Section IX. The Coming Force. Its Possibilities And Impossibilities…

Section IX. The Coming Force. Its Possibilities And Impossibilities

Shall we say that Force is “moving Matter,” or “Matter in motion,” and a manifestation of Energy; or that Matter and Force are the phenomenal differentiated aspects of the one primary, undifferentiated Cosmic Substance?

This query is made with regard to that Stanza which treats of FOHAT and his “Seven brothers or Sons,” in other words, of the cause and the effects of Cosmic Electricity, the Brothers or Sons of Occult parlance being the seven primary forces of Electricity, whose purely phenomenal, and hence grossest, effects are alone cognizable by Physicists on the cosmic and especially on the terrestrial plane. These include, among other things, Sound, Light, Colour, etc. Now what does Physical Science tell us of these “Forces”? SOUND, it says, is a sensation produced by the impact of atmospheric molecules on the tympanum, which, by setting up delicate tremors in the auditory apparatus, thus communicate their vibrations to the brain. LIGHT is the sensation caused by the impact of inconceivably minute vibrations of ether on the retina of the eye.

So, too, say we. But these are simply the effects produced in our atmosphere and its immediate surroundings, all, in fact, which falls within the range of our terrestrial consciousness. Jupiter Pluvius sent his symbol in drops of rain, of water composed, as is believed, of two “elements,” which Chemistry dissociates and recombines. The compound molecules are in its power, but their atoms still elude its grasp. Occultism sees in all these Forces and manifestations a ladder, the lower rungs of which belong to exoteric Physics, and the higher are traced to a living, intelligent, invisible Power, which is, as a rule, the unconcerned, but, exceptionally, the conscious, Cause of the sense‐born phenomena designated as this or that natural law.

We say and maintain that SOUND, for one thing, is a tremendous Occult power; that it is a stupendous force, of which the electricity generated by a million of Niagaras could never counteract the smallest potentiality when directed with Occult Knowledge. Sound may be produced of such a nature that the pyramid of Cheops would be raised in the air, or that a dying man, nay, one at his last breath, would be revived and filled with new energy and vigour.

For Sound generates, or rather attracts together, the elements that produce an ozone the fabrication of which is beyond Chemistry, but is within the limits of Alchemy. It may even resurrect a man or an animal whose astral “vital body” has not been irreparably separated from the physical body by the severance of the magnetic or odic chord. As one saved thrice from death by that power, the writer ought to be credited with personally knowing something about it.

And if all this appears too unscientific to be even noticed, let Science explain to what mechanical and physical laws, known to it, are due the recently produced phenomena of the so‐called Keely motor. What is it that acts as the formidable generator of invisible but tremendous force, of that power which is not only capable of driving an engine of 25 horse‐ power, but has even been employed to bodily lift the machinery? Yet this is done simply by drawing a fiddle‐bow across a tuning fork, as has been repeatedly proven. For the Etheric Force, discovered by John Worrell Keely, of Philadelphia, well‐known in America and Europe, is no hallucination. Notwithstanding his failure to utilize it—a failure prognosticated and maintained by some Occultists from the first—the phenomena exhibited by the discoverer during the last few years have been wonderful, almost miraculous, not in the sense of the supernatural(949) but of the superhuman. Had Keely been permitted to succeed, he might have reduced a whole army to atoms in the space of a few seconds, as easily as he reduced a dead ox to that condition.

The reader is now asked to give serious attention to that newly‐discovered potency, which the discoverer has named Inter‐Etheric Force, and Forces.

In the humble opinion of the Occultists, as of his immediate friends, Mr. Keely was, and still is, at the threshold of some of the greatest secrets of the Universe; of that chiefly on which is built the whole mystery of physical Forces, and the Esoteric significance of the “Mundane Egg” symbolism. Occult Philosophy, viewing the manifested and the unmanifested Kosmos as a UNITY, symbolizes the ideal conception of the former by that “Golden Egg” with two poles in it. It is the positive pole that acts in the manifested World of Matter, while the negative loses itself in the unknowable Absoluteness of SAT—Be‐ness.(950) Whether this agrees with the philosophy of Mr. Keely, we cannot tell, nor does it really much matter. Nevertheless, his ideas about the ethero‐material construction of the Universe look strangely like our own, being in this respect nearly identical. This is what we find him saying in an able pamphlet compiled by Mrs. Bloomfield‐Moore, an American lady of wealth and position, whose incessant efforts in the pursuit of truth can never be too highly appreciated:

Mr. Keely, in explanation of the working of his engine, says: “In the conception of any machine heretofore constructed, the medium for inducing a neutral centre has never been found. If it had, the difficulties of perpetual‐motion seekers would have ended, and this problem would have become an established and operating fact. It would only require an introductory impulse of a few pounds, on such a device, to cause it to run for centuries. In the conception of my vibratory engine, I did not seek to attain perpetual motion; but a circuit is formed that actually has a neutral centre, which is in a condition to be vivified by my vibratory ether, and, while under operation by said substance, is really a machine that is virtually independent of the mass (or globe),(951) and it is the wonderful velocity of the vibratory circuit which makes it so. Still, with all its perfection, it requires to be fed with the vibratory ether to make it an independent motor.... All structures require a foundation in strength according to the weight of the mass they have to carry, but the foundations of the universe rest on a vacuous point far more minute than a molecule; in fact, to express this truth properly, on an inter‐etheric point, which requires an infinite mind to understand it. To look down into the depths of an etheric centre is precisely the same as it would be to search into the broad space of heaven’s ether to find the end, with this difference: that one is the positive field, while the other is the negative field.”

This is, as may easily be seen, precisely the Eastern Doctrine. Mr. Keely’s inter‐etheric point is the laya‐point of the Occultists; this, however, does not require “an infinite mind to understand it,” but only a specific intuition and ability to trace its hiding‐place in this World of Matter. Of course, the laya centre cannot be produced, but an inter‐ etheric vacuum can be—as is proved by the production of bell‐sounds in space. Mr. Keely speaks as an unconscious Occultist, nevertheless, when he remarks, in his theory of planetary suspension:

As regards planetary volume, we would ask in a scientific point of view, How can the immense difference of volume in the planets exist without disorganizing the harmonious action that has always characterized them? I can only answer this question properly by entering into a progressive analysis, starting on the rotating etheric centres that were fixed by the Creator(952) with their attractive or accumulative power. If you ask what power it is that gives to each etheric atom its inconceivable velocity of rotation (or introductory impulse), I must answer that no finite mind will ever be able to conceive what it is. The philosophy of accumulation is the only proof that such a power has been given. The area, if we can so speak, of such an atom presents to the attractive or magnetic, the elective or propulsive, all the receptive force and all the antagonistic force that characterize a planet of the largest magnitude; consequently, as the accumulation goes on, the perfect equation remains the same. When this minute centre has once been fixed, the power to rend it from its position would necessarily have to be so great as to displace the most immense planet that exists. When this atomic neutral centre is displaced, the planet must go with it. The neutral centre carries the full load of any accumulation from the start, and remains the same, for ever balanced in the eternal space.

Mr. Keely illustrates his idea of “a neutral centre” in this way:

We will imagine that, after an accumulation of a planet of any diameter, say, 20,000 miles, more or less, for the size has nothing to do with the problem, there should be a displacement of all the material, with the exception of a crust 5,000 miles thick, leaving an intervening void between this crust and a centre of the size of an ordinary billiard ball, it would then require a force as great to move this small central mass as it would to move the shell of 5,000 miles thickness. Moreover, this small central mass would carry the load of this crust for ever, keeping it equidistant; and there could be no opposing power, however great, that could bring them together. The imagination staggers in contemplating the immense load which bears upon this point of centre, where weight ceases.... This is what we understand by a neutral centre.

And this is what Occultists understand by a laya centre.

The above is pronounced to be “unscientific” by many. But so is everything that is not sanctioned and kept on the strictly orthodox lines of Physical Science. Unless the explanation given by the inventor himself is accepted—and his explanations, being quite orthodox from the Spiritual and the Occult standpoints, if not from that of materialistic speculative Science, called exact, are therefore ours in this particular—what can Science answer to facts already seen, which it is no longer possible for anyone to deny? Occult Philosophy divulges few of its most important vital mysteries. It drops them like precious pearls, one by one, far and wide apart, and even this only when forced to do so by the evolutionary tidal wave that carries on Humanity slowly, silently, but steadily, toward the dawn of the Sixth Race mankind. For once out of the safe custody of their legitimate heirs and keepers, those mysteries cease to be Occult: they fall into the public domain, and have to run the risk of becoming curses more often than blessings in the hands of the selfish—of the Cains of the human race. Nevertheless, whenever such individuals as the discoverer of Etheric Force are born, men with peculiar psychic and mental capacities,(953) they are generally and more frequently helped, than allowed to go unassisted, groping on their way; if left to their own resources, they very soon fall victims to martyrdom or become the prey of unscrupulous speculators. But they are helped only on the condition that they should not become, whether consciously or unconsciously, an additional peril to their age: a danger to the poor, now offered in daily holocaust by the less wealthy to the very wealthy.(954) This necessitates a short digression and an explanation.

Some twelve years back, during the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, the writer, in answering the earnest queries of a Theosophist, one of the earliest admirers of Mr. Keely, repeated to him what she had heard in quarters, information from which she could never doubt.

It had been stated that the inventor of the “Self‐Motor” was what is called, in the jargon of the Kabalists, a “natural‐born magician.” That he was and would remain unconscious of the full range of his powers, and would work out merely those which he had found out and ascertained in his own nature—firstly, because, attributing them to a wrong source, he could never give them full sway; and secondly, because it was beyond his power to pass to others that which was a capacity inherent in his own special nature. Hence, the whole secret could not be made over permanently to anyone, for practical purposes or use.(955)

Individuals born with such a capacity are not very rare. That they are not heard of more frequently is due to the fact that they live and die, in almost every case, in utter ignorance that they are possessed of abnormal powers. Mr. Keely possesses powers which are called abnormal, just because they happen to be as little known, in our day, as was the circulation of the blood before Harvey’s time. Blood existed, and it behaved as it does at present in the first man born from woman; and so exists and has existed in man that principle which can control and guide etheric vibratory Force. At any rate, it exists in all those mortals whose Inner Selves are primordially connected, by reason of their direct descent, with that group of Dhyân‐Chohans who are called “the first‐born of Æther.” Mankind, psychically considered, is divided into various groups, each group being connected with one of the Dhyânic Groups that first formed psychic man (see paragraphs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in the Commentary to Stanza VII.). Mr. Keely—being greatly favoured in this respect, and besides his psychic temperament, being, moreover, intellectually a genius in mechanics—may achieve most wonderful results. He has achieved some already—more than any mortal man, not initiated into the final Mysteries, has achieved in this age up to the present day. What he has done is—as his friends justly say of him—certainly quite sufficient “to demolish with the hammer of Science the idols of Science”—the idols of matter with the feet of clay. Nor would the writer for a moment think of contradicting Mrs. Bloomfield‐Moore, when, in her paper on “Psychic Force and Etheric Force,” she states that Mr. Keely, as a Philosopher:

Is great enough in soul, wise enough in mind, and sublime enough in courage to overcome all difficulties, and to stand at last before the world as the greatest discoverer and inventor in the world.

And again she writes:

Should Keely do no more than lead scientists from the dreary realms where they are groping into the open field of elemental force, where gravity and cohesion are disturbed in their haunts and diverted to use; where, from unity of origin, emanates infinite energy in diversified forms, he will achieve immortal fame. Should he demonstrate, to the destruction of materialism, that the universe is animated by a mysterious principle to which matter, however perfectly organized, is absolutely subservient, he will be a greater spiritual benefactor to our race than the modern world has yet found in any man. Should he be able to substitute, in the treatment of disease, the finer forces of nature for the grossly material agencies which have sent more human beings to their graves than war, pestilence and famine combined, he will merit and receive the gratitude of mankind. All this and more will he do, if he and those who have watched his progress, day by day for years, are not too sanguine in their expectations.

The same lady, in her pamphlet, Keely’s Secrets,(956) brings forward the following passage from an article, written in the Theosophist a few years ago, by the writer of the present volume:

The author of No. 5 of the pamphlets issued by the Theosophical Publication Society, What is Matter and What is Force, says therein: “The men of science have just found out ‘a fourth state of matter,’ whereas the Occultists have penetrated years ago beyond the sixth, and therefore do not infer, but know of, the existence of the seventh, the last.” This knowledge comprises one of the secrets of Keely’s so‐called “compound secret.” It is already known to many that his secret includes “the augmentation of energy,” the insulation of the ether, and the adaptation of dynaspheric force to machinery.

It is just because Keely’s discovery would lead to a knowledge of one of the most Occult secrets, a secret which can never be allowed to fall into the hands of the masses, that his failure to push his discoveries to their logical end seems certain to Occultists. But of this more presently. Even in its limitations this discovery may prove of the greatest benefit. For:

Step by step, with a patient perseverance which some day the world will honour, this man of genius has made his researches, overcoming the colossal difficulties which again and again raised up in his path what seemed to be (to all but himself) insurmountable barriers to further progress: but never has the world’s index finger so pointed to an hour when all is making ready for the advent of the new form of force that mankind is waiting for. Nature, always reluctant to yield her secrets, is listening to the demands made upon her by her master, necessity. The coal mines of the world cannot long afford the increasing drain made upon them. Steam has reached its utmost limits of power, and does not fulfil the requirements of the age. It knows that its days are numbered. Electricity holds back, with bated breath, dependent upon the approach of her sister colleague. Air ships are riding at anchor, as it were, waiting for the force which is to make aërial navigation something more than a dream. As easily as men communicate with their offices from their homes by means of the telephone, so will the inhabitants of separate continents talk across the ocean. Imagination is palsied when seeking to foresee the grand results of this marvellous discovery, when once it is applied to art and mechanics. In taking the throne which it will force steam to abdicate, dynaspheric force will rule the world with a power so mighty in the interests of civilization, that no finite mind can conjecture the results. Laurence Oliphant, in his preface to Scientific Religion, says: “A new moral future is dawning upon the human race—one, certainly, of which it stands much in need.” In no way could this new moral future be so widely, so universally, commenced as by the utilizing of dynaspheric force to beneficial purposes in life.

The Occultists are ready to admit all this with the eloquent writer. Molecular vibration is, undeniably, “Keely’s legitimate field of research,” and the discoveries made by him will prove wonderful—yet only in his hands and through himself. The world so far will get but that with which it can be safely entrusted. The truth of this assertion has, perhaps, not yet quite dawned upon the discoverer himself, since he writes that he is absolutely certain that he will accomplish all that he has promised, and that he will then give it out to the world; but it must dawn upon him, and at no very far distant date. And what he says in reference to his work is a good proof of it:

In considering the operation of my engine, the visitor, in order to have even an approximate conception of its modus operandi, must discard all thought of engines that are operated upon the principle of pressure and exhaustion, by the expansion of steam or other analogous gas which impinges upon an abutment, such as the piston of a steam‐engine. My engine has neither piston nor eccentrics, nor is there one grain of pressure exerted in the engine, whatever may be the size or capacity of it. My system, in every part and detail, both in the developing of my power and in every branch of its utilization, is based and founded on sympathetic vibration. In no other way would it be possible to awaken or develop my force, and equally impossible would it be to operate my engine upon any other principle.... This, however, is the true system; and henceforth all my operations will be conducted in this manner—that is to say, my power will be generated, my engines run, my cannon operated, through a wire. It has been only after years of incessant labour, and the making of almost innumerable experiments, involving not only the construction of a great many most peculiar mechanical structures, and the closest investigation and study of the phenomenal properties of the substance “ether,” per se, produced, that I have been able to dispense with complicated mechanism, and to obtain, as I claim, mastery over the subtle and strange force with which I am dealing.

The passages underlined by us, are those which bear directly on the Occult side of the application of the vibratory Force, that which Mr. Keely calls “sympathetic vibration.” The “wire” is already a step below, or downward from the pure Etheric plane into the Terrestrial. The discoverer has produced marvels—the word “miracle” is not too strong—when acting through the inter‐etheric Force alone, the fifth and sixth principles of Âkâsha. From a generator six feet long, he has come down to one “no larger than an old‐fashioned silver watch”; and this by itself is a miracle of mechanical, but not of spiritual, genius. As was well said by his great patroness and defender, Mrs. Bloomfield‐Moore:

The two forms of force which he has been experimenting with, and the phenomena attending them, are the very antithesis of each other.

One was generated and acted upon by and through himself. No one, who should have repeated the thing done by himself, could have produced the same results. It was truly Keely’s Ether that acted, while Smith’s or Brown’s Ether would have remained for ever barren of results. For Keely’s difficulty has hitherto been to produce a machine which would develop and regulate the Force without the intervention of any “will power” or personal influence of the operator, whether conscious or unconscious. In this he has failed, so far as others were concerned, for no one but himself could operate on his “machines.” Occultly this was a far more advanced achievement than the “success” which he anticipates from his wire, but the results obtained from the fifth and sixth planes of the Etheric, or Astral, Force, will never be permitted to serve for purposes of commerce and traffic. That Keely’s organism is directly connected with the production of his marvellous results is proven by the following statement, emanating from one who knows the great discoverer intimately.

At one time the shareholders of the “Keely Motor Co.” put a man in his workshop for the express purpose of discovering his secret. After six months of close watching, he said to J. W. Keely one day: “I know how it is done, now.” They had been setting up a machine together, and Keely was manipulating the stop‐cock which turned the force on and off. “Try it, then,” was the answer. The man turned the cock, and nothing came. “Let me see you do it again,” the man said to Keely. The latter complied, and the machinery operated at once. Again the other tried, but without success. Then Keely put his hand on his shoulder and told him to try once more. He did so, with the result of an instantaneous production of the current.

This fact, if true, settles the question.

We are told that Mr. Keely defines electricity “as a certain form of atomic vibration.” In this he is quite right; but this is Electricity on the terrestrial plane, and through terrestrial correlations. He estimates—

Molecular vibrations at 100,000,000 per second. Inter‐molecular vibrations at 300,000,000 per second. Atomic vibrations at 900,000,000 per second. Inter‐atomic vibrations at 2,700,000,000 per second. Ætheric vibrations at 8,100,000,000 per second. Inter‐Ætheric vibrations at 24,300,000,000 per second.

This proves our point. There are no vibrations that could be counted or even estimated at an approximate rate beyond “the realm of the fourth Son of Fohat,” to use an Occult phrase, or that motion which corresponds to the formation of Mr. Crookes’ radiant matter, lightly called some years ago the “fourth state of matter”—on this our plane.

If the question is asked why Mr. Keely was not allowed to pass a certain limit, the answer is easy; it was because that, which he has unconsciously discovered, is the terrible sidereal Force, known to, and named by the Atlanteans Mash‐mak, and by the Âryan Rishis in their Astra Vidyâ by a name that we do not like to give. It is the Vril of Bulwer Lytton’s Coming Race, and of the coming Races of our mankind. The name Vril may be a fiction; the Force itself is a fact, as little doubted in India as is the existence of the Rishis, since it is mentioned in all the secret books.

It is this vibratory Force, which, when aimed at an army from an Agni‐ ratha, fixed on a flying vessel, a balloon, according to the instructions found in Astra Vidyâ, would reduce to ashes 100,000 men and elephants, as easily as it would a dead rat. It is allegorized in the Vishnu Purâna, in the Râmâyana and other works, in the fable about the sage Kapila whose “glance made a mountain of ashes of King Sagara’s 60,000 sons,” and which is explained in the Esoteric Works, and referred to as the Kapilâksha—Kapila’s Eye.

And is it this Satanic Force that our generations are to be allowed to add to their stock of Anarchist’s baby‐toys, known as melenite, dynamite clock‐work, explosive oranges, “flower baskets,” and such other innocent names? Is it this destructive agency, which, once in the hands of some modern Attila, a bloodthirsty Anarchist, for instance, would in a few days reduce Europe to its primitive chaotic state, with no man left alive to tell the tale—is it this Force which is to become the common property of all men alike?

What Mr. Keely has already done is grand and wonderful in the extreme; there is enough work before him in the demonstration of his new system to “humble the pride of those scientists who are materialistic, by revealing those mysteries which lie behind the world of matter,” without, nolens volens, revealing it to all. For surely Psychics and Spiritualists, of whom there are a good number in European armies, would be the first to personally experience the fruits of the revelation of such mysteries. Thousands of them would speedily find themselves in blue Ether, perhaps with the populations of whole countries to keep them company, were such a Force to be even entirely discovered, let alone made publicly known. The discovery in its completeness is by several thousand—or shall we say hundred thousand—years too premature. It will be in its appointed place and time only when the great roaring flood of starvation, misery, and underpaid labour ebbs back again—as it will when the just demands of the many are at last happily attended to; when the proletariat exists but in name, and the pitiful cry for bread, that rings unheeded throughout the world, has died away. This may be hastened by the spread of learning, and by new openings for work and emigration, with better prospects than now exist, and on some new continent that may appear. Then only will Keely’s Motor and Force, as originally contemplated by himself and his friends, be in demand, because it will then be more needed by the poor than by the wealthy.

Meanwhile the Force he has discovered will work through wires, and, if he succeeds, this will be quite sufficient to make of him the greatest discoverer of the age in the present generation.

What Mr. Keely says of Sound and Colour is also correct from the Occult standpoint. Hear him talk as though he were the nursling of the “Gods‐Revealers,” and as if he had gazed all his life into the depths of Father‐Mother Æther.

