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The Secret Doctrine Vol I

By H.P. Blavatsky

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On the Elements and Atoms

When the Occultist speaks of Elements, and of human Beings who lived during those geological ages, the duration of which it is found as impossible to determine—according to the opinion of one of the best English Geologists960—as the nature of Matter, it is because he knows what he is talking about. When he says Man and Elements, he means neither man in his present physiological and anthropological form, nor the elemental Atoms, those hypothetical conceptions, existing at present in scientific minds, the entitative abstractions of Matter in its highly attenuated state; nor, again, does he mean the compound Elements of Antiquity. In Occultism the word Element in every case means Rudiment. When we say “Elementary Man,” we mean either the proëmial, incipient sketch of man, in its unfinished and undeveloped condition, hence in that form which now lies latent in physical man during his life-time, and takes shape only occasionally and under certain conditions; or, that form which for a time survives the material body, and which is better known as an Elementary.961 With regard to Element, when the term is used metaphysically, it means, in distinction to the mortal, the incipient Divine Man; and, in its physical usage, it means inchoate Matter in its first undifferentiated condition, or in the Laya state, the eternal and normal condition of Substance, which differentiates only periodically; during that differentiation, Substance is really in an abnormal state—in other words, it is but a transitory illusion of the senses.

As to the Elemental Atoms, so-called, the Occultists refer to them by that name with a meaning analogous to that which is given by [pg 620]the Hindû to Brahmâ, when he calls him Anu, the Atom. Every Elemental Atom, in search of which more than one Chemist has followed the path indicated by the Alchemists, is, in their firm belief, when not knowledge, a Soul; not necessarily a disembodied Soul, but a Jîva, as the Hindûs call it, a centre of Potential Vitality, with latent intelligence in it, and, in the case of compound Souls, an intelligent active Existence, from the highest to the lowest order, a form composed of more or less differentiations. It requires a Metaphysician—and an Eastern Metaphysician—to understand our meaning. All those Atom-Souls are differentiations from the One, and are in the same relation to it as is the Divine Soul, Buddhi, to its informing and inseparable Spirit, Âtmâ.

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

Light becomes heat, and consolidates into fiery particles; which, from being ignited, become cold, hard particles, round and smooth. And this is called Soul, imprisoned in its robe of matter.963
Atoms and Souls were synonymous in the language of the Initiates. The doctrine of “whirling Souls,” Gilgoolem, in which so many learned Jews have believed,964 had no other meaning esoterically. The [pg 621]learned Jewish Initiates never meant Palestine alone by the Promised Land, but they meant the same Nirvâna as do the learned Buddhist and Brahman—the bosom of the Eternal ONE, symbolized by that of Abraham, and by Palestine as its substitute on Earth.
Surely no educated Jew ever believed this allegory in its literal sense, that the bodies of Jews contain within them a principle of Soul which cannot rest, if the bodies are deposited in a foreign land, until, by a process called the “whirling of the Soul” the immortal particle reaches once more the sacred soil of the “Promised Land.”965 The meaning of this is evident to an Occultist. The process was supposed to be accomplished by a kind of metempsychosis, the psychic spark being conveyed through bird, beast, fish, and the most minute insect.966 The allegory relates to the Atoms of the body, each of which has to pass through every form, before all reach the final state, which is the first starting-point of the departure of every Atom—its primitive Laya state. But the primitive meaning of Gilgoolem, or the “Revolution of Souls,” was the idea of the reïncarnating Souls or Egos. “All the Souls go into the Gilgoolah,” into a cyclic or revolving process; i.e., they all proceed on the cyclic path of re-births. Some Kabalists interpret this doctrine to mean only a kind of purgatory for the souls of the wicked. But this is not so.
The passage of the Soul-Atom “through the seven Planetary Chambers” had the same metaphysical and physical meaning. It had the latter when it was said to dissolve into Ether. Even Epicurus, the model Atheist and Materialist, knew so much and believed so much in the ancient Wisdom, that he taught that the Soul—entirely distinct from immortal Spirit, when the former is enshrined latent in it, as it is in every atomic speck—was composed of a fine, tender essence, formed from the smoothest, roundest, and finest atoms.967

