Part 3 — Footnotes (continued 3)

776.

Hist. Nat., XXXVII. liv.

777.

Ibid., II. xxxviii.

778.

Charton, Magasin Pittoresque (1853), p. 32. Quoted by De Mirville, op. cit., ibid., p. 293.

779.

T. A. Wise, History of Paganism in Caledonia, p. 36.

780.

Op. cit., ibid., p. 288.

781.

Essays on Physiology, p. 144.

782.

Principles of Biology, Appendix, p. 482.

783.

We shall treat of the Divine Instructors in Stanza XII.

784.

Men.

785.

Of the primitive Divine Stock.

786.

Race.

787.

Race.

788.

The Great Pyramid.

789.

Knowledge, i. p. 243; quoted by Staniland Wake, op. cit., pp. 81, 82.

790.

Nineteenth Century, 1882, p. 236; quoted by Staniland Wake, ibid., p. 82.

791.

Op. cit., XI. xvii.

792.

As shown by H. Lizeray in his Trinité Chrétienne Devoilée, the Dragon, being placed between the immutable Father (the Pole, a fixed point) and mutable Matter, transmits to the latter the influences he receives from the former, whence his name—the Verbum.

793.

Symbolized by the Egyptians under the form of a serpent with a hawk's head.

794.

Revue Archéologique, 1885.

795.

Mackey's Sphinxiad: or, The Mythological Astronomy of the Ancients Demonstrated by Restoring to their Fables and Symbols their Original Meanings, p. 42.

796.

Ibid., p. 47.

797.

Also translated as “Blissful Immortals” by Dr. W. Geiger; but the first is more correct.

798.

These “seven” became the eight, the Ogdoad, of the later materialized religions, the seventh, or the highest “principle,” being no longer the pervading Spirit, the Synthesis, but becoming an anthropomorphic number, or additional unit.

799.

These elements are: the cosmic, the terrene, the mineral, the vegetable, the animal, the aqueous, and finally the human—in their physical, spiritual, and psychic aspects.

800.

P. 53.

801.

Thalia, lxxvii.

802.

Who adds that “the Egyptians had various ways of representing the angle of the poles. In Perry's View of the Levant there is a figure representing the south pole of the Earth in the constellation of the Harp, in which the poles appear like two straight rods surmounted with hawks' wings, to distinguish the north from the south. But the symbols of the poles ... are, sometimes, in the form of serpents, with the heads of hawks to distinguish the north from the south end.” (Op. cit., p. 41.)

803.

Faber and Bishop Cumberland would make these all the later pagan personifications of “the Noëtic Ark, and ... no other than the patriarch [Noah] and his family”(!), as the former writer puts it in his Cabiri (i. 136); because, we are told, that most probably after the Deluge in commemoration of the event, the pious Noachidæ established a religious festival, which was, later on, corrupted by their impious descendants, who made of “Noah and his family” demons or hero-gods; “and at length unblushing obscenity usurped the name and garb of religion” (ibid., i. p. 10). Now this is indeed putting an extinguisher upon the human reasoning powers, not only of antiquity, but even of our present generations. Reverse the statement, and after the words “Noah and his family” explain that what was meant is simply the Jewish version of a Samothracian mystery, of Saturn, or Cronus-Cydyk and his Sons, and then we may say Amen.

804.

Who were later on, with the Greeks, limited to Castor and Pollux only. But in the days of Lemuria, the Dioscuri, the “Egg-born,” were the Seven Dhyân Chohans (Agnishvâtta-Kumâra) who incarnated in the Seven Elect of the Third Race.

805.

Op. cit., i. 133.

806.

Clement of Alexandria recognized the astronomical significance of Chapters xxv et seqq. of Exodus. He says that, according to the Mosaic doctrine, the seven Planets help in the generation of terrestrial things. The two Cherubs standing on the two sides of the sacred Tetragrammaton represent Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.

807.

Vyse, Operations, etc., ii. 258.

808.

Palgrave, ii. 264.

809.

Vyse, ibid., ii. 342.

810.

P. 57.

811.

The speculation of Mackey, the self-made adept of Norwich, in his Mythological Astronomy, is a curious idea—yet one perhaps not so very far from the truth. He says that the Kabiri named Axieros and Axiokersa (a) derived their names from kab or cab, a “measure,” and from urim, the “heavens”—the Kabirim being thus “a measure of the heavens”; and (b) that their distinctive names, implying the principle of generation, referred to the sexes. For “the word sex was formerly understood by ax; which ... has, in our time, settled into sex. [And he refers to Encyclopædia Londiniensis, at the word ‘aspiration.’] Now if we give the aspirated sound to Axieros, it would become Sax or Sexieros; and the other pole would be Sexiokersa. The two poles would thus become the generators of the other powers of nature—they would be the Parents of the other powers; therefore, the most powerful Gods.” (Op. cit., p. 39.)

812.

ii. 51.

813.

i. 9-17.

814.

Decharme, Mythologie de la Grèce Antique, p. 270.

815.

The word guebra comes from Kabiri (Gabiri), and means the Persian ancient fire-worshippers, or Parsîs. Kabiri became Gabiri and then remained as an appellation of the Zoroastrians in Persia. (See Hyde's De Religione Persarum, c. 29.)

816.

I. ix. 751.

817.

See Macrob., Sat., I. iii. c. 4, p. 376.

818.

Pausan., ix. 22; 5.

819.

Herodotus, iii. 37.

820.

Quoted in Gould's Mythical Monsters, p. 399.

821.

Appendix, p. 13; quoted by Faber, Cabiri, ii. pp. 289-291.

822.

The Amshaspands are six—if Ormazd, their chief and Logos, is excluded. But in the Secret Doctrine he is the seventh and highest, just as Phtah is the seventh Kabir among the Kabiri.

823.

In the Purânas it is identified with Vishnu's or Brahma's Shveta-dvîpa of Mount Meru.

824.

Ed. Fleisher, p. 16.

825.

MS., 47 in Nic. Cat.

826.

MS., 785, Uri's Cat.; quoted by Col. Vyse, Operations at the Pyramids of Gizeh, ii. 364; see Staniland Wake, The Great Pyramid, p. 94.

827.

De Mirville, Pneumatologie, iii. 29.

828.

Staniland Wake, ibid., p. 96.

829.

Ibid., p. 97.

830.

Égypte, iv. 441; De Mirville, op. cit., iii. 41.

831.

Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne, xxxii. 442; see De Mirville, Pneumatologie, iii. 18.

832.

Histoire de l'Astronomie Ancienne; see De Mirville, op. cit., ibid., p. 15.

833.

De Mirville, ibid., p. 41.

834.

Ibid., pp. 16, 17.

835.

In the Vishnu Purâna, with careful reading, may be found many corroborations of the same (Book II, chaps, iii, iv, et seqq.). The reigns of Gods, lower Gods, and Men are all enumerated in the descriptions of the seven islands, seven seas, seven mountains, etc., ruled by Kings. Each King is invariably said to have seven sons, an allusion to the seven sub-races. One instance will do. The King of Kushā-Dvîpa had seven sons ... “after whom the seven portions or Varsha of the island were called.... There reside mankind, along with Daityas and Dânavas, as well as with spirits of heaven [Gandharvas, Yakshas, Kimpurushas, etc.] and Gods.” (Wilson's Trans., ii. 195.) There is but one exception in the case of King Priyavrata, the son of the first Manu, Svâyambhuva—who had ten sons. But of these, three—Medha, Agnibâhu, and Putra (ibid., ii. 101)—became ascetics, and refused their portions. Thus Priyavrata divided the Earth again into seven continents.