In comparing the tenuity of the atmosphere with that of the etheric flows, obtained by his invention for breaking up the molecules of air by vibration, Keely says:

It is as platinum to hydrogen gas. Molecular separation of air brings us to the first sub‐division only; inter‐molecular, to the second; atomic, to the third; inter‐atomic, to the fourth; etheric, to the fifth; and inter‐etheric, to the sixth sub‐ division, or positive association with luminiferous ether.(957) In my introductory argument I have contended that this is the vibratory envelope of all atoms. In my definition of atom I do not confine myself to the sixth sub‐division where this luminiferous ether is developed in its crude form, as far as my researches prove.(958) I think this idea will be pronounced by the physicists of the present day, a wild freak of the imagination. Possibly, in time, a light may fall upon this theory that will bring its simplicity forward for scientific research. At present I can only compare it to some planet in a dark space, where the light of the sun of science has not yet reached it.... I assume that sound, like odour, is a real substance of unknown and wonderful tenuity, emanating from a body where it has been induced by percussion and throwing out absolute corpuscles of matter, inter‐atomic particles, with velocity of 1,120 feet per second; in vacuo 20,000. The substance which is thus disseminated is a part and parcel of the mass agitated, and, if kept under this agitation continuously, would, in the course of a certain cycle of time, become thoroughly absorbed by the atmosphere; or, more truly, would pass through the atmosphere to an elevated point of tenuity corresponding to the condition of sub‐division that governs its liberation from its parent body.... The sounds from vibratory forks, set so as to produce etheric chords, while disseminating their tones (compound), permeate most thoroughly all substances that come under the range of their atomic bombardment. The clapping of a bell in vacuo liberates these atoms with the same velocity and volume as one in the open air; and were the agitation of the bell kept up continuously for a few millions of centuries it would thoroughly return to its primitive element; and, if the chamber were hermetically sealed, and strong enough, the vacuous volume surrounding the bell would be brought to a pressure of many thousands of pounds to the square inch, by the tenuous substance evolved. In my estimation, sound truly defined is the disturbance of atomic equilibrium, rupturing actual atomic corpuscles; and the substance thus liberated must certainly be a certain order of etheric flow. Under these conditions, is it unreasonable to suppose that, if this flow were kept up, and the body thus robbed of its element, it would in time disappear entirely? All bodies are formed primitively from this highly tenuous ether, animal, vegetable, and mineral, and they are only returned to their high gaseous condition when brought under a state of differential equilibrium.... As regards odour, we can only get some definite idea of its extreme and wondrous tenuity by taking into consideration that a large area of atmosphere can be impregnated for a long series of years from a single grain of musk; which, if weighed after that long interval, will be found to be not appreciably diminished. The great paradox attending the flow of odorous particles is that they can be held under confinement in a glass vessel! Here is a substance of much higher tenuity than the glass that holds it, and yet it cannot escape. It is as a sieve with its meshes large enough to pass marbles, and yet holding fine sand which cannot pass through; in fact, a molecular vessel holding an atomic substance. This is a problem that would confound those who stop to recognize it. But infinitely tenuous as odour is, it holds a very crude relation to the substance of sub‐ division that governs a magnetic flow (a flow of sympathy, if you please to call it so). This sub‐division comes next to sound, but is above sound. The action of the flow of a magnet coincides somewhat to the receiving and distributing portion of the human brain, giving off at all times a depreciating ratio of the amount received. It is a grand illustration of the control of mind over matter, which gradually depreciates the physical till dissolution takes place. The magnet on the same ratio gradually loses its power and becomes inert. If the relations that exist between mind and matter could be equated and so held, we would live on in our physical state eternally, as there would be no physical depreciation. But this physical depreciation leads, at its terminus, to the source of a much higher development—viz., the liberation of the pure ether from the crude molecular; which, in my estimation, is to be much desired.(959)

It may be remarked that, save for a few small divergencies, no Adept nor Alchemist could have better explained these theories, in the light of Modern Science, however much the latter may protest against these novel views. In all its fundamental principles, if not in its details, this is Occultism pure and simple; and moreover, it is modern Natural Philosophy as well.

This new Force, or whatever Science may call it, the effects of which are undeniable—as is admitted by more than one Naturalist and Physicist who has visited Mr. Keely’s laboratory and personally witnessed its tremendous effects—what is it? Is it a “mode of motion,” also, in vacuo, since there is no Matter to generate it except Sound—another “mode of motion,” no doubt, a sensation caused, like Colour, by vibrations? Fully as we believe in these vibrations as the proximate, the immediate, cause of such sensations, we as absolutely reject the one‐sided scientific theory that there is no factor to be considered as external to us, other than etheric or atmospheric vibrations.

In this case the American Substantialists are not wrong, though they are too anthropomorphic and material in their views for these to be accepted by Occultists, when they argue through Mrs. M. S. Organ, M.D., that:

There must be positive entitative properties in objects which have a constitutional relation to the nerves of animal sensations, or there can be no perception. No impression of any kind can be made upon brain, nerve, or mind—no stimulus to action—unless there is an actual and direct communication of a substantial force. [“Substantial” as far as it appears, in the usual sense of the word, in this universe of Illusion and Mâyâ, of course; not in reality.] That force may be the most refined and sublimated immaterial Entity [?]. Yet it must exist; for no sense, element, or faculty of the human being can have a perception, or be stimulated into action, without some substantial force coming in contact with it. This is the fundamental law pervading the whole organic and mental world. In the true philosophical sense there is no such thing as independent action: for every force or substance is correlated to some other force or substance. We can with just as much truth and reason assert that no substance possesses any inherent gustatory property or any olfactory property—that taste and odour are simply sensations caused by vibrations; and hence mere illusions of animal perceptions.

There is a transcendental set of causes put in motion, so to speak, in the occurrence of these phenomena, which, not being in relation to our narrow range of cognition, can only be understood and traced to their source and their nature, by the spiritual faculties of the Adept. They are, as Asclepios puts it to the King, “incorporeal corporealities,” such as “appear in the mirror,” and “abstract forms” that we see, hear, and smell, in our dreams and visions. What have the “modes of motion,” light, and ether to do with these? Yet we see, hear, smell and touch them, ergo they are as much realities to us in our dreams, as any other thing on this plane of Mâyâ.

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Section X. On the Elements and Atoms

When the Occultist speaks of Elements, and of human Beings who lived during those geological ages, the duration of which it is found as impossible to determine—according to the opinion of one of the best English Geologists(960)—as the nature of Matter, it is because he knows what he is talking about. When he says Man and Elements, he means neither man in his present physiological and anthropological form, nor the elemental Atoms, those hypothetical conceptions, existing at present in scientific minds, the entitative abstractions of Matter in its highly attenuated state; nor, again, does he mean the compound Elements of Antiquity. In Occultism the word Element in every case means Rudiment. When we say “Elementary Man,” we mean either the proëmial, incipient sketch of man, in its unfinished and undeveloped condition, hence in that form which now lies latent in physical man during his life‐time, and takes shape only occasionally and under certain conditions; or, that form which for a time survives the material body, and which is better known as an Elementary.(961) With regard to Element, when the term is used metaphysically, it means, in distinction to the mortal, the incipient Divine Man; and, in its physical usage, it means inchoate Matter in its first undifferentiated condition, or in the Laya state, the eternal and normal condition of Substance, which differentiates only periodically; during that differentiation, Substance is really in an abnormal state—in other words, it is but a transitory illusion of the senses.

As to the Elemental Atoms, so‐called, the Occultists refer to them by that name with a meaning analogous to that which is given by the Hindû to Brahmâ, when he calls him Anu, the Atom. Every Elemental Atom, in search of which more than one Chemist has followed the path indicated by the Alchemists, is, in their firm belief, when not knowledge, a Soul; not necessarily a disembodied Soul, but a Jîva, as the Hindûs call it, a centre of Potential Vitality, with latent intelligence in it, and, in the case of compound Souls, an intelligent active Existence, from the highest to the lowest order, a form composed of more or less differentiations. It requires a Metaphysician—and an Eastern Metaphysician—to understand our meaning. All those Atom‐Souls are differentiations from the One, and are in the same relation to it as is the Divine Soul, Buddhi, to its informing and inseparable Spirit, Âtmâ.

Modern Physics, in borrowing from the Ancients their Atomic Theory, forgot one point, the most important point of the doctrine; hence they have got only the husks and will never be able to get the kernel. In adopting physical Atoms, they omitted the suggestive fact that, from Anaxagoras to Epicurus, to the Roman Lucretius, and finally even to Galileo, all these Philosophers believed more or less in animated Atoms, not in invisible specks of so‐called “brute” matter. According to them, rotatory motion was generated by larger (read, more divine and pure) Atoms forcing other Atoms downwards; the lighter ones being simultaneously thrust upward. The Esoteric meaning of this is the ever cyclic curve of differentiated Elements downward and upward through intercyclic phases of existence, until each again reaches its starting‐point or birthplace. The idea was metaphysical as well as physical; the hidden interpretation embracing Gods or Souls, in the shape of Atoms, as the causes of all the effects produced on Earth by the secretions from the divine bodies.(962) No Ancient Philosopher, not even the Jewish Kabalists, ever dissociated Spirit from Matter, or Matter from Spirit. Everything originated in the One, and, proceeding from the One, must finally return to the One.

Light becomes heat, and consolidates into fiery particles; which, from being ignited, become cold, hard particles, round and smooth. And this is called Soul, imprisoned in its robe of matter.(963)

Atoms and Souls were synonymous in the language of the Initiates. The doctrine of “whirling Souls,” Gilgoolem, in which so many learned Jews have believed,(964) had no other meaning esoterically. The learned Jewish Initiates never meant Palestine alone by the Promised Land, but they meant the same Nirvâna as do the learned Buddhist and Brahman—the bosom of the Eternal ONE, symbolized by that of Abraham, and by Palestine as its substitute on Earth.

Surely no educated Jew ever believed this allegory in its literal sense, that the bodies of Jews contain within them a principle of Soul which cannot rest, if the bodies are deposited in a foreign land, until, by a process called the “whirling of the Soul” the immortal particle reaches once more the sacred soil of the “Promised Land.”(965) The meaning of this is evident to an Occultist. The process was supposed to be accomplished by a kind of metempsychosis, the psychic spark being conveyed through bird, beast, fish, and the most minute insect.(966) The allegory relates to the Atoms of the body, each of which has to pass through every form, before all reach the final state, which is the first starting‐point of the departure of every Atom—its primitive Laya state. But the primitive meaning of Gilgoolem, or the “Revolution of Souls,” was the idea of the reïncarnating Souls or Egos. “All the Souls go into the Gilgoolah,” into a cyclic or revolving process; i.e., they all proceed on the cyclic path of re‐births. Some Kabalists interpret this doctrine to mean only a kind of purgatory for the souls of the wicked. But this is not so.

The passage of the Soul‐Atom “through the seven Planetary Chambers” had the same metaphysical and physical meaning. It had the latter when it was said to dissolve into Ether. Even Epicurus, the model Atheist and Materialist, knew so much and believed so much in the ancient Wisdom, that he taught that the Soul—entirely distinct from immortal Spirit, when the former is enshrined latent in it, as it is in every atomic speck—was composed of a fine, tender essence, formed from the smoothest, roundest, and finest atoms.(967)

And this shows that the ancient Initiates, who were followed more or less closely by all profane Antiquity, meant by the term Atom, a Soul, a Genius or Angel, the first‐born of the ever‐concealed Cause of all causes; and in this sense their teachings become comprehensible. They asserted, as do their successors, the existence of Gods and Genii, Angels or Demons, not outside, nor independent of, the Universal Plenum, but within it. Only this Plenum, during the life‐cycles, is infinite. They admitted and taught a good deal of that which modern Science now teaches—namely, the existence of a primordial World‐Stuff or Cosmic Substance, eternally homogeneous, except during its periodic existence; then, universally diffused throughout infinite Space, it differentiates, and gradually forms sidereal bodies from itself. They taught the revolution of the Heavens, the Earth’s rotation, the Heliocentric System, and the Atomic Vortices—Atoms being in reality Souls and Intelligences. These “Atomists” were spiritual, most transcendental, and philosophical Pantheists. It is not they who would have ever conceived or dreamed that monstrous contrasted progeny, the nightmare of our modern civilized race: inanimate material and self‐ guiding Atoms, on the one hand, and an extra‐cosmic God on the other.

It may be useful to show what the Monad was, and what its origin, in the teachings of the old Initiates.

Modern exact Science, as soon as it began to grow out of its teens, perceived the great, and to it hitherto esoteric, axiom, that nothing, whether in the spiritual, psychic, or physical realm of Being, could come into existence out of nothing. There is no cause in the manifested Universe without its adequate effects, whether in Space or Time; nor can there be an effect without its primal cause, which itself owes its existence to a still higher one—the final and absolute Cause having to remain to man for ever an incomprehensible Causeless Cause. But even this is no solution, and must be viewed, if at all, from the highest philosophical and metaphysical standpoints, otherwise the problem had better be left unapproached. It is an abstraction, on the verge of which human reason—however trained in metaphysical subtleties—trembles, threatening to collapse. This may be demonstrated to any European, who would undertake to solve the problem of existence, by the articles of faith of the true Vedântin for instance. Let him read and study the sublime teachings of Shankarâchârya, on the subject of Soul and Spirit, and the reader will realize what is now said.(968)

While the Christian is taught that the human Soul is a breath of God, being created by him for sempiternal existence, having a beginning, but no end—and therefore never to be called eternal—the Occult Teaching says: Nothing is created, it is only transformed. Nothing can manifest itself in this Universe—from a globe down to a vague, rapid thought—that was not in the Universe already; everything on the subjective plane is an eternal is; as everything on the objective plane is an ever‐becoming—because all is transitory.

The Monad—a truly “indivisible thing,” as defined by Good, who did not give it the sense we now do—is here rendered as the Âtmâ, in conjunction with Buddhi and the higher Manas. This trinity is one and eternal, the latter being absorbed in the former at the termination of all conditioned and illusive life. The Monad, then, can be traced through the course of its pilgrimage and in its changes of transitory vehicles, only from the incipient stage of the manifested Universe. In Pralaya, the intermediate period between two Manvantaras, it loses its name, as it loses it when the real One Self of man merges into Brahman, in cases of high Samâdhi (the Turîya state), or final Nirvâna; in the words of Shankara:

When the disciple having attained that primeval consciousness, absolute bliss, of which the nature is truth, which is without form and action, abandons this illusive body that has been assumed by the Âtmâ just as an actor (abandons) the dress (put on).

For Buddhi, the Anandamaya Sheath, is but a mirror which reflects absolute bliss; and, moreover, that reflection itself is yet not free from ignorance, and is not the Supreme Spirit, since it is subject to conditions, is a spiritual modification of Prakriti, and is an effect; Âtmâ alone is the one real and eternal substratum of all, the Essence and Absolute Knowledge, the Kshetrajña. Now that the Revised Version of the Gospels has been published and the most glaring mistranslations of the old versions are corrected, one can understand better the words in 1 John v. 6: “It is the Spirit that beareth witness because the Spirit is truth.” The words that follow in the mistranslated version about the “three witnesses,” hitherto supposed to stand for “the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost,” show the real meaning of the writer very clearly, thus still more forcibly identifying his teaching in this respect with that of Shankarâchârya. For what can the sentence mean, “there are three that bear witness ... the Spirit and the Water and the Blood”—if it bears no relation to, nor connection with, the more philosophical statement of the great Vedântin teacher, who, speaking of the Sheaths—the principles in man—Jîva, Vijñânamaya, etc., which are, in their physical manifestation, “Water and Blood” or Life, adds that Âtmâ, Spirit, alone is what remains after the subtraction of the Sheaths and that it is the Only Witness, or synthesized unity. The less spiritual and philosophical school, solely with an eye to a Trinity, made three witnesses out of “one,” thus connecting it more with Earth than with Heaven. It is called in Esoteric Philosophy the “One Witness,” and, while it rests in Devachan, is referred to as the “Three Witnesses to Karma.”

Âtmâ, our seventh principle, being identical with the Universal Spirit, and man being one with it in his essence, what is then the Monad proper? It is that homogeneous spark which radiates in millions of rays from the primeval Seven;—of which Seven something will be said further on. It is the EMANATING SPARK FROM THE UNCREATED RAY—a mystery. In the esoteric, and even exoteric Buddhism of the North, Âdi‐Buddha (Chogi Dangpoi Sangye), the One Unknown, without beginning or end, identical with Parabrahman and Ain Suph, emits a bright Ray from its Darkness.

This is the Logos, the First, or Vajradhara, the Supreme Buddha, also called Dorjechang. As the Lord of all Mysteries he cannot manifest, but sends into the world of manifestation his Heart—the “Diamond Heart,” Vajrasattva or Dorjesempa. This is the Second Logos of Creation, from whom emanate the seven—in the exoteric blind the five—Dhyâni‐Buddhas, called the Anupâdaka, the “Parentless.” These Buddhas are the primeval Monads from the World of Incorporeal Being, the Arûpa World, wherein the Intelligences (on that plane only) have neither shape nor name, in the exoteric system, but have their distinct seven names in the Esoteric Philosophy. These Dhyâni‐Buddhas emanate, or create from themselves, by virtue of Dhyâna, celestial Selves—the super‐human Bodhisattvas. These, incarnating at the beginning of every human cycle on Earth as mortal men, become occasionally, owing to their personal merit, Bodhisattvas among the Sons of Humanity, after which they may reäppear as Mânushi, or Human, Buddhas. The Anupâdaka, or Dhyâni‐Buddhas, are thus identical with the Brâhmanical Mânasaputra, Mind‐born Sons—whether of Brahmâ, or of either of the other two Trimûrtian Hypostases; they are identical also with the Rishis and Prajâpatis. Thus, a passage is found in Anugîtâ, which, read esoterically, shows plainly, though under another imagery, the same idea and system. It says:

Whatever entities there are in this world, moveable or immoveable, they are the very first to be dissolved [at Pralaya]; and next the developments produced from the elements [from which the visible universe is fashioned]; and (after) these developments [evolved entities], all the elements. Such is the upward gradation among entities. Gods, Men, Gandharvas, Pishâchas, Asuras, Râkshasas, all have been created by Nature [Svabhâva, or Prakriti, plastic Nature], not by actions, nor by a cause [not by any physical cause]. These Brâhmanas [the Rishi Prajâpati?], the creators of the world, are born here (on earth) again and again. And whatever is produced from them is dissolved in due time in those very five great elements [the five, or rather seven, Dhyâni‐Buddhas, also called “Elements” of Mankind], like billows in the ocean. These great elements are in every way (beyond) the elements that make up the world [the gross elements]. And he who is released, even from these five elements [the Tanmâtras],(969) goes to the highest goal. The Lord Prajâpati [Brahmâ] created all this by the mind only [by Dhyâna, or abstract meditation and mystic powers, like the Dhyâni‐Buddhas].(970)

Evidently then, these Brâhmanas are identical with the terrestrial Bodhisattvas of the heavenly Dhyâni‐Buddhas. Both, as primordial, intelligent “Elements,” become the Creators or the Emanators of the Monads destined to become human in that cycle; after which they evolve themselves, or, so to say, expand into their own Selves as Bodhisattvas or Brâhmanas, in heaven and earth, to become at last simple men. “The creators of the world are born here, on earth again and again”—truly. In the Northern Buddhist system, or the popular exoteric religion, it is taught that every Buddha, while preaching the Good Law on Earth, manifests himself simultaneously in three Worlds: in the Formless World as a Dhyâni‐ Buddha, in the World of Forms as a Bodhisattva, and in the World of Desire, the lowest or our World, as a man. Esoterically the teaching differs. The divine, purely Âdi‐Buddhic Monad manifests as the universal Buddhi, the Mahâ‐Buddhi or Mahat, in Hindû philosophies, the spiritual, omniscient and omnipotent Root of divine Intelligence, the highest Anima Mundi or the Logos. This descends “like a flame spreading from the eternal Fire, immoveable, without increase or decrease, ever the same to the end” of the cycle of existence, and becomes Universal Life on the Mundane Plane. From this Plane of conscious Life shoot out, like seven fiery tongues, the Sons of Light, the Logoi of Life; then the Dhyâni‐Buddhas of contemplation, the concrete forms of their formless Fathers, the Seven Sons of Light, still themselves, to whom maybe applied the Brâhmanical mystic phrase: “Thou art THAT”—Brahman. It is from these Dhyâni‐Buddhas that emanate their Chhâyâs or Shadows, the Bodhisattvas of the celestial realms, the prototypes of the super‐terrestrial Bodhisattvas, and of the terrestrial Buddhas, and finally of men. The Seven Sons of Light are also called Stars.

The star under which a human Entity is born, says the Occult Teaching, will remain for ever its star, throughout the whole cycle of its incarnations in one Manvantara. But this is not his astrological star. The latter is concerned and connected with the Personality; the former with the Individuality. The Angel of that Star, or the Dhyâni‐Buddha connected with it, will be either the guiding, or simply the presiding, Angel, so to say, in every new rebirth of the Monad, which is part of his own essence, though his vehicle, man, may remain for ever ignorant of this fact. The Adepts have each their Dhyâni‐Buddha, their elder “Twin‐ Soul,” and they know it, calling it “Father‐Soul,” and “Father‐Fire.” It is only at the last and supreme Initiation, however, when placed face to face with the bright “Image” that they learn to recognize it. How much did Bulwer Lytton know of this mystic fact, when describing, in one of his highest inspirational moods, Zanoni face to face with his Augoeides?

