Masonic, Occult and Esoteric Online Library
The Secret Doctrine
By Helena P. Blavatsky
Book II-Part I- The Evolution Of The Second Race
§§ (18) The Sons of Yoga. (19) The Sexless Second Race. (20) The Sons of the Sons of Twilight. (21) The "Shadow," or the Astral Man, retires within, and man develops a physical body.
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18. THE FIRST (Race) WERE THE SONS OF YOGA. THEIR SONS, THE CHILDREN OF THE YELLOW FATHER AND THE WHITE MOTHER.
In the later Commentary, the sentence is translated: --
"The Sons of the Sun and of the Moon, the nursling of ether (or the wind ) (a) . . . . . . .
"They were the shadows of the shadows of the Lords (b). They (the shadows) expanded. The Spirits of the Earth clothed them; the solar Lhas warmed them (i.e. preserved the vital fire in the nascent physical forms). The Breaths had life, but had no understanding. They had no fire nor water of their own (c).
(a) Remember in this connection the Tabula Smaragdina of Hermes, the esoteric meaning of which has seven keys to it. The Astro-Chemical is well known to students, the anthropological may be given now. The "One thing" mentioned in it is MAN. It is said: "The Father of THAT ONE ONLY THING is the Sun; its Mother the Moon; the Wind carries it in his bosom, and its nurse is the Spirituous Earth." In the occult rendering of the same it is added: "and Spiritual Fire is its instructor (Guru)."
This fire is the higher Self, the Spiritual Ego, or that which is eternally reincarnating under the influence of its lower personal Selves, changing with every re-birth, full of Tanha or desire to live. It is a strange law of Nature that, on this plane, the higher (Spiritual) Nature should be, so to say, in bondage to the lower. Unless the Ego takes refuge in the Atman, the ALL-SPIRIT, and merges entirely into the essence thereof, the personal Ego may goad it to the bitter end. This cannot be thoroughly understood unless the student makes himself familiar with the mystery of evolution, which proceeds on triple lines -- spiritual, psychic and physical.
That which propels towards, and forces evolution, i.e., compels the growth and development of Man towards perfection, is (a) the MONAD, or that which acts in it unconsciously through a force inherent in itself; and (b) the lower astral body or the personal SELF. The former, whether imprisoned in a vegetable or an animal body, is endowed with, is indeed itself, that force. Owing to its identity with the ALL-FORCE, which, as said, is inherent in the Monad, it is all-potent on the Arupa, or formless plane. On our plane, its essence being too pure, it remains all-potential, but individually becomes inactive: e.g., the rays of the Sun, which contribute to the growth of vegetation, do not select this or that plant to shine upon. Uproot the plant and transfer it to a piece of soil where the sunbeam cannot reach it, and the latter will not follow it. So with the Atman: unless the higher Self or EGO gravitates towards its Sun the Monad -- the lower Ego, or personal Self, will have the upper hand in every case. For it is this Ego, with its fierce Selfishness and animal desire to live a Senseless life (Tanha), which is "the maker of the tabernacle," as Buddha calls it in Dhammapada (153 and 154). Hence the expression, "the Spirits of the Earth clothed the shadows and expanded them." To these "Spirits" belong temporarily the human astral selves; and it is they who give, or build, the physical tabernacle of man, for the Monad and its conscious principle, Manas, to dwell in. But the "Solar" Lhas, Spirits, warm them, the shadows. This is physically and literally true; metaphysically, or on the psychic and spiritual plane, it is equally true that the Atman alone warms the inner man; i.e., it enlightens it with the ray of divine life and alone is able to impart to the inner man, or the reincarnating Ego, its immortality. Thus, as we shall find, for the first three and a half Root-Races, up to the middle or turning point, it is the astral shadows of the "progenitors," the lunar Pitris, which are the formative powers in the Races, and which build and gradually force the evolution of the physical form towards perfection -- this, at the cost of a proportionate loss of spirituality. Then, from the turning point, it is the Higher Ego, or incarnating principle, the nous or Mind, which reigns over the animal Ego, and rules it whenever it is not carried down by the latter. In short, Spirituality is on its ascending arc, and the animal or physical impedes it from steadily progressing on the path of its evolution only when the selfishness of the personality has so strongly infected the real inner man with its lethal virus, that the upward attraction has lost all its power on the thinking reasonable man. In sober truth, vice and wickedness are an abnormal, unnatural manifestation, at this period of our human evolution -- at least they ought to be so. The fact that mankind was never more selfish and vicious than it is now, civilized nations having succeeded in making of the first an ethical characteristic, of the second an art, is an additional proof of the exceptional nature of the phenomenon.
The entire scheme is in the "Chaldean Book of Numbers," and even in the Zohar, if one only understood the meaning of the apocalyptic hints. First comes En-Soph, the "Concealed of the Concealed," then the Point, Sephira and the later Sephiroth; then the Atzilatic World, a World of Emanations that gives birth to three other worlds -- called the Throne, the abode of pure Spirits; the second, the World of Formation, or Jetzira, the habitat of the Angels who sent forth the Third, or World of Action, the Asiatic World, which is the Earth or our World; and yet it is said of it that this world, also called Kliphoth, containing the (six other) Spheres, [[diagram]], and matter, is the residence of the "Prince of Darkness." This is as clearly stated as can be; for Metatron, the Angel of the second or Briatic World, means Messenger [greek char], Angel, called the great Teacher; and under him are the Angels of the third World, Jetzira, whose ten and seven classes are the Sephiroth,* of whom it is said that "they inhabit and vivify this world as Essential Entities and Intelligences, whose correlatives and contraries inhabit the third or Asiatic World." These "Contraries" are called "the Shells," [[daigam]], or demons,** who inhabit the seven habitations called Sheba Hachaloth, which are simply the seven zones of our globe. Their prince is called in the Kabala Samael, the Angel of Death, who is also the seducing serpent Satan; but that Satan is also Lucifer, the bright angel of Light, the Light and Life-bringer, the "Soul" alienated from the Holy Ones, the other angels, and for a period, anticipating the time when they would have descended on Earth to incarnate in their turn.