836.

Égypte, pp. 450-455: De Mirville, ibid., pp. 41, 42.

837.

As a general rule, now that the very nature of the inner man has become as blind as his physical nature, man on this Globe is as the Amphioxus is in the ocean. Seen by millions of various other fishes and creatures that surround it, the Amphioxus species—having neither brain nor any of the senses possessed by the other classes—sees them not. Who knows whether, on the Darwinian theory, these Branchiostoma are not the direct ancestors of our Materialists?

838.

The Occultists have been accused of worshipping Gods or Devils! We deny this. Among the numberless hosts of Spirits—entities that have been or that will be men—there are some immeasurably superior to the human race, higher and holier than the highest saint on Earth, and wiser than any mortal without exception. And there are those again who are no better than we are, and some also who are far worse and inferior to the lowest savage. It is these last that command the readiest communication with our Earth, who perceive and sense us, as the clairvoyants perceive and sense them. The close proximity of our respective abodes and planes of perception are, unfortunately, in favour of such inter-communication, as they are ever ready to interfere with our affairs for weal or woe. If we are asked how it is that none but sensitive hysterical natures, neuro- and psycho-pathic persons, see—and occasionally talk with—“spirits,” we answer the question by several other queries. We ask: Do you know the nature of hallucination, and can you define its psychic process? How can you tell that all such visions are due merely to physical hallucinations? What makes you feel so sure that mental and nervous diseases, while drawing a veil over our normal senses (so-called), do not reveal at the same time vistas unknown to the healthy man, by throwing open doors usually closed against your scientific (?) perceptions; or that a psycho-spiritual faculty does not forthwith replace the loss, or the temporary atrophy, of a purely physical sense? It is disease or the exuberance of nervous fluid which produces mediumship and visions—hallucinations, as you call them. But what does Science know even of mediumship? Truly were the modern Charcots to pay attention to the delirium of their patients from a more psychic standpoint, Science—Physiology especially—might be more benefited than it is now, and truth have a wider field of fact in its knowledge.

839.

i. 70; De Mirville, ibid., p. 26.

840.

These were the early Âryans and the bulk of the Fourth Root-Race—the former pious and meditative (given to yoga-contemplation), the latter a fighting race of sorcerers, who were rapidly degenerating owing to their uncontrolled passions.

841.

The Northern and Southern Divisions of Lemuria-Atlantis. The Hyperborean and the Equatorial lands of the two Continents.

842.

De Rougemont, Peuple Primitif, iii. 157; De Mirville, ibid., p. 29. This is Occult and refers to the property of iron which is attracted by some magnetic elements, and repelled by others. Such elements, by an Occult process, can be made as impervious to it as water to a blow.

843.

Ibid., loc. cit.

844.

The First Continent, or Island, if so preferred, “the cap of the North Pole,” has never perished; nor will it to the end of the Seven Races.

845.

See De Rougemont, ibid.

846.

Boulanger, Règne des Dieux, Introd.; see De Mirville, op. cit., ibid., pp. 32, 33.

847.

The Secret Doctrine explains and expounds what Plato says, for it teaches that those “Inventors” were Gods and Demi-gods (Devas and Rishis) who had become—some deliberately, some compelled by Karma—incarnated in man.

848.

The preceding paragraphs are condensed from Plato, Legg., l. iv—id., in Crit., et in Politic.; De Mirville, ibid., pp. 33, 34.

849.

Argyle, Unity of Nature.

850.

Book of the Dead, xcix. 33; and clvi. 4. The reader is referred to Stanza VII, Shloka 1 (i. 240), wherein this verse is explained in another of its meanings, and also to the Book of the Dead, cix. 4 and 5. This is a direct reference to the Esoteric division of man's “principles” symbolized by the divine wheat. The legend which inscribes the third Register of the papyrus (Book of the Dead, cx.) states: “This is the region of the Manes [disembodied men] seven cubits high—[to wit, those just translated and supposed to be still sevenfold with all their ‘principles,’ even the body being represented astrally in the Kâma Loka or Hades, before their separation]; and there is wheat three cubits high for Mummies in a state of perfection [i.e., those already separated, whose three higher principles are in Devachan] who are permitted to glean it.” This region (Devachan) is called “the land of the Re-birth of Gods,” and is shown to be inhabited by Shoo, Tefnoot, and Seb. The “region for the Manes seven cubits high”—for the yet imperfect Mummies—and the region for those “in a state of perfection” who “glean wheat three cubits high,” is as clear as possible. The Egyptians had the same Esoteric Philosophy which is now taught by the Cis-Himâlayan Adepts, and the latter, when, buried, have corn and wheat placed over them.

851.

I. xiv. There are Egyptologists who have quite erroneously tried to identify Osiris with Menes. Bunsen assigns to Menes an antiquity of 5,867 years b.c., and is denounced for it by Christians. But “Isis-Osiris” reigned in Egypt before the Zodiac was painted on the ceiling of the temple of Dendera, and that is over 75,000 years ago!

852.

In the text, “corked up” or “screwed up.”

853.

Zohar, part i, col. 177; De Mirville, ibid., p. 88.

854.

Genesis, vi. 4.

855.

Prælectiones Theol., ch. ii; De Mirville, ibid., p. 84.

856.

Réflexions Critiques sur l'Origine des Anciens Peuples.

857.

Rabbi Parcha.

858.

i. 6.

859.

Book of Ruth and Schadash, fol. 63, col. 3, Amsterdam edition.

860.

Zohar, part ii, col. 73; De Mirville, ibid., p. 86.

861.

Ibid., p. 87.

862.

More Nevochim, xxvi. 8.

863.

Sagra Scrittura.

864.

ii. pp. 14, 29.

865.

Chap. viii; Laurence's Translation, pp. 7 and 8.

866.

Job, i. 6.

867.

The Chaldæan Book of Numbers.

868.

Archæology, xxv. 220, London.

869.

Die Phoinizier, 70.

870.

See Sanchuniathon in Eusebius, Pr. Ev., 36; Genesis, xvi.

871.

Society of Antiquaries of London, xxv. 220.

872.

Cartas, 51; see Isis Unveiled, i. 553, et seqq.

873.

He is thus named and included in the list of the Dânavas in Vâyu Purâna; the Commentator of Bhâgavata Purâna calls him a son of Danu, but the name means also “Spirit of Humanity.”

874.

Kashyapa is called the son of Brahmâ, and is the “Self-born” to whom a great part of the work of creation is attributed. He is one of the seven Rishis; exoterically, the son of Marîchi, the son of Brahmâ; while the Atharva Veda says, “The Self-born Kashyapa sprang from Time,” and Esoterically Time and Space are forms of the One incognizable Deity. As an Âditya, Indra is son of Kashyapa, as also Vaivasvata Manu, our Progenitor. In the instance given in the text, he is Kashyapa-Âditya, the Sun and the Sun-god, from whom all the “Cosmic” Demons, Dragons (Nâgas), Serpent or Snake-gods, and Dânavas or Giants, are born. The meaning of the allegories given above is purely astronomical and cosmical, but will serve to prove the identity of all.

