Stanza IV.—Continued.…

Stanza IV.—Continued.

15. SEVEN TIMES SEVEN SHADOWS(201) OF FUTURE MEN(202) (A) WERE(203) BORN, EACH OF HIS OWN COLOUR(204) AND KIND (B). EACH(205) INFERIOR TO HIS FATHER.(206) THE FATHERS, THE BONELESS, COULD GIVE NO LIFE TO BEINGS WITH BONES. THEIR PROGENY WERE BHÛTA,(207) WITH NEITHER FORM NOR MIND. THEREFORE THEY ARE CALLED THE CHHÂYÂ(208) RACE(C).

(a) Manu, as already remarked, comes from the root man, to think, hence a “thinker.” It is from this Sanskrit word very likely that sprung the Latin mens, Mind, the Egyptian Menes, the “Master‐Mind,” the Pythagorean monas, or conscious “thinking unit,” mind also, and even our manas or mind, the fifth principle in man. Hence these Shadows are called Amânasa, “Mindless.”

With the Brâhmans, the Pitris are very sacred, because they are the Progenitors,(209) or Ancestors of men—the first Manushyas on this Earth—and offerings are made to them by the Brâhman when a son is born unto him. They are more honoured and their ritual is more important than the worship of the Gods.(210)

May we not now search for a philosophical meaning in this dual group of Progenitors?

The Pitris being divided into seven Classes, we have here the mystic number again. Nearly all the Purânas agree that three of these are Arûpa, formless, while four are Corporeal; the former being intellectual and spiritual, the latter material and devoid of intellect. Esoterically, it is the Asuras who form the first three Classes of Pitris—“born in the Body of Night”—whereas the other four were produced from the “Body of Twilight.” Their Fathers, the Gods, were doomed to be born fools on Earth, according to the Vâyu Purâna. The legends are purposely mixed up and made very hazy: the Pitris being in one the Sons of the Gods, and, in another, those of Brahmâ; while a third makes them instructors of their own Fathers. It is the Hosts of the four material Classes who create men simultaneously on the seven Zones.

Now, with regard to the seven Classes of Pitris, each of which is again divided into seven, a word to students and a query to the profane. That Class of the “Fire Dhyânîs,” which we identify on undeniable grounds with the Agnishvâttas, is called in our school the “Heart” of the Dhyân‐ Chohanic Body, and is said to have incarnated in the Third Race of men and made them perfect. The Esoteric Mystagogy speaks of the mysterious relation existing between the hebdomadic essence or substance of this angelic Heart and that of man, whose every physical organ, and psychic, and spiritual function, is a reflection, so to say, a copy on the terrestrial plane, of the model or prototype above. Why, it is asked, should there be such a strange repetition of the number seven in the anatomical structure of man? Why should the heart have four lower cavities and three higher divisions, answering so strangely to the septenary division of the human principles, separated into two groups, the higher and the lower; and why should the same division be found in the various classes of Pitris, and especially our Fire Dhyânîs? For, as already stated, these Beings fall into four Corporeal, or grosser, and three Incorporeal, or subtler, “Principles,” or call them by any other name you please. Why do the seven nervous plexuses of the body radiate seven rays? Why are there these seven plexuses, and why seven distinct layers in the human skin?

Says the Commentary:

Having projected their Shadows and made men of one Element [Ether], the Progenitors reäscend to Mahâ‐Loka, whence they descend periodically, when the World is renewed, to give birth to new Men.

The Subtle Bodies remain without understanding [Manas] until the advent of the Suras [Gods] now called Asuras [Not‐Gods].

“Not‐Gods,” for the Brâhmans, perhaps, but the highest “Breaths,” for the Occultist; since those Progenitors (Pitaras), the formless and the intellectual, refuse to build man, but endow him with Mind; the four corporeal Classes creating only his body.

This is very plainly shown in various texts of the Rig Veda—the highest authority for a Hindû of any sect whatever. Therein Asura means “spiritual, divine,” and the word is used as a synonym for Supreme Spirit, and the term Asura, in the sense of a “God,” is applied to Varuna and Indra and preëminently to Agni—the three having been in days of old the three highest Gods, before Brâhmanical Theo‐Mythology distorted the true meaning of almost everything in the Archaic Scriptures. But, as the key is now lost, the Asuras are hardly mentioned.

In the Zend Avesta the same is found. In the Mazdean, or Magian, religion, Asura is the Lord Asura Vishvavedas, the “all‐knowing” or “omniscient Lord”; and Asura Mazdhâ, becoming later Ahura Mazdhâ, is, as Benfey shows, “the Lord who bestows Intelligence”—Asura Medhâ and Ahura Mazdâo.(211) Elsewhere in this work it is shown, on equally good authority, that the Indo‐Iranian Asura was always regarded as sevenfold. This fact, combined with the name Mazdhâ, as above, which makes of the sevenfold Asura the “Lord,” or “Lords” collectively “who bestow Intelligence,” connects the Amshaspands with the Asuras and with our incarnating Dhyân Chohans, as well as with the Elohim, and the seven informing Gods of Egypt, Chaldæa, and every other country.

Why these “Gods” refused to create men is not, as stated in exoteric accounts, because their pride was too great to share the celestial power of their essence with the Children of Earth, but for reasons already suggested. However, allegory has indulged in endless fancies and Theology has taken advantage thereof in every country, to make out its case against these First‐born, or the Logoi, and to impress it as a truth on the minds of the ignorant and credulous.(212)

The Christian system is not the only one which has degraded these Gods into Demons. Zoroastrianism and even Brâhmanism have profited thereby to obtain hold over the people’s mind. Even in Chaldæan exotericism, Beings who refuse to create, and are said to oppose thereby the Demiurgus, are also denounced as Spirits of Darkness. The Suras, who win their intellectual independence, fight the Suras, who are devoid thereof and are shown as passing their lives in profitless ceremonial worship based on blind faith—a hint now ignored by the orthodox Brâhmans—and forthwith the former become A‐Suras. The First‐ and Mind‐born Sons of the Deity refuse to create progeny, and are cursed by Brahmâ to be born as men. They are hurled down to Earth, which, later on, is transformed, in theological dogma, into the Infernal Regions. Ahriman destroys the Bull created by Ormazd—which is the emblem of terrestrial illusive life, the “germ of sorrow”—and, forgetting that the perishing finite seed must die, in order that the plant of immortality, the plant of spiritual, eternal life, should sprout and live, Ahriman is proclaimed the enemy, the opposing power, the Devil. Typhon cuts Osiris into fourteen pieces, in order to prevent him peopling the world and thus creating misery; and Typhon becomes, in the exoteric, theological teaching, the Power of Darkness. But all this is the exoteric shell. It is the worshippers of the latter who attribute to disobedience and rebellion the effort and self‐ sacrifice of those who would help men to their original status of divinity through self‐conscious efforts; and it is these worshippers of form who have made Demons of the Angels of Light.

Esoteric Philosophy, however, teaches that one‐third(213) of the Dhyânîs—i.e., the three Classes of the Arûpa Pitris, endowed with intelligence, “which is a formless breath, composed of intellectual not elementary substances”(214)—was simply doomed by the law of Karma and evolution to be re‐born, or incarnated, on Earth.(215) Some of these were Nirmânakâyas from other Manvantaras. Hence we see them, in all the Purânas, re‐appearing on this Globe, in the Third Manvantara—read Third Root‐Race—as Kings, Rishis and Heroes. This tenet, being too philosophical and metaphysical to be grasped by the multitudes, was, as already stated, disfigured by the priesthood for the purpose of preserving a hold over the former through superstitious fear.

The supposed “Rebels,” then, were simply those who, compelled by Karmic law to drink the cup of gall to its last bitter drop, had to incarnate anew, and thus make responsible thinking entities of the astral statues projected by their inferior brethren. Some are said to have refused, because they had not in them the requisite materials—i.e., an astral body—for they were Arûpa. The refusal of others had reference to their having been Adepts and Yogîs of long past preceding Manvantaras; another mystery. But, later on, as Nirmânakâyas, they sacrificed themselves for the good and salvation of the Monads which were waiting for their turn, and which otherwise would have had to linger for countless ages in irresponsible, animal‐like, though in appearance human, forms. It may be a parable and an allegory within an allegory. Its solution is left to the intuition of the student, if he only reads that which follows with his spiritual eye.

As to their Fashioners or Ancestors—those Angels who, in the exoteric legends, obeyed the law—they must be identical with the Barhishad Pitris, or the Pitri‐Devatâs, i.e., those possessed of the physical creative fire. They could only create, or rather clothe, the human Monads with their own astral Selves, but they could not make man in their image and likeness. “Man must not be like one of us,” say the Creative Gods, entrusted with the fabrication of the lower animal—but higher.(216) Their creating the semblance of men out of their own divine Essence means, Esoterically, that it is they who became the First Race, and thus shared its destiny and further evolution. They would not, simply because they could not, give to man that sacred spark which burns and expands into the flower of human reason and self‐consciousness, for they had it not to give. This was left to that Class of Devas who became symbolized in Greece under the name of Prometheus; to those who had nought to do with the physical body, yet everything with the purely spiritual man.

Each Class of Creators endows man with what it has to give: the one builds his external form; the other gives him its essence, which later on becomes the Human Higher Self owing to the personal exertion of the individual; but they could not make men as they were themselves—perfect, because sinless; sinless, because having only the first, pale shadowy outlines of attributes, and these all perfect—from the human standpoint—white, pure and cold as the virgin snow. Where there is no struggle, there is no merit. Humanity, “of the earth earthy,” was not destined to be created by the Angels of the First Divine Breath. Therefore they are said to have refused to create, and man had to be formed by more material Creators,(217) who, in their turn, could give only what they had in their own natures, and no more. Subservient to eternal law, the pure Gods could only project out of themselves shadowy men, a little less ethereal and spiritual, less divine and perfect than themselves—shadows still. The first Humanity, therefore, was a pale copy of its Progenitors; too material, even in its ethereality, to be a hierarchy of Gods; too spiritual and pure to be Men—endowed as it is with every negative (nirguna) perfection. Perfection, to be fully such, must be born out of imperfection, the incorruptible must grow out of the corruptible, having the latter as its vehicle and basis and contrast. Absolute Light is absolute Darkness, and vice versâ. In fact, there is neither Light nor Darkness in the realms of Truth. Good and Evil are twins, the progeny of Space and Time, under the sway of Mâyâ. Separate them, by cutting off one from the other, and they will both die. Neither exists per se, since each has to be generated and created out of the other, in order to come into being; both must be known and appreciated before becoming objects of perception, hence, in mortal mind, they must be divided.

Nevertheless, as the illusionary distinction exists, it requires a lower Order of Creative Angels to “create” inhabited Globes—especially ours—or to deal with Matter on this earthly plane. The philosophical Gnostics were the first to think so, in the historical period, and to invent various systems upon this theory. Therefore in their schemes of creation, one always finds their “Creators” occupying a place at the very foot of the ladder of Spiritual Being. With them, those who created our Earth and its mortals were placed on the very limit of mâyâvic Matter, and their followers were taught to think—to the great disgust of the Church Fathers—that for the creation of those wretched races, in a spiritual and moral sense, which grace our Globe, no high Divinity could be made responsible, but only Angels of a low Hierarchy,(218) to which Class they relegated the Jewish God, Jehovah.

Mankinds different from the present are mentioned in all the ancient Cosmogonies. Plato speaks, in the Phædrus, of a “winged” race of men. Aristophanes, in Plato’s Banquet, speaks of a race androgynous and with round bodies. In Pymander, all the animal kingdom even is double‐sexed. Thus it is said:

The circuit having been accomplished, the knot was loosened ... and all the animals, which were equally androgynous, were untied [separated] together with man ... [for] ... the causes had to produce effects on earth.(219)

Again, in the ancient Quiché Manuscript, the Popol Vuh—published by the late Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg—the first men are described as a race “whose sight was unlimited, and who knew all things at once”; thus showing the divine knowledge of Gods, not mortals. The Secret Doctrine, correcting the unavoidable exaggerations of popular fancy, gives the facts as they are recorded in the archaic symbols.

(b) These “Shadows” were born “each of his own colour and kind,” each also “inferior to his Father,” or Creator, because the latter was a complete Being of his kind. The Commentaries refer the first sentence to the colour or complexion of each human race thus evolved. In Pymander, the Seven Primitive Men, created by Nature from the “Heavenly Man,” all partake of the qualities of the Seven “Governors,” or Rulers, who loved Man—their own reflection and synthesis.

In the Norse Legends, one recognizes in Asgard, the habitat of the Gods, as also in the Ases themselves, the same mystical Loci and personifications woven into the popular “myths,” as in our Secret Doctrine; and we find them in the Vedas, the Purânas, the Mazdean Scriptures and the Kabalah. The Ases of Scandinavia, the Rulers of the World which preceded ours, whose name means literally the “Pillars of the World,” its “Supports,” are thus identical with the Greek Cosmocratores, the seven “Workmen” or Rectors of Pymander, the seven Rishis and Pitris of India, the seven Chaldæan Gods and seven Evil Spirits, the seven Kabalistic Sephiroth, synthesized by the upper Triad, and even the seven Planetary Spirits of the Christian Mystics. The Ases create the earth, the seas, the sky and the clouds, the whole visible world, from the remains of the slain giant Ymir; but they do not create MAN, but only his form from the Ask or Ash tree. It is Odin who endows him with life and soul, after Lodur had given him blood and bones, and finally it is Hönir who furnishes him with his intellect (Manas) and with his conscious senses.(220) The Norse Ask, the Hesiodic Ash‐tree, whence issued the men of the generation of bronze, the Third Root‐Race, and the Tzité tree of the Popol Vuh, out of which the Mexican third race of men was created, are all one. This may be plainly seen by any reader. But the Occult reason why the Norse Yggdrasil, the Hindû Ashvattha, the Gogard, the Hellenic tree of life, and the Tibetan Zampun, are one with the Kabalistic Sephirothic Tree, and even with the Holy Tree made by Ahura Mazda, and the Tree of Eden—who among the Western scholars can tell?(221) Nevertheless, the fruits of all those “Trees,” whether Pippala, or Haoma, or even the more prosaic Apple, are the “plants of life,” in fact and verity. The prototypes of our races were all enclosed in the Microcosmic Tree, which grew and developed within and under the great mundane Macrocosmic Tree;(222) and the mystery is half revealed in the Dîrghotamas, where it is said:

Pippala, the sweet fruit of that tree upon which come spirits who love the science, and where the gods produce all marvels.

As in the Gogard, among the luxuriant branches of all these Mundane Trees, the “Serpent” dwells. But while the Macrocosmic Tree is the Serpent of Eternity and of absolute Wisdom itself, those who dwell in the Microcosmic Tree are the Serpents of the Manifested Wisdom. One is the One and All; the others are its reflected parts. The “Tree” is man himself, of course, and the Serpent dwelling in each, the conscious Manas, the connecting link between Spirit and Matter, Heaven and Earth.

Everywhere, it is the same. The “Creating” Powers produce Man, but fail in their final object. All these Logoi strive to endow man with conscious immortal Spirit, reflected in the Mind (Manas) alone; they fail, and they are all represented as being punished for the failure, if not for the attempt. What is the nature of the punishment? A sentence of imprisonment in the lower or nether region, which is our Earth, the lowest in its Chain; an “Eternity”—meaning the duration of the Life‐cycle—in the darkness of Matter, or within animal Man. It pleased the half ignorant and half designing Church Fathers to disfigure the graphic symbol. They took advantage of the metaphor and allegory in every old religion to turn them to the benefit of the new one. Thus man was transformed into the darkness of a material Hell; his divine consciousness, obtained from his indwelling Principle, the Mânasa, or the incarnated Deva, became the glaring flames of the Infernal Region, and our Globe that Hell itself. Pippala, Haoma, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, were denounced as the forbidden fruit, and the “Serpent of Wisdom,” the voice of reason and consciousness, remained identified for ages with the Fallen Angel, which is the old Dragon, the Devil!

The same for the other high symbols. The Svastika, the most sacred and mystic symbol in India, the “Jaina Cross” as it is now called by the Masons, notwithstanding its direct connection, and even identity, with the Christian Cross, has become dishonoured in the same manner. It is the “devil’s sign,” we are told by the Indian missionaries. Does it not shine on the head of the great Serpent of Vishnu, on the thousand‐headed Shesha‐ Ananta, in the depths of Pâtâla, the Hindû Naraka or Hell? It does: but what is Ananta? As Shesha, it is the almost endless Manvantaric Cycle of Time, and becomes Infinite Time itself, when called Ananta, the great Seven‐headed Serpent, on which rests Vishnu, the Eternal Deity, during Pralayic inactivity. What has Satan to do with this highly metaphysical symbol? The Svastika is the most philosophically scientific of all symbols, as also the most comprehensible. It is the summary in a few lines of the whole work of “creation,” or evolution as one should rather say, from Cosmotheogony down to Anthropogony, from the indivisible unknown Parabrahman to the humble Moneron of materialistic Science, whose genesis is as unknown to that Science as is that of the All‐Deity Itself. The Svastika is found heading the religious symbols of every old nation. It is the “Worker’s Hammer” in the Chaldæan Book of Numbers, the “Hammer,” above referred to, in the Book of Concealed Mystery, “which striketh sparks from the flint” (Space), those sparks becoming Worlds. It is Thor’s Hammer, the magic weapon forged by the Dwarfs against the Giants, or the Pre‐cosmic Titanic Forces of Nature, which rebel and, while alive in the region of Matter, will not be subdued by the Gods—the agents of Universal Harmony—but have first to be destroyed. This is why the World is formed out of the relics of the murdered Ymir. The Svastika is the Miölnir, the “Storm‐hammer”; and therefore it is said that when the Ases, the holy Gods, after having been purified by fire—the fire of the passions and suffering in their life‐incarnations—become fit to dwell in Ida in eternal peace, then Miölnir will become useless. This will be when the bonds of Hel—the Goddess‐queen of the region of the Dead—will bind them no longer, for the kingdom of evil will have passed away.

Surtur’s flames had not destroyed them, nor yet had the raging waters [of the several deluges].... There were ... the sons of Thor. They brought Miölnir with them, not as a weapon of war, but as the hammer with which to consecrate the new heavens and the new earth.(223)

Verily many are its meanings! In the macrocosmic work, the “Hammer of Creation,” with its four arms bent at right angles, refers to the continual motion and revolution of the invisible Kosmos of Forces. In that of the manifested Cosmos and our Earth, it points to the rotation in the Cycles of Time of the world’s axes and their equatorial belts; the two lines forming the Svastika 卐, meaning Spirit and Matter, the four hooks suggesting the motion in the revolving cycles. Applied to the microcosm, Man, it shows him to be a link between Heaven and Earth; the right hand being raised at the end of a horizontal arm, the left pointing to the Earth. In the Smaragdine Tablet of Hermes, the uplifted right hand is inscribed with the word “Solve,” the left with the word “Coagula.” It is at one and the same time an Alchemical, Cosmogonical, Anthropological, and Magical sign, with seven keys to its inner meaning. It is not too much to say that the compound symbolism of this universal and most suggestive of signs contains the key to the seven great mysteries of Kosmos. Born in the mystical conceptions of the early Âryans, and by them placed at the very threshold of eternity, on the head of the serpent Ananta, it found its spiritual death in the scholastic interpretations of mediæval Anthropomorphists. It is the Alpha and the Omega of universal Creative Force, evolving from pure Spirit and ending in gross Matter. It is also the key to the Cycle of Science, divine and human; and he who comprehends its full meaning is for ever liberated from the toils of Mahâ‐Mâyâ, the great Illusion and Deceiver. The Light that shines from under the Divine Hammer, now degraded into the mallet or gavel of the Grand Masters of Masonic Lodges, is sufficient to dissipate the darkness of any human schemes or fictions.

How prophetic are the songs of the three Norse Goddesses, to whom the ravens of Odin whisper of the past and the future, as they flutter round in their abode of crystal beneath the flowing river. The songs are all written down in the “Scrolls of Wisdom,” of which many are lost but some still remain; and they repeat in poetical allegory the teachings of the Archaic Ages. To summarize from Dr. Wagner’s Asgard and the Gods, concerning the “Renewal of the World,” which is a prophecy about the Seventh Race of our Round told in the past tense.

The Miölnir had done its duty in this Round, and:

On the field of Ida, the field of resurrection [for the Fifth Round], the sons of the highest gods assembled, and in them their fathers rose again [the Egos of all their past incarnations]. They talked of the Past and the Present, and remembered the wisdom and prophecies of their ancestors which had all been fulfilled. Near them, but unseen by them, was the strong, the mighty One, who rules all things, makes peace between those who are angry with each other, and ordains the eternal laws that govern the world. They all knew he was there, they felt his presence and his power, but were ignorant of his name. At his command the new earth rose out of the waters [of Space]. To the south above the Field of Ida, he made another heaven called Audlang, and further off, a third, known as Widblain. Over Gimil’s cave a wondrous palace was erected, which was covered with gold and shining bright in the sun. [These are the three gradually ascending Globes of our Chain.] There the gods were enthroned, as they used to be, and they rejoiced in the restoration and in the better time. From Gimil’s heights [the Seventh Globe, the highest and purest], they looked down upon the happy descendants of Lif [and Lifthrasir, the coming Adam and Eve of purified Humanity] and signed to them to climb up higher, to rise in knowledge and wisdom, in piety and in deeds of love, step by step, from one heaven to another, until they were at last fit to be united to the divinities in the house of All father.(224)

He who knows the doctrines of Esoteric Budhism, or Wisdom, though so imperfectly sketched hitherto, will see clearly the allegory contained in the above.

Its more philosophical meaning will be better understood if the reader thinks carefully over the myth of Prometheus. It is examined, further on, in the light of the Hindû Pramantha. Degraded into a purely physiological symbol by some Orientalists, and taken in connection with terrestrial fire only, their interpretation is an insult to every religion, including Christianity, whose greatest mystery is thus dragged down to Matter. The “friction” of divine Pramantha and Arani could suggest itself under this image only to the brutal conceptions of the German Materialists—than whom there are none worse. It is true that the Divine Babe, Agni with the Sanskrit‐speaking Race, who became Ignis with the Latins, is born from the conjunction of Pramantha and Arani—the Svastika—during the sacrificial ceremony. But what of that? Tvashtri (Vishvakarman) is the “divine artist and carpenter,”(225) and is also the Father of the Gods and of “Creative Fire” in the Vedas. So ancient is the symbol and so sacred, that there is hardly an excavation made on the sites of old cities without its being found. A number of such terra‐cotta discs, called fusaïoles, were found by Dr. Schliemann under the ruins of ancient Troy. Both the forms, [Symbol: swastika with dots around the center] and [Symbol: Cross with dot in the middle], were excavated in great abundance; their presence being one more proof that the ancient Trojans and their ancestors were pure Aryans.

(c) Chhâyâ, as already explained, is the Astral Image. It bears this meaning in Sanskrit works. Thus Sanjnâ, Spiritual Consciousness, the wife of Sûrya, the Sun, is shown retiring into the jungle to lead an ascetic life, and leaving behind to her husband her Chhâyâ, Shadow or Image.

16. HOW ARE THE MANUSHYA(226) BORN? THE MANUS WITH MINDS, HOW ARE THEY MADE? (A) THE FATHERS(227) CALLED TO THEIR HELP THEIR OWN FIRE,(228) WHICH IS THE FIRE THAT BURNS IN EARTH. THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH CALLED TO HIS HELP THE SOLAR FIRE.(229) THESE THREE(230) PRODUCED IN THEIR JOINT EFFORTS A GOOD RÛPA. IT(231) COULD STAND, WALK, RUN, RECLINE, OR FLY. YET IT WAS STILL BUT A CHHÂYÂ, A SHADOW WITH NO SENSE. (B) ...

