Part 1 — Commentaries On the Twelve Stanzas and Their Terms, According To Their Numeration, In Stanzas And Shlokas. (continued 3)

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, as closely and inseparably linked together. Æsculapius was the Son of Apollo—the Sun or Fire of Life; at once Helius, Pythius, 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 Purânas 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 Kabalah, Bath-Kol is the Daughter of the Divine Voice, or Primordial Light, Shekinah. In the Purânas and Hindû exotericism, Vâch, the Voice, is the female Logos of Brahmâ—a permutation of Aditi, Primordial Light. And if Bath-Kol, in Jewish Mysticism, is an articulate præter-natural voice from heaven, revealing to the “chosen people” the sacred traditions and laws, it is only because Vâch 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 Israël and the Jewish High-Priests. [pg 113] 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.248

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 Prabhavâpyaya, 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 Orphic Protologos, he is called Pûrvaja, “pregenetic,” and 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 Dhyân Chohans (Devas), proceed from the [pg 114] First Cause—which is not Parabrahman, for the latter is the All Cause, and cannot be referred to as the “First Cause,”—which First Cause is called in the Brâhmanical Books Jagad-Yoni, the “Womb of the World,” mankind emanates from these active agents in Kosmos. But men, during the First and Second Races, were not physical beings, but merely rudiments of the future men; Bhûtas, which proceeded from Bhûtâdi, “origin,” or the “original place whence sprang the Elements.” Hence they proceeded with all the rest from Prabhavâpyaya, “the place whence is the origination, and into which is the resolution of all things,” as explained by the Commentator on the Vishnu Purâna. Whence also our physical senses. Whence even the highest “created” Deity itself, in our Philosophy. As one with the Universe, whether we call him Brahmâ, Îshvara, 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 Pundarîkâksha, “supreme and imperishable glory,” once that instead of Sadaika-Rûpa, “changeless” or “immutable” Nature, he is addressed as Ekâneka-Rûpa, “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:

Mahâpurusha or Paramâtman: Supreme Spirit.

Âtman or Pûrvaja (Protologos): The Living Spirit of Nature.

Indriyâtman, or Hrishîkesha: Spiritual or Intellectual Soul (one with the senses).

Bhûtâtman: The Living, or Life Soul.

Kshetrajña: Embodied Soul, or the Universe of Spirit and Matter.

Bhrântidarshanatah: False Perception—Material Universe.

The last name means something perceived or conceived of, owing to false and erroneous apprehension, as a material form, but is, in fact, only Mâyâ, Illusion, as all is in our physical universe.

It is in strict analogy with the attributes of this Brahma in both the spiritual and material worlds, that the evolution of the Dhyân-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.

[pg 115]

Stanza V. 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.

18. The First249 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 or 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 now be given. 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 reïncarnating 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 Âtman, 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 [pg 116] 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 Arûpa, or formless plane. On our plane, its essence being too pure, it remains all-potential, but individually becomes inactive. For instance, 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 Âtman: 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 the Dhammapada.250 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, or Spirits, warm the Shadows. This is physically and literally true; metaphysically, or on the psychic and spiritual plane, it is equally true that the Âtman 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 Reïncarnating Ego, its immortality. Thus, 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 [pg 117] 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 former an ethical characteristic, of the latter an art—is an additional proof of the exceptional nature of the phenomenon.

The entire scheme is in the Chaldæan Book of Numbers, and even in the Zohar, if one only understands the meaning of the apocalyptic hints. First comes Ain Suph, 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—the first the Briatic World called the Throne, the abode of pure Spirits; the second, the World of Formation, or Jetziratic, 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 this World—also called Kliphoth, containing the (six other) Spheres, נלגלים, and Matter—that it is the residence of the “Prince of Darkness.” This is as clearly stated as can be; for Metatron, the Angel of the second Briatic World, the first habitable World, means Messenger, Ἄγγελος, Angel, called the great Teacher; and under him are the Angels of the third World, or Jetziratic, whose ten and seven classes are the Sephiroth,251 of whom it is said that:

They inhabit or vivify this world as essential [entities and] intelligences, and their correlates and logical contraries inhabit the third habitable world, called the Asiatic.

These “contraries” are called the “Shells,” קליפות, or Demons,252 who inhabit the seven habitations called Sheba Hachaloth, which are simply the seven Zones of our Globe.253 Their prince is called in the Kabalah Samaël, the Angel of Death, who is also the seducing Serpent Satan; but this 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 descend on Earth to incarnate in their turn.

The Book of Wisdom teaches that:

All Souls [Monads] are preëxistent in the Worlds of Emanations.254

[pg 118]

And the Zohar teaches that in the “Soul” is the real man, i.e., the Ego and the conscious I am, the Manas.

Says Josephus, repeating the belief of the Essenes,

[Souls] descend from the pure air to be chained to bodies.255

And Philo states that:

The air was full of [Souls], and that those which were nearest the earth, descending to be tied to mortal bodies, return back to bodies, being desirous to live in them.256

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 Brâhman, the Twice-born, who rules the Gods or Devas; and Paul repeated it in his Epistle to the Corinthians:

Know ye not that we [the Initiates] shall judge angels?257

Finally, it is shown in every ancient Scripture and Cosmogony that man evolved primarily as a luminous incorporeal form, over which, like molten brass poured into the 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. Says the Zohar:

The Soul and the Form when descending on Earth put on an earthly garment.

His protoplastic body was not formed of that matter of which our mortal frames are fashioned.

When Adam dwelled in the garden of Eden, he was dressed in the celestial garment, which is the garment of heavenly light ... light of that light which was used in the garden of Eden.258 Man [the Heavenly Adam] was created by the ten Sephiroth of the Jetziratic World, and by their common power the seven Angels of a still lower World engendered the Earthly Adam. First Samaël 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 a 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.

[pg 119]

(c) Why had they “no Fire or Water of their own”?259 Because 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 Âtmâ, 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 symbolized by the Sun or Fire; Divine Soul by Water and the Moon, both standing for the Father and Mother of Pneuma, the Human Soul, or Mind, symbolized 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 Kabalah, “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 [pg 120] “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,” or Guru—Âtmâ-Buddhi?

As says the Commentary:

If thou would'st understand the Secondary [“Creation,” so-called], O Lanoo, thou should'st first study its relation to the Primary.260

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,” or Creation that which is marked [Symbol: Like a large letter H, with dots above and below, and tildes above and below] reads “Root,” as in the Secondary likewise.

