Masonic, Occult and Esoteric Online Library
The Secret Doctrine
By Helena P. Blavatsky
Book II-Part I- Creation Of The First Races
§§ (14) Creation of men. (15) They are empty shadows. (16) The Creators are perplexed how to create a THINKING man. (17) What is needed for the formation of a perfect Man.
14. THE SEVEN HOSTS, THE "WILL (or Mind)-BORN" LORDS, PROPELLED BY THE SPIRIT OF LIFE-GIVING (Fohat), SEPARATE MEN FROM THEMSELVES, EACH ON HIS OWN ZONE (a).
(a) They threw off their "shadows" or astral bodies -- if such an ethereal being as a "lunar Spirit" may be supposed to rejoice in an astral, besides a hardly tangible body. In another Commentary it is said that the "Ancestors" breathed out the first man, as Brahma is explained to have breathed out the Suras (Gods), when they became "Asuras" (from Asu, breath). In a third it is said that they, the newly-created men, "were the shadows of the Shadows."
With regard to this sentence -- "They were the shadows of the Shadows" -- a few more words may be said and a fuller explanation attempted. This first process of the evolution of mankind is far easier to accept than the one which follows it, though one and all will be rejected and doubted even by some Kabalists, especially the Western, who study the present effects, but have neglected to study their primary causes. Nor does the writer feel competent to explain a mode of procreation so difficult of appreciation save for an Eastern Occultist. Therefore it is useless to enter here into details concerning the process, though it is minutely described in the Secret Books, as it would only lead to speaking of facts hitherto unknown to the profane world, and hence to their being misunderstood. An "Adam" made of the dust of the ground will always be found preferable, by a certain class of students, to one projected out of the ethereal body of his creator; though the former process has never been heard of, while the latter is familiar, as all know, to many Spiritualists in Europe and America, who, of all men, ought to understand it. For who of those who have witnessed the phenomenon of a materialising form oozing out of the pores of a medium or, at other times, out of his left side, can fail to credit the possibility, at least, of such a birth? If there are in the Universe such beings as Angels or Spirits, whose incorporeal essence may constitute an intelligent entity notwithstanding the absence of any (to us) solid organism; and if there are those who believe that a god made the first man out of dust, and breathed into him a living Soul -- and there are millions upon millions who believe both -- what does this doctrine of ours contain that is so impossible? Very soon the day will dawn, when the world will have to choose whether it will accept the miraculous creation of man (and Kosmos too) out of nothing, according to the dead letter of Genesis, or a first man born from a fantastic link -- absolutely "missing" so far -- the common ancestor of man, and of the "true ape."* Between these two fallacies,** Occult philosophy steps in. It teaches that the first human stock was projected by higher and semi-divine Beings out of their own essences. If the latter process is to be considered as abnormal or even inconceivable -- because obsolete in Nature at this point of evolution -- it is yet proven possible on the authority of certain "Spiritualistic" FACTS. Which, then, we ask of the three hypotheses or theories is the most reasonable and the least absurd? Certainly no one -- provided he is not a soul-blind materialist -- can ever object to the occult teaching.
Now, as shown, we gather from the latter that man was not "created" the complete being he is now, however imperfect he still remains. There was a spiritual, a psychic, an intellectual, and an animal evolution, from the highest to the lowest, as well as a physical development -- from the simple and homogeneous, up to the more complex and heterogeneous; though not quite on the lines traced for us by the modern evolutionists. This double evolution in two contrary directions, required various ages, of divers natures and degrees of spirituality and intellectuality, to fabricate the being now known as man. Furthermore, the one absolute, ever acting and never erring law, which proceeds on the same lines from one eternity (or Manvantara) to the other -- ever furnishing an ascending scale for the manifested, or that which we call the great Illusion (Maha-Maya), but plunging Spirit deeper and deeper into materiality on the one hand, and then redeeming it through flesh and liberating it -- this law, we say, uses for these purposes the Beings from other and higher planes, men, or Minds (Manus), in accordance with their Karmic exigencies.
At this juncture, the reader is again asked to turn to the Indian philosophy and religion. The Esotericism of both is at one with our Secret Doctrine, however much the form may differ and vary.