(a) Here an explanation again becomes necessary in the light and with the help of the exoteric added to the Esoteric Scriptures. The Manushyas (Men) and the Manus are here equivalent to the Chaldæan Adam—this term not meaning at all the first man, as with the Jews, or one solitary individual, but Mankind collectively, as with the Chaldæans and Assyrians. It is the four Orders or Classes of Dhyân Chohans out of the Seven, says the Commentary, “who were the Progenitors of the Concealed Man”—i.e., the subtle Inner Man. The Lha of the Moon, the Lunar Spirits, were, as already stated, only the Ancestors of his Form, i.e., of the model according to which Nature began her external work upon him. Thus Primitive Man was, when he appeared, only a senseless Bhûta(232) or “phantom.” This “creation” was a failure.

(b) This attempt again was a failure. It allegorizes the vanity of physical Nature’s unaided attempts to construct even a perfect animal—let alone man. For the Fathers, the Lower Angels, are all Nature‐ Spirits, and the higher Elementals also possess an intelligence of their own; but this is not enough to construct a thinking man. “Living Fire” was needed, that Fire which gives the human mind its self‐perception and self‐consciousness, or Manas; and the progeny of Pârvaka and Shuchi are the Animal‐Electric and Solar Fires, which create animals, and could thus furnish only a physical living constitution to that first astral model of man. The first Creators, then, were the Pygmalions of Primeval Man: they failed to animate the statue—intellectually.

This Stanza we shall see is very suggestive. It explains the mystery of, and fills the gap between, the Informing Principle in man—the Higher Self or Human Monad—and the Animal Monad, both one and the same, although the former is endowed with divine intelligence, the latter with instinctual faculty alone. How is the difference to be explained, and the presence of that Higher Self in man accounted for?

Says the Commentary:

The Sons of Mahat are the quickeners of the human Plant. They are the Waters falling upon the arid soil of latent life, and the Spark that vivifies the human Animal. They are the Lords of Spiritual Life Eternal.... In the beginning [in the Second Race] some [of the Lords] only breathed of their essence into Manushya [men], and some took in man their abode.

This shows that not all men became incarnations of the “Divine Rebels,” but only a few among them. The remainder had their fifth Principle simply quickened by the spark thrown into it, which accounts for the great difference between the intellectual capacities of men and races. Had not the “Sons of Mahat,” speaking allegorically, skipped the Intermediate Worlds, in their impulse toward intellectual freedom, the animal man would never have been able to reach upward from this Earth, and attain through self‐exertion his ultimate goal. The Cyclic Pilgrimage would have had to be performed through all the planes of existence half unconsciously, if not entirely so, as in the case of the animals. It is owing to this rebellion of intellectual life against the morbid inactivity of pure spirit, that we are what we are—self‐conscious, thinking men, with the capabilities and attributes of Gods in us, for good as much as for evil. Hence the Rebels are our Saviours. Let the Philosopher ponder well over this, and more than one mystery will become clear to him. It is only by the attractive force of the contrasts that the two opposites—Spirit and Matter—can be cemented together on Earth, and, smelted in the fire of self‐conscious experience and suffering, find themselves wedded in Eternity. This will reveal the meaning of many hitherto incomprehensible allegories, foolishly called “fables.”

It explains, to begin with, the statement made in Pymander, that the “Heavenly Man,” the “Son of the Father,” who partook of the nature and essence of the Seven Governors, or Creators and Rulers of the Material World,

Peeped through the Harmony, and breaking through the strength of the [Seven] Circles [of Fire], so showed and made manifest the downward‐borne nature.(233)

It explains every verse in the Hermetic narrative, as also the Greek allegory of Prometheus. Most important of all, it explains the many allegorical accounts about the “Wars in Heaven,” including that of Revelation with respect to the Christian dogma of the “Fallen Angels.” It explains the “Rebellion” of the oldest and highest Angels, and the meaning of their being cast down from Heaven into the depths of Hell, i.e., Matter. It even solves the recent perplexity of the Assyriologists, who express their wonder through the late George Smith, as follows:

My first idea of this part [of the rebellion] was that the war with the powers of evil preceded the Creation; I now think it followed the account of the Fall.(234)

In the same work,(235) Mr. George Smith gives an engraving, from an early Babylonian Cylinder, of the Sacred Tree, the Serpent, man and woman. The Tree has seven branches; three on the man’s side, four on that of the female. These branches are typical of the seven Root‐Races, in the third of which, at its very close, occurred the separation of the sexes and the so‐called Fall into generation. The three earliest Races were sexless, then hermaphrodite; the other four, male and female, as distinct from each other. As the writer tells us:

The dragon, which, in the Chaldean account of the Creation, leads man to sin, is the creature of Tiamat, the living principle of the sea and of chaos ... which was opposed to the deities at the creation of the world.(236)

This is an error. The Dragon is the male principle, or Phallus, personified, or rather animalized; and Tiamat, “the embodiment of the spirit of chaos,” of the Deep, or Abyss, is the female principle, the Womb. The “spirit of chaos and disorder” refers to the mental perturbation which it led to. It is the sensual, attractive, magnetic principle which fascinates and seduces, the ever‐living active element which throws the whole world into disorder, chaos and sin. The Serpent seduces the woman, but it is the latter who seduces man, and both are included in the Karmic curse, though only as a natural result of a cause produced. Says George Smith:

It is clear that the dragon is included in the curse for the Fall, and that the gods [the Elohim, jealous at seeing the man of clay becoming a Creator in his turn, like all the animals] invoke on the head of the human Race all the evils which afflict humanity. Wisdom and knowledge shall injure him, he shall have family quarrels, shall submit to tyranny, he will anger the gods ... he shall be disappointed in his desires, he shall pour out useless prayer, ... he shall commit future sin. No doubt subsequent lines continue these topics, but again our narrative is broken, and it only reopens where the gods are preparing for war with the powers of evil, which are led by Tiamat (the woman).(237)

This account is omitted in Genesis, for monotheistic purposes. But it is a mistaken policy—born no doubt of fear, and regard for dogmatic religion and its superstitions—to seek to restore the Chaldæan fragments by Genesis, whereas it is the latter, far younger than any of the fragments, which ought to be explained by the former.

17. THE BREATH(238) NEEDED A FORM; THE FATHERS GAVE IT. THE BREATH NEEDED A GROSS BODY; THE EARTH MOULDED IT. THE BREATH NEEDED THE SPIRIT OF LIFE; THE SOLAR LHAS BREATHED IT INTO ITS FORM. THE BREATH NEEDED A MIRROR OF ITS BODY;(239) “WE GAVE IT OUR OWN!”—SAID THE DHYÂNÎS. THE BREATH NEEDED A VEHICLE OF DESIRES;(240) “IT HAS IT!”—SAID THE DRAINER OF WATERS.(241) BUT BREATH NEEDS A MIND TO EMBRACE THE UNIVERSE; “WE CANNOT GIVE THAT!”—SAID THE FATHERS. “I NEVER HAD IT!”—SAID THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH. “THE FORM WOULD BE CONSUMED WERE I TO GIVE IT MINE!”—SAID THE GREAT FIRE.(242)... MAN(243) REMAINED AN EMPTY SENSELESS BHÛTA.... THUS HAVE THE BONELESS GIVEN LIFE TO THOSE WHO(244) BECAME MEN WITH BONES IN THE THIRD.(245)

As a full explanation is found in the commentary on Stanza V, a few remarks will now suffice. The “Father” of primitive physical man, or of his body, is the Vital Electric Principle residing in the Sun. The Moon is its “Mother,” because of that mysterious power in the Moon, which has as decided an influence upon human gestation and generation, which it regulates, as it has on the growth of plants and animals. The “Wind” or Ether, standing in this case for the agent of transmission by which those influences are carried down from the two luminaries and diffused upon earth, is referred to as the “Nurse”;(246) while “Spiritual Fire” alone makes of man a divine and perfect entity.

Now what is that “Spiritual Fire”? In Alchemy it is Hydrogen, in general; while in Esoteric actuality it is the emanation, or the Ray which proceeds from its Noumenon, the “Dhyân of the First Element.” Hydrogen is gas only on our terrestrial plane. But even in Chemistry, Hydrogen “would be the only existing form of matter, in our sense of the term,”(247) and is very nearly allied to Protyle, which is our Layam. It is the father and generator, so to say, or rather the Upâdhi (basis), of both Air and Water, and is “fire, air and water,” in fact: one under three aspects; hence the chemical and alchemical trinity. In the world of manifestation, or Matter, it is the objective symbol and the material emanation from the subjective and purely spiritual entitative Being in the region of Noumena. Well might Godfrey Higgins have compared Hydrogen to, and even identified it with, the To On, the “One” of the Greeks. For, as he remarks, Hydrogen is not water, though it generates it; Hydrogen is not fire, though it manifests or creates it; nor is it air, though air may be regarded as a product of the union of water and fire—since Hydrogen is found in the aqueous element of the atmosphere. It is three in one.

If one studies comparative Theogony, it is easy to find that the secret of these “Fires” was taught in the Mysteries of every ancient people, preëminently in Samothrace. There is not the smallest doubt that the Kabiri, the most arcane of all the ancient Deities, Gods and Men, great Deities and Titans, are identical with the Kumâras and Rudras headed by Kârttikeya—a Kumâra also. This is quite evident even exoterically; and these Hindû Deities were, like the Kabiri, the personified sacred Fires of the most Occult Powers of Nature. The several branches of the Âryan Race, the Asiatic and the European, the Hindû and the Greek, did their best to conceal their true nature, if not their importance. As in the case of the Kumâras, the number of the Kabiri is uncertain. Some say that there were three or four only; others say seven. Axierus, Axiocersa, Axiocersus, and Casmilus may very well stand for the alter egos of the four Kumâras—Sanat‐Kumâra, Sananda, Sanaka, and Sanâtana. The former deities, whose reputed father was Vulcan, were often confounded with the Dioscori, Corybantes, Anactes, etc.; just as the Kumâras, whose reputed father is Brahmâ—or rather, the “Flame of his Wrath,” which prompted him to perform the ninth or Kaumâra Creation, resulting in Rudra or Nîlalohita (Shiva) and the Kumâras—were confounded with the Asuras, the Rudras, and the Pitris, for the simple reason that they are all one—i.e., correlative Forces and Fires. There is no space to describe these “Fires” and their real meaning here, though we may attempt to do so if the rest of this work is ever published. Meanwhile a few more explanations may be added.

The foregoing are all mysteries which must be left to the personal intuition of the student for solution, rather than described. If he would learn something of the secret of the Fires, let him turn to certain works of the Alchemists, who very correctly connect Fire with every Element, as do the Occultists. The reader must remember that the Ancients considered Religion and the Natural Sciences along with Philosophy, as closely and inseparably linked together. Æsculapius was the Son of Apollo—the Sun or Fire of Life; at once Helius, Pythius, and the God of oracular Wisdom. In exoteric religions, as much as in Esoteric Philosophy, the Elements—especially Fire, Water, and Air—are made the Progenitors of our five physical senses, and hence are directly connected, in an Occult way, with them. These physical senses pertain even to a lower Creation than the one called in the Purânas Pratisarga, or “Secondary Creation.” “Liquid Fire proceeds from Indiscrete Fire,” says an Occult axiom.

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

In the Kabalah, Bath‐Kol is the Daughter of the Divine Voice, or Primordial Light, Shekinah. In the Purânas and Hindû exotericism, Vâch, the Voice, is the female Logos of Brahmâ—a permutation of Aditi, Primordial Light. And if Bath‐Kol, in Jewish Mysticism, is an articulate præter‐natural voice from heaven, revealing to the “chosen people” the sacred traditions and laws, it is only because Vâch was called, before Judaism, the “Mother of the Vedas,” who entered into the Rishis and inspired them by her revelations; just as Bath‐Kol is said to have inspired the prophets of Israël and the Jewish High‐Priests. And both exist to this day, in their respective sacred symbologies, because the Ancients associated Sound or Speech with the Ether of Space, of which Sound is the characteristic. Hence Fire, Water and Air are the primordial Cosmic Trinity.

I am thy Thought, thy God, more ancient than the Moist Principle, the Light that radiates within Darkness [Chaos], and the shining Word of God [Sound] is the Son of the Deity.(248)

Thus we have to study well the “Primary Creation” before we can understand the Secondary. The first Race had three rudimentary Elements in it; and no Fire as yet; because, with the Ancients, the evolution of man, and the growth and development of his spiritual and physical senses, were subordinate to the evolution of the Elements on the Cosmic plane of this Earth. All proceeds from Prabhavâpyaya, the evolution of the creative and sentient principles in the Gods, and even of the so‐called Creative Deity himself. This is found in the names and appellations given to Vishnu in exoteric Scriptures. As the Orphic Protologos, he is called Pûrvaja, “pregenetic,” and the other names connect him in their descending order more and more with Matter.

The following order on parallel lines may be found in the evolution of the Elements and the Senses; or in Cosmic Terrestrial “Man” or “Spirit,” and mortal physical man:

1. Ether ... Hearing ... Sound. 2. Air ... Touch ... Sound and Touch. 3. Fire, or Light ... Sight ... Sound, Touch and Colour. 4. Water ... Taste ... Sound, Touch, Colour and Taste. 5. Earth ... Smell ... Sound, Touch, Colour, Taste and Smell.

As seen, each Element adds to its own characteristics, those of its predecessor; as each Root‐Race adds the characterizing sense of the preceding Race. The same is true in the septenary “creation” of man, who evolves gradually in seven stages, and on the same principles, as will be shown further on.

Thus, while Gods, or Dhyân Chohans (Devas), proceed from the First Cause—which is not Parabrahman, for the latter is the ALL CAUSE, and cannot be referred to as the “First Cause,”—which First Cause is called in the Brâhmanical Books Jagad‐Yoni, the “Womb of the World,” mankind emanates from these active agents in Kosmos. But men, during the First and Second Races, were not physical beings, but merely rudiments of the future men; Bhûtas, which proceeded from Bhûtâdi, “origin,” or the “original place whence sprang the Elements.” Hence they proceeded with all the rest from Prabhavâpyaya, “the place whence is the origination, and into which is the resolution of all things,” as explained by the Commentator on the Vishnu Purâna. Whence also our physical senses. Whence even the highest “created” Deity itself, in our Philosophy. As one with the Universe, whether we call him Brahmâ, Îshvara, or Purusha, he is a Manifested Deity—hence “created,” or limited and conditioned. This is easily proven, even from the exoteric teachings.

After being called the incognizable, eternal Brahma (neuter or abstract), the Pundarîkâksha, “supreme and imperishable glory,” once that instead of Sadaika‐Rûpa, “changeless” or “immutable” Nature, he is addressed as Ekâneka‐Rûpa, “both single and manifold,” he, the Cause, becomes merged with his own effects; and his names, if placed in Esoteric order, show the following descending scale:

Mahâpurusha or Paramâtman: Supreme Spirit. Âtman or Pûrvaja (Protologos): The Living Spirit of Nature. Indriyâtman, or Hrishîkesha: Spiritual or Intellectual Soul (one with the senses). Bhûtâtman: The Living, or Life Soul. Kshetrajña: Embodied Soul, or the Universe of Spirit and Matter. Bhrântidarshanatah: False Perception—Material Universe.

The last name means something perceived or conceived of, owing to false and erroneous apprehension, as a material form, but is, in fact, only Mâyâ, Illusion, as all is in our physical universe.

It is in strict analogy with the attributes of this Brahma in both the spiritual and material worlds, that the evolution of the Dhyân‐Chohanic Essences takes place; the characteristics of the latter being reflected, in their turn, in Man, collectively, and in each of his principles; _every one of which contains in itself, in the same progressive order, a portion of their various __“__Fires__”__ and Elements_.

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Stanza V. The Evolution of the Second Race

18. The Sons of Yoga. 19. The Sexless Second Race. 20. The Sons of the “Sons of Twilight.” 21. The “Shadow,” or the Astral Man, retires within, and man develops a Physical Body.

18. THE FIRST(249) WERE THE SONS OF YOGA. THEIR SONS, THE CHILDREN OF THE YELLOW FATHER AND THE WHITE MOTHER.

In the later Commentary, the sentence is translated:

_The Sons of the Sun and of the Moon, the nursling of Ether [or the __“__Wind__”__] (a)_....

_They were the shadows of the Shadows of the Lords (b). They [the shadows] expanded. The Spirits of the Earth clothed them; the Solar Lhas warmed them [__i.e.__, preserved the Vital Fire in the nascent physical Forms]. The Breaths had life, but had no understanding. They had no Fire or Water of their own (c)._

(a) Remember in this connection the Tabula Smaragdina of Hermes, the Esoteric meaning of which has seven keys to it. The Astro‐chemical is well known to students, the Anthropological may now be given. The “One Thing” mentioned in it is Man. It is said:

The Father of that One Only Thing is the Sun; its Mother the Moon; the Wind carries it in his bosom, and its Nurse is the Spirituous Earth.

In the Occult rendering of the same it is added: “and Spiritual Fire is its instructor [Guru].”

This Fire is the Higher Self, the Spiritual Ego, or that which is eternally reïncarnating under the influence of its lower personal Selves, changing with every re‐birth, full of Tanha or desire to live. It is a strange law of Nature that, on this plane, the higher (Spiritual) Nature should be, so to say, in bondage to the lower. Unless the Ego takes refuge in the Âtman, the ALL‐SPIRIT, and merges entirely into the essence thereof, the personal Ego may goad it to the bitter end. This cannot be thoroughly understood unless the student makes himself familiar with the mystery of evolution, which proceeds on triple lines—Spiritual, Psychic and Physical.

That which propels towards, and forces evolution, i.e., compels the growth and development of Man towards perfection, is (a) the Monad, or that which acts in it unconsciously through a Force inherent in itself; and (b) the lower Astral Body or the Personal Self. The former, whether imprisoned in a vegetable or an animal body, is endowed with, is indeed itself, that Force. Owing to its identity with the ALL‐FORCE, which, as said, is inherent in the Monad, it is all‐potent on the Arûpa, or formless plane. On our plane, its essence being too pure, it remains all‐potential, but individually becomes inactive. For instance, the rays of the Sun, which contribute to the growth of vegetation, do not select this or that plant to shine upon. Uproot the plant and transfer it to a piece of soil where the sunbeam cannot reach it, and the latter will not follow it. So with the Âtman: unless the Higher Self or Ego gravitates towards its Sun—the Monad—the Lower Ego, or Personal Self, will have the upper hand in every case. For it is this Ego, with its fierce selfishness and animal desire to live a senseless life (Tanha), which is the “maker of the tabernacle,” as Buddha calls it in the Dhammapada.(250) Hence the expression, the Spirits of the Earth clothed the shadows and expanded them. To these “Spirits” belong temporarily the human Astral Selves; and it is they who give, or build, the physical tabernacle of man, for the Monad and its conscious principle, Manas, to dwell in. But the “Solar” Lhas, or Spirits, warm the Shadows. This is physically and literally true; metaphysically, or on the psychic and spiritual plane, it is equally true that the Âtman alone warms the Inner Man; i.e., it enlightens it with the Ray of Divine Life and alone is able to impart to the Inner Man, or the Reïncarnating Ego, its immortality. Thus, we shall find, for the first three and a half Root‐Races, up to the middle or turning point, it is the Astral Shadows of the “Progenitors,” the Lunar Pitris, which are the formative powers in the Races, and which build and gradually force the evolution of the physical form towards perfection—this, at the cost of a proportionate loss of Spirituality. Then, from the turning point, it is the Higher Ego, or Incarnating Principle, the Nous or Mind, which reigns over the Animal Ego, and rules it whenever it is not carried down by the latter. In short, Spirituality is on its ascending arc, and the animal or physical impedes it from steadily progressing on the path of its evolution, only when the selfishness of the Personality has so strongly infected the real Inner Man with its lethal virus, that the upward attraction has lost all its power on the thinking reasonable man. In sober truth, vice and wickedness are an abnormal, unnatural manifestation, at this period of our human evolution—at least they ought to be so. The fact that mankind was never more selfish and vicious than it is now—civilized nations having succeeded in making of the former an ethical characteristic, of the latter an art—is an additional proof of the exceptional nature of the phenomenon.

The entire scheme is in the Chaldæan Book of Numbers, and even in the Zohar, if one only understands the meaning of the apocalyptic hints. First comes Ain Suph, the “Concealed of the Concealed,” then the Point, Sephira and the later Sephiroth; then the Atzilatic World, a World of Emanations that gives birth to three other Worlds—the first the Briatic World called the Throne, the abode of pure Spirits; the second, the World of Formation, or Jetziratic, the habitat of the Angels who sent forth the Third, or World of Action, the Asiatic World, which is the Earth or our World; and yet it is said of this World—also called Kliphoth, containing the (six other) Spheres, נלגלים, and Matter—that it is the residence of the “Prince of Darkness.” This is as clearly stated as can be; for Metatron, the Angel of the second Briatic World, the first habitable World, means Messenger, Ἄγγελος, Angel, called the great Teacher; and under him are the Angels of the third World, or Jetziratic, whose ten and seven classes are the Sephiroth,(251) of whom it is said that:

They inhabit or vivify this world as essential [entities and] intelligences, and their correlates and logical contraries inhabit the third habitable world, called the Asiatic.

These “contraries” are called the “Shells,” קליפות, or Demons,(252) who inhabit the seven habitations called Sheba Hachaloth, which are simply the seven Zones of our Globe.(253) Their prince is called in the Kabalah Samaël, the Angel of Death, who is also the seducing Serpent Satan; but this Satan is also Lucifer, the bright Angel of Light, the Light‐ and Life‐bringer, the “Soul” alienated from the Holy Ones, the other Angels, and for a period, anticipating the time when they would descend on Earth to incarnate in their turn.

The Book of Wisdom teaches that:

All Souls [Monads] are preëxistent in the Worlds of Emanations.(254)

And the Zohar teaches that in the “Soul” is the real man, i.e., the Ego and the conscious I am, the Manas.

Says Josephus, repeating the belief of the Essenes,

[Souls] descend from the pure air to be chained to bodies.(255)

And Philo states that:

The air was full of [Souls], and that those which were nearest the earth, descending to be tied to mortal bodies, return back to bodies, being desirous to live in them.(256)

Because through, and in, the human form they will become progressive Beings, whereas the nature of the Angel is purely intransitive; therefore Man has in him the potency of transcending the faculties of the Angels. Hence the Initiates in India say that it is the Brâhman, the Twice‐born, who rules the Gods or Devas; and Paul repeated it in his Epistle to the Corinthians:

Know ye not that we [the Initiates] shall judge angels?(257)

Finally, it is shown in every ancient Scripture and Cosmogony that man evolved primarily as a luminous incorporeal form, over which, like molten brass poured into the model of the sculptor, the physical frame of his body was built by, through and from, the lower forms and types of animal terrestrial life. Says the Zohar:

The Soul and the Form when descending on Earth put on an earthly garment.

His protoplastic body was not formed of that matter of which our mortal frames are fashioned.

When Adam dwelled in the garden of Eden, he was dressed in the celestial garment, which is the garment of heavenly light ... light of that light which was used in the garden of Eden.(258) Man [the Heavenly Adam] was created by the ten Sephiroth of the Jetziratic World, and by their common power the seven Angels of a still lower World engendered the Earthly Adam. First Samaël fell, and then deceiving (?) man, caused his fall also.

(b) The sentence, “they were the shadows of the Shadows of the Lords”—i.e., the Progenitors created man out of their own Astral Bodies—explains a universal belief. The Devas are credited in the East with having no “shadows” of their own. “The Devas cast no shadows,” and this is the sure sign of a good holy Spirit.

(c) Why had they “no Fire or Water of their own”?(259) Because that which Hydrogen is to the elements and gases on the objective plane, its Noumenon is in the world of mental or subjective phenomena; since its trinitarian latent nature is mirrored in its three active emanations from the three higher principles in man, namely, Spirit, Soul, and Mind, or Âtmâ, Buddhi, and Manas. It is the spiritual and also the material human basis. Rudimentary man, having been nursed by the “Air” or the “Wind,” becomes the perfect man later on; when, with the development of “Spiritual Fire,” the Noumenon of the “Three in One” within his Self, he acquires from his Inner Self, or Instructor, the Wisdom of Self‐Consciousness, which he does not possess in the beginning. Thus here again Divine Spirit is symbolized by the Sun or Fire; Divine Soul by Water and the Moon, both standing for the Father and Mother of Pneuma, the Human Soul, or Mind, symbolized by the Wind or Air, for Pneuma, means “Breath.”