Thus in Alchemy or Western Hermeticism—a variant on Eastern Esotericism—we find:

Sulphur ... Flamma ... Spiritus

Mercury ... Natura ... Aqua

Salt ... 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 0 (nought) in our conceptions, the All in Nature and its Mind. “Pro-Metor” 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 Âryan, to the Jewish God who is a “consuming fire.” In India, God is called in various dialects, Eashoor, Esur, Iswur, and Îshvara, in Sanskrit, the Lord, from Isha, but this is primarily the name of Shiva, the Destroyer; and the three chief Vedic Gods are Agni (Ignis), Vâyu, and Sûrya—Fire, Air, and the Sun, three Occult degrees of Fire. In the Hebrew, אזא (Aza) means to “illuminate,” and אשא (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 the root Ush is fire or heat; and the Egyptian word Osiris is compounded, as shown by Schelling, of the two primitives Aish and Asr, or a “fire-enchanter.” Aesar in the old [pg 121] Etruscan meant a God, being perhaps derived from Asura of the Vedas. Îshvara is an analogous term, as Dr. Kenealy thought, who quotes the Bhagavad Gitâ to the effect that:

Îshvara resides in every mortal being and puts in motion, by his supernatural powers, 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, O Lord! In the Irish language easam, or asam, means to make or create.

[And] Aesar was the name also of one of the ancient Irish gods; the literal meaning of the word is “to kindle a fire.”261

The Christian Kabalists and Symbologists who disfigured Pymander—prominent among them the Bishop of Ayre, François de Tours, in the 16th century—divide the Elements in the following way:

The four Elements formed from divine Substances and the Spirits of the Salts of Nature represented by:

[Symbol: Root symbol] ... St. Matthew ... Angel-Man ... Water (Jesus-Christ, Angel-Man, Mikael)

Α-Ω ... St. Mark ... The Lion ... Fire

Ε-Υ ... St. Luke ... The Bull ... Earth

Ι-Ο ... St. John ... The Eagle ... Air262

Η ... The Quintessence, Ἡ ΦΛΟΞ, Flamma-Virgo [Virgin Oil], Flamma Durissima, Virgo, Lucis Æterna 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, the Moon having generated the Earth, its phantom, attracted by magnetic affinity, sought to form its first inhabitants, the pre-human monsters. [pg 122] To assure himself of this, the student has again to turn to the Chaldæan 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 the androgynous bosom of this Wisdom (Svabhâvat, Mother-Space), its reflections became on Earth the woman Omorôka, who is the Chaldæan Thavatth (or Thalatth), the Greek Thalassa, the Deep or the Sea, which Esoterically and even exoterically is the Moon. It was the Moon (Omorôka) who presided over the monstrous creation of nondescript beings which were slain by the Dhyânîs.263

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 Brahmâ, exoterically—is the supreme condition of the passive infinite Deity, since it contains all the divine energies and is the essence of Brahmâ, who is said, as Brahmâ, to create everything through Yoga power. Brahmâ, Vishnu and Shiva are the most powerful energies of God, Brahma (Neuter), says a Paurânic text. Yoga here is the same as Dhyâna, which word is again synonymous with Yoga in the Tibetan text, where the “Sons of Yoga” are called “Sons of Dhyâna,” or of that abstract meditation through which the Dhyâni-Buddhas create their celestial sons, the Dhyâni-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].264

19. The Second Race (was) the product by budding and expansion, the A-sexual265 from the Sexless.266 Thus was, O Lanoo, the Second Race produced.

What will be most contested by scientific authorities is this A-sexual Race, the Second, the Fathers of the “Sweat-born” so-called, and [pg 123] 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 coöperation of two beings of opposite sex, and also by fissure or budding from one being only, which is of no sex.267

“Budding” is the very word used in the Stanza. How could these Chhâyâs 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 Kâma Rûpa, which evolved only in the Third Race? They evolved the Second Race unconsciously, as do some plants. Or, perhaps, as the Amœba, 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, [Symbol: Large X with horizontal lines across tops and bottoms] 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?

[pg 124]

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.

As the Commentary tells us:

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 æons of time. What Physiologist or Biologist can 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 [pg 125] of plant, animal, and man, it must be so. The mistaken theories of Monogenesis, and the descent of man from the mammal, instead of the mammals from man, 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. Says a Talmudic axiom:

If thou wilt know the invisible, open thine eyes wide on the visible.

In the Descent of Man occurs the following passage, which shows how near Darwin came to the acceptance of this ancient teaching.

It has long 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.268 But here we encounter a singular difficulty. In the mammalian class the males possess rudiments of a uterus with the adjacent passages in the vesiculæ prostaticæ; they bear also rudiments of mammæ, 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,269 for we have to look to fishes, the lowest of all the classes, to find any still existent androgynous forms.270

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:

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 state to the other.271

He instances the case of “spurs, plumes, and brilliant colours, acquired for battle or 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 [pg 126] Darwin. Why not candidly admit the argument in favour of the hermaphroditism which characterizes 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 equally 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, in any case, can be advantageously compared with that of the most liberal men of Science, who have theorized 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. As Naudin explains:

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.272

For the eminent Botanist, Adam was not one man, however, but mankind, which remained

Concealed within a temporary organism, already distinct from all others, and incapable of contracting an alliance with any of them.

He shows the differentiation of sexes accomplished by

A process of germination similar to that of medusæ and ascidians.

Mankind, thus constituted physiologically,

Would retain a sufficient evolutive force for the rapid production of the various great human races.

De Quatrefages criticizes 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 “second causes,” or their action in [pg 127] this evolution of the organic world. Science, which is only occupied with “second causes,” has thus

Nothing to say to the theory of M. Naudin.273

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 Dhyân-Chohanic Essence, the Chhâyâ 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 Dhyân-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 reäct upon each other.274

20. Their Fathers were the Self-born. The Self-born, the Chhâyâ from the brilliant Bodies of the Lords, the Fathers, the Sons of Twilight.

The “Shadows,” or Chhâyâs, 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 [pg 128] Pitris of the Brâhmanical System, as the title is a reference to their mode of birth; these Pitris being stated to have issued from Brahmâ's “Body of Twilight,” as stated in the Purânas.

21. When the Race became old, the old Waters mixed with the fresher Waters (a). When its 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 new Shadow, and the Shadow of the Wing (c).

(a) The old or Primitive Race merged in the Second Race, and became one with it.

