The Secret Doctrine, Volume 2 quotes

… a land in the neighbourhood of Scythia and the Danube.16 [pg 007] It was a real Continent, a bonâ fide land, which knew no winter in those early days, nor have its sorry remains more than one night and day during the year, even now.

The nocturnal shadows never fall upon it, said the Greeks; for it is the “Land of the Gods,” the favourite abode of Apollo, the God of light, and its inhabitants are his beloved priests and servants.

This may be regarded as poetized fiction now; but it was poetized truth then.

The last serious change occurred some 12,000 years ago,20 and was followed by the submersion of Plato's little Atlantic island, which he calls Atlantis after its parent continent.

Geography was part of the Mysteries, in days of old.

Says the Zohar:

It constructed Rûpas; soft Stones that hardened, hard Plants that softened. Visible from invisible, Insects and small Lives. She shook them off her back whenever they overran the Mother.... After thirty crores, she turned round. She lay on her back: on her side....

She would call no Sons of Heaven, she would ask no Sons of Wisdom.

She created from her own Bosom. She evolved Water-Men, terrible and bad.

She shook them off her back whenever they overran the Mother.... After thirty crores, she turned round. She lay on her back: on her side.... She would call no Sons of Heaven, she would ask no Sons of Wisdom.

She created from her own Bosom.

She evolved Water-Men, terrible and bad.

She shook them off her back whenever they overran the Mother.... After thirty crores, she turned round. She lay on her back: on her side.... She would call no Sons of Heaven, she would ask no Sons of Wisdom. She created from her own Bosom.

She evolved Water-Men, terrible and bad.

6. The Water-Men, terrible and bad, she herself created from the remains of others. From the dross and slime of her First, Second, and Third, she formed them. The Dhyâni came and looked ...

9.

Mother-Water, the Great Sea, wept.

She arose, she disappeared in the Moon, which had lifted her, which had given her birth.

15. Seven times seven Shadows of Future Men were born, each of his own Colour and Kind. Each inferior to his Father.

The Fathers, the Boneless, could give no Life to Beings with Bones.

Their progeny were Bhûta, with neither Form nor Mind. Therefore they are called the Chhâyâ Race.

The Spirit of the Earth called to his help the Solar Fire. These Three produced in their joint efforts a good Rûpa. It could stand, walk, run, recline, or fly.

Yet it was still but a Chhâyâ, a Shadow with no Sense....

17. The Breath needed a Form; the Fathers gave it. The Breath needed a Gross Body; the Earth moulded it. The Breath needed the Spirit of Life; the Solar Lhas breathed it into its Form. The Breath needed a Mirror of its Body;

24. The Sons of Wisdom, the Sons of Night, ready for rebirth, came down. They saw the vile forms of the First Third.

“We can choose,” said the Lords, “we have wisdom.”

Some entered the Chhâyâs. Some projected a Spark. Some deferred till the Fourth. From their own Rûpa they filled [pg 021] the Kâma. Those who entered became Arhats. Those who received but a Spark, remained destitute of knowledge; the Spark burned low.

26. When the Sweat-born produced the Egg-born, the twofold, the mighty, the powerful with bones, the Lords of Wisdom said:

“Now shall we create.”

27. The Third Race became the Vâhan of the Lords of Wisdom. It created Sons of Will and Yoga, by Kriyâshakti it created them, the Holy Fathers, Ancestors of the Arhats....

According to the Occult Doctrine, this Planet is our Earth's primary, and its spiritual prototype. Hence, Shukra's car (Venus-Lucifer's) is said to be drawn by an Ogdoad of “earth-born horses,” while the steeds of the chariots of the other Planets are different.

Every sin committed on Earth is felt by Ushanas-Shukra.

The Guru of the Daityas is the Guardian Spirit of the Earth and Men. Every change on Shukra is felt on, and reflected by, the Earth.

The Absolute is not to be defined, and no mortal or immortal has ever seen or comprehended it during the periods of Existence.

The mutable cannot know the Immutable, nor can that which lives perceive Absolute Life.

“Therefore, man cannot know higher Beings than his own Progenitors.” [pg 038] “Nor shall he worship them,” but he ought to learn how he came into the world.

for both the attributes and the genealogies were inseparably linked with cosmogonical symbols, the “Gods” being the life and animating “soul-principle” of the various regions of the Universe. Nowhere and by no people was speculation allowed to range beyond those manifested Gods.

The boundless and infinite Unity remained with every nation a virgin forbidden soil, untrodden by man's thought, untouched by fruitless speculation.

The only reference made to it was the brief conception of its diastolic and systolic property, of its periodical expansion, or dilatation, and contraction.

Whether they had or had not better means—and it is maintained that they had them as is evidenced by their Zodiacs—still the chronology of the ancient Brâhmans shall now be given as faithfully as possible.

No greater riddle exists in Science, no problem is more hopelessly insoluble, than the question: How old—even approximately—are the Sun and Moon, the Earth and Man?

What does Modern Science know [pg 070] of the duration of the Ages of the World, or even of the length of Geological Periods?

It is true that Science can hardly be blamed for it.

Indeed, in the Cimmerian darkness of the prehistoric ages, the explorers are lost in a labyrinth, whose great corridors are doorless, allowing no visible exit into the archaic past.

Lost in the maze of their own conflicting speculations, rejecting, as they have always done, the evidence of Eastern tradition, without any clue, or one single certain milestone to guide them, what can Geologists or Anthropologists do but pick up the slender thread of Ariadne …

There were good “giants” in days of old just as there are bad “pigmies” now; and the Râkshasas and Yakshas of Lankâ are no worse than our modern dynamiters, and certain Christian and civilized generals during modern wars. Nor are they myths.

He who would laugh at Briareus and Orion ought to abstain from going to, or even talking of, Carnac or Stonehenge.

remarks somewhere a modern writer.

We are in a barren period; the eighteenth century, during which the malignant fever of scepticism broke out so irrepressibly, has entailed unbelief as a hereditary disease upon the nineteenth.