Hence in the Smaragdine Tablet, disfigured by Christian hands:

The Superior agrees with the Inferior; and the Inferior with the Superior; to effect that one truly wonderful work—[which is Man].

For the Secret Work of Chiram, or King Hiram in the Kabalah, “one in essence, but three in aspect,” is the Universal Agent or Lapis Philosophorum. The culmination of the Secret Work is Spiritual Perfect Man, at one end of the line; the union of the three Elements is the Occult Solvent in the “Soul of the World,” the Cosmic Soul or Astral Light, at the other; and, on the material plane, it is Hydrogen in its relation to the other gases. The TO ON, truly; the ONE “whom no person has seen except the Son”; this sentence applying both to the metaphysical and physical Kosmos, and to the spiritual and material Man. For how could the latter understand the TO ON, the “One Father,” if his Manas, the “Son,” does not become (as) “One with the Father,” and through this absorption receive enlightenment from the divine “Instructor,” or Guru—Âtmâ‐Buddhi?

As says the Commentary:

If thou would’st understand the SECONDARY [“Creation,” so‐called], O Lanoo, thou should’st first study its relation to the PRIMARY.(260)

The First Race had three Elements, but no Living Fire. Why? Because:

“We say four Elements, my Son, but ought to say three,” says Hermes Trismegistus. “In the Primary Circle,” or Creation that which is marked [Symbol: Like a large letter H, with dots above and below, and tildes above and below] reads “Root,” as in the Secondary likewise.

Thus in Alchemy or Western Hermeticism—a variant on Eastern Esotericism—we find:

Sulphur ... Flamma ... Spiritus Mercury ... Natura ... Aqua Salt ... Mater ... Sanguis

And these three are all quaternaries completed by their Root, Fire. The Spirit, beyond Manifested Nature, is the Fiery BREATH in its absolute Unity. In the Manifested Universe, it is the Central Spiritual Sun, the electric Fire of all Life. In our System it is the visible Sun, the Spirit of Nature, the terrestrial God. And in, on, and around the Earth, the fiery spirit thereof—Air, fluidic Fire; Water, liquid Fire; Earth, solid Fire. All is Fire—Ignis, in its ultimate constitution, or I, the root of which is 0 (nought) in our conceptions, the All in Nature and its Mind. “Pro‐Metor” is divine Fire. It is the Creator, the Destroyer, the Preserver. The primitive names of the Gods are all connected with fire, from Agni, the Âryan, to the Jewish God who is a “consuming fire.” In India, God is called in various dialects, Eashoor, Esur, Iswur, and Îshvara, in Sanskrit, the Lord, from Isha, but this is primarily the name of Shiva, the Destroyer; and the three chief Vedic Gods are Agni (Ignis), Vâyu, and Sûrya—Fire, Air, and the Sun, three Occult degrees of Fire. In the Hebrew, אזא (Aza) means to “illuminate,” and אשא (Asha) is “Fire.” In Occultism, to “kindle a fire” is synonymous to evoking one of the three great Fire‐powers, or to “call on God.” In Sanskrit the root Ush is fire or heat; and the Egyptian word Osiris is compounded, as shown by Schelling, of the two primitives Aish and Asr, or a “fire‐enchanter.” Aesar in the old Etruscan meant a God, being perhaps derived from Asura of the Vedas. Îshvara is an analogous term, as Dr. Kenealy thought, who quotes the Bhagavad Gitâ to the effect that:

Îshvara resides in every mortal being and puts in motion, by his supernatural powers, all things which mount on the wheel of time.

It is the Creator and the Destroyer, truly.

The primitive Fire was supposed to have an insatiable appetite for devouring. Maximus of Tyre relates that the ancient Persians threw into the fire combustible matter crying, Devour, O Lord! In the Irish language easam, or asam, means to make or create.

[And] Aesar was the name also of one of the ancient Irish gods; the literal meaning of the word is “to kindle a fire.”(261)

The Christian Kabalists and Symbologists who disfigured Pymander—prominent among them the Bishop of Ayre, François de Tours, in the 16th century—divide the Elements in the following way:

The four Elements formed from divine Substances and the Spirits of the Salts of Nature represented by:

[Symbol: Root symbol] ... St. Matthew ... Angel‐Man ... Water (Jesus‐ Christ, Angel‐Man, Mikael) Α‐Ω ... St. Mark ... The Lion ... Fire Ε‐Υ ... St. Luke ... The Bull ... Earth Ι‐Ο ... St. John ... The Eagle ... Air(262) Η ... The Quintessence, Ἡ ΦΛΟΞ, Flamma‐Virgo [Virgin Oil], _Flamma Durissima_, Virgo, Lucis Æterna Mater.

The First Race of men were, then, simply the Images, the Astral Doubles, of their Fathers, who were the pioneers, or the most progressed Entities from a preceding though lower Sphere, the shell of which is now our Moon. But even this shell is all‐potential, for, the Moon having generated the Earth, its phantom, attracted by magnetic affinity, sought to form its first inhabitants, the pre‐human monsters. To assure himself of this, the student has again to turn to the Chaldæan Fragments, and read what Berosus says. Berosus obtained his information, he tells us, from Ea, the male‐female Deity of Wisdom. While the Gods were generated in the androgynous bosom of this Wisdom (Svabhâvat, Mother‐Space), its reflections became on Earth the woman Omorôka, who is the Chaldæan Thavatth (or Thalatth), the Greek Thalassa, the Deep or the Sea, which Esoterically and even exoterically is the Moon. It was the Moon (Omorôka) who presided over the monstrous creation of nondescript beings which were slain by the Dhyânîs.(263)

Evolutionary law compelled the Lunar Fathers to pass, in their monadic condition, through all the forms of life and being on this Globe; but at the end of the Third Round, they were already human in their divine nature, and were thus called upon to become the creators of the forms destined to fashion the tabernacles of the less progressed Monads, whose turn it was to incarnate. These “Forms” are called “Sons of Yoga,” because Yoga—union with Brahmâ, exoterically—is the supreme condition of the passive infinite Deity, since it contains all the divine energies and is the essence of Brahmâ, who is said, as Brahmâ, to create everything through Yoga power. Brahmâ, Vishnu and Shiva are the most powerful energies of God, Brahma (Neuter), says a Paurânic text. Yoga here is the same as Dhyâna, which word is again synonymous with Yoga in the Tibetan text, where the “Sons of Yoga” are called “Sons of Dhyâna,” or of that abstract meditation through which the Dhyâni‐Buddhas create their celestial sons, the Dhyâni‐Bodhisattvas.

All the creatures in the world have each a superior above. This superior, whose inner pleasure it is to emanate into them, cannot impart efflux until they have adored [i.e., meditated as during Yoga].(264)

19. THE SECOND RACE (WAS) THE PRODUCT BY BUDDING AND EXPANSION, THE A‐ SEXUAL(265) FROM THE SEXLESS.(266) THUS WAS, O LANOO, THE SECOND RACE PRODUCED.

What will be most contested by scientific authorities is this A‐sexual Race, the Second, the Fathers of the “Sweat‐born” so‐called, and perhaps still more the Third Race, the “Egg‐born” Androgynes. These two modes of procreation are the most difficult to comprehend, especially for the Western mind. It is evident that no explanation can be attempted for those who are not students of Occult Metaphysics. European language has no words to express things which Nature repeats no more at this stage of evolution, things which therefore can have no meaning for the Materialist. But there are analogies. It is not denied that in the beginning of physical evolution there must have been processes in Nature, spontaneous generation, for instance, now extinct, which are repeated in other forms. Thus we are told that microscopic research shows no permanence of any particular mode of reproducing life. For it shows that:

The same organism may run through various metamorphoses in the course of its life‐cycle, during some of which it may be sexual, and in others a‐sexual, i.e., it may reproduce itself alternately by the coöperation of two beings of opposite sex, and also by fissure or budding from one being only, which is of no sex.(267)

“Budding” is the very word used in the Stanza. How could these Chhâyâs reproduce themselves otherwise; viz., procreate the Second Race, since they were ethereal, a‐sexual, and even devoid, as yet, of the vehicle of desire, or Kâma Rûpa, which evolved only in the Third Race? They evolved the Second Race unconsciously, as do some plants. Or, perhaps, as the Amœba, only on a more ethereal, impressive, and larger scale. If, indeed, the cell‐theory applies equally to Botany and Zoology, and extends to Morphology, as well as to the Physiology of organisms, and if the microscopic cells are looked upon by Physical Science as independent living beings—just as Occultism regards the “Fiery Lives”—there is no difficulty in the conception of the primitive process of procreation.

Consider the first stages of the development of a germ‐cell. Its nucleus grows, changes, and forms a double cone or spindle, thus, [Symbol: Large X with horizontal lines across tops and bottoms] within the cell. This spindle approaches the surface of the cell, and one half of it is extruded in the form of what are called the “polar cells.” These polar cells now die, and the embryo develops from the growth and segmentation of the remaining part of the nucleus which is nourished by the substance of the cell. Then why could not beings have lived thus, and been created in this way—at the very beginning of human and mammalian evolution?

This may, perhaps, serve as an analogy to give some idea of the process by which the Second Race was formed from the First.

The Astral Form clothing the Monad was surrounded, as it still is, by its egg‐shaped sphere of Aura, which here corresponds to the substance of the germ‐cell or Ovum. The Astral Form itself is the nucleus, now, as then, instinct with the Principle of Life.

When the season of reproduction arrives, the Sub‐astral “extrudes” a miniature of itself from the egg of surrounding Aura. This germ grows and feeds on the Aura till it becomes fully developed, when it gradually separates from its parent, carrying with it its own sphere of Aura; just as we see living cells reproducing their like by growth and subsequent division into two.

The analogy with the “polar cells” would seem to hold good, since their death would now correspond to the change introduced by the separation of the sexes, when gestation in utero, i.e., within the cell, became the rule.

As the Commentary tells us:

_The early Second [Root] Race were the Fathers of the __“__Sweat‐ born__”__; the later Second [Root] Race were __“__Sweat‐born__”__ themselves._

This passage from the Commentary refers to the work of evolution from the beginning of a Race to its close. The “Sons of Yoga,” or the Primitive Astral Race, had seven stages of evolution racially, or collectively; as every individual Being in it had, and has now. It is not Shakespeare only who divided the ages of man into a series of seven, but Nature herself. Thus the first Sub‐races of the Second Race were born at first by the process described on the law of analogy; while the last began gradually, pari passu with the evolution of the human body, to be formed otherwise. The process of reproduction had seven stages also in each Race, each covering æons of time. What Physiologist or Biologist can tell whether the present mode of generation, with all its phases of gestation, is older than half a million, or at most one million of years, since their cycle of observation began hardly half a century ago?

Primeval human Hermaphrodites are a fact in Nature well known to the Ancients, and form one of Darwin’s greatest perplexities. Yet there is certainly no impossibility, but, on the contrary, a great probability that hermaphroditism existed in the evolution of the early Races; while on the grounds of analogy, and on that of the existence of one universal law in physical evolution, acting indifferently in the construction of plant, animal, and man, it must be so. The mistaken theories of Monogenesis, and the descent of man from the mammal, instead of the mammals from man, are fatal to the completeness of evolution as taught in modern schools on Darwinian lines, and they will have to be abandoned in view of the insuperable difficulties which they encounter. Occult tradition—if the terms Science and Knowledge are denied in this particular to Antiquity—can alone reconcile the inconsistencies and fill the gap. Says a Talmudic axiom:

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

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

It has long been known that in the vertebrate kingdom one sex bears rudiments of various accessory parts, appertaining to the reproductive system, which properly belong to the opposite sex.... Some remote progenitor of the whole vertebrate kingdom appears to have been hermaphrodite or androgynous.(268) But here we encounter a singular difficulty. In the mammalian class the males possess rudiments of a uterus with the adjacent passages in the vesiculæ prostaticæ; they bear also rudiments of mammæ, and some male marsupials have traces of a marsupial sac. Other analogous facts could be added. Are we, then, to suppose that some extremely ancient mammal continued androgynous, after it had acquired the chief distinctions of its class, and therefore after it had diverged from the lower classes of the vertebrate kingdom? This seems very improbable,(269) for we have to look to fishes, the lowest of all the classes, to find any still existent androgynous forms.(270)

Mr. Darwin is evidently strongly disinclined to adopt the hypothesis which the facts so forcibly suggest, viz., that of a primeval androgynous stem from which the Mammalia sprang. His explanation runs:

That various accessory organs, proper to each sex, are found in a rudimentary condition in the opposite sex, may be explained by such organs having been gradually acquired by the one sex, and then transmitted in a more or less imperfect state to the other.(271)

He instances the case of “spurs, plumes, and brilliant colours, acquired for battle or ornament by male birds” and only partially inherited by their female descendants. In the problem to be dealt with, however, the need of a more satisfactory explanation is evident, the facts being of so much more prominent and important a character than the mere superficial details with which they are compared by Darwin. Why not candidly admit the argument in favour of the hermaphroditism which characterizes the old fauna? Occultism proposes a solution which embraces the facts in a most comprehensive and simple manner. These relics of a prior androgyne stock must be placed in the same category as the pineal gland, and other organs equally mysterious, which afford us silent testimony as to the reality of functions which have long since become atrophied in the course of animal and human progress, but which once played a signal part in the general economy of primeval life.

The Occult doctrine, in any case, can be advantageously compared with that of the most liberal men of Science, who have theorized upon the origin of the first man.

Long before Darwin, Naudin, who gave the name of Blastema to that which the Darwinists call Protoplasm, put forward a theory half Occult and half scientifico‐materialistic. He made Adam, the A‐sexual, spring suddenly from the clay, as it is called in the Bible, the Blastema of Science. As Naudin explains:

It is from this larval form of mankind, that the evolutive force effected the completion of species. For the accomplishment of this great phenomenon, Adam had to pass through a phase of immobility and unconsciousness, very analogous to the nymphal state of animals undergoing metamorphosis.(272)

For the eminent Botanist, Adam was not one man, however, but mankind, which remained

Concealed within a temporary organism, already distinct from all others, and incapable of contracting an alliance with any of them.

He shows the differentiation of sexes accomplished by

A process of germination similar to that of medusæ and ascidians.

Mankind, thus constituted physiologically,

Would retain a sufficient evolutive force for the rapid production of the various great human races.

De Quatrefages criticizes this position in The Human Species. It is unscientific, he says, or, properly speaking, Naudin’s ideas “do not form a scientific theory,” inasmuch as Primordial Blastema is connected in his theory with the “first cause,” which is credited with having made potentially in the Blastema all past, present, and future beings, and thus of having in reality created these beings en masse; moreover, Naudin does not even consider the “second causes,” or their action in this evolution of the organic world. Science, which is only occupied with “second causes,” has thus

Nothing to say to the theory of M. Naudin.(273)

Nor will it have any more to say to the Occult teachings, which are to some extent approached by Naudin. For if we but see in his “Primordial Blastema” the Dhyân‐Chohanic Essence, the Chhâyâ or Double of the Pitris, which contains within itself the potentiality of all forms, we are quite in accord. But there are two real and vital differences between our teachings. M. Naudin declares that evolution has progressed by sudden leaps and bounds, instead of extending slowly over millions of years; and his Primordial Blastema is endowed only with blind instincts—a kind of unconscious First Cause in the Manifested Kosmos—which is an absurdity. Whereas it is our Dhyân‐Chohanic Essence—the Causality of the Primal Cause which creates physical man—which is the living, active and potential Matter (pregnant per se with that animal consciousness of a superior kind, such as is found in the ant and the beaver) which produces the long series of physiological differentiations. Apart from this, his “ancient and general process of creation” from Proto‐organisms is as Occult as any theory of Paracelsus or Khunrath could be.

Moreover, the Kabalistic works are full of the proof of this. The Zohar, for instance, says that every type in the visible has its prototype in the invisible Universe.

All that which is in the Lower (our) World is found in the Upper. The Lower and the Upper act and reäct upon each other.(274)

20. THEIR FATHERS WERE THE SELF‐BORN. THE SELF‐BORN, THE CHHÂYÂ FROM THE BRILLIANT BODIES OF THE LORDS, THE FATHERS, THE SONS OF TWILIGHT.

The “Shadows,” or Chhâyâs, are called the Sons of the “Self‐born,” as the latter name is applied to all the Gods and Beings, born through the Will, whether of Deity or Adept. The Homunculi of Paracelsus would, perhaps, be also given this name, though the latter process is on a far more material plane. The name “Sons of Twilight” shows that the “Self‐born” Progenitors of our Doctrine are identical with the Pitris of the Brâhmanical System, as the title is a reference to their mode of birth; these Pitris being stated to have issued from Brahmâ’s “Body of Twilight,” as stated in the Purânas.

21. WHEN THE RACE BECAME OLD, THE OLD WATERS MIXED WITH THE FRESHER WATERS (A). WHEN ITS DROPS BECAME TURBID, THEY VANISHED AND DISAPPEARED IN THE NEW STREAM, IN THE HOT STREAM OF LIFE. THE OUTER OF THE FIRST BECAME THE INNER OF THE SECOND (B). THE OLD WING BECAME THE NEW SHADOW, AND THE SHADOW OF THE WING (C).

(a) The old or Primitive Race merged in the Second Race, and became one with it.

(b) This is the mysterious process of the transformation and evolution of mankind. The material of the first Forms—shadowy, ethereal, and negative—was drawn or absorbed into, and thus became the complement of the Forms of the Second Race. The Commentary explains this by saying that, as the First Race was simply composed of the Astral Shadows of the Creative Progenitors, having of course neither astral nor physical bodies of its own—the Race never died. Its “Men” melted gradually away, becoming absorbed in the bodies of their own “Sweat‐born” progeny, more solid than their own. The old Form vanished and was absorbed by, disappeared in, the new Form, more human and physical. There was no death in those days of a period more blissful than the Golden Age; but the first, or parent, material was used for the formation of the new being, to form the Body and even the inner or lower Principles or Bodies of the progeny.

(c) When the “Shadow” retires, i.e., when the Astral Body becomes covered with more solid flesh, man develops a Physical Body. The “Wing,” or the ethereal Form that produced its Shadow and Image, became the Shadow of the Astral Body and its own progeny. The expression is queer and original.

As there may be no occasion to refer to this mystery later, it is as well to point out at once the dual meaning contained in the Greek myth bearing upon this particular phase of evolution. It is found in the several variants of the allegory of Leda and her two sons Castor and Pollux, each of which variants has a special meaning. Thus in Book XI of the Odyssey, Leda is spoken of as the spouse of Tyndarus, who gave birth by her husband “to two sons of valiant heart”—Castor and Pollux. Jupiter endows them with a marvellous gift and privilege. They are semi‐immortal; they live and die, each in turn, and every alternate day (ἑτερήμεροι(275)). As the Tyndaridæ, the twin brothers are an astronomical symbol, and stand for Day and Night; their two wives, Phœbe and Hilaeira, the daughters of Apollo or the Sun, personifying the Dawn and the Twilight.(276) Again, in the allegory where Zeus is shown as the father of the two heroes—born from the Egg to which Leda gives birth—the myth is entirely theogonical. It relates to that group of cosmic allegories in which the world is described as born from an Egg. For Leda assumes in it the shape of a white swan, when uniting herself to the Divine Swan or Brahma‐Kalahamsa. Leda is the mythical Bird, then, to which, in the traditions of various peoples of the Âryan race, are attributed various ornithological forms of birds which all lay golden Eggs.(277) In the Kalevala, the Epic Poem of Finland, the beauteous daughter of the Ether, the “Water‐Mother,” creates the World in conjunction with a “Duck”—another form of the Swan or Goose, Kalahamsa—who lays six golden eggs, and the seventh, an “egg of iron,” in her lap. But the variant of the Leda allegory which has a direct reference to mystic man is found in Pindar(278) only, with a slighter reference to it in the Homeric Hymns.(279) Castor and Pollux are in it no longer the Dioscuri of Apollodorus(280); but become the highly significant symbol of the dual man, the Mortal and the Immortal. Not only this, but as will now be seen, they are also the symbol of the Third Race, and its transformation from the Animal‐man into a God‐man with only an animal body.

Pindar shows Leda uniting herself in the same night to her husband and also to the Father of the Gods—Zeus. Thus Castor is the son of the Mortal, Pollux the progeny of the Immortal. In the allegory made up for the occasion, it is said that in a riot of vengeance against the Apharides,(281) Pollux kills Lynceus—“of all mortals he whose sight is the most penetrating”—but Castor is wounded by Idas, “he who sees and knows.” Zeus puts an end to the fight by hurling his thunderbolt and killing the last two combatants. Pollux finds his brother dying.(282) In his despair he calls upon Zeus to slay him also. “Thou canst not die altogether,” answers the master of the Gods; “thou art of a divine race.” But he gives him the choice: Pollux will either remain immortal, living eternally in Olympus; or, if he would share his brother’s fate in all things, he must pass half his existence underground, and the other half in the golden heavenly abodes. This semi‐immortality, which is also to be shared by Castor, is accepted by Pollux.(283) And thus the twin brothers live alternately, one during the day, and the other during the night.(284)

Is this a poetical fiction only? An allegory, one of those “solar myth” interpretations, higher than which no modern Orientalist seems able to soar? Indeed, it is much more. Here we have an allusion to the “Egg‐born” Third Race; the first half of which is mortal, i.e., unconscious in its Personality, and having nothing within itself to survive;(285) and the latter half of which becomes immortal in its Individuality, by reason of its Fifth Principle being called to life by the Informing Gods, and thus connecting the Monad with this Earth. This is Pollux; while Castor represents the personal, mortal man, an animal of not even a superior kind, when unlinked from the divine Individuality. “Twins” truly; yet divorced by death for ever, unless Pollux, moved by the voice of twinship, bestows on his less favoured mortal brother a share of his own divine nature, thus associating him with his own immortality.

Such is the Occult meaning of the metaphysical aspect of the allegory. The widely spread modern interpretation of it—so celebrated in antiquity, Plutarch tells us,(286) as symbolical of brotherly devotion—namely, that it was an image of the Sun and Moon borrowed from the spectacle of Nature, is weak and inadequate to explain the secret meaning. Besides the fact that the Moon, with the Greeks, was feminine in exoteric mythology, and could therefore hardly be regarded as Castor, and at the same time be identified with Diana, ancient Symbologists who held the Sun, the king of all sidereal orbs, as the visible image of the highest Deity, would not have personified it by Pollux, a demi‐god only.(287)

If from Greek mythology we pass to the Mosaic allegories and symbolism, we shall find a still more striking corroboration of the same tenet under another form. Unable to trace in them the “Egg‐born,” we shall still unmistakably find in the first four chapters of Genesis the Androgynes and the first Three Races of the Secret Doctrine, hidden under most ingenious symbology.

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The Divine Hermaphrodite

An impenetrable veil of secrecy was thrown over the Occult and Religious Mysteries, after the submersion of the last remnant of the Atlantean Race, some 12,000 years ago, lest they should be shared by the unworthy, and so desecrated. Of these Sciences several have now become exoteric—such as Astronomy, for instance, in its purely mathematical and physical aspects. But their dogmas and tenets, being all symbolized and left to the sole guardianship of parable and allegory, have been forgotten, and hence the meaning has become perverted. Nevertheless, one finds the Hermaphrodite in the scriptures and traditions of almost every nation; and why such unanimous agreement if the statement is only a fiction?