(b) This is the mysterious process of the 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 its own—the 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 and 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, each of which variants has 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 [pg 129] 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 (ἑτερήμεροι275). As the Tyndaridæ, the twin brothers are an astronomical symbol, and stand for Day and Night; their two wives, Phœbe and Hilaeira, the daughters of Apollo or the Sun, personifying the Dawn and the Twilight.276 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 or Brahma-Kalahamsa. Leda is the mythical Bird, then, to which, in the traditions of various peoples of the Âryan race, are attributed various ornithological forms of birds which all lay golden Eggs.277 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, Kalahamsa—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 Pindar278 only, with a slighter reference to it in the Homeric Hymns.279 Castor and Pollux are in it no longer the Dioscuri of Apollodorus280; 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 Apharides,281 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.282 [pg 130] 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.283 And thus the twin brothers live alternately, one during the day, and the other during the night.284

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;285 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 for ever, 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,286 as symbolical of brotherly devotion—namely, that it was an image of the Sun and Moon 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 [pg 131] visible image of the highest Deity, would not have personified it by Pollux, a demi-god only.287

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 them the “Egg-born,” we shall still unmistakably find in the first four chapters of Genesis the Androgynes and the first Three Races of the Secret Doctrine, hidden under most ingenious symbology.

The Divine Hermaphrodite.

An impenetrable veil of secrecy was thrown over the Occult and Religious Mysteries, 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 aspects. But their dogmas and tenets, being all symbolized and left to the sole guardianship of parable and allegory, have been forgotten, and hence the 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?

Under cover of this secrecy the Fifth Race were led to the establishment, or rather the reëstablishment 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 on Earth only 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.”288

[pg 132]

In the Book of Enoch we have Adam,289 the first Divine Androgyne, separating into man and woman, and becoming Jah-Heva in one form, or Race, and Cain and Abel290—male and female—in its other form or Race—the double-sexed Jehovah,291 an echo of its Âryan prototype, Brahmâ-Vâch. After which come the Third and Fourth Root-Races of mankind292—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. For, 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 Brahmâ-Virâj-Vâch, 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.293

Then it proceeds to say:

And Adam ... begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth.294

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 Chapter V onwards. As the author of the Source of Measures says:

The two words of which Jehovah is composed make up the original idea of male-female, as the birth originator.295

[pg 133]

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.” Seth represents the later Third Race.

To screen the real mystery name of Ain Suph—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 Yah or Jah—the letters i or j or y being interchangeable—or Jah-Hovah, i.e., male and female;296 Jah-Eve a 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 Brahmâ-Prajâpati and Jehovah-Sephiroth, between Brahmâ-Virâj and Jehovah-Adam, the Bible and the Purânas compared alone can show. Analyzed, 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 iv. 1 and 26 and Manu i. 32 and they will both yield their meaning. In Manu, Brahmâ, who, like Jehovah or Adam in Genesis, is both man and God, and divides his body into male and female, stands, in his Esoteric meaning, 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 Paurânic expressions; e.g., the “creation” of the world is generally considered in [pg 134] the Brâhmanical books to be the Lîlâ, the delight or sport, the amusement of the Supreme Creator.

Vishnu, being thus discrete and indiscrete substance, spirit, and time, sports like a playful boy, as you shall learn by listening to his frolics.297

Now compare this with what is said in the Book, Nobeleth 'Hokhmah:

The Qabbalists say, that the entering into existence of the worlds happened through delight, in that Ain Suph [? !] rejoiced in Itself, and flashed and beamed from Itself to Itself ... which are all called delight.298

Thus it is not a “curious idea of the Qabbalists,” as the author just quoted remarks, but a purely Paurânic, Âryan idea. Only, why make of Ain Suph a Creator?

The “Divine Hermaphrodite” is, then, Brahmâ-Vâch-Virâj; 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 Israëlites 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 Brâhmans have to call themselves Brâhmans 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 Chapter iv of Genesis, 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, which ought to read:

To him also, was born a son, Enos; then began men to call themselves Jah, or Yah-hovah,

to wit, 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 Kabalah, to find that, instead of the words as they now stand translated, the correct translation should be:

Then began men to call themselves Jehovah;

and not:

Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord

[pg 135]

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.299

Luther translated the passage one way, the Roman Catholics quite differently. Bishop Wordsworth renders it:

Cain—I have gotten—Kain, from Kâ'nithi, I have gotten.

Luther:

I have gotten a man—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 for—(a) a famous Rabbin, a Kabalist, explained the passage to the writer in precisely this way, and (b) this rendering is identical with that in the Secret Doctrine of the East with regard to Brahmâ.

In Isis Unveiled,300 it was explained by the writer that:

Cain ... is the son of the “Lord” not of Adam.

The “Lord” is Adam Kadmon, the “Father” of Yod-Heva, “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 theirname Adam.

The verses in Genesis from Chapters i to v, are purposely mixed up for Kabalistic reasons. After the “Man” of Genesis i. 26, and Enos, the Son of Man, of iv. 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 Âryan and the Semitic Theo-anthropographies are two [pg 136] leaves on the same stem; their respective personifications and symbolic personages standing in relation to each other in the following way:

I. The “Unknowable” referred to in various ways in Rig Vedic verse, such as “Nought was,” called, later on, Parabrahman—the אין, Ain, No-thing, or Ain Suph 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 i, verse 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,301 shows that there were other Elohim who had.

II. The Heavenly Manu-Svâyambhuva, who sprang from Svayambhû-Nârâyana, the “Self-existent,” the Adam Kadmon of the Kabalists, and the Androgyne “Man,” of Genesis i, are also identical.

III. Manu-Svâyambhuva is Brahmâ, 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-Svâyambhuva, or Brahmâ, separates himself to become “Brahmâ-Virâj and Vâch-Virâj,” male and female. All the rest of the texts and versions are “blinds.”

IV. Vâch is the daughter of Brahmâ and is named Shata-Rûpâ, “the hundred-formed,” and Sâvitrî, 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 on the subject in Isis Unveiled, 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, i.e., without any carnal sin: taken at its opposite end it expresses the latter; it is feminine. The name of Eve is composed of three letters, that of the primitive or heavenly Adam, is written with one letter, Jod or Yod; 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 [pg 137]issues from the left 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 Prajâpatis and Sephiroth, led on by the creative Deity itself, who is Adam Kadmon or Yodcheva, [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, or Hermes, or Libra, are one.302

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 Kabalah. יהוה (Ieve) is the Old Testament term, and was pronounced Ya-va. Inman suggests that it is contracted from the two words יהו יה, Yaho-Iah, Jaho-Jah, or Jaho is Jah. Punctuated it is יְהוֶֹה, which is, however, a Rabbinical caprice to associate it with the name Adoni, or אֲדנָי, which has the same points. It is curious, and indeed hardly conceivable, that the Jews anciently read the name יהוה 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 Sanchuniathon, spelt it in Greek letters Ιευω, Javo or Jevo. Theodoret says that the Samaritans pronounced it Yahva, and the Jews Yaho. Prof. Gibbs, however, suggests its punctuation thus: יֵהִוֶה (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.”303 It was also derived from the Chaldaic verb הֲוָא, or הִוָה, eue (eve), 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 הוה 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 הוה, Heve (Eve), which is the feminine of יהוה, and the same as Hebe, the Grecian [pg 138] 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., Jâh-navî, “Ganges,” and Jagan-nâtha, “Lord of the World,” it becomes clear why Mr. Rawlinson is so very confident in his works of an Âryan 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 Levites, 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 was their first human progeny, the “mind-born” primitive humanity, which was most assuredly bi-sexual, 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-Zên (Æther), and Chthonia (the Chaotic Earth) and Metis (Water), his wives; Osiris and Isis-Latona—the former God also representing Æther, 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).304

All these are records of the primeval divine Hermaphrodite.