The Logos, or both the unmanifested and the manifested Word, is called by the Hindûs, Îshvara, the Lord, though the Occultists give it another name. Îshvara, say the Vedântins, is the highest consciousness in Nature. “This highest consciousness,” answer the Occultists, “is only a synthetic unit in the World of the manifested Logos—or on the plane of illusion; for it is the sum total of Dhyân Chohanic consciousness.” “O wise man, remove the conception that Not‐Spirit is Spirit”—says Shankarâchârya. Âtmâ is Not‐ Spirit in its final Parabrahmic state; Îshvara, or Logos, is Spirit; or, as Occultism explains, it is a compound unity of manifested living Spirits, the parent‐source and nursery of all the mundane and terrestrial Monads, plus their divine Reflection, which emanate from, and return into, the Logos, each in the culmination of its time. There are seven chief Groups of such Dhyân Chohans, which groups will be found and recognized in every religion, for they are the primeval Seven Rays. Humanity, Occultism teaches us, is divided into seven distinct Groups, with their sub‐divisions, mental, spiritual, and physical. Hence there are seven chief planets, the spheres of the indwelling seven Spirits, under each of which is born one of the human Groups which is guided and influenced thereby. There are only seven planets specially connected with Earth, and twelve houses, but the possible combinations of their aspects are countless. As each planet can stand to each of the others in twelve different aspects, their combinations must be almost infinite; as infinite, in fact, as the spiritual, psychic, mental, and physical capacities in the numberless varieties of the genus homo, each of which varieties is born under one of the seven planets and one of the said countless planetary combinations.(971)

The Monad, then, viewed as One, is above the seventh principle in Kosmos and man; and as a Triad, it is the direct radiant progeny of the said compound Unit, not the Breath of “God,” as that Unit is called, nor creating out of nihil; for such an idea is quite unphilosophical, and degrades Deity, dragging It down to a finite, attributive condition. As well expressed by the translator of the Crest‐Jewel of Wisdom—though Îshvara is “God.”

Unchanged in the profoundest depths of Pralayas and in the intensest activity of Manvantaras, [still] beyond [him] is ÂTMÂ, round whose pavilion is the darkness of eternal MÂYÂ.(972)

The “Triads” born under the same Parent‐Planet, or rather the Radiations of one and the same Planetary Spirit or Dhyâni‐Buddha are, in all their after lives and rebirths, sister, or “twin” souls, on this Earth. The idea is the same as that of the Christian Trinity, the “Three in One,” only it is still more metaphysical: the Universal “Over‐Spirit,” manifesting on the two higher planes, those of Buddhi and Mahat. These are the three Hypostases, metaphysical, but never personal.

This was known to every high Initiate in every age and in every country: “I and my Father are one,” said Jesus.(973) When he is made to say, elsewhere: “I ascend to my Father and your Father,”(974) it meant that which has just been stated. The identity, and at the same time the illusive differentiation of the Angel‐Monad and the Human‐Monad is shown in the sentences: “My Father is greater than I”;(975) “Glorify your Father which is in Heaven”;(976) “Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (not our Father).(977) So again Paul asks: “Know ye not ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?”(978) All this was simply meant to show that the group of disciples and followers attracted to him belonged to the same Dhyâni‐Buddha, Star, or Father, and that this again belonged to the same planetary realm and division as he did. It is the knowledge of this Occult Doctrine that found expression in the review of The Idyll of the White Lotus, when T. Subba Row wrote:

Every Buddha meets at his last Initiation all the great Adepts who reached Buddhahood during the preceding ages ... every class of Adepts has its own bond of spiritual communion which knits them together.... The only possible and effectual way of entering into such brotherhood ... is by bringing oneself within the influence of the Spiritual light which radiates from one’s own Logos. I may further point out here ... that such communion is only possible between persons whose souls derive their life and sustenance from the same divine Ray, and that, as seven distinct Rays radiate from the “Central Spiritual Sun,” all Adepts and Dhyân Chohans are divisible into seven classes, each of which is guided, controlled, and overshadowed by one of the seven forms or manifestations of the divine Wisdom.(979)

It is then the Seven Sons of Light,—called after their planets and often identified with them by the rabble, namely, Saturn, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, Venus, and presumably the Sun and Moon, for the modern critic, who goes no deeper than the surface of old religions(980)—which are, according to the Occult Teachings, our heavenly Parents, or synthetically our “Father.” Hence, as already remarked, Polytheism is really more philosophical and correct, as to fact and Nature, than is anthropomorphic Monotheism. Saturn, Jupiter, Mercury, and Venus, the four exoteric planets, and the three others, which must remain unnamed, were the heavenly bodies in direct astral and psychic communication, morally and physically, with the Earth, its Guides, and Watchers; the visible orbs furnishing our Humanity with its outward and inward characteristics, and their Regents or Rectors with our Monads and spiritual faculties. In order to avoid creating new misconceptions, let it be stated that among the three Secret Orbs, or Star‐Angels, neither Uranus nor Neptune were included; not only because they were unknown under these names to the ancient Sages, but because they, like all other planets, however many there may be, are the Gods and Guardians of other septenary Chains of Globes within our System.

Nor do the two great planets last discovered depend entirely on the Sun, as do the rest of the planets. Otherwise, how can we explain the fact that Uranus receives 1/390th part of the light received by our Earth, while Neptune receives only 1/900th part; and that their satellites show a peculiarity of inverse rotation found in no other planets of the Solar System? At any rate, what we say applies to Uranus, though the fact has again been disputed recently.

This subject will, of course, be considered as a mere vagary, by all those who confuse the universal order of Being with their own systems of classification. Here, however, simple facts from Occult Teachings are stated, to be either accepted or rejected, as the case may be. There are details which, on account of their great metaphysical abstraction, cannot be entered upon. Hence, we merely state that only seven of our planets are as intimately related to our Globe, as the Sun is to all the bodies subject to him in his System. Of these bodies the poor little number of primary and secondary planets known to Astronomy, looks wretched enough, in truth.(981) Therefore, it stands to reason that there are a great number of planets, small and large, that have not been discovered yet, but of the existence of which ancient Astronomers—all of them initiated Adepts—must certainly have been aware. But, as the relation of these to the Gods was sacred, it had to remain arcane, as did also the names of various other planets and stars.

Besides this, even the Roman Catholic Theology speaks of “seventy planets that preside over the destinies of the nations of this globe;” and, save the erroneous application, there is more truth in this tradition than in exact modern Astronomy. The seventy planets are connected with the seventy elders of the people of Israel,(982) and the Regents of these planets are meant, not the orbs themselves; the word seventy is a play and a blind upon the 7 × 7 of the subdivisions. Each people and nation, as we have already said, has its direct Watcher, Guardian and Father in Heaven—a Planetary Spirit. We are willing to leave their own national God, Jehovah, to the descendants of Israel, the worshippers of Sabaoth or Saturn; for, indeed, the Monads of the people chosen by him are his own, and the Bible has never made any secret of it. Only the text of the Protestant English Bible is, as usual, in disagreement with those of the Septuagint and the Vulgate. Thus, while in the former we read:

When the Most High [not Jehovah] divided to the nations their inheritance ... he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.(983)

In the Septuagint the text reads “according to the number of the Angels,” Planet‐Angels, a version more concordant with truth and fact. Moreover, all the texts agree that “the Lord’s [Jehovah’s] portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance”;(984) and this settles the question. The “Lord” Jehovah took Israel for his portion; what have other nations to do with that particular national Deity? Let then, the “Angel Gabriel” watch over Iran and “Mikael‐Jehovah” over the Hebrews. These are not the Gods of other nations, and it is difficult to see why Christians should have selected a God against whose commandments Jesus was the first to rise in rebellion.

The planetary origin of the Monad, or Soul, and of its faculties was taught by the Gnostics. On its way to the Earth, as on its way back from the Earth, each soul born in, and from, the “Boundless Light,”(985) had to pass through the seven planetary regions either way. The pure Dhyâni and Devas of the oldest religions had become, in course of time, with the Zoroastrians, the Seven Devs, the ministers of Ahriman, “each chained to his planet”;(986) with the Brâhmans, the Asuras and some of the Rishis—good, bad and indifferent; among the Egyptian Gnostics it was Thoth, or Hermes, who was the chief of the Seven whose names are given by Origen as Adonai, genius of the Sun; Tao, of the Moon; Eloi, of Jupiter; Sabaoth, of Mars; Orai, of Venus; Astaphai, of Mercury; and Ildabaoth (Jehovah), of Saturn. Finally, the Pistis‐Sophia, which the greatest modern authority on exoteric Gnostic beliefs, the late Mr. C. W. King, refers to as “that precious monument of Gnosticism”—this old document echoes the archaic belief of the ages, while distorting it to suit sectarian purposes. The Astral Rulers of the Spheres, the planets, create the Monads, or Souls, from their own substance out of “the tears of their eyes, and the sweat of their torments,” endowing the Monads with a spark of their substance which is the Divine Light. It will be shown in Volume II why these “Lords of the Zodiac and Spheres” have been transformed by sectarian Theology into the Rebellious Angels of the Christians, who took them from the Seven Devs of the Magi, without understanding the significance of the allegory.(987)

As usual, that which is, and was from its beginning, divine, pure, and spiritual in its earliest unity, became—by reason of its differentiation through the distorted prism of man’s conceptions—human and impure, as reflecting man’s own sinful nature. Thus, in time, the planet Saturn became reviled by the worshippers of other Gods. The nations born under Saturn—the Jewish, for instance, with whom he became Jehovah, after being considered as a son of Saturn, or Ilda‐Baoth, by the Ophites, and in the Book of Jasher—were eternally fighting with those born under Jupiter, Mercury, or any other planet, except Saturn‐Jehovah; genealogies and prophecies notwithstanding, Jesus the Initiate (or Jehoshua)—the type from whom the “historical” Jesus was copied—was not of pure Jewish blood, and thus recognized no Jehovah; nor did he worship any planetary God beside his own “Father,” whom he knew, and with whom he communed, as every high Initiate does, “Spirit to Spirit and Soul to Soul.” This can hardly be taken exception to, unless the critic explains to every one’s satisfaction the strange sentences put into the mouth of Jesus during his disputes with the Pharisees by the author of the Fourth Gospel:

I know that ye are Abraham’s seed(988).... I speak that which I have seen with my Father; and ye do that which ye have seen with your Father.... Ye do the deeds of your Father.... Ye are of your Father, the Devil.... He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar and the father of it.(989)

This “Father” of the Pharisees was Jehovah, for he was identical with Cain, Saturn, Vulcan, etc.—the planet under which they were born, and the God whom they worshipped. Evidently there must be an Occult meaning sought in these words and admonitions, however mistranslated, since they are pronounced by one who threatened with hell‐fire anyone who says to his brother simply Raca, fool.(990) And evidently, again, the planets are not merely spheres, twinkling in Space, and made to shine for no purpose, but they are the domains of various Beings with whom the uninitiated are so far unacquainted, but who have, nevertheless, a mysterious, unbroken, and powerful connection with men and globes. Every heavenly body is the temple of a God, and these Gods themselves are the temples of God, the Unknown “Not Spirit.” There is nothing profane in the Universe. All Nature is a consecrated place, as Young says:

Each of these Stars is a religious house.

Thus can all exoteric religions be shown to be the falsified copies of the Esoteric Teaching. It is the priesthood which has to be held responsible for the reaction of our day in favour of Materialism. It is by worshipping and enforcing on the masses the worship of the shells of pagan ideals—personified for purposes of allegory—that the latest exoteric religion has made of Western lands a Pandemonium, in which the higher classes worship the golden calf, and the lower and ignorant masses are made to worship an idol with feet of clay.

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Section XI. Ancient Thought in Modern Dress

Modern Science is Ancient Thought distorted, and no more. We have seen, however, what intuitional Scientists think, and are busy about; and now the reader shall be given a few more proofs of the fact that more than one F.R.S. is unconsciously approaching the derided Secret Sciences.

With regard to Cosmogony and primeval matter, modern speculations are undeniably ancient thought, “improved” by contradictory theories of recent origin. The whole foundation belongs to Grecian and Indian Archaic Astronomy and Physics, in those days called always Philosophy. In all the Âryan and Greek speculations, we meet with the conception of an all‐ pervading, unorganized, and homogeneous Matter, or Chaos, re‐named by modern Scientists “nebular condition of the world‐stuff.” What Anaxagoras called Chaos in his Homoiomeria is now called “primitive fluid” by Sir William Thomson. The Hindû and Greek Atomists—Kanâda, Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius, etc.—are now reflected, as in a clear mirror, in the supporters of the Atomic Theory of our modern days, beginning with Leibnitz’s Monads, and ending with the Vortical Atoms of Sir William Thomson.(991) True, the corpuscular theory of old is rejected, and the undulatory theory has taken its place. But the question is, whether the latter is so firmly established as not to be liable to be dethroned like its predecessor? Light, from its metaphysical aspect, has been fully treated in Isis Unveiled:

Light is the first begotten, and the first emanation of the Supreme, and Light is Life, says the Evangelist [and the Kabalist]. Both are electricity—the life principle, the Anima Mundi—pervading the Universe, the electric vivifier of all things. Light is the great Protean magician, and under the divine Will of the Architect(992) [or rather the Architects, the “Builders,” called One collectively], its multifarious, omnipotent waves gave birth to every form as well as to every living being. From its swelling electric bosom, spring Matter and Spirit. Within its beams lie the beginnings of all physical and chemical action, and of all cosmic and spiritual phenomena; it vitalizes and disorganizes; it gives life and produces death, and from its Primordial Point gradually emerged into existence the myriads of worlds, visible and invisible celestial bodies. It was at the ray of this First Mother, one in three, that “God,” according to Plato, “lighted a Fire which we now call the Sun,”(993) and which is not the cause of either light or heat, but merely the focus, or, as we might say, the lens, by which the Rays of the Primordial Light become materialized, are concentrated upon our Solar System, and produce all the correlations of forces.(994)

This is the Ether, as just explained in the views of Metcalfe, repeated by Dr. Richardson, save for the submission of the former to some details of the modern undulatory theory. We do not say that we deny the theory; we assert only that it needs completion and reärrangement. But the Occultists are by no means the only heretics in this respect; for Mr. Robert Hunt, F.R.S. finds that:

The undulatory theory does not account for the results of his experiments.(995) Sir David Brewster, in his Treatise on Optics, showing “that the colours of vegetable life arise ... from a specific attraction which the particles of these bodies exercise over the differently‐coloured rays of light,” and that “it is by the light of the sun that the coloured juices of plants are elaborated, that the colours of bodies are changed, etc.,” remarks that it is not easy to allow “that such effects can be produced by the mere vibration of an ethereal medium.” And he is forced, he says, “by this class of facts, to reason as if light was material” [?]. Professor Josiah P. Cooke, of Harvard University, says that he “cannot agree ... with those who regard the wave‐ theory of light as an established principle of science.”(996) Herschell’s doctrine, that the intensity of light, in effect of each undulation, “is inversely as the square of the distance from the luminous body,” if correct, damages a good deal, if it does not kill, the undulatory theory. That he is right, was proved repeatedly by experiments with photometers; and though it begins to be much doubted, the undulatory theory is still alive.(997)

To this remark of Sir David Brewster—“forced to reason as if light was material”—there is a good deal to reply. Light, in one sense, is certainly as material as is electricity itself. And if electricity is not material, if it is only a “mode of motion,” how is it that it can be stored up in Faure’s accumulators? Helmholtz says that electricity must be as atomic as matter; and Mr. W. Crookes, F.R.S., supported the view in his address at Birmingham, in 1886, to the Chemical Section of the British Association, of which he was President. This is what Helmholtz says:

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.(998)

Here we have to repeat that which was already said in Section VIII, that there is but one science that can henceforth direct modern research into the one path which will lead to the discovery of the whole, hitherto Occult, truth, and it is the youngest of all—Chemistry, as it now stands reformed. There is no other, not excluding Astronomy, that can so unerringly guide scientific intuition, as can Chemistry. Two proofs of this are to be found in the world of Science—two great Chemists, each among the greatest in his own country, namely, Mr. Crookes and the late Professor Butlerof: the one is a thorough believer in abnormal phenomena; the other was as fervid a Spiritualist, as he was great in the natural sciences. It becomes evident that, while pondering over the ultimate divisibility of Matter, and in the hitherto fruitless chase after the element of negative atomic weight, the scientifically trained mind of the Chemist must feel irresistibly drawn towards those ever‐shrouded worlds, to that mysterious Beyond, whose measureless depths seem to close against the approach of the too materialistic hand that would fain draw aside its veil. “It is the unknown and the ever‐unknowable,” warns the Monist‐ Agnostic. “Not so,” answers the persevering Chemist. “We are on the track and we are not daunted, and fain would we enter the mysterious region which ignorance tickets unknown.”

In his Presidential Address at Birmingham Mr. Crookes said:

There is but one unknown—the ultimate substratum of Spirit [Space]. That which is not the Absolute and the One is, in virtue of that very differentiation, however far removed from the physical senses, always accessible to the spiritual human mind, which is a coruscation of the undifferentiable Integral.

Two or three sentences, at the very close of his lecture on the Genesis of the Elements, showed the eminent Scientist to be on the royal road to the greatest discoveries. He has been for some time overshadowing “the original protyle,” and he has come to the conclusion that “he who grasps the Key will be permitted to unlock some of the deepest mysteries of creation.” Protyle, as the great Chemist explains:

... is a word analogous to protoplasm, to express the idea of the original primal matter existing before the evolution of the chemical elements. The word I have ventured to use for this purpose is compounded of πρὸ (earlier than) and ὕλη (the stuff of which things are made). The word is scarcely a new coinage, for 600 years ago Roger Bacon wrote in his Arte Chymiae, “The elements are made out of ὕλη and every element is converted into the nature of another element.”

The knowledge of Roger Bacon did not come to this wonderful old magician(999) by inspiration, but because he studied ancient works on Magic and Alchemy, and had a key to the real meaning of their language. But see what Mr. Crookes says of Protyle, next neighbour to the unconscious Mûlaprakriti of the Occultists:

Let us start at the moment when the first element came into existence. Before this time, matter, as we know it, was not. It is equally impossible to conceive of matter without energy, as of energy without matter; from one point of view both are convertible terms. Before the birth of atoms, all those forms of energy, which become evident when matter acts upon matter, could not have existed(1000)—they were locked up in the protyle as latent potentialities only. Coincident with the creation of atoms, all those attributes and properties, which form the means of discriminating one chemical element from another, start into existence fully endowed with energy.(1001)

With every respect due to the great knowledge of the lecturer, the Occultist would put it otherwise. He would say that no Atom is ever “created,” for the Atoms are eternal within the bosom of the One Atom—“the Atom of Atoms”—viewed during Manvantara as the Jagad‐Yoni, the material causative womb of the World. Pradhâna, unmodified Matter—that which is the first form of Prakriti, or material, visible, as well as invisible Nature—and Purusha, Spirit, are eternally one; and they are Nirupâdhi, without adventitious qualities or attributes, only during Pralaya, and when beyond any of the planes of consciousness of existence. The Atom, as known to modern science, is inseparable from Purusha, which is Spirit, but is now called “energy” in Science. The Protyle Atom has not been comminuted or subtilized: it has simply passed into that plane, which is no plane, but the eternal state of everything beyond the planes of illusion. Both Purusha and Pradhâna are immutable and unconsumable, or Aparinâmin and Avyaya, in eternity; and both may be referred to during the Mâyâvic periods as Vyaya and Parinâmin, or that which can expand, pass away and disappear, and which is “modifiable.” In this sense Purusha, must, of course, be held distinct in our conceptions from Parabrahman. Nevertheless that, which is called “energy” or “force” in Science, and which has been explained as a dual force by Metcalfe, is never, in fact, and cannot be, energy alone; for it is the Substance of the World, its Soul, the All‐permeant, Sarvaga, in conjunction with Kâla, Time. The three are the trinity in one, during Manvantara, the all‐potential Unity, which acts as three distinct things on Mâyâ, the plane of illusion. In the Orphic philosophy of ancient Greece they were called Phanes, Chaos, and Chronos—the triad of the Occult Philosophers of that period.

But see how closely Mr. Crookes brushes the “Unknowable,” and what potentialities there are for the acceptance of Occult truths in his discoveries. He continues, speaking of the evolution of Atoms:

Let us pause at the end of the first complete vibration and examine the result. We have already found the elements of water, ammonia, carbonic acid, the atmosphere, plant and animal life, phosphorus for the brain, salt for the seas, clay for the solid earth ... phosphates and silicates sufficient for a world and inhabitants not so very different from what we enjoy at the present day. True the human inhabitants would have to live in a state of more than Arcadian simplicity, and the absence of calcic phosphate would be awkward as far as the bone is concerned.(1002)... At the lower end of our curve ... we see a great hiatus.... This oasis, and the blanks which precede and follow it, may be referred with much probability to the particular way in which our earth developed into a member of our solar system. If this be so, it may be that on our earth only these blanks occur, and not generally throughout the universe.

This justifies several assertions in the Occult works.