Under cover of this secrecy the Fifth Race were led to the establishment, or rather the reëstablishment of the Religious Mysteries, in which ancient truths might be taught to the coming generations under the veil of allegory and symbolism. Behold the imperishable witness to the evolution of the Human Races from the Divine, and especially from the Androgynous Race—the Egyptian Sphinx, that riddle of the Ages! Divine Wisdom incarnating on Earth, and forced to taste of the bitter fruit of personal experience of pain and suffering, generated on Earth only under the shade of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil—a secret first known only to the Elohim, the Self‐Initiated, “Higher Gods.”(288)

In the Book of Enoch we have Adam,(289) the first Divine Androgyne, separating into man and woman, and becoming Jah‐Heva in one form, or Race, and Cain and Abel(290)—male and female—in its other form or Race—the double‐sexed Jehovah,(291) an echo of its Âryan prototype, Brahmâ‐Vâch. After which come the Third and Fourth Root‐Races of mankind(292)—that is to say, Races of men and women, or individuals of opposite sexes, no longer sexless Semi‐spirits and Androgynes, as were the two Races which precede them. This fact is hinted at in every Anthropogony. It is found in fable and allegory, in myth and revealed Scriptures, in legend and tradition. For, of all the great Mysteries, inherited by Initiates from hoary antiquity, this is one of the greatest. It accounts for the bi‐ sexual element found in every Creative Deity, in Brahmâ‐Virâj‐Vâch, as in Adam‐Jehovah‐Eve, also in Cain‐Jehovah‐Abel. For “The Book of the Generations of Adam” does not even mention Cain and Abel, but says only:

Male and female created he them; ... and called their name Adam.(293)

Then it proceeds to say:

And Adam ... begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth.(294)

After which he begets other sons and daughters, thus proving that Cain and Abel are his own allegorical permutations. Adam stands for the primitive Human Race, especially in its cosmo‐sidereal sense. Not so, however, in its theo‐anthropological meaning. The compound name of Jehovah, or Jah‐ Hovah, meaning male life and female life—first androgynous, then separated into sexes—is used in this sense in Genesis from Chapter V onwards. As the author of the Source of Measures says:

The two words of which Jehovah is composed make up the original idea of male‐female, as the birth originator.(295)

For the Hebrew letter Jod was the membrum virile and Hovah was Eve, the mother of all living, or the procreatrix, Earth and Nature. The author believes, therefore, that:

It is seen that the perfect one [the perfect female circle or Yoni, 20612, numerically], as originator of measures, takes also the form of birth origin, as hermaphrodite one; hence the phallic form and use.

Precisely; only “the phallic form and use” came long ages later; and the first and original meaning of Enos, the son of Seth, was the first Race born in the present usual way from man and woman—for Seth is no man, but a race. Before him humanity was hermaphrodite. While Seth is the first result (physiologically) after the “Fall,” he is also the first man; hence his son Enos is referred to as the “Son of Man.” Seth represents the later Third Race.

To screen the real mystery name of Ain Suph—the Boundless and Endless No‐ Thing—the Kabalists have brought forward the compound attribute‐ appellation of one of the personal Creative Elohim, whose name was Yah or Jah—the letters i or j or y being interchangeable—or Jah‐Hovah, i.e., male and female;(296) Jah‐Eve a hermaphrodite, or the first form of humanity, the original Adam of Earth, not even Adam Kadmon, whose “Mind‐born Son” is the earthly Jah‐Hovah, mystically. And knowing this, the crafty Rabbin‐Kabalist has made of it a name so secret, that he could not divulge it later on without exposing the whole scheme; and thus he was obliged to make it sacred.

How close is the identity between Brahmâ‐Prajâpati and Jehovah‐Sephiroth, between Brahmâ‐Virâj and Jehovah‐Adam, the Bible and the Purânas compared alone can show. Analyzed, and read in the same light, they afford cogent evidence that they are two copies of the same original—made at two periods far distant from each other. Compare once more in relation to this subject Genesis iv. 1 and 26 and Manu i. 32 and they will both yield their meaning. In Manu, Brahmâ, who, like Jehovah or Adam in Genesis, is both man and God, and divides his body into male and female, stands, in his Esoteric meaning, for the symbolical personification of creative and generative power, both divine and human. The Zohar affords still more convincing proof of identity, while some Rabbins repeat word for word certain original Paurânic expressions; e.g., the “creation” of the world is generally considered in the Brâhmanical books to be the Lîlâ, the delight or sport, the amusement of the Supreme Creator.

Vishnu, being thus discrete and indiscrete substance, spirit, and time, sports like a playful boy, as you shall learn by listening to his frolics.(297)

Now compare this with what is said in the Book, Nobeleth ’Hokhmah:

The Qabbalists say, that the entering into existence of the worlds happened through delight, in that Ain Suph [? !] rejoiced in Itself, and flashed and beamed from Itself to Itself ... which are all called delight.(298)

Thus it is not a “curious idea of the Qabbalists,” as the author just quoted remarks, but a purely Paurânic, Âryan idea. Only, why make of Ain Suph a Creator?

The “Divine Hermaphrodite” is, then, Brahmâ‐Vâch‐Virâj; and that of the Semites, or rather of the Jews, is Jehovah‐Cain‐Abel. Only the “Heathen” were, and are, more sincere and frank than were the later Israëlites and Rabbis, who undeniably knew the real meaning of their exoteric deity. The Jews regard the name given to them—the Yah‐oudi—as an insult. Yet they have, or would have if they only wished it, as undeniable a right to call themselves the ancient Yah‐oudi, “Jah‐hovians,” as the Brâhmans have to call themselves Brâhmans after their national deity. For Jah‐hovah is the generic name of that Group or Hierarchy of Creative Planetary Angels, under whose Star their nation has evolved. He is one of the Planetary Elohim of the Regent Group of Saturn. Verse 26 of Chapter iv of Genesis, when read correctly, would alone give them such a right, for it calls the new Race of men—sprung from Seth and Enos—Jehovah, something quite different from the translation adopted in the Bible, which ought to read:

To him also, was born a son, Enos; then began men to call themselves Jah, or Yah‐hovah,

to wit, men and women, the “Lords of Creation.” One has but to read the above‐mentioned verse in the original Hebrew text and by the light of the Kabalah, to find that, instead of the words as they now stand translated, the correct translation should be:

Then began men to call themselves Jehovah;

and not:

Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord

the latter being a mistranslation, whether deliberate or not. Again the well‐known passage:

I have gotten a man from the Lord,

should read:

I have gotten a man, even Jehovah.(299)

Luther translated the passage one way, the Roman Catholics quite differently. Bishop Wordsworth renders it:

Cain—I have gotten—Kain, from Kâ’nithi, I have gotten.

Luther:

I have gotten a man—even the Lord [Jehovah].

And the author of The Source of Measures:

I have measured a man, even Jehovah.

The last is the correct rendering for—(a) a famous Rabbin, a Kabalist, explained the passage to the writer in precisely this way, and (b) this rendering is identical with that in the Secret Doctrine of the East with regard to Brahmâ.

In Isis Unveiled,(300) it was explained by the writer that:

Cain ... is the son of the “Lord” not of Adam.

The “Lord” is Adam Kadmon, the “Father” of Yod‐Heva, “Adam‐Eve,” or Jehovah, the son of sinful thought, not the progeny of flesh and blood. Seth, on the other hand, is the leader and the progenitor of the Races of the Earth; for he is the son of Adam, exoterically, but Esoterically he is the progeny of Cain and Abel, since Abel or Hebel is a female, the counterpart and female half of the male Cain, and Adam is the collective name for man and woman:

Male and female (zachar va nakobeh) created he them ... and called their name Adam.

The verses in Genesis from Chapters i to v, are purposely mixed up for Kabalistic reasons. After the “Man” of Genesis i. 26, and Enos, the Son of Man, of iv. 26; after Adam, the first Androgyne; after Adam Kadmon—the sexless (the first) Logos—Adam and Eve once separated, come finally Jehovah‐Eve and Cain‐Jehovah. These represent distinct Root‐Races, for millions of years elapsed between them.

Hence the Âryan and the Semitic Theo‐anthropographies are two leaves on the same stem; their respective personifications and symbolic personages standing in relation to each other in the following way:

I. The “Unknowable” referred to in various ways in Rig Vedic verse, such as “Nought was,” called, later on, Parabrahman—the אין, Ain, No‐thing, or Ain Suph of the Kabalists—and again, the “Spirit” (of God) that moves upon the face of the Waters, in Genesis. All these are identical. Moreover, in Genesis i, verse 2 is placed as verse 1 in the secret Kabalistic texts, where it is followed by the Elohim “creating the Heaven and the Earth.” This deliberate shifting of the order of the verses was necessary for monotheistic and Kabalistic purposes. Jeremiah’s curse against those Elohim (Gods) who have not created the Heavens and the Earth,(301) shows that there were other Elohim who had.

II. The Heavenly Manu‐Svâyambhuva, who sprang from Svayambhû‐Nârâyana, the “Self‐existent,” the Adam Kadmon of the Kabalists, and the Androgyne “Man,” of Genesis i, are also identical.

III. Manu‐Svâyambhuva is Brahmâ, or the Logos; and he is Adam Kadmon, who in Genesis, iv. 5, separates himself into two halves, male and female, thus becoming Jah‐Hovah or Jehovah‐Eve; as Manu‐Svâyambhuva, or Brahmâ, separates himself to become “Brahmâ‐Virâj and Vâch‐Virâj,” male and female. All the rest of the texts and versions are “blinds.”

IV. Vâch is the daughter of Brahmâ and is named Shata‐Rûpâ, “the hundred‐ formed,” and Sâvitrî, Generatrix, the Mother of the Gods and of all living. She is identical with Eve, “the Mother [of all the Lords or Gods or] of all living.” Besides this there are many other Occult meanings.

What is written on the subject in Isis Unveiled, although scattered about and very cautiously expressed at the time, is correct.

Explaining Esoterically Ezekiel’s Wheel, it is said of Jodhevah or Jehovah:

When the Ternary is taken in the beginning of the Tetragram, it expresses the Divine Creation spiritually, i.e., without any carnal sin: taken at its opposite end it expresses the latter; it is feminine. The name of Eve is composed of three letters, that of the primitive or heavenly Adam, is written with one letter, Jod or Yod; therefore it must not be read Jehovah but Ieva, or Eve. The Adam of the first chapter is the spiritual, therefore pure androgyne, Adam Kadmon. When woman issues from the left rib of the second Adam (of dust), the pure Virgo is separated, and falling into “generation,” or the downward cycle, becomes Scorpio, emblem of sin and matter. While the ascending cycle points to the purely Spiritual Races, or the ten Prediluvian Patriarchs, the Prajâpatis and Sephiroth, led on by the creative Deity itself, who is Adam Kadmon or Yodcheva, [spiritually,] the lower one [Jehovah] is that of the Terrestrial Races, led on by Enoch or Libra, the seventh; who, because he is half‐divine, half‐terrestrial, is said to have been taken by God alive. Enoch, or Hermes, or Libra, are one.(302)

This is only one of the several meanings. No need to remind the scholar that Scorpio is the astrological sign of the organs of reproduction. Like the Indian Rishis, the Patriarchs are all convertible in their numbers, as well as interchangeable. According to the subject to which they relate they become ten, twelve, seven or five, and even fourteen, and they have the same Esoteric meaning as the Manus or Rishis.

Moreover, Jehovah, as may be shown, has a variety of etymologies, but only those are true which are found in the Kabalah. יהוה (Ieve) is the Old Testament term, and was pronounced Ya‐va. Inman suggests that it is contracted from the two words יהו יה, Yaho‐Iah, Jaho‐Jah, or Jaho is Jah. Punctuated it is יְהוֶֹה, which is, however, a Rabbinical caprice to associate it with the name Adoni, or אֲדנָי, which has the same points. It is curious, and indeed hardly conceivable, that the Jews anciently read the name יהוה Adoni, when they had so many names of which Jeho, and Jah, and Iah, constituted a part. But so it was; and Philo Byblus, who gives us the so‐called fragment of Sanchuniathon, spelt it in Greek letters Ιευω, Javo or Jevo. Theodoret says that the Samaritans pronounced it Yahva, and the Jews Yaho. Prof. Gibbs, however, suggests its punctuation thus: יֵהִוֶה (Ye‐hou‐vih); and he cut the Gordian knot of its true Occult meaning. For in this last form, as a Hebrew verb, it means “he will—be.”(303) It was also derived from the Chaldaic verb הֲוָא, or הִוָה, eue (eve), or eua (eva), “to be.” And so it was, since from Enosh, the “Son of Man,” only, were the truly human Races to begin and “to be,” as males and females. This statement receives further corroboration, inasmuch as Parkhurst makes the verb הוה to mean, (1) “to fall down” (i.e. into generation or Matter); and (2) “to be, to continue”—as a race. The aspirate of the word eua (Eva), “to be,” being הוה, Heve (Eve), which is the feminine of יהוה, and the same as Hebe, the Grecian Goddess of youth and the Olympian bride of Heracles, makes the name Jehovah appear still more clearly in its primitive double‐sexed form.

Finding in Sanskrit such syllables as Jah and Yah, e.g., Jâh‐navî, “Ganges,” and Jagan‐nâtha, “Lord of the World,” it becomes clear why Mr. Rawlinson is so very confident in his works of an Âryan or Vedic influence on the early mythology of Babylon. Nor is it to be much wondered at that the alleged ten tribes of Israel disappeared during the captivity period, without leaving a trace behind them, when we are informed that the Jews had de facto but two tribes—those of Judah and of Levi. The Levites, moreover, were not a tribe at all, but a priestly caste. The descendants have only followed their progenitors, the various patriarchs, into thin, sidereal air. There were Brahms and A‐brahms, in days of old, truly, and before the first Jew had been born. Every nation held its first God and Gods to be androgynous; nor could it be otherwise, since they regarded their distant primeval progenitors, their dual‐sexed ancestors, as divine Beings and Gods, just as do the Chinese to this day. And they were divine in one sense, as also was their first human progeny, the “mind‐born” primitive humanity, which was most assuredly bi‐sexual, as all the more ancient symbols and traditions show.

Under the emblematical devices and peculiar phraseology of the priesthood of old, lie latent hints of sciences as yet undiscovered during the present cycle. Well acquainted as may be a scholar with the hieratic writing and hieroglyphical system of the Egyptians, he must first of all learn to sift their records. He has to assure himself, compasses and rule in hand, that the picture‐writing he is examining fits, to a line, certain fixed geometrical figures which are the hidden keys to such records, before he ventures on an interpretation.

But there are myths which speak for themselves. In this class we may include the double‐sexed first creators of every Cosmogony. The Greek Zeus‐Zên (Æther), and Chthonia (the Chaotic Earth) and Metis (Water), his wives; Osiris and Isis‐Latona—the former God also representing Æther, the first emanation of the Supreme Deity, Amun, the primeval source of Light; the Goddess Earth and Water again; Mithras, the rock‐born God, the symbol of the male Mundane Fire, or the personified Primordial Light, and Mithra, the Fire‐ Goddess, at once his mother and his wife; the pure element of Fire (the active, or male principle) regarded as light and heat, in conjunction with Earth and Water, or Matter (the female or passive element of cosmical generation).(304)

All these are records of the primeval divine Hermaphrodite.

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Stanza VI. The Evolution Of The “Sweat‐Born.”

22. The evolution of the three Races continued. 23. The Second Race creates the Third and perishes.

22. THEN THE SECOND EVOLVED THE EGG‐BORN, THE THIRD.(305) THE SWEAT GREW, ITS DROPS GREW, AND THE DROPS BECAME HARD AND ROUND. THE SUN WARMED IT; THE MOON COOLED AND SHAPED IT; THE WIND FED IT UNTIL ITS RIPENESS. THE WHITE SWAN FROM THE STARRY VAULT(306) OVERSHADOWED THE BIG DROP. THE EGG OF THE FUTURE RACE, THE MAN‐SWAN(307) OF THE LATER THIRD (A). FIRST MALE‐FEMALE, THEN MAN AND WOMAN (B).

(a) The text of the Stanza clearly implies that the human embryo was nourished ab extra by Cosmic Forces, and that the “Father‐Mother” furnished apparently the germ that ripened; in all probability a “sweat‐ born egg,” to be hatched out, in some mysterious way, disconnected from the “double” parent. It is comparatively easy to conceive of an oviparous humanity, since even now man is, in one sense, “egg‐born.” Magendie, moreover, in his Precis Élémentaire de Physiologie, citing

A case where the umbilical cord was ruptured and perfectly cicatrized,

yet the infant was born alive, pertinently asks:

How was the circulation carried on in this organ?

On the next page he says:

Nothing is at present known respecting the use of digestion in the fœtus.

And respecting its nutrition, he propounds this query:

What, then, can we say of the nutrition of the fœtus? Physiological works contain only vague conjectures on this point.

“Ah, but,” the sceptic may urge, “Magendie’s book belongs to the last generation, and Science has since made such strides that his stigma of ignorance can no longer be fixed upon the profession.” Indeed; then let us turn to a very great authority upon Physiology, viz., Sir Michael Foster, and, to the disadvantage of Modern Science, we shall find him saying:

Concerning the rise and development of the functional activities of the embryo, our knowledge is almost a blank. We know scarcely anything about the various steps by which the primary fundamental qualities of the protoplasm of the ovum are differentiated into the complex phenomena which we have attempted in this book to explain.(308)

The students of Trin. Coll. Cantab, will now kindly draw a veil before the statue of Hygieia and bandage the eyes of the busts of Galen and Hippocrates, lest they look reproachfully at their degenerate descendants. One further fact we must note. Sir Michael Foster is discreetly silent about the case of the ruptured umbilical cord cited by his great French confrère.

(b) This is a very curious statement as explained in the Commentaries. To make it clear: The First Race having created the Second by “budding,” as explained above, the Second Race gives birth to the Third—which itself is separated into three distinct divisions, consisting of men differently procreated. The first two of these are produced by an oviparous method, presumably unknown to modern Natural History. While the early sub‐races of the Third Humanity procreated their species by a kind of exudation of moisture or vital fluid, the drops of which coalescing formed an oviform ball—or shall we say egg—that served as an extraneous vehicle for the generation therein of a fœtus and child, the mode of procreation by the later sub‐races changed, in its results at all events. The little ones of the earlier sub‐races were entirely sexless—shapeless even for all one knows;(309) but those of the later sub‐races were born androgynous. It is in the Third Race that the separation of sexes occurred. From being previously a‐sexual, Humanity became distinctly hermaphrodite or bi‐ sexual; and finally the man‐bearing Eggs began to give birth, gradually and almost imperceptibly in their evolutionary development, first, to beings in which one sex predominated over the other, and, finally, to distinct men and women. And now let us search for corroboration of these statements in the religious legends of East and West. Let us take the “Egg‐born Race” first. Think of Kashyapa, the Vedic sage, and the most prolific of creators. He was the son of Marichi, Brahmâ’s Mind‐born Son; and he is made to become the father of the Nâgas, or Serpents, among other beings. Exoterically, the Nâgas are semi‐divine beings which have a human face and the tail of a serpent. Yet there was a race of Nâgas, said to be a thousand in number only, born or rather sprung from Kadrû, Kashyapa’s wife, for the purpose of peopling Pâtâla, which is undeniably America, as will be shown; and there was a Nâga‐Dvîpa, one of the seven divisions of Bhâratavarsha, India, inhabited by a people bearing the same name, who are allowed, even by some Orientalists, to be historical, and to have left many a trace behind them to this day.

Now the point most insisted upon at present is that, whatever origin be claimed for man, his evolution took place in this order: (1) sexless, as all the earlier forms are; (2) then, by a natural transition, he became a “solitary hermaphrodite,” a bi‐sexual being; and (3) finally separated and became what he is now. Science teaches us that all the primitive forms, though sexless, “still retained the power of undergoing the processes of a‐sexual multiplication”; why, then, should man be excluded from that law of Nature? Bi‐sexual reproduction is an evolution, a specialized and perfected form on the scale of Matter of the fissiparous act of reproduction. Occult teachings are preëminently panspermic, and the early history of humanity is hidden only “from ordinary mortals”; nor is the history of the primitive Races buried for the Initiates in the tomb of time, as it is for profane Science. Therefore, supported on the one hand by that Science which shows us progressive development and an internal cause for every external modification, as a law in Nature; and, on the other hand, by an implicit faith in the Wisdom—we may say Pansophia even—of the universal traditions gathered and preserved by the Initiates, who have perfected them into an almost faultless system—thus supported, we venture to state the doctrine clearly.

In an able article, written some fifteen years ago, our learned and respected friend Prof. Alexander Wilder, of New York, shows the absolute logic and necessity of believing “The Primeval Race Double‐Sexed,” and gives a number of scientific reasons for it.(310) He argues firstly, that a large part of the vegetable creation exhibits the phenomenon of bi‐ sexuality, the Linnæan classification enumerating thus almost all plants. This is the case in the superior families of the vegetable kingdoms as much as in the lower forms, from the hemp to the Lombardy poplar and ailanthus. In the animal kingdom also it is the same. In insect life, the moth generates a worm, and the worm becomes a moth, as in the Mysteries the great secret was expressed—_Taurus __ Taurus Draconem genuit, et Taurum Draco_. The coral‐producing family, which, according to Agassiz, has spent many hundreds of thousands of years, during the present geological period, in building out the peninsula of Florida, produce their offspring from themselves like the buds and ramifications in a tree. Bees are somewhat in the same line. The aphides, or plant lice, keep house like Amazons, and virgin parents perpetuate the race for ten successive generations.

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

Our nature of old was not the same as it is now. It was androgynous; the form and name partaking of, and being common to both the male and female.... Their bodies ... were round, and the manner of their running circular.(311) They were terrible in force and strength and had prodigious ambition. Hence Zeus divided each of them into two, making them weaker; Apollo, under his direction, closed up the skin.

Meshia and Meshiane were but a single individual with the old Persians.

They also taught that man was the product of the Tree of Life, growing in androgynous pairs, till they were separated at a subsequent modification of the human form.

In the Book of the Generations (Toleduth) of Adam, the verse:

God created (bara, brought forth) man in his image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them,

—if read Esoterically will yield the true sense, viz.:

The Elohim [Gods] brought forth from themselves [by modification] man in their image ... created they him [collective Humanity, or Adam], male and female created he [collective Deity] them.(312)

This will show the Esoteric point. The Sexless Race was their first production, a modification of and from themselves, the pure Spiritual Existences; and this was Adam solus. Thence came the Second Race: Adam‐Eve, or Jod‐Heva, inactive Androgynes; and finally the Third, or the “Separating Hermaphrodite,” Cain and Abel, who produce the Fourth, Seth‐Enos, etc. It is this Third, the last semi‐spiritual Race, which was also the last vehicle of the divine and innate Wisdom, ingenerate in the Enochs, the Seers of that Mankind. The Fourth, which had tasted of the fruit of the Tree of Good and Evil—Wisdom already united to earthy, and therefore impure, intelligence(313)—had consequently to acquire that Wisdom by initiation and great struggle. And the union of Wisdom and Intelligence, the former ruling the latter, is called in the Hermetic books “the God possessing the double fecundity of the two sexes.”

Mystically Jesus was held to be man‐woman. So also in the Orphic Hymns, sung during the Mysteries, we find: “Zeus is a male, Zeus is an immortal maid.” The Egyptian Ammon was the Goddess Neïth, in his other half. Jupiter has female breasts, Venus is bearded in some of her statues, and Ilâ, the Goddess, is also Su‐dyumna, the God, as Vaivasvata’s progeny.

Says Professor Wilder:

The name Adam, or man, itself implies this double form of existence. It is identical with Athamas, or Thomas (Tamil, Tam), which is rendered by the Greek Didumos, a twin; if, therefore, the first woman was formed subsequently to the first man, she must, as a logical necessity, be “taken out of man.” Accordingly we read: “And the side which the Lord God [Elohim] had taken from man, made he a woman.” The Hebrew word here used is Tzala, which bears the translation we have given. It is easy to trace the legend in Berosus, who says that Thalatth (the Omorôka, or Lady of Urka) was the beginning of creation. She was also Telita [? Melita], the queen of the Moon....

