Masonic, Occult and Esoteric Online Library
Occult Chronology
By James Arther
The Descent of the Root base of the Hierarchy
More than once in the previous chapters it has been said that the date of 18 or roughly 20 million years B.C. is the crucial point in the evolution of the human races. It falls in the middle of the Third Race, in its fourth sub-race therefore. This “Third-Race-mankind is the most mysterious of all the hitherto developed five Races,” we are told by H.P.B (Secret Doctrine. II, 197). And its supreme mystery is the separation of the sexes. But that was only the physical apotheosis as it were of the mystery. It was preceded and accompanied by many other physical and intellectual fundamental changes in the constitution of man, which are of no less importance than the sexual transformation.
From “boneless” man became a creature “with bones,” a vertebrate, which made it possible for him at last to walk erect, and to develop that sense of dignity and of the greatness of his destiny, which is his divine heritage, if only he would understand all its implications. From “sexless,” through the “bi-sexual” stage, he completed his polarization, and definitely separated into the “mono-sexual” male and female species of modern times, thereby learning to know what love is, and companionship and friendship, as distinguished from egotism, hate, envy and enmity. From “mindness” he became possessed “with mind,” and thereby with discrimination, with a conscience, with the sense of morality and responsibility. From “dumb” he became endowed with “speech,” and all the possibilities opened up thereby, of social intercourse with his fellow humans, of poetry, literature, culture, and civilization in the true sense of this much abused word. And all these significant radical changes, with all their incalculably far-reaching consequences, were concomitants and corollaries of that central act of polarization, the physical separation of the sexes, which was started in the middle of the Third Race, some 18 or 20 million years ago.
It will be readily understood that, if there is in fact an Inner Government of the world, it must have put out a special effort to guide these fateful changes in the right direction, in the right places, and at the right times. And so we hear indeed of the Descent upon Earth of that “Wondrous Being” who is the “Root base of the Hierarchy,” the Tree from which in subsequent ages all the great historically known Sages and Hierophants have branched off,” known by many names - as“ the Initiator,” the “Great Sacrifice,” the “Solitary Watcher,” the “Great Teacher” of “all the other less divine teachers and instructors of mankind.” And it is “in the first or earlier portion of the existence of this Third Race, while it was yet in its state of purity,” that is, before its “Fall” and separation into different sexes, that this great Advent took place. The “first or earlier portion” of the Third Race embraces its first three and a half sub-races.
To understand the meaning of the “Fall” of the Third Race, when they lost their purity, we must take a bird’s-eye view of the previous stages of development. These we may describe as:
I. Entirely sexless, First Race;II. Still a-sexual, but showing a potential, a first germ of awakening sexuality, Second Race;
III. Bi-sexual, both sexes present in the same individual, first 3½ sub-races of the Third Race;
IV. Mono-sexual, the two sexes divided over different individuals, later sub-races and races.
Say the Stanzas of Dzyan: “The a-sexual Second Race was the product by budding and expansion from the sexless shadow” [the First Race] (Secret Doctrine II,116)
Add the Commentaries: “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 seed-Manus, or the Progenitors and Fathers.
“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 Mind, was not there as yet.
“2. From the First (Race) emanated the Second, called the ‘Sweat-born’ and the ‘Boneless.’ This is the Second Root-Race, endowed by the preservers and the incarnating gods 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 [sub] Races hereof are shells, till the last [sub-race] is ‘inhabited’ (i.e. informed) by the Intelligences” (Secret Doctrine. II, 164-5).
Says H.P.B: “The sexless [First] Race reincarnated in the (potentially) bisexual [or a-sexual Second Race]; the latter in the Androgynes [of the first 3½ sub-races of the Third Race]; these again in the [mono-] sexual, the later, Third Race” (Secret Doctrine - Volume II, pages 2-3).
“That Third and holy Race [holy, because not yet ‘fallen’ into different sexes] 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.’ The days of their physiological purity [i.e. before the Fall], and those of their so-called Fall, have equally survived in the hearts and memories of their descendants” (Secret Doctrine- Volume II, pages 171-72).
How did these earlier Lemurians of the first 3½ sub-races become the “depositories of all the mysteries,” and the “Kings and instructors of the Third Race in arts and sciences, compared with which our little modern science stands less chance than elementary arithmetic with geometry” (Secret Doctrine. II, 194)? With the answer to this question we return to that which we started, the foundation of the spiritual hierarchy upon the Earth.
“At first it was a Wondrous Being, called the ‘Initiator,’ and after him a group of semi-divine and semi-human beings. ‘Set-apart’ in Archaic genesis for certain purposes, they are those in whom are said to have incarnated the highest intellligencies. Wise Men and Sages from previous Manvantaras' - to form the nursery for future human adepts, on this Earth and during this cycle” (Secret Doctrine - Volume I, page 207).