Firstly, that neither the stars nor the Sun can be said to be constituted of those terrestrial elements with which the Chemist is familiar, though they are all present in the Sun’s outward robes—as well as a host more of elements so far unknown to Science.

Secondly, that our globe has its own special laboratory on the far‐away outskirts of its atmosphere, crossing which, every Atom and molecule changes and differentiates from its primordial nature.

And thirdly, that though no element present on our Earth could ever possibly be found wanting in the Sun, there are many others there which have either not reached, or not as yet been discovered on our globe.

Some may be missing in certain stars and heavenly bodies in the process of formation; or, though present in them, these elements, on account of their present state, may not respond as yet to the usual scientific tests.(1003)

Mr. Crookes speaks of helium, an element of still lower atomic weight than hydrogen, an element purely hypothetical as far as our earth is concerned, though existing in abundance in the chromosphere of the Sun. Occult Science adds that not one of the elements regarded as such by Chemistry really deserves the name.

Again we find Mr. Crookes speaking with approbation of

Dr. Carnelly’s weighty argument in favour of the compound nature of the so‐called elements, from their analogy to the compound radicles.

Hitherto, Alchemy alone, within the historical period, and in the so‐ called civilized countries, has succeeded in obtaining a real element, or a particle of homogeneous Matter, the Mysterium Magnum of Paracelsus. But then that was before Lord Bacon’s day.(1004)

... Let us now turn to the upper portion of the scheme. With hydrogen of atomic weight = 1, there is little room for other elements, save, perhaps, for hypothetical Helium. But what if we get “through the looking‐glass,” and cross the zero line in search of new principles—what shall we find on the other side of zero? Dr. Carnelly asks for an element of negative atomic weight; here is ample room and verge enough for a shadow series of such unsubstantialities. Helmholtz says that electricity is probably as atomic as matter; is electricity one of the negative elements, and the luminiferous ether another? Matter, as we now know it, does not here exist; the forms of energy which are apparent in the motions of matter are as yet only latent possibilities. A substance of negative weight is not inconceivable.(1005) But can we form a clear conception of a body which combines with other bodies in proportions expressible by negative qualities?(1006)

A genesis of the elements such as is here sketched out would not be confined to our little solar system, but would probably follow the same general sequence of events in every centre of energy now visible as a star.

Before the birth of atoms to gravitate towards one another, no pressure could be exercised; but at the outskirts of the fire‐mist sphere, within which all is protyle—at the shell on which the tremendous forces involved in the birth of a chemical element exert full sway—the fierce heat would be accompanied by gravitation sufficient to keep the newly‐born elements from flying off into space. As temperature increases, expansion and molecular motion increase, molecules tend to fly asunder, and their chemical affinities become deadened; but the enormous: pressure of the gravitation of the mass of atomic matter, outside what I may for brevity call the birth‐shell, would counteract the action of heat.

Beyond the birth‐shell would be a space in which no chemical action could take place, owing to the temperature there being above what is called the dissociation‐point for compounds. In this space the lion and the lamb would lie down together: phosphorus and oxygen would mix without union; hydrogen and chlorine would show no tendency to closer bonds; and even fluorine, that energetic gas which chemists have only isolated within the last month or two, would float about free and uncombined.

Outside this space of free atomic matter would be another shell, in which the formed chemical elements would have cooled down to the combination point, and the sequence of events so graphically described by Mr. Mattieu Williams in The Fuel of the Sun would now take place, culminating in the solid earth and the commencement of geological time (p. 19).

This is, in strictly scientific, but beautiful language, the description of the evolution of the differentiated Universe in the Secret Teachings. The learned gentleman closes his address in words, every sentence of which is like a flash of light from beyond the dark veil of materiality, hitherto thrown upon the exact sciences, and is a step forward towards the Sanctum Sanctorum of the Occult. Thus he says:

We have glanced at the difficulty of defining an element; we have noticed, too, the revolt of many leading physicists and chemists against the ordinary acceptation of the term element; we have weighed the improbability of their eternal existence,(1007) or their origination by chance. As a remaining alternative, we have suggested their origin by a process of evolution like that of the heavenly bodies according to Laplace, and the plants and animals of our globe according to Lamarck, Darwin, and Wallace.(1008) In the general array of the elements, as known to us, we have seen a striking approximation to that of the organic world.(1009) In lack of direct evidence of the decomposition of any element, we have sought and found indirect evidence.... We have next glanced at the view of the genesis of the elements; and lastly we have reviewed a scheme of their origin suggested by Professor Reynolds’ method of illustrating the periodic classification(1010).... Summing up all the above considerations we cannot, indeed, venture to assert positively that our so‐called elements have been evolved from one primordial matter; but we may contend that the balance of evidence, I think, fairly weighs in favour of this speculation.

Thus inductive Science, in its branches of Astronomy, Physics, and Chemistry, while advancing timidly towards the conquest of Nature’s secrets in her final effects on our terrestrial plane, recedes to the days of Anaxagoras and the Chaldees in its discoveries of (a) the origin of our phenomenal world, and (b) the modes of formation of the bodies that compose the Universe. And having, for their cosmogonical hypotheses to turn back to the beliefs of the earliest philosophers, and the systems of the latter—systems that were all based on the teachings of a universal Secret Doctrine with regard to primeval Matter, with its properties, functions, and laws—have we not the right to hope that the day is not far off when Science will show a better appreciation of the Wisdom of the Ancients than it has hitherto done?

No doubt Occult Philosophy could learn a good deal from exact Modern Science; but the latter, on the other hand, might profit by ancient learning in more than one way, and chiefly in Cosmogony. It might learn, for instance, the mystical signification, alchemical and transcendental, of the many imponderable substances that fill interplanetary space, and which, interpenetrating each, are the direct cause, at the lower end, of the production of natural phenomena manifesting through so‐called vibration. The knowledge of the real, not the hypothetical, nature of Ether, or rather of the Âkâsha, and other mysteries, in short, can alone lead to the knowledge of Forces. It is that Substance against which the Materialistic school of the Physicists rebels with such fury, especially in France,(1011) and which exact Science has to advocate notwithstanding. They cannot make away with it without incurring the risk of pulling down the pillars of the Temple of Science, like a modern Samson, and of getting buried under its roof.

The theories built upon the rejection of Force, outside and independent of Matter pure and simple, have all been shown to be fallacious. They do not, and cannot, cover the ground, and many of the scientific data are thus proved to be unscientific. “Ether produced Sound” is said in the Purânas, and the statement is laughed at. Sound is the result of the vibrations of the air, we are corrected. And what is air? Could it exist if there were no etheric medium in Space to buoy up its molecules? The case stands simply thus. Materialism cannot admit the existence of anything outside Matter, because with the acceptance of an imponderable Force—the source and head of all the physical Forces—other intelligent Forces would have to be virtually admitted, and that would lead Science very far. For it would have to accept as a sequel the presence in Man of a still more spiritual power—entirely independent, for once, of any kind of Matter about which Physicists know anything. Hence, apart from a hypothetical Ether of Space and gross physical bodies, the whole sidereal and unseen Space is, in the sight of Materialists, one boundless void in Nature—blind, unintelligent, useless.

And now the next question is: What is that Cosmic Substance, and how far can one go in suspecting its nature or in wrenching from it its secrets, thus feeling justified in giving it a name? How far, especially, has Modern Science gone in the direction of those secrets, and what is it doing to solve them? The latest hobby of Science, the Nebular Theory, may afford us some answer to this question. Let us then examine the credentials of this Nebular Theory.

Section XII. Scientific and Esoteric Evidence for, and Objections to, the Modern Nebular Theory.

Of late, Esoteric Cosmogony has been frequently opposed by the phantom of this theory and its ensuing hypotheses. “Can this most scientific teaching be denied by your Adepts?” it is asked. “Not entirely,” is the reply, “but the admissions of the men of Science themselves kill it; and there remains nothing for the Adepts to deny.”

To make of Science an integral whole necessitates, indeed, the study of spiritual and psychic, as well as of physical, Nature. Otherwise it will ever be like the anatomy of man, discussed of old by the profane from the point of view of his shell‐side, and in ignorance of the interior work. Even Plato, the greatest Philosopher of his country, was guilty, before his Initiation, of such statements as that liquids pass into the stomach through the lungs. Without metaphysics, as Mr. H. J. Slack says, real Science is inadmissible.

The nebulæ exist; yet the Nebular Theory is wrong. A nebula exists in a state of entire elemental dissociation. It is gaseous and—something else besides, which can hardly be connected with gases as these are known to Physical Science; and it is self‐luminous. But that is all. The sixty‐two “coincidences” enumerated by Professor Stephen Alexander,(1012) confirming the Nebular Theory, may all be explained by Esoteric Science; though, as this is not an astronomical work, the refutations are not attempted at present. Laplace and Faye come nearer to the correct theory than any; but of the speculations of Laplace there remains little in the present theory beyond its general features.

Nevertheless, says John Stuart Mill:

There is in Laplace’s theory nothing hypothetical; it is an example of legitimate reasoning from present effect to its past cause; it assumes nothing more than that objects which really exist obey the laws which are known to be obeyed by all terrestrial objects resembling them.(1013)

From such an eminent logician as was Mill, this would be valuable, if it could only be proved that “terrestrial objects resembling” celestial objects at such a distance as are the nebulæ, resemble those objects in reality, and not only in appearance.

Another of the fallacies, from the Occult standpoint, embodied in the modern theory as it now stands, is the hypothesis that the Planets were all detached from the Sun; that they are bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh; whereas the Sun and the Planets are only co‐uterine brothers, having the same nebular origin, but in a different mode from that postulated by modern Astronomy.

The many objections raised by some opponents of the modern Nebular Theory against the homogeneity of original diffuse Matter, on the ground of the uniformity in the composition of the fixed Stars, do not affect the question of that homogeneity at all, but only the theory itself. Our solar nebula may not be completely homogeneous, or, rather, it may fail to reveal itself as such to the Astronomers, and yet be de facto homogeneous. The Stars do differ in their constituent materials, and even exhibit elements quite unknown on Earth; nevertheless, this does not affect the point that Primeval Matter—Matter as it appeared even in its first differentiation from its laya‐condition(1014)—is yet to this day homogeneous, at immense distances, in the depths of infinitude, and likewise at points not far removed from the outskirts of our Solar System.

Finally, there does not exist one single fact brought forward by the learned objectors against the Nebular Theory (false as it is, and hence, illogically enough, fatal to the hypothesis of the homogeneity of Matter), that can withstand criticism. One error leads to another. A false premiss will naturally lead to a false conclusion, although an inadmissible inference does not necessarily affect the validity of the major proposition of the syllogism. Thus, one may leave every side‐issue and inference from the evidence of spectra and lines, as simply provisional for the present, and abandon all matters of detail to Physical Science. The duty of the Occultist lies with the Soul and Spirit of Cosmic Space, not merely with its illusive appearance and behaviour. That of official Physical Science is to analyze and study its shell—the Ultima Thule of the Universe and Man, in the opinion of Materialism.

With the latter, Occultism has nought to do. It is only with the theories of such men of learning as Kepler, Kant, Oersted, and Sir William Herschell, who believed in a Spiritual World, that Occult Cosmogony might treat, and attempt a satisfactory compromise. But the views of those Physicists differed vastly from the latest modern speculations. Kant and Herschell had in their mind’s eye speculations upon the origin and the final destiny, as well as upon the present aspect, of the Universe, from a far more philosophical and psychic standpoint; whereas modern Cosmology and Astronomy now repudiate anything like research into the mysteries of Being. The result is what might be expected: complete failure and inextricable contradictions in the thousand and one varieties of so‐called Scientific Theories, and in this Theory as in all others.

The nebular hypothesis, involving the theory of the existence of a Primeval Matter, diffused in a nebulous condition, is of no modern date in Astronomy, as everyone knows. Anaximenes, of the Ionian school, had already taught that the sidereal bodies were formed through the progressive condensation of a primordial pregenetic Matter, which had almost a negative weight, and was spread out through Space in an extremely sublimated condition.

Tycho Brahé, who viewed the Milky Way as an ethereal substance, thought the new star that appeared in Cassiopeia, in 1572, had been formed out of that Matter.(1015) Kepler believed that the star of 1606 had likewise been formed out of the ethereal substance that fills the universe.(1016) He attributed to that same Ether the apparition of a luminous ring round the Moon, during the total eclipse of the Sun observed at Naples in 1605.(1017) Still later, in 1714 the existence of a self‐luminous Matter was recognized by Halley in the Philosophical Transactions. Finally, the journal of this name published in 1811 the famous hypothesis of the eminent Astronomer, Sir William Herschell, on the transformation of the nebulæ into Stars,(1018) and after this the Nebular Theory was accepted by the Royal Academies.

In Five Years of Theosophy, on p. 245, may be read an article headed, “Do the Adepts deny the Nebular Theory?” The answer there given is:

_No; they do not deny its general propositions, nor the approximative truth of the scientific hypotheses. They only deny the completeness of the present, as well as the entire error of the many so‐called __“__exploded__”__ old theories, which, during the last century, have followed each other in such rapid succession._

This was asserted at the time to be “an evasive answer.” Such disrespect to official Science, it was argued, must be justified by the replacement of the orthodox speculation by another theory more complete, and having a firmer ground to stand upon. To this there is but one reply: It is useless to give out isolated theories with regard to things embodied in a complete and consecutive system, for, when separated from the main body of the teaching, they would necessarily lose their vital coherence and would thus do no good when studied independently. To be able to appreciate and accept the Occult views on the Nebular Theory, we must study the whole Esoteric cosmogonical system. And the time has hardly arrived for the Astronomers to be asked to accept Fohat and the Divine Builders. Even the undeniably correct surmises of Sir William Herschell, which had nothing “supernatural” in them, as to the Sun’s being called a “globe of fire,” perhaps metaphorically, and his early speculations about the nature of that which is now called the Nasmyth Willow‐leaf Theory, only caused that most eminent of all Astronomers to be smiled at by other, far less eminent, colleagues, who saw and now see in his ideas purely “imaginative and fanciful theories.” Before the whole Esoteric System could be given out and appreciated by the Astronomers, the latter would have to return to some of those “antiquated ideas,” not only to those of Herschell, but also to the dreams of the oldest Hindû Astronomers, and thus abandon their own theories, which are none the less “fanciful” because they have appeared nearly eighty years later than the one, and many thousands of years later than the others. Foremost of all they would have to repudiate their ideas of the Sun’s solidity and incandescence; the Sun “glowing” most undeniably, but not “burning.” Then the Occultists state, with regard to the “willow‐leaves,” that those “objects,” as Sir William Herschell called them, are the immediate sources of the solar light and heat. And though the Esoteric Teaching does not regard these as he did—namely, as “organisms” partaking of the nature of life, for the Solar “Beings” will hardly place themselves within telescopic focus—yet it asserts that the whole Universe is full of such “organisms,” conscious and active according to the proximity or distance of their planes to, or from, our plane of consciousness; and finally that the great Astronomer was right while speculating on those supposed “organisms,” in saying that “we do not know that vital action is incompetent to develop at once heat, light, and electricity.” For, at the risk of being laughed at by the whole world of Physicists, the Occultists maintain that all the “Forces” of the Scientists have their origin in the Vital Principle, the One Life collectively of our Solar System—that “Life” being a portion, or rather one of the aspects, of the One Universal LIFE.

We may, therefore—as in the article under consideration, wherein, on the authority of the Adepts, it was maintained that it is “sufficient to make a résumé of what the solar Physicists do not know”—we may, we maintain, define our position with regard to the modern Nebular Theory and its evident incorrectness, by simply pointing out facts diametrically opposed to it in its present form. And to begin with, what does it teach?

Summarizing the aforesaid hypotheses, it becomes plain that Laplace’s theory—now made quite unrecognizable, moreover—was an unfortunate one. He postulates in the first place Cosmic Matter, existing in a state of diffuse nebulosity “so fine that its presence could hardly have been suspected.” No attempt is made by him to penetrate into the Arcana of Being, except as regards the immediate evolution of our small Solar System.

Consequently, whether one accepts or rejects his theory in its bearing upon the immediate cosmological problems presented for solution, he can only be said to have thrown back the mystery a little further. To the eternal query: “Whence Matter itself; whence the evolutionary impetus determining its cyclic aggregations and dissolutions; whence the exquisite symmetry and order into which the primeval Atoms arrange and group themselves?” no answer is attempted by Laplace. All we are confronted with, is a sketch of the probable broad principles on which the actual process is assumed to be based. Well, and what is this now celebrated note on the said process? What has he given so wonderfully new and original, that its ground‐work, at any rate, should have served as a basis for the modern Nebular Theory? The following is what one gathers from various astronomical works.

Laplace thought that, in consequence of the condensation of the atoms of the primeval nebula, according to the “law” of gravity, the now gaseous, or perhaps, partially liquid mass, acquired a rotatory motion. As the velocity of this rotation increased, it assumed the form of a thin disc; finally, the centrifugal force overpowering that of cohesion, huge rings were detached from the edge of the whirling incandescent masses, and these rings contracted necessarily by gravitation (as accepted) into spheroidal bodies, which would necessarily still continue to preserve the orbit previously occupied by the outer zone from which they were separated.(1019) The velocity of the outer edge of each nascent planet, he said, exceeding that of the inner, there results a rotation on its axis. The more dense bodies would be thrown off last; and finally, during the preliminary state of their formation, the newly‐segregated orbs in their turn throw off one or more satellites. In formulating the history of the rupture and planetation of rings Laplace says:

Almost always each ring of vapours must have broken up into numerous masses, which, moving with a nearly uniform velocity, must have continued to circulate at the same distance around the sun. These masses must have taken a spheroidal form with a motion of rotation in the same direction as their revolution, since the inner molecules (those nearest the sun) would have less actual velocity than the exterior ones. They must then have formed as many planets in a state of vapour. But, if one of them was sufficiently powerful to unite successively, by its attraction, all the others around its centre, the ring of vapours must have been thus transformed into a single spheroidal mass of vapours circulating around the sun with a rotation in the same direction as its revolution. The latter case has been the more common, but the solar system presents us the first case, in the four small planets which move between Jupiter and Mars.

While few will be found to deny the “magnificent audacity of this hypothesis,” it is impossible not to recognize the insurmountable difficulties with which it is attended. Why, for instance, do we find that the satellites of Neptune and Uranus display a retrograde motion? Why, in spite of its closer proximity to the Sun, is Venus less dense than the Earth? Why, again, is the more distant Uranus denser than Saturn? How is it that there are so many variations in the inclination of their axes and orbits in the supposed progeny of the central orb; that such startling variations in the size of the Planets are noticeable; that the satellites of Jupiter are more dense by ·288 than their primary; that the phenomena of meteoric and cometary systems still remain unaccounted for? To quote the words of a Master:

They [the Adepts] _find that the centrifugal theory of Western birth is unable to cover all the ground. That, unaided, it can neither account for every oblate spheroid, nor explain away such evident difficulties as are presented by the relative density of some planets. How, indeed, can any calculation of centrifugal force explain to us, for instance, why Mercury, whose rotation is, we are told, only __“__about one‐third that of the Earth, and its density only about one‐fourth greater than the Earth,__”__ should have a polar compression more than ten times greater than the latter? And again, why Jupiter, whose equatorial rotation is said to be __“__twenty‐seven times greater, and its density only about one‐fifth that of the Earth__”__ should have its polar compression seventeen times greater than that of the Earth? Or why Saturn, with an equatorial velocity fifty‐five times greater than Mercury for centripetal force to contend with, should have its polar compression only three times greater than Mercury’s? To crown the above contradictions, we are asked to believe in the Central Forces, as taught by Modern Science, even when told that the equatorial matter of the Sun, with more than four times the centrifugal velocity of the Earth’s equatorial surface, and only about one‐fourth part of the gravitation of the equatorial matter, has not manifested any tendency to bulge at the solar equator, nor shown the least flattening at the poles of the solar axis. In other and clearer words, the Sun, with only one‐fourth of our Earth’s density for the centrifugal force to work upon, has no polar compression at all! We find this objection made by more than one astronomer, yet never explained away satisfactorily, so far as the __“__Adepts__”__ are aware._

Therefore, do they [the Adepts] _say, that the great men of Science of the West, knowing ... next to nothing either about cometary matter, centrifugal and centripetal forces, the nature of the nebulæ, or the physical constitution of the Sun, the Stars, or even the Moon, are imprudent to speak so confidently as they do about the __“__central mass of the Sun,__”__ whirling out into space planets, comets, and what not.... We maintain that it_ [the Sun] _evolves out only the life‐principle, the Soul of these __ bodies, giving and receiving it back, in our little Solar System, as the __“__Universal Life‐Giver__”__ ... in the Infinitude and Eternity; that the Solar System is as much the Microcosm of the One Macrocosm as man is the former when compared with his own little Solar Cosmos._(1020)

The essential power of all the cosmic and terrestrial Elements to generate within themselves a regular and harmonious series of results, a concatenation of causes and effects, is an irrefutable proof that they are either animated by an Intelligence, ab extrâ or ab intrâ, or conceal such within or behind the “manifested veil.” Occultism does not deny the certainty of the mechanical origin of the Universe; it only claims the absolute necessity of mechanicians of some sort behind or within those Elements—a dogma with us. It is not the fortuitous assistance of the Atoms of Lucretius, as he himself knew well, that built the Kosmos and all in it. Nature herself contradicts such a theory. Celestial Space, containing Matter so attenuated as Ether, cannot be called on, with or without attraction, to explain the common motion of the sidereal hosts. Although the perfect accord of their inter‐revolution indicates clearly the presence of a mechanical cause in Nature, Newton, who of all men had most right to trust to his deductions, was nevertheless forced to abandon the idea of ever explaining the original impulse given to the millions of orbs, by merely the laws of known Nature and its material Forces. He recognized fully the limits that separate the action of natural Forces from that of the Intelligences that set the immutable laws in order and action. And if a Newton had to renounce such hope, which of the modern materialistic pigmies has the right of saying: “I know better?”

