Masonic, Occult and Esoteric Online Library
The Secret Doctrine
By Helena P. Blavatsky
Book II-Part I- Attempts To Create Man
§§ (11) The Descent of the Demiurge. (12) The lunar gods ordered to create. (13) The higher gods refuse.
11. THE LORD OF THE LORDS CAME. FROM HER BODY HE SEPARATED THE WATERS, AND THAT WAS HEAVEN ABOVE, THE FIRST HEAVEN (the atmosphere, or the air, the firmament) (a).
(a) Here tradition falls again into the Universal. As in the earliest version, repeated in the Puranas, so in the latest, the Mosaic account. In the first it is said: "He the Lord" (the god who has the form of Brahma) "when the world had become one ocean (Harivamsa I. 36) concluding that within the waters lay the earth, and desirous to raise it up," to separate it, "created himself in another form. As in the preceding Kalpa (Manvantara) he had assumed the shape of a tortoise, so in this one he took the shape of a boar, etc. etc." In the Elohistic "creation" (Genesis, verses 6, 7, 8, and 9) "God" creates a firmament in the midst of the waters . . . . . and says "let dry land appear." And now comes the traditional peg whereunto is hung the esoteric portion of the Kabalistic interpretation.
11.. THE GREAT CHOHANS (Lords), CALLED THE LORDS OF THE MOON, OF THE AIRY BODIES (a). "BRING FORTH MEN, (they were told), MEN OF YOUR NATURE. GIVE THEM (i.e., the Jivas or Monads) THEIR FORMS WITHIN. SHE (Mother Earth or Nature) WILL BUILD COVERINGS WITHOUT (external bodies). (For) MALES-FEMALES WILL THEY BE. LORDS OF THE FLAME, ALSO."
(a) Who are the Lords of the Moon? In India they are called Pitris or "lunar ancestors," but in the Hebrew scrolls it is Jehovah himself who is the "Lord of the Moon," collectively as the Host, and also as one of the Elohim. The astronomy of the Hebrews and their observance of times was regulated by the moon. A Kabalist, having shown that "Daniel . . . told off God's providence by set times," and that the "Revelation" of John "speaks of a carefully measured cubical city descending out of the heavens," etc., adds --
"But the vitalizing power of heaven lay chiefly with the moon. . . . It was the Hebrew (Jehovah), and St. Paul enjoins: 'Let no man judge you for your observance of the seventh day, and the day of the new moon, which are a shadow of things to come; but the body (or substance) is of Christ" or Jehovah, that function of this power that "made the barren woman . . . a mother . . . for they are the gift of Jehovah" . . . which is a key to the objection which her husband made to the Shunamite, as to her going to the man of God -- "for it is neither the seventh day nor the day of the new moon. . . . (2 Kings, iv., 23.) The living spiritual powers of the constellations had mighty wars, marked by the movements and positions of the stars and planets, and especially as the result of the conjunction of the moon, earth, and sun. Bentley comments on the Hindu "War between the gods and the giants," as marked by the eclipse of the Sun at the ascending node of the Moon, 945 B.C. (! !), at which time was born* or produced from the sea, SRI (Sarai, S-r-i, the wife of the Hebrew A-bram**). Sri is also Venus-Aphrodite the Western emblem "of the luni-solar year or the moon (as Sri is the wife of the moon; vide foot-note), the goddess of increase*** . . . " Therefore . . . "the grand monument and landmark of the exact period of the lunar year and month, by which this cycle (of 19 tropical years and 235 revolutions of the moon) could be calculated, was Mount Sinai -- the Lord Jehovah coming down thereon. . . . Paul speaks (then) as a mystagogue, when he says concerning the freed woman and bond woman of Abraham: 'For this Hagar (the bond-woman) is Mount Sinai in Arabia.' How could a woman be a mountain? and such a mountain! Yet . . . she was. . . . Her name was Hagar, Hebrew , whose numbers re-read 235, or in exact measure, the very number of lunar months to equal nineteen tropical years to complete this cycle. . . . Mount Sinai being, in the esoteric language of the wisdom, the monument of the exact time of the lunar years and months, by which this spiritual vitalizing cycle could be computed -- and which mountain, indeed, was called (see Fuerst), "the Mountain of the Moon (Sin). So also Sarai (SRI), the wife of Abram, could have no child until her name was changed to Sarah, , giving to her the property of this lunar influence."*
This may be regarded as a digression from the main subject; but it is a very necessary one with a view to Christian readers. For who, after studying dispassionately the respective legends of Abram or Abraham, Sarai or Sarah, who was "fair to look upon," and those of Brahma and Sarasvati, or Sri, Lakshmi-Venus, with the relations of all these to the Moon and Water; -- and especially one who understands the real Kabalistic meaning of the name Jehovah and its relation to, and connection with, the moon -- who can doubt that the story of Abram is based upon that of Brahma, or that Genesis was written upon the old lines used by every ancient nation? All in the ancient Scriptures is allegorical -- all based upon and inseparably connected with Astronomy and Cosmolatry.