The divine intellect is veiled in man; his animal brain alone “philosophizes.”

And philosophizing alone, how can it understand the “Soul Doctrine”?

In Isis Unveiled we wrote that which we now repeat:

We are at the bottom of a cycle and evidently in a transitory state.

Plato divides the intellectual progress of the Universe during every Cycle into fertile [pg 078] and barren periods. In the sublunary regions, the spheres of the various elements remain eternally in perfect harmony with the Divine Nature, he says;

… understands the real Kabalistic meaning of the name Jehovah and its relation to, and connection with, the Moon—who can doubt that the story of Abram is based upon that of Brahmâ, or that Genesis was written upon the old lines used by every ancient nation?

All in the ancient Scriptures is allegorical—all based upon and inseparably connected with Astronomy and Cosmolatry.

13. They172 went each on his allotted Land: Seven of them, each on his Lot. The Lords of the Flame remain behind. They would not go, they would not create.

this means in plain words, that they had assimilated during their past incarnations, in lower as well as in higher Worlds, all the wisdom therefrom—the [pg 085] reflection of Mahat in its various degrees of intensity.

No Entity, whether angelic or human, can reach the state of Nirvâna, or of absolute purity, except through æons of suffering and the knowledge of evil as well as of good, as otherwise the latter would remain incomprehensible.

Between man and the animal—whose Monads, or Jîvas, are fundamentally identical—there is the impassable abyss of Mentality and Self-consciousness.

We could multiply our proofs ad infinitum, but it is useless.

The wise will understand our meaning, the unwise are not required to.

There are thirty-three crores, or three hundred and thirty millions, of Gods in India. But, as remarked by the learned lecturer on the Bhagavad Gîtâ:

The first Humanity, therefore, was a pale copy of its Progenitors; too material, even in its ethereality, to be a hierarchy of Gods; too spiritual and pure to be Men—endowed as it is with every negative (nirguna) perfection.

Perfection, to be fully such, must be born out of imperfection, the incorruptible must grow out of the corruptible, having the latter as its vehicle and basis and contrast.

Absolute Light is absolute Darkness, and vice versâ. In fact, there is neither Light nor Darkness in the realms of Truth. Good and Evil are twins, the progeny of Space and Time, under the sway of Mâyâ.

too spiritual and pure to be Men—endowed as it is with every negative (nirguna) perfection. Perfection, to be fully such, must be born out of imperfection, the incorruptible must grow out of the corruptible, having the latter as its vehicle and basis and contrast.

Absolute Light is absolute Darkness, and vice versâ.

In fact, there is neither Light nor Darkness in the realms of Truth. Good and Evil are twins, the progeny of Space and Time, under the sway of Mâyâ. Separate them, by cutting off one from the other, and they will both die.

Absolute Light is absolute Darkness, and vice versâ. In fact, there is neither Light nor Darkness in the realms of Truth.

Good and Evil are twins, the progeny of Space and Time, under the sway of Mâyâ.

Separate them, by cutting off one from the other, and they will both die. Neither exists per se, since each has to be generated and created out of the other, in order to come into being;

but they could not make men as they were themselves—perfect, because sinless; sinless, because having only the first, [pg 100] pale shadowy outlines of attributes, and these all perfect—from the human standpoint—white, pure and cold as the virgin snow.

Where there is no struggle, there is no merit.

Humanity, “of the earth earthy,” was not destined to be created by the Angels of the First Divine Breath.

These physical senses pertain even to a lower Creation than the one called in the Purânas Pratisarga, or “Secondary Creation.” “Liquid Fire proceeds from Indiscrete Fire,” says an Occult axiom.

The Circle is the Thought; the Diameter [or the line] is the Word; and their union is Life.

In the Kabalah, Bath-Kol is the Daughter of the Divine Voice, or Primordial Light, Shekinah. In the Purânas and Hindû exotericism, Vâch, the Voice, is the female Logos of Brahmâ—a permutation of Aditi, Primordial Light.

This Fire is the Higher Self, the Spiritual Ego, or that which is eternally reïncarnating under the influence of its lower personal Selves, changing with every re-birth, full of Tanha or desire to live.

It is a strange law of Nature that, on this plane, the higher (Spiritual) Nature should be, so to say, in bondage to the lower.

Unless the Ego takes refuge in the Âtman, the All-Spirit, and merges entirely into the essence thereof, the personal Ego may goad it to the bitter end.

Occult tradition—if the terms Science and Knowledge are denied in this particular to Antiquity—can alone reconcile the inconsistencies and fill the gap. Says a Talmudic axiom:

If thou wilt know the invisible, open thine eyes wide on the visible.

In the Descent of Man occurs the following passage, which shows how near Darwin came to the acceptance of this ancient teaching.

Bees are somewhat in the same line.

The aphides, or plant lice, keep house like Amazons, and virgin parents perpetuate the race for ten successive generations.

What say the old Sages, the Philosopher-teachers of antiquity? Aristophanes speaks thus on the subject in Plato's Banquet:

… now expounded, is the only one, which—without falling into the absurdity of a “miraculous” man created out of the dust of the earth, or the still greater fallacy of man evolving from a pinch of lime-salt, the ex-protoplasmic Moneron—can account for his appearance on Earth.

Analogy is the guiding law in Nature, the only true Ariadne's thread that can lead us, through the inextricable paths of her domain, toward her primal and final mysteries.

Nature, as a creative potency, is infinite, and no generation of Physical Scientists can ever boast of having exhausted the list of her ways and methods, however uniform the laws upon which she proceeds.

Analogy is the guiding law in Nature, the only true Ariadne's thread that can lead us, through the inextricable paths of her domain, toward her primal and final mysteries.

Nature, as a creative potency, is infinite, and no generation of Physical Scientists can ever boast of having exhausted the list of her ways and methods, however uniform the laws upon which she proceeds.

If we can conceive of a ball of “fire-mist”—as it rolls through æons of time in the interstellar spaces—becoming gradually a Planet, a self-luminous Globe, to settle into a man-bearing World or Earth, thus having passed from a soft plastic body into a rock-bound Globe;

The allegory is very ingenious.