The two memorable twin‐births of Genesis, that of Cain and Abel, and of Esau and Jacob, shadow the same idea. The name Hebel is the same as Eve, and its characteristic seems to be feminine. “Unto thee shall be his desire,” said the Lord God to Cain; “and thou shalt rule over him.” The same language had been uttered to Eve: “Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”

Thus the pristine bi‐sexual unity of the human Third Root‐Race is an axiom in the Secret Doctrine. Its virgin individuals were raised to “Gods,” because that Race represented their “Divine Dynasty.” The moderns are satisfied with worshipping the male heroes of the Fourth Race, who created Gods after their own sexual image, whereas the Gods of primeval mankind were “male and female.”

As stated in Volume I, the Humanities developed coördinately, and on parallel lines with the four Elements, every new Race being physiologically adapted to meet the additional Element. Our Fifth Race is rapidly approaching the Fifth Element—call it interstellar ether, if you will—which has more to do, however, with psychology than with physics. We men have learned to live in every climate, whether frigid or tropical, but the first two Races had nought to do with climate, nor were they subservient to any temperature or change therein. And thus, we are taught, men lived down to the close of the Third Root‐Race, when eternal spring reigned over the whole Globe, such as is now enjoyed by the inhabitants of Jupiter; a world, which, as M. Camille Flammarion says:

Is not subject like our own to the vicissitudes of seasons nor to abrupt alternations of temperature, but is enriched with all the treasures of eternal spring.(314)

Those Astronomers who maintain that Jupiter is in a molten condition, in our sense of the term, are invited to settle their dispute with this learned French Astronomer.(315) It must, however, be always borne in mind that the “eternal spring” referred to is only a condition cognized as such by the Jovians. It is not “spring,” as we know it. In this reservation is to be found the reconciliation between the two theories here cited. Both embrace partial truths.

It is thus a universal tradition that mankind has evolved gradually into its present shape from an almost transparent condition of texture, and neither by miracle nor by sexual intercourse. Moreover, this is in full accord with the ancient Philosophies; from those of Egypt and India, with their Divine Dynasties, down to that of Plato. And all these universal beliefs must be classed with the “presentiments” and “obstinate conceptions,” some of them ineradicable, in popular faiths. Such beliefs, as remarked by Louis Figuier, are:

Frequently the outcome of the wisdom and observation of an infinite number of generations of men.... [For], a tradition which has a uniform and universal existence, has all the weight of scientific testimony.(316)

And there is more than one such tradition in the Paurânic allegories, as has been shown. Moreover, the doctrine that the First Race of mankind was formed out of the Chhâyâs, or Astral Images, of the Pitris, is fully corroborated in the Zohar:

In the Tzelem, shadow image of Elohim [the Pitris], He made Adam (man).(317)

It has been repeatedly urged as an objection that, however high the degree of metaphysical thought in ancient India, yet the old Egyptians had nothing but crass idolatry and zoolatry to boast of; Hermes, as alleged, being the work of Greek Mystics who lived in Egypt. To this, an answer can be given: a direct proof that the Egyptians believed in the Secret Doctrine is, that it was taught to them at Initiation. Let the objectors open the Eclogæ Physicœ et Ethicæ of Stobæus, the Greek compiler of ancient fragments, who lived in the fifth century, A.D. The following is a transcription by him of an old Hermetic fragment, showing the Egyptian theory of the Soul. Translated word for word, it says:

From one Soul, that of All, spring all the souls, which spread themselves as if purposely distributed through the world. These souls undergo many transformations; those which are already creeping creatures turn into aquatic animals; from these aquatic animals are derived land animals; and from the latter the birds. From the beings who live aloft in the air (heaven) men are born. On reaching that status of men, the souls receive the principle of (conscious) immortality, become spirits, then pass into the choir of Gods.

23. THE SELF‐BORN WERE THE CHHÂYÂS, THE SHADOWS FROM THE BODIES OF THE SONS OF TWILIGHT. NEITHER WATER NOR FIRE COULD DESTROY THEM. THEIR SONS WERE.(318)

This verse cannot be understood without the help of the Commentaries. It means that the First Root‐Race, the “Shadows” of the Progenitors, could not be injured, or destroyed by death. Being so ethereal and so little human in constitution, they could not be affected by any element—flood or fire. But their “Sons,” the Second Root‐Race, could be and were so destroyed. As the Progenitors merged wholly in their own Astral Bodies, which were their progeny, so that progeny was absorbed in its descendants, the “Sweat‐born.” These were the Second Humanity—composed of the most heterogeneous gigantic semi‐human monsters—the first attempts of material nature at building human bodies. The ever‐blooming lands (Greenland, among others) of the Second Continent were transformed, successively, from Edens with their eternal spring, into hyperborean Hades. This transformation was due to the displacement of the great waters of the Globe, to oceans changing their beds; and the bulk of the Second Race perished in this first great throe of the evolution and consolidation of the Globe during the human period. Of such great cataclysms there have already been four.(319) And we may expect a fifth for ourselves in due course of time.

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A Few Words About “Deluges” And “Noahs.”

The accounts in the various Purânas about our Progenitors are as contradictory, in their details, as everything else. Thus while, in the Rig Veda, Idâ, or Ilâ, is called the Instructress of Vaivasvata Manu, Sâyana makes of her a Goddess presiding over the Earth, and the Shatapatha Brâhmana shows her to be the Manu’s daughter, an offspring of his sacrifice, and later on, his (Vaivasvata’s) wife, by whom he begat the race of Manus. In the Purânas she is, again, Vaivasvata’s daughter, yet the wife of Budha (Wisdom), the illegitimate son of the Moon (Soma) and the planet Jupiter’s (Brihaspati’s) wife, Târâ. All this, which seems a jumble to the profane, is full of philosophical meaning to the Occultist. On the very face of the narrative a secret and sacred meaning is perceivable; all the details, however, being so purposely mixed up that the experienced eye of an Initiate alone can follow them and place the events in their proper order.

The story as told in the Mahâbhârata strikes the key‐note, and yet it needs to be explained by the secret sense contained in the Bhagavad Gîtâ. It is the prologue to the drama of our (Fifth) Humanity. While Vaivasvata was engaged in devotion on the river bank, a fish craves his protection from a bigger fish. He saves it and places it in a jar; where, growing larger and larger, it communicates to him the news of the forthcoming Deluge. This Fish is the well‐known Matsya Avatâra, the first Avatâra of Vishnu, the Dagon(320) of the Chaldæan Xisuthrus, and many other things besides. The story is too well known to need repetition. Vishnu orders a ship to be built, in which Manu is saved along with the seven Rishis, according to the Mahâbhârata; this, however, being absent from other texts. Here the seven Rishis stand for the seven Races, the seven Principles, and various other things; for there is again a double mystery involved in this manifold allegory.

We have said elsewhere that the Great Flood had several meanings, and that it referred, as also does the “Fall,” to both spiritual and physical, both cosmic and terrestrial, events: as above, so it is below. The Ship or Ark—Navis—in short, being the symbol of the female generative Principle, is typified in the heavens by the Moon, and on Earth by the Womb; both being the vessels and bearers of the seeds of life and being, which the Sun, or Vishnu, the male Principle, vivifies and fructifies. The First Cosmic Flood refers to Primordial Creation, or the formation of Heaven and the Earths; in which case Chaos and the great Deep stand for the “Flood,” and the Moon for the “Mother,” from whom proceed all the life‐germs.(321) But the Terrestrial Deluge and its story has also its dual application. In one case it has reference to that mystery when mankind was saved from utter destruction, by the mortal woman being made the receptacle of the human seed at the end of the Third Race,(322) and in the other to the real and historical Atlantean Submersion. In both cases the “Host”—or the Manu which saved the “seed”—is called Vaivasvata Manu. Hence the diversity between the Paurânic and other versions; while in the Shatapatha Brâhmana, Vaivasvata produces a daughter and begets from her the race of Manu—a reference to the first human Manushyas, who had to create women by Will (Kriyâshakti), before they were naturally born from the Hermaphrodites as an independent sex, and were, therefore, regarded as their creator’s “daughters.” The Paurânic accounts make Idâ, or Ilâ, the wife of Budha (Wisdom). This version refers to the events of the Atlantean Flood, when Vaivasvata, the great Sage on Earth, saved the Fifth Root‐Race from being destroyed along with the remnants of the Fourth.

This is shown very clearly in the Bhagavad Gîtâ, where Krishna is made to say:

The seven Great Rishis, the four preceding Manus, partaking of my essence, were born from my mind: from them sprang (was born) the human race and the world.(323)

Here the four preceding Manus, out of the seven, are the four Races(324) which have already lived, for Krishna belongs to the Fifth Race, his death having inaugurated the Kali Yuga. Thus Vaivasvata Manu, the son of Sûrya, the Sun, and the Saviour of our Race, is connected with the “Seed of Life,” both physically and spiritually. But, at present, while speaking of all, we have to concern ourselves only with the first two.

The “Deluge” is undeniably a “universal tradition.” “Glacial Periods” were numerous, and so were the “Deluges,” for various reasons. Stockwell and Croll enumerate some half‐dozen Glacial Periods and subsequent Deluges—the earliest of all being dated by them 850,000, and the last about 100,000 years ago.(325) But which was our Deluge? Assuredly the former, the one which to this date remains recorded in the traditions of all the peoples from the remotest antiquity; the one that finally swept away the last peninsulas of Atlantis, beginning with Ruta and Daitya and ending with the comparatively small island mentioned by Plato. This is shown by the agreement of certain details in all the legends. It was the last of its gigantic character. The little deluge, the traces of which Baron Bunsen found in Central Asia, and which he places at about 10,000 years B.C., had nothing to do with either the semi‐universal Deluge, or Noah’s Flood—the latter being a purely mythical rendering of old traditions—nor even with the submersion of the last Atlantean island; or, at least, having with them only a moral connection.

Our Fifth Race—the non‐initiated portions of it—hearing of many Deluges, have confused them, and now know of but one. This one altered the whole aspect of the Globe in its interchange, and shifting, of land and sea.

We may compare the tradition of the Peruvians that:

The Incas, seven in number, have repeopled the earth after the deluge.(326)

Humboldt mentions the Mexican version of the same legend, but confuses somewhat the details of the still‐preserved legend concerning the American Noah. Nevertheless, the eminent Naturalist mentions twice seven companions and the “divine bird” which preceded the boat of the Aztecs, and thus makes fifteen elect instead of the seven and the fourteen. This was written probably under some involuntary reminiscence of Moses, who is said to have mentioned fifteen grandsons of Noah, who escaped with their grandsire. Then again Xisuthrus, the Chaldæan Noah, is saved and translated “alive” to heaven—like Enoch—with the seven Gods, the Kabirim, or the seven divine Titans. Again the Chinese Yao has seven figures which sail with him and which he will “animate” when he lands, and use for “human seed.” Osiris, when he enters the Ark, or Solar Boat, takes seven Rays with him, etc.

Sanchuniathon makes the Aletæ or Titans (the Kabirim) contemporary with Agruerus, the great Phœnician God—whom Faber sought to identify with Noah;(327) further, it is suspected that the name “Titan” is derived from Tit‐Ain,—the “fountains of the chaotic abyss”(328) (Tit‐Theus, or Tityus is the “divine deluge”); and thus the Titans, who are seven, are shown to be connected with the Flood and the seven Rishis saved by Vaivasvata Manu.(329)

These Titans are the sons of Kronos, Time, and Rhea, the Earth; and as Agruerus, Saturn and Sydyk are one and the same personage, and as the seven Kabiri are also said to be the sons of Sydyk or Kronos‐Saturn, the Kabiri and Titans are identical. For once the pious Faber was right in his conclusions when he wrote:

I have no doubt of the seven Titans or Cabiri being the same also as the seven Rishis of the Hindoo mythology (?), who are said to have escaped in a boat along with Menu the head (?) of the family.(330)

But he is less fortunate in his speculations when he adds:

The Hindoos, in their wild legends have variously perverted the history of the Noachidæ (? !), yet it is remarkable that they seem to have religiously adhered to the number seven:(331) hence Capt. Wilford very judiciously observes, that, “perhaps, the seven Menus, the seven Brahmâdicas, with the seven Rishis, are the same, and make only seven individual persons.(332) The seven Brahmâdicas were prajâpatis, or lords of the prajas, or creatures. From them mankind was born, and they are probably the same with the seven Menus.... These seven grand ancestors of the human race were ... created for the purpose of replenishing the earth with inhabitants.”(333) The mutual resemblance of the Cabiri, the Titans, the Rishis, and the Noëtic family, is too striking to be the effect of mere accident.(334)

Faber was led into this mistake, and subsequently built his entire theory concerning the Kabiri, on the fact that the name of the scriptural Japhet is on the list of the Titans contained in a verse of the Orphic Hymns. According to Orpheus the names of the seven Arkite Titans—whom Faber refuses to identify with the impious Titans, their descendants—were Kœus, Krœus, Phorcys, Cronus, Oceanus, Hyperion, and Iapetus.

Κοιον τε, Κροιον τε μεγαν, Φορκυν τε κραταιον, Και Κρονον, Ὠκεανον θ᾽, Ὑπεριονα τ᾽, Ἰαπετον τε.(335)

But why could not the Babylonian Ezra have adopted the name of Iapetus for one of Noah’s sons? The Kabiri, who are the Titans, are also called Manes and their mother Mania, according to Arnobius.(336) The Hindûs can therefore claim with far more reason that the Manes mean their Manus, and that Mania is the female Manu of the Râmâyana. Mania is Ilâ, or Idâ, the wife and daughter of Vaivasvata Manu, from whom “he begat the race of Manus.” Like Rhea, the mother of the Titans, she is the Earth—Sâyana making her the Goddess of the Earth—and she is but the second edition and repetition of Vâch. Both Idâ and Vâch are turned into males and females; Idâ becoming Sudyumna, and Vâch, the “female Virâj,” turning into a woman in order to punish the Gandharvas; one version referring to cosmic and divine Theogony, the other to the later period. The Manes and Mania of Arnobius are names of Indian origin, appropriated by the Greeks and Latins and disfigured by them.

Thus it is no accident, but the result of one archaic doctrine, common to all, of which the Israëlites, through Ezra, the author of the modernized Mosaic books, were the latest adapters. So unceremonious were they with other people’s property, that the Pseudo‐Berosus,(337) shows that Titæa—of whom Diodorus Siculus(338) makes the mother of the Titans or Diluvians—was the wife of Noah. Faber calls him the “Pseudo‐Berosus,” yet accepts the information in order to register one proof more that the Pagans have borrowed all their Gods from the Jews, by transforming patriarchal material. According to our humble opinion, this is one of the best proofs possible of exactly the reverse. It shows as clearly as facts can show, that it is the Biblical pseudo‐personages which are all borrowed from Pagan myths, if myths they must be. It shows, at any rate, that Berosus was well aware of the source of Genesis, and that it bore the same cosmic astronomical character as the allegories of Isis‐Osiris, and the Ark, and other older “Arkite” symbols. For, Berosus says that “Titæa Magna” was afterwards called Aretia,(339) and worshipped with the Earth; and this identifies Titæa, Noah’s consort, with Rhea, the Mother of the Titans, and with Idâ; both being Goddesses who preside over the Earth, and the Mothers of the Manus and Manes, or Titan‐Kabiri. And Titæa‐Aretia was worshipped as Horchia, says the same Berosus, and this is a title of Vesta, Goddess of the Earth.

Sicanus deificavit Aretiam, et nominavit eam linguâ Janigenâ Horchiam.(340)

Scarcely an ancient poet of historic or prehistoric days fails to mention the sinking of the two continents—often called isles—in one form or another. Hence the destruction, besides Atlantis, of the Phlegyan Island. Pausanius and Nonnus both tell how:

From its deep‐rooted base the Phlegyan isle Stern Neptune shook, and plunged beneath the waves Its impious inhabitants.(341)

Faber felt convinced that the Phlegyan Island was Atlantis. But all such allegories are more or less distorted echoes of the Hindû tradition about that great Cataclysm, which befell the Fourth, really human, though gigantic, Race, the one which preceded the Âryan. Yet, as just said, like all other legends, the legend of the Deluge has more than one meaning. It refers, in Theogony, to pre‐cosmic transformations, to spiritual correlations—however absurd the term may sound to a scientific ear—and also to subsequent Cosmogony; to the great Flood of Waters (Matter) in Chaos, awakened and fructified by those Spirit‐Rays which were swamped by, and perished in, the mysterious differentiation—a pre‐cosmic mystery, the Prologue to the drama of Being. Anu, Bel, and Noah preceded Adam Kadmon, Adam the Red, and Noah; just as Brahmâ, Vishnu, and Shiva preceded Vaivasvata and the rest.(342)

All this goes to show that the semi‐universal deluge known to Geology—the first Glacial Period—must have occurred just at the time allotted to it by the Secret Doctrine: namely, 200,000 years, in round numbers, after the commencement of our Fifth Race, or about the time assigned by Messrs. Croll and Stockwell for the first Glacial Period: i.e., about 850,000 years ago. Thus, as the latter disturbance is attributed by Geologists and Astronomers to “an extreme eccentricity of the earth’s orbit,” and as the Secret Doctrine attributes it to the same source, but with the addition of another factor, the shifting of the Earth’s axis—a proof of which may be found in the Book of Enoch,(343) if the veiled language of the Purânas be not understood—all this should tend to show that the Ancients knew something of the “modern discoveries” of Science. Enoch, when speaking of “the great inclination of the Earth,” which “is in travail,” is quite significant and clear.

Is not this evident? Nuah is Noah, floating on the waters in his ark; the latter being the emblem of the Argha, or Moon, the feminine Principle; Noah is the “Spirit” falling into Matter. We find him, as soon as he descends upon the Earth, planting a vineyard, drinking of the wine, and getting drunk thereon, i.e., the pure Spirit becomes intoxicated as soon as it is finally imprisoned in Matter. The seventh chapter of Genesis is only another version of the first. Thus, while the latter reads: “And darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters”; in the former it is said: “And the waters prevailed; ... and the ark went [with Noah, the Spirit] upon the face of the waters.” Thus Noah, if identical with the Chaldæan Nuah, is the Spirit vivifying Matter, which latter is Chaos, represented by the Deep, or the Waters of the Flood. In the Babylonian legend (the pre‐cosmical blended with the terrestrial event) it is Istar (Ashteroth, or Venus, the Lunar Goddess) who is shut up in the ark and sends out a dove in search of dry land.(344)

George Smith notes in the “Tablets,” first the creation of the Moon, and then that of the Sun: “Its beauty and perfection are extolled, and the regularity of its orbit, which led to its being considered the type of a judge and the regulator of the world.” If this story related simply to a cosmogonical cataclysm‐even were this latter universal‐why should the goddess Istar or Ashteroth, the Moon, speak of the creation of the sun after the deluge? The waters might have reached as high as the mountain of Nizir of the Chaldæan version, or Jebel Djudi, the deluge mountains of the Arabian legend, or yet Ararat of the Biblical narrative, and even the Himalaya of the Hindû tradition, and yet not have reached the Sun; the Bible itself stopped short of such a miracle! It is evident that the deluge to the people who first recorded it had another meaning, less problematical and far more philosophical than that of a universal deluge, of which there are no geological traces whatever.(345)

As all such Cataclysms are periodical and cyclical, and as Manu Vaivasvata figures as a generic character, under various circumstances and events, there seems to be no serious objection to the supposition that the first “great flood” had an allegorical, as well as a cosmic meaning, and that it happened at the end of the Satya Yuga, the “Age of Truth,” when the Second Root‐Race, “the Manu with bones,” made its primeval appearance as the “Sweat‐born.”

The Second Flood—the so‐called “universal”—which affected the Fourth Root‐ Race—now conveniently regarded by Theology as “the accursed race of giants,” the Cainites, and the “sons of Ham”—is the flood which was first perceived by Geology. If one carefully compares the accounts in the various legends of the Chaldees and other exoteric works of the nations, it will be found that all of them agree with the orthodox narratives given in the Brâhmanical books. And it may be perceived that while, in the first account, “there is no God or mortal yet on Earth,” when Manu Vaivasvata lands on Himavân, in the second, the Seven Rishis are allowed to keep him company; thus showing that whereas some accounts refer to the Sidereal and Cosmic Flood before the so‐called “Creation,” the others treat, one of the Great Flood of Matter on Earth, and the other of a real watery deluge. In the Shatapatha Brâhmana, Manu finds that the Flood had swept away all living creatures, and he alone was left—i.e., the seed of life alone remained from the previous Dissolution of the Universe, or Mahâpralaya, after a “Day of Brahmâ”; and the Mahâbhârata refers simply to the geological cataclysm which swept away nearly all the Fourth Race to make room for the Fifth. Therefore is Vaivasvata Manu shown under three distinct attributes in our Esoteric Cosmogony:(346) as the “Root‐Manu,” on Globe A, in the First Round; (b) as the “Seed of Life,” on Globe D, in the Fourth Round; and (c) as the “Seed of Man,” at the beginning of every Root‐Race—in our Fifth Race especially. The very commencement of the latter witnesses, during the Dvâpara Yuga,(347) the destruction of the accursed sorcerers;

Of that island [Plato speaks only of its last island] beyond the Pillars of Hercules, in the Atlantic Ocean, from which there was an easy transition to other islands in the neighbourhood of another large continent [America].

It is this Atlantic Land which was connected with the “White Island,” and this White Island was Ruta; but it was not the Atala and the “White Devil” of Colonel Wilford,(348) as already shown. It may well be remarked here that the Dvâpara Yuga lasts 864,000 years, according to the Sanskrit texts; and that, if the Kali Yuga began only about 5,000 years ago, that it is just 869,000 years since that destruction took place. Again, these figures are not very widely different from those given by the Geologists, who place their Glacial Period at 850,000 years ago.

The Shatapatha then tells us that a woman was produced who came to Manu and declared herself his daughter, with whom he lived and begat the offspring of Manu. This refers to the physiological transformation of sexes during the Third Root‐Race. And the allegory is too transparently clear to need much explanation. Of course, as already remarked, in the separation of sexes an androgyne being was supposed to divide his body into two halves—as in the case of Brahmâ and Vâch, and even of Adam and Eve—and thus the female is, in a certain sense, his daughter, just as he will be her son, “the flesh of his [and her] flesh and the bone of his [and her] bone.” Let it be also well remembered that not one of our Orientalists has yet learned to discern in those “contradictions and amazing nonsense,” as some call the Purânas, that a reference to a Yuga may mean a Round, a Root‐Race, and often a sub‐race, as well as form a page torn out of pre‐cosmic Theogony. This double and triple meaning is proved by various references to one and the same individual apparently, under an identical name, while in reality the references are to events divided by entire Kalpas. A good instance is that of Ilâ. She is first represented as one thing and then as another. In the exoteric legends it is said that Manu Vaivasvata, desiring to create sons, instituted a sacrifice to Mitra and Varuna; but, through a mistake of the officiating Brâhman, a daughter only was obtained—Ilâ or Idâ. Then, “through the favour of the two deities,” her sex is changed and she becomes a man, Sudyumna. Then she is again turned into a woman, and so on; the fable adding that Shiva and his consort were pleased that “she should be a male one month and a female another.” This has a direct reference to the Third Root‐Race, whose men were androgynes. But some very learned Orientalists(349) think and have declared that:

Idâ is primarily food, nourishment, or a libation of milk; thence a stream of praise, personified as the goddess of speech.

The “profane” are not told, however, the reason why “a libation of milk,” or “a stream of praise,” should be male and female by turn: unless, indeed, there is some “internal evidence” which the Occultists fail to perceive.

In its most mystical meaning, the union of Svâyambhuva Manu with Vâch‐ Shata‐Rûpâ, his own daughter—this being the first “euhemerization” of the dual principle of which Vaivasvata Manu and Ilâ are a secondary and a third form—stands in cosmic symbolism as the Root‐Life, the Germ from which spring all the Solar Systems, the Worlds, Angels and the Gods. For, as says Vishnu:

From Manu all creation, gods, Asuras, man must be produced: By him the world must be created, that which moves and moveth not.