And this shows that the ancient Initiates, who were followed more or less closely by all profane Antiquity, meant by the term Atom, a Soul, a Genius or Angel, the first-born of the ever-concealed Cause of all causes; and in this sense their teachings become comprehensible. They asserted, as do their successors, the existence of Gods and Genii, Angels or Demons, not outside, nor independent of, the Universal Plenum, but within it. Only this Plenum, during the life-cycles, is infinite. They admitted and taught a good deal of that which modern Science now teaches—namely, the existence of a primordial World-Stuff [pg 622]or Cosmic Substance, eternally homogeneous, except during its periodic existence; then, universally diffused throughout infinite Space, it differentiates, and gradually forms sidereal bodies from itself. They taught the revolution of the Heavens, the Earth's rotation, the Heliocentric System, and the Atomic Vortices—Atoms being in reality Souls and Intelligences. These “Atomists” were spiritual, most transcendental, and philosophical Pantheists. It is not they who would have ever conceived or dreamed that monstrous contrasted progeny, the nightmare of our modern civilized race: inanimate material and self-guiding Atoms, on the one hand, and an extra-cosmic God on the other.
It may be useful to show what the Monad was, and what its origin, in the teachings of the old Initiates.
Modern exact Science, as soon as it began to grow out of its teens, perceived the great, and to it hitherto esoteric, axiom, that nothing, whether in the spiritual, psychic, or physical realm of Being, could come into existence out of nothing. There is no cause in the manifested Universe without its adequate effects, whether in Space or Time; nor can there be an effect without its primal cause, which itself owes its existence to a still higher one—the final and absolute Cause having to remain to man for ever an incomprehensible Causeless Cause. But even this is no solution, and must be viewed, if at all, from the highest philosophical and metaphysical standpoints, otherwise the problem had better be left unapproached. It is an abstraction, on the verge of which human reason—however trained in metaphysical subtleties—trembles, threatening to collapse. This may be demonstrated to any European, who would undertake to solve the problem of existence, by the articles of faith of the true Vedântin for instance. Let him read and study the sublime teachings of Shankarâchârya, on the subject of Soul and Spirit, and the reader will realize what is now said.968

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

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

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

For Buddhi, the Anandamaya Sheath, is but a mirror which reflects absolute bliss; and, moreover, that reflection itself is yet not free from ignorance, and is not the Supreme Spirit, since it is subject to conditions, is a spiritual modification of Prakriti, and is an effect; Âtmâ alone is the one real and eternal substratum of all, the Essence and Absolute Knowledge, the Kshetrajña. Now that the Revised Version of the Gospels has been published and the most glaring mistranslations of the old versions are corrected, one can understand better the words in 1 John v. 6: “It is the Spirit that beareth witness because the Spirit is truth.” The words that follow in the mistranslated version about the “three witnesses,” hitherto supposed to stand for “the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost,” show the real meaning of the writer very clearly, thus still more forcibly identifying his teaching in this respect with that of Shankarâchârya. For what can the sentence mean, “there are three that bear witness ... the Spirit and the Water and the Blood”—if it bears no relation to, nor connection with, the more philosophical statement of the great Vedântin teacher, who, speaking of the Sheaths—the principles in man—Jîva, Vijñânamaya, etc., which are, in their physical manifestation, “Water and Blood” or Life, adds that Âtmâ, Spirit, alone is what remains after the subtraction of the Sheaths and that it is the Only Witness, or synthesized unity. The less spiritual and philosophical school, solely with an eye to a Trinity, made three witnesses out of “one,” thus connecting it more with Earth than with Heaven. It is called in Esoteric Philosophy the “One [pg 624]Witness,” and, while it rests in Devachan, is referred to as the “Three Witnesses to Karma.”