875.

Vishnu Purâna, Wilson's Trans., ii. 72.

876.

All such stories differ in the exoteric texts. In the Mahâbhârata, Kârttikeya, “the six-faced Mars,” is the son of Rudra or Shiva, Self-born without a mother from the seed of Shiva cast into the fire. But Kârttikeya is generally called Agnibhû, “Fire-born.”

877.

Hiranyâksha is ruler or king of the fifth region of Pâtâla, a Snake-god.

878.

The Elohim also feared the Knowledge of Good and Evil for Adam, and therefore are shown as expelling him from Eden or killing him spiritually.

879.

The story told is, that Târaka (called also Kâlanâbha), owing to his extraordinary Yoga-powers, had obtained all the divine knowledge of Yoga-vidyâ and the Occult powers of the Gods, who conspired against him. Here we see the “obedient” Host of Archangels or minor Gods conspiring against the (future) Fallen Angels, whom Enoch accuses of the great crime of disclosing to the world all “the secret things done in heaven.” It is Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Suryal and Uriel who denounced to the Lord God those of their Brethren who were said to have pried into the divine mysteries and taught them to men; by this means they themselves escaped a like punishment. Michael was commissioned to fight the Dragon, and so was Kârttikeya, and under the same circumstances. Both are “Leaders of the Celestial Host,” both Virgins, both “Leaders of Saints,” “Spear-holders” (Shakti-dharas), etc. Kârttikeya is the original of Michael and St. George, as surely as Indra is the prototype of Kârttikeya.

880.

The “life and the light” of the material physical world, the delight of the senses—not of the soul. Apollo is preëminently the human God, the God of emotional, pomp-loving and theatrical Church ritualism, with lights and music.

881.

See Revelation (xii) where we find Apollo's mother persecuted by the Python, the Red Dragon, who is also Porphyrion, the scarlet or red Titan.

882.

Book of God, p. 88.

883.

No “God”—whether called Bel or Jehovah—who curses his (supposed) own work, because he has made it imperfect, can be the One Infinite Absolute Wisdom.

884.

In the Indian allegory of Târakâmaya, the War between the Gods and the Asuras headed by Soma (the Moon, the King of Plants), it is Vishvakarmâ, the artificer of the Gods, who, like Vulcan (Tubal-Cain), forges their weapons for them.

885.

Chaldean Account of Genesis, p. 304. We have said elsewhere that the “woman with child” of Revelation was Aima, the Great Mother, or Binah, the third Sephira, “whose name is Jehovah”; and the “Dragon,” who seeks to devour her coming child (the Universe), is the Dragon of Absolute Wisdom—that Wisdom which, recognizing the non-separateness of the Universe and everything in it from the Absolute All, sees in it no better than the great Illusion, Mahâmâyâ, hence the cause of misery and suffering.

886.

The “seven Karshvares of the Earth”—the seven Spheres of our Planetary Chain, the seven Worlds, also mentioned in the Rig Veda, are fully referred to elsewhere. There are six Râjamsi (Worlds) above Prithivî, the Earth, or “this” (Idâm), as opposed to that which is yonder (the six Globes on the three other planes). (See Rig Veda, i. 34; iii. 56; vii. 10411, and v. 60, 6.)

887.

Darmesteter's Trans., “Sacred Books of the East,” vol. iv. p. 207.

888.

Ibid., p. 217.

889.

Ibid., p. 208.

890.

Book of the Dead, xvii. 62; Anubis is Horus who melts “in him who is eyeless.”

891.

See Lenoir's Du Dragon de Metz.

892.

See also Egyptian Pantheon, pp. 20, 23.

893.

Book of the Dead, xvii. 54 and 49.

894.

These “Evil Spirits” can by no means be identified with Satan or the Great Dragon. They are the Elementals generated or begotten by ignorance—cosmic and human passions—or Chaos.

895.

Assyrian Discoveries, p. 403.

896.

See Numbers, xxi. 8, 9. God orders Moses to build a brazen Serpent (Saraph), to look upon which heals those bitten by the Fiery Serpents. The latter were the Seraphim, each one of which, as Isaiah shows (vi. 2), “had six wings”; they are the symbols of Jehovah, and of all the other Demiurgi who produce out of themselves six sons or likenesses—seven with their Creator. Thus, the Brazen Serpent is Jehovah, the chief of the “Fiery Serpents.” And yet, in II Kings (xviii. 4) it is shown that king Hezekiah, who, like as David his father, “did that which was right in the sight of the Lord”—“brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made ... and called it Nehushtan,” or piece of brass.

897.

“And Satan stood up against Israel and provoked David to number Israel” (I Chronicles, xxi. 1). “The anger of the Lord [Jehovah] was kindled against Israel, and he moved David ... to say, Go, number Israel” (II Samuel, xxiv. 1). The two are then identical.

898.

ii. 18, 22.

899.

Dozens of the most erudite writers have sifted thoroughly the various meanings of the name J'hovah (with, and without the Masoretic points), and shown their multifarious bearings. The best of such works is the Source of Measures: the Hebrew Egyptian Mystery, by J. Ralston Skinner, so often already referred to.

900.

In the above-mentioned work (p. 233), verse 26 of chapter iv of Genesis is correctly translated “then men began to call themselves Jehovah,” but less correctly explained, perhaps, as the last word ought to be written Jah (male) Hovah (female), to show that from that time the race of distinctly separate man and woman began.

901.

See for explanation the excellent pages of Appendix vii of the same work.

902.

Op. cit., p. 293.

903.

Rabba Battra, 16a.

904.

In Demonology, Satan is the leader of the opposition in Hell, the monarch of which was Beelzebub. He belongs to the fifth kind or class of Demons (of which there are nine according to mediæval Demonology), and he is at the head of witches and sorcerers. But see elsewhere the true meaning of Baphomet, the goat-headed Satan, one with Azazel, the scape-goat of Israel. Nature is the God Pan.

905.

See Isis Unveiled, ii. 184.

906.

See Codex Nazaræus, iii. 73.

907.

He is also Vulcan or Vul-cain, the greatest God with the later Egyptians, and the greatest Kabir. The God of Time was Chiun in Egypt, or Saturn, or Seth, and Chiun is the same as Cain. (Source of Measures, p. 278.)

908.

See Strabo, comparing them to the Cyclopes, xiv. p. 653 sqq. Callim., in Del., 31. Stat., Silv., iv. 6, 47, etc.

909.

Mythologie de la Grèce Antique, p. 271.

910.

Nothing could be more awkward and childish, we say, than this fruitless attempt to disconnect the genealogies of Cain and of Seth, or to conceal the identity of names under a different spelling. Thus, Cain has a Son Enoch, and Seth a Son Enoch (also Enos, Ch'anoch, Hanoch—one may do what one likes with unvowelled Hebrew names). In the Cainite line Enoch begets Irad, Irad Mehujael, the latter Methusael, and Methusael, Lamech. In the Sethite line, Enoch begets Cainan, and this one Mahalaleel (a variation on Mehujael), who gives birth to Jared (or Irad); Jared to Enoch (number 3), who produces Methuselah (from Methusael), and finally Lamech closes the list. (See Genesis, iv. v.) Now all these are symbols (kabalistically) of solar and lunar years, of astronomical periods and of physiological (phallic) functions, just as in any other Pagan symbolical creed. This has been proven by a number of writers.