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13. THEY (the Moon-gods) WENT, EACH ON HIS ALLOTTED LAND: SEVEN OF THEM, EACH ON HIS LOT. THE LORDS OF THE FLAME REMAINED BEHIND. THEY WOULD NOT GO, THEY WOULD NOT CREATE (a).
(a) The Secret teachings show the divine Progenitors creating men on seven portions of the globe "each on his lot" -- i.e., each a different race of men externally and internally, and on different zones. This polygenistic claim is considered elsewhere (vide Stanza VII.). But who are "They" who create, and the "Lords of the Flame," "who do not"? Occultism divides the "Creators" into twelve classes; of which four have reached liberation to the end of the "Great Age," the fifth is ready to reach it, but still remains active on the intellectual planes, while seven are still under direct Karmic law. These last act on the man-bearing globes of our chain.
Exoteric Hindu books mention seven classes of Pitris, and among them two distinct kinds of Progenitors or Ancestors: the Barhishad and the Agnishwatta; or those possessed of the "sacred fire" and those devoid of it. Hindu ritualism seems to connect them with sacrificial fires, and with Grihasta Brahmins in earlier incarnations: those who have, and those who have not attended as they should to their household sacred fires in their previous births. The distinction, as said, is derived from the Vedas. The first and highest class (esoterically) the Agnishwatta, are represented in the exoteric allegory as Grihasta (Brahman-householders) who, in their past births in other Manvantaras having failed to maintain their domestic fires and to offer burnt sacrifices, have lost every right to have oblations with fire presented to them. Whereas the Barhishad, being Brahmins who have kept up their household sacred fires, are thus honoured to this day. Thence the Agnishwatta are represented as devoid of, and the Barhishad as possessed of, fires.
But esoteric philosophy explains the original qualifications as being due to the difference between the natures of the two classes: the Agnishwatta Pitris are devoid of fire (i.e., of creative passion), because too divine and pure (vide supra, Sloka 11th); whereas the Barhishad, being the lunar spirits more closely connected with Earth, became the creative Elohim of form, or the Adam of dust.
The allegory says that Sanandana and other Vedhas, the Sons of Brahma, his first progeny, "were without desire or passion, inspired with the holy wisdom, estranged from the Universe and undesirous of progeny" (Vishnu Purana, Book I. vii.). This also is what is meant in Sloka 11 by the words: "They would not create," and is explained as follows: -- "The primordial Emanations from the creative Power are too near the absolute Cause. They are transitional and latent forces, which will develop only in the next and subsequent removes." This makes it plain. Hence Brahma is said to have felt wrathful when he saw that those "embodied spirits, produced from his limbs (gatra), would not multiply themselves." After which, in the allegory, he creates other seven mind-born Sons (see "Moksha-Darma" and "Mahabharata"), namely, Marichi, Atri, Angiras, Pulastya, Pulaha, Kratu and Vasishta, the latter being often replaced by Daksha, the most prolific of the creators. In most of the texts these Seven Sons of Vasishta-Daksha are called the seven Rishis of the Third Manvantara; the latter referring both to the Third Round and also to the third Root-Race and its branch-Races in the Fourth Round. These are all the creators of the various beings on this Earth, the Prajapati, and at the same time they appear as divers reincarnations in the early Manvantaras or races.