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

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

Whatever entities there are in this world, moveable or immoveable, they are the very first to be dissolved [at Pralaya]; and next the developments produced from the elements [from which the visible universe is fashioned]; and (after) these developments [evolved entities], all the elements. Such is the upward gradation among entities. Gods, Men, Gandharvas, Pishâchas, Asuras, Râkshasas, all have been created by Nature [Svabhâva, or Prakriti, plastic Nature], not by actions, nor by a cause [not by any physical cause]. These Brâhmanas [the Rishi Prajâpati?], the creators of the world, are born here (on earth) again and again. [pg 625]And whatever is produced from them is dissolved in due time in those very five great elements [the five, or rather seven, Dhyâni-Buddhas, also called “Elements”of Mankind], like billows in the ocean. These great elements are in every way (beyond) the elements that make up the world [the gross elements]. And he who is released, even from these five elements [the Tanmâtras],969 goes to the highest goal. The Lord Prajâpati [Brahmâ] created all this by the mind only [by Dhyâna, or abstract meditation and mystic powers, like the Dhyâni-Buddhas].970

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

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

The Logos, or both the unmanifested and the manifested Word, is called by the Hindûs, Îshvara, the Lord, though the Occultists give it another name. Îshvara, say the Vedântins, is the highest consciousness in Nature. “This highest consciousness,” answer the Occultists, “is only a synthetic unit in the World of the manifested Logos—or on the plane of illusion; for it is the sum total of Dhyân Chohanic consciousness.” “O wise man, remove the conception that Not-Spirit is Spirit”—says Shankarâchârya. Âtmâ is Not-Spirit in its final Parabrahmic state; Îshvara, or Logos, is Spirit; or, as Occultism explains, it is a compound unity of manifested living Spirits, the parent-source and nursery of all the mundane and terrestrial Monads, plus their divine Reflection, which emanate from, and return into, the Logos, each in the culmination of its time. There are seven chief Groups of such Dhyân Chohans, which groups will be found and recognized in every religion, for they are the primeval Seven Rays. Humanity, Occultism teaches us, is divided into seven distinct Groups, with their sub-divisions, mental, spiritual, and physical. Hence there are seven chief planets, the spheres of the indwelling seven Spirits, under each of which is born one of the human Groups which is guided and influenced thereby. There are only seven planets specially connected with Earth, and twelve houses, but the possible combinations of their aspects are countless. As each planet can stand to each of the others in twelve different aspects, their combinations must be almost infinite; as infinite, in fact, as the spiritual, psychic, mental, and physical [pg 627]capacities in the numberless varieties of the genus homo, each of which varieties is born under one of the seven planets and one of the said countless planetary combinations.971

The Monad, then, viewed as One, is above the seventh principle in Kosmos and man; and as a Triad, it is the direct radiant progeny of the said compound Unit, not the Breath of “God,” as that Unit is called, nor creating out of nihil; for such an idea is quite unphilosophical, and degrades Deity, dragging It down to a finite, attributive condition. As well expressed by the translator of the Crest-Jewel of Wisdom—though Îshvara is “God.”
Unchanged in the profoundest depths of Pralayas and in the intensest activity of Manvantaras, [still] beyond [him] is ÂTMÂ, round whose pavilion is the darkness of eternal MÂYÂ.972
The “Triads” born under the same Parent-Planet, or rather the Radiations of one and the same Planetary Spirit or Dhyâni-Buddha are, in all their after lives and rebirths, sister, or “twin” souls, on this Earth. The idea is the same as that of the Christian Trinity, the “Three in One,” only it is still more metaphysical: the Universal “Over-Spirit,” manifesting on the two higher planes, those of Buddhi and Mahat. These are the three Hypostases, metaphysical, but never personal.