[pg 139]

Stanza VI. The Evolution Of The “Sweat-Born.”

22. The evolution of the three Races continued. 23. The Second Race creates the Third and perishes.

22. Then the Second evolved the Egg-born, the Third.305The Sweat grew, its Drops grew, and the Drops became hard and round. The Sun warmed it; the Moon cooled and shaped it; the Wind fed it until its ripeness. The White Swan from the Starry Vault306 overshadowed the big Drop. The Egg of the Future Race, the Man-swan307 of the later Third (a). First male-female, then man and woman (b).

(a) The text of the Stanza clearly implies that the human embryo was nourished ab extra by Cosmic Forces, and that the “Father-Mother” furnished apparently the germ that ripened; in all probability a “sweat-born egg,” to be hatched out, in some mysterious way, disconnected from the “double” parent. It is comparatively easy to conceive of an oviparous humanity, since even now man is, in one sense, “egg-born.” Magendie, moreover, in his Precis Élémentaire de Physiologie, citing

A case where the umbilical cord was ruptured and perfectly cicatrized,

yet the infant was born alive, pertinently asks:

How was the circulation carried on in this organ?

On the next page he says:

Nothing is at present known respecting the use of digestion in the fœtus.

And respecting its nutrition, he propounds this query:

What, then, can we say of the nutrition of the fœtus? Physiological works contain only vague conjectures on this point.

“Ah, but,” the sceptic may urge, “Magendie's book belongs to the last generation, and Science has since made such strides that his stigma of ignorance can no longer be fixed upon the profession.” Indeed; then let us turn to a very great authority upon Physiology, viz., Sir Michael Foster, and, to the disadvantage of Modern Science, we shall find him saying:

[pg 140]

Concerning the rise and development of the functional activities of the embryo, our knowledge is almost a blank. We know scarcely anything about the various steps by which the primary fundamental qualities of the protoplasm of the ovum are differentiated into the complex phenomena which we have attempted in this book to explain.308

The students of Trin. Coll. Cantab, will now kindly draw a veil before the statue of Hygieia and bandage the eyes of the busts of Galen and Hippocrates, lest they look reproachfully at their degenerate descendants. One further fact we must note. Sir Michael Foster is discreetly silent about the case of the ruptured umbilical cord cited by his great French confrère.

(b) This is a very curious statement as explained in the Commentaries. To make it clear: The First Race having created the Second by “budding,” as explained above, the Second Race gives birth to the Third—which itself is separated into three distinct divisions, consisting of men differently procreated. The first two of these are produced by an oviparous method, presumably unknown to modern Natural History. While the early sub-races of the Third Humanity procreated their species by a kind of exudation of moisture or vital fluid, the drops of which coalescing formed an oviform ball—or shall we say egg—that served as an extraneous vehicle for the generation therein of a fœtus and child, the mode of procreation by the later sub-races changed, in its results at all events. The little ones of the earlier sub-races were entirely sexless—shapeless even for all one knows;309 but those of the later sub-races were born androgynous. It is in the Third Race that the separation of sexes occurred. From being previously a-sexual, Humanity became distinctly hermaphrodite or bi-sexual; and finally the man-bearing Eggs began to give birth, gradually and almost imperceptibly in their evolutionary development, first, to beings in which one sex predominated over the other, and, finally, to distinct men and women. And now let us search for corroboration of these statements in the religious legends of East and West. Let us take the “Egg-born Race” first. Think of Kashyapa, the Vedic sage, and the most prolific of creators. He was the son of Marichi, Brahmâ's Mind-born Son; and he is made to become the father of the Nâgas, or Serpents, among other beings. Exoterically, the Nâgas are semi-divine beings which have a human face and the tail of a serpent. Yet there was a race of Nâgas, said to be a thousand in number only, born or rather sprung [pg 141] from Kadrû, Kashyapa's wife, for the purpose of peopling Pâtâla, which is undeniably America, as will be shown; and there was a Nâga-Dvîpa, one of the seven divisions of Bhâratavarsha, India, inhabited by a people bearing the same name, who are allowed, even by some Orientalists, to be historical, and to have left many a trace behind them to this day.

Now the point most insisted upon at present is that, whatever origin be claimed for man, his evolution took place in this order: (1) sexless, as all the earlier forms are; (2) then, by a natural transition, he became a “solitary hermaphrodite,” a bi-sexual being; and (3) finally separated and became what he is now. Science teaches us that all the primitive forms, though sexless, “still retained the power of undergoing the processes of a-sexual multiplication”; why, then, should man be excluded from that law of Nature? Bi-sexual reproduction is an evolution, a specialized and perfected form on the scale of Matter of the fissiparous act of reproduction. Occult teachings are preëminently panspermic, and the early history of humanity is hidden only “from ordinary mortals”; nor is the history of the primitive Races buried for the Initiates in the tomb of time, as it is for profane Science. Therefore, supported on the one hand by that Science which shows us progressive development and an internal cause for every external modification, as a law in Nature; and, on the other hand, by an implicit faith in the Wisdom—we may say Pansophia even—of the universal traditions gathered and preserved by the Initiates, who have perfected them into an almost faultless system—thus supported, we venture to state the doctrine clearly.

In an able article, written some fifteen years ago, our learned and respected friend Prof. Alexander Wilder, of New York, shows the absolute logic and necessity of believing “The Primeval Race Double-Sexed,” and gives a number of scientific reasons for it.310 He argues firstly, that a large part of the vegetable creation exhibits the phenomenon of bi-sexuality, the Linnæan classification enumerating thus almost all plants. This is the case in the superior families of the vegetable kingdoms as much as in the lower forms, from the hemp to the Lombardy poplar and ailanthus. In the animal kingdom also it is the same. In insect life, the moth generates a worm, and the worm becomes a moth, as in the Mysteries the great secret was expressed—Taurus [pg 142]Taurus Draconem genuit, et Taurum Draco. The coral-producing family, which, according to Agassiz, has spent many hundreds of thousands of years, during the present geological period, in building out the peninsula of Florida, produce their offspring from themselves like the buds and ramifications in a tree. Bees are somewhat in the same line. The aphides, or plant lice, keep house like Amazons, and virgin parents perpetuate the race for ten successive generations.