It thus becomes clear why the Agnishwatta, devoid of the grosser creative fire, hence unable to create physical man, having no double, or astral body, to project, since they were without any form, are shown in exoteric allegories as Yogis, Kumaras (chaste youths), who became "rebels," Asuras, fighting and opposing gods,* etc., etc. Yet it is they alone who could complete man, i.e., make of him a self-conscious, almost a divine being -- god on Earth. The Barhishad, though possessed of creative fire, were devoid of the higher MAHAT-mic element. Being on a level with the lower principles -- those which precede gross objective matter -- they could only give birth to the outer man, or rather to the model of the physical, the astral man. Thus, though we see them intrusted with the task by Brahma (the collective Mahat or Universal Divine Mind), the "Mystery of Creation" is repeated on Earth, only in an inverted sense, as in a mirror. It is those who are unable to create the spiritual immortal man, who project the senseless model (the Astral) of the physical Being; and, as will be seen, it was those who would not multiply, who sacrificed themselves to the good and salvation of Spiritual Humanity. For, to complete the septenary man, to add to his three lower principles and cement them with the spiritual Monad -- which could never dwell in such a form otherwise than in an absolutely latent state -- two connecting principles are needed: Manas and Kama. This requires a living Spiritual Fire of the middle principle from the fifth and third states of Pleroma. But this fire is the possession of the Triangles, not of the (perfect) Cubes, which symbolize the Angelic Beings:* the former having from the first creation got hold of it and being said to have appropriated it for themselves, as in the allegory of Prometheus. These are the active, and therefore -- in Heaven -- no longer "pure" Beings. They have become the independent and free Intelligences, shown in every Theogony as fighting for that independence and freedom, and hence -- in the ordinary sense -- "rebellious to the divine passive law." These are then those "Flames" (the Agnishwatta) who, as shown in Sloka 13, "remain behind" instead of going along with the others to create men on Earth. But the true esoteric meaning is that most of them were destined to incarnate as the Egos of the forthcoming crop of Mankind. The human Ego is neither Atman nor Buddhi, but the higher Manas: the intellectual fruition and the efflorescence of the intellectual self-conscious Egotism -- in the higher spiritual sense. The ancient works refer to it as Karana Sarira on the plane of Sutratma, which is the golden thread on which, like beads, the various personalities of this higher Ego are strung. If the reader were told, as in the semi-esoteric allegories, that these Beings were returning Nirvanees, from preceding Maha-Manvantaras -- ages of incalculable duration which have rolled away in the Eternity, a still more incalculable time ago -- he would hardly understand the text correctly; while some Vedantins might say: "This is not so; the Nirvanee can never return"; which is true during the Manvantara he belongs to, and erroneous where Eternity is concerned. For it is said in the Sacred Slokas:
"The thread of radiance which is imperishable and dissolves only in Nirvana, re-emerges from it in its integrity on the day when the Great Law calls all things back into action. . . ."