This was known to every high Initiate in every age and in every country: “I and my Father are one,” said Jesus.973 When he is made to say, elsewhere: “I ascend to my Father and your Father,”974 it meant that which has just been stated. The identity, and at the same time the illusive differentiation of the Angel-Monad and the Human-Monad is shown in the sentences: “My Father is greater than I”;975 “Glorify your Father which is in Heaven”;976 “Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (not our Father).977 So [pg 628]again Paul asks: “Know ye not ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?”978 All this was simply meant to show that the group of disciples and followers attracted to him belonged to the same Dhyâni-Buddha, Star, or Father, and that this again belonged to the same planetary realm and division as he did. It is the knowledge of this Occult Doctrine that found expression in the review of The Idyll of the White Lotus, when T. Subba Row wrote:

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

It is then the Seven Sons of Light,—called after their planets and often identified with them by the rabble, namely, Saturn, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, Venus, and presumably the Sun and Moon, for the modern critic, who goes no deeper than the surface of old religions980—which are, according to the Occult Teachings, our heavenly Parents, or synthetically our “Father.” Hence, as already remarked, Polytheism is really more philosophical and correct, as to fact and Nature, than is anthropomorphic Monotheism. Saturn, Jupiter, Mercury, and Venus, the four exoteric planets, and the three others, which must remain unnamed, were the heavenly bodies in direct astral and psychic communication, morally and physically, with the Earth, its Guides, and Watchers; the visible orbs furnishing our Humanity with its outward and inward characteristics, and their Regents or Rectors with our [pg 629]Monads and spiritual faculties. In order to avoid creating new misconceptions, let it be stated that among the three Secret Orbs, or Star-Angels, neither Uranus nor Neptune were included; not only because they were unknown under these names to the ancient Sages, but because they, like all other planets, however many there may be, are the Gods and Guardians of other septenary Chains of Globes within our System.

Nor do the two great planets last discovered depend entirely on the Sun, as do the rest of the planets. Otherwise, how can we explain the fact that Uranus receives 1/390th part of the light received by our Earth, while Neptune receives only 1/900th part; and that their satellites show a peculiarity of inverse rotation found in no other planets of the Solar System? At any rate, what we say applies to Uranus, though the fact has again been disputed recently.
This subject will, of course, be considered as a mere vagary, by all those who confuse the universal order of Being with their own systems of classification. Here, however, simple facts from Occult Teachings are stated, to be either accepted or rejected, as the case may be. There are details which, on account of their great metaphysical abstraction, cannot be entered upon. Hence, we merely state that only seven of our planets are as intimately related to our Globe, as the Sun is to all the bodies subject to him in his System. Of these bodies the poor little number of primary and secondary planets known to Astronomy, looks wretched enough, in truth.981 Therefore, it stands to reason that there are a great number of planets, small and large, that have not been discovered yet, but of the existence of which ancient Astronomers—all of them initiated Adepts—must certainly have been aware. But, as the relation of these to the Gods was sacred, it had to remain arcane, as did also the names of various other planets and stars.

Besides this, even the Roman Catholic Theology speaks of “seventy planets that preside over the destinies of the nations of this globe;” and, save the erroneous application, there is more truth in this tradition than in exact modern Astronomy. The seventy planets are connected [pg 630]with the seventy elders of the people of Israel,982 and the Regents of these planets are meant, not the orbs themselves; the word seventy is a play and a blind upon the 7 × 7 of the subdivisions. Each people and nation, as we have already said, has its direct Watcher, Guardian and Father in Heaven—a Planetary Spirit. We are willing to leave their own national God, Jehovah, to the descendants of Israel, the worshippers of Sabaoth or Saturn; for, indeed, the Monads of the people chosen by him are his own, and the Bible has never made any secret of it. Only the text of the Protestant English Bible is, as usual, in disagreement with those of the Septuagint and the Vulgate. Thus, while in the former we read:

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

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

The planetary origin of the Monad, or Soul, and of its faculties was taught by the Gnostics. On its way to the Earth, as on its way back from the Earth, each soul born in, and from, the “Boundless Light,”985 had to pass through the seven planetary regions either way. The pure Dhyâni and Devas of the oldest religions had become, in course of time, with the Zoroastrians, the Seven Devs, the ministers of Ahriman, “each chained to his planet”;986 with the Brâhmans, the Asuras and some of the Rishis—good, bad and indifferent; among the Egyptian Gnostics it was Thoth, or Hermes, who was the chief of the Seven [pg 631]whose names are given by Origen as Adonai, genius of the Sun; Tao, of the Moon; Eloi, of Jupiter; Sabaoth, of Mars; Orai, of Venus; Astaphai, of Mercury; and Ildabaoth (Jehovah), of Saturn. Finally, the Pistis-Sophia, which the greatest modern authority on exoteric Gnostic beliefs, the late Mr. C. W. King, refers to as “that precious monument of Gnosticism”—this old document echoes the archaic belief of the ages, while distorting it to suit sectarian purposes. The Astral Rulers of the Spheres, the planets, create the Monads, or Souls, from their own substance out of “the tears of their eyes, and the sweat of their torments,” endowing the Monads with a spark of their substance which is the Divine Light. It will be shown in Volume II why these “Lords of the Zodiac and Spheres” have been transformed by sectarian Theology into the Rebellious Angels of the Christians, who took them from the Seven Devs of the Magi, without understanding the significance of the allegory.987
As usual, that which is, and was from its beginning, divine, pure, and spiritual in its earliest unity, became—by reason of its differentiation through the distorted prism of man's conceptions—human and impure, as reflecting man's own sinful nature. Thus, in time, the planet Saturn became reviled by the worshippers of other Gods. The nations born under Saturn—the Jewish, for instance, with whom he became Jehovah, after being considered as a son of Saturn, or Ilda-Baoth, by the Ophites, and in the Book of Jasher—were eternally fighting with those born under Jupiter, Mercury, or any other planet, except Saturn-Jehovah; genealogies and prophecies notwithstanding, Jesus the Initiate (or Jehoshua)—the type from whom the “historical” Jesus was copied—was not of pure Jewish blood, and thus recognized no Jehovah; nor did he worship any planetary God beside his own “Father,” whom he knew, and with whom he communed, as every high Initiate does, “Spirit to Spirit and Soul to Soul.” This can hardly be taken exception to, unless the critic explains to every one's satisfaction the strange sentences put into the mouth of Jesus during his disputes with the Pharisees by the author of the Fourth Gospel:
I know that ye are Abraham's seed988.... I speak that which I have seen with my Father; and ye do that which ye have seen with your Father.... Ye do the deeds of your Father.... Ye are of your Father, the Devil.... He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth [pg 632]in him. When he speaketh a lie he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar and the father of it.989
This “Father” of the Pharisees was Jehovah, for he was identical with Cain, Saturn, Vulcan, etc.—the planet under which they were born, and the God whom they worshipped. Evidently there must be an Occult meaning sought in these words and admonitions, however mistranslated, since they are pronounced by one who threatened with hell-fire anyone who says to his brother simply Raca, fool.990 And evidently, again, the planets are not merely spheres, twinkling in Space, and made to shine for no purpose, but they are the domains of various Beings with whom the uninitiated are so far unacquainted, but who have, nevertheless, a mysterious, unbroken, and powerful connection with men and globes. Every heavenly body is the temple of a God, and these Gods themselves are the temples of God, the Unknown “Not Spirit.” There is nothing profane in the Universe. All Nature is a consecrated place, as Young says:
Each of these Stars is a religious house.
Thus can all exoteric religions be shown to be the falsified copies of the Esoteric Teaching. It is the priesthood which has to be held responsible for the reaction of our day in favour of Materialism. It is by worshipping and enforcing on the masses the worship of the shells of pagan ideals—personified for purposes of allegory—that the latest exoteric religion has made of Western lands a Pandemonium, in which the higher classes worship the golden calf, and the lower and ignorant masses are made to worship an idol with feet of clay.
[pg 633]