But we may find worse opponents than even the Western Scientists and Orientalists. If, on the question of figures, Brâhmans may agree with our teaching, we are not so sure that some of the orthodox conservatives may not raise objections to the modes of procreation attributed to their Pitri Devatâs. We shall be called upon to produce the works from which we quote, and we will invite them to read their own Purânas a little more carefully and with an eye to the esoteric meaning. And then, we repeat again, they will find, under the veil of more or less transparent allegories, every statement made herein corroborated by their own works. One or two instances have already been given as regards the appearance of the Second Race, which is called the “Sweat‐born.” This allegory is regarded as a fairy‐tale, and yet it conceals a psycho‐physiological phenomenon, and one of the greatest mysteries of Nature.

But in view of the chronological statements made herein, it is natural to ask:

COULD MEN EXIST 18,000,000 YEARS AGO?

To this Occultism answers in the affirmative, notwithstanding all scientific objectors. Moreover, this duration covers only the Vaivasvata‐ Manu Man, i.e., the male and female entity already separated into distinct sexes. The two and a half Races that preceded that event may have lived 300,000,000 years ago for all that Science can tell. For the geological and physical difficulties in the way of the theory could not exist for the primeval, ethereal Man of the Occult Teachings. The whole issue of the quarrel between the Profane and the Esoteric Sciences depends upon the belief in, and demonstration of, the existence of an Astral Body within the Physical, the former independent of the latter. Paul d’Assier, the Positivist, seems to have proven the fact pretty plainly,(350) not to speak of the accumulated testimony of the ages, and that of the modern “Spiritualists” and Mystics. It will be found difficult to reject this fact in our age of proofs, tests, and ocular demonstrations.

The Secret Doctrine maintains that, notwithstanding the general cataclysms and disturbances of the Fourth Round of our Globe, which—owing to its being the period of its greatest physical development, for the Fourth Round is the middle‐point of the Life Cycle allotted to it—were far more terrible and intense than during any of the three preceding Rounds—the Cycles of its earlier psychic and spiritual life and of its semi‐ethereal conditions—Physical Humanity has existed upon it for the last 18,000,000 years.(351) This period was preceded by 300,000,000 years of the mineral and vegetable development. To this, all those who refuse to accept the theory of a “boneless,” purely ethereal, man, will object. Science, which knows only of physical organisms, will feel indignant; and materialistic Theology still more so. The former will object on logical and reasonable grounds, based on the preconception that all animate organisms have always existed on the same plane of materiality in all the ages; the latter on a tissue of most absurd fictions. The ridiculous claim usually brought forward by Theologians is based on the virtual assumption that mankind (read Christians) on this Planet have the honour of being the only human beings in the whole Kosmos, who dwell on a Globe, and that they are consequently, the best of their kind.(352)

The Occultists, who believe firmly in the teachings of the Mother‐ Philosophy, repel the objections of both Theologians and Scientists. They maintain, on their side, that, even during those periods when there must have been insufferable heat, even at the two poles, with successive floods, upheaval of the valleys and constant shifting of the great waters and seas, none of these circumstances could form an impediment to human life and organization, such as is assigned by them to early mankind. Neither the heterogeneity of ambient regions, full of deleterious gases, nor the perils of a crust hardly consolidated, could prevent the First and Second Races from making their appearance even during the Carboniferous, or the Silurian Age itself.

Thus the Monads destined to animate future Races were ready for the new transformation. They had passed their phases of “immetalization,” of plant and animal life, from the lowest to the highest, and were waiting for their human, more intelligent form. Yet what could the Plastic Modellers do but follow the laws of evolutionary Nature? Could they, as claimed by the biblical dead‐letter, form, “Lord‐God”‐like, or as Pygmalion in the Greek allegory, Adam‐Galatea out of volcanic dust, and breathe a “Living Soul” into Man? No; because the Soul was already there, latent in its Monad, and needed but a “coating.” Pygmalion, who fails to animate his statue, and Bahak Zivo of the Nazaræan Gnostics, who fails to construct “a human soul in the creature,” are, as conceptions, far more philosophical and scientific than Adam, taken in the dead‐letter sense, or the biblical Elohim‐Creators. Esoteric Philosophy, which teaches spontaneous generation—after the Shishta and Prajâpati have thrown the seed of life on the Earth—shows the Lower Angels able to construct physical man only, even with the help of Nature, after having evolved the Ethereal Form out of themselves, and leaving the physical form to evolve gradually from its ethereal, or what would now be called, protoplasmic, model.

This will again be objected to; “spontaneous generation” is an exploded theory, we shall be told. Pasteur’s experiments disposed of it twenty years ago, and Professor Tyndall is against it. Well, suppose he is? He ought to know that, should spontaneous generation be indeed proven impossible in our present world‐period and actual conditions—which the Occultists deny—still it would be no demonstration that it could not have taken place under different cosmic conditions, not only in the seas of the Laurentian Period, but even on the then convulsed Earth. It would be interesting to know how Science could ever account for the appearance of species and life on Earth, especially of Man, once that she rejects both the biblical teachings and spontaneous generation. Pasteur’s observations, however, are far from being perfect or proven. Blanchard and Dr. Lutaud reject their importance, and, in fact, show that they have none. The question is so far left sub judice, as well as the other as to when, at what period, life appeared on the Earth? As to the idea that Hæckel’s Moneron—a pinch of salt!—has solved the problem of the origin of life; it is simply absurd. Those Materialists, who feel inclined to pooh‐pooh the theory of the “Self‐existent,” the “Self‐born Heavenly Man,” represented as an Ethereal, Astral Man, must excuse even a tyro in Occultism laughing, in his turn, at some speculations of Modern Thought. After proving most learnedly that the primitive speck of Protoplasm (Moneron) is neither animal nor plant, but both, and that it has no ancestors among either of these, since it is that Moneron which serves as a point of departure for all organized existence, we are finally told that the Monera are their own ancestors. This may be very scientific, but it is very metaphysical also; too much so, even for the Occultist.

If spontaneous generation has changed its methods now—owing, perhaps, to accumulated material on hand—so as to almost escape detection, it was, nevertheless, in full swing in the genesis of terrestrial life. Even the simple physical form and the evolution of species show how Nature proceeds. The scale‐bound, gigantic Saurian, the winged Pterodactyl, the Megalosaurus, and the hundred feet long Iguanodon of the later period, are the transformations of the earliest representatives of the animal kingdom found in the sediments of the primary epoch. There was a time when all the above enumerated “antediluvian” monsters appeared as filamentoid Infusoria without shell or crust, with neither nerves, muscles, organs nor sex, and reproduced their kind by gemmation; as do microscopical animals also, the architects and builders of our mountain ranges, agreeably to the teachings of Science. Why not man in this case? Why should he not have followed the same law in his growth, i.e., gradual condensation? Every unprejudiced person would prefer to believe that Primeval Humanity had at first an Ethereal—or, if so preferred, a huge filamentoid, jelly‐like Form, evolved by Gods or natural “Forces,” which grew, condensed throughout millions of ages, and became gigantic in its physical impulse and tendency, until it settled into the huge, physical form of the Fourth Race Man—rather than believe him created of the dust of the Earth (literally), or from some unknown anthropoid ancestor.

Nor does our Esoteric theory clash with scientific data, except on first appearance, as Dr. A. Wilson, F.R.S., says, in a letter to Knowledge (Dec. 23, 1881):

Evolution—rather nature, in the light of evolution—has only been studied for some twenty‐five years or so. That is, of course, a mere fractional space in the history of human thought.

And just because of this we do not lose all hope that Materialistic Science will amend its ways, and will gradually accept the Esoteric Teachings—if even at first divorced from their (to Science) too metaphysical elements.

Has the last word on the subject of human evolution yet been said? As Processor Huxley says:

Each such answer to the great question [man’s real place in nature], invariably asserted by the followers of its propounder, if not by himself, to be complete and final, remains in high authority and esteem, it may be for one century, it may be for twenty: but, as invariably, Time proves each reply to have been a mere approximation to the truth—tolerable chiefly on account of the ignorance of those by whom it was accepted, and wholly intolerable when tested by the larger knowledge of their successors.(353)

Will this eminent Darwinian admit the possibility of his “Pithecoid Ancestry” being assignable to the list of “wholly intolerable beliefs,” in the “larger knowledge” of Occultists? But whence the savage? Mere “rising to the civilized state” does not account for the evolution of form.

In the same letter, “The Evolution of Man,” Dr. Wilson makes other strange confessions. Thus, he observes, in answer to the queries put to Knowledge, by “G. M.”:

“Has evolution effected any change in man? If so, what change? If not, why not?”... If we refuse to admit [as science does] that man was created a perfect being, and then became degraded, there exists only another supposition—that of evolution. If man has arisen from a savage to a civilized state, that surely is evolution. We do not yet know because such knowledge is difficult to acquire, if the human frame is subject to the same influences as those of lower animals. But there is little doubt that elevation from savagery to civilized life means and implies “evolution,” and that of considerable extent. Mentally, man’s evolution cannot be doubted; the ever‐widening sphere of thought has sprung from small and rude beginnings, like language itself. But man’s ways of life, his power of adaptation to his surroundings, and countless other circumstances, have made the facts and course of his “evolution” very difficult to trace.

This very difficulty ought to make the Evolutionists more cautious in their affirmations. But why is evolution impossible, if “man was created a perfect being, and then became degraded”? At best it can only apply to the outward, physical man. As remarked in Isis Unveiled, Darwin’s evolution begins at the middle point, instead of commencing for man, as for everything else, from universals. The Aristotle‐Baconian method may have its advantages, but it has, undeniably, already demonstrated its defects. Pythagoras and Plato, who proceeded from universals downwards, are now shown more learned, in the light of Modern Science, than was Aristotle. For the latter opposed and denounced the idea of the revolution of the Earth and even of its rotundity, when writing:

Almost all those who affirm that they have studied heaven in its uniformity, claim that the earth is in the centre, but the philosophers of the Italian School, otherwise called the Pythagoreans, teach entirely the contrary.

This, because the Pythagoreans were Initiates, and followed the deductive method. Whereas Aristotle, the father of the inductive system, complained of those who taught that:

The centre of our system was occupied by the sun, and the earth was only a star, which by a rotatory motion around the same centre, produces night and day.(354)

The same with regard to man. The theory taught in the Secret Doctrine, and now expounded, is the only one, which—without falling into the absurdity of a “miraculous” man created out of the dust of the earth, or the still greater fallacy of man evolving from a pinch of lime‐salt, the ex‐ protoplasmic Moneron—can account for his appearance on Earth.

Analogy is the guiding law in Nature, the only true Ariadne’s thread that can lead us, through the inextricable paths of her domain, toward her primal and final mysteries. Nature, as a creative potency, is infinite, and no generation of Physical Scientists can ever boast of having exhausted the list of her ways and methods, however uniform the laws upon which she proceeds. If we can conceive of a ball of “fire‐mist”—as it rolls through æons of time in the interstellar spaces—becoming gradually a Planet, a self‐luminous Globe, to settle into a man‐bearing World or Earth, thus having passed from a soft plastic body into a rock‐bound Globe; and if we see on it everything evolving from the non‐nucleated jelly‐speck that becomes the Sarcode(355) of the Moneron, then passes from its protistic state(356) into the form of an animal, to grow into a gigantic reptilian monster of the Mesozoic times; then dwindling again into the (comparatively) dwarfish crocodile, now confined solely to tropical regions, and the universally common lizard(357)—if we can conceive all this, then how can man alone escape the general law? “There were giants on earth in those days” says Genesis, repeating the statement of all the other Eastern Scriptures; and the Titans are founded on an anthropological and physiological fact.

And, as the hard‐shelled crustacean was once upon a time a jelly‐speck, a “thoroughly homogeneous particle of albumen in a firmly adhesive condition,” so was the outward covering of primitive man, his early “coat of skin,” plus an immortal spiritual Monad, and a psychic temporary form and body within that shell. The modern, hard, muscular man, almost impervious to any climate, was, perhaps, some 25,000,000 years ago, just what the Hæckelian Moneron is, strictly an “organism without organs,” an entirely homogeneous substance with a structureless albumen body within, and a human form only outwardly.

No man of Science has the right, in this century, to find the figures of the Brâhmans in the question of chronology preposterous; for their own calculations often exceed by far the claims made by Esoteric Science. This may easily be shown.

Helmholtz calculated that the cooling of our Earth from a temperature of 2,000° to 200° Cent. must have occupied a period of no less than 350,000,000 years. Western Science (including Geology) seems generally to allow our Globe an age of about 500,000,000 years altogether. Sir William Thomson, however, limits the appearance of the earliest vegetable life to 100,000,000 years ago—a statement respectfully contradicted by the Archaic Records. Speculations, furthermore, vary daily in the domains of Science. Meanwhile, some Geologists are very much opposed to such limitation. Volger calculates:

That the time requisite for the deposit of the strata known to us must at least have amounted to 648 millions of years.

Both time and space are infinite and eternal.

The earth, as a material existence, is indeed infinite; the changes only which it has undergone can be determined by finite periods of time....

We must therefore assume that the starry heaven is not merely in space, which no astronomer doubts, but also in time, without beginning or end; that it never was created, and is imperishable.(358)

Czolbe repeats exactly what the Occultists say. But the Âryan Occultists, we may be told, knew nothing of these later speculations. As Coleman says:

They were even ignorant of the globular form of our earth.

To this the Vishnu Purâna contains a reply, which has forced certain Orientalists to open their eyes very wide.

The sun is stationed, for all time, in the middle of the day, and over against mid‐night, in all the Dvîpas [Continents], Maitreya. But the rising and the setting of the sun being perpetually opposite to each other,—and, in the same way, all the cardinal points, and so the cross‐points, Maitreya, people speak of the rising of the sun where they see it; and where the sun disappears, there, to them, is his setting. Of the sun, which is always in one and the same place, there is neither setting nor rising; for what is called rising and setting are only the seeing and the not seeing the sun.(359)

To this Fitzedward Hall remarks:

The heliocentricism taught in this passage is remarkable. It is contradicted, however, a little further on.(360)

Contradicted purposely, because it was a secret temple‐teaching. Martin Haug remarked the same teaching in another passage. It is useless to calumniate the Âryans any longer.

To return to the chronology of the Geologists and Anthropologists. We are afraid Science has no reasonable grounds on which she could oppose the views of the Occultists in this direction. Except that “of man, the highest organic being of creation, not a trace was found in the primary strata; only in the uppermost, the so‐called alluvial layer,” is all that can be urged, so far. That man was not the last member in the mammalian family, but the first in this Round, is something that Science will be forced to acknowledge one day. A similar view also has already been mooted in France on very high authority.

That man can be shown to have lived in the Mid‐Tertiary Period, and in a geological age when there did not yet exist one single specimen of the now known species of mammals, is a statement that Science cannot deny and which has now been proven by de Quatrefages.(361) But even supposing his existence in the Eocene Period is not yet demonstrated, what period of time has elapsed since the Cretaceous Period? We are aware of the fact that only the boldest Geologists dare place man further back than the Miocene Age. But how long, we ask, is the duration of those ages and periods since the Mesozoic time? On this, after a good deal of speculation and wrangling, Science is silent, the greatest authorities upon the subject being compelled to answer to the question: “We do not know.” This ought to show that the men of Science are no greater authorities in this matter than are the profane. If, according to Professor Huxley, “the time represented by the Coal formation alone would be six millions of years,”(362) how many more millions would be required to cover the time from the Jurassic Period, or the middle of the so‐called Reptilian Age—when the Third Race appeared—up to the Miocene, when the bulk of the Fourth Race was submerged?(363)

The writer is aware that those specialists, whose computations of the ages of the Globe and Man are the most liberal, have always had the shyer majority against them. But this proves very little, since the majority rarely, if ever, turns out to be right in the long run. Harvey stood alone for many years. The advocates for crossing the Atlantic with steamers were in danger of ending their days in a lunatic asylum. Mesmer is classed to this day—in the Encyclopædias—along with Cagliostro and St. Germain, as a charlatan and impostor. And now that Messrs. Charcot and Richet have vindicated Mesmer’s claims, and that Mesmerism under its new name of “Hypnotism”—a false nose on a very old face—is accepted by Science, it does not strengthen our respect for that majority, when we see the ease and unconcern with which its members treat of “Hypnotism,” of “telepathic impacts,” and its other phenomena. They speak of it, in short, as if they had believed therein since the days of Solomon, and had not, only a few years ago, called its votaries lunatics and impostors!(364)

The same revulsion of thought is in store for the long period of years which Esoteric Philosophy claims as the age of sexual and physiological mankind. Therefore even the Stanza which says: “The Mind‐born, the boneless, gave being to the Will‐born with bones;”—adding that this took place in the middle of the Third Race 18,000,000 years ago—has yet a chance of being accepted by future Scientists.

As far as nineteenth century thought is concerned, we shall be told, even by some personal friends who are imbued with an abnormal respect for the shifting conclusions of Science, that such a statement is absurd. How much more improbable will appear our further assertion, viz., that the antiquity of the First Race dates back millions of years beyond this again. For, although the exact figures are withheld—and it is out of the question to refer the incipient evolution of the primeval Divine Races with certainty to either the early Secondary, or the Primary Ages of Geology—one thing is clear, that the figures 18,000,000 of years, which embrace the duration of sexual, physical, man, have to be enormously increased if the whole process of spiritual, astral and physical development is taken into account. Many Geologists, indeed, consider that the duration of the Quaternary and Tertiary Ages demands the concession of such an estimate; and it is quite certain that no terrestrial conditions whatever negative the hypothesis of an Eocene man, if evidence for his reality is forthcoming. Occultists, who maintain that the above date carries us far back into the Secondary or “Reptilian” Age, may refer to M. de Quatrefages in support of the possible existence of man in that remote antiquity. But with regard to the earliest Root‐Races the case is very different. If the thick agglomeration of vapours, charged with carbonic acid, that escaped from the soil, or was held in suspension in the atmosphere since the commencement of sedimentation, offered a fatal obstacle to the life of human organisms as now known, how, it will be asked, could the primeval men have existed? This consideration is, in reality, out of court. Such terrestrial conditions as were then operative had no touch with the plane on which the evolution of the ethereal astral Races proceeded. Only in relatively recent geological periods, has the spiral course of cyclic law swept mankind into the lowest grade of physical evolution—the plane of gross material causation. In those early ages, astral evolution was alone in progress, and the two planes, the astral and the physical,(365) though developing on parallel lines, had no direct point of contact with one another. It is obvious that a shadow‐like ethereal man is related by virtue of his organization—if such it can be called—only to that plane from which the substance of his Upâdhi is derived.

There are things, perhaps, that may have escaped the far‐seeing—but not all‐seeing—eyes of our modern Naturalists; yet it is Nature herself who undertakes to furnish the missing links. Agnostic speculative thinkers have to choose between the version given by the Secret Doctrine of the East, and the hopelessly materialistic Darwinian and Biblical accounts of the origin of man; between no soul and no spiritual evolution, and the Occult doctrine which repudiates “special creation” and the “Evolutionist” anthropogenesis equally.

Again, to take up the question of “spontaneous generation”; life—as Science shows—has not always reigned on this terrestrial plane. There was a time when even the Hæckelian Moneron—that simple globule of Protoplasm—had not yet appeared at the bottom of the seas. Whence came the Impulse which caused the molecules of Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, etc., to group themselves into the Urschleim of Oken, that organic “Slime,” now christened Protoplasm? What were the prototypes of the Monera? They, at least, could not have fallen in meteorites from other Globes already formed, Sir William Thomson’s wild theory to this effect notwithstanding. And even if they had so fallen; if our Earth got its supply of life‐germs from other Planets; who, or what, had carried them on to these Planets? Here, again, unless the Occult Teaching is accepted, we are compelled once more to face a miracle—to accept the theory of a personal, anthropomorphic Creator, the attributes and definitions of whom, as formulated by the Monotheists, clash as much with philosophy and logic, as they degrade the ideal of an infinite Universal Deity, before whose incomprehensible awful grandeur the highest human intellect feels dwarfed. Let not the modern Philosopher, while arbitrarily placing himself on the highest pinnacle of human intellectuality hitherto evolved, show himself spiritually and intuitionally so far below the conceptions of even the ancient Greeks, themselves on a far lower level, in these respects, than the Philosophers of Eastern Âryan antiquity. Hylozoism, when philosophically understood, is the highest aspect of Pantheism. It is the only possible escape from idiotic Atheism based on lethal materiality, and the still more idiotic anthropomorphic conceptions of the Monotheists; between which it stands on its own entirely neutral ground. Hylozoism demands absolute Divine Thought, which would pervade the numberless active, creating Forces, or “Creators,” which Entities are moved by, and have their being in, from, and through, that Divine Thought; the latter, nevertheless, having no more personal concern in them or their creations, than the Sun has in the sun‐flower and its seeds, or in vegetation in general. Such active “Creators” are known to exist and are believed in, because perceived and sensed by the Inner Man in the Occultist. Thus the latter says that an Absolute Deity, having to be unconditioned and unrelated, cannot be thought of at the same time as an active, creating, one living God, without immediate degradation of the ideal.(366) A Deity that manifests in Space and Time—these two being simply the forms of THAT which is the Absolute ALL—can be but a fractional part of the whole. And since that “All” cannot be divided in its absoluteness, therefore that sensed Creator (we say Creators) can be at best but the mere aspect thereof. To use the same metaphor—inadequate to express the full idea, yet well adapted to the case in hand—these Creators are like the numerous rays of the solar orb, which remains unconscious of, and unconcerned in, the work; while its mediating agents, the rays, become the instrumental media every spring—the Manvantaric dawn of the Earth—in fructifying and awakening the dormant vitality inherent in Nature and its differentiated matter. This was so well understood in antiquity, that even the moderately religious Aristotle remarked that such work of direct creation would be quite unbecoming to God—ἀπρεπὲς τῷ Θεῷ. Plato and other philosophers taught the same: deity cannot set its own hand to creation—αὐτουργεῖν ἅπαντα. This Cudworth calls “Hylozoism.” As old Zeno is credited by Laërtius with having said:

Nature is a habit moved from itself, according to seminal principles; perfecting and containing those several things which in determinate times are produced from it, and acting agreeably to that from which it was secreted.(367)

Let us return to our subject, pausing to think over it. Indeed, if there was vegetable life during those periods that could feed on the then deleterious elements; and if there was even animal life whose aquatic organization could be developed, notwithstanding the supposed scarcity of Oxygen, why could there not be human life also, in its incipient physical form, i.e., in a race of beings adapted for that geological period and its surroundings? Besides, Science confesses that it knows nothing of the real length of geological periods.

But the chief question before us is, whether it is quite certain that, from the time of that which is called the Azoic Age, there ever was such an atmosphere as that hypothesized by the Naturalists. Not all the Physicists agree with this idea. Were the writer anxious to corroborate the teachings of the Secret Doctrine by exact Science, it would be easy to show, on the admission of more than one Physicist, that the atmosphere has changed little, if at all, since the first condensation of the oceans—i.e., since the Laurentian Period, the Pyrolithic Age. Such, at any rate, is the opinion of Blanchard, S. Meunier, and even of Bischof—as the experiments of the last Scientist with basalts have shown. For were we to take the word of the majority of Scientists as to the quantity of deadly gases, and of elements entirely saturated with Carbon and Nitrogen, in which the vegetable and animal kingdoms are shown to have lived, thriven, and developed, then one would have to come to the curious conclusion that there were, in those days, oceans of liquid carbonic acid, instead of water. With such an element, it becomes doubtful whether the Ganoids, or even the Primitive Trilobites themselves could live in the oceans of the Primary Age—let alone in those of the Silurian, as shown by Blanchard.