Hence, as the higher "Pitris or Dhyanis" had no hand in his physical creation, we find primeval man, issued from the bodies of his spiritually fireless progenitors, described as aeriform, devoid of compactness, and MINDLESS. He had no middle principle to serve him as a medium between the highest and the lowest, the spiritual man and the physical brain, for he lacked Manas. The Monads which incarnated in those empty SHELLS, remained as unconscious as when separated from their previous incomplete forms and vehicles. There is no potentiality for creation, or self-Consciousness, in a pure Spirit on this our plane, unless its too homogeneous, perfect, because divine, nature is, so to say, mixed with, and strengthened by, an essence already differentiated. It is only the lower line of the Triangle -- representing the first triad that emanates from the Universal MONAD -- that can furnish this needed consciousness on the plane of differentiated Nature. But how could these pure Emanations, which, on this principle, must have originally been themselves unconscious (in our sense), be of any use in supplying the required principle, as they could hardly have possessed it themselves? The answer is difficult to comprehend, unless one is well acquainted with the philosophical metaphysics of a beginningless and endless series of Cosmic Re-births; and becomes well impressed and familiarised with that immutable law of Nature which is ETERNAL MOTION, cyclic and spiral, therefore progressive even in its seeming retrogression. The one divine Principle, the nameless THAT of the Vedas, is the universal Total, which, neither in its spiritual aspects and emanations, nor in its physical atoms, can ever be at "absolute rest" except during the "Nights" of Brahma. Hence, also, the "first-born" are those who are first set in motion at the beginning of a Manvantara, and thus the first to fall into the lower spheres of materiality. They who are called in Theology "the Thrones," and are the "Seat of God," must be the first incarnated men on Earth; and it becomes comprehensible, if we think of the endless series of past Manvantaras, to find that the last had to come first, and the first last. We find, in short, that the higher Angels had broken, countless aeons before, through the "Seven Circles," and thus robbed them of the Sacred fire; which means in plain words, that they had assimilated during their past incarnations, in lower as well as in higher worlds, all the wisdom therefrom -- the reflection of MAHAT in its various degrees of intensity. No Entity, whether angelic or human, can reach the state of Nirvana, or of absolute purity, except through aeons of suffering and the knowledge of EVIL as well as of good, as otherwise the latter remains incomprehensible.
Between man and the animal -- whose Monads (or Jivas) are fundamentally identical -- there is the impassable abyss of Mentality and Self-consciousness. What is human mind in its higher aspect, whence comes it, if it is not a portion of the essence -- and, in some rare cases of incarnation, the very essence -- of a higher Being: one from a higher and divine plane? Can man -- a god in the animal form -- be the product of Material Nature by evolution alone, even as is the animal, which differs from man in external shape, but by no means in the materials of its physical fabric, and is informed by the same, though undeveloped, Monad -- seeing that the intellectual potentialities of the two differ as the Sun does from the Glow-worm? And what is it that creates such difference, unless man is an animal plus a living god within his physical shell? Let us pause and ask ourselves seriously the question, regardless of the vagaries and sophisms of both the materialistic and the psychological modern sciences.
To some extent, it is admitted that even the esoteric teaching is allegorical. To make the latter comprehensible to the average intelligence, requires the use of symbols cast in an intelligible form. Hence the allegorical and semi-mythical narratives in the exoteric, and the (only) semi-metaphysical and objective representations in the esoteric teachings. For the purely and transcendentally spiritual conceptions are adapted only to the perceptions of those who "see without eyes, hear without ears, and sense without organs," according to the graphic expression of the Commentary. The too puritan idealist is at liberty to spiritualise the tenet, whereas the modern psychologist would simply try to spirit away our "fallen," yet still divine, human Soul in its connection with Buddhi.
The mystery attached to the highly spiritual ancestors of the divine man within the earthly man is very great. His dual creation is hinted at in the Puranas, though its esoteric meaning can be approached only by collating together the many varying accounts, and reading them in their symbolical and allegorical character. So it is in the Bible, both in Genesis and even in the Epistles of Paul. For that creator, who is called in the second chapter of Genesis the "Lord God," is in the original the Elohim, or Gods (the Lords), in the plural; and while one of them makes the earthly Adam of dust, the other breathes into him the breath of life, and the third makes of him a living soul (ii. 7), all of which readings are implied in the plural number of the Elohim.* "The first man is of the Earth, the second (the last, or rather highest) is from heaven," says Paul in I. Corinthians xv. 47.
In the Aryan allegory the rebellious Sons of Brahma are all represented as holy ascetics and Yogis. Re-born in every Kalpa, they generally try to impede the work of human procreation. When Daksha, the chief of the Prajapati (creators), brings forth 10,000 sons for the purpose of peopling the world, Narada -- a son of Brahma, the great Rishi, and virtually a "Kumara," if not so in name -- interferes with, and twice frustrates Daksha's aim, by persuading those Sons to remain holy ascetics and eschew marriage. For this, Daksha curses Narada to be re-born as a man, as Brahma had cursed him before for refusing to marry, and obtain progeny, saying: -- "Perish in thy present (Deva or angelic) form and take up thy abode in the womb," i.e., become a man (Vayu Purana; Harivamsa, 170). Notwithstanding several conflicting versions of the same story, it is easy to see that Narada belongs to that class of Brahma's, "first-born," who have all proven rebellious to the law of animal procreation, for which they had to incarnate as men. Of all the Vedic Rishis, Narada, as already shown, is the most incomprehensible, because the most closely connected with the occult doctrines -- especially with the secret cycles and Kalpas (vide supra).