And the descent of this Wondrous Being having taken place “in the early part of the Third Age, before the separation of the sexes of the Third Race,” must therefore have occurred more than 18 million years ago. Now in the earlier days Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater still kept to this figure as the foundation date of the Occult Hierarchy on this Earth.
Annie Besant in 1903: “The nucleus of the first great White Lodge upon earth - from that day, more than 18 million years ago, until now - has never ceases to function” (The Pedigree of Man, 1943, p.141).
C.W.Leadbeater in 1910: “the great Head of this Hierarchy, in whose hands is the fate of the continents, in whose name all initiations are given, is one of the very few now remaining upon earth of the Lords of the Flame, the Children of the Fire-Mist, the great beings who came down from Venus nearly [sic] 18 million years ago to help and lead the evolution of humanity on our chain” (The Inner Life, I, 9).
But in 1913 this was changed. In Man, etc, (page 102)” the coming of the Lords of the Flame” from Venus is said to have taken place “about 6½ million years ago.” How to explain this discrepancy from H.P.B’s figure? I have only one suggestion to offer. That The Secret Doctrine with its 18½ million, and Man with its 6½ million years are describing two different events, two “descents” in fact, related but not identical. I am led to this solution by H.P.B’s telling us that there were indeed two hierarchical “efforts.”
Speaking of “the first and holy Son of Magic Power,” she says that he “had his body gnawed by the tooth of time, but the roots of his inner being remained for ever un-decaying and strong, because they grew and expanded in heaven, not on earth. He was the first of the First, and he was the seed of all the others. There were other “Sons of Magic Power’ produced by a second Spiritual effort, [My italics.] but the very first one has remained to this day the Seed of divine Knowledge, the One and the Supreme among the terrestrial ‘Sons of Wisdom’” (Secret Doctrine. I, 211).
I am further strengthened in this conjecture by what C.W.Leadbeater tells us about there being “three successive Lords of the World” for every globe, and that “the present holder of the office [on the Earth] is already the third” (The Masters and the Path, 1940, page 332).
I believe, then, that the magnificent description given by Annie Besant in Man of the descent upon Earth of the Lords of the Flame from Venus, 6½ million years ago, refers to the third World-Lord, while the “descent” of 18 and odd million years ago, recorded by H.P.B, concerns the Second World-Lord. As to the First World-Lord, that must have been the exalted Being who directed the evolution of the first two and a half Races of mankind antecedent to 18 million B.C., for we cannot assume that these would have been left without guidance altogether, during the 130 millions of years, before the Advent of the Second World-Lord.
But this First World-Lord and His Hierarchy belonged to a class entirely different from the later Hierarchy. The latter being, as we have heard, especially intended “to form the nursery for future human adepts,” the former had no such purpose, as in the young days of the human races it could not yet hope for recruits to their ranks from the primitive human stock. Their quite different task, namely, to set the new races going in the right direction is thus described by the Master: “The Highest Planetary Spirits appear on Earth but at the origin of every new human kind; at the junction of, and close of, the two ends of the great cycle [i.e., the end of the previous and the beginning of the next Round]. And they remain with man no longer than the time required for the eternal truths they teach to impress themselves so forcibly upon the plastic mind of the new races as to warrant them from being lost or entirely forgotten in ages hereafter by the forthcoming generations. The mission of the planetary Spirit is but to strike the Keynote of Truth. Once he has directed the vibration of the latter to run its course uninterruptedly along the catenation of that race and to the end of the cycle - the denizen of the highest inhabited sphere disappears from the surface of our planet - till the following ‘resurrection of flesh’ [the next Round]. The vibrations of the Primitive Truth are what your [our] philosophers name ‘innate ideas’ “ (ML. 41).
Again: “At the beginning of each Round, when humanity reappears under quite different conditions than those afforded for the birth of each [succeeding] new race and its sub-races, a ‘Planetary’ has to mix with these primitive men, and to refresh their memories and reveal to them the truths they knew during the preceding Round. But that happens only for the benefit of the first Race” [read: Races]. And then the Master goes on to describe what apparently is the special task of the Second and Third Hierarchies, with their Second and Third World-Lords or Spiritual Heads. “It is the duty of the latter [the first Race or Races of the previous sentence] to choose the fit recipients among its sons [the human stock becoming fit to contribute its own recruits to the Hierarchy], who are ‘set apart’ [note the same expression used by H.P.B for the second Hierarchy] to use a Biblical phrase - as the vessel to contain the whole stock of knowledge, to be divided among the future races and generations until the close of that Round.”
Finally, the Third World-Lord must of course also have a special task, distinct from the First and Second Hierarchy, namely, to carry over to the new Round the result of the present cycle. Says the Master: “Every race had its adepts, and with every new race, we are allowed to give them out as much of our knowledge as the men of that race deserve it. The last seventh race will have its Buddha as every one of its predecessors had; but its adepts will be far higher than any of the present race, for among them will abide the future Planetary, the spiritual Intelligence whose duty it will be to instruct or ‘refresh the memory’ of the first race of the fifth Round men after this planet’s future obscuration” [ML 158]. And so we see Round linked to Round, evolution to evolution.