The conditions that were necessary for the earliest Race of mankind, however, require no elements, whether simple or compound. That which was stated at the beginning is maintained. The spiritual ethereal Entity which lived in Spaces unknown to Earth, before the first sidereal “jelly‐speck” evolved in the Ocean of crude Cosmic Matter—billions and trillions of years before our globular speck in infinity, called Earth, came into being and generated the Monera in its drops, called oceans—needed no “elements.” The “Manu with soft bones,” could well dispense with Calcium Phosphate, as he had no bones, save in a figurative sense. And while even the Monera, however homogeneous their organism, still required physical conditions of life that would help them toward further evolution, the Being which became Primitive Man and the “Father of Man,” after evolving on planes of existence undreamed of by Science, could well remain impervious to any state of atmospheric conditions around him. The primitive ancestor, in Brasseur de Bourbourg’s Popol Vuh, who—in the Mexican legends—could act and live with equal ease under ground and water as upon the earth, answers only to the Second and early Third Races in our texts. And if the three kingdoms of Nature were so different in pre‐diluvian ages, why should not man have been composed of materials and combinations of atoms now entirely unknown to Physical Science? The plants and animals now known, in almost numberless varieties and species, have all developed, according to scientific hypotheses, from primitive and far fewer organic forms. Why should not the same have occurred in the case of man, the elements, and the rest? As the Commentary says:

Universal Genesis starts from the One, breaks into Three, then Five, and finally culminates in Seven, to return into Four, Three, and One.

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Stanza VII. From The Semi‐Divine Down To The First Human Races

24. The higher Creators reject in their pride the Forms evolved by the “Sons of Yoga.” 25. They will not incarnate in the early Egg‐ born. 26. They select the later Androgynes. 27. The first man endowed with mind.

24. THE SONS OF WISDOM, THE SONS OF NIGHT,(368) READY FOR REBIRTH, CAME DOWN. THEY SAW THE VILE(369) FORMS OF THE FIRST THIRD(370) (A). “WE CAN CHOOSE,” SAID THE LORDS, “WE HAVE WISDOM.” SOME ENTERED THE CHHÂYÂS. SOME PROJECTED A SPARK. SOME DEFERRED TILL THE FOURTH.(371) FROM THEIR OWN RÛPA THEY FILLED(372) THE KÂMA.(373) THOSE WHO ENTERED BECAME ARHATS. THOSE WHO RECEIVED BUT A SPARK, REMAINED DESTITUTE OF KNOWLEDGE;(374) THE SPARK BURNED LOW (B). THE THIRD REMAINED MIND‐LESS. THEIR JÎVAS(375) WERE NOT READY. THESE WERE SET APART AMONG THE SEVEN.(376) THEY BECAME NARROW‐ HEADED. THE THIRD WERE READY. “IN THESE SHALL WE DWELL,” SAID THE LORDS OF THE FLAME AND OF THE DARK WISDOM (C).

This Stanza contains, in itself, the whole key to the mysteries of evil, the so‐called Fall of the Angels, and the many problems that have puzzled the brains of the Philosophers from the time that the memory of man began. It solves the secret of the subsequent inequalities or intellectual capacity, of birth or social position, and gives a logical explanation to the incomprehensible Karmic course throughout the æons which followed. The best explanation which can be given, in view of the difficulties of the subject, will now be attempted.

(a) Up to the Fourth Round, and even to the later part of the Third Race in this Round, Man—if the ever‐changing forms that clothed the Monads during the first three Rounds and the first two and a half Races of the present Round can be given that misleading name—is, so far, only an animal intellectually. It is only in the present midway Round that he entirely develops in himself the Fourth Principle as a fit vehicle for the Fifth. But Manas will be relatively fully developed only in the following Round, when it will have an opportunity of becoming entirely divine until the end of the Rounds. As Christian Schœttgen says in Horæ Hebraicæ, etc., the first terrestrial Adam “had only the breath of life,”—Nephesh, but not the living Soul.

(b) Here the inferior Races, of which there are still some analogues left—as the Australians, now fast dying out, and some African and Oceanic tribes—are meant. “They were not ready” signifies that the Karmic development of these Monads had not yet fitted them to occupy the forms of men destined for incarnation in higher intellectual Races. But this is explained later on.

(c) The Zohar speaks of “Black Fire,” which is Absolute Light—Wisdom. To those who, prompted by old theological prejudice, may say: But the Asuras are the rebel Devas, the opponents of the Gods—hence Devils, and the Spirits of Evil—it is answered: Esoteric Philosophy admits neither good nor evil per se, as existing independently in Nature. The cause for both is found, as regards the Kosmos, in the necessity of contraries or contrasts, and with respect to man, in his human nature, his ignorance and passions. There are no Devils or the utterly depraved, as there are no Angels absolutely perfect, though there may be Spirits of Light and of Darkness; thus Lucifer—the Spirit of Intellectual Enlightenment and Freedom of Thought—is metaphorically the guiding beacon, which helps man to find his way through the rocks and sand‐banks of Life, for Lucifer is the Logos in his highest, and the “Adversary” in his lowest aspect—both of which are reflected in our Ego. Lactantius, speaking of the Nature of Christ, makes the Logos, the Word, “the first‐born brother of Satan, and the first of all creatures.”(377)

The Vishnu Purâna describes these primeval creatures (Tiryaksrotas) with crooked digestive canals:

[They were] endowed with inward manifestations, but mutually in ignorance about their kind and nature.(378)

The twenty‐eight kinds of Badhas, or “imperfections,” do not apply, as Wilson thought, to the animals now known, which are specified by him, for they did not exist in those geological periods. This is quite plain from the said work, in which the first created are the “five‐fold (immovable) world,” minerals and vegetables; then come those fabulous animals, Tiryaksrotas—the monsters of the Abyss, slain by the “Lords,” of Stanzas II and III; then the Ûrdhvasrotas, the happy celestial beings, which feed on ambrosia; and lastly, the Arvâksrotas, human beings—Brahmâ’s seventh “creation” so‐called. But these “creations,” including the latter, did not occur on this Globe, wherever else they may have taken place. It is not Brahmâ who creates things and men on this Earth, but the Chief and Lord of the Prajâpatis, the Lords of Being and terrestrial Creation. “Obeying the command of Brahmâ,” Daksha—the synthesis, or the aggregate, of the Terrestrial Creators and Progenitors, the Pitris included—made superior and inferior (vara and avara) things, “referring to putra” progeny, and “bipeds and quadrupeds, and subsequently, by his will [referring to the Sons of Will and Yoga], gave birth to females”(379)—i.e., separated the androgynes. Here, again, we have “bipeds” or men, created before the “quadrupeds” as in the Esoteric Teachings.

Since, in the exoteric accounts, the Asuras are the first Beings created from the “Body of Night,” while the Pitris issue from that of “Twilight”; the “Gods” being placed by Parâshara, in the Vishnu Purâna, between the two, and shown to evolve from the “Body of the Day,” it is easy to discover a determined purpose to veil the order of creation. Man is the Arvâksrota coming from the “Body of the Dawn”; and elsewhere, man is again referred to, when the Creator of the World, Brahmâ, is shown “creating fierce beings, who were denominated Bhûtas, and eaters of flesh,” or as the text has it, “fiends, frightful from being monkey‐coloured and carnivorous.”(380) Whereas the Râkshasas are generally translated by “evil Spirits” and “enemies of the Gods,” which identifies them with the Asuras. In the Râmâyana, when Hanumân is reconnoitering the enemy in Lankâ, he finds there Râkshasas, some hideous, “while some were beautiful to look upon,” and, in the Vishnu Purâna, there is a direct reference to their becoming the Saviours of “Humanity,” or of Brahmâ.

The allegory is very ingenious. Great intellect and too much knowledge are a two‐edged weapon in life, and instruments for evil as well as for good. When combined with selfishness, they will make of the whole of Humanity a footstool for the elevation of him who possesses them, and a means for the attainment of his objects; while, applied to altruistic humanitarian purposes, they may become the means of the salvation of many. At all events, the absence of self‐consciousness and intellect will make of man an idiot, a brute in human form. Brahmâ is Mahat, the Universal Mind; hence the too selfish among the Râkshasas showing the desire to become possessed of it all—to “devour” Mahat. The allegory is transparent.

At any rate, Esoteric Philosophy identifies the pre‐Brâhmanical Asuras, Rudras,(381) Râkshasas and all the “Adversaries” of the Gods in the allegories, with the Egos, which, by incarnating in the still witless man of the Third Race, made him consciously immortal. They are, then, during the cycle of Incarnations, the true dual Logos—the conflicting and two‐ faced Divine Principle in Man. The Commentary that follows, and the next Stanzas may, no doubt, throw more light on this very difficult tenet, but the writer does not feel competent to give it out fully. Of the succession of Races, however, the Commentary says:

_First come the __SELF‐EXISTENT__ on this Earth. They are the __“__Spiritual Lives__”__ projected by the absolute __WILL__ and __LAW__, at the Dawn of every Rebirth of the Worlds. These Lives are the divine __“__Shishta__”__ [the Seed‐Manus, or the Prajâpatis and the Pitris]._

From these proceed:

1. _The First Race, the __“__Self‐born,__”__ which are the [Astral] Shadows of their Progenitors. The Body was devoid of all understanding [mind, intelligence, and will]. The Inner Being [the Higher Self, or Monad], though within the earthly frame, was unconnected with it. The link, the Manas, was not there as yet._

2. _From the First [Race] emanated the Second, called the __“__Sweat‐ born__”_(382)_ and the __“__Boneless.__”__ This is the Second Root‐Race, endowed by the Preservers [Râkshasas]_(383) and the Incarnating Gods [the Asuras and Kumâras] with the first primitive and weak Spark [the germ of intelligence]....

And from these in turn proceeds:

3. _The Third Root‐Race, the __“__Two‐fold__”__ [Androgynes]. The first Races thereof are Shells, till the last is __“__inhabited__”__ [i.e., informed] by the Dhyânîs._

The Second Race, as stated above, being also sexless, evolved out of itself, at its beginning, the Third, Androgyne Race by an analogous, but already more complicated process. As described in the Commentary, the very earliest of that Race were:

_The __“__Sons of Passive Yoga.__”_(384) They issued from the Second Manushyas [Human Race], and became oviparous. The emanations that came out of their bodies during the seasons of procreation were ovulary; the small spheroidal nuclei developing into a large soft, egg‐like vehicle, gradually hardened, when, after a period of gestation, it broke and the young human animal issued from it unaided, as the fowls do in our Race.

This must seem to the reader ludicrously absurd. Nevertheless, it is strictly on the lines of evolutionary analogy, which Science perceives in the development of the living animal species. First the moneron‐like procreation by “self‐division”; then, after a few stages, the oviparous, as in the case of the reptiles, which are followed by the birds; then, finally, the mammals with their ovoviviparous modes of producing their young ones.

If the term “ovoviviparous” is applied to some fish and reptiles, which hatch their eggs within their bodies, why should it not be applied to female mammalians, including woman? The ovule, in which, after impregnation, the development of the fœtus takes place, is an egg.

At all events, this conception is more philosophical than that of Eve with a suddenly created placenta giving birth to Cain, because of the “apple,” when even the marsupial, the earliest of mammals, is not placental yet.

Moreover, the progressive order of the methods of reproduction, as unveiled by Science, is a brilliant confirmation of Esoteric Ethnology, It is only necessary to tabulate the data in order to prove our assertion.(385)

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I. Fission

(a) As seen in the division of the homogeneous speck of Protoplasm, known as Moneron or Amœba, into two.

(b) As seen in the division of the nucleated cell, in which the cell‐ nucleus splits into two sub‐nuclei, which either develop within the original cell‐wall or burst it, and multiply outside as independent entities. (Cf. the First Root‐Race.)

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II. Budding

A small portion of the parent structure swells out at the surface and finally parts company, growing to the size of the original organism; e.g., many vegetables, the sea‐anemone, etc. (Cf. the Second Root‐ Race.)(386)

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III. Spores

A single cell thrown off by the parent organism, which develops into a multicellular organism reproducing the features of the latter, e.g., Bacteria and mosses.

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IV. Intermediate Hermaphroditism

Male and female organs inhering in the same individual; e.g., the majority of plants, worms, and snails, etc.; allied to budding. (Cf. Second and early Third Root‐Races.)

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V. True Sexual Union

(Cf. later Third Root‐Race.)

We now come to an important point with regard to the double evolution of the human race. The Sons of Wisdom, or the Spiritual, Dhyânîs had become “intellectual” through their contact with Matter, because they had already reached, during previous cycles of incarnation, that degree of intellect which enabled them to become independent and self‐conscious entities, on this plane of Matter. They were reborn only by reason of Karmic effects. They entered those who were “ready,” and became the Arhats, or Sages, alluded to above. This needs explanation.

It does not mean that Monads entered Forms in which other Monads already were. They were “Essences,” “Intelligences,” and Conscious Spirits; Entities seeking to become still more conscious by uniting with more developed Matter. Their essence was too pure to be distinct from the Universal Essence; but their “Egos,” or Manas (since they are called Mânasaputra, born of Mahat, or Brahmâ) had to pass through earthly human experiences to become all‐wise, and be able to start on the returning ascending cycle. The Monads are not discrete principles, limited or conditioned, but rays from that one universal absolute Principle. The entrance of one ray of sunlight following another through the same aperture into a dark room will not constitute two rays, but one ray intensified. It is not in the course of natural law that man should become a perfect Septenary Being before the Seventh Race in the Seventh Round. Yet he has all these principles latent in him from his birth. Nor is it part of the evolutionary law that the Fifth Principle (Manas), should receive its complete development before the Fifth Round. All such prematurely developed intellects (on the spiritual plane) in our Race are abnormal; they are those whom we have called the “Fifth‐Rounders.” Even in the coming Seventh Race, at the close of this Fourth Round, while our four lower principles will be fully developed, that of Manas will be only proportionately so. This limitation, however, refers solely to the spiritual development. The intellectual, on the physical plane, was reached during the Fourth Root‐Race. Thus, those who were “half ready,” who received “but a spark,” constitute the average humanity which have to acquire their intellectuality during the present Manvantaric evolution, after which they will be ready in the next for the full reception of the “Sons of Wisdom.” While those which “were not ready” at all, the latest Monads, which had hardly evolved from their last transitional and lower animal forms at the close of the Third Round, remained the “narrow‐ brained” of the Stanza. This explains the otherwise unaccountable degrees of intellectuality among the various races of men—the savage Bushman and the European—even now. Those tribes of savages, whose reasoning powers are very little above the level of the animals, are not the unjustly disinherited, or the “unfavoured,” as some may think—nothing of the kind. They are simply those latest arrivals among the human Monads, which “were not ready”; which have to evolve during the present Round, as also on the three remaining Globes—hence on four different planes of being—so as to arrive at the level of the average class when they reach the Fifth Round. One remark may prove useful, as food for thought to the student in this connection. The Monads of the lowest specimens of humanity—the “narrow‐brained”(387) savage South‐Sea Islander, the African, the Australian—had no Karma to work out when first born as men, as their more favoured brethren in intelligence had. The former are spinning out Karma only now; the latter are burdened with past, present and future Karma. In this respect the poor savage is more fortunate than the greatest genius of civilized countries.

Let us pause before giving any more such strange teachings. Let us try and find out how far any ancient Scriptures, and even Science, permit the possibility of, or even distinctly corroborate, such wild notions as are found in our Anthropogenesis.

Recapitulating that which has been said, we find that the Secret Doctrine claims for man: (1) a polygenetic origin; (2) a variety of modes of procreation before humanity fell into the ordinary method of generation; (3) that the evolution of animals—of the mammalians at any rate—follows that of man instead of preceding it. And this is diametrically opposed to the now generally accepted theories of evolution and the descent of man from an animal ancestor.

Let us, giving to Cæsar what is Cæsar’s, examine, first of all, the chances for the polygenetic theory among the men of Science.

Now the majority of the Darwinian Evolutionists incline to a polygenetic explanation of the origin of races. On this particular question, however, as in many other cases, Scientists are at sixes and sevens; they agree to disagree.

Does man descend from one single couple or from several groups—monogenism or polygenism? As far as one can venture to pronounce on what in the absence of witnesses [?] will never be known [?], the second hypothesis is far the most probable.(388)

Abel Hovelacque, in his Science of Language, comes to a similar conclusion, arguing from the evidence available to a linguistic enquirer.

In an address delivered before the British Association, Professor W. H. Flower remarked on this question:

The view which appears best to accord with what is now known of the characters and distribution of the races of man ... is a modification of the monogenistic hypothesis[!]. Without entering into the difficult question of the method of man’s first appearance upon the world, we must assume for it a vast antiquity, at all events as measured by any historical standard. If we had any approach to a complete palæontological record, the history of man could be re‐constructed, but nothing of the kind is forthcoming.

Such an admission must be regarded as fatal to the dogmatism of the Physical Evolutionists, and as opening a wide margin to Occult speculations. The opponents of the Darwinian theory were, and still remain, polygenists. Such “intellectual giants” as John Crawford and James Hunt discussed the problem and favoured polygenesis, and in their day there was a far stronger feeling in favour of than against this theory. It was only in 1864 that Darwinians began to be wedded to the theory of unity, of which Messrs. Huxley and Lubbock became the first coryphæi.

As regards the other question, of the priority of man to the animals in the order of evolution, the answer is as promptly given. If man is really the Microcosm of the Macrocosm, then the teaching has nothing so very impossible in it, and is but logical. For, man becomes that Macrocosm for the three lower kingdoms under him. Arguing from a physical standpoint, all the lower kingdoms, save the mineral—which is light itself, crystallized and immetallized—from plants to the creatures which preceded the first mammalians, all have been consolidated in their physical structures by means of the “cast‐off dust” of those minerals, and the refuse of the human matter, whether from living or dead bodies, on which they fed and which gave them their outer bodies. In his turn also, man grew more physical, by reäbsorbing into his system that which he had given out, and which became transformed in the living animal crucibles through which it had passed, owing to Nature’s alchemical transmutations. There were animals in those days of which our Modern Naturalists have never dreamed; and the stronger became physical material man—the giants of those times—the more powerful were his emanations. Once that Androgyne Humanity separated into sexes, transformed by Nature into child‐bearing engines, it ceased to procreate its like through drops of vital energy oozing out of the body. But while man was still ignorant of his procreative powers on the human plane—before his Fall, as a believer in Adam would say—all this vital energy, scattered far and wide from him, was used by Nature for the production of the first mammal‐animal forms. Evolution is an eternal cycle of becoming, we are taught; and Nature never leaves an atom unused. Moreover, from the beginning of the Round, all in Nature tends to become Man. All the impulses of the dual, centripetal and centrifugal Force are directed towards one point—Man. The progress in the succession of beings, says Agassiz:

Consists in an increasing similarity of the living fauna, and among the vertebrates, especially, in the increasing resemblance to man. Man is the end towards which all animal creation has tended from the first appearance of the first palæozoic fishes.(389)

Just so; but the “palæozoic fishes” are at the lower curve of the arc of the evolution of forms, and this Round began with Astral Man, the reflection of the Dhyân Chohans, called the “Builders.” Man is the alpha and the omega of objective creation. As said in Isis Unveiled:

All things had their origin in Spirit—evolution having originally begun from above and proceeding downwards, instead of the reverse, as taught in the Darwinian theory.(390)

Therefore, the tendency spoken of by the eminent Naturalist above quoted is one inherent in every atom. Only, were one to apply it to both sides of evolution, the observations made would greatly interfere with the modern theory, which has now almost become (Darwinian) law.

But in citing the passage from Agassiz’ work with approval, it must not be understood that the Occultists are making any concession to the theory which derives man from the animal kingdom. The fact that in this Round he preceded the mammalia is obviously not impugned by the consideration that the latter follow in the wake of man.

25. HOW DID THE MÂNASA, THE SONS OF WISDOM, ACT? THEY REJECTED THE SELF‐ BORN.(391) THEY ARE NOT READY. THEY SPURNED THE SWEAT‐BORN.(392) THEY ARE NOT QUITE READY. THEY WOULD NOT ENTER THE FIRST EGG‐BORN.(393)

To a Theist or a Christian this verse would suggest a rather theological idea: that of the Fall of the Angels through Pride. In the Secret Doctrine, however, the reasons for the refusal to incarnate in half‐ ready physical bodies seem to be more connected with physiological than metaphysical reasons. Not all the organisms were sufficiently ready. The Incarnating Powers chose the ripest fruits and spurned the rest.

By a curious coincidence, when selecting a familiar name for the continent on which the first Androgynes, the Third Root‐Race, separated, the writer chose, on geographical considerations, that of “Lemuria,” invented by Mr. P. L. Sclater. It was only later that, on reading Hæckel’s Pedigree of Man, it was found that the German “Animalist” had chosen the name for his late continent. He traces, properly enough, the centre of human evolution to Lemuria, but with a slight scientific variation. Speaking of it as that “cradle of mankind,” he pictures the gradual transformation of the anthropoid mammal into the primeval savage!! Vogt, again, holds that in America man sprang from a branch of the platyrrhine apes, independently of the origination of the African and Asian root‐stocks from the old world catarrhinians. Anthropologists are, as usual, at loggerheads on this question, as on many others. We shall examine this claim in the light of Esoteric Philosophy in Stanza VIII. Meanwhile, let us give a few moments of attention to the various consecutive modes of procreation according to the laws of Evolution.

Let us begin by the mode of reproduction of the later sub‐races of the Third Human Race, by those who found themselves endowed with the “Sacred Fire” from the Spark of higher and then independent Beings, who were the psychic and spiritual Parents of Man, as the lower Pitri Devatâs (the Pitris) were the Progenitors of his physical body. That Third and holy Race consisted of men who, at their zenith, were described as “towering giants of godly strength and beauty, and the depositories of all the mysteries of Heaven and Earth.” Have they likewise fallen, if, then, incarnation was the “Fall”?

Of this presently. The only thing now to be noted of these is, that the chief Gods and Heroes of the Fourth and Fifth Races, as of later antiquity, are the deified images of these Men of the Third. The days of their physiological purity, and those of their so‐called Fall, have equally survived in the hearts and memories of their descendants. Hence, the dual nature shown in these Gods, both virtue and sin being exalted to their highest degree, in the biographies composed by posterity. They were the Pre‐Adamite and the Divine Races, with which even Theology, in whose sight they are all the “accursed Cainite races,” now begins to busy itself.

But the action of the “Spiritual Progenitors” of that Race has first to be disposed of. A very difficult and abstruse point has to be explained with regard to Shlokas 26 and 27.

26. WHEN THE SWEAT‐BORN PRODUCED THE EGG‐BORN, THE TWO‐FOLD,(394) THE MIGHTY, THE POWERFUL WITH BONES, THE LORDS OF WISDOM SAID: “NOW SHALL WE CREATE.”

Why “now”—and not earlier? This the following Shloka explains.

27. THE THIRD RACE BECAME THE VÂHAN(395) OF THE LORDS OF WISDOM. IT CREATED SONS OF WILL AND YOGA, BY KRIYÂSHAKTI IT CREATED THEM, THE HOLY FATHERS, ANCESTORS OF THE ARHATS....

How did they “create,” since the “Lords of Wisdom” are identical with the Hindû Devas, who refuse to “create”? Clearly they are the Kumâras of the Hindû Pantheon and Purânas, those Elder Sons of Brahmâ:

Sanandana and the other sous of Vedhas [who], previously created by him ... without desire or passion, [remained chaste] inspired with holy wisdom ... and undesirous of progeny.(396)

The power, by which they first created, is that which has since caused them to be degraded from their high status to the position of Evil Spirits, of Satan and his Host—created in their turn by the unclean fancy of exoteric creeds. It was by Kriyâshakti, that mysterious and divine power, latent in the will of every man, which, if not called to life, quickened and developed by Yoga‐training, remains dormant in 999,999 men out of a million, and so gets atrophied. This power is explained in the “Twelve Signs of the Zodiac,”(397) as follows:

Kriyâshakti:—The mysterious power of thought which enables it to produce external, perceptible, phenomenal results by its own inherent energy. The ancients held that any idea will manifest itself externally, if one’s attention [and will] is deeply concentrated upon it. Similarly, an intense volition will be followed by the desired result.

A Yogî generally performs his wonders by means of Ichchhâshakti (Will‐power) and Kriyâshakti.

The Third Race had thus created the so‐called “Sons of Will and Yoga,” or the “Ancestors”—the Spiritual Forefathers—of all the subsequent and present Arhats, or Mahâtmâs, in a truly immaculate way. They were indeed created, not begotten, as were their brethren of the Fourth Race, who were generated sexually after the separation of sexes, the “Fall of Man.” For Creation is but the result of Will acting on phenomenal Matter, the calling forth out of it the Primordial Divine Light and Eternal Life. They were the “Holy Seed Grain” of the future Saviours of Humanity.