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ON THE IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCES OF THE INCARNATING POWERS.
THE Progenitors of Man, called in India "Fathers," Pitara or Pitris, are the creators of our bodies and lower principles. They are ourselves, as the first personalities, and we are they. Primeval man would be "the bone of their bone and the flesh of their flesh," if they had body and flesh. As stated, they were "lunar Beings."
The Endowers of man with his conscious, immortal EGO, are the "Solar Angels" -- whether so regarded metaphorically or literally. The mysteries of the Conscious EGO or human Soul are great. The esoteric name of these "Solar Angels" is, literally, the "Lords" (Nath) of "persevering ceaseless devotion" (pranidhana). Therefore they of the fifth principle (Manas) seem to be connected with, or to have originated the system of the Yogis who make of pranidhana their fifth observance (see Yoga Shastra, II., 32.) It has already been explained why the trans-Himalayan Occultists regard them as evidently identical with those who in India are termed Kumaras, Agnishwattas, and the Barhishads.
How precise and true is Plato's expression, how profound and philosophical his remark on the (human) soul or EGO, when he defined it as "a compound of the same and the other." And yet how little this hint has been understood, since the world took it to mean that the soul was the breath of God, of Jehovah. It is "the same and the other," as the great Initiate-Philosopher said; for the EGO (the "Higher Self" when merged with and in the Divine Monad) is Man, and yet the same as the "OTHER," the Angel in him incarnated, as the same with the universal MAHAT. The great classics and philosophers felt this truth, when saying that "there must be something within us which produces our thoughts. Something very subtle; it is a breath; it is fire; it is ether;
it is quintessence; it is a slender likeness; it is an intellection; it is a number; it is harmony. . . . . " (Voltaire).
All these are the Manasam and Rajasas: the Kumaras, Asuras, and other rulers and Pitris, who incarnated in the Third Race, and in this and various other ways endowed mankind with Mind.
There are seven classes of Pitris, as shown below, three incorporeal and four corporeal; and two kinds, the Agnishwatta and the Barhishad. And we may add that, as there are two kinds of Pitris, so there is a double and a triple set of Barhishad and Agnishwatta. The former, having given birth to their astral doubles, are reborn as Sons of Atri, and are the "Pitris of the Demons," or corporeal beings, on the authority of Manu (III., 196); while the Agnishwatta are reborn as Sons of Marichi (a son of Brahma), and are the Pitris of the Gods (Manu again, Matsya and Padma Puranas and Kulluka in the Laws of the Manavas, III., 195).* Moreover, the Vayu Purana declares all the seven orders to have originally been the first gods, the Vairajas, whom Brahma "with the eye of Yoga, beheld in the eternal spheres, and who are the gods of gods"; and the Matsya adds that the Gods worshipped them; while the Harivansa (S. 1, 935) distinguishes the Virajas as one class of the Pitris only -- a statement corroborated in the Secret Teachings, which, however, identify the Virajas with the elder Agnishwattas** and the Rajasas, or Abhutarajasas, who are incorporeal without even an astral phantom. Vishnu is said, in most of the MSS., to have incarnated in and through them. "In the Raivata Manvantara, again, Hari, best of gods, was born of Sambhuti, as the divine Manasas -- originating with the deities called Rajasas." Sambhuti was a daughter of Daksha, and wife of Marichi, the father of the Agnishwatta, who, along with the Rajasas, are ever associated with Manasas. As remarked by a far more able Sanskritist than Wilson, Mr. Fitzedward Hall, "Manasa is no inappropriate name for a deity associated with the Rajasas. We appear to have in it Manasam -- the same as Manas -- with the change of termination required to express male personification" (Vishnu Purana Bk. III., ch. I., p. 17 footnote). All the sons of Viraja are Manasa, says Nilakantha. And Viraja is Brahma, and, therefore, the incorporeal Pitris are called Vairajas from being the sons of Viraja, says Vayu Purana.