What say the old Sages, the Philosopher-teachers of antiquity? Aristophanes speaks thus on the subject in Plato's Banquet:

Our nature of old was not the same as it is now. It was androgynous; the form and name partaking of, and being common to both the male and female.... Their bodies ... were round, and the manner of their running circular.311They were terrible in force and strength and had prodigious ambition. Hence Zeus divided each of them into two, making them weaker; Apollo, under his direction, closed up the skin.

Meshia and Meshiane were but a single individual with the old Persians.

They also taught that man was the product of the Tree of Life, growing in androgynous pairs, till they were separated at a subsequent modification of the human form.

In the Book of the Generations (Toleduth) of Adam, the verse:

God created (bara, brought forth) man in his image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them,

—if read Esoterically will yield the true sense, viz.:

The Elohim [Gods] brought forth from themselves [by modification] man in their image ... created they him [collective Humanity, or Adam], male and female created he [collective Deity] them.312

This will show the Esoteric point. The Sexless Race was their first production, a modification of and from themselves, the pure Spiritual Existences; and this was Adam solus. Thence came the Second Race: Adam-Eve, or Jod-Heva, inactive Androgynes; and finally the Third, or the “Separating Hermaphrodite,” Cain and Abel, who produce the Fourth, Seth-Enos, etc. It is this Third, the last semi-spiritual Race, [pg 143] which was also the last vehicle of the divine and innate Wisdom, ingenerate in the Enochs, the Seers of that Mankind. The Fourth, which had tasted of the fruit of the Tree of Good and Evil—Wisdom already united to earthy, and therefore impure, intelligence313—had consequently to acquire that Wisdom by initiation and great struggle. And the union of Wisdom and Intelligence, the former ruling the latter, is called in the Hermetic books “the God possessing the double fecundity of the two sexes.”

Mystically Jesus was held to be man-woman. So also in the Orphic Hymns, sung during the Mysteries, we find: “Zeus is a male, Zeus is an immortal maid.” The Egyptian Ammon was the Goddess Neïth, in his other half. Jupiter has female breasts, Venus is bearded in some of her statues, and Ilâ, the Goddess, is also Su-dyumna, the God, as Vaivasvata's progeny.

Says Professor Wilder:

The name Adam, or man, itself implies this double form of existence. It is identical with Athamas, or Thomas (Tamil, Tam), which is rendered by the Greek Didumos, a twin; if, therefore, the first woman was formed subsequently to the first man, she must, as a logical necessity, be “taken out of man.” Accordingly we read: “And the side which the Lord God [Elohim] had taken from man, made he a woman.” The Hebrew word here used is Tzala, which bears the translation we have given. It is easy to trace the legend in Berosus, who says that Thalatth (the Omorôka, or Lady of Urka) was the beginning of creation. She was also Telita [? Melita], the queen of the Moon....

The two memorable twin-births of Genesis, that of Cain and Abel, and of Esau and Jacob, shadow the same idea. The name Hebel is the same as Eve, and its characteristic seems to be feminine. “Unto thee shall be his desire,” said the Lord God to Cain; “and thou shalt rule over him.” The same language had been uttered to Eve: “Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”

Thus the pristine bi-sexual unity of the human Third Root-Race is an axiom in the Secret Doctrine. Its virgin individuals were raised to “Gods,” because that Race represented their “Divine Dynasty.” The moderns are satisfied with worshipping the male heroes of the Fourth Race, who created Gods after their own sexual image, whereas the Gods of primeval mankind were “male and female.”

As stated in Volume I, the Humanities developed coördinately, and [pg 144] on parallel lines with the four Elements, every new Race being physiologically adapted to meet the additional Element. Our Fifth Race is rapidly approaching the Fifth Element—call it interstellar ether, if you will—which has more to do, however, with psychology than with physics. We men have learned to live in every climate, whether frigid or tropical, but the first two Races had nought to do with climate, nor were they subservient to any temperature or change therein. And thus, we are taught, men lived down to the close of the Third Root-Race, when eternal spring reigned over the whole Globe, such as is now enjoyed by the inhabitants of Jupiter; a world, which, as M. Camille Flammarion says:

Is not subject like our own to the vicissitudes of seasons nor to abrupt alternations of temperature, but is enriched with all the treasures of eternal spring.314

Those Astronomers who maintain that Jupiter is in a molten condition, in our sense of the term, are invited to settle their dispute with this learned French Astronomer.315 It must, however, be [pg 145] always borne in mind that the “eternal spring” referred to is only a condition cognized as such by the Jovians. It is not “spring,” as we know it. In this reservation is to be found the reconciliation between the two theories here cited. Both embrace partial truths.

It is thus a universal tradition that mankind has evolved gradually into its present shape from an almost transparent condition of texture, and neither by miracle nor by sexual intercourse. Moreover, this is in full accord with the ancient Philosophies; from those of Egypt and India, with their Divine Dynasties, down to that of Plato. And all these universal beliefs must be classed with the “presentiments” and “obstinate conceptions,” some of them ineradicable, in popular faiths. Such beliefs, as remarked by Louis Figuier, are:

Frequently the outcome of the wisdom and observation of an infinite number of generations of men.... [For], a tradition which has a uniform and universal existence, has all the weight of scientific testimony.316

And there is more than one such tradition in the Paurânic allegories, as has been shown. Moreover, the doctrine that the First Race of mankind was formed out of the Chhâyâs, or Astral Images, of the Pitris, is fully corroborated in the Zohar:

In the Tzelem, shadow image of Elohim [the Pitris], He made Adam (man).317

It has been repeatedly urged as an objection that, however high the degree of metaphysical thought in ancient India, yet the old Egyptians had nothing but crass idolatry and zoolatry to boast of; Hermes, as alleged, being the work of Greek Mystics who lived in Egypt. To this, an answer can be given: a direct proof that the Egyptians believed in [pg 146] the Secret Doctrine is, that it was taught to them at Initiation. Let the objectors open the Eclogæ Physicœ et Ethicæ of Stobæus, the Greek compiler of ancient fragments, who lived in the fifth century, a.d. The following is a transcription by him of an old Hermetic fragment, showing the Egyptian theory of the Soul. Translated word for word, it says:

From one Soul, that of All, spring all the souls, which spread themselves as if purposely distributed through the world. These souls undergo many transformations; those which are already creeping creatures turn into aquatic animals; from these aquatic animals are derived land animals; and from the latter the birds. From the beings who live aloft in the air (heaven) men are born. On reaching that status of men, the souls receive the principle of (conscious) immortality, become spirits, then pass into the choir of Gods.