Here we have to again make a break, in order to explain certain difficult points, of which there are so many. It is almost impossible to avoid such interruptions.(398)

The order of the evolution of the Human Races stands as follows in the Fifth Book of the Commentaries, and has already been given:

_The first men were Chhâyâs (1); the Second, the __“__Sweat‐born__”__ (2); the Third, __“__Egg‐born,__”__ and the holy Fathers born by the power of Kriyâshakti (3); the Fourth were the children of the Padmapâni [Chenresi] (4)._

Of course such primeval modes of procreation—by the evolution of one’s image; through drops of perspiration; after that by Yoga; and then by what people will regard as magic (Kriyâshakti)—are doomed beforehand to be regarded as fairy‐tales. Nevertheless, beginning with the first and ending with the last, there is really nothing miraculous in them, nor anything which may not be shown to be natural. This must be proven.

1. Chhâyâ‐birth, or that primeval mode of sexless procreation—the First Race having oozed out, so to say, from the bodies of the Pitris—is hinted at in a cosmic allegory in the Purânas.(399) It is the beautiful allegory and story of Sanjñâ, the daughter of Vishvakarman—married to the Sun, who, “unable to endure the fervours of her Lord,” gave him her Chhâyâ (shadow, image, or astral body), while she herself repaired to the jungle to perform religious devotions, or Tapas. The Sun, supposing the Chhâyâ to be his wife, begat by her children, like Adam with Lilith—an ethereal shadow also, as in the legend, though an actual living female monster millions of years ago.

But, perhaps, this instance proves little except the exuberant fancy of the Paurânic authors. We have another proof ready. If the materialized forms, which are sometimes seen oozing out of the bodies of certain mediums could, instead of vanishing, be fixed and made solid—the “creation” of the First Race would become quite comprehensible. This kind of procreation cannot fail to be suggestive to the student. Neither the mystery nor the impossibility of such a mode is certainly any greater—while it is far more comprehensible to the mind of the true metaphysical thinker—than the mystery of the conception of the fœtus, its gestation and birth as a child, as we now know it.

Now to the curious and little understood corroboration in the Purânas about the “Sweat‐born.”

2. Kandu is a sage and a Yogî, eminent in holy wisdom and pious austerities, which, finally, awaken the jealousy of the Gods, who are represented in the Hindû Scriptures as being in never‐ending strife with the Ascetics. Indra, the “King of the Gods,”(400) finally sends one of his female Apsarases to tempt the sage. This is no worse than Jehovah sending Sarah, Abraham’s wife, to tempt Pharaoh; but in truth it is these Gods (and God), who are ever trying to disturb Ascetics and thus make them lose the fruit of their austerities, who ought to be regarded as “tempting demons,” instead of applying the term to the Rudras, Kumâras, and Asuras, whose great sanctity and chastity seem a standing reproach to the Don Juanic Gods of the Pantheon. But it is the reverse that we find in all the Paurânic allegories, and not without good esoteric reason.

The King of the Gods, or Indra, sends a beautiful Apsaras (nymph) named Pramlochâ to seduce Kandu and disturb his penance. She succeeds in her unholy purpose and “nine hundred and seven years six months and three days”(401) spent in her company seem to the Sage as one day. When this psychological or hypnotic state ends, the Muni bitterly curses the creature who has seduced him, thus disturbing his devotions. “Depart, begone!” he cries, “vile bundle of delusions!” And Pramlochâ, terrified, flies away, _wiping the perspiration __ from her body_ with the leaves of the trees as she passes through the air.

The nymph went from tree to tree, and, as, with the dusky shoots that crowned their summits, she dried her limbs, the child she had conceived by the Rishi came forth from the pores of her skin in drops of perspiration. The trees received the living dews; and the winds collected them into one mass. “This,” said Soma [the Moon], “I matured by my rays; and gradually it increased in size, till the exhalation that had rested on the tree tops became the lovely girl named Mârishâ.”(402)

Now Kandu stands for the First Race. He is a son of the Pitris, hence one “devoid of mind,” a fact hinted at by his being unable to discern a period of nearly one thousand years from one day; therefore he is shown to be so easily deluded and blinded. Here is a variant of the allegory in Genesis, of Adam, born an image of clay, into which the “Lord God” breathes the “breath of life” but not of intellect and discrimination, which are developed only after he had tasted of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge; in other words when he has acquired the first development of Mind, and had implanted in him Manas, whose terrestrial aspect is of the earth earthy, though its highest faculties connect it with Spirit and the Divine Soul. Pramlochâ is the Hindû Lilith of the Âryan Adam; and Mârishâ, the daughter born of the perspiration from her pores, is the “Sweat‐born,” and stands as a symbol for the Second Race of mankind.

It is not Indra, who in this case figures in the Purânas, but Kâmadeva, the God of love and desire, who sends Pramlochâ on Earth. Logic, as well as the Esoteric Doctrine, shows that it must be so. For Kâma is the king and lord of the Apsarases, of whom Pramlochâ is one; and, therefore, when Kandu, cursing her, exclaims: “Thou hast performed the office assigned by the monarch of the gods, go!”—he must mean by that monarch Kâma, and not Indra, to whom the Apsarases are not subservient. For Kâma, again, is in the Rig Veda(403) the personification of that feeling which leads and propels to creation. He was the First Movement that stirred the ONE, after its manifestation from the purely Abstract Principle, to create.

Desire first arose in IT, which was the Primal Germ of Mind; and which Sages, searching with their intellect, have discovered to be the bond which connects Entity with Non‐Entity.

A Hymn in the Atharva Veda exalts Kâma into a supreme God and Creator, and says:

Kâma was born the first. Him, neither Gods nor Fathers [Pitris] nor Men have equalled.

The Atharva Veda identifies him with Agni, but makes him superior to that God. The Taittirîya Brâhmana makes him allegorically the son of Dharma (moral religious duty, piety and justice) and of Shraddhâ (faith). Elsewhere Kâma is born from the heart of Brahmâ; therefore he is Âtmabhû “Self‐Existent,” and Aja, the “Unborn.” His sending Pramlochâ has a deep philosophical meaning; sent by Indra—the narrative has none. As Erôs was connected in early Greek mythology with the world’s creation, and only afterwards became the sexual Cupid, so was Kâma in his original Vedic character; the Harivamsha making him a son of Lakshmî, who is Venus. The allegory, as said, shows the psychic element developing the physiological, before the birth of Daksha—the progenitor of real physical men—who is made to be born from Mârishâ and before whose time living beings and men were procreated “by the will, by sight, by touch, and by yoga,” as will be shown.

This, then, is the allegory on the mode of procreation of the Second or the “Sweat‐born.” The same for the Third Race in its final development.

Mârishâ, through the exertions of Soma, the Moon, is taken to wife by the Prachetases, the production of the “Mind‐born” sons of Brahmâ also,(404) from whom they beget the Patriarch Daksha—a son of Brahmâ also in a former Kalpa or life, explain and add the Purânas, in order to mislead, yet speaking the truth.

3. The early Third Race, then, is formed from drops of “Sweat,” which, after many a transformation, grow into human bodies. This is not more difficult to imagine or realize than the growth of the fœtus from an imperceptible germ, and its subsequent development into a child, and then into a strong, heavy man. But the Third Race changes yet again its mode of procreation according to the Commentaries. It is said to have emanated a vis formativa, which changed the drops of perspiration into greater drops, which grew, expanded, and became ovoid bodies—huge eggs. In these the human fœtus gestated for several years. In the Purânas, Mârishâ, the daughter of Kandu, the sage, becomes the wife of the Prachetases, and the mother of Daksha. Now Daksha is the father of the first human‐like Progenitors, having been born in this way. He is mentioned later on. The evolution of man, the microcosm, is analogous to that of the universe, the macrocosm. His evolution stands between that of the latter and that of the animal, for which man, in his turn, is a macrocosm.

Then the Third Race becomes:

4. The Androgyne, or Hermaphrodite. This process of men‐bearing explains, perhaps, why Aristophanes, in Plato’s Banquet, describes the nature of the old race as “androgynous,” the form of every individual being rounded, “having the back and sides as in a circle,” whose “manner of running was circular ... terrible in force and strength and with prodigious ambition.” Therefore, to make them weaker, “Zeus divided them [in the Third Root‐ Race] into two, and Apollo [the Sun], under his direction, closed up the skin.”

The Madagascans—the island belonged to Lemuria—have a tradition about the first man. He lived at first without eating, and, having indulged in food, a swelling appeared in his leg; this bursting, there emerged from it a female, who became the mother of their race. Truly, “we have our sciences of Heterogenesis and Parthenogenesis, showing that the field is yet open.... The polyps ... produce their offspring from themselves, like the buds and ramifications of a tree....” Why not the primitive human polyp? The very interesting polyp Stauridium passes alternately from gemmation into the sex method of reproduction. Curiously enough, though it grows merely as a polyp on a stalk, it produces gemmules, which ultimately develop into a sea‐nettle or Medusa. The Medusa is utterly dissimilar to its parent‐organism, the Stauridium. It also reproduces itself differently, by sexual method, and from the resulting eggs Stauridia once more put in an appearance. This striking fact may assist many to understand that a form may be evolved—as in the sexual Lemurians from hermaphrodite parentage—quite unlike its immediate progenitors. It is, moreover, unquestionable that in the case of human incarnations the law of Karma, racial or individual, overrides the subordinate tendencies of Heredity, its servant.

The meaning of the last sentence in the above‐quoted Commentary on Shloka 27, namely, that the Fourth Race were the children of Padmapâni, may find its explanation in a certain letter from the Inspirer of Esoteric Buddhism:

The majority of mankind belongs to the seventh sub‐race of the Fourth Root‐Race—the above‐mentioned Chinamen and their off‐shoots and branchlets (Malayans, Mongolians, Tibetans, Hungarians, Finns, and even the Esquimaux are all remnants of this last offshoot).

Padmapâni or Avalokiteshvara, in Sanskrit, is, in Tibetan, Chenresi. Now, Avalokiteshvara is the great Logos in its higher aspect and in the divine regions. But in the manifested planes, he is, like Daksha, the Progenitor (in a spiritual sense) of men. Padmapâni‐Avalokiteshvara is called esoterically Bodhisattva (or Dhyân Chohan) Chenresi Vanchug, “the powerful and all‐seeing.” He is considered now as the greatest protector of Asia in general, and of Tibet in particular. In order to guide the Tibetans and Lamas in holiness, and preserve the great Arhats in the world, this heavenly Being is credited with manifesting himself from age to age in human form. A popular legend has it that whenever faith begins to die out in the world, Padmapâni Chenresi, the “Lotus‐bearer,” emits a brilliant ray of light, and forthwith incarnates himself in one of the two great Lamas—the Dalai and Teschu Lamas; finally, it is believed that he will incarnate as the “most perfect Buddha” in Tibet, instead of in India, where his predecessors, the great Rishis and Manus had appeared in the beginning of our Race, but now appear no longer. Even the exoteric appearance of Dhyâni Chenresi is suggestive of the Esoteric Teaching. He is evidently, like Daksha, the synthesis of all the preceding Races and the progenitor of all the human Races after the Third—the first complete one—and thus is represented as the culmination of the four Primeval Races in his eleven‐faced form. This is a column built in four rows, each series having three faces or heads of different complexions; the three faces for each Race being typical of its three fundamental physiological transformations. The first is white (moon‐coloured); the second is yellow; the third, red‐brown; the fourth, in which are only two faces—the third face being left a blank; a reference to the untimely end of the Atlanteans—is brown‐black. Padmapâni (Daksha) is seated on the column, and forms the apex. In this reference compare Shloka 39. The Dhyân Chohan is represented with four arms, another allusion to the four Races. For while two are folded, the third hand holds a lotus—Padmapâni, the “Lotus‐bearer”; the flower symbolizing generation—and the fourth holds a serpent, emblem of the Wisdom in his power. On his neck is a rosary, and on his head the sign of water [Symbol: two horizontal rows of wave‐like symbols]—matter, deluge—while on his brow rests the third eye, Shiva’s eye, that of spiritual insight. His name is “Protector” (of Tibet), “Saviour of Humanity.” On other occasions when he has only two arms, he is Chenresi the Dhyânî, and Bodhisattva, Chakna Padma Karpo, “he who holds a white lotus.” His other name is Chantong, “he of the thousand eyes,” when he is endowed with a thousand arms and hands, on the palm of each of which is represented an eye of Wisdom, these arms radiating from his body like a forest of rays. Another of his names in Sanskrit is Lokapati or Lokanâtha, “Lord of the World”; and in Tibetan Jigten Gonpo, “Protector and Saviour” against evil of any kind.(405)

Padmapâni, however, is the “Lotus‐bearer” symbolically only for the profane; esoterically, it means the supporter of the Kalpas, the last of which is called Pâdma, and represents one half of the life of Brahmâ. Though really a minor Kalpa, it is called Mahâ, “great,” because it comprises the age in which Brahmâ sprang from a lotus. Theoretically, the Kalpas are infinite, but practically they are divided and subdivided in Space and Time, each division—down to the smallest—having its own Dhyânî as patron or regent. Padmapâni (Avalokiteshvara) becomes, in China, in his female aspect, Kwan‐yin, “who assumes any form, at pleasure, in order to save mankind.” The knowledge of the astrological aspect of the constellations on the respective “birthdays” of these Dhyânîs—Amitabha (the A‐mi‐to Fo, of China), included: e.g., on the 19th day of the second month, on the 17th day of the eleventh month, and on the 7th day of the third month,(406) etc.—gives the Occultist the greatest facilities for performing what are called “magic” feats. The future of an individual is seen, with all its coming events marshalled in order, in a magic mirror placed under the ray of certain constellations. But—beware of the reverse of the medal, SORCERY.

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Stanza VIII. Evolution Of The Animal Mammalians: The First Fall

28. How the first mammals were produced. 29. A quasi‐Darwinian evolution. 30. The animals get solid bodies. 31. Their separation into sexes. 32. The first sin of the mindless men.

28. FROM THE DROPS OF SWEAT, FROM THE RESIDUE OF THE SUBSTANCE, MATTER FROM DEAD BODIES OF MEN AND ANIMALS OF THE WHEEL BEFORE,(407) AND FROM CAST‐OFF DUST, THE FIRST ANIMALS(408) WERE PRODUCED.

The Occult Doctrine maintains that, in this Round, the mammalians were a later work of evolution than man. Evolution proceeds in Cycles. The great Manvantaric Cycle of Seven Rounds, beginning in the First Round with the mineral, vegetable, and animal, brings its evolutionary work on the descending arc to a dead stop in the middle of the Fourth Race, at the close of the first half of the Fourth Round. It is on our Earth, then—the Fourth Sphere and the lowest—and in the present Round, that this middle point has been reached. And since the Monad has passed, after its first “immetallization” on Globe A, through the mineral, vegetable, and animal worlds in every degree of the three states of matter, except the last degree of the third or solid state, which it reached only at the “mid‐ point of evolution,” it is but logical and natural that at the beginning of the Fourth Round on Globe D, Man should be the first to appear; and also that his frame should be of the most tenuous matter that is compatible with objectivity. To make it still clearer: if the Monad begins its cycle of incarnations through the three objective kingdoms on the descending curved line, it has necessarily to enter on the reäscending curved line of the Sphere as a man also. On the descending arc it is the spiritual which gradually transforms into the material. On the middle line of the base, Spirit and Matter are equilibrized in Man. On the ascending arc, Spirit is slowly reässerting itself at the expense of the physical, or Matter, so that, at the close of the Seventh Race of the Seventh Round, the Monad will find itself as free from Matter and all its qualities as it was in the beginning; having gained in addition the experience and wisdom, the fruitage of all its personal lives, without their evil and temptations.

This order of evolution is found also in the first and second chapters of Genesis, if one reads it in its true esoteric sense; for Chapter i contains the history of the first Three Rounds, as well as that of the first Three Races of the Fourth, up to the moment when Man is called to conscious life by the Elohim of Wisdom. In Chapter i, animals, whales and fowls of the air, are created before the androgyne Adam.(409) In Chapter ii, Adam (the sexless) comes first, and the animals only appear after him. Even the state of mental torpor and unconsciousness of the first two Races, and of the first half of the Third Race, is symbolized, in the second chapter of Genesis, by the deep sleep of Adam. It is the dreamless sleep of mental inaction, the slumber of the Soul and Mind, which is meant by that “sleep,” and not at all the physiological process of differentiation of sexes, as a learned French theorist, M. Naudin, imagined.

The Purânas, the Chaldæan and Egyptian fragments, and also the Chinese traditions, all show an agreement with the Secret Doctrine as to the process and order of evolution. We find in them the corroboration of almost all our teaching: for instance, the statement concerning the oviparous mode of procreation of the Third Race, and even a hint at a less innocent mode of procreation of the first mammal forms. “Gigantic, transparent, dumb and monstrous they were,” says the Commentary. Study in this connection the stories of the several Rishis and their multifarious progeny. Pulastya is the father of all the Serpents and Nâgas—an oviparous brood; Kashyapa is grandsire, through his wife Tâmrâ, of the birds and of Garuda, king of the feathered tribe; while by his wife Surabhi, he was the parent of cows and buffaloes, etc.

In the Secret Doctrine, the first Nâgas—Beings wiser than Serpents—are the “Sons of Will and Yoga,” born before the complete separation of the sexes, “matured in the man‐bearing eggs(410) produced by the power (Kriyâshakti) of the holy Sages” of the early Third Race.(411)

“In these were incarnated the Lords of the three [upper] worlds—the various classes of Rudras, who had been Tushitas, who had been Jayas, who are Âdityas;” for, as explained by Parâshara: “There are a hundred appellations of the immeasurably mighty Rudras.”

Some of the descendants of the primitive Nâgas, the Serpents of Wisdom, peopled America, when its continent arose during the palmy days of the great Atlantis; America being the Pâtâla or Antipodes of Jambu‐dvîpa, not of Bhârata‐varsha. Otherwise, whence the traditions and legends—the latter always more true than history, as says Augustin Thierry—and even the identity in the names of certain “medicine men” and priests, who exist to this day in Mexico? We shall have to say something of the Nargals and the Nagals, and also of Nagalism, called “devil‐worship” by the missionaries.

In almost all the Purânas, the story of the “Sacrifice of Daksha” is given, the oldest account of which is to be found in the Vâyu Purâna. Allegorical as it is, there is more meaning and biological revelation in it to a Naturalist, than in all the pseudo‐scientific vagaries, which are regarded as learned theories and hypotheses.

Daksha, who is regarded as the Chief Progenitor, is, moreover, pointed out as the creator of physical man, in the “fable” which makes him lose his head from his body in the general strife between the Gods and the Raumas. This head, being burnt in the fire, is replaced by the head of a ram, according to the Kâshi Khanda of the Skanda Purâna. Now the ram’s head and horns are ever the symbol of generating power and of reproductive force, and are phallic. As we have shown, it is Daksha who establishes the era of men engendered by sexual intercourse. This mode of procreation did not occur suddenly, however, as one might think, but required long ages before it became the one “natural” way. Therefore, Daksha’s sacrifice to the Gods is shown to have been interfered with by Shiva—the Destroying Deity, Evolution and Progress personified, who is the Regenerator at the same time; who destroys things under one form but to recall them to life under another more perfect type. Shiva‐Rudra creates the terrible Vîrabhadra, born of his breath, the “thousand‐headed, thousand‐armed” monster, and commissions him to destroy the sacrifice prepared by Daksha. Then Vîrabhadra, “abiding in the region of ghosts (ethereal men) ... created from the pores of his skin (Roma‐kûpas) powerful Raumas.”(412) Now, however mythical the allegory, the Mahâbhârata(413)—which is as much history as is the Iliad—shows the Raumas and other races springing in the same manner from the Roma‐kûpas, hair or skin pores. This allegorical description of Daksha’s “sacrifice” is full of significance to the students of the Secret Doctrine who know of the “Sweat‐born.”

In the Vâyu Purâna’s account of the sacrifice, moreover, it is said to have taken place in the presence of creatures born from the egg, from the vapour, vegetation, pores of the skin, and, finally only, from the womb.(414)

Daksha typifies the early Third Race, holy and pure, as yet devoid of an Individual Ego, and possessing passive capacities only. Brahmâ, therefore, commands him to create (in the exoteric texts); when, obeying the command, he made “inferior and superior” (Avara and Vara) progeny (Putra), bipeds and quadrupeds; and by his will, gave birth to females, to the Gods, the Daityas (Giants of the Fourth Race), the snake‐gods, animals, cattle and the Dânavas (Titans and Demon Magicians) and other beings.

From that period forward, living creatures were engendered by sexual intercourse. Before the time of Daksha, they were variously propagated—by the will, by sight, by touch, and by the influence of religious austerities practised by devout sages and holy saints.(415)

And now comes the simply zoölogical teaching.

29. ANIMALS WITH BONES, DRAGONS OF THE DEEP, AND FLYING SARPAS(416) WERE ADDED TO THE CREEPING THINGS. THEY THAT CREEP ON THE GROUND GOT WINGS. THEY OF THE LONG NECKS IN THE WATER BECAME THE PROGENITORS OF THE FOWLS OF THE AIR.

This is a point on which the teachings and modern biological speculation are in perfect accord. The missing links representing this transition process between reptile and bird are apparent to the veriest bigot, especially in the Ornithoscelidæ, Hesperornis, and the Archæopteryx of Vogt.

30. DURING THE THIRD,(417) THE BONELESS ANIMALS GREW AND CHANGED; THEY BECAME ANIMALS WITH BONES, THEIR CHHÂYÂS BECAME SOLID.(418)

Vertebrates, and after that mammalians. Before that the animals were also ethereal proto‐organisms, just as man was.

31. THE ANIMALS SEPARATED THE FIRST.(419) THEY BEGAN TO BREED. THE TWO‐ FOLD MAN(420) SEPARATED ALSO. HE(421) SAID: “LET US AS THEY; LET US UNITE AND MAKE CREATURES.” THEY DID....

32. AND THOSE WHICH HAD NO SPARK(422) TOOK HUGE SHE‐ANIMALS UNTO THEM. THEY BEGAT UPON THEM DUMB RACES. DUMB THEY(423) WERE THEMSELVES. BUT THEIR TONGUES UNTIED.(424) THE TONGUES OF THEIR PROGENY REMAINED STILL. MONSTERS THEY BRED. A RACE OF CROOKED RED‐HAIR‐COVERED MONSTERS GOING ON ALL FOURS.(425) A DUMB RACE, TO KEEP THE SHAME UNTOLD.(426)

The fact of former hermaphrodite mammals and the subsequent separation of sexes is now indisputable, even from the standpoint of Biology. As Prof. Oscar Schmidt, an avowed Darwinist, shows:

Use and disuse, combined with selection, elucidate [?] the separation of the sexes, and the existence, otherwise totally incomprehensible, of rudimentary sexual organs. In the Vertebrata especially, each sex possesses such distinct traces of the reproductive apparatus characteristic of the other, that even antiquity assumed hermaphroditism as a natural primæval condition of mankind.... The tenacity with which these rudiments of sexual organs are inherited is remarkable. In the class of mammals, actual hermaphroditism is unheard of, although through the whole period of their development they drag along with them these residues, borne by their unknown ancestry, no one can say how long.(427)

“The animals separated the first,” says Shloka 31. Bear in mind that at that period men were different, even physiologically, to what they are now; the middle point of the Fifth Race being already passed. We are not told what the “huge she‐animals” were; but they certainly were as different from any we now know, as were the “men” from the men of to‐day.

This was the first physical “fall into matter” of some of the then existing and lower races. Bear in mind Shloka 24. The “Sons of Wisdom” had spurned the early Third Race, i.e., the non‐developed, and are shown incarnating in, and thereby endowing with intellect, the later Third Race. Thus the sin of the brainless or “mindless” Races, who had no “spark” and were irresponsible, fell upon those who failed to do by them their Karmic duty.

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