We could multiply our proofs ad infinitum, but it is useless. The wise will understand our meaning, the unwise are not required to. There are thirty-three crores, or 330 millions, of gods in India. But, as remarked by the learned lecturer on the Bhagavad Gita, "they may be all devas, but are by no means all 'gods', in the high spiritual sense one attributes to the term." "This is an unfortunate blunder," he remarks, "generally committed by Europeans. Deva is a kind of spiritual being, and because the same word is used in ordinary parlance to mean god, it by no means follows that we have to worship thirty-three crores of gods." And he adds suggestively: "These beings, as may be naturally inferred have a certain affinity with one of the three component Upadhis (basic principles) into which we have divided man." -- (Vide Theosophist, Feb., 1887, et seq.)
The names of the deities of a certain mystic class change with every Manvantara. Thus the twelve great gods, Jayas, created by Brahma to assist him in the work of creation in the very beginning of the Kalpa, and who, lost in Samadhi, neglected to create -- whereupon they were cursed to be repeatedly born in each Manvantara till the seventh -- are respectively called Ajitas, Tushitas, Satyas, Haris, Vaikunthas, Sadhyas, and Adityas: they are Tushitas (in the second Kalpa), and Adityas in this Vaivasvata period (see Vayu Purana), besides other names for each age. But they are identical with the Manasa or Rajasas, and these with our incarnating Dhyan Chohans. They are all classes of the Gnana-devas.
Yes; besides those beings, who, like the Yakshas, Gandharvas, Kinaras, etc., etc., taken in their individualities, inhabit the astral plane, there are real Devagnanams, and to these classes of Devas belong the Adityas, the Vairajas, the Kumaras, the Asuras, and all those high celestial beings whom Occult teaching calls Manaswin, the Wise, foremost of all, and who would have made all men the self-conscious spiritually intellectual beings they will be, had they not been "cursed" to fall into generation, and to be reborn themselves as mortals for their neglect of duty.
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STANZA IV. -- (Continued.)
15. SEVEN TIMES SEVEN SHADOWS (chhayas) OF FUTURE MEN (or Amanasas) (a) WERE (thus) BORN, EACH OF HIS OWN COLOUR (complexion) AND KIND (b). EACH (also) INFERIOR TO HIS FATHER (creator). THE FATHERS, THE BONELESS, COULD GIVE NO LIFE TO BEINGS WITH
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 91 SEVEN CLASSES OF PITRIS.
BONES. THEIR PROGENY WERE BHUTA (phantoms) WITH NEITHER FORM NOR MIND, THEREFORE THEY WERE CALLED THE CHHAYA (image or shadow) 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 amanasa, "mindless."
With the Brahmins the Pitris are very sacred, because they are the Progenitors,* or ancestors of men -- the first Manushya on this Earth -- and offerings are made to them by the Brahmin when a son is born unto him. They are more honoured and their ritual is more important than the worship of the gods (See the "Laws of Manu," Bk. III., p. 203).
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 Puranas agree that three of these are arupa, 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 Vayu Purana. 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 Brahma; 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 Dhyanis," which we identify on undeniable grounds with the Agnishwattas, is called in our school the "Heart" of the Dhyan-Chohanic Body; and it 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 Dhyanis? 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?
"Having projected their shadows and made men of one element (ether), the progenitors re-ascend to Maha-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)," says the Commentary.
"Not-gods," for the Brahmins, perhaps, but the highest Breaths, for the Occultist; since those progenitors (Pitar), 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 Hindu of any sect whatever. Therein Asura means "spiritual divine," and the word is used as a synonym for Supreme Spirit, while in the sense of a "God," the term "Asura" is applied to Varuna and Indra and pre-eminently to Agni -- the three having been in days of old the three highest gods, before Brahmanical 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 Zendavesta the same is found. In the Mazdean, or Magian, religion, "Asura" is the lord Asura Visvavedas, the "all-knowing" or "omniscient Lord"; and Asura-Mazdha, become later Ahura-Mazdha, is, as Benfey shows, "the Lord who bestows Intelligence" -- Asura-Medha and Ahura-Mazdao. 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 Mazdha, as above, which makes of the sevenfold Asura the "Lord," or "Lords" collectively "who bestow Intelligence," connects the Amshaspends with the Asuras and with our incarnating Dhyan Chohans, as well as with the Elohim, and the seven informing gods of Egypt, Chaldea, 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 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. (Compare also what is said about Makara and the Kumaras in connection with the Zodiac.)