There remains one more problem regarding these Hierarchies to be solved. Of the First Head of the Hierarchy we have heard the Master say that He was a “denizen of the highest inhabited sphere.” Of the Second Head of the Hierarchy H.P.B, told us that He “descended from a ‘high region.’ “ But no further particulars are vouchsafed. Of the Third Head of the Hierarchy we are told that He came from Venus. This was propounded not only in Man but in the ten years older Pedigree as well. In the earlier teachings, however, either The Mahatma Letters or The Secret Doctrine, there is no straight pronouncement, directly connecting either of the three Hierarchies or their Heads with the planet Venus. But there are various indications pointing in that direction, in so far as regards either one or both of the two later Human Hierarchies, so to say, as distinguished from the “Planetary” First Hierarchy, to borrow the Master’s term.
Says H.P.B: “The third humanity [Third Race] those who fell into generation, or from [bisexual] androgynes became separate entities, one male and the other female, are said to be under the direct influence of Venus, the little sun in which the solar orb stores his light’ “ (Secret Doctrine - Volume II, page 24) [Secret Doctrine. II, 29. Lohitanga is Mars and not Venus. The words between brackets on line 9 from the top, should therefore be read: “the ‘fiery-bodied’ [Mars, and also under] Venus.] On the other hand, it is said of every Race that it is born under a special planet: the First under the Sun, the second under Jupiter, the Third under Mars and Venus, the Fourth under the Moon and Saturn, the Fifth under Mercury. On the same grounds we might infer that parts of the Hierarchies, or “descents” or “efforts” may have come also from some of the other Planets mentioned. And who knows if this has not indeed been the case, whether every Planet has not given some contribution towards the helping of the Earth on its path! I myself find the idea perfectly reasonable and logical, their spiritual Hierarchies are not! But it is somewhat beyond the point at issue, namely, whether one of the Heads of the Earthly Hierarchy came in fact from Venus.
Of stronger force are the following pronouncements from the Commentaries to the Stanzas of Dzyan: “Light comes [to the Earth] through Venus, who receives a triple supply, and gives one-third of it to the Earth. Therefore the two [the Earth and Venus] are called ‘twin-sisters,’ but the Spirit of the Earth is subservient to the ‘Lord of Venus. Our wise men represent the two Globes, one over, the other under the double Sign (the primeval Svastica, bereft of its four arms, or the cross+ )” (Secret Doctrine -Volume II, page 29). The two signs for the Earth and Venus are therefore respectively ? and ?.
This highly mystical passage needs some explanation to be fully understood in all its allusions and implications.
The “triple supply” which Venus receives, and of which it gives “one-third” to the Earth, so that it keeps only two-thirds for itself, is an allusion to the well-known astronomical fact, that Venus being nearer to the Sun than the Earth, “receives from the Sun twice as much light and heat as the Earth” (Secret Doctrine. II, 29). [“Twice as much” (2: 1) is right. “Twice more” (3:!) On the preceding page is wrong]. But behind this physical fact , and the other that Venus is “far older than the Earth” (Secret Doctrine. I, 155), there is hidden the spiritual fact that Venus is far in advance of the Earth in spiritual Wisdom, from the standpoint of one Round twice as far, being one full Round ahead of the Earth. And of this excess of spiritual light, like a true “twin-sister,” the “occult sister and alter-ego of the Earth” (Secret Doctrine. I, 305) it yields exactly half to its twin. This “half” of its Wisdom contributed to the Earth, may very well be interpreted as referring to the “descent” from Venus of the Lords of the Flame to take over the Inner Government of the Earth, whether this be the Second or the Third “effort,” or both. I think the latter the most probable.
Though twins, Venus is undoubtedly the First-born, the Elder, and therefore the “Spirit of the Earth,” that is, its Spiritual Hierarchy is “subservient” to the Lord of Venus, or to the Head of the Hierarchy on “the little Sun,” or “the Sol alter, ‘the other Sun’ “ as Venus is also called (Secret Doctrine. II, 31).
Some other texts, pointing all in the same direction, may finally be here collected together: “Venus is the most occult, powerful, and mysterious of all the planets” (Secret Doctrine. II, 30). “This planet is our Earth’s primary, and its spiritual proto-type. Hence Venus-Lucifer’s car is said to be drawn by an ogdoad of ‘earth-born horses’. Every sin committed on Earth is felt by Venus. The Teacher of the Atlanteans is the Guardian Spirit of the Earth and Men. Every change on Venus is felt on, and reflected by the Earth. Venus is thus represented as the preceptor of the Atlanteans, the giants of the [Third and] Fourth Race” (Secret Doctrine. II, 31).