23. The Self-born were the Chhâyâs, the Shadows from the Bodies of the Sons of Twilight. Neither water nor fire could destroy them. Their sons were.318

This verse cannot be understood without the help of the Commentaries. It means that the First Root-Race, the “Shadows” of the Progenitors, could not be injured, or destroyed by death. Being so ethereal and so little human in constitution, they could not be affected by any element—flood or fire. But their “Sons,” the Second Root-Race, could be and were so destroyed. As the Progenitors merged wholly in their own Astral Bodies, which were their progeny, so that progeny was absorbed in its descendants, the “Sweat-born.” These were the Second Humanity—composed of the most heterogeneous gigantic semi-human monsters—the first attempts of material nature at building human bodies. The ever-blooming lands (Greenland, among others) of the Second Continent were transformed, successively, from Edens with their eternal spring, into hyperborean Hades. This transformation was due to the displacement of the great waters of the Globe, to oceans changing their beds; and the bulk of the Second Race perished in this first great throe of the evolution and consolidation of the Globe during the human period. Of such great cataclysms there have already been four.319 And we may expect a fifth for ourselves in due course of time.

[pg 147]

A Few Words About “Deluges” And “Noahs.”

The accounts in the various Purânas about our Progenitors are as contradictory, in their details, as everything else. Thus while, in the Rig Veda, Idâ, or Ilâ, is called the Instructress of Vaivasvata Manu, Sâyana makes of her a Goddess presiding over the Earth, and the Shatapatha Brâhmana shows her to be the Manu's daughter, an offspring of his sacrifice, and later on, his (Vaivasvata's) wife, by whom he begat the race of Manus. In the Purânas she is, again, Vaivasvata's daughter, yet the wife of Budha (Wisdom), the illegitimate son of the Moon (Soma) and the planet Jupiter's (Brihaspati's) wife, Târâ. All this, which seems a jumble to the profane, is full of philosophical meaning to the Occultist. On the very face of the narrative a secret and sacred meaning is perceivable; all the details, however, being so purposely mixed up that the experienced eye of an Initiate alone can follow them and place the events in their proper order.

The story as told in the Mahâbhârata strikes the key-note, and yet it needs to be explained by the secret sense contained in the Bhagavad Gîtâ. It is the prologue to the drama of our (Fifth) Humanity. While Vaivasvata was engaged in devotion on the river bank, a fish craves his protection from a bigger fish. He saves it and places it in a jar; where, growing larger and larger, it communicates to him the news of the forthcoming Deluge. This Fish is the well-known Matsya Avatâra, the first Avatâra of Vishnu, the Dagon320 of the Chaldæan Xisuthrus, and many other things besides. The story is too well known to need repetition. Vishnu orders a ship to be built, in which Manu is saved along with the seven Rishis, according to the Mahâbhârata; this, however, being absent from other texts. Here the seven Rishis stand for the seven Races, the seven Principles, and various other things; for there is again a double mystery involved in this manifold allegory.

We have said elsewhere that the Great Flood had several meanings, and that it referred, as also does the “Fall,” to both spiritual and physical, both cosmic and terrestrial, events: as above, so it is below. The Ship or Ark—Navis—in short, being the symbol of the female [pg 148] generative Principle, is typified in the heavens by the Moon, and on Earth by the Womb; both being the vessels and bearers of the seeds of life and being, which the Sun, or Vishnu, the male Principle, vivifies and fructifies. The First Cosmic Flood refers to Primordial Creation, or the formation of Heaven and the Earths; in which case Chaos and the great Deep stand for the “Flood,” and the Moon for the “Mother,” from whom proceed all the life-germs.321 But the Terrestrial Deluge and its story has also its dual application. In one case it has reference to that mystery when mankind was saved from utter destruction, by the mortal woman being made the receptacle of the human seed at the end of the Third Race,322 and in the other to the real and historical Atlantean Submersion. In both cases the “Host”—or the Manu which saved the “seed”—is called Vaivasvata Manu. Hence the diversity between the Paurânic and other versions; while in the Shatapatha Brâhmana, Vaivasvata produces a daughter and begets from her the race of Manu—a reference to the first human Manushyas, who had to create women by Will (Kriyâshakti), before they were naturally born from the Hermaphrodites as an independent sex, and were, therefore, regarded as their creator's “daughters.” The Paurânic accounts make Idâ, or Ilâ, the wife of Budha (Wisdom). This version refers to the events of the Atlantean Flood, when Vaivasvata, the great Sage on Earth, saved the Fifth Root-Race from being destroyed along with the remnants of the Fourth.

This is shown very clearly in the Bhagavad Gîtâ, where Krishna is made to say:

The seven Great Rishis, the four preceding Manus, partaking of my essence, were born from my mind: from them sprang (was born) the human race and the world.323

Here the four preceding Manus, out of the seven, are the four [pg 149] Races324 which have already lived, for Krishna belongs to the Fifth Race, his death having inaugurated the Kali Yuga. Thus Vaivasvata Manu, the son of Sûrya, the Sun, and the Saviour of our Race, is connected with the “Seed of Life,” both physically and spiritually. But, at present, while speaking of all, we have to concern ourselves only with the first two.

The “Deluge” is undeniably a “universal tradition.” “Glacial Periods” were numerous, and so were the “Deluges,” for various reasons. Stockwell and Croll enumerate some half-dozen Glacial Periods and subsequent Deluges—the earliest of all being dated by them 850,000, and the last about 100,000 years ago.325 But which was our Deluge? Assuredly the former, the one which to this date remains recorded in the traditions of all the peoples from the remotest antiquity; the one that finally swept away the last peninsulas of Atlantis, beginning with Ruta and Daitya and ending with the comparatively small island mentioned by Plato. This is shown by the agreement of certain details in all the legends. It was the last of its gigantic character. The little deluge, the traces of which Baron Bunsen found in Central Asia, and which he places at about 10,000 years b.c., had nothing to do with either the semi-universal Deluge, or Noah's Flood—the latter being a purely mythical rendering of old traditions—nor even with the submersion of the last Atlantean island; or, at least, having with them only a moral connection.

Our Fifth Race—the non-initiated portions of it—hearing of many [pg 150] Deluges, have confused them, and now know of but one. This one altered the whole aspect of the Globe in its interchange, and shifting, of land and sea.