A cosmogonical theory, to become complete and comprehensible, has to start with a Primordial Substance diffused throughout boundless Space, of an intellectual and divine nature. That Substance must be the Soul and Spirit, the Synthesis and Seventh Principle of the manifested Kosmos, and, to serve as a spiritual Upâdhi to this, there must be the sixth, its vehicle—Primordial Physical Matter, so to speak, though its nature must escape for ever our limited normal senses. It is easy for an Astronomer, if endowed with an imaginative faculty, to build a theory of the emergence of the Universe out of Chaos, by simply applying to it the principles of mechanics. But such a Universe will always prove a Frankenstein’s monster with respect to its scientific human creator; it will lead him into endless perplexities. The application of mechanical laws only can never carry the speculator beyond the objective world; nor will it unveil to men the origin and final destiny of Kosmos. This is whither the Nebular Theory has led Science. In sober fact and truth this Theory is twin sister to that of Ether, and both are the offspring of necessity; one is as indispensable to account for the transmission of light, as is the other to explain the problem of the origin of the Solar Systems. The question with Science is, how the same homogeneous Matter(1021) could, obeying the laws of Newton, give birth to bodies—Sun, Planets, and their satellites—subject to conditions of identity of motion, and formed of such heterogeneous elements.

Has the Nebular Theory helped to solve the problem, even if applied solely to bodies considered as inanimate and material? We say: most decidedly not. What progress has it made since 1811, when first Sir William Herschell’s paper, with its facts based on observation and showing the existence of nebular matter, made the sons of the Royal Society “shout for joy”? Since then a still greater discovery, through spectrum analysis, has permitted the verification and corroboration of Sir William Herschell’s conjecture. Laplace demanded some kind of primitive “world‐stuff” to prove the idea of progressive world‐evolution and growth. Here it is, as offered two millenniums ago.

The “world‐stuff,” now called nebulæ, was known from the highest antiquity. Anaxagoras taught that, upon differentiation, the resulting commixture of heterogeneous substances remained motionless and unorganized, until finally the “Mind”—the collective body of Dhyân Chohans, we say—began to work upon, and communicated to, them motion and order.(1022) This theory is now taken up, so far as concerns its first portion; the last, that of any “Mind” interfering, being rejected. Spectrum analysis reveals the existence of nebulæ formed entirely of gases and luminous vapours. Is this the primitive nebular Matter? The spectra reveal, it is said, the physical conditions of the Matter which emits cosmic light. The spectra of the resolvable and the irresolvable nebulæ are shown to be entirely different, the spectra of the latter showing their physical state to be that of glowing gas or vapour. The bright lines of one nebula reveal the existence of hydrogen, and of other material substances known and unknown. The same as to the atmospheres of the Sun and Stars. This leads to the direct inference that a Star is formed by the condensation of a nebula; hence that even the metals themselves are formed on earth by the condensation of hydrogen or of some other primitive matter, some ancestral cousin to helium, perhaps, or some yet unknown stuff. This does not clash with the Occult Teachings. And this is the problem that Chemistry is trying to solve; and it must succeed sooner or later in the task, accepting nolens volens, when it does, the Esoteric Teaching. But when this does happen, it will kill the Nebular Theory as it now stands.

Meanwhile Astronomy cannot accept in any way, if it is to be regarded as an exact Science, the present theory of the filiation of Stars—even if Occultism does so in its own way, seeing that it explains this filiation differently—because Astronomy has not one single physical datum to show for it. Astronomy could anticipate Chemistry in proving the existence of the fact, if it could show a planetary nebula exhibiting a spectrum of three or four bright lines, gradually condensing and transforming into a Star, with a spectrum all covered with a number of dark lines. But

The question of the variability of the nebulæ, even as to their form, is yet one of the mysteries of Astronomy. The data of observation possessed so far are of too recent an origin, too uncertain, to permit us to affirm anything.(1023)

Since its discovery, the magic power of the spectroscope has revealed to its adepts only one single transformation of a Star of this kind; and even that showed directly the reverse of what is needed as proof in favour of the Nebular Theory; for it revealed a Star transforming itself into a planetary nebula. As related in The Observatory,(1024) the temporary Star, discovered by J. F. J. Schmidt in the constellation Cygnus, in November, 1876, exhibited a spectrum broken by very brilliant lines. Gradually, the continuous spectrum and most of the lines disappeared, leaving finally one single brilliant line, which appeared to coincide with the green line of the nebula.

Though this metamorphosis is not irreconcileable with the hypothesis of the nebular origin of the Stars, nevertheless this single solitary case rests on no observation whatever, least of all on direct observation. The occurrence may have been due to several other causes. Since Astronomers are inclined to think our Planets are tending toward precipitation into the Sun, why should not that Star have blazed up owing to a collision of such precipitated Planets, or, as many suggest, the appulse of a Comet? Be that as it may, the only known instance of star‐transformation since 1811 is not favourable to the Nebular Theory. Moreover, on the question of this Theory, as on all others, Astronomers disagree.

In our own age, and before Laplace ever thought of it, Buffon, being very much struck by the identity of motion in the Planets, was the first to propose the hypothesis that the Planets and their satellites originated in the bosom of the Sun. Forthwith and for this purpose, he invented a special Comet, supposed to have torn out, by a powerful oblique blow, the quantity of matter necessary for their formation. Laplace gave its dues to the “Comet” in his Exposition du Système du Monde.(1025) But the idea was seized and even improved upon by a conception of the alternate evolution, from the Sun’s central mass, of Planets apparently without weight or influence on the motion of the visible Planets—and as evidently without any more existence than the likeness of Moses in the Moon.

But the modern theory is also a variation on the systems elaborated by Kant and Laplace. The idea of both was that, at the origin of things, all that Matter which now enters into the composition of the planetary bodies was spread over all the space comprized in the Solar System—and even beyond. It was a nebula of extremely small density, and its condensation gradually gave birth, by a mechanism that has hitherto never been explained, to the various bodies of our System. This is the original Nebular Theory, an incomplete yet faithful repetition—a short chapter out of the large volume of universal Esoteric Cosmogony—of the teachings of the Secret Doctrine. And both systems, Kant’s and Laplace’s, differ greatly from the modern Theory, redundant with conflicting sub‐theories and fanciful hypotheses. Say the Teachers:

The essence of cometary matter [and of that which composes the Stars] ... is totally different from any of the chemical or physical characteristics with which the greatest Chemists and Physicists of the earth are familiar.... While the spectroscope has shown the probable similarity [owing to the chemical action of terrestrial light upon the intercepted rays] of terrestrial and sidereal substance, the chemical actions peculiar to the variously progressed orbs of space, have not been detected, nor proven to be identical with those observed on our own planet.(1026)

Mr. Crookes says almost the same in the fragment quoted from his lecture, Elements and Meta‐Elements. C. Wolf, Member of the Institute, Astronomer of the Observatory, Paris, observes:

At the utmost the nebular hypothesis can only show in its favour, with W. Herschell, the existence of planetary nebulæ in various degrees of condensation, and of spiral nebulæ, with nuclei of condensation on the branches and centre.(1027) But, in fact, the knowledge of the bond that unites the nebulæ to the stars is yet denied to us; and lacking as we do direct observation, we are even debarred from establishing it on the analogy of chemical composition.(1028)

Even if the men of Science—leaving aside the difficulty arising out of such undeniable variety and heterogeneity of matter in the constitution of nebulæ—did admit, with the Ancients, that the origin of all the visible and invisible heavenly bodies must be sought for in one primordial homogeneous world‐stuff, in a kind of Pre‐Protyle,(1029) it is evident that this would not put an end to their perplexities. Unless they admit also that our actual visible Universe is merely the Sthûla Sharîra, the gross body, of the sevenfold Kosmos, they will have to face another problem; especially if they venture to maintain that its now visible bodies are the result of the condensation of that one and single Primordial Matter. For mere observation shows them that the operations which produced the actual Universe are far more complex than could ever be embraced in that theory.

First of all, there are two distinct classes of “irresolvable” nebulæ, as Science itself teaches.

The telescope is unable to distinguish between these two classes, but the spectroscope can do so, and notices an essential difference between their physical constitutions.

The question of the resolvability of the nebulæ has been often presented in too affirmative a manner and quite contrary to the ideas expressed by the illustrious experimenter with the spectra of these constellations—Mr. Huggins. Every nebula whose spectrum contains only bright lines is gaseous, it is said, and hence is irresolvable; every nebula with a continuous spectrum must end by resolving into stars with an instrument of sufficient power. This assumption is contrary at once to the results obtained, and to spectroscopic theory. The “Lyra” nebula, the “Dumb‐bell” nebula, the central region of the nebula of Orion, appear resolvable, and show a spectrum of bright lines; the nebula of Canes Venatici is not resolvable, and gives a continuous spectrum. Because, indeed, the spectroscope informs us of the physical state of the constituent matter of the stars, but affords us no notions of their modes of aggregation. A nebula formed of gaseous globes (or even of nuclei, faintly luminous, surrounded by a powerful atmosphere) would give a spectrum of lines and be still resolvable; such seems to be the state of Huggins’ region in the Orion nebula. A nebula formed of solid or fluidic particles in a state of incandescence, a true cloud, will give a continuous spectrum and will be irresolvable.

Some of these nebulæ, Wolf tells us,

Have a spectrum of three or four bright lines, others a continuous spectrum. The first are gaseous, the others formed of a pulverulent matter. The former must constitute a veritable atmosphere: it is among these that the solar nebula of Laplace has to be placed. The latter form an ensemble of particles that may be considered as independent, and the rotation of which obeys the laws of internal weight: such are the nebulæ adopted by Kant and Faye. Observation allows us to place the one as the other at the very origin of the planetary world. But when we try to go beyond and ascend to the primitive chaos which has produced the totality of the heavenly bodies, we have first to account for the actual existence of these two classes of nebulæ. If the primitive chaos were a cold luminous gas,(1030) one could understand how the contraction resulting from attraction could have heated it and made it luminous. We have to explain the condensation of this gas to the state of incandescent particles, the presence of which is revealed to us in certain nebulæ by the spectroscope. If the original chaos was composed of such particles, how did certain of their portions pass into the gaseous state, while others have preserved their primitive condition?

Such is the synopsis of the objections and difficulties in the way of the acceptance of the Nebular Theory, brought forward by the French savant, who concludes this interesting argument by declaring that:

The first part of the cosmogonical problem—what is the primitive matter of chaos; and how did that matter give birth to the sun and stars?—thus remains to this day in the domain of romance and of mere imagination.(1031)

If this is the last word of Science upon the subject, whither then should we turn in order to learn what the Nebular Theory is supposed to teach? What, in fact, is this theory? What it is, no one seems to know for certain. What it is not—we learn from the erudite author of World‐Life. He tells us that it:

i. Is not a theory of the evolution of the Universe. It is primarily a genetic explanation of the phenomena of the solar system, and accessorily a co‐ordination in a common conception of the principal phenomena in the stellar and nebular firmament, as far as human vision has been able to penetrate.

ii. It does not regard the comets as involved in that particular evolution which has produced the Solar System. [The Esoteric Doctrine does, because it, too, “recognizes the comets as forms of cosmic existence co‐ordinated with earlier stages of nebular evolution”; and it actually assigns to them chiefly the formation of all worlds.]

iii. It does not deny an antecedent history of the luminous fire mist—[the secondary stage of evolution in the Secret Doctrine] [and] ... makes no claim to having reached an absolute beginning. [And even it allows that this] fire mist may have previously existed in a cold, non‐luminous and invisible condition.

iv. [And that finally] it does not profess to discover the ORIGIN of things, but only a stadium in material history.... [leaving] the philosopher and the theologian as free as they ever were to seek the origin of the modes of being.(1032)

But this is not all. Even the greatest philosopher of England—Mr. Herbert Spencer—arrayed himself against this fantastic theory by saying that (a) “The problem of existence is not resolved” by it; (b) the nebular hypothesis “throws no light upon the origin of diffused matter”; and (c) that “the nebular hypothesis (as it now stands) implies a First Cause.”(1033)

The latter, we are afraid, is more than our modern Physicists have bargained for. Thus, it seems that the poor “hypothesis” can hardly expect to find help or corroboration even in the world of the Metaphysicians.

Considering all this, the Occultists believe they have a right to present their Philosophy, however misunderstood and ostracized it may be at present. And they maintain that this failure of the Scientists to discover the truth is entirely due to their Materialism and their contempt for transcendental Sciences. Yet although the scientific minds in our century are as far from the true and correct doctrine of Evolution as ever, there may be still some hope left for the future, for even now we find another Scientist giving us a faint glimmer of it.

In an article in the Popular Science Review on “Recent Researches in Minute Life,” we find Mr. H. J. Slack, F.C.S., Sec. R.M.S., saying:

There is an evident convergence of all sciences, from physics to chemistry and physiology, toward some doctrine of evolution and development, of which the facts of Darwinism will form part, but what ultimate aspect this doctrine will take, there is little, if any, evidence to show, and perhaps it will not be shaped by the human mind until metaphysical as well as physical inquiries are much more advanced.(1034)

This is a happy forecast indeed. The day may come, then, when “Natural Selection,” as taught by Mr. Darwin and Mr. Herbert Spencer, will, in its ultimate modification, form only a part of our Eastern doctrine of Evolution, which will be Manu and Kapila Esoterically explained.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Section XIII. Forces—Modes of Motion or Intelligences?

This is, then, the last word of Physical Science up to the present year, 1888. Mechanical laws will never be able to prove the homogeneity of Primeval Matter, except inferentially and as a desperate necessity, when there will remain no other issue—as in the case of Ether. Modern Science is secure only in its own domain and region; within the physical boundaries of our Solar System, beyond which everything, every particle of Matter, is different from the Matter it knows, and where Matter exists in states of which Science can form no idea. This Matter, which is truly homogeneous, is beyond human perception, if perception is tied down merely to the five senses. We feel its effects through those INTELLIGENCES which are the results of its primeval differentiation, whom we name Dhyân Chohans, called in the Hermetic works the “Seven Governors”; those to whom Pymander, the “Thought Divine,” refers as the “Building Powers,” and whom Asklepios calls the “Supernal Gods.” This Matter—the real Primordial Substance, the Noumenon of all the “matter” we know of—some of our Astronomers even have been led to believe in, for they despair of the possibility of ever accounting for rotation, gravitation, and the origin of any mechanical physical laws, unless these INTELLIGENCES be admitted by Science. In the above‐quoted work upon Astronomy by Wolf,(1035) the author endorses fully the theory of Kant, and the latter theory, if not in its general aspect, at any rate in some of its features, reminds one strongly of certain Esoteric Teachings. Here we have the world’s system “reborn from its ashes,” through a nebula—the emanation from the bodies, dead and dissolved in Space, resultant of the incandescence of the Solar Centre—reänimated by the combustible matter of the Planets. In this theory, generated and developed in the brain of a young man hardly twenty‐ five years of age, who had never left his native place, Königsberg, a small town of Northern Prussia, one can hardly fail to recognize either the presence of an inspiring external power, or an evidence of the reïncarnation which the Occultists see in it. It fills a gap which Newton, with all his genius, failed to bridge. And surely it is our Primeval Matter, Âkâsha, that Kant had in view, when he postulated a universally pervading primordial Substance, in order to solve Newton’s difficulty, and his failure to explain, by natural forces alone, the primitive impulse imparted to the Planets. For, as he remarks in Chapter viii, if it is once admitted that the perfect harmony of the Stars and Planets and the coincidence of their orbital planes prove the existence of a natural Cause, which would thus be the Primal Cause, “that Cause cannot really be the matter which fills to‐day the heavenly spaces.” It must be that which filled Space—was Space—originally, whose motion in differentiated Matter was the origin of the actual movements of the sidereal bodies; and which, “in condensing itself in those very bodies, thus abandoned the space that is to‐day found void.” In other words, it is of that same Matter that are now composed the Planets, Comets, and the Sun himself, and that Matter, having originally formed itself into those bodies, has preserved its inherent quality of motion; which quality, now centred in their nuclei, directs all motion. A very slight alteration of words in this is needed, and a few additions, to make of it our Esoteric Doctrine.

The latter teaches that it is this original, primordial Prima Materia, divine and intelligent, the direct emanation of the Universal Mind, the Daiviprakriti—the Divine Light(1036) emanating from the Logos—which formed the nuclei of all the “self‐moving” orbs in Kosmos. It is the informing, ever‐present moving‐power and life‐principle, the Vital Soul of the Suns, Moons, Planets, and even of our Earth; the former latent, the latter active—the invisible Ruler and Guide of the gross body attached to, and connected with, its Soul, which is the spiritual emanation, after all, of these respective Planetary Spirits.

Another quite Occult Doctrine is the theory of Kant, that the Matter of which the inhabitants and the animals of other Planets are formed is of a lighter and more subtle nature and of a more perfect conformation, in proportion to their distance from the Sun. The latter is too full of Vital Electricity, of the physical, life‐giving principle. Therefore, the men on Mars are more ethereal than we are, while those on Venus are more gross, though far more intelligent, if less spiritual.

The last doctrine is not quite ours—yet these Kantian theories are as metaphysical, and as transcendental as any Occult Doctrines; and more than one man of Science would, if he but dared speak his mind, accept them as Wolf does. From this Kantian Mind and Soul of the Suns and Stars to the Mahat (Mind) and Prakriti of the Purânas there is but a step. After all, the admission of this by Science would be only the admission of a natural cause, whether it would or would not stretch its belief to such metaphysical heights. But then Mahat, the Mind, is a “God,” and Physiology admits “mind” only as a temporary function of the material brain, and no more.

The Satan of Materialism now laughs at all alike, and denies the visible as well as the invisible. Seeing in light, heat, electricity, and even in the phenomenon of life, only properties inherent in Matter, it laughs whenever life is called the Vital Principle, and derides the idea of its being independent of and distinct from the organism.

But here again scientific opinions differ as in everything else, and there are several men of Science who accept views very similar to ours. Consider, for instance, what Dr. Richardson, F.R.S. (elsewhere quoted at length) says of that “Vital Principle,” which he calls “Nervous Ether”:

I speak only of a veritable material agent, refined, it may be, to the world at large, but actual and substantial: an agent having quality of weight and of volume, an agent susceptible of chemical combination, and thereby of change of physical state and condition, an agent passive in its action, moved always, that is to say, by influences apart from itself,(1037) obeying other influences, an agent possessing no initiative power, no vis or energeia naturæ,(1038) but still playing a most important, if not a primary part in the production of the phenomena resulting from the action of the energeia upon visible matter.(1039)

As Biology and Physiology now deny, in toto, the existence of a Vital Principle, this extract, together with De Quatrefages’ admission, is a clear confirmation that there are men of Science who take the same views about “things Occult” as do Theosophists and Occultists. These recognize a distinct Vital Principle independent of the organism—material, of course, as physical Force cannot be divorced from Matter, but of a Substance existing in a state unknown to Science. Life for them is something more than the mere interaction of molecules and atoms. There is a Vital Principle without which no molecular combinations could ever have resulted in a living organism, least of all in the so‐called “inorganic” Matter of our plane of consciousness.

By “molecular combinations” are meant, of course, those of the Matter of our present illusive perceptions, which Matter energizes only on this, our plane. And this is the chief point at issue.(1040)

Thus the Occultists are not alone in their beliefs. Nor are they so foolish, after all, in rejecting even the “gravity” of Modern Science along with other physical laws, and in accepting instead attraction and repulsion. They see, moreover, in these two opposite Forces only the two aspects of the Universal Unit, called Manifesting Mind; in which aspects, Occultism, through its great Seers, perceives an innumerable Host of operative Beings: cosmic Dhyân Chohans, Entities, whose essence, in its dual nature, is the Cause of all terrestrial phenomena. For that essence is con‐substantial with the universal Electric Ocean, which is LIFE; and being dual, as said—positive and negative—it is the emanations of that duality that act now on Earth under the name of “modes of motion”; even Force having now become objectionable as a word, for fear it should lead someone, even in thought, to separate it from Matter! It is, as Occultism says, the dual effects of that dual essence, which have now been called centripetal and centrifugal forces, now negative and positive poles, or polarity, heat and cold, light and darkness, etc.

And it is further maintained that even the Greek and Roman Catholic Christians are wiser in believing, as they do—even if blindly connecting and tracing them all to an anthropomorphic God—in Angels, Archangels, Archons, Seraphs, and Morning Stars, in all those theological deliciæ humani generis, in short, that rule the Cosmic Elements, than Science is, in disbelieving in them altogether, and in advocating its mechanical Forces. For these act very often with more than human intelligence and pertinency. Nevertheless, that intelligence is denied and attributed to blind chance. But, as De Maistre was right in calling the law of gravitation merely a word which replaced “the thing unknown,” so are we right in applying the same remark to all the other Forces of Science. And if it is objected that the Count was an ardent Roman Catholic, then we may cite Le Couturier, as ardent a Materialist, who said the same thing, as did also Herschell and many others.(1041)

From Gods to men, from Worlds to atoms, from a Star to a rush‐light, from the Sun to the vital heat of the meanest organic being—the world of Form and Existence is an immense chain, the links of which are all connected. The Law of Analogy is the first key to the world‐problem, and these links have to be studied coördinately in their Occult relations to each other.