Certain contradictory statements about this Sage have much distracted the Orientalists. Thus he is shown as refusing positively to create (have progeny), and even as calling his father Brahma "a false teacher" for advising him to get married ("Narada-Pancha-Ratra"); nevertheless, he is referred to as one of the Prajapati, "progenitors"! In Naradiya Purana, he describes the laws and the duties of the celibate adepts; and as these occult duties do not happen to be found in the fragment of about 3,000 Stanzas in the possession of European museums, the Brahmins are proclaimed liars;
the Orientalists forgetting that the Naradiya is credited with containing 25,000 Stanzas, and that it is not very likely that such MSS. should be found in the hands of the Hindu profane, those who are ready to sell any precious olla for a red pottage. Suffice it to say, that Narada is the Deva-Rishi of Occultism par excellence; and that the Occultist who does not ponder, analyse, and study Narada from his seven esoteric facets, will never be able to fathom certain anthropological, chronological, and even Cosmic Mysteries. He is one of the Fires above-mentioned, and plays a part in the evolution of this Kalpa from its incipient, down to its final stage. He is an actor who appears in each of the successive acts (Root-Races) of the present Manvantaric drama, in the world allegories which strike the key-note of esotericism, and are now becoming more familiar to the reader. But shall we turn to other ancient Scriptures and documents for the corroboration of the "Fires," "Sparks," and "Flames?" They are plentiful, if one only seeks for them in the right places. In the "Book of the Concealed Mystery," they are clearly enunciated, as also in the "Ha Idra Zuta Qadisha," or the lesser holy Assembly. The language is very mystical and veiled, yet still comprehensible. Therein, among the sparks of Prior Worlds, "vibrating Flames and Sparks," from the divine flint, the workmen proceed to create man, "male and female" (427); which "Flames and Sparks" (Angels and their Worlds, Stars and Planets) are said, figuratively, to "become extinct and die," that is to say, remain unmanifested until a certain process of nature is accomplished. To show how thickly veiled from public view are the most important facts of anthropogenesis, two passages are now quoted from two Kabalistic books. The first is from the Book of the Concealed Mystery: --
(429.) From a Light-Bearer (one of the seven sacred planets) of insupportable brightness proceeded a radiating Flame, dashing off, like a vast and mighty hammer, those sparks which were the prior worlds.
(430.) And with most subtle ether were these intermingled and bound mutually together, but only when they were conjoined together, even the great Father and great Mother.
(431.) From Hoa, himself, is AB, the Father; and from Hoa, himself, is RUACH, the Spirit; who are hidden in the Ancient of Days, and therein is that Ether concealed.
(432.) And it was connected with a Light-Bearer (a planet and its angel or regent), which went forth from that Light-Bearer of insupportable brightness, which is hidden in the bosom of Aima, the Great Mother.*
Now the following extract from the Zohar** also deals with the same mystery: -- "The Pre-Adamite Kings. 'We have learned in the Siphrah D'Tzniootha: That the At-tee'kah DAt-tee'keen, Ancient of Ancients, before He prepared his Form, built Kings, and engraved Kings, and sketched out Kings (men, the Kings of the animals), and they could not exist: till he overthrew them and hid them until after a time, therefore it is written: 'And these are the Kings which reigned in the land of Edom' . . . . And they could not exist till Resha'Hiv'rah, the White Head, the At'-tee-'kah D'At-tee'keen, Ancient of Ancients, arranged Himself . . . . and formed all forms above and below. . . . Before He arranged himself in his Form had not been formed all those whom he desired to form, and all worlds have been destroyed . . . . they did not remain in their places, because the form of the Kings had not been formed as it ought to be, and the Holy City had not been prepared." (Zohar iii., 135a; 292a Idra Zootah. Brody, etc.)
Now the plain meaning of these two allegorical and metaphysical disquisitions is simply this: Worlds and men were in turn formed and destroyed, under the law of evolution and from pre-existing material, until both the planets and their men, in our case our Earth and its animal and human races, became what they are now in the present cycle: opposite polar forces, an equilibrized compound of Spirit and Matter, of the positive and the negative, of the male and the female. Before man could become male and female physically, his prototype, the creating Elohim, had to arrange his Form on this sexual plane astrally. That is to say, the atoms and the organic forces, descending into the plane of the given differentiation, had to be marshalled in the order intended by Nature, so as to be ever carrying out, in an immaculate way, that law which the Kabala calls the Balance, through which everything that exists does so as male and female in its final perfection, in this present stage of materiality. Chochmah, Wisdom, the Male Sephiroth, had to diffuse itself in, and through, Binah, intelligent Nature, or Understanding. Therefore the First Root-race of men, sexless and mindless, had to be overthrown and "hidden until after a time"; i.e., the first race, instead of dying, disappeared in the second race, as certain lower lives and plants do in their progeny. It was a wholesale transformation. The First became the Second Root-race, without either begetting it, procreating it, or dying. "They passed by together," as it is written: "And he died and another reigned in his stead" (Genesis xxvi. 31 et seq. Zohar iii., 292a). Why? Because "the Holy City had not been prepared." And what is the "Holy City"? The Maquom (the Secret Place or the Shrine) on Earth: in other words, the human womb, the microcosmic copy and reflection of the Heavenly Matrix, the female space or primeval Chaos, in which the male Spirit fecundates the germ of the Son, or the visible Universe.* So much so, that in the paragraph on "the Emanation of the Male and Female Principles" in the Zohar (ibid.), it is said that, on this earth, the WISDOM from the "Holy Ancient" "does not shine except in male and female." "Hohmah, Wisdom, is the Father, and BINAH, understanding, is the Mother . . . . and when they connect one with the other they bring forth and diffuse and emanate truth. In the sayings of Rabbi Je-yeva Sabah, i.e., the Old, we learned this: What is Binah Understanding? But when they connect in one another, the [[diagram]] (Yod) in the [[diagram]] (Heh), they become impregnated and produce a Son. And, therefore, it is called Binah, Understanding. It means BeN YaH, i.e., Son of YaH. This is the completeness of the whole."*
This is also the "completeness" of phallicism by the Rabbis, its perfect apotheosis, the divine being dragged into the animal, the sublime into the grossness of the terrestrial. Nothing so graphically gross exists in Eastern Occultism, nor in the primitive Kabala -- the "Chaldean Book of Numbers." We have said so in "Isis Unveiled": --
"We find it rather unwise on the part of Catholic writers to pour out their vials of wrath in such sentences as these: 'In a multitude of pagodas, the phallic stone, ever and always assuming, like the Grecian batylos, the brutally indecent form of the lingham . . . the Maha Deva.' Before casting slurs on a symbol whose profound metaphysical meaning is too much for the modern champions of that religion of sensualism par excellence, Roman Catholicism, to grasp, they are in duty bound to destroy their oldest churches, and change the form of the cupolas of their own temples. The Mahody of Elephanta, the Round Tower of Bhangulpore, the minarets of Islam -- either rounded or pointed -- are the originals of the Campanile column of San Marco, at Venice, of the Rochester Cathedral, and of the modern Duomo of Milan. All of these steeples, turrets, domes, and Christian temples, are the reproductions of the primitive idea of the lithos, the upright phallus." (Vol. II., p. 5.)
Nevertheless, and however it may be, the fact that all these Hebrew Elohim, Sparks, and Cherubs are identical with the Devas, Rishis and the Fires and Flames, the Rudras and the forty-nine Agnis of the ancient Aryas, is sufficiently proven by and in the Kabala.
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