The Christian system is not the only one which has degraded them into demons. Zoroastrianism and even Brahmanism have profited thereby to obtain hold over the people's mind. Even in Chaldean exotericism, Beings who refuse to create, i.e., who are said to oppose thereby the Demiurgos, are also denounced as the Spirits of Darkness. The Suras, who win their intellectual independence, fight the Suras who are devoid thereof, who are shown as passing their lives in profitless ceremonial worship based on blind faith -- a hint now ignored by the orthodox Brahmins -- and forthwith the former become A-Suras. The first and mind-born Sons of the Deity refuse to create progeny, and are cursed by Brahma 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 his 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* of the Dhyanis -- i.e., the three classes of the Arupa Pitris, endowed with intelligence, "which is a formless breath, composed of intellectual not elementary substances" (see Harivamsa, 932) -- was simply doomed by the law of Karma and evolution to be reborn (or incarnated) on Earth.** Some of these were Nirmanakayas from other Manvantaras. Hence we see them, in all the Puranas, reappearing on this globe, in the third Manvantara, as Kings, Rishis and heroes (read Third Root-Race). 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 them 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 -- since they were arupa. The refusal of others had reference to their having been Adepts and Yogis of long past preceding Manvantaras; another mystery. But, later on, as Nirmanakayas, 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 Pitar-Devata, 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; (see Gen. and Plato's Timaeus). 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 symbolised 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. (See Part II of this volume, "The Fallen Angels"; also "The Gods of Light proceed from the Gods of Darkness.")
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 do so, and man had to be formed by more material creators,* 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 versa. 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 Maya. 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 mayavic 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,* 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 Phaedrus, 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 in § 18, 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."** Again, in the ancient Quiche Manuscript, the Popol Vuh -- published by the late Abbe 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 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 Puranas, the Mazdean Scriptures and the Kabala. 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 Chaldean gods and seven evil spirits, the seven Kabalistic Sephiroth synthesised 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 Honir who furnishes him with his intellect (manas) and with his conscious senses. The Norse Ask, the Hesiodic Ash-tree, whence issued the men of the generation of bronze, the Third Root-Race, and the Tzite 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 Hindu Aswatha, the Gogard, the Hellenic tree of life, and the Tibetan Zampun, are one with the Kabalistic Sephirothal Tree, and even with the Holy Tree made by Ahura Mazda, and the Tree of Eden -- who among the western scholars can tell?** Nevertheless, the fruits of all those "Trees," whether Pippala or Haoma or yet 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***; and the mystery is half revealed in the Dirghotamas, 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 those mundane trees, the "Serpent" dwells. But while the Macroscosmic 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 Serpents 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 has pleased the half ignorant and half designing Church Fathers to disfigure the graphic symbol. They took advantage of the metaphor and allegory found 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 Manasa), 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! (Vide Part II., "The Evil Spirit, who, or what?")
The same for the other high symbols. The Svastica, 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 Sesha-Ananta, in the depths of Patala, the Hindu Naraka or Hell"? It does: but what is Ananta? As Sesha, 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 Svastica 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 Cosmo-theogony down to Anthropogony, from the indivisible unknown Parabrahm to the humble moneron of materialistic science, whose genesis is as unknown to that science as is that of the All-Deity itself. The Svastica is found heading the religious symbols of every old nation. It is the "Worker's Hammer" in the Chaldean Book of Numbers, the "Hammer" just referred to in the "Book of Concealed Mystery" (Ch. I., §§ 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.), "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 Svastica is the Miolnir, the "storm-hammer"; and therefore it is said that when the Ases, the holy gods, after having been purified by fire (the fire of passions and suffering in their life-incarnations), become fit to dwell in Ida in eternal peace, then Miolnir 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. . . . . "Then came the sons of Thor. They brought Miolnir with them, no longer as a weapon of war, but as the hammer with which to consecrate the new heaven and the new Earth. . . . . "*
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 Kosmos 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 Svastica 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 Aryans, 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 mediaeval 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 Mahamaya, 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 around 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 summarise from Dr. Wagner's "Asgard and the Gods," the "renewal of the world," which is a prophecy about the seventh Race of our Round told in the past tense.