"The Souls (Monads) are pre-existent in the world of Emanations," (Book of Wisdom viii., 20); and the Zohar teaches that in the "Soul" "is the real man, i.e., the Ego and the conscious I AM: 'Manas.' "
"They descend from the pure air to be chained to bodies," says Josephus repeating the belief of the Essenes (De Bello Judaeo, 11, 12). "The air is full of Souls," states Philo, "they descend to be tied to mortal bodies, being desirous to live in them." (De Gignat, 222 c.; De Somniis, p. 455)***; because through, and in, the human form they will become progressive beings, whereas the nature of the angel is purely intransitive, therefore man has in him the potency of transcending the faculties of the Angels. Hence the Initiates in India say that it is the Brahmin, the twice-born, who rules the gods or devas; and Paul repeated it in I Corinthians vi., 3: "Know ye not that we (the Initiates) shall judge angels"?
Finally, it is shown in every ancient scripture and Cosmogony that man evolved primarily as a luminous incorporeal form, over which, like the molten brass round the clay model of the sculptor, the physical frame of his body was built by, through, and from, the lower forms and types of animal terrestrial life. "The Soul and the Form when descending on Earth put on an earthly garment," says the Zohar. His protoplastic body was not formed of that matter of which our mortal frames are fashioned. "When Adam dwelt in the garden of Eden, he was clothed in the celestial garment, which is the garment of heavenly light. . . . light of that light which was used in the garden of Eden," (Zohar II 229 B). "Man (the heavenly Adam) was created by the ten Sephiroth of the Jetziric world, and by the common power they (the seven angels of a still lower world) engendered the earthly Adam . . . . First Samael fell, and then deceiving (?) man, caused his fall also."
(b) The sentence: "They were the shadows of the shadows of the Lords," i.e., the progenitors created man out of their own astral bodies, explains an universal belief. The Devas are credited in the East with having no shadows of their own. "The devas cast no shadows," and this is the sure sign of a good holy Spirit.
Why had they "no fire or water of their own"?* Because: --
(c) That which Hydrogen is to the elements and gases on the objective plane, its noumenon is in the world of mental or subjective phenomena; since its trinitarian latent nature is mirrored in its three active emanations from the three higher principles in man, namely, "Spirit, Soul, and Mind," or Atma, Buddhi, and Manas. It is the spiritual and also the material human basis. Rudimentary man, having been nursed by the "air" or the "wind," becomes the perfect man later on; when, with the development of "Spiritual fire," the noumenon of the "Three in One" within his Self, he acquires from his inner Self, or Instructor, the Wisdom of Self-Consciousness, which he does not possess in the beginning. Thus here again divine Spirit is symbolised by the Sun or Fire; divine Soul by Water and the Moon, both standing for the Father and Mother of Pneuma, human Soul, or Mind, symbolised by the Wind or air, for Pneuma, means "breath."
Hence in the Smaragdine Tablet, disfigured by Christian hands: --
"The Superior agrees with the Inferior; and the Inferior with the Superior; to effect that one truly wonderful Work" -- which is MAN. For the secret work of Chiram, or King Hiram in the Kabala, "one in Essence, but three in Aspect," is the Universal Agent or Lapis Philosophorum. The culmination of the Secret Work is Spiritual Perfect Man, at one end of the line; the union of the three elements is the Occult Solvent in the "Soul of the World," the Cosmic Soul or Astral Light, at the other; and, on the material plane, it is Hydrogen in its relation to the other gases. The To ON, truly; the ONE "whom no person has seen except the Son"; this sentence applying both to the metaphysical and physical Kosmos, and to the spiritual and material Man. For how could the latter understand the To ON the "One Father," if his Manas, the "Son," does not become (as) "One with the Father," and through this absorption receive enlightenment from the "divine instructor," Guru -- Atma-Buddhi?
"If thou would'st understand the SECONDARY ("Creation," so-called), oh Lanoo, thou should'st first study its relation to the PRIMARY." (Commentary, Book of Dzyan, III. 19.)
The first Race had three elements, but no living Fire. Why? Because: --
"We say four elements, my Son, but ought to say three," says Hermes Trismegistus. "In the Primary Circle" (creation) that which is marked reads "Root," as in the Secondary likewise.
Thus in Alchemy or Western Hermetism (a variant on Eastern Esotericism) we find: --
X. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X.
Sulphur . . . . . . Flamma . . . . . . Spiritus
Hydrargyum . . Natura . . . . . . . Aqua
Sal . . . . . . . . . . Mater . . . . . . . Sanguis
And these three are all quaternaries completed by their Root, Fire. The Spirit, beyond manifested Nature, is the fiery BREATH in its absolute Unity. In the manifested Universe, it is the Central Spiritual Sun, the electric Fire of all Life. In our System it is the visible Sun, the Spirit of Nature, the terrestrial god. And in, on, and around the Earth, the fiery Spirit thereof -- air, fluidic fire; water, liquid fire; Earth, solid fire. All is fire -- ignis, in its ultimate constitution, or I, the root of which is O (nought) in our conceptions, the All in nature and its mind. Pro-Mater is divine fire. It is the Creator, the Destroyer, the Preserver. The primitive names of the gods are all connected with fire, from AGNI, the Aryan, to the Jewish god who "is a consuming fire." In India, God is called in various dialects, Eashoor, Esur, Iswur, and Is'Vara, in Sanskrit the Lord, from Isa, but this is primarily the name of Siva, the Destroyer; and the three Vedic chief gods are Agni (ignis), Vayu, and Surya -- Fire, Air, and the Sun, three occult degrees of fire. In the Hebrew (aza), means to illuminate, and (asha) is fire. In Occultism, "to kindle a fire" is synonymous to evoking one of the three great fire-powers, or "to call on God." In Sanskrit Osch or Asch is fire or heat; and the Egyptian word Osiris is compounded (as shown by Schelling) of the two primitives aish and asr, or a "fireenchanter." Aesar in the old Etruscan meant a God (being perhaps derived from Asura of the Vedas). Aeswar and Eswara are analogous terms, as Dr. Kenealy thought. In the Bhagavad Gita we read, "Iswara resides in every mortal being and puts in motion, by his supernatural power, all things which mount on the Wheel of Time." It is the creator and the destroyer, truly. "The primitive fire was supposed to have an insatiable appetite for devouring. Maximus of Tyre relates that the ancient Persians threw into the fire combustible matter crying: 'Devour, oh Lord!' In the Irish language Easam, or Asam, means 'to create,' and Aesar was the name of an ancient Irish god, meaning 'to light a fire' " (Kenealy). The Christian Kabalists and symbologists who disfigured Pymander -- prominent among them the Bishop of Ayre, Francois de Tours, in the 16th century -- divide the elements in this way: --
The four elements formed from divine substances and the Spirits of the Salts of Nature represented by --
. . . St. Matthew. . Angel-Man . . Water . . (Jesus-Christ, Angel-Man, Mikael)
A - . St. Mark. . . . .The Lion . . . . Fire
E - Y . .St. Luke. . . . . The Bull . . . . Earth
I - O . . St. John. . . . . The Eagle . . . Air*
H, THE QUINTESSENCE, [[HEPHLOX]], FLAMMA-VIRGO (virgin oil), FLAMMA DURISSIMA, VIRGO, LUCIS AETERNA MATER.
The first race of men were, then, simply the images, the astral doubles, of their Fathers, who were the pioneers, or the most progressed Entities from a preceding though lower sphere, the shell of which is now our Moon. But even this shell is all-potential, for, having generated the Earth, it is the phantom of the Moon which, attracted by magnetic affinity, sought to form its first inhabitants, the pre-human monsters, (vide supra, Stanza II.). To assure himself of this, the student has again to turn to the Chaldean Fragments, and read what Berosus says. Berosus obtained his information, he tells us, from Ea, the male-female deity of Wisdom. While the gods were generated in its androgynous bosom (Svabhavat, Mother-space) its (the Wisdom's) reflections became on Earth the woman Omoroka, who is the Chaldean Thavatth, or the Greek Thalassa, the Deep or the Sea, which esoterically and even exoterically is the Moon. It was the Moon (Omoroka) who presided over the monstrous creation of nondescript beings which were slain by the Dyanis. (Vide Hibbert Lectures, p. 370 et seq.; also in Part II. "Adam-Adami.")
Evolutionary law compelled the lunar "Fathers" to pass, in their monadic condition, through all the forms of life and being on this globe; but at the end of the Third Round, they were already human in their divine nature, and were thus called upon to become the creators of the forms destined to fashion the tabernacles of the less progressed Monads, whose turn it was to incarnate. These "Forms" are called "Sons of Yoga," because Yoga (union with Brahma exoterically) is the supreme condition of the passive infinite deity, since it contains all the divine energies and is the essence of Brahma, who is said (as Brahma) to create everything through Yoga power. Brahma, Vishnu and Siva are the most powerful energies of God, Brahma, the Neuter, says a Puranic text. Yoga here is the same as Dhyana, which word is again synonymous with Yoga in the Tibetan text, where the "Sons of Yoga" are called "Sons of Dhyana," or of that abstract meditation through which the Dhyani-Buddhas create their celestial sons, the Dhyani-Bodhisattvas. All the creatures in the world have each a superior above. "This superior, whose inner pleasure it is to emanate into them, cannot impart efflux until they have adored" -- i.e., meditated as during Yoga. (Sepher M'bo Ska-arim, translated by Isaac Myer, Qabbalah, pp. 109-111.)
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19. THE SECOND RACE (was) THE PRODUCT BY BUDDING AND EXPANSION; THE A-SEXUAL (form) FROM THE SEXLESS (shadow). THUS WAS, O LANOO, THE SECOND RACE PRODUCED (a).
(a) What will be most contested by scientific authorities is this a-sexual Race, the Second, the fathers of the "Sweat-born" so-called, and perhaps still more the Third Race, the "Egg-born" androgynes. These two modes of procreation are the most difficult to comprehend, especially for the Western mind. It is evident that no explanation can be attempted for those who are not students of Occult metaphysics. European language has no words to express things which Nature repeats no more at this stage of evolution, things which therefore can have no meaning for the materialist. But there are analogies. It is not denied that in the beginning of physical evolution there must have been processes in Nature, spontaneous generation, for instance, now extinct, which are repeated in other forms. Thus we are told that microscopic research shows no permanence of any particular mode of reproducing life. For "it shows that the same organism may run through various metamorphoses in the course of its life-cycle, during some of which it may be sexual, and in others a-sexual; i.e., it may reproduce itself alternately by the co-operation of two beings of opposite sex, and also by fissure or budding from one being only, which is of no sex."* "Budding" is the very word used in the Stanza. How could these Chhayas reproduce themselves otherwise; viz., procreate the Second Race, since they were ethereal, a-sexual, and even devoid, as yet, of the vehicle of desire, or Kama Rupa, which evolved only in the Third Race? They evolved the Second Race unconsciously, as do some plants. Or, perhaps, as the Amoeba, only on a more ethereal, impressive, and larger scale. If, indeed, the cell-theory applies equally to Botany and Zoology, and extends to Morphology, as well as to the Physiology of organisms, and if the microscopic cells are looked upon by physical science as independent living beings -- just as Occultism regards the "fiery lives"* -- there is no difficulty in the conception of the primitive process of procreation.
Consider the first stages of the development of a germ-cell. Its nucleus grows, changes, and forms a double cone or spindle, thus, within the cell. This spindle approaches the surface of the cell, and one half of it is extruded in the form of what are called the "polar cells." These polar cells now die, and the embryo develops from the growth and segmentation of the remaining part of the nucleus which is nourished by the substance of the cell. Then why could not beings have lived thus, and been created in this way -- at the very beginning of human and mammalian evolution?
This may, perhaps, serve as an analogy to give some idea of the process by which the Second Race was formed from the First.
The astral form clothing the Monad was surrounded, as it still is, by its egg-shaped sphere of aura, which here corresponds to the substance of the germ-cell or ovum. The astral form itself is the nucleus, now, as then, instinct with the principle of life.
When the season of reproduction arrives, the sub-astral "extrudes" a miniature of itself from the egg of surrounding aura. This germ grows and feeds on the aura till it becomes fully developed, when it gradually separates from its parent, carrying with it its own sphere of aura; just as we see living cells reproducing their like by growth and subsequent division into two.
The analogy with the "polar cells" would seem to hold good, since their death would now correspond to the change introduced by the separation of the sexes, when gestation in utero, i.e., within the cell, became the rule.
"The early Second (Root) Race were the Fathers of the 'Sweat-born'; the later Second (Root) Race were 'Sweat-born' themselves."
This passage from the Commentary refers to the work of evolution from the beginning of a Race to its close. The "Sons of Yoga," or the primitive astral race, had seven stages of evolution racially, or collectively; as every individual Being in it had, and has now. It is not Shakespeare only who divided the ages of man into a series of seven, but Nature herself. Thus the first sub-races of the Second Race were born at first by the process described on the law of analogy; while the last began gradually, pari passu with the evolution of the human body, to be formed otherwise. The process of reproduction had seven stages also in each Race, each covering aeons of time. What physiologist or biologist could tell whether the present mode of generation, with all its phases of gestation, is older than half a million, or at most one million of years, since their cycle of observation began hardly half a century ago.
Primeval human hermaphrodites are a fact in Nature well known to the ancients, and form one of Darwin's greatest perplexities. Yet there is certainly no impossibility, but, on the contrary, a great probability that hermaphroditism existed in the evolution of the early races; while on the grounds of analogy, and on that of the existence of one universal law in physical evolution, acting indifferently in the construction of plant, animal, and man, it must be so. The mistaken theories of mono-genesis, and the descent of man from the mammals instead of the reverse, are fatal to the completeness of evolution as taught in modern schools on Darwinian lines, and they will have to be abandoned in view of the insuperable difficulties which they encounter. Occult tradition -- if the terms Science and Knowledge are denied in this particular to antiquity -- can alone reconcile the inconsistencies and fill the gap. "If thou wilt know the invisible, open thine eye wide on the visible," says a Talmudic axiom.
In the "Descent of Man"* occurs the following passage; which shows how near Darwin came to the acceptance of this ancient teaching.
"It has been known that in the vertebrate kingdom one sex bears rudiments of various accessory parts appertaining to the reproductive system, which properly belong to the opposite sex. . . . Some remote progenitor of the whole vertebrate kingdom appears to have been hermaphrodite or androgynous** . . . But here we encounter a singular difficulty. In the mammalian class the males possess rudiments of a uterus with the adjacent passages in the Vesiculae prostaticae; they bear also rudiments of mammae, and some male marsupials have traces of a marsupial sac. Other analogous facts could be added. Are we then to suppose that some extremely ancient mammal continued androgynous after it had acquired the chief distinctions of its class, and therefore after it had diverged from the lower classes of the vertebrate kingdom? This seems very improbable,*** for we have to look to fishes, the lowest of all the classes, to find any still existent androgynous forms."
Mr. Darwin is evidently strongly disinclined to adopt the hypothesis which the facts so forcibly suggest, viz., that of a primeval androgynous stem from which the mammalia sprang. His explanation runs: -- "The fact that various accessory organs proper to each sex, are found in a rudimentary condition in the opposite sex may be explained by such organs having been gradually acquired by the one sex and then transmitted in a more or less imperfect condition to the other." He instances the case of "spurs, plumes, and brilliant colours, acquired for battle or for ornament by male birds" and only partially inherited by their female descendants. In the problem to be dealt with, however, the need of a more satisfactory explanation is evident, the facts being of so much more prominent and important a character than the mere superficial details with which they are compared by Darwin. Why not candidly admit the argument in favour of the hermaphroditism which characterises the old fauna? Occultism proposes a solution which embraces the facts in a most comprehensive and simple manner. These relics of a prior androgyne stock must be placed in the same category as the pineal gland, and other organs as mysterious, which afford us silent testimony as to the reality of functions which have long since become atrophied in the course of animal and human progress, but which once played a signal part in the general economy of primeval life.
The occult doctrine, anyhow, can be advantageously compared with that of the most liberal men of science, who have theorised upon the origin of the first man.
Long before Darwin, Naudin, who gave the name of Blastema to that which the Darwinists call protoplasm, put forward a theory half occult and half scientifico-materialistic. He made Adam, the a-sexual, spring suddenly from the clay, as it is called in the Bible, the Blastema of Science. "It is from this larval form of mankind that the evolutive force effected the completion of species. For the accomplishment of this great phenomenon, Adam had to pass through a phase of immobility and unconsciousness, very analogous to the nymphal state of animals undergoing metamorphosis," explains Naudin. For the eminent botanist, Adam was not one man, however, but mankind, "which remained concealed within a temporary organism . . . . distinct from all others and never contracting alliance with any of these." He shows the differentiation of sexes accomplished by "a process of germination similar to that of Medusae and Ascidians." Mankind, thus constituted physiologically, "would retain a sufficient evolutive force for the rapid production of the various great human races."
De Quatrefages criticises this position in the "Human Species." It is unscientific, he says, or, properly speaking, Naudin's ideas "do not form a scientific theory," inasmuch as primordial Blastema is connected in his theory with the First Cause, which is credited with having made potentially in the Blastema all past, present, and future beings, and thus of having in reality created these beings en masse; moreover, Naudin does not even consider the secondary Causes, or their action in this evolution of the organic world. Science, which is only occupied with Secondary Causes, has thus "nothing to say to the theory of Naudin" (p. 125).
Nor will it have any more to say to the occult teachings, which are to some extent approached by Naudin. For if we but see in his "primordial Blastema" the Dhyan-Chohanic essence, the Chhaya or double of the Pitris, which contains within itself the potentiality of all forms, we are quite in accord. But there are two real and vital differences between our teachings. M. Naudin declares that evolution has progressed by sudden leaps and bounds, instead of extending slowly over millions of years; and his primordial Blastema is endowed only with blind instincts -- a kind of unconscious First Cause in the manifested Kosmos -- which is an absurdity. Whereas it is our Dhyan Chohanic essence -- the causality of the primal cause which creates physical man -- which is the living, active and potential matter, pregnant per se with that animal consciousness of a superior kind, such as is found in the ant and the beaver, which produces the long series of physiological differentiations. Apart from this his "ancient and general process of creation" from proto-organisms is as occult as any theory of Paracelsus or Khunrath could be.
Moreover, the Kabalistic works are full of the proof of this. The Zohar, for instance, says that every type in the visible has its prototype in the invisible Universe. "All that which is in the lower (our) world is found in the upper. The Lower and the Upper act and react upon each other." (Zohar, fol. 186.) Vide infra, Part II., "Esoteric Tenets corroborated in every Scripture."
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20. THEIR FATHERS WERE THE SELF-BORN. THE SELF-BORN, THE CHHAYA FROM THE BRILLIANT BODIES OF THE LORDS, THE FATHERS, THE SONS OF TWILIGHT (a).
(a) The "shadows," or Chhayas, are called the sons of the "self-born," as the latter name is applied to all the gods and Beings born through the WILL, whether of Deity or Adept. The Homunculi of Paracelsus would, perhaps, be also given this name, though the latter process is on a far more material plane. The name "Sons of Twilight" shows that the "Self-born" progenitors of our doctrine are identical with the Pitris of the Brahmanical system, as the title is a reference to their mode of birth, these Pitris being stated to have issued from Brahma's "body of twilight." (See the Puranas.)
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21. WHEN THE RACE BECAME OLD, THE OLD WATERS MIXED WITH THE FRESHER WATERS (a); WHEN THE DROPS BECAME TURBID, THEY VANISHED AND DISAPPEARED, IN THE NEW STREAM, IN THE HOT STREAM OF LIFE. THE OUTER OF THE FIRST BECAME THE INNER OF THE SECOND. (b). THE OLD WING BECAME THE SHADOW, AND THE SHADOW OF THE WING (c).
(a) The old (primitive) Race merged in the second race, and became one with it.
(b) This is the mysterious process of transformation and evolution of mankind. The material of the first forms -- shadowy, ethereal, and negative -- was drawn or absorbed into, and thus became the complement of the forms of the Second Race. The Commentary explains this by saying that, as the First Race was simply composed of the astral shadows of the creative progenitors, having of course neither astral nor physical bodies of their own -- this Race never died. Its "men" melted gradually away, becoming absorbed in the bodies of their own "sweat-born" progeny, more solid than their own. The old form vanished and was absorbed by, disappeared in, the new form, more human and physical. There was no death in those days of a period more blissful than the Golden Age; but the first, or parent material was used for the formation of the new being, to form the body and even the inner or lower principles or bodies of the progeny.
(c) When the shadow retires, i.e. when the astral body becomes covered with more solid flesh, man develops a physical body. The "wing," or the ethereal form that produced its shadow and image, became the shadow of the astral body and its own progeny. The expression is queer but original.
As there may be no occasion to refer to this mystery later, it is as well to point out at once the dual meaning contained in the Greek myth bearing upon this particular phase of evolution. It is found in the several variants of the allegory of Leda and her two sons Castor and Pollux, which variants have each a special meaning. Thus in Book XI. of the Odyssey, Leda is spoken of as the spouse of Tyndarus, who gave birth by her husband "to two sons of valiant heart" -- Castor and Pollux. Jupiter endows them with a marvellous gift and privilege. They are semi-immortal; they live and die, each in turn, and every alternate day; [[eteremeroi*]]. As the Tyndaridae, the twin brothers are an astronomical symbol, and stand for Day and Night; their two wives, Phoebe and Hilasira, the daughters of Apollo or the Sun, personifying the Dawn and the Twilight.** Again, in the allegory where Zeus is shown as the father of the two heroes -- born from the egg to which Leda gives birth -- the myth is entirely theogonical. It relates to that group of cosmic allegories in which the world is described as born from an egg. For Leda assumes in it the shape of a white swan when uniting herself to the Divine Swan.*** Leda is the mythical bird, then, to which, in the traditions of various peoples of the Aryan race, are attributed various ornithological forms of birds which all lay golden eggs.**** In the Kalevala (the Epic Poem of Finland), the beauteous daughter of the Ether, "the Water Mother," creates the world in conjunction with a "Duck" (another form of the Swan or Goose, Kalahansa), who lays six golden eggs, and the seventh, "an egg of iron," in her lap. But the variant of the Leda allegory which has a direct reference to mystic man is found in Pindar***** only, with a slighter reference to it in the Homeric hymns.****** Castor and Pollux are in it no longer the Dioscuri (of Apollodorus III. 10, 7); but become the highly significant symbol of the dual man, the Mortal and the Immortal. Not only this, but as will now be seen, they are also the symbol of the Third Race, and its transformation from the animal man into a god-man with only an animal body.
Pindar shows Leda uniting herself in the same night to her husband and also to the father of the gods -- Zeus. Thus Castor is the son of the Mortal, Pollux the progeny of the Immortal. In the allegory made up for the occasion, it is said that in a riot of vengeance against the Apherides******* Pollux kills Lynceus -- "of all mortals he whose sight is the most penetrating" -- but Castor is wounded by Idas, "he who sees and knows." Zeus puts an end to the fight by hurling his thunderbolt and killing the last two combatants. Pollux finds his brother dying.******** In his despair he calls upon Zeus to slay him also. "Thou canst not die altogether," answers the master of the Gods; "thou art of a divine race." But he gives him the choice: Pollux will either remain immortal, living eternally in Olympus; or, if he would share his brother's fate in all things, he must pass half his existence underground, and the other half in the golden heavenly abodes. This semi-immortality, which is also to be shared by Castor, is accepted by Pollux.* And thus the twin brothers live alternately, one during the day, and the other during the night.**
Is this a poetical fiction only? An allegory, one of those "solar myth" interpretations, higher than which no modern Orientalist seems able to soar? Indeed, it is much more. Here we have an allusion to the "Egg-born," Third Race; the first half of which is mortal, i.e., unconscious in its personality, and having nothing within itself to survive***; and the latter half of which becomes immortal in its individuality, by reason of its fifth principle being called to life by the informing gods, and thus connecting the Monad with this Earth. This is Pollux; while Castor represents the personal, mortal man, an animal of not even a superior kind, when unlinked from the divine individuality. "Twins" truly; yet divorced by death forever, unless Pollux, moved by the voice of twinship, bestows on his less favoured mortal brother a share of his own divine nature, thus associating him with his own immortality.
Such is the occult meaning of the metaphysical aspect of the allegory. The widely spread modern interpretation of it -- so celebrated in antiquity, Plutarch tells us,**** as symbolical of brotherly devotion -- namely, that it was an image borrowed from the spectacle of Nature -- is weak and inadequate to explain the secret meaning. Besides the fact that the Moon, with the Greeks, was feminine in exoteric mythology, and could therefore hardly be regarded as Castor -- and at the same time be identified with Diana -- ancient symbologists who held the Sun, the King of all sidereal orbs, as the visible image of the highest deity, would not have personified it by Pollux, a demi-god only.*****
If from Greek mythology we pass to the Mosaic allegories and symbolism, we shall find a still more striking corroboration of the same tenet under another form. Unable to trace in Genesis the "Egg-born," we shall still find there unmistakably the androgynes, and the first three races of the Secret Doctrine hidden under most ingenious symbology in the first four chapters of Genesis.
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THE DIVINE HERMAPHRODITE.
An impenetrable veil of secrecy was thrown over the occult and religious mysteries taught, after the submersion of the last remnant of the Atlantean race, some 12,000 years ago, lest they should be shared by the unworthy, and so desecrated. Of these sciences several have now become exoteric -- such as Astronomy, for instance, in its purely mathematical and physical aspect. Hence their dogmas and tenets, being all symbolised and left to the sole guardianship of parable and allegory, have been forgotten, and their meaning has become perverted. Nevertheless, one finds the hermaphrodite in the scriptures and traditions of almost every nation; and why such unanimous agreement if the statement is only a fiction?
It is this secrecy which led the Fifth Race to the establishment, or rather the re-establishment of the religious mysteries, in which ancient truths might be taught to the coming generations under the veil of allegory and symbolism. Behold the imperishable witness to the evolution of the human races from the divine, and especially from the androgynous Race -- the Egyptian Sphinx, that riddle of the Ages! Divine wisdom incarnating on earth, and forced to taste of the bitter fruit of personal experience of pain and suffering, generated under the shade of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil -- a secret first known only to the Elohim, the SELF-INITIATED, "higher gods" -- on earth only.*
[[Footnote continued]]-------------------------------
In the Book of Enoch we have Adam,** the first divine androgyne, Moon, conceived as twins . . . The Sun, the immortal and powerful being that disappears every evening from the horizon and descends under the Earth, as though he would make room for the fraternal orb which comes to life with night, is Pollux, who sacrifices himself for Castor; Castor, who, inferior to his brother, owes to him his immortality: for the Moon, says Theophrastus, is only another, but feebler Sun." (De Ventis 17. See Decharme, p. 655.) separating into man and woman, and becoming JAH-HEVA in one form, or Race, and Cain and Abel* (male and female) in its other form or Race -- the double-sexed Jehovah** -- an echo of its Aryan prototype, Brahma-Vach. After which come the Third and Fourth Root-Races of mankind*** -- that is to say, Races of men and women, or individuals of opposite sexes, no longer sexless semi-spirits and androgynes, as were the two Races which precede them. This fact is hinted at in every Anthropogony. It is found in fable and allegory, in myth and revealed Scriptures, in legend and tradition. Because, of all the great Mysteries, inherited by Initiates from hoary antiquity, this is one of the greatest. It accounts for the bi-sexual element found in every creative deity, in Brahma-Viraj-Vach, as in Adam-Jehovah-Eve, also in "Cain-Jehovah-Abel." For "The Book of the Generations of Adam" does not even mention Cain and Abel, but says only: "Male and female created he them. . . and called their name Adam" (ch. v. 5). Then it proceeds to say: "And Adam begat a son in his own likeness, after his image, and called his name Seth" (v. 3); after which he begets other sons and daughters, thus proving that Cain and Abel are his own allegorical permutations. Adam stands for the primitive human race, especially in its cosmo-sidereal sense. Not so, however, in its theo-anthropological meaning. The compound name of Jehovah, or Jah-Hovah, meaning male life and female life -- first androgynous, then separated into sexes -- is used in this sense in Genesis from ch. v. onwards. As the author of "The Source of Measures" says (p. 159): "The two words of which Jehovah is composed make up the original idea of male-female, as the birth originators"; for the Hebrew letter Jod was the membrum virile and Hovah was Eve, the mother of all living, or the procreatrix, Earth and Nature. The author believes, therefore, that "It is seen that the perfect one" (the perfect female circle or Yoni, 20612, numerically), "as originator of measures, takes also the form of birth-origin, as Hermaphrodite one; hence the phallic form and use."
Precisely; only "the phallic form and use" came long ages later; and the first and original meaning of Enos, the son of Seth, was the First Race born in the present usual way from man and woman --for Seth is no man, but a race. Before him humanity was hermaphrodite. While Seth is the first result (physiologically) after the FALL, he is also the first man; hence his son Enos is referred to as the "Son of man." (Vide infra.) Seth represents the later Third Race.
To screen the real mystery name of AIN-SOPH -- the Boundless and Endless No-Thing -- the Kabalists have brought forward the compound attribute-appellation of one of the personal creative Elohim, whose name was Yak and Jab, the letters i or j or y being interchangeable, or Jah-Hovah, i.e. male and female;* Jah-Eve an hermaphrodite, or the first form of humanity, the original Adam of Earth, not even Adam Kadmon, whose " mind-born son" is the earthly Jah-Hovah, mystically. And knowing this, the crafty Rabbin-Kabalist has made of it a name so secret, that he could not divulge it later on without exposing the whole scheme; and thus he was obliged to make it sacred.
How close is the identity between Brahma-Prajapati and Jehovah-Sephiroth, between Brahma-Viraj and Jehovah-Adam, the Bible and the Puranas compared can alone show. Analysed and read in the same light, they afford cogent evidence that they are two copies of the same original -- made at two periods far distant from each other. Compare once more in relation to this subject Genesis ch. 4. verses 1 and 26 and Manu I., and they will both yield their meaning. In Manu (Book I. 32) Brahma, who is also both man and god, and divides his body into male and female, stands in his esoteric meaning, as does Jehovah or Adam in the Bible, for the symbolical personification of creative and generative power, both divine and human. The Zohar affords still more convincing proof of identity, while some Rabbins repeat word for word certain original Puranic expressions; e.g., the "creation" of the world is generally considered in the Brahmanical books to be the Lila, delight or sport, the amusement of the Supreme Creator, "Vishnu being thus discrete and indiscrete substance, spirit, and time, sports like a playful boy in frolics." (Vishnu Purana, Book I., ch. ii.) Now compare this with what is said in the Book, "Nobeleth' Hokhmah": "The Kabalists say that the entering into existence of the worlds happens through delight, in that Ain-Soph (? !) rejoiced in Itself, and flashed and beamed from Itself to Itself . . . . which are all called delight," etc. (Quoted in Myer's "Qabbalah," p. 110). Thus it is not a "curious idea of the Qabbalists," as the author just quoted remarks, but a purely Puranic, Aryan idea. Only, why make of Ain-Soph a Creator?
The "Divine Hermaphrodite" is then Brahma-Vach-Viraj; and that of the Semites, or rather of the Jews, is Jehovah-Cain-Abel. Only the "Heathen" were, and are, more sincere and frank than were the later Israelites and Rabbis, who undeniably knew the real meaning of their exoteric deity. The Jews regard the name given to them -- the Yah-oudi -- as an insult. Yet they have, or would have if they only wished it, as undeniable a right to call themselves the ancient Yah-oudi, "Jah-hovians," as the Brahmins have to call themselves Brahmins, after their national deity. For Jah-hovah is the generic name of that group or hierarchy of creative planetary angels, under whose star their nation has evolved. He is one of the planetary Elohim of the regent group of Saturn. Verse 26 of Genesis, ch. iv., when read correctly, would alone give them such a right, for it calls the new race of men sprung from Seth and Enos, Jehovah, something quite different from the translation adopted in the Bible: -- "To him also, was born a son, Enos; then began men to call themselves Jah or Yah-hovah," to with men and women, the "lords of creation." One has but to read the above-mentioned verse in the original Hebrew text and by the light of the Kabala, to find that, instead of the words as they now stand translated, it is: -- "Then began men to call themselves Jehovah," which is the correct translation, and not "Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord"; the latter being a mistranslation, whether deliberate or not. Again the well-known passage: "I have gotten a man from the Lord," should read: "I have gotten a man, even Jehovah."* Luther translated the passage one way, the Roman Catholics quite differently. Bishop Wordsworth renders it: "Cain -- I have gotten Kain, from Kanithi, I have gotten." Luther: "I have gotten a man 0-- even the Lord" (Jehovah); and the author of "The Source of Measures": "I have measured a man, even Jehovah." The last is the correct rendering, because (a) a famous Rabbin, a Kabalist, explained the passage to the writer in precisely this way, and (b) because this rendering is identical with that in the Secret Doctrine of the East with regard to Brahma. In "Isis Unveiled,"** it was explained by the writer that "Cain . . . is the son of the 'Lord' not of Adam (Genesis iv. I)" The "Lord" is Adam Kadmon, the "father" of Yodcheva, "Adam-Eve," or Jehovah, the son of sinful thought, not the progeny of flesh and blood. Seth, on the other hand, is the leader and the progenitor of the Races of the Earth; for he is the son of Adam, exoterically, but esoterically he is the progeny of Cain and Abel, since Abel or Hebel is a female, the counterpart and female half of the male Cain, and Adam is the collective name for man and woman: "male and female (Zachar va Nakobeh) created he them . . . and called their name Adam." The verses in Genesis from chs. i. to v., are purposely mixed up for Kabalistic reasons. After MAN of Genesis ch. i. 26 and Enos, Son of Man of ch. iv. v. 26, after Adam, the first androgyne, after Adam Kadmon, the sexless (the first) Logos, Adam and Eve once separated, come finally Jehovah-Eve and Cain-Jehovah. These represent distinct Root-Races, for millions of years elapsed between them.
Hence the Aryan and the Semitic Theo-anthropographies are two leaves on the same stem; their respective personifications and symbolic personages standing in relation to each other in this way.
I. The Unknowable, referred to in various ways in Rig Vedic verse, such as "Nought Was," called, later on "Parabrahm;" the (Ain, nothing, or the "Ain-Soph" of the Kabalists), and again, the "Spirit" (of God) that moves upon the face of the waters, in Genesis. All these are identical. Moreover, in Genesis, ch. i., v. 2, is placed as verse 1 in the secret Kabalistic texts, where it is followed by the Elohim "creating the Heaven and the Earth." This deliberate shifting of the order of the verses was necessary for monotheistic and Kabalistic purposes. Jeremiah's curse against those Elohim (gods) who have not created the Heavens and the Earth, ch. x., v. 11, shows that there were other Elohim who had.
II. The "Heavenly" Manu-Swayambhuva, who sprang from Swayambhu-Narayana, the "Self-existent," and Adam Kadmon of the Kabalists, and the androgyne MAN of Genesis ch. 1 are also identical.