We may compare the tradition of the Peruvians that:

The Incas, seven in number, have repeopled the earth after the deluge.326

Humboldt mentions the Mexican version of the same legend, but confuses somewhat the details of the still-preserved legend concerning the American Noah. Nevertheless, the eminent Naturalist mentions twice seven companions and the “divine bird” which preceded the boat of the Aztecs, and thus makes fifteen elect instead of the seven and the fourteen. This was written probably under some involuntary reminiscence of Moses, who is said to have mentioned fifteen grandsons of Noah, who escaped with their grandsire. Then again Xisuthrus, the Chaldæan Noah, is saved and translated “alive” to heaven—like Enoch—with the seven Gods, the Kabirim, or the seven divine Titans. Again the Chinese Yao has seven figures which sail with him and which he will “animate” when he lands, and use for “human seed.” Osiris, when he enters the Ark, or Solar Boat, takes seven Rays with him, etc.

Sanchuniathon makes the Aletæ or Titans (the Kabirim) contemporary with Agruerus, the great Phœnician God—whom Faber sought to identify with Noah;327 further, it is suspected that the name “Titan” is derived from Tit-Ain,—the “fountains of the chaotic abyss”328 (Tit-Theus, or Tityus is the “divine deluge”); and thus the Titans, who are seven, are shown to be connected with the Flood and the seven Rishis saved by Vaivasvata Manu.329

These Titans are the sons of Kronos, Time, and Rhea, the Earth; and as Agruerus, Saturn and Sydyk are one and the same personage, and as the seven Kabiri are also said to be the sons of Sydyk or Kronos-Saturn, the Kabiri and Titans are identical. For once the pious Faber was right in his conclusions when he wrote:

I have no doubt of the seven Titans or Cabiri being the same also as the seven Rishis of the Hindoo mythology (?), who are said to have escaped in a boat along with Menu the head (?) of the family.330

[pg 151]

But he is less fortunate in his speculations when he adds:

The Hindoos, in their wild legends have variously perverted the history of the Noachidæ (? !), yet it is remarkable that they seem to have religiously adhered to the number seven:331 hence Capt. Wilford very judiciously observes, that, “perhaps, the seven Menus, the seven Brahmâdicas, with the seven Rishis, are the same, and make only seven individual persons.332 The seven Brahmâdicas were prajâpatis, or lords of the prajas, or creatures. From them mankind was born, and they are probably the same with the seven Menus.... These seven grand ancestors of the human race were ... created for the purpose of replenishing the earth with inhabitants.”333 The mutual resemblance of the Cabiri, the Titans, the Rishis, and the Noëtic family, is too striking to be the effect of mere accident.334

Faber was led into this mistake, and subsequently built his entire theory concerning the Kabiri, on the fact that the name of the scriptural Japhet is on the list of the Titans contained in a verse of the Orphic Hymns. According to Orpheus the names of the seven Arkite Titans—whom Faber refuses to identify with the impious Titans, their descendants—were Kœus, Krœus, Phorcys, Cronus, Oceanus, Hyperion, and Iapetus.

Κοιον τε, Κροιον τε μεγαν, Φορκυν τε κραταιον,

Και Κρονον, Ὠκεανον θ᾽, Ὑπεριονα τ᾽, Ἰαπετον τε.335

But why could not the Babylonian Ezra have adopted the name of Iapetus for one of Noah's sons? The Kabiri, who are the Titans, are also called Manes and their mother Mania, according to Arnobius.336 The Hindûs can therefore claim with far more reason that the Manes mean their Manus, and that Mania is the female Manu of the Râmâyana. Mania is Ilâ, or Idâ, the wife and daughter of Vaivasvata Manu, from whom “he begat the race of Manus.” Like Rhea, the mother of the Titans, she is the Earth—Sâyana making her the Goddess of the Earth—and she is but the second edition and repetition of Vâch. Both Idâ and Vâch are turned into males and females; Idâ becoming Sudyumna, and Vâch, the “female Virâj,” turning into a woman in order to punish the Gandharvas; one version referring to cosmic and divine Theogony, [pg 152] the other to the later period. The Manes and Mania of Arnobius are names of Indian origin, appropriated by the Greeks and Latins and disfigured by them.

Thus it is no accident, but the result of one archaic doctrine, common to all, of which the Israëlites, through Ezra, the author of the modernized Mosaic books, were the latest adapters. So unceremonious were they with other people's property, that the Pseudo-Berosus,337 shows that Titæa—of whom Diodorus Siculus338 makes the mother of the Titans or Diluvians—was the wife of Noah. Faber calls him the “Pseudo-Berosus,” yet accepts the information in order to register one proof more that the Pagans have borrowed all their Gods from the Jews, by transforming patriarchal material. According to our humble opinion, this is one of the best proofs possible of exactly the reverse. It shows as clearly as facts can show, that it is the Biblical pseudo-personages which are all borrowed from Pagan myths, if myths they must be. It shows, at any rate, that Berosus was well aware of the source of Genesis, and that it bore the same cosmic astronomical character as the allegories of Isis-Osiris, and the Ark, and other older “Arkite” symbols. For, Berosus says that “Titæa Magna” was afterwards called Aretia,339 and worshipped with the Earth; and this identifies Titæa, Noah's consort, with Rhea, the Mother of the Titans, and with Idâ; both being Goddesses who preside over the Earth, and the Mothers of the Manus and Manes, or Titan-Kabiri. And Titæa-Aretia was worshipped as Horchia, says the same Berosus, and this is a title of Vesta, Goddess of the Earth.

Sicanus deificavit Aretiam, et nominavit eam linguâ Janigenâ Horchiam.340

Scarcely an ancient poet of historic or prehistoric days fails to mention the sinking of the two continents—often called isles—in one form or another. Hence the destruction, besides Atlantis, of the Phlegyan Island. Pausanius and Nonnus both tell how:

[pg 153]

From its deep-rooted base the Phlegyan isle

Stern Neptune shook, and plunged beneath the waves

Its impious inhabitants.341

Faber felt convinced that the Phlegyan Island was Atlantis. But all such allegories are more or less distorted echoes of the Hindû tradition about that great Cataclysm, which befell the Fourth, really human, though gigantic, Race, the one which preceded the Âryan. Yet, as just said, like all other legends, the legend of the Deluge has more than one meaning. It refers, in Theogony, to pre-cosmic transformations, to spiritual correlations—however absurd the term may sound to a scientific ear—and also to subsequent Cosmogony; to the great Flood of Waters (Matter) in Chaos, awakened and fructified by those Spirit-Rays which were swamped by, and perished in, the mysterious differentiation—a pre-cosmic mystery, the Prologue to the drama of Being. Anu, Bel, and Noah preceded Adam Kadmon, Adam the Red, and Noah; just as Brahmâ, Vishnu, and Shiva preceded Vaivasvata and the rest.342

All this goes to show that the semi-universal deluge known to Geology—the first Glacial Period—must have occurred just at the time allotted to it by the Secret Doctrine: namely, 200,000 years, in round numbers, after the commencement of our Fifth Race, or about the time assigned by Messrs. Croll and Stockwell for the first Glacial Period: i.e., about 850,000 years ago. Thus, as the latter disturbance is attributed by Geologists and Astronomers to “an extreme eccentricity of the earth's orbit,” and as the Secret Doctrine attributes it to the same source, but with the addition of another factor, the shifting of the Earth's axis—a proof of which may be found in the Book of Enoch,343 if the veiled language of the Purânas be not understood—all this should tend to show that the Ancients knew something of the “modern discoveries” of Science. Enoch, when speaking of “the great inclination of the Earth,” which “is in travail,” is quite significant and clear.