Great intellect and too much knowledge are a two-edged weapon in life, and instruments for evil as well as for good.

When combined with selfishness, they will make of the whole of Humanity a footstool for the elevation of him who possesses them, and a means for the attainment of his objects;

But while man was still ignorant of his procreative powers on the human plane—before his Fall, as a believer in Adam would say—all this vital energy, scattered far and wide from him, was used by Nature for the production of the first mammal-animal forms.

Evolution is an eternal cycle of becoming, we are taught; and Nature never leaves an atom unused.

Moreover, from the beginning of the Round, all in Nature tends to become Man. All the impulses of the dual, centripetal and centrifugal Force are directed towards one point—Man. The progress in the succession of beings, says Agassiz:

As the fœtus develops amidst the liquor amnii in the womb, so the Earths germinate in the Universal Ether, or [pg 199]Astral Fluid, in the Womb of the Universe.

These cosmic children, like their pigmy inhabitants, are first nuclei; then ovules; then gradually mature; and becoming mothers, in their turn, develop mineral, vegetable, animal, and human forms.

From centre to circumference, from the imperceptible vesicle to the uttermost conceivable bounds of the cosmos, those glorious thinkers, the Occultists, trace cycle merging into cycle, containing and contained in an endless series.

As to the separation of sexes, it did not occur suddenly, as one may think.

Nature proceeds slowly in whatever she does.

37. The one457 became two; also all the living and creeping things that were still one, giant fish, birds and serpents with shell-heads.

We deny their existence in our present era.

The sea-serpent is one thing, the dragon quite another.

The former is denied by the majority because it lives in the very depths of the ocean, is very scarce, and rises to the surface only when compelled, perhaps, by hunger. Thus keeping invisible, it may [pg 218] exist and still be denied.

Were it Light alone, inactive and absolute, the human mind could not appreciate nor even realize it.

Shadow is that which enables Light to manifest itself, and gives it objective reality.

Therefore, Shadow is not evil, but is the necessary and indispensable corollary which completes Light or Good; it is its creator on Earth.

The Arasa-maram [?], the banyan tree, so sacred with the Hindûs—since Vishnu during one of his incarnations, reposed under its mighty shade and there taught human philosophy and sciences—is called the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life.

Under the protecting foliage of this king of the forests, the Gurus teach their pupils their first lessons on immortality and initiate them into the mysteries of life and death.

The Java-Aleim of the Sacerdotal College are said, in the Chaldæan tradition, to have taught the sons of men to become like one of them.

Sceptics may smile and denounce our work as full of nonsense or fairy-tales. But by so doing they only justify the wisdom of the Chinese philosopher Chuang, who said that:

The things that men do know can in no way be compared, numerically speaking, to the things that are unknown.

508

not those who saw the daughters of men, but the real Elohim, though in the oriental Kabalah they have another name. It was they who imparted Nature's most weird secrets to men, and revealed to them the ineffable, and now lost “word.”

The “Island,” according to belief, exists to the present hour, as an oasis surrounded by the dreadful wildernesses of the great Gobi Desert—whose sands “no foot hath crossed in the memory of man.”

This word, which is no word, has travelled once round the globe, and still lingers as a far-off dying echo in the hearts of some privileged men. The hierophants of all the Sacerdotal Colleges were aware of the existence of this island;

The “Island,” according to belief, exists to the present hour, as an oasis surrounded by the dreadful wildernesses of the great Gobi Desert—whose sands “no foot hath crossed in the memory of man.”

This word, which is no word, has travelled once round the globe, and still lingers as a far-off dying echo in the hearts of some privileged men.

The hierophants of all the Sacerdotal Colleges were aware of the existence of this island;

There were many such Colleges, and the old classical authors speak of them.

There was no communication with the fair island by sea, but subterranean passages, known only to the chiefs, communicated with it in all directions.

510

Thus saith Hermes, the thrice great Initiate,603 the “Power of the Thought Divine.” St. Paul, another Initiate, called our World, “the enigmatical mirror of pure truth,” and St. Gregory of Nazianzen corroborated Hermes by stating that:

Things visible are but the shadow and delineation of things that we cannot see.

It is an eternal combination, and images are repeated from the higher rung of the Ladder of Being down to the lower.

… actual and the future Elements, just as the Angels of the Seven Powers of Nature—the grosser effects of which we perceive in what Science is pleased to call “modes of motion,” the imponderable forces and what not—are the still higher Noumena of still higher Hierarchies.

It was the “Golden Age” in those days of old, the Age when the “Gods walked the earth, and mixed freely with the mortals.”

When it ceased, the Gods departed—i.e., became invisible—and later generations ended by worshipping their kingdoms—the Elements.

because, by so doing, hints are given to the thoughtful student for his own investigations, and more light can thus be suggested than it is possible to convey in the technical phrases of a more formal, philosophical exposition.

The “Fallen Angels,” so-called, are Humanity itself.

The Demon of Pride, Lust, Rebellion, and Hatred, had no being before the appearance of physical conscious man. It is man who has begotten and nurtured the fiend, and allowed it to develop in his heart;

The “Fallen Angels,” so-called, are Humanity itself. The Demon of Pride, Lust, Rebellion, and Hatred, had no being before the appearance of physical conscious man.

It is man who has begotten and nurtured the fiend, and allowed it to develop in his heart; it is he, again, who has contaminated the Indwelling God in himself, by linking the pure Spirit with the impure Demon of Matter.

And, if the Kabalistic saying, “Demon est Deus inversus,” finds its metaphysical and theoretical corroboration in dual manifested Nature, nevertheless, its practical application is found in Mankind alone.

Lower still in the order of creation we find witnesses for the same proportionate size in the flora going pari passu with the fauna.

The pretty ferns we collect and dry among the leaves of our favourite volumes are the descendants of the gigantic ferns which grew during the Carboniferous period.

Scriptures, and fragments of philosophical and scientific works—in short, almost every record that has come down to us from antiquity—contain references to Giants. No one can fail to recognize the Atlanteans of the Secret Doctrine in the Râkshasas of Lankâ—the opponents conquered by Râma.

Unfortunately not. The “Deva Eye” exists no more for the majority of mankind.

The Third Eye is dead, and acts no longer; but it has left behind a witness to its existence.

This witness is now the Pineal Gland. As for the “four-armed” men, it is they who became the prototypes of the four-armed Hindû Gods, as shown in a preceding footnote.

and in the middle, dominating them both, and especially the animal functions, the developed Pineal Gland, in connection with the more highly evolved, or spiritual man.

It must be remembered that these are only physical correspondences; just as the ordinary human brain is the registering organ of memory, but not memory itself.

This is, then, the organ which has given rise to so many legends and traditions, among others to that of men with one head but two faces. These legends may be found in several Chinese works, besides being referred to in the Chaldæan fragments.

moreover the reader who should feel perplexed at the use of the term “spiritual” instead of “physical” iniquity, is reminded of the fact that there can be no physical iniquity.

The body is simply the irresponsible organ, the tool of the Psychic, if not of the Spiritual, Man.

And in the case of the Atlanteans, it was precisely the Spiritual Being which sinned, the Spirit Element being still the “Master” Principle in man, in those days.

Nevertheless, notwithstanding civilization, while their pastoral brethren enjoyed wondrous powers as their birthright, the “builders” could now obtain their powers only gradually; even those they did obtain being generally used for conquest over physical nature and selfish and unholy purposes.

Civilization has ever developed the physical and the intellectual at the cost of the psychic and spiritual.

The command over and the guidance of one's own psychic nature, which foolish men now associate with the supernatural, were with early Humanity innate and congenital, and came to man as naturally as walking and thinking.

… fact—that is no reason why, when the time for a new Continent to appear arrives, a geological convulsion and upraising of the sea-bottom should not dispose of these 5,000 feet of chalk for the formation of some mountains and 5,000 more come to the surface.

The Racial Cataclysms are not a Noah's Deluge of forty days—a kind of Bombay monsoon.

That the periodical sinking and reäppearance of the mighty Continents, now called Atlantis and Lemuria by modern writers, is no fiction, will be demonstrated in the Section in which all the evidence has been collated together.

Just as in the case of Race evolution, so in that of the shifting and re-shifting of Continental masses, no hard and fast line can be drawn as to where a new order ends and another begins.

Continuity in natural processes is never broken.

Thus the Fourth-Race Atlanteans were developed from a nucleus of Northern Lemurian Third-Race Men, centred, roughly speaking, toward a point of land in what is now the mid-Atlantic Ocean.

A. Taine and Renan. The former shows that the civilizations of such archaic nations as the Egyptians, Âryans of India, Chaldæans, Chinese, and Assyrians are the result of preceding civilizations lasting “myriads of centuries”;747 and the latter points to the fact that:

Egypt at the beginning appears mature, old, and entirely without mythical and heroic ages, as if the country had never known youth.

Its civilization has no infancy, and its art no archaic period. The civilization of the Old Monarchy did not begin with infancy. It was already mature.748

… have the bounds and limits of God's will, and the power of our common mother Nature tied to his sleeve, and that there is no greater folly in the world than to reduce them to the measure of our capacitie and bounds of our sufficiencie....

If we term those things monsters or miracles to which our reason cannot attain, how many such doe daily present themselves unto our sight?

Let us consider through what cloudes, and how blinde-folde, we are led to the knowledge of most things that passe our hands; verily we shall finde it is rather custome than science that receiveth the strangenesse of them from us:

… spiritual men of our present day can no longer be satisfied with either Science or Theology, and why they prefer any “psychic craze” to the dogmatic assertions of the pair, since neither of them, in its infallibility, has anything better to offer than blind faith.

Universal tradition is by far the safer guide in life.

And universal tradition shows Primitive Man living for ages together with his Creators and first Instructors—the Elohim—in the World's “Garden of Eden,” or “Delight.”783

But the “Serpents of Wisdom” have preserved their records well, and the history of human evolution is traced in Heaven as it is traced on underground walls.

Humanity and the Stars are bound together indissolubly, because of the Intelligences that rule the latter.

Modern Symbologists may scoff at this and call it “fancy,” but as Mr. Staniland Wake writes:

Yet, from Homer downwards, the term implied something hidden from the Profane.

“Terrible are the Gods when they manifest themselves”—those Gods whom men call Dragons.

And Ælianus, treating in his De Naturâ Animalium of these ophidian symbols, makes certain remarks which show that he well understood the nature of these most ancient of symbols. Thus with reference to the above Homeric verse he most pertinently explains:

The Chinese Y-King attributes the discovery of agriculture to “the instruction given to men by celestial genii.”

Woe, woe to the men who know nought, observe nought, nor will they see.

They are all blind,852 since they remain ignorant how full the world is of various and invisible creatures which crowd even in the most sacred places.853

In Heaven—because the Divine Monad had voluntarily exiled itself therefrom, to descend, for incarnating purposes, to a lower plane and thus transform the animal of clay into an immortal God. For, as Éliphas Lévi tells us:

The Angels aspire to become Men; for the perfect Man, the Man-God, is above even Angels.

On Earth—because no sooner had Spirit descended than it was strangled in the coils of Matter.

… the place of Adam,”902 and the Talmud adding that “the evil Spirit, Satan, and Samael, the angel of Death, are the same”903—it becomes easy to see that Jehovah (mankind, or Jah-hovah) and Satan (therefore the tempting Serpent) are one and the same in every particular.

There is no Devil, no Evil outside mankind to produce a Devil.

Evil is a necessity in, and one of the supporters of the Manifested Universe. It is a necessity for progress and evolution, as night is necessary for the production of day, and death for that of life—that man may live for ever.

In the first beginnings of [human] life, the only dry land was on the right end938 of the Sphere, where it [the Globe] is motionless.939

The whole Earth was one vast watery desert, and the waters were tepid....

There, man was born on the seven zones of the immortal, the indestructible of the Manvantara.940 There was eternal spring in darkness. [But] that which is darkness to the man of to-day, was light to the man of his dawn.

There, man was born on the seven zones of the immortal, the indestructible of the Manvantara.940

There was eternal spring in darkness.

[But] that which is darkness to the man of to-day, was light to the man of his dawn. There, the Gods rested, and Fohat941 reigns ever since....

There, man was born on the seven zones of the immortal, the indestructible of the Manvantara.940 There was eternal spring in darkness.

[But] that which is darkness to the man of to-day, was light to the man of his dawn.

There, the Gods rested, and Fohat941 reigns ever since....

Enough proofs have now been given to satisfy the greatest sceptic. Nevertheless, direct proofs based on exact Science will also be added.

And yet even though volumes were written, it would be to no purpose for those who will neither see nor hear, except through the eyes and ears of their respective authorities.

Hence the teaching of the Roman Catholic scholiasts, namely, that Hermon, the mount in the land of Mizpeth—meaning “anathema,” “destruction”—is the same as Mount Armon.

The Ahrimans and Typhons, the Samaels and Satans, must be all dethroned on that day, when every dark evil passion will be subdued.

There is one Eternal Law in Nature, one that always tends to adjust contraries, and to produce final harmony.

It is owing to this Law of spiritual development superseding the physical and purely intellectual, that mankind will become freed from its false Gods, and find itself finally—Self-redeemed.

whereas the superior Host was an exile from Heaven, who had got entangled in the meshes of Matter. The inferior Host were masters of all the Cosmic and lower Titanic Forces; the higher Titan possessed only the Intellectual and Spiritual Fire.

This drama of the struggle of Prometheus with the Olympic tyrant and despot, sensual Zeus, one sees enacted daily within our actual mankind; the lower passions chain the higher aspirations to the rock of Matter, to generate in many a case the vulture of sorrow, pain, and repentance.

In every such case one sees once more—

This is what is written in one passage:

The Kings of Light have departed in wrath.

The sins of men have become so black that Earth quivers in her great agony.... The Azure Seats remain empty.

The Kings of Light have departed in wrath. The sins of men have become so black that Earth quivers in her great agony....

The Azure Seats remain empty.

Who of the Brown, who of the Red, or yet among the Black [Races], can sit in the Seats of the Blessed, the Seats of Knowledge and Mercy? Who can assume the Flower of Power, the Plant of the Golden Stem and the Azure Blossom?

The Kings of Light have departed in wrath.

The sins of men have become so black that Earth quivers in her great agony....

The Azure Seats remain empty. Who of the Brown, who of the Red, or yet among the Black [Races], can sit in the Seats of the Blessed, the Seats of Knowledge and Mercy?

The great King fell upon his Dazzling Face and wept....

When the Kings assembled, the waters had already moved....

[But] the nations had now crossed the dry lands. They were beyond the water-mark. Their Kings reached them in their Vimânas, and led them on to the lands of Fire and Metal [East and North].

High lands remained, the bottom of the Earth [the lands of the antipodes] remained dry. There dwelt those who escaped; the men of the Yellow Faces and of the straight eye [the frank and sincere people].

When the Lords of the Dark Faces awoke and bethought themselves of their Vimânas in order to escape from the rising waters, they found them gone.

Then a passage shows some of the more powerful Magicians of the “Dark Faces,” who awoke earlier than the others, pursuing those who had “spoilt them” and who were in the rear-guard, for—“the nations that were led away were as thick as the stars of …

… truth has ever been accepted à [pg 461]priori, and generally a century or two has passed before it has begun to glimmer in the human consciousness as a possible verity, except in such cases as the positive discovery of the thing claimed as a fact.

The truths of to-day are the falsehoods and errors of yesterday, and vice versà.

It is only in the twentieth century that portions, if not the whole, of the present work will be vindicated.

Such is the course of Nature under the sway of Karmic Law; of Ever-present and Ever-becoming Nature. For, in the words of a Sage, known only to a few Occultists:

The Present is the child of the Past; the Future, the begotten of the Present.

And yet, O present moment! knowest thou not that thou hast no parent, nor canst thou have a child; that thou art ever begetting but thyself?

that thou art ever begetting but thyself? Before thou hast even begun to say “I am the progeny of the departed moment, the child of the past,” thou hast become that past itself.

Before thou utterest the last syllable, behold! thou art no more the Present but verily that Future.

Thus, are the Past, the Present, and the Future the Ever-living Trinity in One—the Mahámâyâ of the Absolute “IS.”

Nor is there any need of proselytizing. As remarked by the wise Cicero:

Time destroys the speculations of man, but it confirms the judgment of nature.

Let us bide our time. Meanwhile, it is not in the human constitution to witness in silence the destruction of one's Gods, whether they be true or false.

They considered it a most fortunate circumstance if the Guru (teacher) found in his pupil an aptitude for the pure life of Brahmâchârya. Their dual symbols were to them but the poetical imagery of the sublime correlation of creative cosmic forces.

And this ideal conception is found beaming like a golden ray upon each idol, however coarse and grotesque, in the crowded galleries of the sombre fanes of India and other mother-lands of cults.

This will be demonstrated in the following Section.

who recognize in every pain and suffering but the necessary pangs of incessant procreation; a series of stages toward an ever-growing perfectibility, which is visible in the silent influence of never-erring Karma, or Abstract Nature—the Occultists, we say, view the Great Mother otherwise.

Woe to those who live without suffering. Stagnation and death is the future of all that vegetates without change.

And how can there be any change for the better without proportionate suffering during the preceding stage?

Its history begins by the descent on Earth of the “Gods” who incarnate in mankind, and this is the “Fall.” Whether Brahmâ hurled down on Earth by Bhagavân in the allegory, or Jupiter by Cronus, all are the symbols of the human races.

Once having touched this Planet of dense Matter, the snow-white wings of even the highest Angel can no longer remain immaculate, or the Avatâra (or incarnation) be perfect, as every such Avatâra is the fall of a God into generation.

Nowhere is the metaphysical [pg 508] truth more clear, when explained Esoterically, or more hidden from the average comprehension of those who instead of appreciating the sublimity of the idea can only degrade it—than in the Upanishads, the Esoteric glossaries of the Vedas.

The Rig Veda, as Guignault characterized it, “is the most sublime conception of the great highways of humanity.” The Vedas are, and will remain for ever, in the Esotericism of the Vedânta and the Upanishads, “the mirror of the Eternal Wisdom.”

For upwards of sixteen centuries the new masks, forced over the faces of the old Gods, have screened them from public curiosity, but they have finally proved a misfit.

Yet the metaphorical Fall, and the as metaphorical Atonement and Crucifixion, have led Western Humanity through roads knee-deep in blood.

from heaven.”1114 All these metaphors and figures of speech, preëminently Oriental in their character, must have their origin searched for in the East.

In all the ancient Cosmogonies Light comes from Darkness.

In Egypt, as elsewhere, Darkness was “the principle of all things.” Hence Pymander, the “Thought Divine,” issues as Light from Darkness.

Again, the Tchoon-Tsieoo says allegorically:

One night the stars ceased shining in darkness, and deserted it, falling down like rain upon the Earth, where they are now hidden.

These stars are the Monads.

Now the Collective Mind—the Universal—composed of various and numberless Hosts of Creative Powers, however infinite in Manifested Time, is still finite when contrasted with the Unborn and Undecaying Space in its supreme essential aspect.

That which is finite cannot be perfect.

Therefore there are inferior [pg 512] Beings among those Hosts, but there never have been any Devils or “disobedient Angels,” for the simple reason that they are all governed by Law.

It [pg 534] had to isolate itself, and to assert its authority. Hence it could not do better than turn every Pagan Deity into a Devil.

Every bright Sun-God of antiquity—a glorious Deity by day, and its own Opponent and Adversary by night, named the Dragon of Wisdom, because it was supposed to contain the germs of night and day—has now been turned into the antithetical Shadow of God, and has become Satan on the sole and unsupported authority of despotic human dogma.

After which all these producers of light and shadow, all the Sun- and the Moon-Gods, have been cursed, and thus the one God chosen out of the many and Satan have both been anthropomorphized.

The Kabalists say that the true name of Satan is that of Jehovah turned upside down, for “Satan is not a black God but the negation of the white Deity,” or the Light of Truth.

God is Light and Satan is the necessary Darkness or Shadow to set it off, without which pure Light would be invisible and incomprehensible.

1179 “For the Initiates,” says Éliphas Lévi, “the Devil is not a person but a creative Force, for Good [pg 537] as for Evil.” The Initiates represented this Force, which presides at physical generation, under the mysterious form of God Pan—or Nature;

Hence, while the Astral Light is the Universal Cause in its unmanifested unity and infinity, it becomes, with regard to mankind, simply the effects of the causes produced by men in their sinful lives.

It is not its bright denizens—whether they are called Spirits of Light or Darkness—that produce Good or Evil, but mankind itself that determines the unavoidable action and reaction in the Great Magic Agent.

It is mankind which has become the “Serpent of Genesis,” and thus causes daily and hourly the Fall and Sin of the “Celestial Virgin”—which thus becomes the Mother of Gods and Devils at one and the same time;

Without this quickening spirit, or human mind or soul, there would be no difference between man and beast; as there is none, in fact, between animals with respect to their actions.

The tiger and the donkey, the hawk and the dove, are each one as pure and as innocent as the other, because irresponsible.

Each follows its instinct, the tiger and the hawk killing with the same unconcern as the donkey eats a thistle, or the dove pecks at a grain of corn. If the Fall had the significance given to it by Theology;

What is the complete truth as well as the Esoteric meaning about this universal myth? The whole essence of truth cannot be transmitted from mouth to ear.

Nor can any pen describe it, not even that of the Recording Angel, unless man finds the answer in the sanctuary of his own heart, in the innermost depths of his divine intuition.

It is the great Seventh Mystery of Creation, the first and the last; and those who read St. John's Apocalypse may find its shadow lurking under the seventh seal.

What is the complete truth as well as the Esoteric meaning about this universal myth?

The whole essence of truth cannot be transmitted from mouth to ear.

Nor can any pen describe it, not even that of the Recording Angel, unless man finds the answer in the sanctuary of his own heart, in the innermost depths of his divine intuition.

With the Greeks, the Ash-tree represented the same idea.

Its luxuriant boughs are the Sidereal Heaven, golden by day and studded with stars by night—the fruits of Melia and Yggdrasil, under whose protecting shadow humanity lived during the Golden Age without desire as without fear.

“That tree had a fruit, or an inflamed bough, which was lightning”—Decharme guesses.

It is not denied that the moral idea in the myth, as presented in the Theogony of Hesiod, plays a certain part in the primitive Greek conception.

The Titan is more than a thief of the celestial fire.

He is the representation of humanity—active, industrious, intelligent, but at the same time ambitious, which aims at equalling divine powers. Therefore it is humanity punished in the person of Prometheus, but it is only so with the Greeks.

and if the symbol, owing to the gradual and irrepressible spread of exoteric religions, may now be regarded as having a sexual significance, this in no way mars the original purity of the image.

The subjective had been transformed into the objective; Spirit had fallen into Matter.

The universal kosmic polarity of Spirit-Substance had become, in human thought, the mystic, but still sexual, union of Spirit and Matter, and had thus acquired an anthropomorphic colouring which it had never had in the beginning.

God is a circle, the centre of which is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.

Whereas the Kabalists say the reverse, and maintain it, solely out of their desire to veil their doctrine. By the way, the definition of Deity by the circle is not Pascal's at all, as Éliphas Lévi thought.

Later, it expanded into the beautiful idea adopted by, and represented in, the Mysteries, that of regenerated man, the mortal, who, by crucifying the man of flesh and his passions on the Procrustean bed of torture, became reborn as an Immortal.

Leaving the body, the animal-man, behind him, tied on the Cross of Initiation like an empty chrysalis, the Ego-Soul became as free as a butterfly.

Still [pg 593] later, owing to the gradual loss of spirituality, the cross became in Cosmogony and Anthropology no higher than a phallic symbol.

But such is the usual destiny of ideas and things in this world of spiritual decadence, though at the same time of physical progress.

Pan was at one time Absolute Nature, the One and Great All; but when history catches a first glimpse of him, Pan has already tumbled down into a godling of the fields, a rural God; history will not recognize him, while theology makes of him the Devil!

Yet his seven-piped [pg 615] flute, the emblem of the seven forces of Nature, of the seven planets, the seven musical notes, of all the septenary harmony in short, shows well his primordial character. So with the cross.

of Brâhmanical fancy and love of exaggeration.” But to the student of Occultism, the whole is pregnant with deep philosophical meaning.

We willingly leave the rind to the Western Sanskritist, but claim the essence of the fruit for ourselves.

We do more: we concede that in one sense much in these so-called “fables” refers to astronomical allegories about constellations, asterisms, stars, and planets.

… in their turn, bend down like the boughs of the Ashvattha, the holy Tree of Bodhi, throw their seed out, take root and [pg 623] procreate other trees—this is the only Force that has reality for him, as it is the never-dying Breath of Life.

The Pagan philosopher sought for the cause, the modern is content with only the effects and seeks the former in the latter.

What is beyond, he does not know, nor does the modern A-gnostic care; thus rejecting the only knowledge upon which he can with full security base his Science. Yet this manifested Force has an answer for him who seeks to fathom it.

from Venus to the Sun one and a half tones; from the Sun to Mars a tone; from thence to Jupiter half a tone; from Jupiter to Saturn half a tone; and thence to the Zodiac a tone; thus making seven tones—the diapason harmony.1425

All the melody of Nature is in those seven tones, and therefore is called the “Voice of Nature.”

Plutarch explains1426 that the most ancient Greeks regarded the Tetrad as the root and principle of all things, since it was the number of the elements which gave birth to all visible and invisible created things.1427 [pg 636] With the brothers of the Rosy Cross, …

Physicians and Theologians, Mathematicians and Psychologists, have repeatedly drawn the attention of the world to this fact of periodicity in the behaviour of “Nature.” These numbers are explained in the Commentaries in the following words:

The Circle is not the “One” but the “All.”

In the higher [Heaven], the impenetrable Rajah,1499 it [the Circle] becomes One, because [it is] the indivisible, and there can be no Tau in it.

“Endless is the search for truth!” Let us love it and aspire to it for its own sake, and not for the glory or benefit a minute portion of its revelation may confer on us.

For who of us can presume to have the whole truth at his fingers' ends, even upon one minor teaching of Occultism?

Our chief point in the present subject, however, has been to show that the septenary doctrine, or division of the constitution of man, was a very ancient one, and was not invented by us.

And here we must be allowed a last remark.

No true Theosophist, from the most ignorant up to the most learned, ought to claim infallibility for anything he may say or write upon Occult matters.

The [pg 677] chief point is to admit that, in many a way, in the classification of either cosmic or human principles, in addition to mistakes in the order of evolution, and especially on metaphysical questions, those of us who pretend to teach others more …

Then only should we say, “This is verily a work without sin or blemish in it!”

But so long as the artist is imperfect, how can his work be perfect?

“Endless is the search for truth!” Let us love it and aspire to it for its own sake, and not for the glory or benefit a minute portion of its revelation may confer on us.

Furthermore, past as well as present daily experience teaches that no truth has ever been accepted by learned bodies unless it has dovetailed with the habitually preconceived ideas of their professors. “The crown of the innovator is a crown of thorns”—said Geoffroy St. Hilaire.

It is only that which fits in with popular hobbies and accepted notions that as a general rule gains ground.

Hence the triumph of the Hæckelian ideas, notwithstanding that they are proclaimed by Virchow, du Bois-Reymond, and others as the “testimonium paupertatis of Natural Science.”

but it would be still more correct and in accordance with the spirit of these two categories of evolution to say, that the true cause of organic life is the tendency of spirit to manifest in substantial forms, to clothe itself in substantial reality.

It is the highest form which contains the complete explanation of the lowest, never the reverse.

This is admitting, as Bourges does in the Mémoire above mentioned, the identity of this mysterious, integrally acting and organizing Principle with the Self-Conscious and Inner Subject, which we call the Ego and the world at large the Soul.

And he quotes from Darwin's introduction to The Descent of Man the following words, which he modestly applies to his scientific opponents and himself:

It is always those who know little, and not those who know much, that positively affirm that this or that problem will never be solved by Science.

The world may rest satisfied.

But even more. The ordinary man has no experience of any state of consciousness other than that to which the physical senses link him.

Men dream; they sleep the profound sleep which is too deep for its dreams to impress the physical brain; and in these states there must still be consciousness.

How, then, while these mysteries remain unexplored, can we hope to speculate with profit on the nature of Globes which, in the economy of Nature, must needs belong to states of consciousness other and quite different from any which man experiences here?

withal, that no speculations were ever made about the latter.

The whole of antiquity believed in the Universality of Life.

But no really initiated Seer of any civilized nation has ever taught that life on other Stars could be judged by the standard of terrestrial life.

According to the best modern calculations, there are no less than 500,000,000 Stars of various magnitudes, within the range of the best telescopes. As to the distances between them, they are incalculable.

Is, then, our microscopical Earth—a “grain of sand on an infinite sea-shore”—the only centre of intelligent life?

Our own Sun, itself 1,300,000 times larger than our Planet, sinks into insignificance beside the giant Sun, Sirius, and the latter in its turn is dwarfed by other luminaries in infinite Space.

For were it to win support from believers in special creation, it would never gain the favour of the evolutionists, and vice versâ.

Truth must rest upon its own firm foundation of facts, and take its chance of recognition, when every prejudice in the way is disposed of.

Though the question has been already fully considered in its main aspect, it is, nevertheless, advisable to combat every so-called “scientific” objection as we go along, [pg 752] when making what are regarded as heretical and anti-scientific statements.

Nor has such evidence been found to this day.

Science is thus offering for sale the skin of a bear, which has hitherto never been seen by mortal eye!

This concession of Lyell's reads most suggestively with the subjoined utterance of Professor Max Müller, whose attack on Darwinian Anthropology from the standpoint of language has, by the way, never been satisfactorily answered:

The fact that no traces of human relics or skeletons are so far found beyond Post-Tertiary or Quaternary times—though Abbé Bourgeois' flints may serve as a warning1706—seems to point to the truth of another Esoteric statement, which runs thus:

Seek for the remains of thy forefathers in the high places. The vales have grown into mountains and the mountains have crumbled to the bottom of the seas.

Fourth Race mankind, thinned after the last cataclysm by two-thirds of its population, instead of settling on the new continents and islands that reäppeared—while their predecessors formed the floors of new oceans—deserted that which is now Europe and parts of Asia and Africa for the …

… forest of Sumatra was made in the image of man, since the framework of the ape, we say again, is the revival, the resuscitation by abnormal means, of the actual form of the Third Round and of the Fourth Round Man as well, later on.

Nothing is lost in Nature, not an atom: this is at least certain on scientific data.

Analogy would appear to demand that form should be equally endowed with permanency.

Once the sagacious student gets hold of the guiding thread he may find out such evidence for himself.

We give facts and show landmarks; let the wayfarer follow them.

What is adduced here is amply sufficient for this century.

Many a time Atlantis is spoken of under another name, one unknown to our commentators.

The power of names is great, and has been known since the first men were instructed by the Divine Masters.

And as Solon had studied it, he translated the “Atlantean” names into names devised by himself.

… the Atlanteans and Âryans in their supreme struggle, or the conflict between the Devs and Izeds, or Peris, became, ages later, the struggle of Titans, separated into two inimical camps, and still later the war between the Angels of God and the Angels of Satan.

Historical facts became theological dogmas.

Ambitious scholiasts, men of a small sub-race born but yesterday, and one of the latest [pg 821] issues of the Âryan stock, took upon themselves to overturn the religious thought of the world, and succeeded.

For the Third, Lemurian Race must be physiologically divided into the early androgynous and the later bi-sexual race; and the climate of its dwelling-places and continents into that of an eternal spring and eternal winter, into life and death, purity and impurity.

The cycle of legends is ever being transformed on its journey by popular fancy.

Yet it may be cleansed from the dross it has picked up on its way through many nations, and through the countless minds which have added their own exuberant additions to the original facts.

nothing of the significance of the vast volume of inscriptions upon the tombs and temples of Egypt; nothing of the meaning of the arrow-headed inscriptions of Babylon; nothing of the marvellous civilizations revealed in the remains of Yucatan, Mexico, and Peru.

We are on the threshold.

Scientific investigation is advancing with giant strides.

What was this source?

If coming events are said to cast their shadows before, past events cannot fail to leave their impress behind them.

It is, then, by those shadows of the hoary Past and their fantastic silhouettes on the external screen of every Religion and Philosophy, that we can, by checking them as we go along and comparing them, trace out finally the body that produced them.

There must be truth and fact in that which every people of antiquity accepted and made the foundation of its religions and its faith. Moreover, as Haliburton said:

Hear one side, and you will be in the dark; hear both sides, and all will be clear.

The public has hitherto had access to, and has heard but one side, or rather the one-sided views of two diametrically opposed classes of men, whose primâ facie propositions or respective premises differ widely, but whose final conclusions are the same—the men of Science and …

” (Staniland Wake, The Great Pyramid, p. 79; Dupuis, iii. 255.) Only Dupuis never knew why Draco, once the pole-star—the symbol of Guide, Guru and Director—had been thus degraded by posterity.

“The Gods of our fathers are our devils,” says an Asiatic proverb.

When Draco ceased to be the “lode-star,” the guiding sidereal divinity, it shared the fate of all the fallen Gods.

The words “whosoever shall say to this mountain be thou removed and cast into the sea, and shall not doubt ... that thing will come to pass,” are no vain words. Only the word “faith” ought to be translated by “Will.”

Faith without Will is like a wind-mill without wind—barren of results.

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

cit.) renders the allegory differently. “Brahmâ transformed himself into night [or ignorance] invested with a body.” This the Yakshas and Râkshasas seized, exclaiming, “Do not spare it; devour it.” Brahmâ cried out, “Do not devour me; spare me.” This has an inner meaning of course.

The “Body of Night” is the darkness of ignorance, and it is the darkness of silence and secrecy.

Now the Râkshasas are shown in almost every case to be Yogîs, pious Sâdhus and Initiates, a rather unusual occupation for Demons.

Quoted in De Mirville, op. cit., iii. 53. Remember the same statement in the Book of Enoch, as also the ladder seen by Jacob in his dream. The “two worlds” mean, of course, the two planes of Consciousness and Being.

A seer can commune with Beings of a higher plane than the Earth, without quitting his arm-chair.

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

hence we find another word of the same stock, pramatha, signifying theft.” This is very ingenious, but perhaps not altogether correct; besides, there is a very prosaic element in it.

No doubt in physical nature, the higher forms may develop from the lower ones, but it is hardly so in the world of thought.

And as we are told that the word manthâmi passed into the Greek language and became the word manthanô, to learn—that is to say, to appropriate knowledge, whence prometheia, fore-knowledge, fore-thought—we may find, in searching, a more poetical origin for the “fire-bringer” than that displayed …

In the Cycle of Initiation, which was very long, Water represented the first and lower steps toward purification, while trials connected with Fire came last.

Water could regenerate the Body of Matter; Fire alone, that of the Inner Spiritual Man.

See the Introduction by Káshináth Trimbak Telang, M.A.