III. Manu-swayambhuva is Brahma, or the Logos; and he is Adam Kadmon, who in Genesis iv., 5, separates himself into two halves, male and female, thus becoming Jah-Hovah or Jehovah-Eve; as Manu Swayambhuva or Brahma separates himself to become "Brahma-Viraj and Vach-Viraj," male and female; all the rest of the texts and versions being blinds.
IV. Vach is the daughter of Brahma and is named Sata-Rupa, "the hundred-formed," and Savitri, "generatrix," the mother of the gods and of all living. She is identical with Eve, "the mother (of all the lords or gods or) of all living." Besides this there are many other occult meanings.
What is written in "Isis," although scattered about and very cautiously expressed at the time, is correct:
Explaining esoterically Ezekiel's wheel,* it is said of Jodhevah or Jehovah: -
"When the ternary is taken in the beginning of the Tetragram, it expresses the divine creation spiritually, without any carnal sin; taken at its opposite end it expresses the latter: it is feminine. The name of Eva is composed of three letters, that of the primitive or heavenly Adam, is written with one letter, Jod or Yodh; therefore it must not be read Jehovah but Ieva, or Eve. The Adam of the first chapter is the spiritual, therefore pure, androgyne Adam Kadmon. When woman issues from the rib of the second Adam (of dust), the pure Virgo is separated, and falling "into generation," or the downward cycle, becomes Scorpio, emblem of sin and matter. While the ascending cycle points to the purely spiritual races, or the ten prediluvian patriarchs, the Prajapatis and Sephiroth are led on by the creative Deity itself, who is Adam Kadmon or Yod-cheva. Spiritually, the lower one (Jehovah) is that of the terrestrial races, led on by Enoch or Libra, the seventh; who, because he is half-divine, half-terrestrial, is said to have been taken by God alive. Enoch, Hermes, and Libra, are one."
This is only one of the several meanings. No need to remind the scholar that Scorpio is the astrological sign of the organs of reproduction. Like the Indian Rishis, the Patriarchs are all convertible in their numbers, as well as interchangeable. According to the subject to which they relate they become ten, twelve, seven or five, and even fourteen, and they have the same esoteric meaning as the Manus or Rishis.
Moreover, Jehovah, as may be shown, has a variety of etymologies, but only those are true which are found in the Kabala. (Ieve) is the Old Testament term, and was pronounced Ya-va. Inman suggests that it is contracted from the two words Yaho-Iah, Jaho-Jah, or Jaho is Jah. Punctuated it is which is, however, a Rabbinical caprice to associate it with the name Adoni or , which has the same points. It is curious, and indeed hardly conceivable, that the Jews anciently read the name (Adoni), when they had so many names of which Jeho and Jah and Iah constituted a part. But so it was; and Philo Byblus, who gives us the so-called fragment of Sanchoniathon, spelt it in Greek letters [[IEUO]], Javo or Jevo. Theodoret says that the Samaritans pronounced Yahva, and the Jews Yaho. Prof. Gibbs, however, suggests its punctuation thus: (Ye-hou-vih); and he cut the Gordian knot of its true occult meaning. For in this last form, as a Hebrew verb, it means "he will -- be."* It was also derived from the Chaldaic verb or eue (eva) or eua (Eva) "to be." And so it was, since from Enosh, the "Son of Man," only, were the truly human races to begin and "to be," as males and females. This statement receives further corroboration, inasmuch as Parkhurst makes the verb to mean: (1) "To fall down" (i.e. into generation or matter); and (2) "To be, to continue " -- as a Race. The aspirate of the word eua (Eva) "to be" being Heve (Eve), which is the feminine of and the same as Hebe, the Grecian goddess of youth and the Olympian bride of Heracles, makes the name Jehovah appear still more clearly in its primitive double-sexed form.
Finding in Sanskrit such syllables as Jah and Yah, e.g., Jah (navi) "Ganges" and Jagan-natha, "Lord of the World," it becomes clear why Mr. Rawlinson is so very confident in his works of an Aryan or Vedic influence on the early mythology of Babylon. Nor is it to be much wondered at that the alleged ten tribes of Israel disappeared during the captivity period, without leaving a trace behind them, when we are informed that the Jews had de facto but two tribes -- those of Judah and of Levi. The Levies, moreover, were not a tribe at all, but a priestly caste. The descendants have only followed their progenitors, the various patriarchs, into thin, sidereal air. There were Brahms and A-brahms, in days of old, truly, and before the first Jew had been born. Every nation held its first god and gods to be androgynous; nor could it be otherwise, since they regarded their distant primeval progenitors, their dual-sexed ancestors, as divine Beings and Gods, just as do the Chinese to this day. And they were divine in one sense, as also were their first human progeny, the "mind-born" primitive humanity, which were most assuredly bi-sexuals as all the more ancient symbols and traditions show. Under the emblematical devices and peculiar phraseology of the priesthood of old, lie latent hints of sciences as yet undiscovered during the present cycle. Well acquainted as may be a scholar with the hieratic writing and hieroglyphical system of the Egyptians, he must first of all learn to sift their records. He has to assure himself, compasses and rule in hand, that the picture writing he is examining fits, to a line, certain fixed geometrical figures which are the hidden keys to such records, before he ventures on an interpretation."
"But there are myths which speak for themselves. In this class we may include the double-sexed first creators of every Cosmogony. The Greek Zeus-Zen (AEther), and Chthonia (the chaotic earth) and Metis (water), his wives; Osiris and Isis-Latona -- the former god also representing AEther, the first emanation of the Supreme Deity, Amun, the primeval source of Light; the goddess Earth and Water again; Mithras, the rock-born god, the symbol of the male mundane fire, or the personified primordial light, and Mithra, the fire goddess, at once his mother and his wife; the pure element of fire (the active, or male principle) regarded as light and heat, in conjunction with Earth and Water, or Matter, the female or passive element of cosmical generation" -- all these are records of the primeval divine Hermaphrodite.