911.

See Analysis of Ancient Mythology, ii. 760.

912.

vi. 9.

913.

See New Encyclopædia, by Abraham Rees, F.R.S.

914.

See Hebrews, v. 6; vii. 1, et seqq.

915.

The Æolian name of Mars was Areus (Ἄρευς), and the Greek Ares (Ἄρης) is a name over the etymological significance of which, Philologists and Indianists, Greek and Sanskrit scholars, have vainly worked to this day. Very strangely, Max Müller connects both the names Mars and Ares with the Sanskrit root mar, whence he traces their derivation, and from which, he says, comes the name of the Maruts or Storm-gods. Welcker, however, offers a more correct etymology. (See Griech. Götterlehre, i. 415.) However it may be, etymologies of roots and words alone will never yield the Esoteric meaning fully, though they may help to useful guesses.

916.

As the same author shows: “The very name Vulcain appears in the reading, for in the first words (Gen., iv. 5) is to be found V'elcain, or V'ulcain, agreeably to the deepened u sound of the letter vau. Out of its immediate context, it may be read as, ‘and the god Cain,’ or Vulcain. If, however, anything is wanting to confirm the Cain-Vulcain idea, Fuerst says: ‘קין Cain, the iron point of a lance, a smith (blacksmith), inventor of sharp iron tools and smith work’ ” (p. 278).

917.

Op. cit., p. 186.

918.

Append. de Cabiris ap. Orig. Gent., pp. 364, 376; and the latter statement on p. 357. See Faber's Cabiri, i. 8.

919.

Some derive the word from Paras which produced Pars, Pers, Persia; but it may be equally derived from Pitaras or Pitris, the Hindû progenitors of the Fifth Race—the Fathers of Wisdom or the Sons of “Will and Yoga”—who were called Pitaras, as were the divine Pitris of the First Race.

920.

See for these traditions the Collection of Persian Legends, in Russian, Georgian, Armenian, and Persian; Herbelot's narrative Légendes Persanes, “Bibliothèque Orientale,” p. 298, 387, etc., and Danville's Mémoires. We give in a condensed narrative that which is scattered in hundreds of volumes in European and Asiatic languages, as well as in oral traditions.

921.

Genesis, iv. 16, et seqq.

922.

The main Continent perished in the Miocene times, as already stated.

923.

From Bede downwards all the chronologists of the Church have differed among themselves, and contradicted each other. “The chronology of the Hebrew text has been grossly altered, especially in the interval next after the Deluge”—says Whiston (Old Test., p. 20).

924.

ii. 170, 171.

925.

Hence king Solomon, whose traces are nowhere to be found outside of the Bible. The description of his magnificent palace and city dovetail with those of the Persian tales, though they were unknown to all Pagan travellers, even to Herodotus.

926.

Herbelot, op. cit., p. 829.

927.

Orient. Trad., p. 454. See also Bailly's Lettres sur l'Atlantide.

928.

See Orient. Collect., ii. 119.

929.

Ibid. Remember that the Rabbins teach that there are to be seven successive renewals of the Globe; that each will last 7,000 years, the total duration being thus 49,000 years. (See Rabbi Parcha's Wheel; also Kenealy's Book of God, p. 176.) This refers to seven Rounds, seven Root-Races, and sub-races, the truly Occult figures, though sorely confused.

930.

Tales of Derbent.

931.

Mergain, or Morgana, the fairy sister of King Arthur, is thus shown of Oriental descent.

932.

Where we find her, indeed, in Great Britain, in the romance of the Knights of the Round Table. Whence the identity of name and fairy-hood, if both heroines did not symbolize the same historical event which passed into a legend?

933.

Herbelot, p. 593; Armenian Tales, p. 35.

934.

To this day the aborigines of Caucasus speak of their mountains as Kap-kaz, using the consonant p instead of the usual v (Kav-kaz or Caucasus). But their bards say that it requires seven months for a swift horse to reach the “dry land” beyond Kaf, holding North without ever deviating from one's way.

935.

Bailly thought he saw in this Horse a twelve-oared ship. The Secret Doctrine teaches that the early Third Race built boats and flotillas before it built houses. But the “Horse,” though a much later animal, has, nevertheless, a more occult primitive meaning. The crocodile and the hippopotamus were considered sacred and represented divine symbols, both with the ancient Egyptians and with the Mexicans. Poseidon is, in Homer, the God of the Horse, and assumes that form himself to please Ceres. Arion, their progeny, is one of the aspects of that “Horse,” which is a Cycle.

936.

The severed parts must be Norway and other lands in the neighbourhood of the Arctic Circle.

937.

Cosmas Indicopleustes in Collect. Novâ Patrum, t. ii. p. 188; also see Journ. des Savants, Suppl. 1707, p. 20.

938.

The two Poles are called the “right” and “left ends” of our Globe—the Right being the North Pole—or the head and feet of the Earth. Every beneficent (astral and cosmic) action comes from the North; every lethal influence from the South Pole. They are much connected with and influence “right” and “left” hand magic.

939.

The more one approaches the Poles the less rotation is felt; at the Poles proper, the diurnal revolution is quite neutralized. Hence the expression that the Sphere is “motionless.”

940.

It is averred in Occultism that the land or island, which crowns the North Pole like a skull-cap, is the only one which prevails during the whole Manvantara of our Round. All the central continents and lands will emerge from the sea bottom many times in turn, but this land will never change.

941.

Bear in mind that the Vedic and Avestaic name of Fohat is Apâm-Napât. In the Avesta he stands between the Fire-yazatas and the Water-yazatas. The literal meaning is “Son of the Waters,” but these “Waters” are not the liquid we know, but Æther—the Fiery Waters of Space. Fohat is the “Son of Æther” in its highest aspect, Âkâsha, the Mother-Father of the primitive Seven, and of Sound or the Logos. Fohat is the Light of the Logos.

942.

This “Water” is the blood or fluid of Life which animates the Earth, compared here to a living body.

943.

Occult teaching corroborates the popular tradition which asserts the existence of a Fountain of Life in the bowels of the Earth and in the North Pole. It is the blood of the Earth, the electro-magnetic current, which circulates through all the arteries, and which is said to be found stored in the “navel” of the Earth.

944.

Occultism points to the Himâlayan Chain as that “belt,” and maintains that whether under the water or above, it encircles the Globe. The “navel” is described as situated towards the setting Sun or to the West of the Himavat in which lie the roots of Meru, which mountain is North of the Himâlaya. Meru is not “the fabulous mountain in the navel or centre of the earth,” but its roots and foundations are in that “navel,” while it is in the far North itself. This connects it with the “Central” Land “that never perishes”; the land in which “the day of the mortal lasts six months and his night another six months.” As the Vishnu Purâna has it: “For the North of Meru there is, therefore, always night during day in other regions; for Meru is North of all the Dvipas and Varshas” (islands and countries). (Book ii. chap. viii.) Meru is therefore neither on Atlas as Wilford suggests, nor, as Wilson tried to show, “absolutely in the centre of the globe,” only because “relatively with the inhabitants of the several portions, to all of whom the East is that quarter where the sun first appears.”

945.

Even the Commentaries do not refrain from Oriental metaphor. The Globe is likened to the body of a woman, “Mother-Earth.” From her neck downward, means from the inland sea now beyond the impassable barrier of ice. The Earth, as Parâshara says, “is the mother and nurse, augmented with all creatures and their qualities, the comprehender of all the worlds.”

946.

For the Stanzas call this locality by a term translated in the Commentary as a place of no latitude (Niraksha), the Abode of the Gods. As a scholiast says in the Sûrya Siddhânta (xii. 42-44): “Above them goes the sun when situated at the equinoxes; they have neither equinoctial shadow nor elevation of the pole (akshonnati). “In both directions from Meru are two pole-stars (dhruvatârâ), fixed in the midst of the sky, to those who are situated in places of no latitude (niraksha), both these have their place in the horizon. “Hence there is, in those cities [in that land], no elevation of the poles, the two pole-stars being situated in their horizon; but their degrees of co-latitude (lambaka) are ninety: at Meru the degrees of latitude (aksha) are of the same number.” (See Vishnu Purâna, Wilson's Trans., ii. 208.)

947.

Wilford makes many mistakes. He identifies, for instance, Shveta-dvîpa, the White Island, the “island in the northern part of Toyambhudi,” with England, and then tries to identify it with Atala. (a nether region) and Atlantis. Now the Shveta-dvîpa is the abode of Vishnu (exoterically), and Atala is a hell. He also places it in the Euxine or Ikshu (Black) Sea, and then seems to connect it, in another place, with Africa and Atlas.

948.

Asiatick Researches, viii. 280.

949.

Op. cit., ibid., p. 201.

950.

Every name in the Purânas has to be examined at least under two aspects, geographically and metaphysically, in its allegorical application; e.g., Nîla, the (blue) mountain which is one of the boundaries to the north of Meru, is again to be sought geographically in a mountain range in Orissa, and yet again in a mountain quite different from the others, in Western Africa. Jambu-dvîpa is Vishnu's dominion—the World, limited in the Purânas to our Globe, the region which contains Meru only, and again it is divided to contain Bharata-varsha (India), its best division, and the fairest, says Parâshara. Likewise with Pushkara and all others.

951.

Ibid., p. 202.

952.

Sûrya Siddhânta, Whitney's Trans., v. 5.

953.

Asiatick Researches, iii. 300.

954.

Jambu, Plaksha, Shâlmali, Kusha, Krauncha, Shâka, and Pushkara.

955.

Such as Shâka and Pushkara, for instance, which do not yet exist, but into which will enter such lands as some portions of America, of Africa, and Central Asia, with the Gobi region. Let us bear in mind that Upadvîpas mean “root” islands, or the dry land in general.

956.

They were called Demons, Asuras, Giants, and monsters, because of their wickedness; and thus their country was likened to Atala—a Hell.

957.

Not on the river Nile, surely, but near the Nila mountains of the Atlas range.

958.

Asiatick Researches, iii. 225.

959.

See vols. viii, x, and xi, of Asiatick Researches.

960.

Op. cit., iii. 326.

961.

Ibid.

962.

Says Wilford of the division of Atlantis and Bhârata or India, confusing the two accounts and Priyavrata with Medhâtithi: “This division was made by Priyavrata.... He had ten sons, and it was his intention to divide the whole world between them equally.... In the same manner Neptune divided the Atlantis between his ten sons: one of them had ... the extremity of the Atlantis”—which “is probably the old continent, at the extremity of which is Gades.... This Atlantis was overwhelmed with a flood; and it seems that by the Atlantis, we should understand the antediluvian Earth, over which ten princes were born to rule, according to the mythology of the West [and of the East, also] but seven of them only sate upon the throne.” (Op. cit., viii. 286.) Some also are of opinion that of the seven Dvîpas six were destroyed by a flood. Wilford takes it to be “Gades which included Spain,” but it was Plato's island—rather.

963.

America, the “new” world, is thus, though not much, older—still it is older—than Europe, the “old” world.

964.

If Div or Dev-sefid's (the Târadaitya's) abode was on the seventh stage, it is because he came from Pushkara, the Pâtâla (antipodes) of India, or from America. The latter touched the walls, so to say, of Atlantis, before the latter finally sank. The word Pâtâla meaning both the antipodal countries and infernal regions, these became synonymous in ideas and attributes as well as in name.

965.

Neither Atlantis, nor yet Shankha-dvîpa, was ever called “White Island.” When tradition says that “the White Island became black on account of the sins of the people,” it only means the denizens of the “White Island,” or Siddhapura, or Shveta-dvîpa, who descended to the Atlantis of the Third and Fourth Races, to “inform the latter; and who, having incarnated, became black with sin” figure of speech. All the Avatâras of Vishnu are said to come originally from the White Island. According to Tibetan tradition the White Island is the only locality which escapes the general fate of other Dvipas; it can be destroyed by neither fire nor water, for—it is the “Eternal Land.”

966.

Asiatick Researches, xi. 27.

967.

Genesis, ix. 1.

968.

How wise and grand, how far-seeing and morally beneficent are the laws of Manu on connubial life, when compared with the licence tacitly allowed to man in civilized countries. That those laws have been neglected for the last two millenniums does not prevent us from admiring their forethought. The Brâhman was a Grihasta, a family man, till a certain period of his life, when, after begetting a son, he broke with married life and became a chaste Yogi. His very connubial life was regulated by his Brâhman astrologer in accordance with his nature. Therefore, in such countries as the Punjâb, for instance, where the lethal influence of Mussulman, and later on of European, licentiousness, has hardly touched the orthodox Âryan castes, one still finds the finest men—so far as stature and physical strength go—on the whole Globe; whereas the mighty men of old have found themselves replaced in the Deccan, and especially in Bengal, by men whose generation becomes with every century—and almost with every year—dwarfed and weakened.

969.

Diseases and over-population are facts that can never be denied.

970.

In Mrs. Anna Swanwick's volume, The Dramas of Æschylus, it is said of “Prometheus Bound” (“Bohn's Classical Library,” p. 334), that Prometheus truly appears in it “as the champion and benefactor of mankind, whose condition: ... is depicted as weak and miserable in the extreme.... Zeus, it is said, proposed to annihilate these puny ephemerals, and to plant upon the earth a new race in their stead.” We see the Lords of Being doing likewise, and exterminating the first product of Nature and the Sea, in the Stanzas. “Prometheus represents himself as having frustrated this design, and as being consequently subjected, for the sake of mortals, to the most agonizing pain, inflicted by the remorseless cruelty of Zeus. We have, thus, the Titan, the symbol of finite reason and free will [of intellectual humanity, or the higher aspect of Manas], depicted as the sublime philanthropist, while Zeus, the Supreme Deity of Hellas, is portrayed as the cruel and obdurate despot, a character peculiarly revolting to Athenian sentiment.” The reason for it is explained further on. The “Supreme Deity” bears, in every ancient Pantheon—including that of the Jews—a dual character, composed of light and shadow.

971.

The animal world, having simple instinct to guide it, has its seasons of procreation, and the sexes become neutralized during the rest of the year. Therefore, the free animal knows sickness but once in its life—before it dies.

972.

Introduction to “Prometheus Bound,” p. 340.

973.

From προ-μῆτις, “forethought.” “Professor Kuhn,” we are told in the above-named volumes, The Dramas of Æschylus, “considers the name of the Titan to be derived from the Sanskrit word Pramantha, the instrument used for kindling fire. The root mand or manth, implies rotatory motion, and the word manthâmi, used to denote the process of fire kindling, acquired the secondary sense of snatching away; hence we find another word of the same stock, pramatha, signifying theft.” This is very ingenious, but perhaps not altogether correct; besides, there is a very prosaic element in it. No doubt in physical nature, the higher forms may develop from the lower ones, but it is hardly so in the world of thought. And as we are told that the word manthâmi passed into the Greek language and became the word manthanô, to learn—that is to say, to appropriate knowledge, whence prometheia, fore-knowledge, fore-thought—we may find, in searching, a more poetical origin for the “fire-bringer” than that displayed in its Sanskrit origin. The Svastica, the sacred sign and the instrument for kindling sacred fire, may explain it better. “Prometheus, the fire-bringer, is the Pramantha personified,” continues the author, “and finds his prototype in the Âryan Mâtarishvan, a divine ... personage, closely associated with Agni, the fire-god of the Vedas.” Matih, in Sanskrit, is “understanding,” and a synonym of Mahat and Manas, and must be of some account in the origin of the name; Pramatih is the son of Fohat, and has his story also.

974.

Cronus is “Time,” and thus the allegory becomes very suggestive.

975.

It is complained by the author of the version and translator of “Prometheus Bound” that in this tracing of Io's wanderings, “no consistency with our own known geography is attainable” (p. 379). There may be good reason for it. First of all it is the journey and wandering from place to place of the Race from which the “tenth,” or Kalki Avatâra, so called, is to issue. This he calls the “kingly race born in Argos” (888). But Argos has no reference here to Argos in Greece. It comes from arg or arka—the female generative power symbolized in the Moon—the navi-formed Argha of the Mysteries, meaning the Queen of Heaven. Eustathius shows that, in the dialect of the Arg-ians, Io signified the Moon; while Esotericism explains it as the divine Androgyne, or the mystic Ten (10); in Hebrew 10 is the perfect number, or Jehovah. Arghya in Sanskrit is the libation cup, the navi-form or boat-shaped vessel in which flowers and fruit are offered to the Deities. Arghyanâth is a title of the Mahâ Chohan, meaning the “Lord of Libations”; and Arghyavarsha, the “Land of Libations,” is the mystery name of that region which extends from Kailâsa mountain nearly to the Shamo Desert—from within which the Kalki Avatâra is expected. The Airyâna-Varsedya of the Zoroastrians, as a locality, is identical with it. It is now said to have been situated between the Sea of Aral, Baltistan, and Little Tibet; but in olden times its area was far larger, as it was the birth-place of physical humanity, of which Io is the mother and symbol.

976.

Op. cit., p. 385, note.

977.

i. 569, 570.

978.

Alexander, who was better acquainted with Attock than with India—for he never entered India proper—could not have failed to hear the Indus, near its very sources, called Nîl and Nîlâ. The mistake—if mistake it is—is thus easily accounted for.

979.

That Io is identical, allegorically, with Isis and the Moon is shown by her being “cow-horned.” The allegory undeniably reached Greece from India, where Vâch—the “melodious Cow” of the Rig Veda, “from whom mankind was produced” (Bhâgavata Purâna) is shown in the Aitareya Brâhmana as pursued by her father Brahmâ, who was moved by an illicit passion, and changed her into a Deer. Hence Io, refusing to yield to Jupiter's passion, becomes “horned.” The Cow was in every country the symbol of the passive generative power of nature, Isis, Vâch, Venus—the mother of the prolific God of Love, Cupid, but, at the same time, that of the Logos whose symbol, with the Egyptians and the Indians, became the Bull, as testified to by the Apis and the Hindû Bulls in the most ancient temples. In Esoteric Philosophy the Cow is the symbol of Creative Nature, and the Bull (her calf) the Spirit which vivifies her, or the “Holy Spirit,” as Dr. Kenealy shows. Hence the symbol of the horns. These were sacred also with the Jews, who placed on the altar horns of Shittim wood, by seizing which a criminal ensured his safety.

980.

Tuscul. Quæst., I. ii. 20.

981.

Strom., I. ii, Oper., i. 467, Ed. Potter's.

982.

Herodotus and Pausanias supposed that the cause of the condemnation was that Æschylus, adopting the Theogony of the Egyptians, made Diana the daughter of Ceres, and not of Latona. (See Ælian, Var. Hist., I. v. xviii; i. 433, Edition Gronov.) But Æschylus was initiated.

983.

The Sabasia was a periodical festival with Mysteries enacted in honour of some Gods, a variant on the Mithraic Mysteries. The whole evolution of the Races was performed in these Mysteries.

984.

Mrs. A. Swanwick, op. cit.

985.

See the foot-note (p. 431) concerning the etymology of προ-μῆτις or forethought. Prometheus confesses it in the drama when saying: O holy ether, swiftly-wingèd gales.... Behold what I, a god, from gods endure. And yet what say I? Clearly I foreknow All that must happen.... ... The Destined it behoves, As best I may, to bear, for well I wot How incontestable the strength of Fate.... (105) “Fate” stands here for Karma, or Nemesis.

986.

Mankind is obviously divided into God-informed men and lower human creatures. The intellectual difference between the Âryan and other civilized nations and such savages as the South Sea Islanders, is inexplicable on any other grounds. No amount of culture, no generations of training amid civilization, could raise such human specimens as the Bushmen, the Veddhas of Ceylon, and some African tribes, to the same intellectual level as the Âryans, the Semites, and the Turanians so-called. The “Sacred Spark” is missing in them, and it is they who are the only inferior races on the Globe, now happily—owing to the wise adjustment of Nature which ever works in that direction—fast dying out. Verily mankind is “of one blood,” but not of the same essence. We are the hot-house, artificially quickened plants in Nature, having in us a spark, which in them is latent.

987.

The philosophical view of Indian metaphysics places the Root of Evil in the differentiation of the Homogeneous into the Heterogeneous, of the Unit into Plurality.

988.

Sap., i. 13.

989.

Gautama Buddha, named Shâkya Thüb-pa, is the twenty-seventh of the last group, as most of these Buddhas belong to the Divine Dynasties which instructed mankind.

990.

Of these Buddhas, or the “Enlightened,” the far distant predecessors of Gautama, the Buddha, who represent, we are taught, once living? men, great Adepts and Saints, in whom the “Sons of Wisdom” had incarnated, and who were, therefore, so to speak, minor Avatâras of the Celestial Beings—eleven only belong to the Atlantean Race, and twenty-four to the Fifth Race, from its beginnings. They are identical with the Tirthankaras of the Jainas.

991.

This may account for the similarity of the artificial mounds in the United States of America, and the tumuli in Norway. It is this identity that has led some American Archæologists to suggest that Norwegian mariners had discovered America about one thousand years ago. (See Holmboe's Traces de Bouddhisme en Norvège, p. 23.) There is no doubt that America is that “far distant land into which pious men and heavy storms had transferred the sacred doctrine,” as a Chinese writer suggested by his description to Neumann. But neither Professor Holmboe, of Stockholm, nor the American Archæologists, have guessed the right age of the mounds, or the tumuli. The fact that Norwegians may have re-discovered the land that their long-forgotten forefathers believed to have perished in the general submersion, does not conflict with the other fact that the Secret Doctrine of the land which was the cradle of physical man, and of the Fifth Race, had found its way into the so-called New World ages and ages before the “Sacred Doctrine” of Buddhism.

992.

See Physiological Selection, by G. J. Romanes, F.R.S.

993.

Esoteric Buddhism, p. 65.

994.

Exodus, xi.

995.

Wrote the late Brahmachârî Bawa, a Yogî of great renown and holiness: “Extensive works on ‘Ashtar Vidiâ’ and such other sciences were at different times compiled in the languages of the times from the Sanskrit originals. But they, together with the Sanskrit originals, were lost at the time of the partial deluge of our county.” (The Theosophist, June, 1880, “Some Things the Âryans Knew.”) For Agnyastra, see Wilson's Specimens of the Hindû Theatre, i. 297.

996.

Some wonderful, artificially-made beast, similar in some way to Frankenstein's creation, which spoke and warned his master of every approaching danger. The master was a “Black Magician,” the mechanical animal was informed by a Djin, an Elemental, according to the accounts. The blood of a pure man alone could destroy him. See Part II, Section XXV, “Seven in Astronomy, Science, and Magic.”

997.

The four Karmic Gods, called the Four Mahârâjahs in the Stanzas.

998.

Mythical Monsters, p. 19.

999.

Travels in Egypt, vol. ii.

1000.

The Mythological Astronomy of the Ancients Demonstrated (p. 3), by a strangely intuitional Symbologist and Astronomer, a kind of a self-made Adept of Norwich, who lived in the first quartet of this century.

1001.

See Proctor, Knowledge, i. pp. 242, 400.

1002.

Rawlinson's Herodotus, ii. 345.

1003.

The Great Pyramid, pp. 36, 37.

1004.

Staniland Wake, op. cit., pp. 6, 7.

1005.

Ibid.

1006.

The Mythological Astronomy of the Ancients Demonstrated, pp. 4, 5.

1007.

The term “Atlantean” must not mislead the reader to regard these as one race only, or even a nation. It is as though one said “Asiatics.” Many, multityped, and various were the Atlanteans, who represented several “humanities,” and almost a countless number of races and nations, more varied indeed than would be the “Europeans,” were this name to be given indiscriminately to the five existing parts of the world, which, at the rate colonization is proceeding, will be the case, perhaps, in less than two or three hundred years. There were brown, red, yellow, white and black Atlanteans; giants and dwarfs, as some African tribes comparatively are, even now.

1008.

Says a teacher in Esoteric Buddhism (p. 64): “In the Eocene age, even in its very first part, the great cycle of the Fourth Race men, the [Lemuro-] Atlanteans, had already reached its highest point [of civilization], and the great Continent, the father of nearly all the present continents, showed the first symptoms of sinking.” And on page 70, it is shown that Atlantis as a whole perished during the Miocene period. To show how the continents, races, nations and cycles overlap each other, one has but to think of Lemuria, the last of whose lands perished about 700,000 years before the beginning of the Tertiary period (p. 65), and the last of “Atlantis” only 11,000 years ago; thus both overlapping—one the Atlantean period, and the other the Âryan.

1009.

See Traité de l'Astronomie Indienne et Orientale, part iii.

1010.

Ceylon.

1011.

This is not so. The forefathers of the Âryan Brâhmans had their Zodiac and Zodiacal calculations from those born by Kriyâshakti power, the “Sons of Yoga”; the Egyptians from the Atlanteans of Ruta.

1012.

The former, therefore, may have registered time for seven or eight millions of years, but the Egyptians could not.

1013.

Op. cit., p. 6.

1014.

This question was amply challenged, and as amply discussed and answered. See Five Years of Theosophy, Art., “Mr. Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism,” pp. 325-346.

1015.

Ruins of Empires, p. 360. Volney says that, as Aries was in its 15th degree 1,447 b.c., it follows that the first degree of Libra could not have coincided with the Vernal Equinox more lately than 15,194 years b.c., to which if you add 1,790 since Christ, when Volney wrote this, it appears that 16,984 years have elapsed since the (Greek or rather Hellenic) origin of the Zodiac.

1016.

The word “historical” is used, because, although historians have almost absurdly dwarfed the dates that separate certain events from our modern day, nevertheless, once that they are known and accepted, they belong to history. Thus, the Trojan War is a historical event, which, though even less than 1,000 years b.c. are assigned to it, really took place more nearly 6,000 than 5,000 years b.c.

1017.

It is a historical fact that Sanchuniathon compiled the full record of the Phœnician religion from annals and state documents in the archives of the older Phœnician cities, and wrote it in Phœnician characters in 1,250 b.c.

1018.

Prof. Virchow, in Appendix I, to Schliemann's Ilios. Murray, 1880.

1019.

Gosse writes of the latter: “She is set down a thorough heretic, not at all to be believed, a manufacturer of unsound natural history, an inventor of false facts in science.” (Romance of Natural History, 2nd Series, p. 227.)

1020.

Pp. 9, 10.

1021.

Popular Science Monthly, No. 60, April, 1877.

1022.

Dr. Cover writes: “That famous bird of Washington was a myth; either Audubon was mistaken, or else, as some do not hesitate to affirm, he lied about it.”

1023.

Ibid., pp. 10, 11.

1024.

Mythical Monsters, p. 13, note.

1025.

So far back as July, 1888, at a time when the MS. of this work had not yet left my writing table, and The Secret Doctrine was utterly unknown to the world, it was already being denounced as a product of my brain and no more. These are the flattering terms in which the Evening Telegraph (of America) referred to this still unpublished work in its issue of June 30, 1888: “Among the fascinating books for July reading is Mme. Blavatsky's new book on Theosophy ... (!) The Secret Doctrine.... But because she can soar back into the Brahmin ignorance ... (!?) is no proof that everything she says is true.” And once the prejudiced verdict has been given on the mistaken notion that my book was out, and that the reviewer had read it—neither of which was or could be the case—now that it is really out, the critic will have to support his first statement, whether correct or otherwise, and will get out of it, probably by a more slashing criticism than ever.

1026.

Science of Language, p. 168.

1027.

The Human Species, p. 274.

1028.

See above, the diagram of the Genealogical Tree of the Fifth Race.

1029.

The Hegelian doctrine, which identifies Absolute Being or “Be-ness” with “Non-Being,” and represents the Universe as an Eternal Becoming, is identical with the Vedânta Philosophy.

1030.

The Religions of India, p. xiii.

1031.

Myer's Qabbalah, p. 175.

1032.

See De Mirville, Pneumatologie, iii. pp. 218 et seqq.

1033.

Op. cit., ibid.

1034.

See Genesis and the authorized chronology. In chapter viii, “Noah leaveth the ark”—2,348 b.c. In chapter x, “Nimrod the first monarch,” stands over 1,998 b.c.

1035.

Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne, June, 1860, p. 415.