When, therefore, the Secret Doctrine—postulating that conditioned or limited space (location) has no real being except in this world of illusion, or, in other words, in our perceptive faculties—teaches that every one of the higher, as of the lower worlds, is interblended with our own objective world; that millions of things and beings are, in point of localization, around and in us, as we are around, with, and in them; this is no mere metaphysical figure of speech, but a sober fact in Nature, however incomprehensible to our senses.

But one has to understand the phraseology of Occultism before criticizing what it asserts. For example, the Doctrine refuses—as Science does, in one sense—to use the words “above” and “below,” “higher” and “lower,” in reference to invisible spheres, since here they are without meaning. Even the terms “East” and “West” are merely conventional, necessary only to aid our human perceptions. For though the Earth has its two fixed points in the poles, North and South, yet both East and West are variable relatively to our own position on the Earth’s surface, and in consequence of its rotation from West to East. Hence, when “other worlds” are mentioned—whether better or worse, more spiritual or still more material, though both invisible—the Occultist does not locate these spheres either outside or inside our Earth, as the theologians and the poets do; for their location is nowhere in the space known to, or conceived by, the profane. They are, as it were, blended with our world—interpenetrating it and interpenetrated by it. There are millions and millions of worlds and firmaments visible to us; there are still greater numbers beyond those visible to the telescope, and many of the latter kind do not belong to our objective sphere of existence. Although as invisible as if they were millions of miles beyond our Solar System, they are yet with us, near us, within our own world, as objective and material to their respective inhabitants as ours is to us. But, again, the relation of these worlds to ours is not that of a series of egg‐shaped boxes enclosed one within the other, like the toys called Chinese nests; each is entirely under its own special laws and conditions, having no direct relation to our sphere. The inhabitants of these, as already said, may be, for all we know, or feel, passing through and around us as if through empty space, their very habitations and countries being interblended with ours, though not disturbing our vision, because we have not yet the faculties necessary for discerning them. Yet by their spiritual sight the Adepts, and even some seers and sensitives, are always able to discern, whether in a greater or smaller degree, the presence and close proximity to us of Beings pertaining to other spheres of life. Those of the spiritually higher worlds communicate only with those terrestrial mortals who ascend to them, through individual efforts, on to the higher plane they are occupying.

The sons of Bhûmi [Earth] regard the Sons of Deva‐lokas [Angel‐ spheres] as their Gods; and the Sons of lower kingdoms look up to the men of Bhûmi as to their Devas [Gods]; men remaining unaware of it in their blindness.... They [men] tremble before them while using them [for magical purposes].... _The First Race of Men were the __“__Mind‐born Sons__”__ of the former. They_ [the Pitris and Devas] are our progenitors.(1042)

“Educated people,” so‐called, deride the idea of Sylphs, Salamanders, Undines, and Gnomes; the men of Science regard any mention of such superstitions as an insult; and with a contempt of logic and common good sense, that is often the prerogative of “accepted authority,” they allow those, whom it is their duty to instruct, to labour under the absurd impression that in the whole Kosmos, or at any rate in our own atmosphere, there are no other conscious, intelligent beings, save ourselves.(1043) Any other humanity (composed of distinct human beings) save a mankind with two legs, two arms, and a head with man’s features on it, would not be called human; though the etymology of the word would seem to have little to do with the general appearance of a creature. Thus, while Science sternly rejects even the possibility of there being such (to us, generally) invisible creatures, Society, while believing in it all secretly, is made to deride the idea openly. It hails with mirth such works as the Comte de Gabalis, and fails to understand that open satire is the securest mask.

Nevertheless, such invisible worlds do exist. Inhabited as thickly as is our own, they are scattered throughout apparent Space in immense numbers; some far more material than our own world, others gradually etherealizing until they become formless and are as “breaths.” The fact that our physical eye does not see them, is no reason for disbelieving in them. Physicists cannot see their Ether, Atoms, “modes of motion,” or Forces. Yet they accept and teach them.

If we find, even in the natural world with which we are acquainted, Matter affording a partial analogy to the difficult conception of such invisible worlds, there seems little difficulty in recognizing the possibility of such a presence. The tail of a Comet, which, though attracting our attention by virtue of its luminosity, yet does not disturb or impede our vision of objects, which we perceive through and beyond it, affords the first stepping‐stone toward a proof of the same. The tail of a Comet passes rapidly across our horizon, and we should neither feel it, nor be cognizant of its passage, but for the brilliant coruscation, often perceived only by a few interested in the phenomenon, while everyone else remains ignorant of its presence and of its passage through, or across, a portion of our globe. This tail may, or may not, be an integral portion of the being of the Comet, but its tenuity subserves our purpose as an illustration. Indeed, it is no question of superstition, but simply a result of transcendental Science, and of logic still more, to admit the existence of worlds formed of even far more attenuated Matter than the tail of a Comet. By denying such a possibility, Science has for the last century played into the hands of neither Philosophy nor true Religion, but simply into those of Theology. To be able to dispute the better the plurality of even material worlds, a belief thought by many churchmen incompatible with the teachings and doctrines of the Bible,(1044) Maxwell had to calumniate the memory of Newton, and to try and convince his public that the principles contained in the Newtonian philosophy are those “which lie at the foundation of all atheistical systems.”(1045)

“Dr. Whewell disputed the plurality of worlds by appeal to scientific evidence,” writes Professor Winchell.(1046) And if even the habitability of physical worlds, of Planets, and distant Stars which shine in myriads over our heads is so disputed, how little chance is there for the acceptance of invisible worlds within the apparently transparent space of our own!

But, if we can conceive of a world composed of Matter still more attenuated to our senses than the tail of a Comet, hence of inhabitants in it who are as ethereal, in proportion to their Globe, as we are in comparison with our rocky, hard‐crusted Earth, no wonder if we do not perceive them, nor sense their presence or even existence. Only, in what is the idea contrary to Science? Cannot men and animals, plants and rocks, be supposed to be endowed with quite a different set of senses from those we possess? Cannot their organisms be born, develop, and exist, under other laws of being than those that rule our little world? Is it absolutely necessary that every corporeal being should be clothed in “coats of skin” like those that Adam and Eve were provided with in the legend of Genesis? Corporeality, we are told, however, by more than one man of Science, “may exist under very divergent conditions.” Professor A. Winchell—arguing upon the plurality of worlds—makes the following remarks:

It is not at all improbable that substances of a refractory nature might be so mixed with other substances, known or unknown to us, as to be capable of enduring vastly greater vicissitudes of heat and cold than is possible with terrestrial organisms. The tissues of terrestrial animals are simply suited to terrestrial conditions. Yet even here we find different types and species of animals adapted to the trials of extremely dissimilar situations.... That an animal should be a quadruped or a biped is something not depending on the necessities of organization, or instinct, or intelligence. That an animal should possess just five senses is not a necessity of percipient existence. There may be animals on the earth with neither smell nor taste. There may be beings on other worlds, and even on this, who possess more numerous senses than we. The possibility of this is apparent when we consider the high probability that other properties and other modes of existence lie among the resources of the Cosmos, and even of terrestrial matter. There are animals which subsist where rational man would perish—in the soil, in the river, and the sea ... [and why not human beings of different organizations, in such case?].... Nor is incorporated rational existence conditioned on warm blood, nor on any temperature which does not change the forms of matter of which the organism may be composed. There may be intelligences corporealized after some concept not involving the processes of injection, assimilation, and reproduction. Such bodies would not require daily food and warmth. They might be lost in the abysses of the ocean, or laid up on a stormy cliff through the tempests of an Arctic winter, or plunged in a volcano for a hundred years, and yet retain consciousness and thought. It is conceivable. Why might not psychic natures be enshrined in indestructible flint and platinum? These substances are no further from the nature of intelligence than carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and lime. But, not to carry the thought to such an extreme [?], might not high intelligence be embodied in frames as indifferent to external conditions as the sage of the western plains, or the lichens of Labrador, the rotifers which remain dried for years, or the bacteria which pass living through boiling water.... These suggestions are made simply to remind the reader how little can be argued respecting the necessary conditions of intelligent, organized existence, from the standard of corporeal existence found upon the earth. Intelligence is, from its nature, as universal and as uniform as the laws of the universe. Bodies are merely the local fitting of intelligence to particular modifications of universal matter or force.(1047)

Do not we know through the discoveries of that same all‐denying Science that we are surrounded by myriads of invisible lives? If these microbes, bacteria and the tutti quanti of the infinitesimally small, are invisible to us by virtue of their minuteness, cannot there be, at the other pole, beings as invisible owing to the quality of their texture or matter—to its tenuity, in fact? Conversely, as to the effects of cometary matter, have we not another example of a half visible form of Life and Matter? The ray of sunlight entering our apartment reveals in its passage myriads of tiny beings living their little life and ceasing to be, independent and heedless of whether they are or are not perceived by our grosser materiality. And so again, of the microbes and bacteria and such‐ like unseen beings in other elements. We passed them by, during those long centuries of dreary ignorance, after the lamp of knowledge in the heathen and highly philosophical systems had ceased to throw its bright light on the ages of intolerance and bigotry of early Christianity; and we would fain pass them by again now.

And yet these lives surrounded us then as they do now. They have worked on, obedient to their own laws, and it is only as they have been gradually revealed by Science that we have begun to take cognizance of them and of the effects produced by them.

How long has it taken the world to become what it now is? If it can be said that even up to the present day cosmic dust, “which has never belonged to the earth before,”(1048) reaches our Globe, how much more logical is it to believe—as the Occultists do—that through the countless millions of years that have rolled away since that dust aggregated and formed the Globe we live in round its nucleus of intelligent Primeval Substance, many humanities—differing from our present mankind as greatly as the humanity which will evolve millions of years hence will differ from our races—appeared but to disappear from the face of the Earth, as will our own. These primitive and far‐distant humanities are denied, because, as Geologists think, they have left no tangible relics of themselves. All trace of them is swept away, and therefore they have never existed. Yet their relics—though very few of them, truly—are to be found, and they must be discovered by geological research. But, even if they were never to be met with, there would be no reason to say that no men could have ever lived in the geological periods to which their presence on earth is assigned. For their organisms needed no warm blood, no atmosphere, no feeding; the author of World‐Life is right, and there is no extravagance in believing as we do, that as, on scientific hypotheses, there may be to this day “psychic natures enshrined in indestructible flint and platinum,” so there were psychic natures enshrined in forms of equally indestructible Primeval Matter—the real forefathers of our Fifth Race.

When, therefore, as in Volume II, we speak of men who inhabited this Globe 18,000,000 years ago, we have in mind neither the men of our present races, nor the present atmospheric laws, thermal conditions, etc. The Earth and Mankind, like the Sun, Moon, and Planets, all have their growth, changes, development, and gradual evolution in their life‐periods; they are born, become infants, then children, adolescent, grown‐up, they grow old, and finally die. Why should not Mankind be also under this universal law? Says Uriel to Enoch:

Behold, I have showed thee all things, O Enoch.... Thou seest the sun, the moon, and those which conduct the stars of heaven, which cause all their operations, seasons, and arrivals to return. In the days of sinners the years shall be shortened ... everything done on earth shall be subverted ... the moon shall change its laws.(1049)

The “days of sinners” meant the days when Matter would be in its full sway on Earth, and man would have reached the apex of physical development in stature and animality. That came to pass during the period of the Atlanteans, about the middle point of their Race, the Fourth, which was drowned, as prophesied by Uriel. Since then man has been decreasing in physical stature, strength, and years, as will be shown in Volume II. But as we are at the mid‐point of our sub‐race of the Fifth Root‐Race—the acme of materiality in each—the animal propensities, though more refined, are none the less developed; and this is most marked in civilized countries.

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Section XIV. Gods, Monads and Atoms

Some years ago we remarked that:

The Esoteric Doctrine may well be called ... the “Thread Doctrine,” since, like Sûtrâtmâ [in the Vedânta Philosophy](1050), it passes through and strings together all the ancient philosophical religious systems, and ... reconciles and explains them.(1051)

We now say it does more. It not only reconciles the various and apparently conflicting systems, but it checks the discoveries of modern exact Science, showing some of them to be necessarily correct, since they are found corroborated in the Ancient Records. All this will, no doubt, be regarded as terribly impertinent and disrespectful, a veritable crime of lèse‐science; nevertheless, it is a fact.

Science is, undeniably, ultra‐materialistic in our days; but it finds, in one sense, its justification. Nature behaving ever esoterically in actu, and being, as the Kabalists say, in abscondito, can only be judged by the profane through her appearance, and that appearance is always deceitful on the physical plane. On the other hand, the Naturalists refuse to blend Physics with Metaphysics, the Body with its informing Soul and Spirit. They prefer to ignore the latter. This is a matter of choice with some, while the minority very sensibly strive to enlarge the domain of Physical Science by trespassing on the forbidden grounds of Metaphysics, so distasteful to some Materialists. These Scientists are wise in their generation. For all their wonderful discoveries will go for nothing, and remain for ever headless bodies, unless they lift the veil of Matter and strain their eyes to see beyond. Now that they have studied Nature in the length, breadth, and thickness of her physical frame, it is time to remove the skeleton to the second plane, and search within the unknown depths for the living and real entity, for its sub‐stance—the noumenon of evanescent Matter.

It is only by acting along such lines that some truths, now called “exploded superstitions,” will be discovered to be facts, and the relics of ancient knowledge and wisdom.

One of such “degrading” beliefs—degrading in the opinion of the all‐ denying Sceptic—is found in the idea that Kosmos, besides its objective planetary inhabitants, its humanities in other inhabited worlds, is full of invisible, intelligent Existences. The so‐called Arch‐Angels, Angels and Spirits, of the West, copies of their prototypes, the Dhyân Chohans, the Devas and Pitris, of the East, are not real Beings, but fictions. On this point materialistic Science is inexorable. To support its position, it upsets its own axiomatic law of uniformity and of continuity in the laws of Nature, and all the logical sequence of analogies in the evolution of Being. The masses of the profane are asked, and are made to believe that the accumulated testimony of History—which shows even the “Atheists” of old, such men as Epicurus and Democritus, as believers in Gods—is false; and that Philosophers like Socrates and Plato, asserting such existences, were mistaken enthusiasts and fools. If we hold our opinions merely on historical grounds, on the authority of legions of the most eminent Sages, Neo‐Platonists, and Mystics in all ages, from Pythagoras down to the eminent Scientists and Professors of the present century, who, if they reject “Gods,” believe in “Spirits,” are we to consider such authorities to be as weak‐minded and foolish as any Roman Catholic peasant, who believes in and prays to his once human Saint, or the Archangel St. Michael? But is there no difference between the belief of the peasant and that of the Western heirs of the Rosicrucians and Alchemists of the Middle Ages? Is it the Van Helmonts, the Khunraths, the Paracelsuses and Agrippas, from Roger Bacon down to St. Germain, who were all blind enthusiasts, hysteriacs or cheats, or is it the handful of modern Sceptics—the “leaders of thought”—who are struck with the cecity of negation? The latter is the case, we opine. It would indeed be a miracle, quite an abnormal fact in the realm of probabilities and logic, were that handful of negators to be the sole custodians of truth, while the million‐strong hosts of believers in Gods, Angels, and Spirits—in Europe and America alone—namely, Greek and Latin Christians, Theosophists, Spiritualists, Mystics, etc., should be no better than deluded fanatics and hallucinated mediums, and often no higher than the victims of deceivers and impostors! However varying in their external presentations and dogmas, beliefs in the Hosts of invisible Intelligences of various grades have all the same foundation. Truth and error are mixed in all. The exact extent, depth, breadth, and length of the mysteries of Nature are to be found only in Eastern Esoteric Science. So vast and so profound are these that scarcely even a few, a very few of the highest Initiates—those whose very existence is known but to a small number of Adepts—are capable of assimilating the knowledge. Yet it is all there, and one by one facts and processes in Nature’s workshops are permitted to find their way into exact Science, while mysterious help is given to rare individuals in unravelling its arcana. It is at the close of great Cycles, in connection with racial development, that such events generally take place. We are at the very close of the cycle of 5,000 years of the present Âryan Kali Yuga; and between this time and 1897 there will be a large rent made in the Veil of Nature, and materialistic Science will receive a death‐blow.

Without throwing any discredit upon time‐honoured beliefs, in any direction, we are forced to draw a marked line between blind faith, evolved by theologies, and knowledge due to the independent researches of long generations of Adepts; between, in short, faith and Philosophy. There have been, in all ages, undeniably learned and good men who, having been reared in sectarian beliefs, died in their crystallized convictions. For Protestants, the garden of Eden is the primeval point of departure in the drama of Humanity, and the solemn tragedy on the summit of Calvary is the prelude to the hoped‐for Millennium. For Roman Catholics, Satan is at the foundation of Kosmos, Christ in its centre, and Antichrist at its apex. For both, the Hierarchy of Being begins and ends within the narrow frames of their respective theologies: one self‐created personal God, and an empyrean ringing with the Hallelujas of created Angels; the rest, false Gods, Satan and fiends.

Theo‐Philosophy proceeds on broader lines. From the very beginning of æons—in time and space in our Round and Globe—the mysteries of Nature (at any rate, those which it is lawful for our Races to know) were recorded by the pupils of those same, now invisible, “Heavenly Men,” in geometrical figures and symbols. The keys thereto passed from one generation of “Wise Men” to another. Some of the symbols thus passed from the East to the West, brought from the Orient by Pythagoras, who was not the inventor of his famous “Triangle.” The latter figure, along with the square and circle, are more eloquent and scientific descriptions of the order of the evolution of the Universe, spiritual and psychic, as well as physical, than volumes of descriptive Cosmogonies and revealed “Geneses.” The ten Points inscribed within that “Pythagorean Triangle” are worth all the theogonies and angelologies ever emanated from the theological brain. For he who interprets these seventeen points (the seven Mathematical Points hidden)—on their very face, and in the order given—will find in them the uninterrupted series of the genealogies from the first Heavenly to Terrestrial Man. And, as they give the order of Beings, so they reveal the order in which were evolved the Kosmos, our Earth, and the primordial Elements by which the latter was generated. Begotten in the invisible “Depths,” and in the Womb of the same “Mother” as its fellow‐globes—he who masters the mysteries of our own Earth will have mastered those of all others.

Whatever ignorance, pride or fanaticism may suggest to the contrary, Esoteric Cosmology can be shown to be inseparably connected with both Philosophy and Modern Science. The Gods and Monads of the Ancients—from Pythagoras down to Leibnitz—and the Atoms of the present materialistic schools (as borrowed by them from the theories of the old Greek Atomists) are only a compound unit, or a graduated unity like the human frame, which begins with body and ends with Spirit. In the Occult Sciences they can be studied separately, but they can never be mastered unless they are viewed in their mutual correlations during their life‐cycle, and as a Universal Unity during Pralayas.

La Pluche shows sincerity, but gives a poor idea of his philosophical capacities, when declaring his personal views on the Monad or the Mathematical Point. He says:

A point is enough to put all the schools in the world in a combustion. But what need has man to know that point, since the creation of such a small being is beyond his power? À fortiori, philosophy acts against probability when, from that point which absorbs and disconcerts all her meditations, she presumes to pass on to the generation of the world.

Philosophy, however, could never have formed its conception of a logical, universal, and absolute Deity, if it had had no Mathematical Point within the Circle upon which to base its speculations. It is only the manifested Point, lost to our senses after its pregenetic appearance in the infinitude and incognizability of the Circle, that makes a reconciliation between Philosophy and Theology possible—on condition that the latter should abandon its crude materialistic dogmas. And it is because Christian theology has so unwisely rejected the Pythagorean Monad and geometrical figures, that it has evolved its self‐created human and personal God, the monstrous Head whence flow in two streams the dogmas of Salvation and Damnation. This is so true, that even those clergymen who are Masons, and who would be Philosophers, have, in their arbitrary interpretations, fathered upon the Ancient Sages the queer idea that:

The Monad represented [with them] the throne of the Omnipotent Deity, placed in the centre of the empyrean to indicate T.G.A.O.T.U. [read the “Great Architect of the Universe”].(1052)

A curious explanation this, more Masonic than strictly Pythagorean.

Nor did the “Hierogram within a Circle, or equilateral Triangle,” ever mean “the exemplification of the unity of the divine Essence”; for this was exemplified by the plane of the boundless Circle. What it really meant was the triune coëqual Nature of the first differentiated Substance, or the con‐substantiality of the (manifested) Spirit, Matter and the Universe—their “Son”—which proceeds from the Point, the real, Esoteric Logos, or Pythagorean Monad. For the Greek Monas signifies “Unity” in its primary sense. Those unable to seize the difference between the Monad—the Universal Unit—and the Monads or the manifested Unity, as also between the ever‐hidden and the revealed Logos, or the Word, ought never to meddle with Philosophy, let alone with the Esoteric Sciences. It is needless to remind the educated reader of Kant’s Thesis to demonstrate his second Antinomy.(1053) Those who have read and understood it will see clearly the line we draw between the absolutely ideal Universe and the invisible though manifested Kosmos. Our Gods and Monads are not the Elements of extension itself, but only those of the invisible Reality which is the basis of the manifested Kosmos. Neither Esoteric Philosophy, nor Kant, to say nothing of Leibnitz, would ever admit that extension can be composed of simple or unextended parts. But theologian‐philosophers will not grasp this. The Circle and the Point—the latter retiring into and merging with the former, after having emanated the first three Points and connected them with lines, thus forming the first noumenal basis of the Second Triangle in the Manifested World—have ever been an insuperable obstacle to theological flights into dogmatic empyreans. On the authority of this Archaic Symbol, a male, personal God, the Creator and Father of all, becomes a third‐rate emanation, the Sephira standing fourth in descent, and on the left hand of Ain Suph, in the Kabalistic Tree of Life. Hence, the Monad is degraded into a Vehicle—a “Throne”!

The Monad—the emanation and reflection only of the Point, or Logos, in the phenomenal World—becomes, as the apex of the manifested equilateral Triangle, the “Father.” The left side or line is the Duad, the “Mother,” regarded as the evil, counteracting principle;(1054) the right side represents the “Son,” “his Mother’s Husband” in every Cosmogony, as being one with the apex; the base line is the universal plane of productive Nature, unifying on the phenomenal plane Father‐Mother‐Son, as these were unified in the apex, in the supersensuous World.(1055) By mystic transmutation they became the Quaternary—the Triangle became the Tetraktys.

This transcendental application of geometry to cosmic and divine theogony—the Alpha and the Omega of mystical conception—was dwarfed after Pythagoras by Aristotle. By omitting the Point and the Circle, and taking no account of the apex, he reduced the metaphysical value of the idea, and thus limited the doctrine of magnitude to a simple Triad—the line, the surface, and the body. His modern heirs, who play at Idealism, have interpreted these three geometrical figures as Space, Force, and Matter—“the potencies of an interacting Unity.” Materialistic Science, perceiving but the base line of the manifested Triangle—the plane of Matter—translates it practically as (Father)‐Matter, (Mother)‐Matter, and (Son)‐Matter, and theoretically as Matter, Force, and Correlation.

But to the average Physicist, as remarked by a Kabalist:

Space, and Force, and Matter, are what signs in Algebra are to the Mathematician, merely conventional symbols, or Force as Force, and Matter as Matter, are as absolutely unknowable as is the assumed empty space in which they are held to interact.(1056)

Symbols represent abstractions, and on these

The physicist bases reasoned hypotheses of the origin of things ... he sees three needs in what he terms creation: A place wherein to create. A medium by which to create. A material from which to create. And in giving a logical expression to this hypothesis through the terms space, force, matter, he believes he has proved the existence of that which each of these represents as he conceives it to be.(1057)

The Physicist who regards Space merely as a representation of our mind, or extension unrelated to things in it, which Locke defined as capable of neither resistance nor motion; the paradoxical Materialist, who would have a void there, where he can see no Matter, would reject with the utmost contempt the proposition that Space is

A substantial though [apparently an absolutely] unknowable living Entity.(1058)

Such is, nevertheless, the Kabalistic teaching, and it is that of Archaic Philosophy. Space is the real World, while our world is an artificial one. It is the One Unity throughout its infinitude: in its bottomless depths as on its illusive surface; a surface studded with countless phenomenal Universes, Systems and mirage‐like Worlds. Nevertheless, to the Eastern Occultist, who is an objective Idealist at bottom, in the real World, which is a Unity of Forces, there is “a connection of all Matter in the Plenum,” as Leibnitz would say. This is symbolized in the Pythagorean Triangle.

It consists of Ten Points inscribed pyramid‐like (from one to four) within its three sides, and it symbolizes the Universe in the famous Pythagorean Decad. The upper single point is a Monad, and represents a Unit‐Point, which is the Unity whence all proceeds. All is of the same essence with it. While the ten points within the equilateral Triangle represent the phenomenal world, the three sides enclosing the pyramid of points are the barriers of noumenal Matter, or Substance, that separate it from the world of Thought.

Pythagoras considered a point to correspond in proportion to unity; a line to 2; a superfice to 3; a solid to 4; and he defined a point as a monad having position, and the beginning of all things; a line was thought to correspond with duality, because it was produced by the first motion from indivisible nature, and formed the junction of two points. A superfice was compared to the number three because it is the first of all causes that are found in figures; for a circle, which is the principal of all round figures, comprises a triad, in centre—space—circumference. But a triangle, which is the first of all rectilineal figures, is included in a ternary, and receives its form according to that number; and was considered by the Pythagoreans to be the author of all sublunary things. The four points at the base of the Pythagorean triangle correspond with a solid or cube, which combines the principles of length, breadth, and thickness, for no solid can have less than four extreme boundary points.(1059)

It is argued that “the human mind cannot conceive an indivisible unit short of the annihilation of the idea with its subject.” This is an error, as the Pythagoreans have proved, and a number of Seers before them, although there is a special training needed for the conception, and although the profane mind can hardly grasp it. But there are such things as “Meta‐mathematics” and “Meta‐geometry.” Even Mathematics pure and simple proceed from the universal to the particular, from the mathematical indivisible point to solid figures. The teaching originated in India, and was taught in Europe by Pythagoras, who, throwing a veil over the Circle and the Point—which no living man can define except as incomprehensible abstractions—laid the origin of the differentiated cosmic Matter in the base of the Triangle. Thus the latter became the earliest of geometrical figures. The author of New Aspects of Life, dealing with the Kabalistic Mysteries, objects to the objectivization, so to speak, of the Pythagorean conception and the use of the equilateral triangle, and calls it a “misnomer.” His argument that a solid equilateral body—

One whose base, as well as each of its sides, form equal triangles—must have four co‐equal sides or surfaces, while a triangular plane will as necessarily possess five,(1060)

—demonstrates on the contrary the grandeur of the conception in all its Esoteric application to the idea of the pregenesis, and the genesis of Kosmos. Granted, that an ideal Triangle, depicted by mathematical, imaginary lines,

Can have no sides at all, being simply a phantom of the mind to which, if sides be imputed, these must be the sides of the object it constructively represents.(1061)

But in such case most of the scientific hypotheses are no better than “phantoms of the mind”; they are unverifiable, except on inference, and have been adopted merely to answer scientific necessities. Furthermore, the ideal Triangle—“as the abstract idea of a triangular body, and, therefore, as the type of an abstract idea”—accomplished and carried out to perfection the double symbolism intended. As an emblem applicable to the objective idea, the simple triangle became a solid. When repeated in stone, facing the four cardinal points, it assumed the shape of the Pyramid—the symbol of the phenomenal merging into the noumenal Universe of thought, at the apex of the four triangles; and, as an “imaginary figure constructed of three mathematical lines,” it symbolized the subjective spheres—these lines “enclosing a mathematical space—which is equal to nothing enclosing nothing.” And this because, to the senses and the untrained consciousness of the Profane and the Scientist, everything beyond the line of differentiated Matter—i.e., outside of, and beyond the realm of even the most Spiritual Substance—has to remain for ever equal to nothing. It is the Ain Suph—the No Thing.

Yet these “phantoms of the mind” are in truth no greater abstractions than the abstract ideas in general as to evolution and physical development—e.g., Gravity, Matter, Force, etc.—on which the exact Sciences are based. Our most eminent Chemists and Physicists are earnestly pursuing the not hopeless attempt of finally tracing to its hiding‐place the Protyle, or the basic line of the Pythagorean Triangle. The latter is, as we have said, the grandest conception imaginable, for it symbolizes both the ideal and the visible universes.(1062) For if

The possible unit is only a possibility as an actuality of nature, as an individual of any kind, [and as] every individual natural object is capable of division, and by division loses its unity, or ceases to be a unit,(1063)

this is true only of the realm of exact Science in a world as deceptive as it is illusive. In the realm of Esoteric Science the Unit divided ad infinitum, instead of losing its unity, approaches with every division the planes of the only eternal REALITY. The eye of the Seer can follow it and behold it in all its pregenetic glory. This same idea of the reality of the subjective, and the unreality of the objective Universe, is found at the bottom of the Pythagorean and Platonic Teachings—limited to the Elect alone; for Porphyry, speaking of the Monad and the Duad, says that the former only was considered substantial and real, “that most simple Being, the cause of all unity and the measure of all things.”

But the Duad, although the origin of Evil, or Matter—hence unreal in Philosophy—is still Substance during Manvantara, and is often called the Third Monad, in Occultism, and the connecting line as between two Points, or Numbers, which proceeded from THAT, “which was before all Numbers,” as expressed by Rabbi Barahiel. And from this Duad proceeded all the Scintillas of the three Upper and the four Lower Worlds or Planes—which are in constant interaction and correspondence. This is a teaching which the Kabalah has in common with Eastern Occultism. For in the Occult Philosophy there is the “ONE Cause” and the “Primal Cause,” the latter thus becoming, paradoxically, the Second, as is clearly expressed by the author of the Qabbalah, from the Philosophical Writings of Ibn Gabirol, who says:

In the treatment of the Primal Cause, two things must be considered, the Primal Cause per se, and the relation and connection of the Primal Cause with the visible and unseen universe.(1064)

Thus he shows the early Hebrews, as the later Arabians, following in the steps of the Oriental Philosophy, such as the Chaldean, Persian, Hindû, etc. Their Primal Cause was designated at first,

By the triadic שדי Shaddaï, the [triune] Almighty, subsequently by the Tetragrammaton, יהוה, YHVH symbol of the Past, Present, and Future,(1065)

and, let us add, of the eternal IS, or the I AM. Moreover, in the Kabalah the name YHVH (or Jehovah) expresses a He and a She, male and female, two in one, or Chokmah and Binah, and his, or rather their Shekinah or synthesizing Spirit (or Grace), which again makes of the Duad a Triad. This is demonstrated in the Jewish Liturgy for Pentecost, and the prayer:

“In the name of Unity, of the Holy and Blessed Hû [He], and His She’keenah, the Hidden and Concealed Hû, blessed be YHVH [the Quaternary] for ever.” Hû is said to be masculine and YaH feminine, together they make the יהוה אחד i.e., one YHVH. One, but of a male‐female nature. The She’keenah is always considered in the Qabbalah as feminine.(1066)

And so it is considered in the exoteric Purânas, for Shekinah is no more than Shakti—the female double of any God—in such case. And so it was with the early Christians, whose Holy Spirit was feminine, as Sophia was with the Gnostics. But in the transcendental Chaldean Kabalah, or Book of Numbers, Shekinah is sexless, and the purest abstraction, a state, like Nirvâna, neither subject nor object, nor anything except an absolute PRESENCE.

Thus it is only in the anthropomorphized systems—such as the Kabalah has now for the most part become—that Shekinah‐Shakti is feminine. As such she becomes the Duad of Pythagoras, the two straight lines which can form no geometrical figure and are the symbol of Matter. Out of this Duad, when united in the basic line of the Triangle on the lower plane (the upper Triangle of the Sephirothal Tree), emerge the Elohim, or Deity in Cosmic Nature, with the true Kabalists the lowest designation, translated in the Bible “God.”(1067) Out of these (the Elohim) issue the Scintillas.

The Scintillas are the “Souls,” and these Souls appear in the three‐fold form of Monads (Units), Atoms and Gods—according to our Teaching. As says the Esoteric Catechism:

Every Atom becomes a visible complex unit [a molecule], and once attracted into the sphere of terrestrial activity, the Monadic Essence, passing through the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, becomes man.

Again:

God, Monad, and Atom are the correspondences of Spirit, Mind, and Body [Âtmâ, Manas, and Sthûla Sharîra] in man.

In their septenary aggregation they are the “Heavenly Man,” in the Kabalistic sense; thus, terrestrial man is the provisional reflection of the Heavenly. Once again:

The Monads [Jîvas] are the Souls of the Atoms; both are the fabric in which the Chohans [Dhyânîs, Gods] clothe themselves when a form is needed.

This relates to cosmic and sub‐planetary Monads, not to the super‐cosmic Monads, the Pythagorean Monad, as it is called, in its synthetic character, by the Pantheistical Peripatetics. The Monads of the present dissertation are treated, from the standpoint of their individuality, as Atomic Souls, before these Atoms descend into pure terrestrial form. For this descent into concrete Matter marks the medial point of their own individual pilgrimage. Here, losing in the mineral kingdom their individuality, they begin to ascend through the seven states of terrestrial evolution to that point where a correspondence is firmly established between the human and Deva (divine) consciousness. At present, however, we are not concerned with their terrestrial metamorphoses and tribulations, but with their life and behaviour in Space, on planes wherein the eye of the most intuitional Chemist and Physicist cannot reach them—unless, indeed, he develops in himself highly clairvoyant faculties.

It is well known that Leibnitz came very near the truth several times, but he defined Monadic Evolution incorrectly, a thing not to be wondered at, since he was not an Initiate, nor even a Mystic, but only a very intuitional Philosopher. Yet no Psycho‐physicist ever came nearer than has he to the Esoteric general outline of evolution. This evolution—viewed from its several standpoints, i.e., as the Universal and the Individualized Monad, and the chief aspects of the Evolving Energy after differentiation, the purely Spiritual, the Intellectual, the Psychic and the Physical—may be thus formulated as an invariable law: a descent of Spirit into Matter, equivalent to an ascent in physical evolution; a reäscent from the depths of materiality towards its status quo ante, with a corresponding dissipation of concrete form and substance up to the Laya‐state, or what Science calls the “zero‐point,” and beyond.

These states—once the spirit of Esoteric Philosophy is grasped—become absolutely necessary from simple logical and analogical considerations. Physical Science having now ascertained, through its department of Chemistry, the invariable law of this evolution of Atoms—from their “protylean” state down to that of a physical and then a chemical particle, or molecule—cannot well reject these states as a general law. And once it is forced by its enemies—Metaphysics and Psychology(1068)—out of its alleged impregnable strongholds, it will find it more difficult than it now appears to refuse room in the Spaces of SPACE to Planetary Spirits (Gods), Elementals, and even the Elementary Spooks or Ghosts, and others. Already Figuier and Paul D’Assier, two Positivists and Materialists, have succumbed before this logical necessity. Other and still greater Scientists will follow in that intellectual “Fall.” They will be driven out of their position not by spiritual, theosophical, or any other physical or even mental phenomena, but simply by the enormous gaps and chasms that open daily and will still be opening before them, as one discovery follows the other, until they are finally knocked off their feet by the ninth wave of simple common sense.

We may take as an example, Mr. W. Crookes’ latest discovery of what he has named Protyle. In the Notes on the Bhagavad Gîtâ, by one of the best metaphysicians and Vedântic scholars in India, the lecturer, referring cautiously to “things Occult” in that great Indian Esoteric work, makes a remark as suggestive as it is strictly correct. He says:

Into the details of the evolution of the solar system itself, it is not necessary for me to enter. You may gather some idea as to the way in which the various elements start into existence from these three principles into which Mûlaprakriti [the Pythagorean Triangle] is differentiated, by examining the lecture delivered by Professor Crookes a short time ago upon the so‐called elements of modern chemistry. This lecture will give you some idea of the way in which these so‐called elements spring from Vishvânara,(1069) the most objective of these three principles, which seems to stand in the place of the protyle mentioned in that lecture. Except in a few particulars, this lecture seems to give the outlines of the theory of physical evolution on the plane of Vishvânara, and is, so far as I know, the nearest approach made by modern investigators to the real occult theory on the subject.(1070)

These words will be reëchoed and approved by every Eastern Occultist. Much from the lectures by Mr. Crookes has already been quoted in Section XI. A second lecture has been delivered by him, as remarkable as the first, on the “Genesis of the Elements,”(1071) and also a third one. Here we have almost a corroboration of the teachings of Esoteric Philosophy concerning the mode of primeval evolution. It is, indeed, as near an approach, made by a great scholar and specialist in Chemistry,(1072) to the Secret Doctrine, as could be made apart from the application of the Monads and Atoms to the dogmas of pure transcendental Metaphysics, and their connection and correlation with “Gods and intelligent conscious Monads.” But Chemistry is now on its ascending plane, thanks to one of its highest European representatives. It is impossible for it to go back to that day when Materialism regarded its sub‐elements as absolutely simple and homogeneous bodies, which it had raised, in its blindness, to the rank of Elements. The mask has been snatched off by too clever a hand for there to be any fear of a new disguise. And after years of pseudology, of bastard molecules parading under the name of Elements, behind and beyond which there could be nought but void, a great professor of Chemistry asks once more:

What are these elements, whence do they come, what is their signification?... These elements perplex us in our researches, baffle us in our speculations, and haunt us in our very dreams. They stretch like an unknown sea before us—mocking, mystifying, and murmuring strange revelations and possibilities.(1073)

Those who are heirs to primeval revelations have taught these “possibilities” in every century, but have never found a fair hearing. The truths inspired into Kepler, Leibnitz, Gassendi, Swedenborg, etc., were ever alloyed with their own speculations in one or another predetermined direction—hence were distorted. But now one of the great truths has dawned upon an eminent professor of exact Modern Science, and he fearlessly proclaims as a fundamental axiom that Science has not made itself acquainted, so far, with real simple Elements. For Mr. Crookes tells his audience:

If I venture to say that our commonly received elements are not simple and primordial, that they have not arisen by chance or have not been created in a desultory and mechanical manner, but have been evolved from simpler matters—or perhaps, indeed, from one sole kind of matter—I do but give formal utterance to an idea which has been, so to speak, for some time “in the air” of science. Chemists, physicists, philosophers of the highest merit, declare explicitly their belief that the seventy (or thereabouts) elements of our text‐books are not the pillars of Hercules which we must never hope to pass.... Philosophers in the present as in the past—men who certainly have not worked in the laboratory—have reached the same view from another side. Thus Mr. Herbert Spencer records his conviction that “the chemical atoms are produced from the true or physical atoms by processes of evolution under conditions which chemistry has not yet been able to produce.”... And the poet has forestalled the philosopher. Milton (Paradise Lost, Book V.) makes the Archangel Raphael say to Adam instinct with the evolutionary idea, that the Almighty had created

... “One first matter, all Indued with various forms, various degrees Of substance.”

Nevertheless, the idea would have remained crystallized “in the air of Science,” and would not have descended into the thick atmosphere of Materialism and profane mortals for years to come, perhaps, had not Mr. Crookes bravely and fearlessly reduced it to its simple constituents, and thus publicly forced it on scientific notice. Says Plutarch:

An idea is a Being incorporeal, which has no subsistence by itself, but gives figure and form unto shapeless matter, and becomes the cause of the manifestation.(1074)

The revolution produced in old Chemistry by Avogadro was the first page in the volume of “New Chemistry.” Mr. Crookes has now turned the second page, and is boldly pointing to what may be the last. For Protyle once accepted and recognized—as invisible Ether was, both being logical and scientific necessities—Chemistry will have virtually ceased to live: it will reäppear in its reïncarnation as—“New Alchemy,” or “Meta‐chemistry.” The discoverer of radiant matter will have vindicated in time the Archaic Âryan works on Occultism, and even the Vedas and Purânas. For what are the manifested “Mother,” the “Father‐Son‐Husband” (Aditi and Daksha, a form of Brahmâ, as Creators), and the “Son”—the three “First‐born”—but simply Hydrogen, Oxygen, and that which in its terrestrial manifestation is called Nitrogen. Even the exoteric descriptions of the “First‐born” Triad give all the characteristics of these three “gases.” Priestley, the “discoverer” of Oxygen, or of that which was known in the highest antiquity!

Yet all the ancient, mediæval, and modern Poets and Philosophers have been anticipated even in the exoteric Hindû books as to the Elemental Vortices inaugurated by the Universal Mind—Descartes’ “Plenum” of Matter differentiated into particles; Leibnitz’s “ethereal fluid”; and Kant’s “primitive fluid” dissolved into its elements; Kepler’s solar vortex and systemic vortices; in short, through Anaxagoras, down to Galileo, Torricelli, and Swedenborg, and after them to the latest speculations by European Mystics—all this is found in the Hindû Hymns, or Mantras, to the “Gods, Monads and Atoms,” in their Fulness, for they are inseparable. In Esoteric Teachings, the most transcendental conceptions of the Universe and its mysteries, as also the most seemingly materialistic speculations, are found reconciled, because these Sciences embrace the whole scope of evolution from Spirit to Matter. As declared by an American Theosophist:

The Monads [of Leibnitz] may from one point of view be called force, from another matter. To Occult Science, force and matter are only two sides of the same substance.(1075)

Let the reader remember these “Monads” of Leibnitz, every one of which is a living mirror of the Universe, every Monad reflecting every other, and compare this view and definition with certain Sanskrit Shlokas translated by Sir William Jones, in which it is said that the creative source of the Divine Mind,

Hidden in a veil of thick darkness, formed mirrors of the atoms of the world, and cast reflection from its own face on every atom.

When, therefore, Mr. Crookes declares that:

If we can show how the so‐called chemical elements might have been generated we shall be able to fill up a formidable gap in our knowledge of the universe,

the answer is ready. The theoretical knowledge is contained in the Esoteric meaning of every Hindû cosmogony in the Purânas; the practical demonstration thereof—is in the hands of those who will not be recognized in this century, save by the very few. The scientific possibilities of various discoveries, that must inexorably lead exact Science into the acceptation of Eastern Occult views, which contain all the requisite material for the filling of those “gaps,” are, so far, at the mercy of Modern Materialism. It is only by working in the direction taken by Mr. William Crookes that there is any hope for the recognition of a few, hitherto Occult, truths.

Meanwhile, any one thirsting to have a glimpse at a practical diagram of the evolution of primordial Matter—which, separating and differentiating under the impulse of cyclic law, divides itself on a general view into a septenary gradation of Substance—can do no better than examine the plates attached to Mr. Crookes’ lecture, Genesis of the Elements, and ponder well over some passages of the text. In one place he says:

Our notions of a chemical element have expanded. Hitherto the molecule has been regarded as an aggregate of two or more atoms, and no account has been taken of the architectural design on which these atoms have been joined. We may consider that the structure of a chemical element is more complicated than has hitherto been supposed. Between the molecules we are accustomed to deal with in chemical reactions and ultimate atoms as first created, come smaller molecules or aggregates of physical atoms; these sub‐ molecules differ one from the other, according to the position they occupy in the yttrium edifice.

Perhaps this hypothesis can be simplified if we imagine yttrium to be represented by a five‐shilling piece. By chemical fractionation I have divided it into five separate shillings, and find that these shillings are not counterparts, but like the carbon atoms in the benzol ring, have the impress of their position, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, stamped on them.... If I throw my shillings into the melting‐ pot or dissolve them chemically, the mint stamp disappears and they all turn out to be silver.(1076)

This will be the case with all the Atoms and molecules when they have separated from their compound forms and bodies—when Pralaya sets in. Reverse the case, and imagine the dawn of a new Manvantara. The pure “silver” of the absorbed material will once more separate into SUBSTANCE, which will generate “Divine Essences” whose “Principles”(1077) are the Primary Elements, the Sub‐elements, the Physical Energies, and subjective and objective Matter; or, as these are epitomized—GODS, MONADS, and ATOMS. If leaving for one moment the metaphysical or transcendental side of the question—dropping out of the present consideration the supersensuous and intelligent Beings and Entities believed in by the Kabalists and Christians—we turn to the theory of atomic evolution, the Occult Teachings are still found corroborated by exact Science and its confessions, so far, at least, as regards the supposed “simple” Elements, now suddenly degraded into poor and distant relatives, not even second cousins to the latter. For we are told by Mr. Crookes that:

Hitherto, it has been considered that if the atomic weight of a metal, determined by different observers, setting out from different compounds, was always found to be constant ... then such metal must rightly take rank among the simple or elementary bodies. We learn ... that this is no longer the case. Again, we have here wheels within wheels. Gadolinium is not an element but a compound. ... We have shown that yttrium is a complex of five or more new constituents. And who shall venture to gainsay that each of these constituents, if attacked in some different manner, and if the result were submitted to a test more delicate and searching than the radiant‐matter test, might not be still further divisible? Where, then, is the actual ultimate element? As we advance it recedes like the tantalizing mirage lakes and groves seen by the tired and thirsty traveller in the desert. Are we in our quest for truth to be thus deluded and baulked? The very idea of an element, as something absolutely primary and ultimate, seems to be growing less and less distinct.(1078)

In Isis Unveiled, we said:

This mystery of first creation, which was ever the despair of Science, is unfathomable unless we accept the doctrine of Hermes. Could he [Darwin] remove his quest from the visible universe into the invisible, he might find himself on the right path. But then, he would be following in the footsteps of the Hermetists.(1079)

Our prophecy begins to assert itself.

But between Hermes and Huxley there is a middle course and point. Let the men of Science only throw a bridge half‐way, and think seriously over the theories of Leibnitz. We have shown our theories with regard to the evolution of Atoms—their last formation into compound chemical molecules being produced within our terrestrial workshops in the Earth’s atmosphere and not elsewhere—as strangely agreeing with the evolution of Atoms shown on Mr. Crookes’ plates. Several times already it has been stated in this volume that Mârttânda, the Sun, had evolved and aggregated, together with his seven smaller Brothers, from his Mother Aditi’s bosom, that bosom being Prima Mater‐ia—the lecturer’s primordial Protyle. Esoteric Doctrines teach the existence of

An antecedent form of energy having periodic cycles of ebb and swell, rest and activity.(1080)

And behold a great scholar in Science now asking the world to accept this as one of his postulates! We have shown the “Mother,” fiery and hot, becoming gradually cool and radiant, and this same Scientist claims as his second postulate—a scientific necessity, it would seem—

An internal action, akin to cooling, operating slowly in the protyle.

Occult Science teaches that the “Mother” lies stretched in Infinity, during Pralaya, as the great Deep, the “dry Waters of Space,” according to the quaint expression in the Catechism, and becomes wet only after the separation and the moving over its face of Nârâyana, the

Spirit which is invisible Flame, which never burns, but sets on fire all that it touches, and gives it life and generation.(1081)

And now Science tells us that “the first‐born element ... most nearly allied to protyle” would be “hydrogen ... which for some time would be the only existing form of matter” in the Universe. What says Old Science? It answers: Just so; but we would call Hydrogen (and Oxygen), which—in the pre‐geological and even pre‐genetic ages—instils the fire of life into the “Mother” by incubation, the spirit, the noumenon, of that which becomes in its grossest form Oxygen and Hydrogen and Nitrogen on Earth—Nitrogen being of no divine origin, but merely an earth‐born cement for uniting other gases and fluids, and serving as a sponge to carry in itself the Breath of Life, pure air.(1082) Before these gases and fluids become what they are in our atmosphere, they are interstellar Ether; still earlier and on a deeper plane—something else, and so on in infinitum. The eminent and learned gentleman must pardon an Occultist for quoting him at such length; but such is the penalty of a Fellow of the Royal Society who approaches so near the precincts of the Sacred Adytum of Occult Mysteries as virtually to overstep the forbidden boundaries.

But it is time to leave Modern Physical Science and turn to the psychological and metaphysical side of the question. We would only remark that to the “two very reasonable postulates” required by the eminent lecturer, “to get a glimpse of some few of the secrets so darkly hidden” behind “the door of the Unknown,” a third should be added(1083)—lest no battering at it should avail; the postulate that Leibnitz stood on a firm groundwork of fact and truth in his speculations. The admirable and thoughtful synopsis of these speculations—as given by John Theodore Mertz in his “Leibnitz”—shows how nearly he has brushed the hidden secrets of Esoteric Theogony in his Monadologie. And yet this philosopher has hardly risen in his speculations above the first planes, the lower principles of the Cosmic Great Body. His theory soars to no loftier heights than those of the manifested life, self‐consciousness and intelligence, leaving the regions of the earlier post‐genetic mysteries untouched, as his ethereal fluid is post‐planetary.

But this third postulate will hardly be accepted by the modern men of Science; and, like Descartes, they will prefer keeping to the properties of external things, which, like extension, are incapable of explaining the phenomenon of motion, rather than accept the latter as an independent Force. They will never become anti‐Cartesian in this generation; nor will they admit that:

This property of inertia is not a purely geometrical property; that it points to the existence of something in external bodies which is not extension merely.

This is Leibnitz’s idea as analyzed by Mertz, who adds that he called this “something” Force, and maintained that external things were endowed with Force, and that in order to be the bearers of this Force they must have a Substance, for they are not lifeless and inert masses, but the centres and bearers of Form—a purely Esoteric claim, since Force was with Leibnitz an active principle—the division between Mind and Matter disappearing by this conclusion.

The mathematical and dynamical enquiries of Leibnitz would not have led to the same result in the mind of a purely scientific enquirer. But Leibnitz was not a scientific man in the modern sense of the word. Had he been so, he might have worked out the conception of energy, defined mathematically the ideas of force and mechanical work, and arrived at the conclusion that even for purely scientific purposes it is desirable to look upon force, not as a primary quantity, but as a quantity derived from some other value.

But, luckily for truth:

Leibnitz was a philosopher; and as such he had certain primary principles, which biassed him in favour of certain conclusions, and his discovery that external things were substances endowed with force was at once used for the purpose of applying these principles. One of these principles was the law of continuity, the conviction that all the world was connected, that there were no gaps and chasms which could not be bridged over. The contrast of extended thinking substances was unbearable to him. The definition of the extended substances had already become untenable: it was natural that a similar enquiry was made into the definition of mind, the thinking substance.

The divisions made by Leibnitz, however incomplete and faulty from the standpoint of Occultism, show a spirit of metaphysical intuition to which no man of Science, not Descartes, not even Kant, has ever reached. With him there existed ever an infinite gradation of thought. Only a small portion of the contents of our thoughts, he said, rises into the clearness of apperception, “into the light of perfect consciousness.” Many remain in a confused or obscure state, in the state of “perceptions”; but they are there. Descartes denied soul to the animal. Leibnitz, as do the Occultists, endowed “the whole creation with mental life, this being, according to him, capable of infinite gradations.” And this, as Mertz justly observes:

At once widened the realm of mental life, destroying the contrast of animate and inanimate matter; it did yet more—it reäcted on the conception of matter, of the extended substance. For it became evident that external or material things presented the property of extension to our senses only, not to our thinking faculties. The mathematician, in order to calculate geometrical figures, had been obliged to divide them into an infinite number of infinitely small parts, and the physicist saw no limit to the divisibility of matter into atoms. The bulk through which external things seemed to fill space was a property which they acquired only through the coarseness of our senses.... Leibnitz followed these arguments to some extent, but he could not rest content in assuming that matter was composed of a finite number of very small parts. His mathematical mind forced him to carry out the argument in infinitum. And what became of the atoms then? They lost their extension and they retained only their property of resistance; they were the centres of force. They were reduced to mathematical points.... But if their extension in space was nothing, so much fuller was their inner life. Assuming that inner existence, such as that of the human mind, is a new dimension, not a geometrical but a metaphysical dimension, ... having reduced the geometrical extension of the atoms to nothing, Leibnitz endowed them with an infinite extension in the direction of their metaphysical dimension. After having lost sight of them in the world of space, the mind has, as it were, to dive into a metaphysical world to find and grasp the real essence of what appears in space merely as a mathematical point.... As a cone stands on its point, or a perpendicular straight line cuts a horizontal plane only in one mathematical point, but may extend infinitely in height and depth, so the essences of things real have only a punctual existence in this physical world of space; but have an infinite depth of inner life in the metaphysical world of thought.(1084)

This is the spirit, the very root of Occult doctrine and thought. The “Spirit‐Matter” and “Matter‐Spirit” extend infinitely in depth, and like the “essence of things” of Leibnitz, our essence of things real is at the seventh depth; while the unreal and gross matter of Science and the external world, is at the lowest extreme of our perceptive senses. The Occultist knows the worth or worthlessness of the latter.

The student must now be shown the fundamental distinction between the system of Leibnitz(1085) and that of Occult Philosophy, on the question of the Monads, and this may be done with his Monadologie before us. It may be correctly stated that were Leibnitz’ and Spinoza’s systems reconciled, the essence and spirit of Esoteric Philosophy would be made to appear. From the shock of the two—as opposed to the Cartesian system—emerge the truths of the Archaic Doctrine. Both oppose the Metaphysics of Descartes. His idea of the contrast of two Substances—Extension and Thought—radically differing from each other and mutually irreducible, is too arbitrary and too un‐philosophical for them. Thus Leibnitz made of the two Cartesian Substances two attributes of one universal Unity, in which he saw God. Spinoza recognized but one universal indivisible Substance, an absolute ALL, like Parabrahman. Leibnitz, on the contrary, perceived the existence of a plurality of Substances. There was but One for Spinoza; for Leibnitz an infinitude of Beings, from, and in, the One. Hence, though both admitted but One Real Entity, while Spinoza made it impersonal and indivisible, Leibnitz divided his personal Deity into a number of divine and semi‐divine Beings. Spinoza was a subjective, Leibnitz an objective Pantheist, yet both were great Philosophers in their intuitive perceptions.

Now, if these two teachings were blended together and each corrected by the other—and foremost of all the One Reality weeded of its personality—there would remain as sum total a true spirit of Esoteric Philosophy in them; the impersonal, attributeless, absolute Divine Essence, which is no “being” but the root of all Being. Draw a deep line in your thought between that ever‐incognizable Essence, and the as invisible, yet comprehensible Presence, Mûlaprakriti or Shekinah, from beyond and through which vibrates the Sound of the Verbum, and from which evolve the numberless Hierarchies of intelligent Egos, of conscious as of semi‐conscious, “apperceptive” and “perceptive” Beings, whose Essence is spiritual Force, whose Substance is the Elements, and whose Bodies (when needed) are the Atoms—and our Doctrine is there. For, says Leibnitz:

The primitive element of every material body being force, which has none of the characteristics of [objective] matter—it can be conceived but can never be the object of any imaginative representation.

That which was for him the primordial and ultimate element in everybody and object was thus not the material atoms, or molecules, necessarily more or less extended, as those of Epicurus and Gassendi, but, as Mertz shows, immaterial and metaphysical Atoms, “mathematical points,” or real souls—as explained by Henri Lachelier (Professeur Agrégé de Philosophie), his French biographer.

That which exists outside of us in an absolute manner, are Souls whose essence is force.(1086)

Thus, reality in the manifested world is composed of a unity of units, so to say, immaterial—from our standpoint—and infinite. These Leibnitz calls Monads, Eastern Philosophy Jîvas, while Occultism, with the Kabalists and all the Christians, gives them a variety of names. With us, as with Leibnitz, they are “the expression of the universe,”(1087) and every physical point is but the phenomenal expression of the noumenal, metaphysical Point. His distinction between “perception” and “apperception” is the philosophical though dim expression of the Esoteric Teachings. His “reduced universes,” of which “there are as many as there are Monads”—is the chaotic representation of our Septenary System with its divisions and sub‐divisions.

As to the relation his Monads bear to our Dhyân Chohans, Cosmic Spirits, Devas, and Elementals, we may reproduce briefly the opinion of a learned and thoughtful Theosophist, Mr. C. H. A. Bjerregaard, on the subject. In an excellent paper, “On the Elementals, the Elementary Spirits, and the Relationship between Them and Human Beings,” read by him before the Âryan Theosophical Society of New York, Mr. Bjerregaard thus distinctly formulates his opinion:

To Spinoza, substance is dead and inactive, but to Leibnitz’s penetrating powers of mind everything is living activity and active energy. In holding this view, he comes infinitely nearer the Orient than any other thinker of his day, or after him. His discovery that an active energy forms the essence of substance is a principle that places him in direct relationship to the Seers of the East.(1088)

And the lecturer proceeds to show that to Leibnitz Atoms and Elements are Centres of Force, or rather “spiritual beings whose very nature it is to act,” for the

Elementary particles are vital forces, not acting mechanically, but from an internal principle. They are incorporeal spiritual units [“substantial,” however, but not “immaterial” in our sense] inaccessible to all change from without ... [and] indestructible by any external force. Leibnitz’ monads differ from atoms in the following particulars, which are very important for us to remember, otherwise we shall not be able to see the difference between Elementals and mere matter. Atoms are not distinguished from each other, they are qualitatively alike; but one monad differs from every other monad qualitatively; and every one is a peculiar world to itself. Not so with the atoms; they are absolutely alike quantitatively and qualitatively, and possess no individuality of their own.(1089) Again, the atoms [molecules, rather] of materialistic philosophy can be considered as extended and divisible, while the monads are mere “metaphysical points” and indivisible. Finally, and this is a point where these monads of Leibnitz closely resemble the Elementals of mystic philosophy, these monads are representative beings. Every monad reflects every other. Every monad is a living mirror of the Universe within its own sphere. And mark this, for upon it depends the power possessed by these monads, and upon it depends the work they can do for us; in mirroring the world, the monads are not mere passive reflective agents, but spontaneously self active; they produce the images spontaneously, as the soul does a dream. In every monad, therefore, the adept may read everything, even the future. Every monad—or Elemental—is a looking‐glass that can speak.

It is at this point that Leibnitz’s philosophy breaks down. There is no provision made, nor any distinction established, between the “Elemental” Monad and that of a high Planetary Spirit, or even the Human Monad or Soul. He even goes so far as to sometimes doubt whether

God has ever made anything but monads or substances without extension.(1090)

He draws a distinction between Monads and Atoms,(1091) because, as he repeatedly states:

Bodies with all their qualities are only phenomenal, like the rainbow. Corpora omnia cum omnibus qualitatibus suis non sunt aliud quam phenomena bene fundata, ut Iris.(1092)

But soon after he finds a provision for this in a substantial correspondence, a certain metaphysical bond between the Monads—vinculum substantiale. Esoteric Philosophy, teaching an objective Idealism—though it regards the objective Universe and all in it as Mâyâ, Temporary Illusion—draws a practical distinction between Collective Illusion, Mahâmâyâ, from the purely metaphysical standpoint, and the objective relations in it between various conscious Egos so long as this Illusion lasts. The Adept, therefore, may read the future in an Elemental Monad, but he has to draw together for this object a great number of them, as each Monad represents only a portion of the Kingdom it belongs to.

It is not in the object, but in the modification of the cognition of the object that the monads are limited. They all tend (confusedly) to the infinite, to the whole, but they are limited and distinguished by the degrees of distinctness in their perception.(1093)

And as Leibnitz explains:

All the portions of the universe are distinctly represented in the monads, but some are reflected in one monad, some in another.

A number of Monads could represent simultaneously the thoughts of the two million inhabitants of Paris.

But what say the Occult Sciences to this, and what do they add?

They say that what is called collectively Monads by Leibnitz—roughly viewed, and leaving every subdivision out of calculation, for the present—may be separated into three distinct Hosts,(1094) which, counted from the highest planes, are, firstly, “Gods,” or conscious, spiritual Egos; the intelligent Architects, who work after the plan in the Divine Mind. Then come the Elementals, or “Monads,” who form collectively and unconsciously the grand Universal Mirrors of everything connected with their respective realms. Lastly, the “Atoms,” or material molecules, which are informed in their turn by their “perceptive” Monads, just as every cell in a human body is so informed. There are shoals of such informed Atoms which, in their turn, inform the molecules; an infinitude of Monads, or Elementals proper, and countless spiritual Forces—Monadless, for they are pure incorporealities,(1095) except under certain laws, when they assume a form—not necessarily human. Whence the substance that clothes them—the apparent organism they evolve around their centres? The Formless (Arûpa) Radiations, existing in the harmony of Universal Will, and being what we term the collective or the aggregate of Cosmic Will on the plane of the subjective Universe, unite together an infinitude of Monads—each the mirror of its own Universe—and thus individualize for the time being an independent Mind, omniscient and universal; and by the same process of magnetic aggregation they create for themselves objective, visible bodies, out of the interstellar Atoms. For Atoms and Monads, associated or dissociated, simple or complex, are, from the moment of the first differentiation, but the “principles,” corporeal, psychic and spiritual, of the “Gods”—themselves the Radiations of Primordial Nature. Thus, to the eye of the Seer, the higher Planetary Powers appear under two aspects: the subjective—as influences, and the objective—as mystic forms, which, under Karmic law, become a Presence, Spirit and Matter being One, as repeatedly stated. Spirit is Matter on the seventh plane; Matter is Spirit at the lowest point of its cyclic activity; and both are—Mâyâ.

Atoms are called Vibrations in Occultism; also Sound—collectively. This does not interfere with Mr. Tyndall’s scientific discovery. He traced, on the lower rung of the ladder of monadic being, the whole course of the atmospheric Vibrations—and this constitutes the objective part of the process in Nature. He has traced and recorded the rapidity of their motion and transmission; the force of their impact; their setting up vibrations in the tympanum and their transmission of these to the otoliths, etc., till the vibration of the auditory nerve commences—and a new phenomenon now takes place: the subjective side of the process or the sensation of sound. Does he perceive or see it? No; for his specialty is to discover the behaviour of Matter. But why should not a Psychic see it, a spiritual Seer, whose inner Eye is opened, one who can see through the veil of Matter? The waves and undulations of Science are all produced by Atoms propelling their molecules into activity from within. Atoms fill the immensity of Space, and by their continuous vibration are that MOTION which keeps the wheels of Life perpetually going. It is that inner work that produces the natural phenomenon called the correlation of Forces. Only, at the origin of every such “Force,” there stands the conscious guiding Noumenon thereof—Angel or God, Spirit or Demon, ruling powers, yet the same.

As described by Seers—those who can see the motion of the interstellar shoals, and follow them clairvoyantly in their evolution—they are dazzling, like specks of virgin snow in radiant sunlight. Their velocity is swifter than thought, quicker than any mortal physical eye can follow, and, as well as can be judged from the tremendous rapidity of their course, the motion is circular. Standing on an open plain, on a mountain summit especially, and gazing into the vast vault above and the spatial infinitudes around, the whole atmosphere seems ablaze with them, the air soaked through with these dazzling coruscations. At times, the intensity of their motion produces flashes like the Northern Lights in the Aurora Borealis. The sight is so marvellous, that, as the Seer gazes into this inner world, and feels the scintillating points shoot past him, he is filled with awe at the thought of other, still greater mysteries, that lie beyond, and within, this radiant ocean.

However imperfect and incomplete this explanation on “Gods, Monads and Atoms,” it is hoped that some students and Theosophists, at least, will feel that there may indeed be a close relation between Materialistic Science and Occultism, which is the complement and missing soul of the former.

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