Theosophical Society,
Secret Doctrine Text Version
THE
SECRET DOCTRINE
BY
H. P. BLAVATSKY
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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 "
[[devanagari
characters]]
"There
is no Religion higher than Truth."
VOL.
I. -- COSMOGENESIS.
THE
THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING COMPANY, LIMITED.
7,
WILLIAM
Q. JUDGE,
117,
THE
MANAGER OF THE THEOSOPHIST,
Adyar,
---
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.
-------
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.
-------
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
-------
BOOK
I. -- PART I.
COSMIC
EVOLUTION.
SEVEN
STANZAS FROM THE BOOK OF DZYAN ... 27
-------
STANZA
I. -- THE NIGHT OF THE UNIVERSE... 35
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
-------
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
-------
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
-------
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
-------
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
-------
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
-------
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
-------
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 Island ... 207
-------
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
-------
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
---------------------
BOOK
I. -- PART II.
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
-------
II.
THE MYSTERY LANGUAGE AND ITS KEYS ... 310
Egypt's
many Religions ... 311
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
Union of Chaos and Spirit ... 343
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
-------
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
-------
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
-------
XV.
ON KWAN-SHI-YIN AND KWAN-YIN ... 470
Kwan-Shi-Yin
and Phallicism ... 471
The
Real Meaning ... 472
---------------------
BOOK
I. -- PART III.
SCIENCE
AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED.
§§
I.
REASONS FOR THESE ADDENDA ... 477
Occultism
versus Materialism ... 479
The
Sabbath of the Mystic ... 481
-------
II.
MODERN PHYSICISTS ARE PLAYING AT BLIND MAN'S BUFF ... 482
-------
III.
AN LUMEN SIT CORPUS NEC NON? ... 483
The
Hypothetical Ether ... 485
Scientific
Theories of its Constitution ... 489
-------
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
-------
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
-------
VII.
AN ATTACK ON THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF FORCE BY A MAN OF SCIENCE ... 523
Ether
and Atoms ... 527
-------
VIII.
LIFE, FORCE, OR GRAVITY? ... 529
Dr.
Richardson on Nervous Ether ... 531
The
Senses and their Action ... 535
Too
much "Life" may Kill ... 539
-------
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
-------
X.
THE COMING FORCE ... 554
Mr.
Keeley, an Unconscious Occultist ... 557
Inter-Etheric
Waves ... 561
The
Secrets of Sound and Odour ... 565
-------
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
-------
XIII.
THE MODERN NEBULAR THEORY ... 588
Forces
are Emanations ... 591
What
is the Nebula? ... 595
-------
XIV.
FORCES -- MODES OF MOTION OR INTELLIGENCES? ... 601
The
Vital Principle ... 603
Occult
and Physical Science ... 605
-------
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
-------
XVI.
CYCLIC EVOLUTION AND KARMA ... 634
Karmic
Cycles and Universal Ethics ... 637
Destiny
and Karma ... 639
Karma-Nemesis
... 643
-------
XVII.
THE ZODIAC AND ITS ANTIQUITY ... 647
The
Jewish Patriarchs and the Signs of the Zodiac ... 651
Zodiacal
Cycles ... 656
Hindu
Astronomy ... 661
-------
XVIII.
SUMMARY OF THE MUTUAL POSITION ... 668
Science
Confesses her Ignorance ... 669
Materialism
is leading Europe towards a catastrophe ... 675
-------
N.B.
-- The Index and Glossary will be found at the close of Volume II.
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INTRODUCTORY.
-------
"Gently
to hear, kindly to judge."
--
SHAKESPEARE.
SINCE
the appearance of Theosophical literature in England, it has become customary
to call its teachings "Esoteric Buddhism." And, having become a habit
-- as an old proverb based on daily experience has it -- "Error runs down
an inclined plane, while Truth has to laboriously climb its way up hill."
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
India are ourselves the real culprits, although, at the time, we did our best
to correct the mistake. (See Theosophist, June, 1883.) To avoid this deplorable
misnomer was easy; the spelling of the word had only to be altered, and by
common consent both pronounced and written "Budhism," instead of
"Buddhism." Nor is the latter term correctly spelt and pronounced, as
it ought to be called, in English, Buddhaism, and its votaries
"Buddhaists."
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
Mount Baibhar (the Webhara of the Pali MSS.). This cave was in Rajagriha, the
ancient capital of Mogadha, and was the Cheta cave of Fa-hian, as rightly
suspected by some archaeologists.**
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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[[Vol.
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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 India; i.e., once they
were transferred into China, Japan, Siam, and Burmah. How the pristine purity
of these grand revelations was dealt with may be seen in studying some of the
so-called "esoteric" Buddhist schools of antiquity in their modern garb,
not only in China and other Buddhist countries in general, but even in not a
few schools in Thibet, left to the care of uninitiated Lamas and Mongolian
innovators.
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 India, the last of the precious
manuscripts were secured and hidden during the reign of the Emperor Akbar.*
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 Europe
has the complete text is very doubtful, and the future may have very
disagreeable surprises in store for the Orientalists.
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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.)
**
Karakorum mountains, Western Tibet.
***
According to the same tradition the now desolate regions of the waterless land
of Tarim -- a true wilderness in the heart of Turkestan -- were in the days of
old covered with flourishing and wealthy cities. At present, hardly a few
verdant oases relieve its dead solitude. One such, sprung on the sepulchre of a
vast city swallowed by and buried under the sandy soil of the desert, belongs
to no one, but is often visited by Mongolians and Buddhists. The same tradition
speaks of immense subterranean abodes, of large corridors filled with tiles and
cylinders. It may be an idle rumour, and it may be an actual fact.
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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 Paris, complained in 1881.
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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 Babylon; to
record the vast cycle of astronomical observations of the Chaldean Magi; to
justify the tradition of their splendid and eminently occult literature, what
now remains? -- only a few fragments, said to be by Berosus.
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 Babylon?
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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[[Vol.
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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 Central Asia, are still to be found.
This civilization is undeniably prehistoric. And how can there be civilization
without a literature, in some form, without annals or chronicles? Common sense
alone ought to supplement the broken links in the history of departed nations.
The gigantic, unbroken wall of the mountains that hem in the whole table-land
of Tibet, from the upper course of the river Khuan-Khe down to the Kara-Korum
hills, witnessed a civilization during millenniums of years, and would have
strange secrets to tell mankind. The Eastern and Central portions of those
regions -- the Nan-Schayn and the Altyne-taga -- were once upon a time covered
with cities that could well vie with Babylon. A whole geological period has
swept over the land, since those cities breathed their last, as the mounds of
shifting sand, and the sterile and now dead soil of the immense central plains
of the basin of Tarim testify. The borderlands alone are superficially known to
the traveller. Within those table-lands of sand there is water, and fresh oases
are found blooming there, wherein no European foot has ever yet ventured, or
trodden the now treacherous soil. Among these verdant oases there are some
which are entirely inaccessible even to the native profane traveller.
Hurricanes may "tear up the sands and sweep whole plains away," they
are powerless to destroy that which is beyond their reach. Built deep in the
bowels of the earth, the subterranean stores are secure; and as their entrances
are concealed in such oases, there is little fear that any one should discover
them, even should several armies invade the sandy wastes where --
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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 Afghanistan, long before the days
of Alexander, and brings legendary lore to that effect as corroboration. The
Russian traveller, Colonel (now General) Prjevalsky, found quite close to the
oasis of Tchertchen, the ruins of two enormous cities, the oldest of which was,
according to local tradition, ruined 3,000 years ago by a hero and giant; and
the other by the Mongolians in the tenth century of our era. "The
emplacement of the two cities is now covered, owing to shifting sands and the
desert wind, with strange and heterogeneous relics; with broken china and
kitchen utensils and human bones. The natives often find copper and gold coins,
melted silver, ingots, diamonds, and turquoises, and what is the most
remarkable -- broken glass. . . . ." "Coffins of some undecaying
wood, or material, also, within which beautifully preserved embalmed bodies are
found. . . . . The male mummies are all extremely tall powerfully built men
with long waving hair. . . . . A vault was found with twelve dead men sitting
in it. Another time, in a separate coffin, a young girl was discovered by us.
Her eyes were closed with golden discs, and the jaws held firm by a golden
circlet running from under the chin across the top of the head. Clad in a
narrow
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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 India and Mongolia, when they speak of immense libraries reclaimed from the
sand, together with various reliques of ancient MAGIC lore, which have all been
safely stowed away.
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 Philadelphia, but we cannot understand how any danger could arise
from the revelation of such a purely philosophic doctrine, as, e.g., the
evolution of the planetary chains."
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 Temple,
wherein MYSTERIES have ever been made a discipline and stimulus to virtue. This
is very old news, and was repeatedly made known by the great adepts, from
Pythagoras and Plato down to the Neoplatonists. It was the new religion of the
Nazarenes that wrought a change for the worse -- in the policy of centuries.
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 St. Peters-
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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 [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[blank]]
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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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[[Vol.
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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."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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 school of
Buddhism (which still exists in Nepaul), speculate only upon the active
condition of this "Essence," which they call Svabhavat, and deem it
foolish to theorise upon the abstract and "unknowable" power in its
passive condition. Hence they are called atheists by both Christian theologians
and modern scientists, for neither of the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
*
Nominalists, arguing with
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 7 PROEM.
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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[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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, I. 8, and Devi Bhagavata Purana. The author of the Four Lectures on
the Bhagavad Gita, says, in speaking of Mulaprakriti: "From its (the
Logos') objective standpoint, Parabrahmam appears to it as Mulaprakriti. . . .
Of course this Mulaprakriti is material to it, as any material object is
material to us. . . . Parabrahmam is an unconditioned and absolute reality, and
Mulaprakriti is a sort of veil thrown over it." (Theosophist, Vol. VIII.,
p. 304.)
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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 13 PROEM.
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 14 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
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]]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 15 PROEM.
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."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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]]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 17 PROEM.
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 18 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 19 PROEM.
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
Union of the Rose and Cross," the great mystery of occult generation, from
whence the name -- Rosicrucians (Rose Cross)!
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 23 PROEM.
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 India of the
post-Mahabharatan period are not found in the Vedas, nor are they to be met
with in the original Stanzas, but only their equivalents. The reader who is not
a Theosophist, is once more invited to regard all that which follows as a fairy
tale, if he likes; at best as one of the yet unproven speculations of
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 24 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
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.
---------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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PART
I.
COSMIC
EVOLUTION.
---------------------
SEVEN
STANZAS TRANSLATED WITH COMMENTARIES
FROM
THE
SECRET
BOOK OF DZYAN.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page 26]]
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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[[Vol.
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COSMIC
EVOLUTION.
In
Seven Stanzas translated from the Book of Dzyan.
---------------------
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 SEVEN WAYS TO BLISS WERE NOT. THE GREAT CAUSES OF MISERY WERE NOT, FOR
THERE WAS NO ONE TO PRODUCE AND GET ENSNARED BY THEM.
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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[[Vol.
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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 OCEAN OF LIFE.
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 OCEAN OF IMMORTALITY, 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, OR
FATHER AND MOTHER.
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 FORTH AS THE
SON; HE IS THE BLAZING DIVINE DRAGON OF WISDOM; THE ONE IS FOUR, AND FOUR TAKES
TO ITSELF THREE,** AND THE UNION PRODUCES THE SAPTA, IN WHOM ARE THE SEVEN
WHICH BECOME THE TRIDASA (OR THE HOSTS AND THE MULTITUDES). 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, AND TURNS THE UPPER INTO A SHORELESS SEA OF FIRE, AND THE ONE MANIFESTED
INTO THE GREAT WATERS.
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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[[Vol.
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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 SPARKS, THE SACRED ANIMALS, AND THE
MESSENGERS OF THE SACRED FATHERS WITHIN THE HOLY FOUR.
4.
THIS WAS THE ARMY OF THE VOICE -- THE DIVINE MOTHER OF THE SEVEN. THE SPARKS OF
THE SEVEN ARE SUBJECT TO, AND THE SERVANTS OF, THE FIRST, THE SECOND, THE
THIRD, THE FOURTH, THE FIFTH, THE SIXTH, AND THE SEVENTH OF THE SEVEN. THESE
"SPARKS" ARE CALLED SPHERES, TRIANGLES, CUBES, LINES, AND MODELLERS;
FOR THUS STANDS THE ETERNAL NIDANA -- THE OEAOHOO, WHICH IS:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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 SPARKS, AND JOINS THEM.
3.
HE IS THEIR GUIDING SPIRIT AND LEADER. WHEN HE COMMENCES WORK, HE SEPARATES THE
SPARKS OF THE LOWER KINGDOM THAT FLOAT AND THRILL WITH JOY IN THEIR RADIANT
DWELLINGS, AND FORMS THEREWITH THE GERMS OF WHEELS. HE PLACES THEM IN THE SIX
DIRECTIONS OF SPACE, AND ONE IN THE MIDDLE -- THE CENTRAL WHEEL.
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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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 ONE WAY, 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. THUS
ACTS FOHAT FROM ONE TWILIGHT TO THE OTHER, DURING SEVEN ETERNITIES.
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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[[Vol.
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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 SPARKS, THAT DRAW FROM THE THREE-TONGUED FLAME SHOT OUT BY THE
SEVEN -- THEIR FLAME -- THE BEAMS AND SPARKS OF ONE MOON REFLECTED IN THE
RUNNING WAVES OF ALL THE RIVERS OF EARTH.
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 35 STANZA I.
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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[[Vol.
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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.
-------
STANZA
I. -- Continued.
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
-------
STANZA
I. -- Continued.
3.
. . . UNIVERSAL MIND WAS NOT, FOR THERE WERE NO AH-HI (celestial beings) TO
CONTAIN (hence to manifest) IT (a).
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[[Vol.
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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.
-------
STANZA
I. -- Continued.
4.
THE SEVEN WAYS TO BLISS (Moksha* or Nirvana) WERE NOT (a). THE GREAT CAUSES OF
MISERY (Nidana** and Maya) WERE NOT, FOR THERE WAS NO ONE TO PRODUCE AND GET
ENSNARED BY THEM (b).
(a)
There are seven "Paths" or "Ways" to the bliss of
Non-Exist-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
*
Nippang in China; Neibban in Burmah; or Moksha in India.
**
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).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 39 THE CAUSES OF BEING.
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
-------
STANZA
I. -- Continued.
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 41 WHAT IS DARKNESS IN PHILOSOPHY?
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.")
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 43 MOTIONS, THE "GREAT BREATH."
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 44 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
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.*
-------
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 45 BEING AND NON-BEING.
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 49 ALAYA, THE UNIVERSAL SOUL.
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]]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 51 CAN THE FINITE CONCEIVE THE INFINITE?
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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[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 53 THE STATE OF PARANIRVANA.
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 54 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 55 THE ABSOLUTE KNOWS ITSELF NOT.
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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 57 THE GERM OF LIFE.
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 58 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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.")
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 61 DIVINE THOUGHT, DIVINE THINKERS.
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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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]]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 119 THE EVOLUTION OF THE PRINCIPLES.
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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 121 THE MYSTERY OF THE FIRE.
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,
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 123 THE SECRET OF THE ELEMENTS.
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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]]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 125 THE REAL MEANING OF THE TABERNACLE.
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 127 THE DRAGONS OF SECRET WISDOM.
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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[[Vol.
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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]]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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]]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 141 WERE THE ANCIENTS IGNORANT OF THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES?
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.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 145 THE COSMIC PLANE, AN ILLUSION.
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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 147 PRIMORDIAL SUBSTANCE, A REALITY.
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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 149 THE MOON IS NOT DEAD, BUT ONLY SLEEPETH.
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]]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 151 NATURE CAN NEVER CEASE.
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."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 153 DESCENDING AND RE-ASCENDING STATES.
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 155 EXCHANGE OF LIFE-PRINCIPLES.
"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]]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 157 OPINIONS DIFFER AND YET AGREE.
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 159 THE TRANSMIGRATIONS OF THE EGO.
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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 161 A RE-ADJUSTMENT OF FACTS.
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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 162 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 163 LIKE QUESTIONS, LIKE ANSWERS.
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 164 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
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."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 165 AN AUTHORITATIVE LETTER.
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 --
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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]]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 191 THE PRELIMINARY CREATION OF MAN.
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 193 THE FIRST CAUSE OF SIN.
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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 197 ILDA-BAOTH-JEHOVAH.
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 198 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 199 THE SEVEN PLANES.
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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,
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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]]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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]]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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]]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 231 THE DIFFERENTIATION OF THE "ONE."
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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[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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]]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 235 DII SUNT DEMONES INVERSI.
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 237 THE IMMORTAL ROOT.
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 238 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 239 CHALDEAN METAPHYSICS.
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."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 240 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
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.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 241 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE KABALA.
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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 243 OCCULT AND KABALISTIC DOCTRINES.
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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]]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 247 SPIRIT ALONE IS HELPLESS ON EARTH.
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 249 MATTER, LIFE AND SUBSTANCE.
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 251 THE FOUR DIMENSIONS OF SPACE.
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.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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]]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 253 THE GREAT ARCHAEUS.
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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[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 255 BUT WHY SLANDER THE INDIAN HIEROPHANTS?
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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
1, Page]] 257 AKASA IS NOT ETHER.
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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[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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]]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 271 OCCULTISM IN THE UPANISHADS.
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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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]]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
---------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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[[blank]]
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[[Vol.
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BOOK
I., PART II.
THE
EVOLUTION
OF SYMBOLISM
IN
ITS APPROXIMATE ORDER.
---------------------
EXPLANATORY
SECTIONS.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page 302]]
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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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-
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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,
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 317 TRUTH MUST PREVAIL AT LAST.
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]]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 318 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
"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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 319 MOSES COPIED FROM SARGON.
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."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 320 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
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]]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 321 THE CROSS, A PHALLIC SYMBOL.
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."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 322 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
"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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 323 IDENTITY OF THE ANCIENT SYMBOLS.
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).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 324 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 325 THE IMPARTIALITY OF SCIENTIFIC DENIALS.
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.
-------
§
III.
.
c§
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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[[Vol.
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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." (
"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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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.)
--------------
§
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)]]
-------------------------------------------------
*
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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[[Vol.
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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)]]
-------------------------------------------------
*
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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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)]]
-------------------------------------------------
*
We use the term as one accepted and sanctioned by use, and therefore more
comprehensible to the reader.
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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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)]]
-------------------------------------------------
*
In the Indian Pantheon the double-sexed Logos is Brahma, the Creator, whose
seven "mind born" sons are the primeval Rishis -- the
"Builders."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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.
-------------
§
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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[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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."
--------------
c--------------
§
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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Vol.
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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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[[Vol.
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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)]]
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*
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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[[Vol.
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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)]]
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*
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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[[Vol.
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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)]]
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*
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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[[Vol.
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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)]]
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