The Miolnir 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 ancestor which had all been fulfilled. Near them, but unseen of them, was the strong, the mighty One, who rules all things. . . . 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, Widblain. Over Gimil's cave, a wondrous palace was erected, covered with gold and shining bright in the sun." These are the three gradually ascending planets of our "Chain." There the Gods were enthroned, as they used to be. . . . From Gimil's heights (the seventh planet or globe, the highest and the 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, step by step, from one "heaven to another," until they were at last fit to be united to the Gods in the house of All-Father (p. 305).
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 Hindu 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 (Svastica) during the sacrificial ceremony. But what of that? Twashtri (Viswakarman) is the "divine artist and carpenter"* 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 fusaiolos, were found by Dr. Schliemann under the ruins of ancient Troy. Both these forms and were excavated in great abundance, their presence being one more proof that the ancient Trojans and their ancestors were pure Aryans.
(c) Chhaya, as already explained, is the astral image. It bears this meaning in Sanskrit works. Thus Sanjna (Spiritual Consciousness), the wife of Surya, the Sun, is shown retiring into the jungle to lead an ascetic life, and leaving behind to her husband her Chhaya, shadow or image.
16. HOW ARE THE (real) MANUSHYAS BORN? THE MANUS WITH MINDS, HOW ARE THEY MADE? (a) THE FATHERS (Barhishad (?)) CALL TO THEIR HELP THEIR OWN FIRE (the Kavyavahana, electric fire), WHICH IS THE FIRE WHICH BURNS IN EARTH. THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH CALLED TO HIS HELP THE SOLAR FIRE (Suchi, the spirit in the Sun). THESE THREE (the Pitris and the two fires) PRODUCED IN THEIR JOINT EFFORTS A GOOD RUPA. IT (the form) COULD STAND, WALK, RUN, RECLINE AND FLY. YET IT WAS STILL BUT A CHHAYA, 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 Chaldean "Adam" -- this term not meaning at all the first man, as with the Jews, or one solitary individual, but mankind collectively, as with the Chaldeans and Assyrians. It is the four orders or classes of Dhyan 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 Bhuta* or a "Phantom." This "creation" was a failure, the reason of which will be explained in the Commentary on Sloka 20.
(b) This attempt was again 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 Parvaka and Suchi are the animal electric and solar fires, which create animals, and could thus furnish but 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?
"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 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 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." (Vide infra, "The Secret of Satan.")
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 Seven Circles of Fire, made manifest the downward-born nature."* It explains every verse in that 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.
"My first idea of this part" (of the rebellion), he says, "was that the wars with the powers of Evil preceded the Creation; I now think it followed the account of the fall" (Chaldean Account of Genesis, p. 92). In this work 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. "The Dragon," says Mr. G. Smith, "which in the Chaldean account of the creation leads man to sin, is the creation of Tiamat, the living principle of the Sea, or Chaos . . . which was opposed to the deities at the creation of the world." 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, he will anger the gods, he shall submit to tyranny. . . . he shall be disappointed in his desires, he shall pour out useless prayers, he shall commit future sin. . No doubt subsequent lines continue this topic, but again our narrative is broken, and it re-opens only where the gods are preparing for war with the powers of evil, which are led by Tiamat (the woman). . . . " (Babylonian Legend of Creation, p. 92.)
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 have sought to restore the Chaldean fragments by Genesis, whereas it is the latter, far younger than any of the fragments, which ought to be explained by the former.
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17. THE BREATH (human Monad) 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 (astral shadow); "WE GAVE IT OUR OWN," SAID THE DHYANIS. THE BREATH NEEDED A VEHICLE OF DESIRES (Kama Rupa); "IT HAS IT," SAID THE DRAINER OF WATERS (Suchi, the fire of passion and animal instinct). THE 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 (solar) FIRE . . . . (nascent) MAN REMAINED AN EMPTY, SENSELESS BHUTA . . . . THUS HAVE THE BONELESS GIVEN LIFE TO THOSE WHO BECAME (later) MEN WITH BONES IN THE THIRD (race) (a).
As a full explanation is found in Stanza V. (Vide paragraph (a)), 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"; 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 "Dhyan 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,"* and is very nearly allied to protyle, which is our layam. It is the father and generator, so to say, or rather the Upadhi (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, pre-eminently in Samothrace. There is not the smallest doubt that the Kabeiri, the most arcane of all the ancient deities, gods and men, great deities and Titans, are identical with the Kumaras and Rudras headed by Kartikeya -- a Kumara also. This is quite evident even exoterically; and these Hindu deities were, like the Kabeiri, the personified sacred Fires of the most occult powers of Nature. The several branches of the Aryan Race, the Asiatic and the European, the Hindu and the Greek, did their best to conceal their true nature, if not their importance. As in the case of the Kumaras, the number of the Kabeiri is uncertain. Some say that there were three or four only; others say seven. Aschieros, Achiosersa, Achiochersus, and Camillus may very well stand for the alter egos of the four Kumaras -- Sanat-Kumara, Sananda, Sanaka, and Sanatana. The former deities, whose reputed father was Vulcan, were often confounded with the Dioscuri, Corybantes, Anaces, etc.; just as the Kumara, whose reputed father is Brahma, (or rather, the "Flame of his Wrath," which prompted him to perform the ninth or Kumara creation, resulting in Rudra or Nilalohita (Siva) and the Kumaras), 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 third and fourth volumes of this work are 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, to be closely and inseparably linked together. AEsculapius was the Son of Apollo -- the Sun or FIRE of Life; at once Helios, Pythios, 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 Puranas 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 Kabala, Bath-Kol is the daughter of the Divine Voice, or primordial light, Shekinah. In the Puranas and Hindu exotericism, Vach (the Voice) is the female Logos of Brahma -- a permutation of Aditi, primordial light. And if Bath-Kol, in Jewish mysticism, is an articulate praeternatural voice from heaven, revealing to the "chosen people" the sacred traditions and laws, it is only because Vach 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 Israel 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." ("Pymander," § 6.)*
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 Prabhavapyaya, 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 Protologos (the Orphic), he is called Purvaja, "pregenetic," and then 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 Dhyan Chohans (Devas) proceed from the First Cause -- which is not Parabrahm, for the latter is the ALL CAUSE, and cannot be referred to as the "First Cause," -- which First Cause is called in the Brahmanical Books Jagad-Yoni, "the womb of the world," mankind emanates from these active agents in Kosmos. But men, during the first and the second races, were not physical beings, but merely rudiments of the future men: Bhutas, which proceeded from Bhutadi, "origin," or the "original place whence sprung the Elements." Hence they proceeded with all the rest from Prabhavapyaya, "the place whence is the origination, and into which is the resolution of all things," as explained by the Commentator. Whence also our physical senses. Whence even the highest "created" deity itself, in our philosophy. As one with the Universe, whether we call him Brahma, Iswara, 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 Punda-Rikaksha, "supreme and imperishable glory," once that instead of Sadaika-Rupa, "changeless" or "immutable" Nature, he is addressed as Ekanaka-Rupa, "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: --
1. Mahapurusha or Paramatman ... Supreme Spirit.
2. Atman or Purvaja (Protologos) ...The living Spirit of Nature.
3. Indriyatman, or Hrishikesa ..........Spiritual or intellectual soul (One with the senses).
5. Bhutatman ................................ . The living, or Life Soul.
6. Kshetrajna .................................. Embodied soul, or the Universe of Spirit and Matter.
7. Bhrantidarsanatah .........................False perception -- Material Universe.
The last name means something perceived or conceived of, owing to false and erroneous apprehension, as a material form; but, in fact, only Maya, illusion, as all is in our physical universe.
It is in strict analogy with ITS attributes in both the spiritual and material worlds, that the evolution of the Dhyan 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.