Is not this evident? Nuah is Noah, floating on the waters in his ark; the latter being the emblem of the Argha, or Moon, the feminine Principle; Noah is the “Spirit” falling into Matter. We find him, as soon as he descends upon the Earth, planting a vineyard, drinking of the wine, and getting drunk thereon, i.e., the pure Spirit becomes intoxicated as soon as it is finally imprisoned in Matter. The seventh chapter of Genesis is only another version of the first. Thus, while the [pg 154]latter reads: “And darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters”; in the former it is said: “And the waters prevailed; ... and the ark went [with Noah, the Spirit] upon the face of the waters.” Thus Noah, if identical with the Chaldæan Nuah, is the Spirit vivifying Matter, which latter is Chaos, represented by the Deep, or the Waters of the Flood. In the Babylonian legend (the pre-cosmical blended with the terrestrial event) it is Istar (Ashteroth, or Venus, the Lunar Goddess) who is shut up in the ark and sends out a dove in search of dry land.344

George Smith notes in the “Tablets,” first the creation of the Moon, and then that of the Sun: “Its beauty and perfection are extolled, and the regularity of its orbit, which led to its being considered the type of a judge and the regulator of the world.” If this story related simply to a cosmogonical cataclysm-even were this latter universal-why should the goddess Istar or Ashteroth, the Moon, speak of the creation of the sun after the deluge? The waters might have reached as high as the mountain of Nizir of the Chaldæan version, or Jebel Djudi, the deluge mountains of the Arabian legend, or yet Ararat of the Biblical narrative, and even the Himalaya of the Hindû tradition, and yet not have reached the Sun; the Bibleitself stopped short of such a miracle! It is evident that the deluge to the people who first recorded it had another meaning, less problematical and far more philosophical than that of a universal deluge, of which there are no geological traces whatever.345

As all such Cataclysms are periodical and cyclical, and as Manu Vaivasvata figures as a generic character, under various circumstances and events, there seems to be no serious objection to the supposition that the first “great flood” had an allegorical, as well as a cosmic meaning, and that it happened at the end of the Satya Yuga, the “Age of Truth,” when the Second Root-Race, “the Manu with bones,” made its primeval appearance as the “Sweat-born.”

The Second Flood—the so-called “universal”—which affected the Fourth Root-Race—now conveniently regarded by Theology as “the accursed race of giants,” the Cainites, and the “sons of Ham”—is the flood which was first perceived by Geology. If one carefully compares the accounts in the various legends of the Chaldees and other exoteric works of the nations, it will be found that all of them agree with the orthodox narratives given in the Brâhmanical books. And it may be perceived that while, in the first account, “there is no God or mortal yet on Earth,” when Manu Vaivasvata lands on Himavân, in the second, the Seven Rishis are allowed to keep him company; thus showing that whereas some accounts refer to the Sidereal and Cosmic Flood before the so-called “Creation,” the others treat, one of the [pg 155] Great Flood of Matter on Earth, and the other of a real watery deluge. In the Shatapatha Brâhmana, Manu finds that the Flood had swept away all living creatures, and he alone was left—i.e., the seed of life alone remained from the previous Dissolution of the Universe, or Mahâpralaya, after a “Day of Brahmâ”; and the Mahâbhârata refers simply to the geological cataclysm which swept away nearly all the Fourth Race to make room for the Fifth. Therefore is Vaivasvata Manu shown under three distinct attributes in our Esoteric Cosmogony:346 as the “Root-Manu,” on Globe A, in the First Round; (b) as the “Seed of Life,” on Globe D, in the Fourth Round; and (c) as the “Seed of Man,” at the beginning of every Root-Race—in our Fifth Race especially. The very commencement of the latter witnesses, during the Dvâpara Yuga,347 the destruction of the accursed sorcerers;

Of that island [Plato speaks only of its last island] beyond the Pillars of Hercules, in the Atlantic Ocean, from which there was an easy transition to other islands in the neighbourhood of another large continent [America].

It is this Atlantic Land which was connected with the “White Island,” and this White Island was Ruta; but it was not the Atala and the “White Devil” of Colonel Wilford,348 as already shown. It may well be remarked here that the Dvâpara Yuga lasts 864,000 years, according to the Sanskrit texts; and that, if the Kali Yuga began only about 5,000 years ago, that it is just 869,000 years since that destruction took [pg 156] place. Again, these figures are not very widely different from those given by the Geologists, who place their Glacial Period at 850,000 years ago.

The Shatapatha then tells us that a woman was produced who came to Manu and declared herself his daughter, with whom he lived and begat the offspring of Manu. This refers to the physiological transformation of sexes during the Third Root-Race. And the allegory is too transparently clear to need much explanation. Of course, as already remarked, in the separation of sexes an androgyne being was supposed to divide his body into two halves—as in the case of Brahmâ and Vâch, and even of Adam and Eve—and thus the female is, in a certain sense, his daughter, just as he will be her son, “the flesh of his [and her] flesh and the bone of his [and her] bone.” Let it be also well remembered that not one of our Orientalists has yet learned to discern in those “contradictions and amazing nonsense,” as some call the Purânas, that a reference to a Yuga may mean a Round, a Root-Race, and often a sub-race, as well as form a page torn out of pre-cosmic Theogony. This double and triple meaning is proved by various references to one and the same individual apparently, under an identical name, while in reality the references are to events divided by entire Kalpas. A good instance is that of Ilâ. She is first represented as one thing and then as another. In the exoteric legends it is said that Manu Vaivasvata, desiring to create sons, instituted a sacrifice to Mitra and Varuna; but, through a mistake of the officiating Brâhman, a daughter only was obtained—Ilâ or Idâ. Then, “through the favour of the two deities,” her sex is changed and she becomes a man, Sudyumna. Then she is again turned into a woman, and so on; the fable adding that Shiva and his consort were pleased that “she should be a male one month and a female another.” This has a direct reference to the Third Root-Race, whose men were androgynes. But some very learned Orientalists349 think and have declared that: