully remark to him that the latter
hypothesis can only hold good, if the septenary arrangement of atoms is not
interfered with. This is the one law, and an infallible method that must always
lead to success, one who follows it.
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instance, the
mystical signification, alchemical and transcendental, of the many imponderable
substances that fill interplanetary space, and which, interpenetrating each,
are the direct cause, at the lower end, of the production of natural phenomena
manifesting through vibration (so-called). The knowledge of the real (not the
hypothetical) nature of Ether, or rather of the Akasa, and other mysteries, in
short, can alone lead to the knowledge of Forces. It is that substance against
which the materialistic school of the physicists rebels with such fury,
especially in France,* and which exact Science has to advocate notwithstanding.
They cannot make away with it without incurring the risk, like a modern Samson,
of pulling down the pillars of the Temple of Science, and getting buried under
its roof.
The theories
built upon the rejection of Force outside and independent of Matter pure and
simple, have been all shown fallacious. They do not, and cannot, cover the
ground, and many of the scientific data are thus proved unscientific.
"Ether produced Sound" is said in the Puranas, and the statement is
laughed at. It is the vibrations in the air, we are corrected. And what is air?
Could it exist if there were no etheric medium in Space to buoy up its
molecules? The case stands simply thus. Materialism cannot admit the existence
of anything outside matter, because with the acceptance of an imponderable
Force -- the source and head of all the physical Forces -- other intelligent
Forces would have to be admitted virtually, and that would lead Science very
far. For it would have to accept as a sequel the presence in Man of a still
more spiritual power -- entirely independent, for once, of any kind of matter
physicists know anything about. Hence, apart from an hypothetical ether of
Space and gross physical bodies, the whole Sidereal and unseen Space is, in the
sight of the materialists, one boundless void in nature -- blind,
unintelligent, useless.
And now the next
question is: What is that Cosmic Substance, and how far can one go to suspect
its nature or to wrench from it its secrets, and thus feel justified in giving
it a NAME? How far, especially, has modern Science gone in the direction of
those secrets, and what it is doing to solve them. The latest hobby of Science,
the "Nebular Theory," may afford us some answer to this question. Let
us then examine the credentials of the NEBULAR THEORY.
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* A group of
electricians has just protested against the new theory of Clausius, the famous
professor of the University of Bonn. The character of the protest is shown in
the signature, which has "Jules Bourdin, in the name of the group of
Electricians, which had the honour of being introduced to Professor Clausius in
1881, and whose war-cry (cri de ralliement) is A bas l'Ether" -- down with
ether, even; they want Universal Void, you see!
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XIII.
SCIENTIFIC AND
ESOTERIC EVIDENCE FOR, AND OBJECTIONS TO, THE MODERN NEBULAR THEORY.
OF late Esoteric
Cosmogony has been frequently opposed by the phantom of this theory and its
ensuing hypotheses. "Can this most scientific teaching be denied by your
adepts?" it is asked. "Not entirely," is the reply, "but
the admissions of the men of Science themselves kill it; and there remains
nothing for the adepts to deny."
To make of
Science an integral whole necessitates, indeed, the study of spiritual and
psychic, as well as physical Nature. Otherwise it will ever be like the anatomy
of man, discussed of old by the profane from the point of view of his
shell-side and in ignorance of the interior work. Even Plato, the greatest
philosopher of his country, became guilty, before his initiation, of such
statements as that liquids pass into the stomach through the lungs. Without
metaphysics, as Mr. H. J. Slack says, real science is inadmissible.
The nebulae exist;
yet the nebular theory is wrong. A nebula exists in a state of entire elemental
dissociation. It is gaseous and -- something else besides, which can hardly be
connected with gases, as known to physical science; and it is self-luminous.
But that is all. The sixty-two "coincidences" enumerated by Professor
Stephen Alexander,* confirming the nebular theory, may all be explained by
esoteric science; though, as this is not an astronomical work, the refutations
are not attempted at present. Laplace and Faye come nearer to the correct
theory than any; but of the speculations of Laplace there remains little in the
present theory except its general features. Nevertheless, "there is in
Laplace's theory," says John Stuart Mill, "nothing hypothetical; it
is an example of legitimate reasoning from present effect to its past cause; it
assumes nothing more than that objects which really exist, obey the laws which
are known to be obeyed by all terrestrial objects resembling them."
(System of Logic, p. 229).
This from such
an eminent logician as Mill was, would be valuable, if it could only be proved
that "terrestrial objects resembling . . ." celestial objects at such
a distance as the nebulae are -- resemble those objects in reality, not alone
in appearance.
Another of the
fallacies from the Occult stand-point, which are embodied in the modern theory
as it now stands, is the hypothesis that the planets were all detached from the
Sun; that they are bone of
[[Footnote(s)]]
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*
"Smithsonian Contributions," xxi., Art. 1, pp. 79-97.
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his bone, and
flesh of his flesh; whereas, the Sun and planets are only co-uterine brothers,
having had the same nebular origin, only in a different mode from that
postulated by modern astronomy.
The many
objections raised against the homogeneity of original diffuse matter, on the
ground of the uniformity in the composition of the fixed stars, by some
opponents of the modern nebular theory, do not affect the question of that
homogeneity at all, but only the said theory. Our solar nebula may not be
completely homogeneous, or, rather, it may fail to reveal itself as such to the
astronomers, and yet be de facto homogeneous. The stars do differ in their
constituent materials and even exhibit elements quite unknown on earth;
nevertheless, this does not affect the point that primeval matter -- i.e., as
it appeared even in its first differentiation from its laya condition* -- is
yet to this day homogeneous, at immense distances, in the depths of infinitude,
and likewise at points not far removed from the outskirts of our solar system.
Finally, there
does not exist one single fact brought forward by the learned objectors against
the "nebular theory," (false as it is, and hence, illogically enough,
fatal to the hypothesis of the homogeneity of matter,) that can withstand criticism.
One error leads into another. A false premise will naturally lead to a false
conclusion, although an inadmissible inference does not necessarily affect the
validity of the major proposition of the syllogism. Thus, one may leave every
side-issue and inference from the evidence of spectra, and lines, as simply
provisional for the present, and abandon all matters of detail to physical
science. The duty of the Occultist lies with the Soul and Spirit of Cosmic
Space, not merely with its illusive appearance and behaviour. That of official
physical science is to analyze and study its shell -- the Ultima Thule of the
Universe and man, in the opinion of Materialism.
With the latter,
Occultism has nought to do. It is only with the theories of such men of learning
as Kepler, Kant, Oersted, and Sir W. Herschell, who believed in a Spiritual
world, that Occult Cosmogony might treat, and attempt a satisfactory
compromise. But the views of those physicists differed vastly from the latest
modern speculations. Kant and Herschell had in their mind's eye speculations
upon the origin and the final destiny, as well as the present aspect, of the
Universe, from a far more philosophical and psychic standpoint; whereas modern
Cosmology and Astronomy now repudiate anything like research into the mysteries
of being. The result is what might be expected: complete failure and
inextricable contradictions in the thousand and one varieties of so-called
scientific theories, and in this theory as in all others.
The nebular
hypothesis, involving the theory of the existence of a
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* Beyond the
zero-line of action.
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primeval matter,
diffused in a nebulous condition, is of no modern date in astronomy as everyone
knows. Anaximenes, of the Ionian school, had already taught that the sidereal
bodies were formed through the progressive condensation of a primordial
pregenetic matter, which had almost a negative weight, and was spread out
through Space in an extremely sublimated condition.
Tycho Brahe, who
viewed the Milky Way as an ethereal substance, thought the new star that
appeared in Cassiopoeia, in 1572, had been formed out of that matter.
("Progymnasmata" p. 795.) Kepler believed the star of 1606 had been
likewise formed out of the ethereal substance that fills the universe ("De
stella nova in pede Serpentarii," p. 115). He attributed to that same
ether the apparition of a luminous ring around the moon, during the total
eclipse of the sun observed at Naples in 1605. ("Hypotheses
Cosmogoniques," C. Wolf.) Still later, in 1714, -- the existence of a
self-luminous matter was recognised by Halley ("Philosophical
Transactions"). Finally, the journal of this name published in 1811 the
famous hypothesis on the transformation of the nebulae into stars, by the
eminent astronomer, Sir W. Herschell (See "Philosophical
Transactions," of 1811, p. 269, et seq.), after which the nebular theory
was accepted by the Royal Academies.
In "Five
years of Theosophy," on p. 245, an article headed "Do the Adepts deny
the Nebular Theory?" may be read. The answer there given is "No; they
do not deny its general propositions, nor the approximative truth of the
scientific hypotheses. They only deny the completeness of the present, as well
as the entire error of the many so-called "exploded" old theories,
which, during the last century, have followed each other in such rapid
succession."
This was
proclaimed at the time "an evasive answer." Such disrespect to
official science, it was argued, must be justified by the presentation, to
replace the orthodox speculation, of another theory more complete than theirs,
and having a firmer ground to stand upon. To this there is but one reply; it is
useless to give out isolated theories with regard to things embodied in a whole
and consecutive system, which, when separated from the main body of the
teaching, would necessarily lose their vital coherence and thus do no good when
studied independently. To be able to appreciate and accept the occult views on
the nebular theory, one has to study the whole esoteric cosmogonical system.
And the time has hardly arrived for the astronomers to be asked to accept Fohat
and the divine Builders. Even the undeniably correct surmises of Sir W.
Herschell], that had nothing "supernatural" in them, about the sun
being called "globe of fire" (perhaps) metaphorically, and his early
speculations about the nature of that which is now called the Nasmyth
willow-leaf theory -- caused that most eminent of all astro-
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nomers to be
smiled at by other, far less eminent colleagues, who saw and now see in his
ideas only "imaginative and fanciful theories." Before the whole
esoteric system could be given out and appreciated by the astronomers, they
would have to return to some of those "antiquated ideas," not only to
those of Herschell, but to the dreams of the oldest Hindu astronomers, and to
abandon their own theories, none the less "fanciful" because they
have appeared in one case nearly 80 years and in the other many thousands of
years later. Foremost of all they would have to repudiate the ideas on the
Sun's solidity and incandescence; the sun "glowing" most undeniably,
but not "burning." Then it is stated, with regard to Sir W.
Herschell's view that those "objects," as he called the "willow
leaves," are the immediate sources of the solar light and heat. And though
the esoteric teaching does not regard these as he did -- namely, organisms as
partaking of the nature of life," for the Solar "Beings" will
hardly place themselves within telescopic focus -- yet it asserts that the
whole Universe is full of such "organisms," conscious and active
according to the proximity or distance of their planes to, or from, our plane
of consciousness; and that finally the great astronomer was right in saying
that "we do not know that vital action is competent to develop at once
heat, light, and electricity" while speculating on those supposed
"organisms." For, at the risk of being laughed at by the whole world
of physicists, the Occultists maintain that all the "Forces" of the
Scientists have their origin in the Vital Principle, the ONE LIFE collectively
of our Solar system -- that "life" being a portion, or rather one of
the aspects of the One Universal LIFE.
We may,
therefore, as in the article under consideration, wherein, on the authority of
the Adepts, it was maintained that it is "sufficient to make a resume of
what the solar physicists do not know," -- we may, we maintain, define our
position with regard to the modern nebular theory and its evident
incorrectness, by simply pointing out facts diametrically opposed to it in its
present form. And to begin with, what does it teach?
Summarizing the
aforesaid hypotheses, it becomes plain that Laplace's theory -- now made quite
unrecognisable, moreover -- was an unfortunate one. He postulates in the first
place Cosmic matter, existing in a state of diffuse nebulosity "so fine
that its presence could hardly have been suspected." No attempt is made by
him to penetrate into the arcana of being, except as regards the immediate
evolution of our small solar system.
Consequently,
whether one accepts or rejects his theory in its bearing upon the immediate
cosmological problems presented for solution, he can only be said to have
thrown back the mystery a little further. To the eternal query -- "Whence
matter itself; whence the evolutionary impetus
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determining its
cyclic aggregations and dissolutions; whence the exquisite symmetry and order
into which the primeval atoms arrange and group themselves?" -- no answer
is attempted by Laplace. All we are confronted with, is a sketch of the
probable broad principles on which the actual process is assumed to be based.
Well, and what is this now celebrated note on the said process? What has he
given so wonderfully new and original, that its ground-work, at any rate,
should have served as a basis for the modern nebular theory? This is what one
gathers from various astronomical works.
Laplace thought
that, consequent on the condensation of the atoms of the primeval nebula,
according to the "Law" of gravity, the now gaseous, or perhaps,
partially liquid mass, acquired a rotatory motion. As the velocity of this
rotation increased, it assumed the form of a thin disc; finally, the
centrifugal force overpowering that of cohesion, huge rings were detached from
the edge of the whirling incandescent masses, contracting necessarily by
gravitation (as accepted) into spheroidal bodies, which would necessarily still
continue to preserve the same orbit occupied previously by the outer zone from
which they were separated. ("Laplace conceived that the external and
internal zones of the ring would rotate with the same angular velocity, which
would be the case with a solid ring; but the principle of equal areas requires
the inner zones to rotate more rapidly than the outer.")* The velocity of
the outer edge of each nascent planet, he said, exceeding that of the inner,
there results a rotation on its axis. The more dense bodies would be thrown off
last; and finally, during the preliminary state of their formation, the
newly-segregated orbs in their turn throw off one or more satellites . . . In
formulating the history of the rupture and planetation of rings, Laplace says:
"Almost always
each ring of vapours must have broken up into numerous masses, which, moving
with a nearly uniform velocity, must have continued to circulate at the same
distance around the Sun. These masses must have taken a spheroidal form with a
motion of rotation in the same direction as their revolution, since the inner
molecules (those nearer to the Sun) would have less actual velocity than the
exterior ones. They must then have formed as many planets in a state of vapour.
But, if one of them was sufficiently powerful to unite successively, by its
attraction, all the others around its centre, the ring of vapours must have
been thus transformed into a single spheroidal mass of vapours circulating
around the Sun with a rotation in the same direction as its revolution. The
latter case has been the more common, but the solar system presents us the
first case, in the four small planets which move between Jupiter and
Mars."
While few will
be found to deny "the magnificent audacity of this
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
*
"World-Life." Prof. Winchell points to a good many mistakes of
Laplace in his work; but as a geologist he is not infallible himself in his
"astronomical speculations."
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hypothesis,"
it is impossible not to recognise the insurmountable difficulties with which it
is attended. Why, for instance, do we find that the satellites of Neptune and
Uranus display a retrograde motion; that, in spite of its closer proximity to
the Sun, Venus is less dense than the Earth? Similarly, the more distant Uranus
is more dense than Saturn? How is it that so many variations in the inclination
of their axes and orbits are present in the supposed progeny of the central
orb; that such startling variations in the size of the planets is noticeable;
that the Satellites of Jupiter are more dense by .288 than their primary --
that the phenomena of meteoric and cometic systems still remain unaccounted
for? To quote the words of a Master: "They (the Occultists) find that the
centrifugal theory of Western birth is unable to cover all the ground. That,
unaided, it can neither account for every oblate spheroid, nor explain away
such evident difficulties as are presented by the relative density of some
planets. How, indeed, can any calculation of centrifugal force explain to us,
for instance, why Mercury, whose rotation is, we are told, only about one-third
that of the Earth, and its density only about one-fourth greater than the
Earth, should have a polar compression more than ten times as great as the
latter? And again, why Jupiter, whose equatorial rotation is said to be 'twenty-seven
times greater, and its density only about one-fifth that of the earth' should
have its polar compression seventeen times greater than that of the earth? Or
why Saturn, with an equatorial velocity fifty-five times greater than Mercury
for centripetal force to contend with, should have its polar compression only
three times greater than Mercury's? To crown the above contradictions, we are
asked to believe in the Central Forces, as taught by Modern Science, even when
told that the equatorial matter of the Sun, with more than four times the
centrifugal velocity of the Earth's equatorial surface, and only about
one-fourth part of the gravitation of the equatorial matter, has not manifested
any tendency to bulge at the Solar equator, nor shown the least flattening of
the poles of the Solar axis. In other and clearer words, the Sun, with only one
fourth of our Earth's density for the centrifugal force to work upon, has no
polar compression at all! We find this objection made by more than one
astronomer, yet never explained away satisfactorily so far as the 'Adepts' are
aware."
"Therefore,
do they (the Adepts) say, that the great men of science of the West, knowing .
. . . . next to nothing either about cometary matter, centrifugal and
centripetal forces, the nature of the nebulae, or the physical constitution of
the Sun, the Stars, or even the Moon, are imprudent to speak as confidently as
they do about the 'central mass of the Sun' whirling out into space planets,
comets, and what not . . . ." "We maintain that it (the Sun) evolves
out only the life-principle, the
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Soul of those
bodies, giving and receiving it back, in our solar system, as the 'Universal
Life-Giver' . . . . in infinitude and Eternity; that the solar system is as
much the microcosm of the ONE Macrocosm as man is the former when compared with
his own little Solar Cosmos."*
The essential
faculty possessed by all the cosmic and terrestrial elements, of generating
within themselves a regular and harmonious series of results, a concatenation
of causes and effects, is an irrefutable proof that they are either animated by
an extra or intra INTELLIGENCE, or conceal such within or behind the manifested
veil. Occultism does not deny the certainty of the mechanical origin of the
Universe; it only claims the absolute necessity of mechanicians of some sort
behind those Elements (or within) -- a dogma with us. It is not the fortuitous
assistance of the atoms of Lucretius, who himself knew better, that built the
Kosmos and all in it. Nature herself contradicts such a theory. Celestial
space, containing matter so attenuated as is Ether, cannot be called on, with
or without attraction, to explain the common motion of the sidereal hosts.
Although the perfect accord of their mutual revolution indicates clearly the
presence of a mechanical cause in Nature, Newton, who of all men had best right
to trust to his deductions and views, was nevertheless forced to abandon the
idea of ever explaining, by the laws of known Nature and its Material forces,
the original impulse given to the millions of orbs. He recognised fully the
limits that separate the action of natural Forces from that of the
INTELLIGENCES that set the immutable laws into order and action. And if a
NEWTON had to renounce such hope, which of the modern materialistic pigmies has
the right of saying: "I know better"?
To become
complete and comprehensible, a cosmogonical theory has to start with a
primordial Substance diffused throughout boundless Space, of an intellectual
and divine Nature. That substance must be the Soul and Spirit, the Synthesis
and Seventh Principle of the manifested Kosmos, and, to serve as a spiritual
Upadhi to this, there must be the sixth, its vehicle -- primordial physical
matter, so to speak, though its nature must escape for ever our limited normal
senses. It is easy for an astronomer, if endowed with an imaginative faculty,
to build a theory of the emergence of the universe out of chaos, by simply
applying to it the principles of mechanics. But such a universe will always
prove, with respect to its scientific human creator, a Frankenstein's monster;
it will lead him into endless perplexities. The application of the mechanical
laws only can never carry the speculator beyond the objective world; nor will
it unveil to men the origin and final destiny of Kosmos. This is
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Five
Years of Theosophy," pp. 249-50. Art. "Do the Adepts deny the Nebular
Theory?"
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whither the
nebular theory has led Science. In sober fact and truth this theory is twin
sister to that of Ether, and both are the offsprings of necessity; one as
indispensable to account for the transmission of light, as the other to explain
the problem of the origin of the solar systems. The question with them is, how
the same homogeneous matter* could, obeying the laws of Newton, give birth to
bodies -- sun, planets, and their satellites -- subject to conditions of identity
of motion and formed of such heterogeneous elements.
Has the nebular
theory helped to solve the problem, even if applied solely to bodies considered
as inanimate and material? We say most decidedly not. What progress has it made
since 1811, when Sir W. Herschell's paper, first presenting facts based on
observation and showing the existence of nebular matter, made the
"Sons" of the Royal Society "shout for joy"? Since then a
still greater discovery has permitted, through spectrum analysis, the verification
and corroboration of Sir W. Herschell's conjecture. Laplace demanded some kind
of primitive "world stuff " to prove the idea of progressive
world-evolution and growth. Here it is, as offered two millenniums ago.
The "world
stuff," now nebulae, was known from the highest antiquity. Anaxagoras
taught that, having differentiated, the subsequent commixture of heterogeneous
substances remained motionless and unorganized, until finally "the
Mind" -- the collective body of Dhyan Chohans, we say -- began to work
upon and communicated to it motion and order (Aristotle's "Physica,"
viii, 1.) The theory is now taken up in its first portion, that of any
"Mind" interfering with it being rejected. Spectrum analysis reveals
the existence of nebulae formed entirely of gases and luminous vapours. Is this
the primitive nebular matter? The spectra reveal, it is said, the physical
conditions of the matter which emits cosmic light. The spectra of the
resolvable and the irresolvable nebulae are shown to be entirely different, the
spectra of the latter showing their physical state to be that of glowing gas or
vapour. The bright lines of one nebula reveal the existence of hydrogen in it,
and of other material substances known and unknown. The same in the atmospheres
of the Sun and stars. This leads to the direct inference that a star is formed
by the condensation of a nebula; hence that even the metals themselves on earth
are
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Had
astronomers held simply, in their present state of knowledge, to the hypothesis
of Laplace, which was simply the formation of the planetary system, it might in
time have resulted in something like an approximate truth. But the two parts of
the general problem, that of the formation of the universe, or the formation of
the suns and stars from the primitive matter, and then the development of the
planets around their sun, rest on quite different facts in nature and are even
so viewed by Science itself. They are at the opposite poles of being.
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formed owing to
the condensation of hydrogen or some other primitive matter, some ancestral
cousin to "helium," perhaps, or some yet unknown stuff? This does not
clash with the occult teachings. And this is the problem that chemistry is
trying to solve; and it must succeed sooner or later in the task, accepting
nolens volens, when it does, the esoteric teaching. But when this does happen,
it will kill the nebular theory as it now stands.
Meanwhile
Astronomy cannot accept in any way, if it is to be regarded as an exact
science, the present theory of the filiation of stars -- even if occultism does
so in its own way, as it explains this filiation differently -- because
astronomy has not one single physical datum to show for it. Astronomy could
anticipate Chemistry in proving the existence of the fact, if it could show a
planetary nebula exhibiting a spectrum of three or four bright lines, gradually
condensing and transforming into a star, with a spectrum all covered with a
number of dark lines. But "the question of the variability of the nebula,
even as to their form, is yet one of the mysteries of Astronomy. The data of
observation possessed so far are of too recent an origin, too uncertain to
permit us to affirm anything." (Cosmogonical Hypotheses of Wolf.)
Since the
discovery of the spectroscope, its magic power has revealed to its adepts only
one single transformation of a star of this kind; and even that one showed
directly the reverse of what is needed as proof in favour of the nebular
theory; namely -- a star transforming itself into a planetary nebula. As told
in The Observatory (Vol. I., p. 185), the temporary star which appeared in the
constellation Cygnus, in November, 1876, discovered by J. F. J. Schmidt,
exhibited a spectrum broken by very brilliant lines. Gradually, the continuous
spectrum and most of the lines disappeared, leaving finally one single
brilliant line, which appeared to coincide with the green line of the nebula.
Though this
metamorphosis is not irreconcileable with the hypothesis of the nebular origin
of the stars, nevertheless this single solitary case rests on no observation
whatever, least of all on direct observation. The occurrence may have been due
to several other causes. Since astronomers are inclined to think our planets
are tending toward precipitation on the Sun, why should not that star have blazed
out owing to a collision of such precipitated planets, or, as many suggest, the
appulse of a comet? Anyhow, the only known instance of a star transformation
since 1811 is not favourable to the nebular theory. Moreover, on the question
of this theory, as in all others, astronomers disagree.
In our own age,
it was Buffon, before Laplace ever thought of it, who, very much struck by the
identity of motion in the planets, was the first to propose the hypothesis of
the planets and their satellites originating in
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the bosom of the
Sun. Forthwith, and for the purpose, he invented a special comet, supposed to
have torn out, by a powerful oblique blow, the quantity of matter necessary to
their formation. Laplace gave its dues to the "comet" in his
"Exposition du Systeme du Monde." (Note VII.) But the idea was seized
and even improved upon by a conception of the alternate evolution from the
Sun's central mass of planets apparently without weight or influence on the
motion of the visible planets -- and as evidently without any more existence
than the likeness of Moses in the moon.
But the modern
theory is also a variation on the systems elaborated by Kant and Laplace. The
idea of both was that, at the origin of things, all that matter which now
enters into the composition of the planetary bodies was spread over all the
space comprised in the solar system -- and even beyond. It was a nebula of
extremely small density, whose condensation gradually gave birth, by a
mechanism that has hitherto never been explained, to the various bodies of our
systems. This is the original nebular theory, an incomplete yet faithful
repetition -- a short chapter out of the large volume of universal esoteric
cosmogony -- of the teachings in the Secret Doctrine. And both systems, Kant's
and Laplace's, differ greatly from the modern theory, redundant with
conflicting sub-theories and fanciful hypotheses.
"The
essence of cometary matter and of that which composes the stars is totally
different from any of the chemical or physical characteristics with which Western
Science is now acquainted. While the spectroscope has shown the probable
similarity (owing to the chemical action of terrestrial light upon the
intercepted rays) of earthly and sidereal substance, the chemical actions,
peculiar to the variously progressed orbs of space, have not been detected, nor
proven to be identical with those observed on our own planet" -- say the
Teachers (op. cit.). Mr. Crookes says almost the same in the fragment quoted
from his lecture, "Elements and Meta-Elements."
"At the utmost,"
observes C. Wolf,* "could the nebular hypothesis show in its favour, with
W. Herschell, the existence of planetary nebulae in various degrees of
condensation, and of spiral nebulae, with nuclei of condensation on the
branches and centre.** But, in fact, the knowledge of the bond that unites the
nebulae to the stars is yet denied to us; and lacking as we do direct
observation, we are even debarred from establishing it even on the analogy of
chemical composition."
It is evident
that, even if the men of science, leaving aside the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Member of the
Institute, Astronomer of the Observatory, Paris, "Cosmogonical
Hypotheses."
** But the
spectra of these nebulae have never yet been ascertained. When they are found
with bright lines, then only may they be cited.
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difficulty
arising for them out of such undeniable variety and heterogeneity of matter in
the constitution of nebulae, did admit, with the ancients, that the origin of
all the visible and invisible heavenly bodies must be sought for in one
primordial homogeneous world-stuff, in a kind of PRE-protyle,* -- it is evident
that this would not put an end to their perplexities. Unless they admit also
that our actual visible Universe is merely the Sthula-Sharira, the gross body,
of the sevenfold Kosmos, they will have to face another problem; especially if
they risk maintaining that its now visible bodies are the result of the
condensation of that one and single primordial matter. For mere observation
shows them that the actions which produced the actual Universe are far more
complex than could ever be embraced in that theory.
First of all,
there are two distinct classes of irresolvable nebulae, -- as Science itself
teaches.
The telescope is
unable to distinguish between the two, but the spectroscope can, and notices,
therefore, an essential difference between their physical constitutions.**
"Some of
these," Wolf tells us, "have a spectrum of three or four bright
lines, others a continuous spectrum. The first are gaseous, the others formed
of a pulverulent matter. The former must constitute a veritable atmosphere: it
is among these that the solar nebula of Laplace has to be placed. The latter
form an ensemble of particles that may be considered as independent, and the
rotation of which obeys the laws of
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Mr. Crookes'
"Protyle" must not be regarded as the primary stuff, out of which the
Dhyan Chohans, in accordance with the immutable laws of nature, wove our solar
system. This protyle cannot even be the first prima-materia of Kant, which that
great mind saw used up in the formation of the worlds, and thus existing no
longer in a diffused state. It is a MEDIATE phase in the progressive
differentiation of cosmic substance from its normal undifferentiated state.
Protyle is then the aspect assumed by matter in its middle passage into full
objectivity.
** "The
question of the resolvability of the nebulae has been often presented in too
affirmative a manner and quite contrary to the ideas expressed by the illustrious
experimenter with the spectra of these constellations -- Mr. Huggins. Every
nebula whose spectrum contains only bright lines is gaseous, it is said, and
hence is irresolvable; every nebula with a continuous spectrum must end by
resolving into stars with an instrument of sufficient power. This assumption is
contrary at once to the results obtained, and to spectroscopic theory. The Lyra
nebula, the Dumb-bell nebula, the central region of the nebula of Orion, appear
resolvable, and show a spectrum of bright lines; the nebula of Canis Venatici
is not resolvable, and gives a continuous spectrum. Because, indeed, the
spectroscope informs us of the physical state of the constituent matter of the
stars, but affords us no notions of their modes of aggregation. A nebula formed
of gaseous globes (or even of nuclei, faintly luminous, surrounded by a
powerful atmosphere) would give a spectrum of lines and be still resolvable;
such seems to be the state of Huggins' region in the Orion nebula. A nebula
formed of solid or fluidic particles in a state of incandescence, a true cloud,
will give a continuous spectrum but will be irresolvable." (C. Wolf,
Cosmogonical Hypotheses.)
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internal weight:
such are the nebulae adopted by Kant and Faye. Observation allows us to place
the one as the other at the very origin of the planetary world. But when we try
to go beyond and ascend to the primitive chaos which has produced the totality
of the heavenly bodies, we have first to account for the actual existence of
these two classes of nebulae. If the primitive chaos were a cold luminous gas,*
one could understand how the contraction resulting from attraction could have
heated it and made it luminous. We have to explain the condensation of this gas
to the state of incandescent particles, the presence of which is revealed to us
in certain nebulae by the spectroscope. If the original chaos was composed of
such particles, how did certain of their portions pass into the gaseous state,
while others have preserved their primitive condition? . . . ."
Such is the
synopsis of the objections and difficulties to the acceptance of the nebular
theory brought forward by the French savant, who concludes his interesting
chapter by declaring that:--
"The first
part of the Cosmogonical problem, -- what is the primitive matter of chaos; and
how did that matter give birth to the sun and stars? -- thus remains to this
day in THE DOMAIN OF ROMANCE AND OF MERE IMAGINATION."**
If this is the
last word of Science upon that subject, whither then should one turn in order
to learn what the nebular theory is supposed to teach? What, in fact, is this
theory? What it is, no one seems to know for a certainty. What it is not -- we
learn from the erudite author of the "World-Life." He tells us
that:--
(I.) It "is
not a theory of the evolution of the Universe . . . but only and primarily a genetic
explanation of the phenomena of the solar system, and accessorily a
co-ordination of the principal phenomena in the stellar and nebular firmament,
as far as human vision has been able to penetrate."
(II.) "That
it does not regard the Comets as involved in that particular evolution which
has produced the solar system." (Esoteric doctrine does.)
(It does,
because it, too, recognises the comets as forms of cosmic existence
co-ordinated with earlier stages of nebular evolution; and it actually assigns
to them chiefly the formation of all worlds.)
(III.)
"That it does not deny an antecedent history of the luminous fire
mist" -- (the secondary stage of evolution in the Secret Doctrine) . . . .
"and makes no claim to having reached an absolute beginning." And
even
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Stanza
III. about "Light, or the cold Flame," and Commentary Number 8, where
it is explained that the "mother" (Chaos) is a cold Fire, a cool
Radiance, colourless, formless, devoid of every quality. "Motion is the
One Eternal is, and contains the potentialities of every quality in the
Manvantaric Worlds," it is said.
** Hypotheses
Cosmogoniques, C. Wolf, 1886.
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it allows that
this "fire mist may have previously existed in a cold, nonluminous and
invisible condition" . . . .
(IV.) "And
that finally: it does not profess to discover the ORIGIN of things, but only a
stadium in material history" . . . . leaving "the philosopher and
theologian as free as they ever were to seek for the origin of the modes of
being."*
But this is not
all. Even the greatest philosopher of England -- Mr. Herbert Spencer -- arrayed
himself against the fantastic theory by saying that (a) "The problem of
existence is not resolved" by it; (b) the nebular hypothesis "throws
no light upon the origin of diffused matter," and (c) that "the
nebular hypothesis (as it now stands) implies a First Cause."**
The latter, we
are afraid, is more than our modern physicists have bargained for. Thus, it
seems that the poor "hypothesis" can hardly expect to find help or
corroboration even in the world of the metaphysicians.
Considering all
this, the Occultists believe they have a right to present their philosophy,
however misunderstood and ostracised it may be at present. And they maintain
that this failure of the scientists to discover the truth is entirely due to
their materialism and contempt for transcendental sciences. Yet although the
scientific minds in our century are as far from the true and correct doctrine
of Evolution as ever, there may be still some hope left for the future, as we
find another great scientist giving us a faint glimmer of it.
In an article in
Popular Science Review (Vol. XIV., p. 252) on "Recent Researches in Minute
Life," we find Mr. H. J. Slack, F.C.S., Sec. R.M.S., saying: "There
is an evident convergence of all sciences, from physics to chemistry and
physiology, toward some doctrine of evolution and development, of which the
facts of Darwinism will form part, but what ultimate aspect this doctrine will
take, there is little, if any, evidence to show, and perhaps it will not be
shaped by the human mind until metaphysical as well as physical inquiries are
much more advanced."
This is a happy
forecast indeed. The day may come, then, when the "Natural
Selection," as taught by Mr. Darwin and Mr. Herbert Spencer, will form
only a part, in its ultimate modification, of our Eastern doctrine of
Evolution, which will be Manu and Kapila esoterically explained.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
*
"World-Life," p. 196.
** Westminster
Review, XX., July 27, 1868.
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XIV.
FORCES -- MODES
OF MOTION OR INTELLIGENCES?
THIS is, then,
the last word of physical science up to the present year, 1888. Mechanical laws
will never be able to prove the homogeneity of primeval matter, except
inferentially and as a desperate necessity, when there will remain no other
issue -- as in the case of Ether. Modern Science is secure only in its own
domain and region; within the physical boundaries of our solar system, beyond
which everything, every particle of matter, is different from the matter it
knows: which matter exists in states of which Science can form no idea. That
matter, which is truly homogeneous, is beyond human perceptions, if perception
is tied down merely to the five senses. We feel its effects through those
INTELLIGENCES which are the results of its primeval differentiation, whom we
name Dhyan-Chohans; called in the Hermetic works the "Seven
Governors," those to whom Pymander, the "Thought Divine," refers
as the Building Powers, and whom Asklepios calls the "Supernal Gods."
That matter -- the real primordial substance, the noumenon of all the
"matter" we know of, -- even some of the astronomers have been led to
believe in, and to despair of the possibility of ever accounting for rotation,
gravitation, and the origin of any mechanical physical laws -- unless these
Intelligences be admitted by Science. In the abovequoted work upon astronomy,
by Wolf,* the author endorses fully the theory of Kant, and the latter, if not
in its general aspect, at any rate in some of its features, reminds one
strongly of certain esoteric teachings. Here we have the world's system reborn
from its ashes, through a nebula; the emanation from the bodies, dead and
dissolved in Space -- resultant of the incandescence of the solar centre
reanimated by the combustible matter of the planets. In this theory, generated
and developed in the brain of a young man hardly twenty-five years of age, who
had never left his native place, a small town of Northern Prussia (Konigsberg)
one can hardly fail to recognise either an inspiring external power, or the
reincarnation which the Occultists see in it. It fills a gap which Newton, with
all his genius, failed to bridge. And surely it is our primeval matter, Akasa,
that Kant had in view, when proposing to solve Newton's difficulty and his
failure to explain, by the natural forces, the primitive impulse imparted to
the planets, by the postulation of a universally pervading primordial
substance. For, as he remarks in chapter viii., if it is once admitted that the
perfect harmony of the stars and planets and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "LES
HYPOTHESES COSMOGONIQUES. Examen des Theories Scientifiques modernes sur
l'Origine des Mondes, suivi de la Traduction de la Theorie du Ciel de
Kant."
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the coincidence
of their orbital planes prove the existence of a natural cause, which would
thus be the primal cause, "that cause cannot really be the matter which
fills to-day the heavenly spaces." It must be that which filled space --
was space -- originally, whose motion in differentiated matter was the origin
of the actual movements of the sidereal bodies; and which, "in condensing
itself in those very bodies, thus abandoned the space that is found void
to-day." In other words, it is that same matter of which are now composed
the planets, comets, and the Sun himself, which, having in the origin formed
itself into those bodies, has preserved its inherent quality of motion; which
quality, now centred in their nuclei, directs all motion. A very slight
alteration of words is needed, and a few additions, to make of this our
Esoteric Doctrine.
The latter
teaches that it is this original, primordial prima materia, divine and
intelligent, the direct emanation of the Universal Mind -- the Daiviprakriti
(the divine light emanating from the Logos*) -- which formed the nuclei of all
the "self-moving" orbs in Kosmos. It is the informing, ever-present
moving-power and life-principle, the vital soul of the suns, moons, planets,
and even of our Earth. The former latent: the last one active -- the invisible
Ruler and guide of the gross body attached to, and connected with, its Soul,
which is the spiritual emanation, after all, of these respective planetary
Spirits.
Another quite
occult doctrine is the theory of Kant, that the matter of which the inhabitants
and the animals of other planets are formed is of a lighter and more subtle
nature and of a more perfect conformation in proportion to their distance from
the Sun. The latter is too full of Vital Electricity, of the physical,
life-giving principle. Therefore, the men on Mars are more ethereal than we
are, while those of Venus are more gross, though far more intelligent, if less
spiritual.
The last
doctrine is not quite ours -- yet those Kantian theories are as metaphysical,
and as transcendental as any occult doctrines; and more than one man of Science
would, if he but dared speak his mind, accept them as Wolf does. From this
Kantian mind and soul of the Suns and Stars to the MAHAT (mind) and Prakriti of
the Puranas, there is but a step. After all, the admission of this by Science
would be only the admission of a natural cause, whether it would or would not
stretch its belief to such metaphysical heights. But then Mahat, the MIND, is a
"God," and physiology admits "mind" only as a temporary
function of the material brain, and no more.
The Satan of
Materialism now laughs at all alike, and denies the visible as well as the
invisible. Seeing in light, heat, electricity, and even in the phenomenon of
life, only properties inherent in matter, it
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Which
"Light" we call Fohat.
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laughs whenever
life is called VITAL PRINCIPLE, and derides the idea of its being independent
of and distinct from the organism.
But here again
scientific opinions differ as in everything else, and there are several men of
science who accept views very similar to ours. Consider, for instance, what Dr.
Richardson, F.R.S. (elsewhere quoted at length) says of that "Vital
principle," which he calls "nervous ether" ("Popular
Science Review," Vol. 10):--
"I speak
only of a veritable material agent, refined, it may be, to the world at large,
but actual and substantial: an agent having quality of weight and of volume, an
agent susceptible of chemical combination, and thereby of change of physical
state and condition, an agent passive in its action, moved always, that is to
say, by influences apart from itself,* obeying other influences, an agent
possessing no initiative power, no vis or energia naturae,** but still playing
a most important, if not a primary part in the production of the phenomena
resulting from the action of the energeia upon visible matter" (p. 379).
As Biology and
Physiology now deny, in toto, the existence of a "vital principle,"
this extract, together with de Quatrefages' admission, is a clear confirmation
that there are men of science who take the same views about "things
occult" as theosophists and occultists do. These recognise a distinct
vital principle independent of the organism -- material, of course, as physical
force cannot be divorced from matter, but of a substance existing in a state
unknown to Science. Life for them is something more than the mere interaction of
molecules and atoms. There is a vital principle without which no molecular
combinations could ever have resulted in a living organism, least of all in the
so-called "inorganic" matter of our plane of consciousness.
By
"molecular combinations" is meant, of course, those of the matter of
our present illusive perceptions, which matter energises only on this, our
plane. And this is the chief point at issue.***
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This is a
mistake, which implies a material agent, distinct from the influences which
move it, i.e. blind matter and perhaps "God" again, whereas this ONE
Life is the very God and Gods "Itself."
** The same
error.
*** "Is the
Jiva a myth, as science says, or is it not?" ask some Theosophists,
wavering between materialistic and idealistic Science. The difficulty of really
grasping esoteric problems concerning the "ultimate state of matter"
is again the old crux of the objective and the subjective. What is matter? Is the
matter of our present objective consciousness anything but our SENSATIONS?
True, the sensations we receive come from without, but can we really (except in
terms of phenomena) speak of the "gross matter" of this plane as an
entity apart from and independent of us? To all such arguments Occultism
answers: True, in reality matter is not independent of, or existent outside,
our perceptions. Man is an illusion: granted. But the existence and actuality
of other, still more illusive, but not less actual, entities than we are, is
not a claim which is lessened, but rather strengthened by this doctrine of
Vedantic and even Kantian Idealism.
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Thus the
Occultists are not alone in their beliefs. Nor are they so foolish, after all,
in rejecting even the "gravity" of modern Science along with other
physical laws, and in accepting instead attraction and repulsion. They see,
moreover, in these two opposite Forces only the two aspects of the universal
unit, called "MANIFESTING MIND"; in which aspects, Occultism, through
its great Seers, perceives an innumerable Host of operative Beings: Cosmic
Dhyan-Chohans, Entities, whose essence, in its dual nature, is the Cause of all
terrestrial phenomena. For that essence is co-substantial with the universal
Electric Ocean, which is LIFE; and being dual, as said -- positive and negative
-- it is the emanations of that duality that act now on earth under the name of
"modes of motion"; even Force having now become objectionable as a
word, for fear it should lead someone, even in thought, to separate it from
matter! It is, as Occultism says, the dual effects of that dual essence, which
have now been called centripetal and centrifugal forces, negative and positive
poles, or polarity, heat and cold, light and darkness, etc., etc.
And it is
maintained that even the Greek and Roman Catholic Christians, are wiser in
believing, as they do -- even if blindly connecting and tracing them all to an
anthropomorphic god -- in Angels, Archangels, Archons, Seraphs, and Morning
Stars: in all those theological Deliciae humani generis, in short, that rule
the cosmic elements, than Science is, in disbelieving in them altogether, and
advocating its mechanical Forces. For these act very often with more than human
intelligence and pertinency. Nevertheless, that intelligence is denied and
attributed to blind chance. But, as De Maistre was right in calling the law of
gravitation merely a word which replaced "the thing unknown"
(Soirees), so are we right in applying the same remark to all the other Forces
of Science. And if it is objected that the Count was an ardent Roman Catholic,
then we may cite Le Couturier, as ardent a materialist, who said the same
thing, as also did Herschell and many others. (Vide Musee des Sciences, August,
1856.)
From Gods to
men, from Worlds to atoms, from a star to a rush-light, from the Sun to the
vital heat of the meanest organic being -- the world of Form and Existence is
an immense chain, whose links are all connected. The law of Analogy is the
first key to the world-problem, and these links have to be studied coordinately
in their occult relations to each other.
When, therefore,
the Secret Doctrine -- postulating that conditioned or limited space (location)
has no real being except in this world of illusion, or, in other words, in our
perceptive faculties -- teaches that every one of the higher, as of the lower worlds,
is interblended with our own objective world; that millions of things and
beings are, in point of
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localization,
around and in us, as we are around, with, and in them; it is no metaphysical
figure of speech, but a sober fact in Nature, however incomprehensible to our
senses.
But one has to
understand the phraseology of Occultism before criticising what it asserts. For
example, the Doctrine refuses (as Science does, in one sense) to use the words
"above" and "below," "higher" and
"lower," in reference to invisible spheres, as being without meaning.
Even the terms "East" and "West" are merely conventional,
necessary only to aid our human perceptions. For, though the Earth has its two
fixed points in the poles, North and South, yet both East and West are variable
relatively to our own position on the Earth's surface, and in consequence of
its rotation from West to East. Hence, when " other worlds" are
mentioned -- whether better or worse, more spiritual or still more material,
though both invisible -- the Occultist does not locate these spheres either
outside or inside our Earth, as the theologians and the poets do; for their
location is nowhere in the space known to, and conceived by, the profane. They
are, as it were, blended with our world interpenetrating it and interpenetrated
by it. There are millions and millions of worlds and firmaments visible to us;
there still greater numbers beyond those visible to the telescopes, and many of
the latter kind do not belong to our objective sphere of existence. Although as
invisible as if they were millions of miles beyond our solar system, they are
yet with us, near us, within our own world, as objective and material to their
respective inhabitants as ours is to us. But, again, the relation of these
worlds to ours is not that of a series of egg-shaped boxes enclosed one within
the other, like the toys called Chinese nests; each is entirely under its own
special laws and conditions, having no direct relation to our sphere. The
inhabitants of these, as already said, may be, for all we know, or feel,
passing through and around us as if through empty space, their very habitations
and countries being interblended with ours, though not disturbing our vision,
because we have not yet the faculties necessary for discerning them. Yet by
their spiritual sight the Adepts, and even some seers and sensitives, are
always able to discern, whether in a greater or smaller degree, the presence
and close proximity to us of Beings pertaining to other spheres of life. Those
of the (spiritually) higher worlds, communicate only with those terrestrial
mortals who ascend to them, through individual efforts, on to the higher plane
they are occupying. . . .
"THE SONS
OF Bhumi (EARTH) REGARD THE SONS OF Deva-lokas (ANGEL-SPHERES) AS THEIR GODS;
AND THE SONS OF LOWER KINGDOMS LOOK UP TO THE MEN OF Bhumi, AS TO THEIR devas
(GODS); MEN REMAINING UNAWARE OF IT IN THEIR BLINDNESS. . . . THEY (men)
TREMBLE
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BEFORE THEM
WHILE USING THEM (for magical purposes). . . . THE FIRST RACE OF MEN WERE THE
"Mind-born sons" OF THE FORMER. THEY (the pitris and devas) ARE OUR
PROGENITORS. . . . (Book II. of Commentary on the Book of DZYAN.)
"Educated
people," so-called, deride the idea of Sylphs, Salamanders, Undines, and
Gnomes; the men of science regard as an insult any mention of such
superstitions; and with a contempt of logic and common good sense, that is
often the prerogative of "accepted authority," they allow those, whom
it is their duty to instruct, to labour under the absurd impression that in the
whole Kosmos, or at any rate in our own atmosphere, there are no other
conscious, intelligent beings, save ourselves.* Any other humanity (composed of
distinct human beings) than a mankind with two legs, two arms, and a head with
man's features on it, would not be called human; though the etvmology of the
word would seem to have little to do with the general appearance of a creature.
Thus, while Science sternly rejects even the possibility of there being such
(to us, generally) invisible creatures, Society, while believing in it all
secretly, is made to deride the idea openly. It hails with mirth such works as
the Count de Gabalis, and fails to understand that open satire is the securest
mask.
Nevertheless,
such invisible worlds do exist. Inhabited as thickly as our own is, they are
scattered throughout apparent Space in immense number; some far more material
than our own world, others gradually etherealizing until they become formless
and are as "Breaths." That our physical eye does not see them, is no
reason to disbelieve in them; physicists can see neither their ether, atoms,
nor "modes of motion," or Forces. Yet they accept and teach them.
If we find, even
in the natural world with which we are acquainted, matter affording a partial
analogy in the difficult conception of such invisible worlds, there seems
little difficulty in recognizing the possibility of such a presence. The tail
of a comet, which, though attracting our attention by virtue of its luminosity,
yet does not disturb or impede our vision of objects, which we perceive through
and beyond it, affords the first stepping-stone toward a proof of the same. The
tail of a comet passes rapidly across our horizon, and we should neither feel
it, nor be cognizant of its passage, but for the brilliant coruscation, often
perceived only by a few interested in the phenomenon, while everyone else
remains ignorant of its presence and passage through, or across, a portion of
our globe. This tail may, or may not, be an integral portion of the being of
the comet, but its tenuity sub-
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* Even the
question of the plurality of worlds inhabited by sentient creatures is rejected
or approached with the greatest caution! And yet see what the great astronomer,
Camille Flammarion, says in his "Pluralite des Mondes."
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serves our
purpose as an illustration. Indeed, it is no question of superstition, but
simply a result of transcendental science, and of logic still more, to admit the
existence of worlds formed of even far more attenuated matter than the tail of
a comet. By denying such a possibility, Science has played for the last century
into the hands of neither philosophy nor true religion, but simply into those
of theology. To be able to dispute the better the plurality of even material
worlds, a belief thought by many churchmen incompatible with the teachings and
doctrines of the Bible,* Maxwell had to calumniate the memory of Newton, and
try to convince his public that the principles contained in the Newtonian
philosophy are those "which lie at the foundation of all atheistical
systems." (Vide Vol. II., "Plurality of Worlds.")
"Dr.
Whewell disputed the plurality of worlds by appeal to scientific
evidence," writes Professor Winchell.** And if even the habitability of
physical worlds, of planets, and distant stars which shine in myriads over our
heads is so disputed, how little chance is there for the acceptance of
invisible worlds within the apparently transparent space of our own!
But, if we can
conceive of a world composed (for our senses) of matter still more attenuated
than the tail of a comet, hence of inhabitants in it who are as ethereal, in
proportion to their globe, as we are in comparison with our rocky, hard-crusted
earth, no wonder if we do not perceive them, nor sense their presence or even
existence. Only, in what is the idea contrary to science? Cannot men and
animals, plants and rocks, be supposed to be endowed with quite a different set
of senses from those we possess? Cannot their organisms be born, developed, and
exist, under other laws of being than those that rule our little world? Is it
absolutely necessary that every corporeal being should be clothed in
"coats of skin" like those that Adam and Eve were provided with in
the legend of Genesis? Corporeality, we are told, however, by more than one man
of science, "may exist under very divergent conditions."*** Do not we
know through the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Nevertheless,
it will be shown on the testimony of the Bible itself, and of such good
Christian theologians as Cardinal Wiseman, that this plurality is taught in
both the Old and the New Testaments.
** See "The
Plurality of the Worlds," wherein the list of many men of Science, who
wrote to prove the theory, is given.
*** Professor A.
Winchell -- arguing upon the plurality of the worlds -- makes the following
remarks: "It is not at all improbable that substances of a refractory
nature might be so mixed with other substances, known or unknown to us, as to
be capable of enduring vastly greater vicissitudes of heat and cold than is
possible with terrestrial organisms. The tissues of terrestrial animals are
simply suited to terrestrial conditions. Yet even here we find different types
and species of animals adapted to the trials of extremely dissimilar
situations. . . . . . That an animal should be a quadruped or a [[Footnote
continued on next page]]
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discoveries of
that very all-denying science that we are surrounded by myriads of invisible
lives? If these microbes, bacteria and the tutti quanti of the infinitesimally
small, are invisible to us by virtue of their minuteness, cannot there be, at
the other pole of it, beings as invisible owing to the quality of their texture
or matter -- to its tenuity, in fact? Conversely, as to the effects of cometary
matter, have we not another example of a half visible form of life and matter?
The ray of sunlight entering our apartment, reveals in its passage myriads of
tiny beings living their little life and ceasing to be, independent and heedless
of whether they are perceived or not by our grosser materiality. And so again,
of the microbes and bacteria and such-like unseen beings in other elements. We
passed them by, during those long centuries of dreary ignorance, after the lamp
of knowledge in the heathen and highly philosophical systems had ceased to
throw its bright light on the ages of intolerance and bigotry during early
Christianity; and we would fain pass them by again now.
And yet these
lives surrounded us then as they do now. They have worked on, obedient to their
own laws, and it is only as they were gradually revealed by Science that we
have begun to take cognisance of them, as of the effects produced by them.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] biped is something not depending on the
necessities of organization, or instinct, or intelligence. That an animal
should possess just five senses is not a necessity of percipient existence.
There may be animals on the earth with neither smell nor taste. There may be
beings on other worlds, and even on this, who possess more numerous senses than
we. The possibility of this is apparent when we consider the high probability
that other properties and other modes of existence lie among the resources of
the Kosmos, and even of terrestrial matter. There are animals which subsist
where rational man would perish -- in the soil, in the river, and the sea"
. . . (and why not human beings of different organizations, in such case?) . .
. "Nor is incorporated rational existence conditioned on warm blood, nor
on any temperature which does not change the forms of matter of which the
organism may be composed. There may be intelligences corporealized after some
concept not involving the processes of injection, assimilation, and
reproduction. Such bodies would not require daily food and warmth. They might
be lost in the abysses of the ocean, or laid up on a stormy cliff through the
tempests of an Arctic winter, or plunged in a volcano for a hundred years, and
yet retain consciousness and thought. It is conceivable. Why might not psychic
natures be enshrined in indestructible flint and platinum? These substances are
no further from the nature of intelligence than carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and lime.
But, not to carry the thought to such an extreme (?), might not high
intelligences be embodied in frames as indifferent to external conditions as
the sage of the western plains, or the lichens of Labrador, the rotifers that
remain dried for years, or the spores of bacteria which pass living through
boiling water. . . . These suggestions are made simply to remind the reader how
little can be argued respecting the necessary conditions of intelligent,
organized existence, from the standard of corporeal existence found upon the
earth. Intelligence is, from its nature, as universal and as uniform as the
laws of the Universe. Bodies are merely the local fitting of intelligence to
particular modifications of universal matter or Force." (World-Life, or Comparative
Geology, pp. 496-498 et seq.)
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How long has it
taken the world, as it is now, to become what it is? If it can be said of
cosmic dust that some of it comes to the present day "which had never
belonged to the earth before" ("World-Life"), how much more
logical to believe -- as the Occultists do -- that through the countless ages
and millions of years that have rolled away, since that dust aggregated and
formed the globe we live in around its nucleus of intelligent primeval
substance -- many humanities, differing from our present mankind, as greatly as
the one which will evolve millions of years hence will differ from our races,
appeared but to disappear from the face of the earth, as our own will. Those
primitive and far-distant humanities, having, as geologists think, left no
tangible relics of themselves, are denied. All trace of them is swept away, and
therefore they have never existed. Yet their relics -- a very few of them,
truly -- are to be found, and they have to be discovered by geological
research. Though, even if they were never to be met with, there is no reason to
say that no men could have ever lived in those geological times, to which the
period of their presence on earth is assigned. For their organisms needed no
warm blood, no atmosphere, no feeding; the author of "World-Life" is
right, and it is no such great extreme to believe even as we do, that as there
may be, on scientific hypotheses, "psychic natures enshrined in
indestructible flint and platinum" to this day, so there were psychic
natures enshrined in forms of equal indestructible primeval matter the real
forefathers of our fifth race.
When we speak,
therefore, as in Book II., of men who inhabited this globe 18,000,000 years
back, we have in the mind neither the men of our present races, nor the present
atmospheric laws, thermal conditions, etc. The Earth and mankind, like the Sun,
Moon, and planets, have all their growth, changes, developments, and gradual
evolution in their life-periods; they are born, become infants, then children,
adolescents, grown-up bodies, grow old, and finally die. Why should not Mankind
be also under this universal law? Says Uriel to Enoch: "Behold, I have
showed thee all things. Thou seest the Sun, Moon, and those which conduct the
stars of heaven, which cause all their operations, seasons, and arrivals to
return. . . . In the days of sinners the years shall be shortened . . .
everything done on Earth shall be subverted . . . the moon shall change its
laws" . . . etc. (Ch. lxxix.)
The "days
of Sinners" meant the days when matter would be in its full sway on Earth,
and man would have reached the apex of physical development in stature and
animality. That came to pass during the period of the Atlanteans, about the
middle point of their Race (the 4th), which was drowned as prophesied by Uriel.
Since then man began decreasing in physical stature, strength, and years, as
will be shown in
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Book II. But as
we are in the mid-point of our sub-race of the Fifth Root Race -- the acme of
materiality in each -- therefore the animal propensities, though more refined,
are not the less developed for that: and they are so chiefly in civilized
countries.
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§ XV.
GODS, MONADS,
AND ATOMS.
SOME years ago
we remarked* that "the Esoteric Doctrine may well be called the
'thread-doctrine,' since, like Sutratman, in the Vedanta philosophy,** it
passes through and strings together all the ancient philosophical religious
systems, and reconciles and explains them all." We say now it does more.
It not only reconciles the various and apparently conflicting systems, but it
checks the discoveries of modern exact science, and shows some of them to be necessarily
correct, since they are found corroborated in the ancient records. All this
will, no doubt, be regarded as terribly impertinent and disrespectful, a
veritable crime of lese-Science; nevertheless, it is a fact.
Science is,
undeniably, ultra-materialistic in our days; but it finds, in one sense, its
justification. Nature behaving in actu ever esoterically, and being, as the
Kabalists say, in abscondito, can only be judged by the profane through her
appearance, and that appearance is always deceitful on the physical plane. On
the other hand, the naturalists refuse to blend physics with metaphysics, the
body with its informing soul and spirit, which they prefer ignoring. This is a
matter of choice with some, while the minority strive very sensibly to enlarge
the domain of physical science by trespassing on the forbidden grounds of
metaphysics, so distasteful to some materialists. These scientists are wise in
their generation. For all their wonderful discoveries would go for nothing, and
remain for ever headless bodies, unless they lift the veil of matter and strain
their eyes to see beyond. Now that they have studied nature in the length,
breadth, and thickness of her physical frame, it is time to remove the skeleton
to the second plane and search within the unknown depths for the living and
real entity, for its SUB-stance -- the noumenon of evanescent matter.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The
Septenary Principle," art. in "Five Years of Theosophy," p. 197.
** The Atman or
Spirit (the Spiritual SELF) passing like a thread through the five subtle
bodies (or principles, Koshas) is called "thread-soul," or Sutratman
in Vedantic philosophy.
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It is only by
acting on such lines that some of the truths, now called "exploded
superstitions," will be discovered to be facts and the relics of ancient
knowledge and wisdom.
One of such
"degrading" beliefs -- in the opinion of the all-denying sceptic --
is found in the idea that Kosmos, besides its objective planetary inhabitants,
its humanities in other inhabited worlds, is full of invisible, intelligent
Existences. The so-called Arch-Angels, Angels and Spirits, of the West, copies
of their prototypes, the Dhyan-Chohans, the Devas and Pitris, of the East, are
no real Beings but fictions. On this point Materialistic Science is inexorable.
To support its position, it upsets its own axiomatic law of uniformity in the
laws of nature, that of continuity, and all the logical sequence of analogies
in the evolution of being. The masses of the profane are asked, and made, to
believe that the accumulated testimony of History, which shows even the
Atheists of old -- such as Epicurus and Democritus -- believing in gods, was
false; and that philosophers like Socrates and Plato, asserting their
existence, were mistaken enthusiasts and fools. If we hold our opinions merely
on historical grounds, on the authority of legions of the most eminent Sages,
Neo-Platonists, Mystics of all the ages, from Pythagoras down to the eminent
Scientists and Professors of the present century, who, if they reject "gods,"
believe in "spirits," shall we consider such authorities as
weak-minded and foolish as any Roman Catholic peasant, who believes in and
prays to his once human Saint, or the Archangel, St. Michael? But is there no
difference between the belief of the peasant and that of the Western heirs to
the Rosicrucians and Alchemists of the Middle Ages? Is it the Van Helmonts, the
Khunraths, the Paracelsuses and Agrippas, from Roger Bacon down to St. Germain,
who were all blind enthusiasts, hysteriacs or cheats, or is it the handful of
modern sceptics -- the "leaders of thought" -- who are struck with
the cecity of negation? The latter, we opine. It would be a miracle indeed,
quite an abnormal fact in the realm of probabilities and logic, were that handful
of negators to be the sole custodians of truth, while the million-strong hosts
of believers in gods, angels, and spirits -- in Europe and America alone --
namely, Greek and Latin Christians, Theosophists, Spiritualists, Mystics, etc.,
etc., should be no better than deluded fanatics and hallucinated mediums, and
often no higher than the victims of deceivers and impostors! However varying in
their external presentations and dogmas, beliefs in the Hosts of invisible
Intelligences of various grades have all the same foundation. Truth and error
are mixed in all. The exact extent, depth, breadth, and length of the mysteries
of Nature are to be found only in Eastern esoteric sciences. So vast and so
profound are these that hardly a few, a very few of the highest Initiates --
those whose very existence is known but to a small number of
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Adepts -- are capable
of assimilating the knowledge. Yet it is all there, and one by one facts and
processes in Nature's workshops are permitted to find their way into the exact
Sciences, while mysterious help is given to rare individuals in unravelling its
arcana. It is at the close of great Cycles, in connection with racial
development, that such events generally take place. We are at the very close of
the cycle of 5,000 years of the present Aryan Kaliyuga; and between this time
and 1897 there will be a large rent made in the Veil of Nature, and
materialistic science will receive a death-blow.
Without throwing
any discredit upon time-honoured beliefs, in whatever direction, we are forced
to draw a marked line between blind faith, evolved by theologies, and knowledge
due to the independent researches of long generations of adepts; between, in
short, faith and philosophy. There have been -- in all ages -- undeniably
learned and good men who, having been reared in sectarian beliefs, died in
their crystallized convictions. For Protestants, the garden of Eden is the
primeval point of departure in the drama of Humanity, and the solemn tragedy on
the summit of Calvary, the prelude to the hoped-for Millennium. For Roman
Catholics, Satan is at the foundation of Kosmos, Christ in its centre, and
Antichrist at its apex. For both, the Hierarchy of Being begins and ends within
the narrow frames of their respective theologies: one self-created personal God
and an Empyrean ringing with the Hallelujas of created angels; the rest, false
gods, Satan and fiends.
Theophilosophy
proceeds on broader lines. From the very beginning of AEons -- in time and
space in our Round and Globe -- the Mysteries of Nature (at any rate, those
which it is lawful for our races to know) were recorded by the pupils of those
same now invisible "heavenly men," in geometrical figures and
symbols. The keys thereto passed from one generation of "wise men" to
the other. Some of the symbols, thus passed from the east to the west, were
brought therefrom by Pythagoras, who was not the inventor of his famous
"Triangle." The latter figure, along with the plane cube and circle,
are more eloquent and scientific descriptions of the order of the evolution of
the Universe, spiritual and psychic, as well as physical, than volumes of
descriptive Cosmogonies and revealed "Geneses." The ten points
inscribed within that "Pythagorean triangle" are worth all the
theogonies and angelologies ever emanated from the theological brain. For he
who interprets them -- on their very face, and in the order given -- will find
in these seventeen points (the seven Mathematical Points hidden) the
uninterrupted series of the genealogies from the first Heavenly to terrestrial
man. And, as they give the order of Beings, so they reveal the order in which were
evolved the Kosmos, our earth, and the primordial elements by
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which the latter
was generated. Begotten in the invisible Depths, and in the womb of the same
"Mother" as its fellow-globes -- he who will master the mysteries of
our Earth, will have mastered those of all others.
Whatever
ignorance, pride or fanaticism may suggest to the contrary, Esoteric Cosmology
can be shown inseparably connected with both philosophy and modern science. The
gods of the ancients, the monads -- from Pythagoras down to Leibnitz -- and the
atoms of the present materialistic schools (as borrowed by them from the
theories of the old Greek Atomists) are only a compound unit, or a graduated
unity like the human frame, which begins with body and ends with spirit. In the
occult sciences they can be studied separately, but never mastered unless
viewed in their mutual correlations during their life-cycle, and as a Universal
Unity during Pralayas.
La Pluche shows
sincerity, but gives a poor idea of his philosophical capacities when declaring
his personal views on the Monad or the Mathematical Point. "A point,"
he says, "is enough to put all the schools in the world in a combustion.
But what need has man to know that point, since the creation of such a small
being is beyond his power? A fortiori, philosophy acts against probability
when, from that point which absorbs and disconcerts all her meditations, she
presumes to pass on to the generation of the world. . . ."
Philosophy,
however, could never have formed its conception of a logical, universal, and
absolute Deity if it had no Mathematical Point within the Circle to base its
speculations upon. It is only the manifested Point, lost to our senses after
its pregenetic appearance in the infinitude and incognizability of the Circle,
that made a reconciliation between philosophy and theology possible -- on condition
that the latter should abandon its crude materialistic dogmas. And it is
because it has so unwisely rejected the Pythagorean Monad and geometrical
figures, that Christian theology has evolved its self-created human and
personal God, the monstrous Head from whence flow in two streams the dogmas of
Salvation and Damnation. This is so true that even those clergymen who would be
philosophers and who were masons, have, in their arbitrary interpretations,
fathered upon the ancient sages the queer idea that "the Monad represented
(with them) the throne of the Omnipotent Deity, placed in the centre of the
Empyrean to indicate T.G.A.O.T.U."* -- read "the Great Architect of
the Universe." A curious explanation this, more Masonic than strictly
Pythagorean.
Nor did the
"hierogram within a Circle, or equilateral Triangle,"
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Science
of Numbers," by the Rev. G. Oliver (p. 36).
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ever mean
"the exemplification of the unity of the divine Essence"; for this
was exemplified by the plane of the boundless Circle. What it really meant was
the triune co-equal Nature of the first differentiated Substance, or the
con-substantiality of the (manifested) Spirit, matter and the Universe -- their
"Son," who proceeds from the Point (the real, esoteric LOGOS) or the
Pythagorean MONAD. For the Greek Monas signifies "Unity" in its
primary sense. Those unable to seize the difference between the monad -- the
Universal Unit -- and the Monads or the manifested Unity, as also between the
ever-hidden and the revealed LOGOS or the Word, ought never to meddle in
philosophy, let alone the Esoteric Sciences. It is needless to remind the
educated reader of Kant's Thesis to demonstrate his second Antinomy.* Those who
have read and understood it will see clearly the line we draw between the absolutely
Ideal Universe and the invisible though manifested Kosmos. Our Gods and Monads
are not the Elements of extension itself, but only those of the invisible
reality which is the basis of the manifested Kosmos. Neither esoteric
philosophy, nor Kant, nor Leibnitz would ever admit that extension can be
composed of simple or unextended parts. But theologian-philosophers will not
grasp this. The Circle and the Point, which latter retires into and merges with
the former, after having emanated the first three points and connected them
with lines, thus forming the first noumenal basis of the Second Triangle in the
Manifested World, have ever been an insuperable obstacle to theological flights
into dogmatic Empyreans. On the authority of this Archaic Symbol, a male,
personal god, the Creator and Father of all, becomes a third-rate emanation,
the Sephiroth standing fourth in descent, and on the left hand of En-Soph (see
the Kabalistic Tree of Life). Hence, the Monad is degraded into a Vehicle -- a
"throne"!
The Monad --
only the emanation and reflection of the Point (Logos) in the phenomenal World
-- becomes, as the apex of the manifested equilateral triangle, the
"Father." The left side or line is the Duad, the "Mother,"
regarded as the evil, counteracting principle (Plutarch, De Placitis
Placitorum); the right side represents the Son ("his Mother's
husband" in every Cosmogony, as one with the apex); at the basic line is
the Universal plane of productive Nature, unifying on the phenomenal plane
Father-Mother-Son, as these were unified in the apex, in the supersensuous
World.** By mystic transmutation they became the Quaternary -- the triangle
became the TETRAKTIS.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Kant's
Critique de la Raison pure (Barni's transl., Vol. II., p. 54).
** In the Greek
and Latin churches -- which regard marriage as one of the sacraments -- the
officiating priest during the marriage ceremony represents the apex of the
triangle; the bride its left feminine side and the bridegroom the right one,
while the horizontal line is symbolised by the row of witness, the bridesmaids
and best-men. But behind [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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This
transcendental application of geometry to Cosmic and divine theogony -- the
Alpha and the Omega of mystical conception -- became dwarfed after Pythagoras
by Aristotle. By omitting the Point and the Circle, and taking no account of
the apex, he reduced the metaphysical value of the idea, and thus limited the
doctrine of magnitude to a simple TRIAD -- the line, the surface, and the body.
His modern heirs, who play at Idealism, have interpreted these three
geometrical figures as Space, Force, and Matter -- "the potencies of an
interacting Unity."* Materialistic Science, perceiving but the basic line
of the manifested "triangle" -- the plane of matter -- translates it
practically as (Father)-MATTER, (Mother)-MATTER, and (Son)-MATTER, and
theoretically as Matter, Force, and Correlation.
But to the
average physicist, as remarked by a Kabalist, "Space, Force, Matter, are,
what signs in algebra are to the mathematician, merely conventional
symbols;" or "Force as force, and Matter as matter, are as absolutely
unknowable as is the assumed empty space in which they are held to
interact." As symbols representing abstractions, "the physicist bases
reasoned hypotheses of the origin of things . . . . and sees three needs in
what he terms creation: (a) a place wherein to create; (b) a medium by which to
create; (c) a material from which to create. And in giving a logical expression
to this hypothesis through the terms space, force, matter, he believes he has
proved the existence of that which each of these represents as he conceives it
to be."**
The physicist
who regards Space merely as a representation of our mind, or extension
unrelated to things in it, which Locke defined as capable of neither resistance
nor motion; the paradoxical materialist, who would have a void there, where he
can see no matter, would reject with the utmost contempt the proposition that
"Space is a substantial though (apparently) an absolutely unknowable
living Entity." (New Aspects, p. 9.) Such is, nevertheless, the Kabalistic
teaching, and it is that of Archaic philosophy. Space is the real world, while
our world is an artificial one. It is the One Unity throughout its infinitude:
in its bottomless depths as on its illusive surface; a surface studded with
countless phenomenal Universes, systems and mirage-like worlds. Nevertheless,
to the Eastern Occultist, who is an objective Idealist at the bottom, in the
real world, which is a Unity of Forces, there is "a connection of all
matter in the plenum," as Leibnitz would say. This is symbolized in the
Pythagorean Triangle.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued
from previous page]] the priest there is the altar with its mysterious
containments and symbolic meaning, inside of which no one but the consecrated
priests ought to enter. In the early days of Christianity the marriage ceremony
was a mystery and a true symbol. Now, however, even the churches have lost the
true meaning of this symbolism.
* See Von
Hartmann's and Herbert Spencer's works.
** "New
Aspects of Life," by Henry Pratt, M.D.
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It consists of
ten points inscribed pyramid-like (from one to the last four) within its three
lines, and it symbolizes the Universe in the famous Pythagorean Decad. The
upper single dot is a Monad, and represents a Unit-Point, which is the Unity
from whence all proceeds, and all is of the same essence with it. While the ten
dots within the triangle represent the phenomenal world, the three sides of the
equilateral triangle which enclose the pyramid of dots are the barriers of
noumenal Matter, or Substance, that separate it from the world of Thought.
"Pythagoras considered a point to correspond in proportion to unity; a
line to 2; a superficies to 3; a solid to 4; and he defined a point as a Monad
having position, and the beginning of all things; a line was thought to
correspond with duality, because it was produced by the first motion from
indivisible nature, and formed the junction of two points. A superficies was
compared to the number three because it is the first of all causes that are
found in figures; for a circle, which is the principal of all round figures,
comprises a triad, in centre -- space -- circumference. But a triangle, which
is the first of all rectilineal figures, is included in a ternary, and receives
its form according to that number; and was considered by the Pythagoreans to be
the creator of all sublunary things. The four points at the base of the
Pythagorean triangle correspond with a solid or cube, which combines the
principles of length, breadth, and thickness, for no solid can have less than
four extreme boundary points." (Pythag. Triangle, p. 19.)
It is argued
that "the human mind cannot conceive an indivisible unit short of the
annihilation of the idea with its subject." This is an error, as the
Pythagoreans have proved, and a number of Seers before them, although there is
a special training for it, and although the profane mind can hardly grasp it.
But there are such things as metamathematics and metageometry. Even mathematics
pure and simple proceed from the Universal to the particular, from the
mathematical, hence indivisible Point, to solid figures. The teaching
originated in India, and was taught in Europe by Pythagoras, who, throwing a
veil over the Circle and the Point -- which no living man can define except as
incomprehensible abstractions -- laid the origin of the differentiated Cosmic
matter in the basic or horizontal line of the Triangle. Thus the latter became
the earliest of geometrical figures. The author of "New Aspects of
Life" and of the Kabalistic Mysteries -- objects to the objectivization,
so to speak, of the Pythagorean conception and use of the equilateral triangle,
and calls it a misnomer. His argument that a solid equilateral body --
"one whose base, and each of its sides, form equal triangles -- must have
four co-equal sides or surfaces, while a triangular plane will as necessarily
possess five," demonstrates on the contrary the grandeur of the conception
in all its esoteric application to the idea of
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the pregenesis,
and the genesis of Kosmos. Granted, that an ideal triangle, depicted by
mathematical, imaginary lines "can have no sides at all, being simply a
phantom of the mind (if sides be imputed to which, they must be the sides of
the object it constructively represents)." But in such case most of the
scientific hypotheses are no better than "phantoms of the mind"; they
are unverifiable, except on inference, and have been adopted merely to answer
scientific necessities. Furthermore, the ideal triangle -- "as the
abstract idea of a triangular body, and, therefore, as the type of an abstract
idea" -- accomplished and carried out to perfection the double symbolism
intended. As an emblem applicable to the objective idea, the simple triangle
became a solid. When repeated in stone on the four cardinal points, it assumed
the shape of the Pyramid -- the symbol of the phenomenal merging into the
noumenal Universe of thought -- at the apex of the four triangles; and, as an
"imaginary figure constructed of three mathematical lines," it symbolized
the subjective spheres -- those lines "enclosing a mathematical space --
which is equal to nothing enclosing nothing." Because, to the senses and
the untrained consciousness of profane and scientist, everything beyond the
line of differentiated matter -- i.e., outside of, and beyond the realm of even
the most spiritual substance -- has to remain for ever equal to nothing. It is
the AIN-SOPH -- the No-THING.
Yet these
"phantoms of the mind" are in truth no greater abstractions than the
abstract ideas in general upon evolution and physical development -- e.g.,
Gravity, Matter, Force, etc. -- on which the exact sciences are based. Our most
eminent chemists and physicists are earnestly pursuing the not hopeless attempt
of finally tracing to its hiding-place the protyle, or the basic line of the
Pythagorean triangle. The latter is, as said, the grandest conception
imaginable, as it symbolizes both the ideal and the visible universes.* For if
"the possible unit is only a possibility as an actuality of nature, as an
individual of any kind," and as every individual natural object is capable
of division, and by division loses its unity, or ceases to be a unit,** it is
so only in the realm of exact sciences in a world as deceptive as it is
illusive. In the realm of the Esoteric sciences the unit divided ad infinitum,
instead of losing its unity, approaches with every division the planes of the
only eternal REALITY. The eye of the SEER can follow and behold it in all its
pregenetic glory. This same idea of the reality of the subjective, and the
unreality of the objective universes, is found at the bottom of the Pythagorean
and Platonic teachings -- limited to the Elect alone; for
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In the world
of Form, having found its expression in the Pyramids, Symbolism has in them
both a triangle and a square, with their four co-equal triangles or surfaces,
the four basic points, and the fifth -- the apex.
** "New
Aspects of Life."
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Porphyry,
speaking of the Monad and the Duad, says that the former only was considered substantial
and real, "that most simple Being, the cause of all unity and the measure
of all things."
But the Duad,
although the origin of Evil, or Matter -- thence unreal in philosophy -- is
still Substance during Manvantara, and is often called the third monad, in
Occultism, and the connecting line as between two Points, . . . or Numbers
which proceeded from THAT, "which was before all Numbers," as
expressed by Rabbi Barahiel. And from this Duad proceeded all the Scintillas of
the three upper and the four lower worlds or planes -- which are in constant
interaction and correspondence. This is a teaching which the Kabala has in
common with Eastern Occultism. For in the occult philosophy there are the
"ONE Cause" and the "Primal Cause," which latter thus becomes,
paradoxically, the second, as clearly expressed by the author of the
"Qabbalah, from the philosophical writings of Ibn Gabirol," --
"in the treatment of the Primal cause, two things must be considered, the
Primal Cause per se, and the relation and connection of the Primal Cause with
the visible and unseen universe." Thus he shows the early Hebrews
following in the steps of the Oriental philosophy -- Chaldean, Persian, Hindu,
Arabic, etc. Their Primal Cause was designated at first "by the triadic
Shaddai, the (triune) Almighty, subsequently by the Tetragrammaton, YHVH,
symbol of the Past, Present, and Future," and, let us add, of the eternal
IS, or the I AM. Moreover, in the Kabala the name YHVH (or Jehovah) expresses a
He and a She, male and female, two in one, or Hokhmah and Binah, and his, or
rather their Shekinah or synthesizing spirit (grace), which makes again of the
Duad a Triad. This is demonstrated in the Jewish Liturgy for Pentecost, and the
prayer, "In the name of Unity, of the Holy and Blessed Hu (He), and His
Shekinah, the Hidden and Concealed Hu, blessed be YHVH (the Quaternary) for
ever." "Ha is said to be masculine and YAH feminine, together they
make the [[hebrew]] i.e., one YHVH. One, but of a male-female nature. The
Shekinah is always considered in the Qabbalah as feminine" (p. 175). And
so it is considered in the exoteric Puranas, for Shekinah is no more than Sakti
-- the female double or lining of any god, in such case. And so it was with the
early Christians whose Holy Spirit was feminine, as Sophia was with the
Gnostics. But in the transcendental Chaldean Kabala or "Book of
Numbers," "Shekinah" is sexless, and the purest abstraction, a
State, like Nirvana, not subject or object or anything except an absolute PRESENCE.
Thus it is only
in the anthropomorphised systems (such as the Kabala has now greatly become)
that Shekinah-Sakti is feminine. As such she becomes the Duad of Pythagoras,
the two straight lines of the symbol that can never meet, which therefore form
no geometrical figure and are
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the symbol of
matter. Out of this Duad, when united in one basic line of the triangle on the
lower plane (the upper Triangle of the Sephirothal Tree), emerge the Elohim, or
Deity in Cosmic Nature, with the true Kabalists the lowest designation,
translated in the Bible "God" (see the same work and page).* Out of these
issue the Scintillas.
The Scintillas
are the "Souls," and these Souls appear in the three-fold form of
Monads (units), atoms and gods -- according to our teaching. "Every atom
becomes a visible complex unit (a molecule), and once attracted into the sphere
of terrestrial activity, the Monadic Essence, passing through the mineral,
vegetable, and animal kingdoms, becomes man." (Esot. Catechism.) Again,
"God, Monad, and Atom are the correspondences of Spirit, Mind, and Body
(Atma, Manas and Sthula Sarira) in man." In their septenary aggregation
they are the "Heavenly Man" (see Kabala for the latter term); thus,
terrestrial man is the provisional reflection of the Heavenly. . . . .
"The Monads (Jivas) are the Souls of the Atoms, both are the fabric in
which the Chohans (Dhyanis, gods) cloth themselves when a form is needed."
(Esot. Cat.)
This relates to
Cosmic and sub-planetary Monads, not to the Super-Cosmic Monas (the Pythagorean
Monad) as called, in its synthetic character, by the Pantheistical
Peripatetics. The Monads of the present dissertation are treated from the
standpoint of their individuality, as atomic Souls, before these atoms descend
into pure terrestrial form. For this descent into concrete matter marks the
medial point of their own individual pilgrimage. Here, losing in the mineral
kingdom their individuality, they begin to ascend through the seven states of
terrestrial evolution to that point where a correspondence is firmly
established between the human and Deva (divine) consciousness. At present, however,
we are not concerned with their terrestrial metamorphoses and tribulations, but
with their life and behaviour in Space, on planes wherein the eye of the most
intuitional chemist and physicist cannot reach them -- unless, indeed, he
develops in himself highly clairvoyant faculties.
It is well known
that Leibnitz came several times very near the truth, but defined monadic
evolution incorrectly, which is not to be wondered at, since he was not an
INITIATE, nor even a Mystic, only a
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Such recent
works as the Qabbalah of Mr. Isaac Myer and of Mr. S. L. MacGregor Mathers,
fully justify our attitude towards the Jehovistic Deity. It is not the
transcendental, philosophical, and highly metaphysical abstraction of the
original Kabalistic thought -- Ain-Soph-Shekinah-Adam-Kadmon, and all that
follows -- that we oppose, but the crystallization of all these into the highly
unphilosophical, repulsive, and anthropomorphic Jehovah, the androgynous and
finite deity for which eternity, omnipotence, and omniscience are claimed. We
do not war against the IDEAL REALITY, but the hideous theological Shadow.
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very intuitional
philosopher. Yet no psycho-physicist ever came nearer than he has to the
esoteric general outline of evolution. This evolution -- viewed from its
several standpoints -- i.e., as the universal and the individualized Monad; and
the chief aspects of the Evolving Energy, after differentiation -- the purely
Spiritual, the Intellectual, the Psychic and the Physical -- may be thus
formulated as an invariable law; a descent of Spirit into Matter, equivalent to
an ascent in physical evolution; a re-ascent from the depths of materiality
towards its status quo ante, with a corresponding dissipation of concrete form
and substance up to the LAYA state, or what Science calls "the zero-point,"
and beyond.
These states --
once the spirit of Esoteric philosophy is grasped -- become absolutely
necessary from simple logical and analogical considerations. Physical Science having
now ascertained, through its department of Chemistry, the invariable law of
this evolution of atoms -- from their "protylean" state down to that
of a physical and then a chemical particle (or molecule) -- cannot well reject
the same as a general law. And once it is forced by its enemies -- Metaphysics
and Psychology* -- out of its alleged impregnable strongholds, it will find it
more difficult than it now appears to refuse room in the Spaces of SPACE to
Planetary Spirits (gods), Elementals, and even the Elementary Spooks or Ghosts,
and others. Already Figuier and Paul D'Assier, two Positivists and
Materialists, have succumbed before this logical necessity. Other and still
greater Scientists will follow in that "intellectual FALL." They will
be driven out of their position not by spiritual, theosophical, or any other
physical or even mental phenomena, but simply by the enormous gaps and chasms
that open daily and will still be opening before them, as one discovery follows
the other, until they are finally knocked off their feet by the ninth wave of
simple common sense.
Here is an
example: Prof. W. Crookes' latest discovery of what he has named protyle. In
the "Notes on the Bhagavat Gita," by one of the best metaphysicians
and Vedantic scholars in India,** the lecturer, referring cautiously to
"things occult" in that great Indian esoteric work, makes a remark as
suggestive as it is strictly correct. ". . . Into the details of the
evolution of the solar system itself," he says, "it is not necessary
for me to enter. You may gather some idea as to the way in which the various
elements start into existence from these THREE principles into which
MULAPRAKRITI is differentiated (the Pythagorean triangle), by
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Let not the
word "psychology" cause the reader to carry his thought by an
association of ideas to modern "Psychologists," so-called, whose
idealism is another name for uncompromising materialism, and whose pretended
Monism is no better than a mask to conceal the void of final annihilation --
even of consciousness. Here Spiritual psychology is meant.
** T. Subba Row,
see Theosophist for Feb., 1887.
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examining the
lecture delivered by Professor Crookes a short time ago upon the so-called
elements of modern chemistry. This lecture will give you some idea of the way
in which these Elements spring from Vishwanara,* the most objective of these
three principles, which seems to stand in the place of the protyle mentioned in
that lecture. Except in a few particulars, this lecture seems to give the
outlines of the theory of physical evolution on the plane of Vishwanara, and
is, so far as I know, the nearest approach made by modern investigators TO THE
REAL OCCULT THEORY on the subject."
These words will
be re-echoed and approved by every Eastern Occultist. Much from the lectures by
Prof. Crookes has already been quoted in § XII. of these Addenda. Since then,
there has been another lecture delivered, as remarkable as the first one, on
the "Genesis of the Elements,"** and also a third one. Here we have
almost a corroboration of the teachings of Esoteric philosophy concerning the
mode of primeval evolution. It is, indeed, as near an approach, made by a great
scholar and specialist in chemistry,*** to the Secret Doctrine, as could be
made apart from the application of the monads and atoms to the dogmas of pure
transcendental metaphysics, and their connection and correlation with
"Gods and intelligent Conscious Monads." But Chemistry is now on its
ascending plane, thanks to one of its highest European representatives. It is
impossible for it to go back to that day when materialism regarded its
sub-elements as absolutely simple and homogeneous bodies, which it had raised,
in its blindness, to the rank of elements. The mask has been snatched off by
too clever a hand for there to be any fear of a new disguise. And after years
of pseudology, of bastard molecules parading under the name of elements, behind
and beyond which there could be nought but void, a great professor of chemistry
asks once more: "What are these elements, whence do they come, what is
their signification? . . . . These elements perplex us in our researches,
baffle us in our speculations, and haunt us in our very dreams. They stretch
like an unknown sea before us mocking -- mystifying, and murmuring strange
revelations and possibilities." (Gen. of Elem., p. 1.)
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
*
"Vishwanara is not merely the manifested objective world, but the one
physical basis (the horizontal line of the triangle) from which the whole
objective world starts into existence." And this is the Cosmic Duad, the
androgynous Substance. Beyond only, is the true Protyle.
** By W.
Crookes, F.R.S., V.P.C.S., delivered at the Royal Institution, London, on
Friday, February 18th, 1887.
*** How true it
is will be fully demonstrated only on that day when his discovery of radiant
matter will have resulted in a further elucidation with regard to the true
source of light, and revolutionized all the present speculations. Further
familiarity with the northern streamers of the aurora borealis may help the
recognition of this truth.
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Those who are
heirs to primeval revelations have taught these "possibilities" in
every century, but have never found a fair hearing. The truths inspired to
Kepler, Leibnitz, Gassendi, Swedenborg, etc., were ever alloyed with their own
speculations in one or another predetermined direction --hence distorted. But
now one of the great truths has dawned upon an eminent professor of modern
exact science, and he fearlessly proclaims as a fundamental axiom that Science
has not made itself acquainted, so far, with real simple elements. For Prof.
Crookes tells his audience:
"If I
venture to say that our commonly received elements are NOT simple and
primordial, that they have not arisen by chance or have not been created in a
desultory and mechanical manner, but have been evolved from simpler matters --
or perhaps, indeed, from one sole kind of matter -- I do but give formal
utterance to an idea which has been, so to speak, for some time 'in the air' of
science. Chemists, physicists, philosophers of the highest merit, declare
explicitly their belief that the seventy (or thereabouts) elements of our
text-books are not the pillars of Hercules which we must never hope to
pass." . . . "Philosophers in the present as in the past -- men who
certainly have not worked in the laboratory -- have reached the same view from
another side." Thus Mr. Herbert Spencer records his conviction that 'the
chemical atoms are produced from the true or physical atoms by processes of
evolution under conditions which chemistry has not yet been able to produce.' .
. . "And the poet has forestalled the philosopher. Milton ('Paradise
Lost,' Book V.) makes the Archangel Raphael say to Adam, instinct with the
evolutionary idea, that the Almighty had created
. . . 'One first
matter, all
Indued with various
forms, various degrees
Of substance.'
"
Nevertheless,
the idea would have remained crystallized "in the air of Science,"
and never have descended into the thick atmosphere of materialism and profane
mortals for years to come, perhaps, had not Professor Crookes bravely and
fearlessly reduced it to its simple elements, and thus publicly forced it on
Scientific notice. "An idea," says Plutarch, "is a being
incorporeal, which has no subsistence by itself, but gives figure and form unto
shapeless matter, and becomes the cause of the manifestation." (De Placit.
Philos.) The revolution produced in old chemistry by Avogadro was the first
page in the Volume of New Chemistry. Mr. Crookes has now turned the second
page, and is boldly pointing to what may be the last. For once protyle accepted
and recognized -- as invisible Ether was, both being logical and scientific
necessities -- Chemistry will have virtually ceased to live: it will reappear
in its reincarnation as New Alchemy, or METACHEMISTRY. The discoverer of
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radiant matter
will have vindicated in time the Archaic Aryan works on Occultism and even the
Vedas and Puranas. For what are the manifested "Mother," the
"Father-Son-Husband" (Aditi and Daksha, a form of Brahma, as
Creators) and the "Son," -- the three "First-born" -- but
simply Hydrogen, Oxygen, and that which in its terrestrial manifestation is
called nitrogen. Even the exoteric descriptions of the "First Born"
triad give all the characteristics of these three gases. Priestley, the
"discoverer" of Oxygen, or that which was known in the highest
antiquity!
Yet all the
ancient, mediaeval, and modern poets and philosophers have been anticipated
even in the exoteric Hindu books. Descartes' plenum of matter differentiated
into particles; Leibnitz's Ethereal Fluid and Kant's "primitive
fluid" dissolved into its elements; Kepler's Solar Vortex and Systemic
Vortices; in short, from the Elemental Vortices inaugurated by the universal
mind -- through Anaxagoras, down to Galileo, Torricelli, and Swedenborg, and
after them to the latest speculations by European mystics -- all this is found in
the Hindu hymns and Mantras to the "Gods, Monads, and Atoms," in
their fulness, for they are inseparable. In esoteric teachings, the most
transcendental conceptions of the universe and its mysteries, as the most
(seemingly) materialistic speculations are found reconciled, because those
sciences embrace the whole scope of evolution from Spirit to matter. As
declared by an American Theosophist, "The Monads (of Leibnitz) may from
one point of view be called force, from another matter. To occult Science,
force and matter are only two sides of the same SUBSTANCE."
("Path," No. 10, p. 297.)
Let the reader
remember these "Monads" of Leibnitz, every one of which is a living
mirror of the universe, every monad reflecting every other, and compare this
view and definition with certain Sanskrit stanzas (Slokas) translated by Sir
William Jones, in which it is said that the creative source of the Divine Mind,
. . . "Hidden in a veil of thick darkness, formed mirrors of the atoms of
the world, and cast reflection from its own face on every atom. . . . ."
When, therefore,
Professor Crookes declares that "If we can show how the so-called chemical
elements might have been generated we shall be able to fill up a formidable gap
in our knowledge of the universe, . . ." the answer is ready. The
theoretical knowledge is contained in the esoteric meaning of every Hindu
cosmogony in the Puranas; the practical demonstration thereof -- is in the
hands of those who will not be recognised in this century, save by the very
few. The scientific possibilities of various discoveries, that must inexorably
lead exact Science into the acceptation of Eastern Occult views, which contain
all the requisite material for the filling of those "gaps," are, so
far, at the mercy of modern materialism. It is only by working in the direction
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taken by
Professor Crookes that there is any hope for the recognition of a few, hitherto
Occult, truths.
Meanwhile, one
thirsting to have a glimpse at a practical diagram of the evolution of
primordial matter, which, separating and differentiating under the impulse of
cyclic law, divides itself into a septenary gradation of SUBSTANCE (from a
general view), can do no better than examine the plates attached to Mr.
Crookes' lecture: "Genesis of the Elements," and ponder well over
some passages of the text. In one place (p. 11) he says:--
". . . . Our
notions of a chemical element have expanded. Hitherto the molecule has been
regarded as an aggregate of two or more atoms, and no account has been taken of
the architectural design on which these atoms have been joined. We may consider
that the structure of a chemical element is more complicated than has hitherto
been supposed. Between the molecules we are accustomed to deal with in chemical
reactions and ultimate atoms as first created, come smaller molecules or
aggregates of physical atoms; then sub-molecules differ one from the other,
according to the position they occupied in the yttrium edifice."
"Perhaps
this hypothesis can be simplified if we imagine yttrium to be represented by a
five-shilling piece. By chemical fractionation I have divided it into five
separate shillings, and find that these shillings are not counterparts, but
like the carbon atoms in the benzol ring, have the impress of their position,
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, stamped on them. . . . If I throw my shillings into the
melting-pot or dissolve them chemically, the mint stamp disappears and they all
turn out to be silver." . . .
This will be the
case with all the atoms and molecules when they have separated from their
compound forms and bodies -- when pralaya sets in. Reverse the case, and imagine
the dawn of a new manvantara. The pure "silver" of the absorbed
material will once more separate into SUBSTANCE, which will generate
"Divine Essences" whose "principles"* are the primary
elements, the sub-elements, the physical energies and subjective and objective
matter; or, as these are epitomised -- GODS, MONADS, and ATOMS. If leaving for
one moment the metaphysical or transcendental side of the question, -- dropping
out of the present consideration the supersensuous and intelligent beings and
entities believed in by the Kabalists and Christians -- we turn to the atomical
theory of evolution, the occult teachings are still found corroborated by exact
Science and its confessions, as far, at least, as regards the supposed
"simple" elements, now suddenly
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Corresponding
on the cosmic scale with the Spirit, Soul-mind, Life, and the three Vehicles --
the astral, the Mayavic and the physical bodies (of mankind) whatever division
is made.
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degraded into
poor and distant relatives -- not even second cousins to the latter. For we are
told by Prof. Crookes that:
"Hitherto,
it has been considered that if the atomic weight of a metal, determined by
different observers, setting out from different compounds, was always found to
be constant . . . then such metal must rightly take rank among the simple or
elementary bodies. We learn . . . that this is no longer the case. Again, we
have here wheels within wheels. Gadolinium is not an element but a compound. .
. We have shown that yttrium is a complex of five or more new constituents. And
who shall venture to gainsay that each of these constituents, if attacked in
some different manner, and if the result were submitted to a test more delicate
and searching than the radiant-matter test, might not be still further
divisible? Where, then, is the actual ultimate element? As we advance it
recedes like the tantalizing mirage lakes and groves seen by the tired and
thirsty traveller in the desert. Are we in our quest for truth to be thus
deluded and baulked? The very idea of an element, as something absolutely
primary and ultimate, seems to be growing less and less distinct. . ." (p.
16).
On page 429 of
Isis Unveiled, Vol. I., we said that "the mystery of first creation, which
was ever the despair of Science, is unfathomable unless they (the Scientists)
accept the doctrine of Hermes. They will have to follow in the footsteps of the
Hermetists." Our prophecy begins to assert itself.
But between
Hermes and Huxley there is a middle course and point. Let the men of Science
only throw a bridge half-way, and think seriously over the theories of
Leibnitz. We have shown our theories with regard to atomic evolution -- their
last formation into compound chemical molecules being produced within our
terrestrial workshops in the earth's atmosphere and not elsewhere -- as
strangely agreeing with the evolution of atoms shown on Mr. Crookes' plates.
Several times already it was stated in this volume that Martanda (the Sun) had
evolved and aggregated, together with his smaller seven Brothers, from his
Mother's (Aditi's) bosom, that bosom being prima MATER-ia -- the lecturer's
primordial protyle. Esoteric doctrines teach the existence of "an
antecedent form of energy having periodic cycles of ebb and swell, rest and
activity" (p. 21) -- and behold a great scholar in Science now asking the
world to accept this as one of the postulates. We have shown the
"Mother," fiery and hot, becoming gradually cool and radiant, and
that same Scientist claims as his second postulate, a scientific necessity, it
would seem -- "an internal action akin to cooling, operating slowly in the
protyle." Occult Science teaches that "Mother" lies stretched in
infinity (during Pralaya) as the great Deep, the "dry Waters of
Space," according to the quaint expression in the Catechism, and becomes
wet
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only after the
separation and the moving over its face of Narayana, the "Spirit which is
invisible Flame, which never burns, but sets on fire all that it touches, and
gives it life and generation."* And now Science tells us that "the
first-born element . . . most nearly allied to protyle" . . . would be
"hydrogen . . . which for some time would be the only existing form of
matter" in the Universe. What says Old Science? It answers: just so; but
we would call hydrogen and oxygen (which instils the fire of life into the
"Mother" by incubation) in the pregenetic and even pre-geological
ages -- the Spirit, the noumenon of that which becomes in its grossest form
oxygen and hydrogen and nitrogen on Earth -- nitrogen being of no divine
origin, but merely an earth-born cement to unite other gases and fluids, and
serve as a sponge to carry in itself the breath of LIFE -- pure air.** Before
these gases and fluids become what they are in our atmosphere, they are
interstellar Ether; still earlier and on a deeper plane -- something else, and
so on in infinitum. The eminent and learned gentleman must pardon an Occultist
for quoting him at such length; but such is the penalty of a Fellow of the
Royal Society who approaches so near the precincts of the Sacred Adytum of
Occult mysteries as virtually to overstep the forbidden boundaries.
But it is time
to leave modern physical science and turn to the psychological and metaphysical
side of the question. We would only remark that to the "two very
reasonable postulates" required by the eminent lecturer, "to get a
glimpse of some few of the secrets so darkly hidden" behind "the door
of the Unknown" -- a third should be added*** -- lest no battering at it
should avail; the postulate that Leibnitz, in his speculations, stood on a firm
groundwork of fact and truth. The admirable and thoughtful synopsis of these
speculations -- as given by John Theodore Merz in his "Leibnitz" --
shows how nearly he has brushed the hidden secrets of esoteric Theogony in his
Monadologie. And yet that philosopher has hardly risen in his speculations
above the first planes, the lower principles of the Cosmic Great Body. His
theory soars to no loftier heights than those of the manifested life,
self-consciousness and intelligence, leaving the regions of the earlier
post-genetic mysteries untouched, as his ethereal fluid is post-planetary.
But this third
postulate will hardly be accepted by the modern men
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The Lord
is a consuming fire." . . . "In him was life, and the life was the
light of men."
** Which if separated
ALCHEMICALLY would yield the Spirit of Life, and its Elixir.
*** Foremost of
all, the postulate that there is no such thing in Nature as inorganic
substances or bodies. Stones, minerals, rocks, and even chemical
"atoms" are simply organic units in profound lethargy. Their coma has
an end and their inertia becomes activity.
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of Science; and,
like Descartes, they will prefer keeping to the properties of external things,
which, like extension, are incapable of explaining the phenomenon of motion,
rather than accept the latter as an independent Force. They will never become anti-Cartesian
in this generation; nor will they admit that "this property of inertia is
not a purely geometrical property, that it points to the existence of something
in external bodies which is not extension merely." This is Leibnitz's idea
as analyzed by Mertz, who adds that he called this something Force, and
maintained that external things were endowed with Force, and that in order to
be the bearers of this force they must have a substance, for they are not
lifeless and inert masses, but the centres and bearers of form, a purely
esoteric claim, since force was with Leibnitz an active principle, the division
between mind and matter disappearing by this conclusion. But --
"The
mathematical and dynamical inquiries of Leibnitz would not have led to the same
result in the mind of a purely scientific inquirer. But Leibnitz was not a
scientific man in the modern sense of the word. Had he been so, he might have
worked out the conception of energy, defined mathematically the ideas of force
and mechanical work, and arrived at the conclusion that even for purely
scientific purposes it is desirable to look upon force, not as a primary
quantity, but as a quantity derived from some other value."
But, luckily for
truth --
"Leibnitz
was a philosopher; and as such he had certain primary principles, which biassed
him in favour of certain conclusions, and his discovery that external things
were substances endowed with force was at once used for the purpose of applying
these principles. One of these principles was the law of continuity, the
conviction that all the world was connected, that there were no gaps and chasms
which could not be bridged over. The contrast of extended thinking substances
was unbearable to him. The definition of the extended substances had already become
untenable: it was natural that a similar inquiry was made into the definition
of mind, the thinking substance. . ."
The divisions
made by Leibnitz, however incomplete and faulty from the standpoint of
Occultism, show a spirit of metaphysical intuition to which no man of science,
not Descartes -- not even Kant -- has ever reached. With him there existed ever
an infinite gradation of thought. Only a small portion of the contents of our
thoughts, he said, rises into the clearness of apperception, "into the
light of perfect consciousness." Many remain in a confused or obscure
state, in the state of "perceptions;" but they are there; . . .
Descartes denied soul to the animal, Leibnitz endowed, as the Occultists do,
"the whole creation with mental life, this being, according to him,
capable of infinite gradations." And
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this, as Mertz justly
observes, "at once widened the realm of mental life, destroying the
contrast of animate and inanimate matter; it did yet more -- it reacted on the
conception of matter, of the extended substance. For it became evident that
external or material things presented the property of extension to our senses
only, not to our thinking faculties. The mathematician, in order to calculate
geometrical figures, had been obliged to divide them into an infinite number of
infinitely small parts, and the physicist saw no limit to the divisibility of
matter into atoms. The bulk through which external things seemed to fill space
was a property which they acquired only through the coarseness of our senses. .
. . Leibnitz followed these arguments to some extent, but he could not rest
content in assuming that matter was composed of a finite number of very small
parts. His mathematical mind forced him to carry out the argument in infinitum.
And what became of the atoms then? They lost their extension and they retained
only their property of resistance; they were the centres of force. They were
reduced to mathematical points . . . but if their extension in space was
nothing, so much fuller was their inner life. Assuming that inner existence,
such as that of the human mind, is a new dimension, not a geometrical but a
metaphysical dimension . . . having reduced the geometrical extension of the
atoms to nothing, Leibnitz endowed them with an infinite extension in the
direction of their metaphysical dimension. After having lost sight of them in
the world of space, the mind has, as it were, to dive into a metaphysical world
to find and grasp the real essence of what appears in space merely as a
mathematical point. . . . As a cone stands on its point, or a perpendicular
straight line cuts a horizontal plane only in one mathematical point, but may
extend infinitely in height and depth, so the essences of things real have only
a punctual existence in this physical world of space; but have an infinite
depth of inner life in the metaphysical world of thought . . . " (p. 144).
This is the
spirit, the very root of occult doctrine and thought. The
"Spirit-Matter" and "Matter-Spirit" extend infinitely in
depth, and like "the essence of things" of Leibnitz, our essence of things
real is at the seventh depth; while the unreal and gross matter of Science and
the external world, is at the lowest end of our perceptive senses. The
Occultist knows the worth or worthlessness of the latter.
The student must
now be shown the fundamental distinction between the system of Leibnitz* and
that of occult philosophy, on the question of the Monads, and this may be done
with his Monadology before us. It may be correctly stated that were Leibnitz'
and Spinoza's systems
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The real
spelling of the name -- as spelt by himself -- is Leibniz. He was of Slavonian
descent though a German by birth.
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reconciled, the
essence and Spirit of esoteric philosophy would be made to appear. From the
shock of the two -- as opposed to the Cartesian system -- emerge the truths of
the Archaic doctrine. Both opposed the metaphysics of Descartes. His idea of
the contrast of two substances -- Extension and Thought -- radically differing
from each other and mutually irreducible, was too arbitrary and too
unphilosophical for them. Thus Leibnitz made of the two Cartesian substances
two attributes of one universal unity, in which he saw God. Spinoza recognised
but one universal indivisible substance and absolute ALL, like Parabrahmam.
Leibnitz, on the contrary perceived the existence of a plurality of substances.
There was but ONE for Spinoza; for Leibnitz an infinitude of Beings, from, and
in, the One. Hence, though both admitted but one real Entity, while Spinoza
made it impersonal and indivisible, Leibnitz divided his personal Deity into a
number of divine and semi-divine Beings. Spinoza was a subjective, Leibnitz an
objective Pantheist, yet both were great philosophers in their intuitive
perceptions.
Now, if these
two teachings were blended together and each corrected by the other, -- and
foremost of all the One Reality weeded of its personality -- there would remain
as sum total a true spirit of esoteric philosophy in them; the impersonal,
attributeless, absolute divine essence which is no "Being," but the
root of all being. Draw a deep line in your thought between that
ever-incognizable essence, and the, as invisible, yet comprehensible Presence
(Mulaprakriti), or Schekinah, from beyond and through which vibrates the Sound
of the Verbum, and from which evolve the numberless hierarchies of intelligent
Egos, of conscious as of semi-conscious, perceptive and apperceptive Beings,
whose essence is spiritual Force, whose Substance is the Elements and whose
Bodies (when needed) are the atoms -- and our doctrine is there. For, says
Leibnitz, "the primitive Element of every material body being Force, which
has none of the characteristics of (objective) matter -- it can be conceived
but can never be the object of any imaginative representation." That which
was for him the primordial and ultimate element in every body and object was
thus not the material atoms, or molecules, necessarily more or less extended,
as those of Epicurus and Gassendi, but, as Mertz shows, immaterial and
metaphysical atoms, 'mathematical points'; or real souls, -- as explained by
Henri Lachelier (Professeur agrege de Philosophie), his French biographer.
"That which exists outside of us in an absolute manner, are Souls whose
essence is force," (Monadologie, Introd.).
Thus, reality in
the manifested world is composed of a unity of units, so to say, immaterial
(from our stand-point) and infinite. This Leibnitz calls "Monads,"
Eastern philosophy "Jivas" -- and Occultism gives it, with the
Kabalists and all the Christians, a variety of names.
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They are with
us, as with Leibnitz -- "the expression of the universe,"* and every
physical point is but the phenomenal expression of the noumenal, metaphysical
point. His distinction between perception and apperception, is the
philosophical though dim expression of the Esoteric teachings. His
"reduced universes," of which "there are as many as there are
Monads" -- is the chaotic representation of our Septenary System with its
divisions and sub-divisions.
As to the
relation his Monads bear to our Dhyan-Chohans, Cosmic Spirits, Devas and
Elementals, we may reproduce briefly the opinion of a learned and thoughtful
theosophist, Mr. H. A. Bjerregaard, on the subject. In an excellent paper
"On the Elementals, the Elementary Spirits, and the relationship between
them and Human Beings," read by him before the "Aryan Theosophical
Society of New York" (see PATH, Nos. 10 and 11, of Jan. and Feb. 1887),
Mr. Bjerregaard formulates distinctly his opinion. . . . . "To Spinoza,
substance is dead and inactive, but to Leibnitz's penetrating mind everything
is living activity and active energy. In holding this view, he comes infinitely
nearer the Orient than any other thinker of his day, or after him. His
discovery that an active energy forms the essence of Substance is a principle
that places him in direct relationship to the Seers of the East."
And the lecturer
proceeds to show that to Leibnitz atoms and elements are centres of force, or
rather "spiritual beings whose very nature is to act," for the
elementary particles are not acting mechanically, but from an internal
principle. They are incorporeal spiritual units ("substantial," however,
but not immaterial in our sense) inaccessible to all changes from without, and
indestructible by any external force. Leibnitz's monads, adds the lecturer,
"differ from atoms in the following particulars, which are very important
for us to remember, otherwise we shall not be able to see the difference
between elementals and mere matter." . . . . "Atoms are not
distinguished from each other, they are qualitatively alike; but one monad
differs from every other monad qualitatively; and every one is a peculiar world
to itself. Not so with atoms; they are absolutely alike quantitatively and
qualitatively, and possess no individuality of their own.** Again, the atoms
(molecules,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Leibnitz's
Dynamism," says Professor Lachelier, "would offer but little
difficulty if, with him, the Monad had remained a simple atom of blind force.
But . . . ." One perfectly understands the perplexity of modern
materialism!
** Leibnitz was
an absolute Idealist in maintaining that "material atoms are contrary to
reason" (Systeme nouveau, Erdmann, p. 126. col. 2). For him matter was a
simple representation of the monad, whether human or atomic. Monads, he thought
(as we do), are everywhere. Thus the human soul is a monad, and every cell in
the human body has its monad, as every cell in animal, vegetable, and even in
the (so-called) inorganic bodies. His atoms are the molecules of modern
Science, and his monads those simple [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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rather) of
materialistic philosophy can be considered as extended and divisible, while the
monads are mere mathematical points and indivisible. Finally, and this is a
point where these monads of Leibnitz closely resemble the elementals of mystic
philosophy -- these monads are representative Beings. Every monad reflects
every other. Every monad is a living mirror of the Universe within its own
sphere. And mark this, for upon it depends the power possessed by these monads,
and upon this depends the work they can do for us; in mirroring the world, the
monads are not mere passive reflective agents, but spontaneously self-active;
they produce the images spontaneously, as the soul does a dream. In every
monad, therefore, the adept may read everything, even the future. Every monad
or Elemental is a looking-glass that can speak. . ."
It is at this
point that Leibnitz's philosophy breaks down. There is no provision made, nor
any distinction established, between the "Elemental" monad and that
of a high Planetary Spirit, or even the human monad or Soul. He even goes so
far as to sometimes doubt whether "God has ever made anything but Monads
or substances without extension." (Examen des Principes du P.
Malebranche.) He draws a distinction between Monads and Atoms,* because, as he
repeatedly states, "bodies with all their qualities are only phenomenal,
like the rainbow. . . . Corpora omnia cum omnibus qualitatibus suis non sunt
aliud quam phenomena bene fundata, ut Iris" (Letter to Father Desbosses,
Correspondence, letter xviii.) -- but soon after he finds a provision for this
in a substantial correspondence, a certain metaphysical bond between the monads
-- vinculum substantiale. Esoteric philosophy, teaching an objective Idealism
-- though it regards the objective Universe and all in it as Maya, temporary
illusion -- draws a practical distinction between collective illusion,
Mahamaya, from the purely metaphysical stand-point, and the objective relations
in it between various conscious Egos so long as this illusion lasts. The adept,
therefore, may read the future in an Elemental Monad, but he has to draw for
this object a great number of them, as each monad represents only a portion of
the Kingdom it belongs to. "It is not in the object, but in the
modification of the cognition of the object that the Monads are limited. They
all go confusedly to the infinite, to the all, but they are all limited and
distinguished by the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] atoms that materialistic Science takes on faith,
though it will never succeed in interviewing them -- except in imagination. But
Leibnitz is rather contradictory in his views about Monads. He speaks of his
Metaphysical Points and Formal Atoms, at one time as realities, occupying
space; at another as pure Spiritual ideas; then again endows them with
objectivity and aggregates and positions in their co-relations.
* The atoms of
Leibnitz have, in truth, nothing but the name in common with the atoms of the
Greek Materialists, or even the molecules of modern Science. He calls them formal
atoms, and compares them to the substantial forms of Aristotle. (See Systeme
Nouveau, § 3.)
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degrees of
distinct perceptions." (§ 60, Monadologie.)* And as Leibnitz explains,
"All the portions of the Universe are distinctly represented in the
Monads, but some are reflected in one monad, some in another;" but a
number of monads could represent simultaneously the thoughts of the two
millions of inhabitants of Paris.
But what say the
Occult Sciences to this, and what do they add?
They say that
what is called collectively Monads by Leibnitz -- roughly viewed, and leaving
every subdivision out of calculation, for the present** -- may be separated
into three distinct Hosts, which, counted from the highest planes, are,
firstly, "gods," or conscious, spiritual Egos; the intelligent
architects, who work after the plan in the Divine Mind. Then come the
Elementals, or Monads, who form collectively and unconsciously the grand
Universal Mirrors of everything connected with their respective realms. Lastly,
the atoms, or material molecules, which are informed in their turn by their
apperceptive monads, just as every cell in a human body is so informed. (See
the closing pages of Book I.) There are shoals of such informed atoms which, in
their turn, inform the molecules; an infinitude of monads, or Elementals
proper, and countless spiritual Forces -- Monadless, for they are pure
incorporealities,*** except under certain laws, when they assume a form -- not
necessarily human. Whence the substance that clothes them -- the apparent
organism they evolve around their centres? The Formless ("Arupa")
Radiations, existing in the harmony of Universal Will, and being what we term
the collective or the aggregate of Cosmic Will on the plane of the subjective
Universe, unite together an infinitude of monads -- each the mirror of its own
Universe -- and thus individualize
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Leibnitz, like
Aristotle, calls the created or emanated monads (the Elementals issued from
Cosmic Spirits or Gods) -- Entelechies, [[Entelecheia]] -- and
"incorporeal automata." (§ 18, Monadologie.)
** These three
"rough divisions" correspond to spirit, mind (or soul), and body, in
the human constitution.
*** Brother C.
H. A. Bjerregaard, in his lecture (already mentioned), warns his audience not
to regard the Sephiroth too much as individualities, but to avoid at the same
time seeing in them abstractions. "We shall never arrive at the
truth," he says, "much less the power of associating with those
celestials, until we return to the simplicity and fearlessness of the primitive
ages, when men mixed freely with the gods, and the gods descended among men and
guided them in truth and holiness" (No. 10, Path) . . . . "There are
several designations for 'angels' in the Bible which clearly show that beings
like the Elementals of the Kabala and the monads of Leibnitz, must be
understood by that term rather than that which is commonly understood. They are
called 'morning stars,' 'flaming fires,' 'the mighty ones,' and St. Paul sees
them in his cosmogonic vision as 'Principalities and Powers.' Such names as
these preclude the idea of personality, and we find ourselves compelled to
think of them as impersonal Existences . . . as an influence, a spiritual
substance, or conscious Force." (Path, No. 11, p. 322.)
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for the time
being an independent mind, omniscient and universal; and by the same process of
magnetic aggregation they create for themselves objective, visible bodies, out
of the interstellar atoms. For atoms and Monads, associated or dissociated,
simple or complex, are, from the moment of the first differentiation, but the
principles, corporeal, psychic and Spiritual, of the "Gods," --
themselves the Radiations of primordial nature. Thus, to the eye of the Seer,
the higher Planetary Powers appear under two aspects: the subjective -- as
influences, and the objective -- as mystic FORMS, which, under Karmic law,
become a Presence, Spirit and Matter being One, as repeatedly stated. Spirit is
matter on the seventh plane; matter is Spirit -- on the lowest point of its
cyclic activity; and both -- are MAYA.
Atoms are called
"Vibrations" in Occultism; also "Sound" -- collectively.
This does not interfere with Mr. Tyndall's scientific discovery. He traced, on
the lower rung of the ladder of monadic being, the whole course of the
atmospheric vibrations -- and this constitutes the objective part of the
process in nature. He has traced and recorded the rapidity of their motion and
transmission; the force of their impact; their setting up vibrations in the
tympanum and their transmission of these to the stolithes, etc., etc., till the
vibration of the auditory nerve commences -- and a new phenomenon now takes
place: the subjective side of the process or the sensation of Sound. Does he
perceive or see it? No; for his speciality is to discover the behaviour of
matter. But why should not a psychic see it, a spiritual seer, whose inner Eye
is opened, and who can see through the veil of matter? The waves and
undulations of Science are all produced by atoms propelling their molecules
into activity from within. Atoms fill the immensity of Space, and by their
continuous vibration are that MOTION which keeps the wheels of Life perpetually
going. It is that inner work that produces the natural phenomena called the
correlation of Forces. Only, at the origin of every such "force,"
there stands the conscious guiding noumenon thereof -- Angel or God, Spirit or
Demon -- ruling powers, yet the same.
As described by
Seers -- those who can see the motion of the interstellar shoals, and follow
them in their evolution clairvoyantly -- they are dazzling, like specks of
virgin snow in radiant sunlight. Their velocity is swifter than thought,
quicker than any mortal physical eye could follow, and, as well as can be
judged from the tremendous rapidity of their course, the motion is circular. .
. . . Standing on an open plain, on a mountain summit especially, and gazing
into the vast vault above and the spacial infinitudes around, the whole
atmosphere seems ablaze with them, the air soaked through with these dazzling
coruscations. At times, the intensity of their motion produces flashes
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like the
Northern lights during the Aurora Borealis. The sight is so marvellous, that,
as the Seer gazes into this inner world, and feels the scintillating points
shoot past him, he is filled with awe at the thought of other, still greater
mysteries, that lie beyond, and within, this radiant ocean. . . . .
However
imperfect and incomplete this explanation on "Gods, Monads and
Atoms," it is hoped that some students and theosophists, at least, will
feel that there may be indeed a close relation between materialistic Science,
and Occultism, which is the complement and missing soul of the former.
-------
XVI.
CYCLIC EVOLUTION
AND KARMA.
IT is the
Spiritual evolution of the inner, immortal man that forms the fundamental tenet
in the Occult Sciences. To realize even distantly such a process, the student
has to believe (a) in the ONE Universal Life, independent of matter (or what
Science regards as matter); and (b) in the individual intelligences that
animate the various manifestations of this Principle. Mr. Huxley does not
believe in "Vital Force," others do. Dr. J. H. Hutchinson Sterling's
work "Concerning Protoplasm" has made no small havoc of this dogmatic
negation. Professor Beale's decision is also in favour of a Vital Principle;
and Dr. B. W. Richardson's lectures on the "Nervous Ether," have been
sufficiently quoted from. Thus, opinions are divided.
The ONE LIFE is
closely related to the one law which governs the World of Being -- KARMA.
Exoterically, this is simply and literally "action," or rather an
"effect-producing cause." Esoterically it is quite a different thing
in its far-fetching moral effects. It is the unerring LAW OF RETRIBUTION. To
say to those ignorant of the real significance, characteristics and awful
importance of this eternal immutable law, that no theological definition of a
personal deity can give an idea of this impersonal, yet ever present and active
Principle, is to speak in vain. Nor can it be called Providence. For
Providence, with the Theists (the Christian Protestants, at any rate), rejoices
in a personal male gender, while with the Roman Catholics it is a female
potency, "Divine Providence tempers His blessings to secure their better
effects," Wogan tells us. Indeed "He" tempers them, which Karma
-- a sexless principle -- does not.
Throughout the
first two Parts, it was shown that, at the first flutter
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of renascent
life, Svabhavat, "the mutable radiance of the Immutable Darkness
unconscious in Eternity," passes, at every new rebirth of Kosmos, from an
inactive state into one of intense activity; that it differentiates, and then
begins its work through that differentiation. This work is KARMA.
The Cycles are
also subservient to the effects produced by this activity. "The one Cosmic
atom becomes seven atoms on the plane of matter, and each is transformed into a
centre of energy; that same atom becomes seven rays on the plane of spirit, and
the seven creative forces of nature, radiating from the root-essence . . . .
follow, one the right, the other the left path, separate till the end of the
Kalpa, and yet are in close embrace. What unites them? KARMA." The atoms
emanated from the Central Point emanate in their turn new centres of energy,
which, under the potential breath of Fohat, begin their work from within
without, and multiply other minor centres. These, in the course of evolution
and involution, form in their turn the roots or developing causes of new
effects, from worlds and "man-bearing" globes, down to the genera,
species, and classes of all the seven kingdoms* (of which we know only four).
For "the blessed workers have received the Thyan-kam, in the
eternity" (Book of "The Aphorisms of Tson-ka-pa").
"Thyan-kam"
is the power or knowledge of guiding the impulses of cosmic energy in the right
direction.
The true
Buddhist, recognising no "personal god," nor any "Father"
and "Creator of Heaven and Earth," still believes in an absolute
consciousness, "Adi-Buddhi"; and the Buddhist philosopher knows that
there are Planetary Spirits, the "Dhyan Chohans." But though he
admits of "spiritual lives," yet, as they are temporary in eternity,
even they, according to his philosophy, are "the maya of the day,"
the illusion of a "day of Brahma," a short manvantara of
4,320,000,000 years. The "Yin-Sin" is not for the speculations of
men, for the Lord Buddha has strongly prohibited all such inquiry. If the Dhyan
Chohans and all the invisible Beings -- the Seven Centres and their direct
Emanations, the minor centres of Energy -- are the direct reflex of the ONE
Light, yet men are far removed from these, since the whole of the visible
Kosmos consists of "self-produced beings, the creatures of Karma."
Thus regarding a personal God "as only a gigantic shadow thrown upon the
void of space by the imagination of ignorant men,"** they teach that only
"two things are (objectively) eternal, namely Akasa and Nirvana"; and
that these are ONE in reality, and but a maya when divided. "Buddhists
deny creation and cannot conceive of a Creator." "Everything has come
out of Akasa (or Svabhavat
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Vide Stanza
VI. (Book I.) and Commentary.
** Buddhist
Catechism, by H. S. Olcott, President of the Theosophical Society.
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on our earth) in
obedience to a law of motion inherent in it, and after a certain existence
passes away. Nothing ever came out of nothing." (Buddhist Catechism.)
If a Vedantic
Brahmin of the Adwaita Sect, when asked whether he believes in the existence of
God, is always likely to answer, as Jacolliot was answered -- "I am myself
'God';" a Buddhist (a Sinhalese especially) would simply laugh, and say in
reply, "There is no God; no Creation." Yet the root philosophy of
both Adwaita and Buddhist scholars is identical, and both have the same respect
for animal life, for both believe that every creature on earth, however small
and humble, "is an immortal portion of the immortal matter" -- for
matter with them has quite another significance than it has with either
Christian or materialist -- and that every creature is subject to Karma.
The answer of
the Brahmin is one which would suggest itself to every ancient philosopher,
Kabalist, and Gnostic of the early days. It contains the very spirit of the
Delphic and Kabalistic commandments, for esoteric philosophy solved, ages ago,
the problem of what man was, is, and will be; of man's origin, life-cycle --
interminable in its duration of successive incarnations or rebirths -- and
finally of his absorption into the source from which he started.
But it is not
physical Science that we can ever ask to read man for us, as the riddle of the
Past, or that of the Future; since no philosopher is able to tell us even what
man is, as he is known both to physiology and psychology. In doubt whether man
was "a god or beast," he is now connected with the latter and derived
from an animal. No doubt that the care of analyzing and classifying the human
being as a terrestrial animal may be left to Science, which occultists -- of
all men -- regard with veneration and respect. They recognize its ground and
the wonderful work done by it, the progress achieved in physiology, and even --
to a degree -- in biology. But man's inner, spiritual, psychic, or even moral,
nature cannot be left to the tender mercies of an ingrained materialism; for
not even the higher psychological philosophy of the West is able, in its
present incompleteness and tendency towards a decided agnosticism, to do
justice to the inner; especially to his higher capacities and perceptions, and
those states of consciousness, across the road to which such authorities as
Mill draw a strong line, saying "So far, and no farther shalt thou
go."
No Occultist
would deny that man -- no less than the elephant and the microbe, the crocodile
and the lizard, the blade of grass or the crystal -- is, in his physical formation,
the simple product of the evolutionary forces of nature through a numberless
series of transformations; but he puts the case differently.
It is not
against zoological and anthropological discoveries, based on
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the fossils of
man and animal, that every mystic and believer in a divine soul inwardly
revolts, but only against the uncalled-for conclusions built on preconceived
theories and made to fit in with certain prejudices. Their premises may or may
not be always true; and as some of these theories live but a short life, the
deductions therefrom must ever be one-sided with materialistic evolutionists.
Yet it is on the strength of such very ephemeral authority, that most of the
men of science frequently receive undue honours where they deserve them the
least.*
To make the
working of Karma, in the periodical renovations of the Universe, more evident
and intelligible to the student when he arrives at the origin and evolution of
man, he has now to examine with us the esoteric bearing of the Karmic Cycles
upon Universal Ethics. The question is, do those mysterious divisions of time,
called Yugas and Kalpas by the Hindus, and so very graphically -- [[Kuklos]] --
"cycle," ring or circle, by the Greeks, have any bearing upon, or any
direct connection with, human life? Even exoteric philosophy explains that
these perpetual circles of time are ever returning on themselves, periodically,
and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* We refer those
who would regard the statement as an impertinence or irreverence against
accepted Science, to Mr. James Hutchinson Stirling's work concerning
"Protoplasm," which is a defence of a vital Principle versus the
Molecularists -- Huxley, Tyndall, Vogt, and Co. -- and request them to examine
whether it is true or not to say that the scientific premises may not be always
correct, but that they are accepted, nevertheless, to fill up a gap or a hole
in some beloved materialistic hobby. Speaking of protoplasm and the organs of
man, as "viewed by Mr. Huxley," the author says: "Probably then,
in regard to any continuity in protoplasm of power, of form, or of substance,
we have seen lacunae enow. Nay, Mr. Huxley himself can be adduced in evidence
on the same side. Not rarely do we find in his essay admissions of PROBABILITY,
where it is CERTAINTY that is alone in place. He says, for example: 'It is more
than probable that when the vegetable world is thoroughly explored we shall
find all plants in possession of the same powers.' When a conclusion is
decidedly announced, it is rather disappointing to be told, as here, that the
premisses are still to collect' (!!) . . . . . Again, here is a passage in
which he is seen to cut his own 'basis' from beneath his own feet. After
telling us that all forms of protoplasm consist of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and
nitrogen 'in very complex union,' he continues: 'To this complex combination,
the nature of which has never been determined with exactness (!!), the name of
protein has been applied.' This, plainly, is an identification, on Mr. Huxley's
own part, of protoplasm and protein; and what is said of one, being necessarily
true of the other, it follows that he admits the nature of protoplasm never to
have been determined with exactness, and that even in his eyes the lis is still
sub judice. This admission is strengthened by the words, too, 'If we use this
term -- protein -- with such caution as may properly arise out of our
comparative ignorance of the things for which it stands . . . etc., etc. (p. 33
and 34, in reply to Mr. Huxley in "Yeast").
This is the
eminent Huxley, the king of physiology and biology, who is proven playing at
blind man's buff with premisses and facts. What may not the "smaller
fry" of science do after this!
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intelligently in
Space and Eternity. There are "Cycles of matter"* and there are
"Cycles of Spiritual evolution." Racial, national, and individual
cycles. May not esoteric speculation allow us a still deeper insight into the
workings of these?
This idea is
beautifully expressed in a very clever scientific work:--
"The
possibility of rising to a comprehension of a system of co-ordination so far outreaching
in time and space all reach of human observations, is a circumstance which
signalizes the power of man to transcend the limitations of changing and
inconsistent matter, and assert his superiority over all unstable and
perishable forms of being. There is a method in the succession of events, and
in the relation of co-existent things, which the mind of man seizes hold of;
and by means of this as a clue, he runs back or forward over aeons of material
history of which human experience can never testify. Events germinate and
unfold. They have a past which is connected with their present, and we feel a
well-justified confidence that a future is appointed which will be similarly
connected with the present and the past. This continuity and unity of history
repeat themselves before our eyes in all conceivable stages of progress. The
phenomena furnish us the grounds for the generalization of two laws which are
truly principles of scientific divination, by which alone the human mind
penetrates the sealed records of the past and the unopened pages of the future.
The first of these is the law of evolution, or, to phrase it for our purpose,
the law of correlated successiveness or organized history in the individual,
illustrated in the changing phases of every single maturing system of results.
. . . These thoughts summon into our immediate presence the measureless past
and the measureless future of material history. They seem almost to open vistas
through infinity, and to endow the human intellect with an existence and a
vision exempt from the limitations of time and space and finite causation, and
lift it up toward a sublime apprehension of the Supreme Intelligence whose
dwelling place is Eternity." ("World-Life," p. 535 and 548.)
According to the
teachings, Maya, or the illusive appearance of the marshalling of events and
actions on this earth, changes, varying with nations and places. But the chief
features of one's life are always in accordance with the
"Constellation" one is born under, or, we should say, with the
characteristics of its animating principle or the deity that presides over it,
whether we call it a Dhyan Chohan, as in Asia, or an Archangel, as with the
Greek and Latin churches. In ancient Symbolism it was always the SUN (though
the Spiritual, not the visible, Sun was meant), that was supposed to send forth
the chief Saviours and Avatars. Hence the connecting link between the Buddhas,
the Avatars, and so many other incarnations of the highest SEVEN. The closer
the approach to one's Prototype, "in Heaven," the better for the
mortal whose personality was chosen, by his own personal deity (the seventh
principle), as its terrestrial abode. For, with every effort of will toward
purification and unity
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The
Cycles of Matter," a name given by Professor Winchell to an Essay of his
written in 1860.
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with that
"Self-god," one of the lower rays breaks and the spiritual entity of
man is drawn higher and ever higher to the ray that supersedes the first,
until, from ray to ray, the inner man is drawn into the one and highest beam of
the Parent-SUN. Thus, "the events of humanity do run coordinately with the
number forms," since the single units of that humanity proceed one and all
from the same source -- the central and its shadow, the visible SUN. For the
equinoxes and solstices, the periods and various phases of the Solar course,
astronomically and numerically expressed, are only the concrete symbols of the
eternally living verity, though they do seem abstract ideas to uninitiated
mortals. And this explains the extraordinary numerical coincidences with
geometrical relations, as shown by several authors.
Yes; "our
destiny is written in the stars!" Only, the closer the union between the
mortal reflection MAN and his celestial PROTOTYPE, the less dangerous the
external conditions and subsequent reincarnations -- which neither Buddhas nor
Christs can escape. This is not superstition, least of all is it Fatalism. The
latter implies a blind course of some still blinder power, and man is a free
agent during his stay on earth. He cannot escape his ruling Destiny, but he has
the choice of two paths that lead him in that direction, and he can reach the
goal of misery -- if such is decreed to him, either in the snowy white robes of
the Martyr, or in the soiled garments of a volunteer in the iniquitous course;
for, there are external and internal conditions which affect the determination
of our will upon our actions, and it is in our power to follow either of the
two. Those who believe in Karma have to believe in destiny, which, from birth
to death, every man is weaving thread by thread around himself, as a spider
does his cobweb; and this destiny is guided either by the heavenly voice of the
invisible prototype outside of us, or by our more intimate astral, or inner
man, who is but too often the evil genius of the embodied entity called man.
Both these lead on the outward man, but one of them must prevail; and from the
very beginning of the invisible affray the stern and implacable law of
compensation steps in and takes its course, faithfully following the
fluctuations. When the last strand is woven, and man is seemingly enwrapped in
the net-work of his own doing, then he finds himself completely under the
empire of this self-made destiny. It then either fixes him like the inert shell
against the immovable rock, or carries him away like a feather in a whirlwind
raised by his own actions, and this is -- KARMA.
A materialist,
treating upon the periodical creations of our globe, has expressed it in one
sentence. "The whole past of the Earth is nothing but an unfolded
present." This was Buchner, who little suspected that he was repeating an
axiom of the Occultists. It is quite true also, as Burmeister (quoted in
"Force and matter") remarks, that
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"the
historical investigation of the development of the Earth has proved that now
and then rest upon the same base; that the past has been developed in the same
manner as the present rolls on; and that the Forces which were in action ever
remained the same."
The
"Forces" -- their noumena rather -- are the same, of course;
therefore, the phenomenal Forces must be the same also. But how can any one
feel so sure that the attributes of matter have not altered under the hand of
Protean Evolution? How can any materialist assert with such confidence, as is
done by Rossmassler, that "this eternal conformity in the essence of
phenomena renders it certain that fire and water possessed at all times the
same powers and ever will possess them?" Who are they "that darken
counsel with words without knowledge," and where were the Huxleys and
Buchners when the foundations of the earth were laid by the great Law? It is a
fundamental principle of the Occult philosophy, this same homogeneity of matter
and immutability of natural laws, which are so much insisted upon by
materialism; but that unity rests upon the inseparability of Spirit from
matter, and, if the two are once divorced, the whole Kosmos would fall back
into chaos and non-being. Therefore, it is absolutely false, and but an
additional demonstration of the great conceit of our age, to assert (as men of
science do) that all the great geological changes and terrible convulsions have
been produced by ordinary and known physical forces. For these forces were but
the tools and final means for the accomplishment of certain purposes, acting
periodically, and apparently mechanically, through an inward impulse mixed up
with, but beyond their material nature. There is a purpose in every important
act of Nature, whose acts are all cyclic and periodical. But spiritual Forces
having been usually confused with the purely physical, the former are denied
by, and therefore, have to remain unknown to Science, because left unexamined.*
"The
history of the World begins with its general aim," says Hegel; "the
realization of the Idea of Spirit -- only in an implicit form (an sich), that
is, as Nature; a hidden, most profoundly hidden unconscious instinct, and the
whole process of History . . . is directed to rendering this unconscious
impulse a conscious one. Thus appearing in the form of merely natural
existence, natural will -- that which has been called the subjective side --
physical craving, instinct, passion, private interest, as also opinion and
subjective conception -- spontaneously present themselves at the very
commencement. This vast congeries of volitions, interests and activities
constitute the instruments and means of the WORLD
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Men of science
will say: We deny, because nothing of the kind has ever come within the scope
of our experience. But, as argued by Charles Richet, the physiologist: "So
be it, but have you at least demonstrated the contrary? . . . Do not, at any
rate, deny a priori. Actual Science is not sufficiently advanced to give you
such right." ("La suggestion mentale et le calcul des
probabilites.")
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SPIRIT for
attaining its object; bringing it to consciousness and realising it. And this
aim is none other than finding itself -- coming to itself -- and contemplating
itself in concrete actuality. But that those manifestations of vitality on the
part of individuals and peoples, in which they seek and satisfy their own
purposes, are at the same time the means and instruments of a higher power, of
a higher and broader purpose of which they know nothing -- which they realise
unconsciously -- might be made a matter of question; rather has been questioned
. . . on this point I announced my view at the very outset, and asserted our
hypothesis . . . and our belief that Reason governs the World and has
consequently governed its history. In relation to this independently universal
and substantial existence -- all else is subordinate, subservient to it, and
the means for its development."*
No metaphysician
or theosophist could demur to these truths, which are all embodied in esoteric
teachings. There is a predestination in the geological life of our globe, as in
the history, past and future, of races and nations. This is closely connected
with what we call Karma and Western Pantheists, "Nemesis" and
"Cycles." The law of evolution is now carrying us along the ascending
arc of our cycle, when the effects will be once more re-merged into, and
re-become the (now neutralized) causes, and all things affected by the former
will have regained their original harmony. This will be the cycle of our
special "Round," a moment in the duration of the great cycle, or the
Mahayuga.
The fine
philosophical remarks of Hegel are found to have their application in the
teachings of Occult Science, which shows nature ever acting with a given
purpose, whose results are always dual. This was stated in our first Occult
volumes, in Isis Unveiled, p. 268, Vol. II., in the following words:--
As our planet
revolves once every year around the sun, and at the same time turns once in
every twenty-four hours upon its own axis, thus traversing minor circles within
a larger one, so is the work of the smaller cyclic periods accomplished and
recommenced, within the Great Saros.
The revolution
of the physical world, according to the ancient doctrine, is attended by a like
revolution in the world of intellect -- the spiritual evolution of the world
proceeding in cycles, like the physical one.
Thus we see in
history a regular alternation of ebb and flow in the tide of human progress.
The great kingdoms and empires of the world, after reaching the culmination of
their greatness, descend again, in accordance with the same law by which they
ascended; till, having reached the lowest point, humanity reasserts itself and
mounts up once more, the height of its attainment being, by this law of
ascending progression by cycles, somewhat higher than the point from which it
had before descended.
But these cycles
-- wheels within wheels, so comprehensively and ingeniously symbolized by the
various Manus and Rishis in India, and by the Kabiri in the West** -- do not
affect all mankind at one and the same
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "On World
History" in "Philosophy of History," p. 26. (Sibree's Eng.
Transl.).
** This
symbolism does not prevent these now seemingly mythic personages from
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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time -- as explained
in the Racial division of Cycles (See sub-section 6.) Hence, as we see, the
difficulty of comprehending, and discriminating between them, with regard to
their physical and spiritual effects, without having thoroughly mastered their
relations with, and action upon the respective positions of nations and races,
in their destiny and evolution. This system cannot be comprehended if the
spiritual action of these periods -- pre-ordained, so to say, by Karmic law
--is separated from their physical course. The calculations of the best
astrologers would fail, or at any rate remain imperfect, unless this dual
action is thoroughly taken into consideration and dealt with upon these lines.
And this mastery can be achieved only through INITIATION.
The Grand Cycle
includes the progress of mankind from the appearance of primordial man of
ethereal form. It runs through the inner cycles of his (man's) progressive
evolution from the ethereal down to the semi-ethereal and purely physical: down
to the redemption of man from his coat of skin and matter, after which it
continues running its course downward and then upward again, to meet at the
culmination of a Round, when the manvantaric "Serpent swallows its
tail" and seven minor cycles are passed. These are the great Racial Cycles
which affect equally all the nations and tribes included in that special Race;
but there are minor and national as well as tribal cycles within those, which
run independently of each other. They are called in the Eastern esotericism the
Karmic cycles. In the West, since Pagan Wisdom has been repudiated as having
grown from and been developed by the dark powers supposed to be at constant war
and in opposition to the little tribal Jehovah -- the full and awful
significance of the Greek NEMESIS (or Karma) has been entirely forgotten.
Otherwise Christians would have better realized the profound truth that Nemesis
is without attributes; that while the dreaded goddess is absolute and immutable
as a Principle, it is we ourselves -- nations and individuals -- who propel her
to action and give the impulse to its direction. KARMA-NEMESIS is the creator
of nations and mortals, but once created, it is they who make of her either a
fury or a rewarding Angel. Yea --
"Wise are
they who worship Nemesis"*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] having ruled the earth once upon a time under
the human form of actual living, though truly divine and god-like man. The
opinion of Colonel Vallancey (and also of Count de Gobelin) that the names of
the Kabiri appear to be all allegorical, and to have signified no more (?) than
an almanac of the vicissitudes of the seasons -- calculated for the operations
of agriculture" (Collect. de Reb. Hibern., No. 13, Praef. Sect. 5) is as
absurd as his assertion that OEon, Kronos, Saturn and Dagon are all one,
namely, the "patriarch Adam." The Kabiri were the instructors of
mankind in agriculture, because they were the regents over the seasons and
Cosmic cycles. Hence it was they who regulated, as planetary Spirits or
"Angels" (messengers), the mysteries of the art of agriculture.
* Who dread
Karma-Nemesis would be better.
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-- as the chorus
tells Prometheus. And as unwise they, who believe that the goddess may be
propitiated by whatever sacrifices and prayers, or have her wheel diverted from
the path it has once taken. "The triform Fates and ever mindful
Furies" are her attributes only on earth, and begotten by ourselves. There
is no return from the paths she cycles over; yet those paths are of our own
making, for it is we, collectively or individually, who prepare them.
Karma-Nemesis is the synonym of PROVIDENCE, minus design, goodness, and every
other finite attribute and qualification, so unphilosophically attributed to
the latter. An Occultist or a philosopher will not speak of the goodness or
cruelty of Providence; but, identifying it with Karma-Nemesis, he will teach
that nevertheless it guards the good and watches over them in this, as in
future lives; and that it punishes the evil-doer -- aye, even to his seventh
rebirth. So long, in short, as the effect of his having thrown into
perturbation even the smallest atom in the Infinite World of harmony, has not
been finally readjusted. For the only decree of Karma -- an eternal and
immutable decree -- is absolute Harmony in the world of matter as it is in the
world of Spirit. It is not, therefore, Karma that rewards or punishes, but it
is we, who reward or punish ourselves according to whether we work with,
through and along with nature, abiding by the laws on which that Harmony
depends, or -- break them.
Nor would the
ways of Karma be inscrutable were men to work in union and harmony, instead of
disunion and strife. For our ignorance of those ways -- which one portion of
mankind calls the ways of Providence, dark and intricate; while another sees in
them the action of blind Fatalism; and a third, simple chance, with neither
gods nor devils to guide them -- would surely disappear, if we would but
attribute all these to their correct cause. With right knowledge, or at any
rate with a confident conviction that our neighbours will no more work to hurt
us than we would think of harming them, the two-thirds of the World's evil
would vanish into thin air. Were no man to hurt his brother, Karma-Nemesis
would have neither cause to work for, nor weapons to act through. It is the
constant presence in our midst of every element of strife and opposition, and
the division of races, nations, tribes, societies and individuals into Cains
and Abels, wolves and lambs, that is the chief cause of the "ways of
Providence." We cut these numerous windings in our destinies daily with
our own hands, while we imagine that we are pursuing a track on the royal high
road of respectability and duty, and then complain of those ways being so
intricate and so dark. We stand bewildered before the mystery of our own
making, and the riddles of life that we will not solve, and then accuse the
great Sphinx of devouring us. But verily there is not an accident in our lives,
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not a misshapen
day, or a misfortune, that could not be traced back to our own doings in this
or in another life. If one breaks the laws of Harmony, or, as a theosophical
writer expresses it, "the laws of life," one must be prepared to fall
into the chaos one has oneself produced. For, according to the same writer,
"the only conclusion one can come to is that these laws of life are their
own avengers; and consequently that every avenging Angel is only a typified
representation of their re-action."
Therefore, if
any one is helpless before these immutable laws, it is not ourselves, the
artificers of our destinies, but rather those angels, the guardians of harmony.
Karma-Nemesis is no more than the (spiritual) dynamical effect of causes
produced and forces awakened into activity by our own actions. It is a law of
occult dynamics that "a given amount of energy expended on the spiritual
or astral plane is productive of far greater results than the same amount
expended on the physical objective plane of existence."
This state will
last till man's spiritual intuitions are fully opened, which will not happen
before we fairly cast off our thick coats of matter; until we begin acting from
within, instead of ever following impulses from without; namely, those produced
by our physical senses and gross selfish body. Until then the only palliative
to the evils of life is union and harmony -- a Brotherhood IN ACTU, and altruism
not simply in name. The suppression of one single bad cause will suppress not
one, but a variety of bad effects. And if a Brotherhood or even a number of
Brotherhoods may not be able to prevent nations from occasionally cutting each
other's throats -- still unity in thought and action, and philosophical
research into the mysteries of being, will always prevent some, while trying to
comprehend that which has hitherto remained to them a riddle, from creating
additional causes in a world already so full of woe and evil. Knowledge of
Karma gives the conviction that if --
". . . .
virtue in distress, and vice in triumph
Make atheists of
mankind,"*
it is only
because that mankind has ever shut its eyes to the great truth that man is himself
his own saviour as his own destroyer. That he need not accuse Heaven and the
gods, Fates and Providence, of the apparent injustice that reigns in the midst
of humanity. But let him rather remember and repeat this bit of Grecian wisdom,
which warns man to forbear accusing That which --
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .
"Just,
though mysterious, leads us on unerring
Through ways
unmark'd from guilt to punishment . . ."
-- which are now
the ways and the high road on which move onward the great European nations. The
Western Aryans had, every nation
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Dryden.
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and tribe, like
their Eastern brethren of the Fifth Race, their Golden and their Iron ages,
their period of comparative irresponsibility, or the Satya age of purity, while
now, several of them have reached their Iron Age, the Kali-Yuga, an age BLACK
WITH HORRORS. . . . .
It is true, on
the other hand, that the exoteric cycles of every nation have been correctly
made to be derived from, and depend on, sidereal motions. The latter are
inseparably blended with the destinies of nations and men. But in their purely
physical sense, Europe knows of no other cycles than the astronomical, and
makes its computations accordingly. Nor will it hear of any other than
imaginary circles or circuits in the starry heavens that gird them --
"With
centric and eccentric scribbled o'er
Cycle and
epicycle, orb in orb . . ."
But with the
pagans, with whom, as Coleridge has it -- ". . . . . Time, cyclical time,
was their abstraction of the Deity . ." that "Deity" manifesting
co-ordinately with, and only through Karma, and being that KARMA-NEMESIS
itself, the cycles meant something more than a mere succession of events, or a
periodical space of time of more or less prolonged duration. For they were
generally marked with recurrences of a more varied and intellectual character
than are exhibited in the periodical return of seasons or of certain
constellations. Modern wisdom is satisfied with astronomical computations and
prophecies based on unerring mathematical laws. Ancient Wisdom added to the
cold shell of astronomy the vivifying elements of its soul and spirit --
ASTROLOGY. And, as the sidereal motions do regulate and determine other events
on Earth -- besides potatoes and the periodical disease of that useful
vegetable -- (a statement which, not being amenable to scientific explanation,
is merely derided, while accepted) -- those events have to be allowed to find
themselves predetermined by even simple astronomical computations. Believers in
astrology will understand our meaning, sceptics will laugh at the belief and
mock the idea. Thus they shut their eyes, ostrich-like, to their own fate. . .
. . . .*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Not all, however,
for there are men of Science awakening to truth. This is what we read:
"Whatever way we turn our eyes we encounter a mystery . . . . all in
Nature for us is the unknown. . . Yet they are numerous, those superficial
minds for whom nothing can be produced by natural forces outside of facts
observed long ago, consecrated in books and grouped more or less skilfully with
the help of theories whose ephemeral duration ought, by this time, to have
demonstrated their insufficiency, . . . . I do not pretend to contest the
possibility of invisible Beings, of a nature different from ours and
susceptible of moving matter to action. Profound philosophers have admitted it
in all epochs as a consequence of the great law of continuity which rules the
Universe. That intellectual life, which we see starting in some way from
non-being (neant) and gradually reaching man, can it stop abruptly at man to
reappear only in the infinite, in the sovereign regulator of the world? This is
little probable." Therefore . . "I [[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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This because
their little historical period, so called, allows them no margin for
comparison. Sidereal heaven is before them; and though their spiritual vision
is still unopened and the atmospheric dust of terrestrial origin seals their
sight and chains it to the limits of physical systems, still they do not fail
to perceive the movements and note the behaviour of meteors and comets. They
record the periodical advents of those wanderers and "flaming
messengers," and prophesy, in consequence, earthquakes, meteoric showers,
the apparition of certain stars, comets, etc., etc. Are they soothsayers for
all that? No, they are learned astronomers.
Why, then,
should occultists and astrologers, as learned, be disbelieved, when they
prophesy the return of some cyclic event on the same mathematical principle?
Why should the claim that they know it be ridiculed? Their forefathers and
predecessors, having recorded the recurrence of such events in their time and
day, throughout a period embracing hundreds of thousands of years, the
conjunction of the same constellations must necessarily produce, if not quite
the same, at any rate, similar effects. Are the prophecies derided, because of
the claim of the hundreds of thousands of years of observation, and the
millions of years of the human races? In its turn modern Science is laughed at
for its far more modest geological and anthropological figures, by those who
hold to Biblical chronology. Thus Karma adjusts even human laughter at the
mutual expense of sects, learned societies, and individuals. Yet in the
prognostication of such future events, at any rate, all foretold on the
authority of cyclic recurrences, there is no psychic phenomenon involved. It is
neither prevision, nor prophecy; no more than is the signalling of a comet or
star, several years before its appearance. It is simply knowledge and
mathematically correct computations which enable the WISE MEN OF THE EAST to
foretell, for instance, that England is on the eve of such or another
catastrophe; France, nearing such a point of her cycle, and Europe in general
threatened with, or rather, on the eve of, a cataclysm, which her own cycle of
racial Karma has led her to. The reliability of the information depends, of
course, on the acceptation or rejection of the claim for a tremendous period of
historical observation. Eastern Initiates maintain that they have preserved
records of the racial development and of events of universal import ever since
the beginning of the Fourth Race -- that which preceded being traditional.
Moreover, those who believe in Seership and Occult
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote
continued from previous page]] no more deny the existence of Spirits than I
deny soul while trying to explain certain facts without their hypothesis . .
." "The Non-Defined Forces," Historical and Experimental
Researches, p. 3. The above is written by A. de Rochas, a well-known man of
science in France, his work being one of the signs of the time. (Paris: Masson,
Boulevard St. Germain, 1887.)
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powers will have
no difficulty in crediting the general character, at least, of the information
given, even if traditional, once the latter is checked and corrected by the
corroboration of clairvoyance and esoteric knowledge. But in the present case
no such metaphysical belief is claimed as our chief dependence, but a proof is
given on what, to every Occultist, is quite scientific evidence -- the records
preserved through the Zodiac for incalculable ages.
It is now amply
proved that even horoscopes and judiciary astrology are not quite based on a
fiction, and that stars and constellations, consequently, have an occult and
mysterious influence on, and connection with, individuals. And if with the
latter, why not with nations, races, and mankind in bulk? This, again, is a
claim made on the authority of the Zodiacal records. We shall examine then, if
you please, how far the Zodiac was known to the ancients, and how far it is
forgotten by the moderns.
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XVII.
"THE ZODIAC
AND ITS ANTIQUITY."
"ALL men
are apt to have a high conceit of their own understanding, and to be tenacious
of the opinions they profess," said Jordan, justly adding to this --
"and yet almost all men are guided by the understandings of others, not by
their own; and may be said more truly to adopt, than to beget, their
opinions."
This becomes doubly
true in the matter of scientific opinions upon hypotheses offered for
consideration -- the prejudice and preconceptions of "authorities,"
so called, often deciding upon questions of the most vital importance for
history. There are several such predetermined opinions among our learned
Orientalists, yet few are more unjust or illogical than the general error with
regard to the antiquity of the Zodiac. Thanks to the hobby of some German
Orientalists, English and American Sanskritists have accepted Professor Weber's
opinion that the peoples of India had no idea or knowledge of the Zodiac prior
to the Macedonian invasion, and that it is from the Greeks that the ancient
Hindus imported it into their country. We are further told, by several other
"authorities," that no Eastern nation knew of the Zodiac before the
Hellenes kindly acquainted their neighbours with their invention. This, in the
face of the Book of Job, declared, even by themselves, to be the oldest in the
Hebrew canon, certainly prior to Moses, and which speaks of the making "of
Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades (Ash, Kesil, and
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Cimah) and the
chambers of the South" (ix. 9); of Scorpio and the Mazzaroths -- the
TWELVE SIGNS (xxxviii., 31, 32), which words, if they mean anything, imply
knowledge of the Zodiac even among the nomadic Arabic tribes. The Book of Job,
they say, precedes Homer and Hesiod by at least one thousand years -- the two
Greek poets having themselves flourished some eight centuries before the
Christian era (!!). One who prefers, by the bye, to believe Plato, who shows
Homer flourishing far earlier, could point to a number of Zodiacal signs
mentioned in the Iliad and the Odyssey, in the Orphic poems, and elsewhere. But
since the cock-and-bull hypothesis of some modern critics to the effect that
neither Orpheus, nor yet Homer and Hesiod, ever existed, it would seem time
lost to mention these Archaic authors at all. The Arabian Job will suffice;
unless, indeed, his volume of lamentations, along with the poems of the two
Greeks, adding to them those of Linus, should now be also declared to be the
patriotic forgery of the Jew Aristobulus. But if the Zodiac was known in the
days of Job, how could the civilized and philosophical Hindus have remained
ignorant of it?
Risking the
arrows of modern criticism -- rather blunted by misuse -- the reader may be
made acquainted with Bailly's learned opinion upon the subject. Inferred
speculations may be shown to be erroneous. Mathematical calculations stand on
more secure grounds. Taking as a starting point several astronomical references
in Job, Bailly devised a very ingenious means of proving that the earliest
founders of the science of the Zodiac belonged to an antediluvian, primitive
people. The fact that he seems willing to see in Thoth, Seth, and in Fohi (of
China), some of the Biblical patriarchs, does not interfere with the validity
of his proof as to the antiquity of the Zodiac.* Even accepting, for argument's
sake, his cautious 3700 years B.C. as the correct age of the science, this date
proves in the most irrefutable way that it was not the Greeks who invented the
Zodiac, for the simple reason that they did not yet exist as a nation
thirty-seven centuries B.C. -- not as an historical race admitted by the
critics, at any rate. Bailly then calculated the period at which the
constellations manifested the atmospheric influence called by Job "sweet
influences of the Pleiades"** (in Hebrew, Chimah, see Job xxxviii. 31); of
the Cesil (Orion); and that of the desert rains with reference to Scorpio, the
eighth constellation; and found that in presence the eternal conformity of
those divisions of the zodiac and names of the planets applied in the same
order everywhere and always; and in presence of the impossibility of
attributing it all to chance and coincidence,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Astronomie
Antique.
** The Pleiades,
as all know, are the seven stars beyond the Bull, which appear at the beginning
of spring. They have a very occult meaning in the Hindu esoteric philosophy,
and are connected with sound and other mystic principles in Nature.
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"which
never creates such similarities," there must be allowed for the zodiac a
great antiquity indeed. (See Astronomie Antique, pp. 63 to 74.)
Again, if the
Bible is supposed to be an authority on any matter (and there are some who
still believe so, whether from Christian or Kabalistical considerations), then
the zodiac is clearly mentioned in II Kings, xxiii. 5. Before the "book of
the law" was "found" by Hilkiah, the high priest (xxii.), the
signs of the zodiac were known and worshipped. They were held in the same
adoration as the sun and moon, since the "priests, whom the kings of Judah
had ordained to burn incense . . . unto Baal, to the sun, moon, and to the
planets, and to all the host of heaven," or the twelve signs or
constellations, as the marginal note in the English Bible explains (see II.
Kings xxiii. 5), had followed the injunction for centuries. They were stopped
in their idolatry only by King Josiah, 624 years B.C.
The Old
Testament is full of allusions to the twelve zodiacal signs, and the whole
scheme is built upon it -- heroes, personages, and events. Thus in the dream of
Joseph, who saw eleven "stars" bowing to the twelfth, which was his
"star," the zodiac is meant. The Roman Catholics have discovered in
it, moreover, a prophecy of Christ, who is that twelfth star, they say, and the
eleven apostles; the absence of the twelfth being also regarded as a prophetic
allusion to the treachery of Judas. The twelve sons of Jacob are again a
reference to the same, as justly pointed out by Villapandus (Temple de
Jerusalem, Vol. II., p. 2nd part, chap. xxx). Sir James Malcolm, in his History
of Persia (ch. vii.), shows the Dabistan echoing all such traditions about the
Zodiac. He traces the invention of it to the palmy days of the golden age of
Iran, remarking that one of the said traditions maintains that the genii of the
planets are represented under the same shapes and figures they had assumed,
when they showed themselves to several holy prophets, and have thus led to the
establishment of the rites based on the Zodiac.
Pythagoras, and
after him Philo Judaeus, held the number 12 as very sacred. "The
dodecahedron is a PERFECT number." It is the one among the signs of the
Zodiac, Philo adds, that the sun visits in twelve months, and it is to honour
that sign that Moses divided his nation into twelve tribes, established the
twelve cakes (Levit. xxiv., 5) of the shewbread, and placed twelve precious
stones around the ephod of the pontiffs. (See De Profugis.)
According to
Seneca, Berosus taught prophecy of every future event and cataclysm by the
Zodiac; and the time fixed by him for the conflagration of the world (pralaya),
and another for a deluge, is found to answer to the time given in an ancient
Egyptian papyrus. It comes at every renewal of the cycle of the sidereal year
of 25,868 years. The names of the Akkadian months were called by, and derived
from, the
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names of the signs
of the Zodiac, and the Akkadians themselves are far earlier than the
Chaldaeans. Mr. Proctor shows, in his Myths and Marvels of Astronomy, that the
ancient astronomers had acquired a system of the most accurate astronomy 2,400
years B.C.; the Hindus date their Kali Yug from a great periodical conjunction
of the planets thirty-one centuries B.C.; and, withal, it is the Greeks
belonging to the expedition of Alexander the Great, who were the instructors of
the Aryan Hindus in astronomy!
Whether the origin
of the Zodiac is Aryan or Egyptian, it is still of an immense antiquity.
Simplicius (VIth cent. A.D.) writes that he had always heard that the Egyptians
had kept astronomical observations and records for the last 630,000 years. This
statement appears to frighten Mr. G. Massey, who remarks on this in his Natural
Genesis (318) that "if we read this number of years by the month which
Euxodus said the Egyptians termed a year, that would still yield the length of
two cycles of precession (or 51,736 years)." Diogenes Laertius carried
back the astronomical calculations of the Egyptians to 48,863 years before
Alexander the Great (Proem, 2). Martianus Capella corroborates the same by
telling posterity that the Egyptians had secretly studied astronomy for over 40,000
years, before they imparted their knowledge to the world (Astronomy of the
Ancients, Lewis, p. 264).
Several valuable
quotations are made in the Natural Genesis with the view of supporting the
author's theories, but they justify the teaching of the Secret Doctrine far
more. For instance, Plutarch is quoted from his Life of Sulla, saying:
"One day when the sky was serene . . . a sound was heard in it . . . of a
trumpet, so loud, shrill and mournful, that it affrighted . . . the world. The
Tuscan sages said that it portended a new race of men, and a renovation of the
world; for they affirmed that there were eight several kinds of men, all being
different in life and manners, and that Heaven had allotted each its time,
which was limited by the circuit of the great year" (25,868 years).
This reminds one
strongly of our seven races of men, and of the eighth -- the "animal
man" -- descended from the later Third Race; as also of the successive
submersions and destruction of the continents which finally disposed of almost
the entire bulk of that race.
"The
Assyrians," says Iamblichus, "have not only preserved the memorials
of seven and twenty myriads of years (270,000 years) as Hipparchus says they
have, but likewise of the whole apocatastases and periods of the seven rulers
of the world." (Proclus, in Timaeus, b. I.) This is the calculation of the
Esoteric Doctrine, as approximately as it can be. For 1,000,000 of years are
allowed for our present Root-race (the Fifth), and about 850,000 years since
the submersion of the last large island (part of the Continent), the Ruta of
the Fourth Race, or the Atlanteans;
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while Daitya, a
small island inhabited by a mixed race, was destroyed about 270,000 years ago,
during the glacial period or thereabouts (vide Book II.). But the Seven Rulers,
or the seven great Dynasties of the divine kings belong to the traditions of
every great people of antiquity. Wherever twelve are mentioned, these are
invariably the 12 signs of the zodiac.
So patent is the
fact, that the Roman Catholic writers -- especially among the French
Ultramontanes -- have tacitly agreed to connect the twelve Jewish Patriarchs
with the signs of the Zodiac. This is done in a kind of prophetico-mystic way,
which would sound to pious and ignorant ears like a portentous sign, a tacit
divine recognition of the "chosen people of God," whose finger has
purposely traced in heaven, from the beginning of creation, the numbers of
these patriarchs. For instance, these writers (De Mirville among others)
recognise curiously enough all the characteristics of the 12 signs of the Zodiac,
in the words addressed by the dying Jacob to his Sons, and in his definitions
of the future of each Tribe. (Vide Genesis, ch. xlix.) Moreover, the respective
banners of the same tribes are claimed to have exhibited the same symbols and
the same names as the signs, repeated in the 12 stones of the Urim and Thummim,
and on the 12 wings of the cherub. Leaving the proof of exactitude in the
alleged correspondence to the said mystics, it is as follows: Man, or the
Aquarius, is in the sphere of Reuben, who is declared as "unstable as
water" (the Vulgate has it, to be "rushing like water,"; Gemini,
in the strong fraternal association of Simeon and Levi; Leo, in that of Judah,
"the strong Lion" of his tribe, "the lion's whelp"; the
Pisces, in Zabulon, who "shall dwell at the haven of the sea";
Taurus, in Issachar, because he is "a strong ass couching down,"
etc., and therefore associated with the stables; Virgo-Scorpio, in Dan, who is
described as "a serpent, an adder in the path that biteth," etc.;
Capricornus in Naphtali, who is "a hind (a deer) let loose"; Cancer,
in Benjamin, for he is "ravenous"; Libra, the "Balance," in
Asher, whose "bread shall be fat"; Saggitarius in Joseph, because
"his bow abode in strength." To make up for the twelfth sign, Virgo,
made independent of Scorpio, is Dina, the only daughter of Jacob. (See Genesis
xlix.) Tradition shows the alleged tribes carrying the 12 signs on their
banners. But the Bible is, besides these, full of theo-cosmological and
astronomical symbols and personifications.
It remains to
wonder, and query -- if the actual, living Patriarch's destiny was so
indissolubly wound up with the Zodiac -- how it is that after the loss of the
ten tribes, ten signs out of the twelve have not also miraculously disappeared
from the sidereal fields? But this is of no great concern. Let us rather busy
ourselves with the history of the Zodiac itself.
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Now the reader
may be reminded of some opinions expressed on the subject by several of the
highest authorities in Science.
Newton believed
the invention of the Zodiac could be traced as far back as the expedition of
the Argonauts; and Dulaure fixed its origin at 6,500 years B.C., just 2,496
years before the creation of the World according to the Bible chronology.
Creuzer believes
it very easy to show that most of the theogonies are intimately connected with
religious calendars, and point to the Zodiac as their prime origin -- if not
identical with the Zodiac known to us now, then something very analogous to it.
He feels certain that the Zodiac and its mystic relations are at the bottom of
all the mythologies, under one form or the other, and that it had existed in
the old form for ages before; owing to some singular co-ordination of events,
it was brought out in the present defined astronomical garb. (Creuzer, Book
III., page 930.)
Whether
"the genii of the planets" (our Dhyan Chohans of supra-mundane
spheres) showed themselves to "holy prophets" or not, as claimed in
the Dabistan, it would seem that great laymen and warriors were favoured in the
same way in days of old, when astrological magic and theophania went hand in
hand in Chaldea. For Xenophon, no ordinary man, narrates of Cyrus, that at the
moment of his death that king was giving ardent thanks to gods and heroes, for
having so often instructed him themselves about the signs in heaven, [[ev ouraniois
semeiois]] (Cyropedie, "Ant. du Zodiaque.")
Unless the
science of the zodiac is supposed to be of the highest antiquity and
universality, how account for its signs being traced in the oldest theogonies?
Laplace is said to have felt struck with amazement at the idea of the days of
Mercury (Wednesday), Venus (Friday), Jupiter (Thursday), Saturn (Saturday), and
others being related to the days of the week in the same order and with the
same names in India as in Northern Europe. "Try, if you can, with the present
system of autochthonous civilizations, so much in fashion in our day, to
explain how nations with no ancestry, no traditions or birthplace in common,
could have succeeded in inventing a kind of celestial phantasmagoria, a
veritable imbroglio of sidereal denominations, without sequence or object,
having no figurative relation with the constellations they represent, and still
less, apparently, with the phases of our terrestrial life they are made to
signify," had there not been a general intention and a universal cause and
belief, at the root of all this? (Pneumatologie, Vol. IV., p. 61.) Most truly
has Dupuis asserted the same: "Il est impossible de decouvrir le moindre
trait de ressemblance entre les parties du ciel et les figures que les astronomes
y ont arbitrairement tracees, et de l'autre cote; le hazard est
impossible," he says. (Origine des Cultes, "Zodiaque.")
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Most certainly
chance is "impossible." There is no "chance" in Nature,
wherein everything is mathematically co-ordinate and mutually related in its
units. "Chance," says Coleridge, "is but the pseudonym of God
(or Nature), for those particular cases which He does not choose to subscribe
openly with His sign manual." Replace the word "God" by that of
Karma and it will become an Eastern axiom. Therefore, the sidereal
"prophecies" of the zodiac, as they are called by Christian mystics,
never point to any one particular event, however solemn and sacred it may be
for some one portion of humanity, but to ever-recurrent, periodical laws in
nature, understood but by the Initiates of the sidereal gods themselves.
No occultist, no
astrologer of Eastern birth, will ever agree with Christian mystics, or even
with Kepler's mystical astronomy, his great science and erudition
notwithstanding; simply because, if his premises are quite correct, his
deductions therefrom are one-sided and biassed by Christian preconceptions.
Where the latter finds a prophecy directly pointing at the Saviour, other
nations see a symbol of an eternal law decreed for the actual manvantara. Why
see in the Pisces a direct reference to Christ -- one of the several
world-reformers, a Saviour but for his direct followers, but only a great and
glorious Initiate for all the rest -- when that constellation shines as a
symbol of all the past, present, and future Spiritual Saviours who dispense
light and dispel mental darkness? Christian symbologists have tried to prove
that it was that of Ephraim (Joseph's son), the elect of Jacob, that therefore,
it was at the moment of the Sun entering into the sign of the Fish (Pisces)
that "the Elect Messiah, the [[Ichthus]] of the first Christians, had to
be born. But, if Jesus of Nazareth was that Messiah -- was he really born at
that "moment," or was he made to be so born by the adaptation of
theologians, who sought only to make their preconceived ideas fit in with sidereal
facts and popular belief? Everyone knows that the real time and year of the
birth of Jesus are totally unknown. And it is the Jews, whose forefathers have
made the word Dag signify both "fish" and "Messiah," who,
during the forced development of their rabbinical language, are the first to
deny this Christian claim. And what of the further facts that Brahmins also
connect their "Messiah," the eternal Avatar Vishnu, with a fish and
the Deluge, and that the Babylonians made of their Dag-On, equally a fish and a
Messiah, the Man-Fish and Prophet?
There are those
learned iconoclasts among Egyptologists, who say that "when the Pharisees
sought a 'sign from heaven' Jesus said, 'there shall no sign be given but the
sign of Jonas' (Mat. xvi. 4). . . . . The sign of Jonas is that of the Oan or
fishman of Nineveh. . . . . Assuredly there was no other sign than that of the
Sun reborn in Pisces. The
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voice of the
Secret Wisdom says those who are looking for signs can have no other than that
of the returning fish-man Ichthys, Oannes, or Jonas -- who could not be made
flesh."
It would appear
that Kepler maintained it as a positive fact that, at the moment of the
"incarnation," all the planets were in conjunction in the sign of
Pisces, called by the Jews (the Kabalists) the "constellation of the
Messiah." "It is in this constellation," he averred, "that
was placed the star of the Magi." This statement, quoted by Dr. Sepp (Vie
de notre Seigneur Jesus Christ, Vol. I. p. 9), emboldened him to remark that
"all the Jewish traditions while announcing that star, that many nations
have seen,"(!)* added that "it would absorb the seventy planets that
preside over the destinies of various nations on this globe."** "In
virtue of those natural prophecies," explains Dr. Sepp, "it was
written in the stars of the firmament that the Messiah would be born in the
lunar year of the world 4320, in that memorable year when the entire choir of
the planets would be feasting its jubilee."
There was indeed
a rage, at the beginning of the present century, for claiming from the Hindus
restoration of an alleged robbery from the Jews of their "gods,"
patriarchs, and chronology. It was Wilford who had recognized Noah in Prithee
and in Satyavrata, Enos in Dhruva, and even Assur in Iswara. Yet, after being
residents for so many years in India, some Orientalists, at least, ought to have
known that it was not the Hindus alone who had these figures, or who had
divided their great age into four minor ages. Nevertheless writers in the
Asiatic Researches indulged in the most extravagant speculations.
"Christian
theologians think it their duty to write against the long periods of Hindu
chronology," argues very pertinently S. A. Mackey, the Norwich
"philosopher, astronomer, and shoemaker." "But when a man of
learning crucifies the names and numbers of the ancients, and wrings and twists
them into a form which means something quite foreign to the intention of the
ancient authors; but which, so mutilated, fits in with the birth of some maggot
pre-existing in his own brain with so much exactness that he pretends to be
amazed at the discovery, I cannot think him quite so pardonable" (Key of
Urania).
This is intended
to apply to Captain (later Colonel) Wilford, but the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Whether many
nations have seen that identical star, or not, we all know that the sepulchres
of "the three Magi," who rejoice in the quite Teutonic names of
Kaspar and Melchior, Balthazar being the only exception, and the two having
little of the Chaldean ring in them -- are shown by the priests in the famous
cathedral of Cologne, where the Magian bodies are not only supposed, but firmly
believed to have been buried.
** This
tradition about the seventy planets that preside over the destinies of nations,
is based on the occult cosmogonical teaching that besides our own septenary
chain of world-planets, there are many more in the solar system.
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words may fit
more than one of our modern Orientalists. The former was the first to crown his
unlucky speculations in Hindu chronology and the Puranas by connecting the
4,320,000 years with biblical chronology, simply dwarfing the figures to 4,320
years (the supposed lunar year of the Nativity), and Dr. Sepp has simply
plagiarized the idea from this gallant officer. Moreover, he persisted in
seeing in them Jewish property, as well as a Christian prophecy, thus accusing
the Aryans of having helped themselves to Semitic revelation, whereas it was
the reverse. The Jews, moreover, need not be accused of despoiling the Hindus,
of whose figures Ezra probably knew nothing. They had evidently and undeniably
borrowed them from the Chaldeans, along with their gods. Of the 432,000 years
of the Chaldean divine Dynasties* they made 4,320 lunar years from the world's
creation to the Christian era; as to the Babylonian and Egyptian Gods, they
transformed them as quietly and modestly into Patriarchs. Every nation was more
or less guilty of such refashioning and adaptation of a Pantheon (common once
to all) of universal, into national, tribal gods and Heroes. It was their
property in its new Pentateuchal garb, and no one of the Israelites has ever
forced it upon any other nation -- least of all upon Europeans.
Without stopping
to notice this very unscientific chronology more than is necessary, we may make
a few remarks that may be found to the point. These figures of 4,320 lunar
years of the world (in the Bible the solar years are used) are not fanciful, as
such, even if their application is quite erroneous; for they are only the
distorted echo of the primitive esoteric, and later on Brahminical doctrine concerning
the Yugas. A "Day" of Brahma equals 4,320,000,000 years, as also a
"Night" of Brahma, or the duration of Pralaya, after which a new SUN
rises trium-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Every scholar
is aware, of course, that the Chaldeans claimed the same figures (432) or
(432,000) for their divine dynasties as the Hindus do for their Mahayuga,
namely, 4,320,000. Therefore has Dr. Sepp, of Munich, undertaken to support
Kepler and Wilford in their charge that the Hindus had borrowed them from the
Christians, and the Chaldeans from the Jews, who, as claimed, expected their
Messiah in the lunar year of the world 4,320!!! As these figures, according to
ancient writers, were based by Berosus on the 120 Saroses -- each of the
divisions meaning six neroses of 600 years each, making a sum total of 432,000
years -- they do not thus appear peremptory. But the pious professor of Munich
undertook to explain them in the correct way. He claims to have solved the
riddle by showing that "the saros being composed according to Pliny of 222
synodial months, to wit, 18 years 6/10," the calculator naturally fell
back into the figures "given by Suidas," who affirmed that the 120
saroses made 2,222 sacerdotal and cyclic years, which equalled 1,656 solar
years." (Vie de Notre Seigneur Jesus Christ, Vol. II., p. 417.)
Suidas said
nothing of the kind, and, if he had, he would prove little, if anything, by it.
The neroses and saroses were the same thorn in the side of uninitiated ancient
writers, as the apocalyptic 666 of the "great Beast" is in that of
the modern, and they have found their unlucky Newtons as the latter figures
have.
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phantly over a
new manvantara, for the septenary chain it illuminates. The teaching had
penetrated into Palestine and Europe centuries before the Christian era (see
Isis Unveiled II. 132), and was present in the minds of the Mosaic Jews, who
based upon it their small cycle, though it received full expression only
through the Christian chronologers of the Bible, who adopted it, as also the
25th of December, the day on which all the solar gods were said to have been
incarnated. What wonder, then, that the Messiah was made to be born "the
lunar year of the world 4,320?" The "Son of Righteousness and
Salvation" had once more arisen and had dispelled pralayic darkness of
chaos and non-being on the plane of our objective little globe and chain. Once
the subject of the adoration was settled upon, it was easy to make the supposed
events of his birth, life, and death, fit in with the Zodiacal exigencies and
old traditions, though they had to be somewhat remodelled for the occasion.
Thus what Kepler
said, as a great astronomer, becomes comprehensible. He recognised the grand
and universal importance of all such planetary conjunctions, "each of
which" -- as he has well said -- "is a climacteric year of Humanity."*
The rare conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars has its significance and
importance on account of its certain great results -- in India and China as
much as it has in Europe for the respective mystics of all those countries. And
it is certainly no better now than a mere assumption to maintain that nature
had only Christ in view, when building her (to the profane) fantastic and
meaningless constellations. If it is claimed that it was no hazard that could
lead the archaic architects of the Zodiac, thousands of years ago, to mark with
the asterisk (a) the figure of Taurus, with no better or more valid proof of it
being prophetic of the Verbum or Christ than that the aleph of Taurus means
"the ONE" and the FIRST, and that Christ was also the alpha or the
ONE, then this "proof" may be shown strangely invalidated in more
than one way. To begin with, the Zodiac existed before the Christian era, at
all events; further, all the Sun-gods had been mystically connected with that
constellation (Taurus) -- Osiris, for instance -- and were all called by their
respective votaries "the First." Then the compilers of the mystical
epithets given to the Christian Saviour, were all more or less acquainted with
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The reader has
to bear in mind that the phrase "climacteric year" has more than the
usual significance, when used by Occultists and Mystics. It is not only a
critical period, during which some great change is periodically expected,
whether in human or cosmic constitution, but it likewise pertains to spiritual
universal changes. The Europeans called every 63rd year "the grand
climacteric," and perhaps justly supposed those years to be the years
produced by multiplying 7 into the odd numbers 3, 5, 7 and 9. But seven is the
real scale of nature, in Occultism, and 7 has to be multiplied in quite a
different way and method, unknown as yet to European nations.
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the significance
of the Zodiacal signs; and it is easier to suppose that they should have
arranged their claims so as to answer the mystic signs, than that the latter
should have shone as a prophecy for one portion of humanity, for millions of
years, taking no heed of the numberless generations that had gone before, and
those to be born hereafter.
"It is not
simple chance," we are told, "that has placed in certain spheres, on
a throne, the head of that bull (Taurus), trying to push away with the ansated
cross on its horns, a Dragon; the more so, since this constellation of Taurus
was called 'the great city of God and the mother of revelations,' and also 'the
interpreter of the divine voice,' the Apis pacis of Hermoutis, in Egypt, which
(as the patristic fathers would assure the world) preferred oracles that
related to the birth of the Saviour" (Pneumatologie, iv., 71).
To this theological
assumption there are several answers. Firstly, the ansated Egyptian cross, or
tau, the Jaina cross, or Swastica, and the Christian cross have all the same
meaning. Secondly, no peoples or nations except the Christians gave the
significance to the Dragon that is given to it now. The serpent was the symbol
of WISDOM; and the Bull (Taurus) the symbol of physical or terrestrial
generation. Thus the latter, pushing off the Dragon, or spiritual, Divine
Wisdom, with the Tau, or Cross -- which is esoterically "the foundation
and framework of all construction" -- would have an entirely phallic,
physiological meaning, had it not still another significance unknown to our
Biblical scholars and symbologists. At any rate, it shows no special reference
to the Verbum of St. John, except, perhaps, in a general sense. The taurus
(which, by the way, is no lamb, but a bull) was sacred in every Cosmogony, with
the Hindus as with the Zoroastrians, with the Chaldees as with the Egyptians.
So much, every schoolboy knows.
It may perhaps
help to refresh the memory of our Theosophists by referring them to what was
said of the Virgin and the Dragon, and the universality of periodical births
and re-births of World-Saviours -- solar gods -- in Isis, II., 490, with
reference to certain passages in Revelations.
In 1853, the
savant known as Erard-Mollien read before the Institute of France a paper
tending to prove the antiquity of the Indian Zodiac, in the signs of which were
found the root and philosophy of all the most important religious festivals of
that country, the origin of which religious ceremonies goes back into the night
of time at least 3,000 B.C., as the lecturer tried to demonstrate. The Zodiac
of the Hindus, he thought, was far anterior to the Zodiac of the Greeks, and
differed from it in some particulars vastly. In it one sees the Dragon on a
tree, at the foot of which the "Virgin," Kanya-Durga, one of the most
ancient goddesses, is placed on a lion dragging after him the solar car.
"This is the reason why," he added, "this Virgin Durga is not
the simple memento of
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an astronomical
fact, but verily the most ancient divinity of the Indian Olympus. She is
evidently the same of whom all the Sibylline books spoke, those works that have
been the source of the inspiration of Virgil; the virgin whose return was
prophesied as a sign of universal renovation. . . . . And why," he added,
"when we see to this day, the months named after the deity-names of this
solar Zodiac by the Malayalim-speaking people of southern India -- why should
that people have abandoned their ancestral Zodiac to burden themselves with
that of the Greeks? Everything proves, on the contrary, that these zodiacal
figures have been transmitted to the Greeks by the Chaldees, who got them from
the Brahmans." (See Recueil de l'Academie des Inscriptions, 1853.)
But all this is
very poor testimony. Let us remember, however, also that which was said and
accepted by the contemporaries of Volney, who, in his "Ruins of
Empires," p. 360, remarks that as Aries was in its fifteenth 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 1,790 years since Christ, it appears that 16,984 years have elapsed
since the origin of the Zodiac.
Dr. Schlegel,
moreover, in his Uranographie Chinoise assigns to the Chinese Astronomical
Sphere an antiquity of 18,000 years. (Vide pp. 54, 196, et seq.)
Nevertheless, as
opinions quoted without adequate proofs are of little avail, it may be more
useful to turn to scientific evidence. M. Bailly, the famous French astronomer
of the last century, Member of the Academy, etc., etc., asserts that the Hindu
systems of astronomy are by far the oldest, and that from them the Egyptians,
Greeks, Romans, and even the Jews derived their knowledge. In support of these
views he says --
"The
astronomers who preceded the epoch 1,491 are, first, the Alexandrian Greeks;
Hipparchus, who flourished 125 years before our era, and Ptolemy, 260 years
after Hipparchus. Following these were the Arabs, who revived the study of
astronomy in the ninth century. These were succeeded by the Persians and the
Tartars, to whom we owe the tables of Massireddin in 1269, and those of
Ulug-beg in 1437. Such is the succession of events in Asia as known prior to
the Indian epoch 1491. What, then, is an epoch? It is the observation of the
longitude of a star at a given moment, the place in the sky where it was seen,
and which serves as a point of reference, a starting-point from which to
calculate both the past and future positions of the star from its observed
motion. But an epoch is useless unless the motion of the star has been
determined. A people, new to science and obliged to borrow a foreign astronomy,
finds no difficulty in fixing an epoch, since
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the only
observation needed is one which can be made at any moment. But what it needs
above all, what it is obliged to borrow, are those elements which depend on
accurate determination, and which require continuous observation; above all,
those motions which depend on time, and which can only be accurately determined
by centuries of observation. These motions, then, must be borrowed from a
nation which has made such observations, and has behind it the labours of
centuries. We conclude, therefore, that a new people will not borrow the epochs
of an ancient one, without also borrowing from them the 'average motions.'
Starting from this principle we shall find that the Hindu epochs 1491 and 3102
could not have been derived from those of either Ptolemy or Ulug-beg."
There remains
the supposition that the Hindus, comparing their observations in 1491 with
those previously made by Ulug-beg and Ptolemy, used the intervals between these
observations to determine the "average motions." The date of Ulug-beg
is too recent for such a determination; while those of Ptolemy and Hipparchus
were barely remote enough. But if the Hindu motions had been determined from
these comparisons, the epochs would be connected together. Starting from the
epochs of Ulug-beg and Ptolemy we should arrive at all those of the Hindus. But
this is not the case. Hence foreign epochs were either unknown or useless to
the Hindus.*
We may add to
this another important consideration. When a nation is obliged to borrow from
its neighbours the methods or the average motions of its astronomical tables,
it has even greater need to borrow, besides these, the knowledge of the
inequalities of the motions of the heavenly bodies, the motions of the apogee,
of the nodes, and of the inclination of the ecliptic; in short, all those
elements the determination of which requires the art of observing, some
instrumental appliances, and great industry. All these astronomical elements,
differing more or less with the Greeks of Alexandria, the Arabs, the Persians
and the Tartars, exhibit no resemblance whatever with those of the Hindus. The
latter, therefore, borrowed nothing from their neighbours.
Condensing
Bailly's remarks, he comes to the following conclusions:--
If the Hindus
did not borrow their epoch, they must have possessed a real one of their own,
based on their own observations; and this must be either the epoch of the year
1491 after, or that of the year 3102 before our era, the latter preceding by
4592 years the epoch 1491. We have to choose between these two epochs and to
decide which of them is based on observation. But before stating the arguments
which can and must
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* For a detailed
scientific proof of this conclusion, see page 121 of Mr. Bailly's work, where
the subject is discussed technically.
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decide the
question, we may be permitted to make a few remarks to those who may be
inclined to believe that it is modern observations and calculations which have
enabled the Hindus to determine the past positions of the heavenly bodies. It
is far from easy to determine the celestial movements with sufficient accuracy
to ascend the stream of time for 4592 years, and to describe the phenomena
which must have occurred at that period.
We possess
to-day excellent instruments; exact observations have been made for some two or
three centuries, which already permit us to calculate with considerable
accuracy the average motions of the planets; we have the observations of the
Chaldeans, of Hipparchus and of Ptolemy, which, owing to their remoteness from
the present time, permit us to fix these motions with greater certainty. Still
we cannot undertake to represent with invariable accuracy the observations
throughout the long period intervening between the Chaldeans and ourselves; and
still less can we undertake to determine with exactitude events occurring 4592
years before our day. Cassini and Maier have each determined the secular motion
of the moon, and they differ by 3m. 43s. This difference would give rise in
forty-six centuries to an uncertainty of nearly three degrees in the moon's
place. Doubtless one of these determinations is more accurate than the other;
and it is for observations of very great antiquity to decide between them. But
in very remote periods, where observations are lacking, it follows that we are
uncertain as to the phenomena. How, then, could the Hindus have calculated back
from the year 1491 A.D. to the year 3102 before our era, if they were only
recent students of astronomy?
The Orientals
have never been what we are. However high an opinion of their knowledge we may
form from the examination of their Astronomy, we cannot suppose them ever to
have possessed that great array of instruments which distinguishes our modern
observatories, and which is the product of simultaneous progress in various
arts, nor could they have possessed that genius for discovery, which has
hitherto seemed to belong exclusively to Europe, and which, supplying the place
of time, causes the rapid progress of science and of human intelligence. If the
Asiatics have been powerful, learned and wise, it is power and time which have
produced their merit and success of all kinds. Power has founded or destroyed
their empires; now it has erected edifices imposing by their bulk, now it has
reduced them to venerable ruins; and while these vicissitudes alternated with
each other, patience accumulated knowledge; and prolonged experience produced
wisdom. It is the antiquity of the nations of the East which has erected their
scientific fame.
If the Hindus
possessed in 1491 a knowledge of the heavenly motions
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sufficiently
accurate to enable them to calculate backwards for 4,592 years, it follows that
they could only have obtained this knowledge from very ancient observations. To
grant them such knowledge, while refusing them the observations from which it
is derived, is to suppose an impossibility; it would be equivalent to assuming
that at the outset of their career they had already reaped the harvest of time
and experience. While on the other hand, if their epoch of 3102 is assumed to
be real, it would follow that the Hindus had simply kept pace with successive
centuries down to the year 1491 of our era. Thus, time itself was their
teacher; they knew the motions of the heavenly bodies during these periods,
because they had seen them; and the duration of the Hindu people on earth is
the cause of the fidelity of its records and the accuracy of its calculations.
It would seem
that the problem as to which of the two epochs of 3102 and 1491 is the real one
ought to be solved by one consideration, viz., that the ancients in general,
and particularly the Hindus, calculated, and therefore observed, eclipses only.
Says Bailly:--
Now, there was
no eclipse of the sun at the moment of the epoch 1492; and no eclipse of the
moon either 14 days before or after that moment. Therefore the epoch 1491 is
not based on an observation. As regards the epoch 3102, the Brahmins of
Tirvalour place it at sunrise on February 18th. The sun was then in the first point
of the Zodiac according to its true longitude. The other tables show that at
the preceding midnight the moon was in the same place, but according to its
average longitude. The Brahmins tell us also that this first point, the origin
of their Zodiac, was, in the year 3102, 54 degrees behind the equinox. It
follows that the origin -- the first point of their Zodiac -- was therefore in
the sixth degree of Libra.
There occurred,
therefore, about this time and place an average conjunction; "and indeed
this conjunction is given in our best tables: La Caille's for the sun and
Maier's for the moon." There was no eclipse of the sun, the moon being too
distant from her node; but fourteen days later, the moon having approached the
node, must have been eclipsed. Maier's tables, used without correction for
acceleration, give this eclipse; but they place it during the day when it could
not have been observed in India. Cassini's tables give it as occurring at
night, which shows that Maier's motions are too rapid for distant centuries,
when the acceleration is not allowed for; and which also proves that in spite
of the improvement of our knowledge we can still be uncertain as to the actual
aspect of the heavens in past times.
Therefore we
believe that as between the two Hindu epochs, the real one is the year 3102,
because it was accompanied by an eclipse which could be observed, and which
must have served to determine it. This
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is a first proof
of the truth of the longitude assigned by the Hindus to the sun and the moon at
this instant; and this proof would perhaps be sufficient, were it not that this
ancient determination becomes of the greatest importance for the verification
of the motions of these bodies, and must therefore be borne out by every
possible proof of its authenticity.
We notice,
first, that the Hindus seem to have combined two epochs together into the year
3102. The Tirvalour Brahmins reckon primarily from the first moment of the
Kali-Yug; but they have a second epoch placed 2d. 3h. 32m. 30s. later. The
latter is the true astronomical epoch, while the former seems to be a civil era.
But if this epoch of the Kali-Yug had no reality, and was the mere result of a
calculation, why should it be thus divided? Their calculated astronomical epoch
would have become that of the Kali-Yug, which would have been placed at the
conjunction of the sun and the moon, as is the case with the epochs of the
three other tables. They must have had some reason for distinguishing between
the two; and this reason can only be due to the circumstances and the time of
the epoch; which therefore could not be the result of calculation. This is not
all; starting from the solar epoch determined by the rising of the sun on
February 18th, 3102, and tracing back events 2d. 3h. 32m. 30s., we come to 2h.
27m. 30s. a.m. of February 16th, which is the instant of the beginning of
Kali-Yuga. It is curious that this age has not been made to commence at one of
the four great divisions of the day. It might be suspected that the epoch
should be midnight, and that the 2h. 27m. 30s. are a meridian correction. But
whatever may have been the reason for fixing on this moment, it is plain that
were this epoch the result of calculation, it would have been just as easy to
carry it back to midnight, so as to make the epoch correspond to one of the
chief divisions of the day, instead of placing it at a moment fixed by the
fraction of a day.
2nd. The Hindus
assert that at the first moment of Kali-Yug there was a conjunction of all the
planets; and their tables show this conjunction while ours indicate that it
might actually have occurred. Jupiter and Mercury were in exactly the same
degree of the ecliptic; Mars being 8 [[degrees]] and Saturn 17 [[degrees]]
distant from it. It follows that about this time, or some fourteen days after
the commencement of Kali-Yug, the Hindus saw four planets emerge successively
from the Sun's rays; first Saturn, then Mars, then Jupiter and Mercury, and
these planets appeared united in a somewhat small space. Although Venus was not
among them, the taste for the marvellous caused it to be called a general
conjunction of all the planets. The testimony of the Brahmins here coincides
with that of our tables; and this evidence, the result of a tradition, must be
founded on actual observation.
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3rd. We may
remark that this phenomenon was visible about a fortnight after the epoch, and
exactly at the time when the eclipse of the moon must have been observed, which
served to fix the epoch. The two observations mutually confirm each other; and
whoever made the one must have made the other also.
4th. We may
believe also that the Hindus made at the same time a determination of the place
of the moon's node; this seems indicated by their calculation. They give the
longitude of this point of the lunar orbit for the time of their epoch, and to
this they add as a constant 40m., which is the node's motion in 12d. 14h. It is
as if they stated that this determination was made 13 days after their epoch,
and that to make it correspond to that epoch, we must add the 40m. through
which the node has retrograded in the interval.
This observation
is, therefore, of the same date as that of the lunar eclipse; thus giving three
observations, which are mutually confirmatory.
5th. It appears
from the description of the Hindu Zodiac given by M. C. Gentil, that on it the
places of the stars named "The Eye of Taurus" and the "Wheat-ear
of Virgo," can be determined for the commencement of the Kali-Yug.
Now, comparing
these places with the actual positions, reduced by our precession of the
equinoxes to the moment in question, we see that the point of origin of the
Hindu Zodiac must lie between the fifth and sixth degree of Libra. The
Brahmins, therefore, were right in placing it in the sixth degree of that sign,
the more so since this small difference may be due to the proper motion of the
stars which is unknown.
Thus it was yet
another observation which guided the Hindus in this fairly accurate
determination of the first point of their movable zodiac.
It does not seem
possible to doubt the existence in antiquity of observations of this date. The
Persians say that four beautiful stars were placed as guardians at the four
corners of the world. Now it so happens that at the commencement of Kali Yug,
3000 or 3100 years before our era, the "Eye of the Bull" and the
"Heart of the Scorpion" were exactly at the equinoctial points, while
the "Heart of the Lion" and the "Southern Fish" were pretty
near the solstitial points. An observation of the rising of the Pleiades in the
evening, seven days before the autumnal equinox, also belongs to the year 3000
before our era. This and similar observations collected in Ptolemy's calendars,
though he does not give their authors, these observations, which are older than
those of the Chaldeans, may well be the work of the Hindus. They are well
acquainted with the constellation of the Pleiades, and while we call it
vulgarly the "Poussiniere" they name it: Pillaloo-codi -- the
"Hen and chickens." This name has therefore, passed from people to
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people, and
comes to us from the most ancient nations of Asia. We see that the Hindus must
have observed the rising of the Pleiades, and have made use of it to regulate
their years and their months; for this constellation is also called Krittika.
Now they have a month of the same name, and this coincidence can only be due to
the fact that this month was announced by the rising or setting of the
constellation in question. But what is even more decisive as showing that the
Hindus observed the stars, and in the same way that we do, marking their
position by their longitude, is a fact mentioned by Augustinus Riccius that,
according to observations attributed to Hermes, and made 1,985 years before
Ptolemy, the brilliant star in the Lyre and that in the Heart of the Hydra were
each seven degrees in advance of their respective positions as determined by
Ptolemy.
This
determination seems very extraordinary. The stars advance regularly with
respect to the equinox; and Ptolemy ought to have found the longitudes 28
degrees in excess of what they were 1985 years before his time. Besides, there
is a remarkable peculiarity about this fact; the same error or difference being
found in the positions of both stars; therefore the error was due to some cause
affecting both stars equally. It was to explain this peculiarity that the Arab
Thebith imagined the stars to have an oscillatory movement, causing them to
advance and recede alternately.
This hypothesis
was easily disproved; but the observations attributed to Hermes remained
unexplained. Their explanation, however, is found in Hindu Astronomy. At the
date fixed for these observations, 1985 years before Ptolemy, the first point
of the Hindu Zodiac was 35 degrees in advance of the equinox; therefore the
longitudes reckoned for this point are 35 degrees in excess of those reckoned
from the equinox. But after the lapse of 1985 years the stars would have
advanced 28 degrees, and there would remain a difference of only 7 degrees
between the longitudes of Hermes and those of Ptolemy, and the difference would
be the same for the two stars, since it is due to the difference between the
starting-points of the Hindu Zodiac and that of Ptolemy, which reckons from the
equinox. This explanation is so simple and natural that it must be true. We do
not know whether Hermes, so celebrated in antiquity, was a Hindu, but we see
that the observations attributed to him are reckoned in the Hindu manner, and
we conclude that they were made by the Hindus, who, therefore, were able to
make all the observations we have enumerated, and which we find noted in their
tables.
6th. The
observation of the year 3102, which seems to have fixed their epoch, was not a
difficult one. We see that the Hindus, having once determined the moon's daily
motion of 13deg. 10m. 35sec., made
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use of it to
divide the Zodiac into 27 constellations, related to the period of the moon,
which takes about 27 days to describe it.
It was by this
method that they determined the positions of the stars in this Zodiac; it was
thus they found that a certain star of the Lyre was in 8h. 24m., the Heart of
the Hydra in 4d. 7h., longitudes which are ascribed to Hermes, but which are
calculated on the Hindu Zodiac. Similarly, they discovered that the
"Wheatear of Virgo" forms the commencement of their fifteenth
constellation, and the "Eye of Taurus" the end of the fourth; these
stars being the one in 6d. 6h. 40m., the other in 1d. 23h. 20min. of the Hindu
Zodiac. This being so, the eclipse of Moon which occurred 14 days after the Kali
Yug epoch, took place at a point between the "Wheat Ear" of Virgo and
the star [[ ]] of the same constellation. These stars are very approximately a
constellation apart, the one beginning the fifteenth, the other the sixteenth.
Thus it would not be difficult to determine the moon's place by measuring her
distance from one of these stars; from this they deduced the position of the
sun, which is opposite to the moon, and then, knowing their average motions,
they calculated that the moon was at the first point of the Zodiac according to
her average longitude at midnight on the 17th-18th February of the year 3,102
before our era, and that the sun occupied the same place six hours later
according to his true longitude; an event which fixes the commencement of the
Hindu year.
7th. The Hindus
state that 20,400 years before the age of Kali Yug, the first point of their
Zodiac coincided with the vernal equinox, and that the sun and moon were in
conjunction there. This epoch is obviously fictitious;* but we may inquire from
what point, from what epoch, the Hindus set out in establishing it. Taking the
Hindu values for the revolution of the sun and moon, viz., 365d. 6h. 12m. 30s.,
and 27d. 7h. 43m. 13s., we have --
20,400
revolutions of the sun = 7,451,277d. 2h.
272,724
revolutions of the moon = 7,451,277d. 7h.
Such is the
result obtained by starting from the Kali Yuga epoch; and the assertion of the
Hindus, that there was a conjunction at the time stated, is founded on their
tables; but if, using the same elements, we start from the era of the year
1491, or from another placed in the year 1282, of which we shall speak later,
there will always be a difference of almost one or two days. It is both just
and natural, in verifying the Hindu calculations, to take those among their
elements which give the same result as they had themselves arrived at, and to
set out from that one among their epochs which enables us to arrive at
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Why it should
be "fictitious" can never be made plain by European scientists.
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the fictitious
epoch in question. Hence, since to make this calculation they must have set out
from their real epoch, the one which was founded on an observation and not from
any of those which were derived by this very calculation from the former, it
follows that their real epoch was that of the year 3102 before our era.
8th. The
Tiravalore Brahmins give the Moon's motion as 7d. 2h. 8m. on the movable
Zodiac, and as 9d. 7h. 45m. 1s. as referred to the equinox in a great period of
1,600,984 days, or 4,386 years and 94 days. We believe this motion to have been
determined by observation; and we must state at the outset that this period is
of an extent which renders it but ill suited to the calculation of the mean
motions.
In their
astronomical calculations the Hindus make use of periods of 248, 3,031, and
12,372 days; but, apart from the fact that these periods, though much too
short, do not present the inconvenience of the former, they contain an exact
number of revolutions of the moon referred to its apogee. They are in reality
mean motions. The great period of 1,600,984 is not a sum of accumulated
revolutions; there is no reason why it should contain 1,600,984 rather than
1,600,985 days. It would seem that observation alone must have fixed the number
of days and marked the beginning and end of the period. This period ends on the
21st of May, 1282, of our era at 5h. 15m. 30s. at Benares. The moon was then in
apogee, according to the Hindus, and her longitude was ... 7d. 13h. 45m. 1s.
Maier gives the
longitude as ... 7d. 13h. 53m. 48s.
And places the
apogee at ... ... 7d. 14h. 6m. 54s.
The
determination of the moon's place by the Brahmins thus differs only by nine
minutes from ours, and that of the apogee by twenty-two minutes, and it is very
evident that they could only have obtained this agreement with our best tables
and this exactitude in the celestial positions by observation. If then,
observation fixed the end of this period, there is every reason to believe that
it determined its commencement. But then this motion, determined directly, and
from nature, would of necessity be in close agreement with the true motions of
the heavenly bodies.
And in fact the
Hindu motion during this long period of 4,883 years, does not differ by a minute
from that of Cassini, and agrees equally with that of Maier. Thus two peoples,
the Hindus and the Europeans, placed at the two extremities of the world, and
perhaps as distant by their institutions, have obtained precisely the same
results as regards the moon's motions; and an agreement which would be
inconceivable, if it were not based on the observation and mutual imitation of
nature. We must remark that the four tables of the Hindus are all copies of the
same Astronomy. It cannot be denied that the Siamese tables existed
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in 1687, when
they were brought from India by M. de la Loubere. At that time the tables of
Cassini and Maier were not in existence, and thus the Hindus were already in
possession of the exact motion contained in these tables, while we did not yet
possess it.* It must, therefore, be admitted that the accuracy of this Hindu
motion is the point of observation. It is exact throughout this period of 4,383
years, because it was taken from the sky itself -- and if observation
determined its close, it fixed its commencement also. It is the longest period
which has been observed and of which the recollection is preserved in the
annals of Astronomy. It has its origin in the epoch of the year 3102, B.C., and
it is a demonstrative proof of the reality of that epoch.
Bailly is
referred to at such length, as he is one of the few scientific men who have
tried to do full justice to the Astronomy of the Aryans. From John Bentley down
to Burgess' "Surya-Siddhanta," not one astronomer has been fair
enough to the most learned people of Antiquity. However distorted and misunderstood
the Hindu Symbology, no Occultist can fail to do it justice once that he knows
something of the Secret Sciences; nor will he turn away from their metaphysical
and mystical
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The following
is an answer to those men of science who might suspect that our Astronomy was
carried to India and communicated to the Hindus by our Missionaries. 1st. Hindu
astronomy has its own peculiar forms, characterized by their originality; if it
had been our astronomy translated, great skill and knowledge would have been
needed to disguise the theft. 2nd. When adopting the mean movement of the moon,
they would have adopted also the inclination of the ecliptic, the equation of
the sun's centre, the length of the year; these elements differ completely from
ours, and are remarkably accurate as applying to the epoch of 3102; while they
would be exceedingly erroneous if they had been calculated for last century.
3rd, finally, our missionaries could not have communicated to the Hindus in
1687 the tables of Cassini, which were not then in existence; they could have
known only the mean motions of Tycho, Riccioli, Copernicus, Bouilland, Kepler,
Longomontanus, and those of the tables of Alphonso. I will now give a tabular
view of these mean motions for 4383 years and 94 days:--
Table.
------------- Mean Motion. --- Difference from Hindu.
Alphonso
............9d 7h 2m 47s ... - 0h 42m 14s
Copernicus
......... 9d 6h 2m 13s ... - 1h 42m 48s
Tycho
.............. 9d 7h 54m 40s .. + 0h 9m 39s
Kepler
............. 9d 6h 57m 35s .. - 0h 47m 26s
Longomontanus
...... 9d 7h 2m 13s ... - 0h 42m 48s
Bouilland
.......... 9d 6h 48m 8s ... - 0h 58m 53s
Riccioli
........... 9d 7h 53m 57s .. + 0h 8m 56s
Cassini
............ 9d 7h 44m 11s .. - 0h 0m 50s
Indian
............. 9d 7h 45m 1s
None of these
mean motions, except Cassini's, agrees with that of the Hindus, who therefore,
did not borrow their mean motions, since their figures agree only with those of
Cassini, whose tables were not in existence in 1687. This mean motion of the
moon belongs, therefore, to the Hindus, who could only have obtained it by
observation." -- Bailly's "Traite de l'Astronomie Indienne et
Orientale."
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interpretation
of the Zodiac, even though the whole Pleiades of Royal Astronomical Societies
rise in arms against their mathematical rendering of it. The descent and
re-ascent of the Monad or Soul cannot be disconnected from the Zodiacal signs,
and it looks more natural, in the sense of the fitness of things, to believe in
a mysterious sympathy between the metaphysical soul and the bright
constellations, and in the influence of the latter on the former, than in the
absurd notion that the creators of Heaven and Earth have placed in heaven the
types of twelve vicious Jews. And if, as the author of The Gnostics asserts,
the aim of all the Gnostic schools and the later Platonists "was to
accommodate the old faith to the influence of Buddhistic theosophy, the very
essence of which was that the innumerable gods of the Hindu mythology were but
names for the ENERGIES of the First Triad in its successive AVATARS or
manifestations unto man," whither can we turn to trace these theosophic
ideas to their very root -- better than to old Indian wisdom? We say it again:
archaic Occultism would remain incomprehensible to all, if it were rendered otherwise
than through the more familiar channels of Buddhism and Hinduism. For the
former is the emanation of the latter; and both are children of one mother --
ancient Lemuro-Atlantean Wisdom.
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XVIII.
SUMMARY OF THE
MUTUAL POSITION.
THE reader has
had the whole case presented to him from both sides, and it remains with him to
decide whether its summary stands in our favour or not. If there were such a
thing as void, a vacuum in Nature, one would find it produced, according to a
physical law, in the minds of helpless admirers of the "lights" of
science, who pass their time in mutually destroying their teachings. If ever
the theory that "two lights make darkness" found its application it
is in this case, when one half of the "lights" imposes its Forces and
"modes of motion" on the belief of the faithful, and the other half
opposes the very existence of the same. "Ether, Matter, Energy" --
the sacred hypostatical trinity, the three principles of the truly unknown God
of Science, called by them PHYSICAL NATURE!
Theology is
taken to task and ridiculed for believing in the union of three persons in one
Godhead -- one God as to substance, three persons as to individuality; and we
are laughed at for our belief in unproved and unprovable doctrines, in Angels
and Devils, Gods and Spirits. And,
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indeed, that
which made the Scientists win the day over Theology in the Great "Conflict
between Religion and Science," was precisely the argument that neither the
identity of that substance, nor the triple individuality claimed, after having
been conceived, invented, and worked out in the depths of Theological
Consciousness, could be proved by any Scientific inductive process of
reasoning, least of all on the evidence of our senses. Religion must perish, it
is said, because it teaches mysteries. Mystery is the negation of Common Sense,
and Science repels it. According to Mr. Tyndall, metaphysics is fiction, like
poetry. The man of Science takes nothing on trust; rejects everything that is
not proven to him, while the Theologian accepts everything on blind faith. The
Theosophist and the Occultist, who take nothing on trust, not even exact
Science, the Spiritualist who denies dogma but believes in Spirits and in
invisible but potential influences, all share in the same contempt. Very well,
then; what we have to do now, is to examine for the last time whether exact
Science does not act precisely in the same way as Theosophy, Spiritualism, and
Theology do.
In a work by Mr.
S. Laing, considered a standard book on Science, "Modern Science and
Modern Thought," the author of which, according to the laudatory review of
the Times, "exhibits with much power and effect the immense discoveries of
Science, and its numerous victories over old opinions, whenever THEY HAVE THE
RASHNESS TO CHALLENGE CONCLUSIONS WITH IT," one reads in chapter III., "On
Matter," as follows:
"WHAT IS
THE MATERIAL UNIVERSE COMPOSED OF? ETHER, MATTER, ENERGY" . . . . . is the
answer.
We stop to ask,
"What is Ether?" And Mr. Laing answers in the name of Science:--
"Ether is
not actually known to us BY ANY TEST OF WHICH THE SENSES CAN TAKE COGNIZANCE,
but is a sort of mathematical substance which WE ARE COMPELLED TO ASSUME in
order to account for the phenomena of light and heat."
And what is
matter? Do you know more about it than you do about the
"hypothetical" agent, Ether?
"In perfect
strictness, it is true that chemical investigations can tell us . . . . NOTHING
DIRECTLY of the composition of living matter, and . . . . it is also in
strictness true, THAT WE KNOW NOTHING about the composition of ANY (material)
BODY WHATEVER AS IT IS." (Lecture on Protoplasm by Mr. Huxley.)
And Energy?
Surely you can define the third person of the Trinity of your Material
universe?
"THE ENERGY
IS THAT WHICH IS ONLY KNOWN TO US BY ITS EFFECTS." (Books on Physics.)
Pray explain,
for this is rather hazy.
"IN
MECHANICS THERE IS ACTUAL AND POTENTIAL ENERGY: WORK
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ACTUALLY PERFORMED,
AND THE CAPACITY FOR PERFORMING IT. AS TO THE NATURE OF MOLECULAR ENERGY OR
FORCES, THE VARIOUS PHENOMENA WHICH BODIES PRESENT SHOW THAT THEIR MOLECULES
ARE UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF TWO CONTRARY FORCES -- ONE WHICH TENDS TO BRING THEM
TOGETHER, THE OTHER TO SEPARATE THEM. . . . . THE FIRST IS MOLECULAR
ATTRACTION, THE SECOND FORCE IS DUE TO vis viva, OR MOVING FORCE." . . . .
(Ganot's Physics.)
Just so: it is
the nature of this moving force, the vis viva that we want to know. What is it?
. . . . .
"WE DO NOT
KNOW!" IS THE INVARIABLE ANSWER. "IT IS AN EMPTY SHADOW OF MY
IMAGINATION," explains Mr. Huxley in his Physical Basis of Life.
Thus the whole
structure of Modern Science is built on a kind of "mathematical
abstraction," on a Protean "Substance which eludes the senses,"
(Dubois Reymond,) and on effects, the shadowy and illusive will-o'-the-wisps of
a something entirely unknown to and beyond the reach of Science,
"Self-moving" atoms! Self-moving Suns, planets, and stars! But who,
then, or what are they all, if they are self-endowed with motion? Why then
should you, physicists, laugh and deride our "Self-moving ARCHAEUS"?
Mystery is rejected and scorned by Science, and "MYSTERY is the fatality
of Science," as Father Felix has truly said. . . . . Science cannot escape
it!" The language of the French preacher is ours, and we quote it in
"Isis Unveiled" (Vide Vol. I. 338-9). Who -- he asks -- who of you,
men of Science:
". . . .
has been able to penetrate the secret of the formation of a body, the generation
of a single atom? What is there, I will not say at the centre of a sun, but at
the centre of an atom? Who has sounded to the bottom the abyss in a grain of
sand? The grain of sand, gentlemen, has been studied four thousand years by
science, she has turned and returned it; she divides it and subdivides it; she
torments it with her experiments; she vexes it with her questions to snatch
from it the final word as to its secret constitution; she asks it, with an
insatiable curiosity: 'Shall I divide thee infinitesimally?' Then suspended
over this abyss, science hesitates, she stumbles, she feels dazzled, she
becomes dizzy, and in despair says: I DO NOT KNOW."
"But if you
are so fatally ignorant of the genesis and hidden nature of a grain of sand,
how should you have an intuition as to the generation of a single living being?
Whence in the living being does life come? Where does it commence? What is the
life principle?"*
Do the men of
science deny all these charges? Not at all, for here is a confession of Tyndall,
which shows how powerless is science, even over the world of matter.
"The first
marshalling of the atoms, on which all subsequent action depends,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Le
Mystere et la Science," Conferences, Pere Felix de Notre Dame; des
Mousseaux: "Hauts Phen. Magiques."
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baffles a keener
power than that of the microscope." "Through pure excess of
complexity, and long before observation can have any voice in the matter, the
most highly trained intellect, the most refined and disciplined imagination,
retires in bewilderment from the contemplation of the problem. We are struck
dumb by an astonishment which no microscope can relieve, doubting not only the
power of our instrument, but even whether we ourselves possess the intellectual
elements which will ever enable us to grapple with the ultimate structural
energies of nature."
How little is
known of the material universe, indeed, has now been suspected for years, on
the very admissions of these men of science themselves. And now there are some
materialists who would even make away with Ether -- or whatever Science calls
the infinite Substance, the noumenon of which the Buddhists call Swabhavat --
as well as with atoms, too dangerous both on account of their ancient
philosophical and their present Christian and theological associations. From
the earliest philosophers whose records passed to posterity, down to our
present age, which, if it denies "invisible Beings" in Space, can
never be so insane as to deny a plenum of some sort -- the fulness of the
universe was an accepted belief. And what it was said to contain, one learns
from Hermes Trismegistus (in Mrs. Kingsford's able rendering) -- who is made to
say:--
"Concerning
the void . . . my judgment is that it does not exist, that it never existed,
and that it never will exist, for all the various parts of the universe are
filled, as the earth also is complete and full of bodies, differing in quality
and in form, having their species and their magnitude, one larger, one smaller,
one solid, one tenuous. The larger . . . are easily perceived; the smaller . .
. are difficult to apprehend, or altogether invisible. We know only of their
existence by the sensation of feeling, wherefore many persons deny such
entities to be bodies, and regard them as simply spaces,* but it is impossible
there should be such spaces. For if indeed there should be anything outside the
universe . . . then it would be a space occupied by intelligent beings
analogous to its (the universe's) divinity . . . . . . I speak of the genii,
for I hold they dwell with us, and of the heroes who dwell above us, between
the earth and the highest airs; wherein are neither clouds nor any
tempest" (p. 84).
And we
"hold" it too. Only, as already remarked, no Eastern Initiate would
speak of spheres "above us, between the earth and the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Behold the
work of Cycles and their periodical return! Those who denied such
"Entities" (Forces) to be bodies, and called them "Spaces,"
were the prototypes of our modern "Science-struck" public, and their
official teachers, who speak of the Forces of nature as the imponderable energy
of matter and modes of motion, and yet bold electricity (for one) as being as
atomic as matter itself -- (Helmholtz). Inconsistency and contradiction reign
as much in official as in heterodox Science.
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airs," even
the highest, as there is no such division or measurement in occult speech, no
"above" as no "below," but an eternal "within,"
within two other withins, or the planes of subjectivity merging gradually into
that of terrestrial objectivity -- this being for man the last one, his own
plane. This necessary explanation may be closed here by giving, in the words of
Hermes, the belief on this particular point of the whole world of mystics:--
"There are
many orders of the gods; and in all there is an intelligent part. It is not to
be supposed they do not come within the range of our senses; on the contrary,
we perceive them, better even than those which are called visible. . . There
are then gods, superior to all appearances; after them come the gods whose
principle is spiritual; these gods being sensible, in conformity with their
double origin, manifest all things by a sensible nature, each of them
illuminating his works one by another.* The Supreme Being of Heaven, or of all
that is comprehended under this name, is Zeus, for it is by Heaven that Zeus
gives life to all things. The Supreme Being of the Sun is Light, for it is by
the disk of the Sun that we receive the benefit of the light. The thirty-six
horoscopes of the fixed stars have for supreme Being or Prince, him whose name
is Pantomorphos, or having all forms, because he gives divine forms to divers
types. The seven planets, or wandering spheres, have for Supreme Spirits
Fortune and Destiny, who uphold the eternal stability of the laws of nature
throughout incessant transformation and perpetual agitation. The ether is the
instrument or medium by which all is produced."
This is quite
philosophical and in accordance with the spirit of Eastern esotericism: for all
the Forces, such as Light, Heat, Electricity, etc., etc., are called the
"Gods" -- esoterically.
It must be so,
since the esoteric teachings in Egypt and India were identical. And, therefore,
the personification of Fohat synthesizing all the manifesting forces in nature
is a legitimate result. Moreover, as will be shown in the division that follows
this one, the real and Occult forces in nature only now begin to be known --
and even in this case, by heterodox, not orthodox, Science (See also § X., THE
COMING FORCE), though their existence, in one instance at any rate, is
corroborated, and certified to by an immense number of educated people and even
by some official men of science.
This sentence,
moreover, in Stanza VI., "Fohat sets in motion the primordial World-germs,
or the aggregation of Cosmic atoms and matter, some one way, some another, in
the opposite direction" -- looks orthodox and Scientific enough. For there
is, at all events, one fact in support of this position fully recognized by
Science, and it is this. The meteoric showers (periodical in November and
August) belong to
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Hermes
here includes as gods the sensible Forces of nature, the elements and the
phenomena of the Universe," remarks Mrs. A. Kingsford in a foot-note
explaining it very correctly. So does Eastern philosophy.
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a system moving
in an elliptical orbit around the Sun. The aphelion of this ring is 1,732
millions of miles beyond the orbit of Neptune, its plane is inclined to the
Earth's orbit at an angle of 64 [[degrees]] 3', and the direction of the
meteoric swarm moving round this orbit is contrary to that of the Earth's
revolution.
This fact,
recognized only in 1833, shows it to be the modern rediscovery of what was very
anciently known. Fohat turns with his two hands in contrary directions the
"seed" and "the curds," or Cosmic matter; is turning, in
clearer language, particles in a highly attenuated condition, and nebulae.
Outside the
boundaries of the solar system, it is other Suns, and especially the mysterious
"central Sun" (the "Abode of the invisible deity" as some
reverend gentlemen have called it) that determines the motion of bodies and
their direction. That motion serves also to differentiate the homogeneous
matter, round and between the several bodies, into elements and sub-elements
unknown to our earth, which are regarded by modern Science as distinct
individual elements, whereas they are merely temporary appearances, changing
with every small cycle within the Manvantara, some Esoteric works calling them
"Kalpic Masks."
Fohat is the key
in Occultism which opens and unriddles the multiform symbols and respective
allegories in the so-called mythology of every nation; demonstrating the
wonderful philosophy and the deep insight into the mysteries of nature, in the
Egyptian and Chaldean as well as in the Aryan religions. Fohat, shown in his
true character, proves how deeply versed were all those prehistoric nations in
every science of nature, now called physical and chemical branches of natural
philosophy. In India, Fohat is the scientific aspect of both Vishnu and Indra,
the latter older and more important in the Rig Veda than his sectarian
successor; while in Egypt Fohat was known as Toum issued of Noot,* or Osiris in
his character of a primordial god, creator of heaven and of beings (see chapter
xvii., "Book of the Dead"). For Toum is spoken of as the Protean god
who generates other gods and gives himself the form he likes; the "master
of life" "giving their vigour to the gods" (chapter lxxix.) He
is the overseer of the gods, and he "who creates spirits and gives them
shape and life"; he is "the north wind and the spirit of the
west;" and finally the "Setting Sun of Life," or the vital
electric force that leaves the body at death, wherefore the defunct begs that
Toum should give him the breath from his right nostril (positive elec-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Oh Toum,
Toum! issued from the great (female) which is in the bosom of the waters"
(the great Deep or Space) . . . "Thou, luminous through the two
Lions" (the dual Force or power of the two solar eyes, or the
electro-positive and the electro-negative forces. (See Book of the Dead, III.,
and Egyptian Pantheon, chapter ii.)
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tricity) that he
might live in his second form. Both the hieroglyph, and the text of chapter
lxii. in the "Book of the Dead," show the identity of Toum with
Fohat. The former represents a man standing erect with the hieroglyph of the
breaths in his hands. The latter says:--
"I open to
the chief of An (Heliopolis), I am Toum. I cross the water spilt by Thot-Hapi,
the lord of the horizon, and am the divider of the earth" (Fohat divides
Space and, with his Sons, the earth into seven zones) . . . .
. . . . "I
cross the heavens, and am the two Lions. I am Ra, I am Aam, I ate my heir.* . .
. . I glide on the soil of the field of Aanroo,** given me by the master of
limitless eternity. I am the germ of eternity. I am Toum, to whom eternity is
accorded. . . . "
The very words
used by Fohat in the XIth Book, and the very titles given him. In the Egyptian
Papyri the whole Cosmogony of the Secret Doctrine is found scattered about in
isolated sentences, even in the "Book of Dead." Number seven is quite
as much insisted upon and emphasized therein as in the Book of Dzyan. "The
Great Water (the Deep or Chaos) is said to be seven cubits deep" --
"cubits" standing here of course for divisions, zones, and
principles. Therein, "in the great mother, all the Gods, and the seven
great ones are born." (See chapter cviii., 4, Book of the Dead and
Egyptian Pantheon). Both Fohat and Toum are addressed as the "Great ones
of the Seven Magic Forces," who, "conquer the Serpent Apap" or
Matter.
No student of
occultism, however, ought to be betrayed, by the usual phraseology used in the
translations of Hermetic Works, into believing that the ancient Egyptians or
Greeks spoke of, and referred, monk-like, at every moment in conversation, to a
Supreme Being, God, the "One Father and Creator of all," etc., as
found on every page of such translations. No such thing indeed; and those texts
are not the original Egyptian texts. They are Greek compilations, the earliest
of which does not go beyond the early period of Neo-Platonism. No Hermetic
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* An image
expressing the succession of divine functions, the substitution from one form
into another, or the correlation of forces. Aam is the electro-positive force,
devouring all others as Saturn devoured his progeny.
** Aanroo is in
the domain of Osiris, a field divided into fourteen sections "surrounded
with an iron enclosure, within which grows the corn of life seven cubits
high," the Kama-loka of the Egyptians. Those only of the dead, who know
the names of the janitors of the "seven halls," will be admitted into
Amenti for ever; i.e., those who have passed through the seven races of each
round -- otherwise they will rest in the lower fields; "and it represents
also the seven successive Devachans, or lokas. In Amenti, one becomes pure
spirit for the eternity (xxx. 4.); while in Aanroo "the soul of the
spirit," or the defunct, is devoured each time by Uraeus -- the Serpent,
Son of the earth (in another sense the primordial vital principles in the Sun),
i.e., the Astral body of the deceased or the "Elementary" fades out
and disappears in the "Son of the earth," limited time. The soul
quits the fields of Aanroo and goes on earth under any shape it likes to
assume. (See chapter xcix., Book of the Dead.)
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work written by
Egyptians (vide "Book of the Dead") would speak of the one universal
God of the Monotheistic systems -- the one Absolute cause of all, was as
unnameable and unpronounceable in the mind of the ancient philosopher of Egypt,
as it is for ever Unknowable in the conception of Mr. Herbert Spencer. As for
the Egyptian in general, as M. Maspero well remarks, whenever he "arrived
at the notion of divine Unity, the God One was never 'God,' simply." And
Lepage Renouf very justly observed that the word Nouter, nouti, "god"
had never ceased being a generic name with the Egyptians, nor has it ever
become a personal pronoun. Every God was the "one living and unique
God" with them. Their "monotheism was purely geographical. If the
Egyptian of Memphis proclaimed the unity of Phtah to the exclusion of Ammon,
the Thebeian Egyptian proclaimed the unity of Ammon to the exclusion of
Phtah," as we now see done in India in the case of the Saivas and the
Vaishnavas. "Ra, the 'One God' at Heliopolis is not the same as Osiris,
the 'One God' at Abydos, and can be worshipped side by side with him, without
being absorbed by his neighbour. The one god is but the god of the nome or the
city, noutir, noutti, and does not exclude the existence of the one god of that
town or of the neighbouring nome. In short, whenever speaking of Egyptian
Monotheism, one ought to speak of the Gods 'One' of Egypt, and not of the one
god" (Maspero, in the Guide au Musee de Boulak.) It is by this feature,
pre-eminently Egyptian, that the authenticity of the various so-called Hermetic
Books, ought to be tested; and it is totally absent from the Greek fragments
known as such. This proves that a Greek Neo-Platonic, or even a Christian hand,
had no small share in the editing of such works. Of course the fundamental
philosophy is there, and in many a place -- intact. But the style has been
altered and smoothed in a monotheistic direction, as much, if not more than
that of the Hebrew Genesis in its Greek and Latin translations. They may be
Hermetic works, but not works written by either of the two Hermes -- or rather,
by Thot (Hermes) the directing intelligence of the Universe (See ch. xciv.,
Book of the Dead), or by Thot, his terrestrial incarnation called Trismegistus,
of the Rosetta stone.
But all is
doubt, negation, iconoclasm and brutal indifference, in our age of the hundred
"isms" and no religion. Every idol is broken save the Golden Calf.
Unfortunately,
no nation or nations can escape their Karmic fate any more than units and
individuals do. History itself is dealt with by the so-called historians as
unscrupulously as legendary lore. For this, Augustin Thierry has made the
amende honorable, if one may believe his biographers. He deplored the erroneous
principle that made them all (the would-be historiographers) lose their way,
and each presume to
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correct
tradition, "that vox populi which nine times out of ten is vox Dei;"
and he finally admitted that in legend alone rests real history; for
"legend," he adds, "is living tradition, and three times out of four
it is truer than what we call History."*
While
Materialists deny everything in the universe, save matter, Archaeologists are
trying to dwarf antiquity, and seek to destroy every claim to ancient Wisdom by
tampering with Chronology. Our present-day Orientalists and Historical writers
are to ancient History that which the white ants are to the buildings in India.
More dangerous even than those Termites, the modern Archaeologists -- the
"authorities" of the future in the matter of Universal History -- are
preparing for the History of past nations the fate of certain edifices in
tropical countries: "History will tumble down and break into atoms in the
lap of the twentieth century, devoured to its foundations by her
annalists," said Michelet. Very soon, indeed, under their combined
efforts, it will share the fate of those ruined cities in both Americas, which
lie deeply buried under impassable virgin forests. Historical facts will remain
as concealed from view by the inextricable jungles of modern hypotheses,
denials and scepticism. But very happily actual History repeats herself, for
she proceeds, like everything else, in cycles; and dead facts and events
deliberately drowned in the sea of modern scepticism will ascend once more and
reappear on the surface. . . .
In our Book II.
the very fact that a work with pretensions to philosophy, and which is an
exposition of the most abstruse problems, has to be commenced by tracing the
evolution of mankind from what are regarded as supernatural beings -- Spirits
-- will arouse the most malevolent criticism. Believers in, and the defenders
of, the Secret Doctrine, however, will have to bear the accusation of madness
and worse, as philosophically as for long years already the writer has done.
Whenever a Theosophist is taxed with insanity, he ought to reply by quoting
from Montesquieu's "Lettres Persanes." "By opening so freely
their lunatic asylums to their supposed madmen, men only seek to assure each
other that they are not themselves mad."
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[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------
* Revue des Deux
Mondes, 1865, pp. 157 and 158.
END OF VOL. I.
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THE SECRET
DOCTRINE
BY H. P.
BLAVATSKY
VOLUME 2
THEOSOPHCAL
UNIVERSITY PRESS ASCII EDITION
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THE SECRET
DOCTRINE.
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[[blank]]
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THE SECRET
DOCTRINE:
THE SYNTHESIS
OF
SCIENCE,
RELIGION, AND PHILOSOPHY.
BY
H. P. BLAVATSKY
AUTHOR OF
"ISIS UNVEILED."
"There is
no Religion higher than Truth."
VOL. II. --
ANTHROPOGENESIS.
London:
THE THEOSOPHICAL
PUBLISHING COMPANY, LIMITED.
7 Duke Street,
Adelphi, W. C.
WILLIAM Q.
JUDGE,
117 Nassau
Street, New York.
THE MANAGER OF
THE THEOSOPHIST,
Adyar, Madras
---
1888.
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"Entered
according to Act of Congress in the year 1888, by H. P. Blavatsky,
in the Office of
the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C."
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This Work
I Dedicate to
all True Theosophists,
In every
Country,
And of every
Race,
For they called
it forth, and for them it was recorded.
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[[blank]]
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TABLE OF
CONTENTS.
-------
VOLUME SECOND.
PRELIMINARY
NOTES. PAGE.
On the Archaic
Stanzas, and the Four Prehistoric Continents ... 1
The Imperishable
Sacred Land ... 6
The Hyperborean
... 7
Lemuria ... 7
Atlantis ... 8
The Tropics at
the Pole ... 11
-------
BOOK II. -- PART
I.
ANTHROPOGENESIS.
STANZAS FROM THE
BOOK OF DZYAN... 15
-------
STANZA I. --
BEGINNINGS OF SENTIENT LIFE ... 22
Man, the Third
Logos ... 25
The Celestial
Governors of Humanity ... 29
Parent Stars and
Sister Planets ... 33
Three Kinds of
Light ... 35
The Numbers of
Creation ... 39
The First War in
Heaven ... 45
-------
TWO ANTEDILUVIAN
ASTRONOMERS ... 47
-------
STANZA II. --
NATURE UNAIDED FAILS ... 52
The Monsters of
Chaos ... 53
The "Double
Dragon" ... 57
Who are the
Flames? ... 63
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PAGE.
THE CHRONOLOGY
OF THE BRAHMINS ... 66
The Race that
never dies ... 67
Cosmogony, an
intelligent plan ... 73
-------
STANZA III. --
ATTEMPTS TO CREATE MAN ... 75
The various
classes of Creators ... 77
Man, a god in
animal form ... 81
"Fires,"
"Sparks," and "Flames" ... 83
-------
STANZA IV. --
CREATION OF THE FIRST RACES ... 86
Pitris of the
Gods and Demons ... 89
What Prometheus
symbolized ... 95
The Hammer of
Thor ... 99
The Divine
Rebels ... 103
Man's Father,
the Sun ... 105
-------
STANZA V. -- THE
EVOLUTION OF THE SECOND RACE ... 109
The Secret Work
of Chiram ... 113
The outgrowth of
Races ... 117
Leda, Castor, and
Pollux ... 121
Jah-Hovah
Androgynous ... 125
The Jewish
God-name ... 127
-------
STANZA VI.-THE
EVOLUTION OF THE SWEAT-BORN ... 131
Bi-sexual
reproduction ... 133
The Virgin Third
Race ... 135
A Few Words
about Deluges and Noah's ... 138
Various Deluges
... 141
The Arkite
Symbols ... 143
Could Men Exist
18,000,000 Years ago? ... 148
Spontaneous
Generation ... 151
The Solar System
in the Puranas ... 155
Oceans of
Carbonic Acid? ... 159
-------
STANZA VII. --
FROM THE SEMI-DIVINE DOWN TO THE FIRST HUMAN RACES ... 161
Monads and
Rounds ... 167
A Suggestive
Explanation ... 171
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PAGE.
A Saint --
Hypnotised ... 175
Sweat-born and
Androgynes ... 177
-------
STANZA VIII. --
EVOLUTION OF THE ANIMAL MAMMALIANS -- THE FIRST FALL ... 180
Archaic Zoology
... 182
The Sin of the
Mindless Men ... 183
-------
WHAT MAY BE THE
OBJECTIONS TO THE FOREGOING ... 185
-------
STANZA IX. --
THE FINAL EVOLUTION OF MAN ... 191
The Hairy Men of
China ... 195
The Separation
of Sexes ... 197
Primeval
Language ... 199
-------
EDENS, SERPENTS
AND DRAGONS ... 202
The Garden of
Eden a College ... 203
Flying Camels
... 205
Two Schools of
Magic ... 211
The Flying
Dragons ... 219
-------
THE SONS OF GOD
AND THE SACRED ISLAND0 ... 220
The Magicians of
Atlantis ... 223
-------
STANZA X. -- THE
HISTORY OF THE FOURTH RACE ... 227
The Mysteries
among the Mayas ... 229
Satanic Myths
... 233
Mahasura and
Satan ... 237
Man, the pale
shadow of God ... 243
The curse of
Vasishta ... 247
-------
ARCHAIC
TEACHINGS IN THE PURANAS AND GENESIS ... 251
From worm to man
... 255
Identity of Human
and Animal embryos ... 259
-------
A PANORAMIC VIEW
OF THE EARLY RACES ... 263
The Natural
"Fall" ... 267
The Symbolism of
Kronos ... 269
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PAGE.
STANZA X. --
Continued ... 271
The Golden Age
... 273
The Devil's
outside Humanity ... 275
-------
ARE GIANTS A
FICTION? ... 277
The Seven Virgin
Youths ... 281
The Tibetan
Lilith ... 285
The Races of Men
not all Human ... 287
-------
THE RACES WITH
THE "THIRD EYE" ... 289
Occult
Physiology ... 295
The Evolution of
the Eve ... 299
The Third Eye is
now a Gland ... 301
-------
THE PRIMEVAL
MANUS OF HUMANITY ... 307
The Four Earlier
Races ... 311
The Esoteric
Meaning of "Fish" ... 313
-------
STANZA XI. --
THE CIVILIZATION AND DESTRUCTION OF THE FOURTH AND FIFTH RACES ... 316
Degeneration of
Mankind ... 319
Atlantis now
Ocean Floor ... 325
Changes of
Climate ... 329
How to Read
Symbols ... 335
The Antediluvian
Buddhas ... 339
-------
CYCLOPEAN RUINS AND COLOSSAL STONES AS
WITNESSES TO GIANTS 341
Living,
Speaking, and Moving Stones ... 345
It takes a God
to become a Man ... 349
-------
STANZA XII. --
THE FIFTH RACE AND ITS DIVINE INSTRUCTORS 351
The Astronomical
Dragon ... 353
Serpents and
Dragons under different Symbolisms ... 355
The Sidereal and
Cosmic Glyphs ... 357
Our Divine
Instructors ... 365
The Origin of
the Satanic Myth ... 378
Noah was a Kabir,
hence he must have been a Demon ... 390
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PAGE.
The oldest
Persian Traditions about the Polar, and the Submerged Continents ... 393
Western
Speculations founded on the Greek and Puranic Traditions ... 401 [[sic]]
The
"Curse" from a Philosophical point of view ... 409
-------
ADDITIONAL
FRAGMENTS FROM A COMMENTARY ON THE VERSES OF STANZA XII. ... 423
The Oldest
Records about Atlantis ... 425
The Doom of
Atlantis ... 427
The Races,
Sub-Races, and Family Races ... 434
CONCLUSION ...
437
-------
BOOK II. -- PART
II.
THE ARCHAIC
SYMBOLISM OF THE WORLD-RELIGIONS.
ESOTERIC TENETS
CORROBORATED IN EVERY SCRIPTURE ... 449
-------
§ XVI.
ADAM-ADAMI ... 452
The Cabalistic
Four Adams ... 457
-------
XVII. THE
"HOLY OF HOLIES": ITS DEGRADATION ... 459
Christian
Symbolism ... 463
The
"Four-faced" Brahm ... 465
The Old and the New
Jehovah ... 469
-------
XVIII. ON THE
MYTH OF THE "FALLEN ANGEL," IN ITS VARIOUS ASPECTS ... 475
The Evil Spirit:
Who and What? ... 475
The Gods of
Light proceed from the Gods of Darkness 483
The many
meanings of the "War in Heaven" ... 492
-------
XIX. IS PLEROMA
SATAN'S LAIR? ... 506
Jehovah's
Personating Spirit ... 509
The Mysterium
Magnum ... 512
The Logos and
Satan are One ... 515
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PAGE.
XX. PROMETHEUS
THE TITAN ... 519
His Origin in
Ancient India ... 519
The Boon he
Gives ... 523
-------
XXI.
ENOICHION-HENOCH ... 529
-------
XXII. THE
SYMBOLTSM OF THE MYSTERY NAMES IAO, AND JEHOVAH 536
Cross and Circle
... 545
The Fall of the
Cross into Matter ... 553
-------
XXIII. THE
UPANISHADS IN GNOSTIC LITERATURE ... 563
When Time be no
longer ... 565
The Divine
Self's Wisdom ... 566
-------
XXIV. THE CROSS
AND THE PYTHAGOREAN DECADE ... 573
Poseidon's Five
Ministers ... 577
The Mystery of
the Number Six ... 583
The Cross and
Christian After-thought ... 587
-------
XXV. THE
MYSTERIES OP THE HEBDOMAD ... 590
Saptaparna ...
590
The Tetraktis in
relation to the Heptagon ... 598
The Septenary
Element in the Vedas ... 605
The Septenary in
the Exoteric Works ... 611
Seven in
Astronomy, Science and Magic ... 618
The Seven Souls
of the Egyptologists ... 630
---------------------
BOOK II. -- PART
III.
ADDENDA.
SCIENCE AND THE
SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED.
§§
I. ARCHAIC, OR
MODERN ANTHROPOLOGY? ... 645
The Occult and
the Modern Doctrines ... 649