1036.

April 30, 1860.

1037.

“I will mention to thee the writings ... respecting the belief and institutions of the Sabæans,” he says. “The most famous is the Book, The Agriculture of the Nabatheans, which has been translated by Ibn Wahohijah. This book is full of heathenish foolishness.... It speaks of preparations of Talismans, the drawing down of the powers of the Spirits, Magic, Demons, and Ghouls, which make their abode in the desert.” (Maimonides, quoted by Dr. D. Chwolsohn; Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus, ii. 458.) The Nabatheans of Mount Lebanon believed in the seven Archangels, as their forefathers had believed in the seven Great Stars, the abodes and bodies of these Archangels, which are believed in to this day by the Roman Catholics, as is shown elsewhere.

1038.

See Isis Unveiled, ii. 197.

1039.

i. 354.

1040.

Sayce; cf., p. 115, 2nd ed.

1041.

Op. cit., pp. 418, 419.

1042.

Ibid., p. 118.

1043.

Simply, the womb, the “Holy of Holies” with the Semites.

1044.

See the Valentinian Table in Epiphanius, Adv. Hær., I. xxxi. 2.

1045.

But it was not so in reality, as witness their prophets. It is the later Rabbis and the Talmudic scheme that killed out all spirituality from the body of their symbols; leaving only their Scriptures—a dead shell, from which the soul has departed.

1046.

See II Samuel, vi. 16-22.

1047.

Psalms, xxiv. 3.

1048.

II Kings, xxiii. 7; see Dunlap, Sôd; The Mysteries of Adoni, p. 41.

1049.

Judges, xxi. 21, 23 et passim.

1050.

I Kings, xviii. 26.

1051.

Isis Unveiled, ii. 49.

1052.

Ibid., ii. 444.

1053.

The author of the Qabbalah makes several attempts to prove conclusively the antiquity of the Zohar. Thus he shows that Moses de Leon could not be the author or the forger of the Zoharic works in the thirteenth century, as he is accused of being, since Ibn Gebirol gave out the same philosophical teaching 225 years before the day of Moses de Leon. No true Kabalist or scholar will ever deny the fact. It is certain that Ibn Gebirol based his doctrines upon the oldest Kabalistic sources, namely, the Chaldæan Book of Numbers, as well as some no longer extant Midrashim, the same, no doubt, as those used by Moses de Leon. But it is just the difference between the two ways of treating the same Esoteric subjects, which—while proving the enormous antiquity of the Esoteric System—points to a decided ring of Talmudistic and even Christian sectarianism in the compilation and glossaries of the Zoharic system by Rabbi Moses. Ibn Gebirol never quoted from the Scriptures to enforce the teachings (Myer's Qabbalah, p. 7). Whereas Moses de Leon has made of the Zohar that which it has remained to this day, “a running commentary on the Five Books, or Pentateuch” (ibid.), with a few later additions made by Christian hands. One follows the Archaic Esoteric Philosophy; the other, only that portion which was adapted to the lost Books of Moses restored by Ezra. Thus, while the system, or the trunk on which the primitive original Zohar was engrafted, is of an immense antiquity, many of the (later) Zoharic offshoots are strongly coloured by the peculiar views held by Christian Gnostics (Syrian and Chaldæan), the friends and co-workers of Moses de Leon who, as shown by Munk, accepted their interpretations.

1054.

See Franck's Kabbala, Preface.

1055.

i. 14.

1056.

See Schwartze, op. cit., pagg. 359, 361, et seqq.

1057.

Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, 1887, p. 374.

1058.

Timæus, the Locrian, speaking of “Arka” [Arche], calls her “the principle of best things” (Ἀρχὰ τῶν ἁρίστων). The word arcane, “hidden,” or secret, is derived from this. “To no one is the Arcane shown except to the ... Most High” (Codex Nazaræus)—alluding to Nature the female, and Spirit, the male Power. Æsculapius, as a Sun-God was called Archagetas, “born from the Archa,” the divine Virgin-Mother of the Heavens. (See Kenealy, Book of God, p. 10.)

1059.

Kenealy, op. cit., ibid.

1060.

This is composed of ten dots arranged triangularly in four rows. It is the Tetragrammaton of the Western Kabalists.

1061.

From an MS.

1062.

See G. Maspéro, Guide au Musée Boulaq, 1884, p. 168, No. 1981.

1063.

Ibid., p. 169, No. 1998.

1064.

Ibid., p. 172, No. 2068.

1065.

The student must be aware that Jethro is not called the “father-in-law” of Moses because Moses was really married to one of his seven daughters. Moses was an Initiate, if he ever existed, and as such an Ascetic, a Nazar, and could never have been married. It is an allegory like everything else. Zipporah (the “shining”) is one of the personified Occult Sciences given by Reuel-Jethro, the Midian priest Initiator, to Moses, his Egyptian pupil. The “well” by which Moses sat down in his flight from the Pharaoh symbolizes the “Well of Knowledge.”

1066.

i. pp. 106-108 and elsewhere.

1067.

In Hebrew the phallic symbol Lingam and Yoni.

1068.

See Vol. I, Stanza IV, Shloka 3.

1069.

It is at that Step that one arrives on the plane of the level or floor and open entrance to the King's Chamber, the Egyptian “Holy of Holies.”

1070.

The Candidate for Initiation always personified the God of the Temple he belonged to, as the High Priest personified the God at all times; just as the Pope now personates Peter and even Jesus Christ upon entering the inner sanctuary—the Christian “Holy of Holies.”

1071.

Genesis, i. 27.

1072.

Jehovah says to Moses: “the summation of my name is sacr, the carrier of the germ”—phallus. “It is ... the vehicle of enunciation, and truly enough, as the sacr, or carrier of the germ, its use passed down through ages to the sacr-factum of the Roman priest, and the sacr-fice, and sacr-ment of the English speaking race.” (Source of Measures, p. 236.) Hence marriage is a sacrament in the Greek and Roman Churches.

1073.

4to, London, 1684, vol. i. pp. 120, 121.

1074.

Op. cit., p. 67.

1075.

Source of Measures, 159.

1076.

Op. cit., p. 187.

1077.

Op. cit., p. 271.

1078.

From the same author. See also the Section on “The Symbolism of the Mystery Names Iao and Jehovah.”

1079.

In Genesis (iv. 26), it is mis-translated. “And he called his name Enos [man]: then began men to call upon the name of the Lord”—which has no sense in it, since Adam and the others must have done the same.

1080.

Strictly speaking, the Jews are an artificial Âryan race, born in India, and belonging to the Caucasian division. No one who is familiar with the Armenians and the Parsîs can fail to recognize in the three the same Âryan, Caucasian type. From the seven primitive types of the Fifth Race there now remain on Earth but three. As Prof. W. H. Flower aptly said in 1885: “I cannot resist the conclusion so often arrived at by various anthropologists—that the primitive man, whatever he may have been, has in the course of ages diverged into three extreme types, represented by the Caucasian of Europe, the Mongolian of Asia, and the Ethiopian of Africa, and that all existing individuals of the species can be ranged around these types.” (The President's Address at the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain, etc.) Considering that our Race has reached its fifth sub-race, how can it be otherwise?

1081.

Whenever such analogies between the Gentiles and the Jews, and later the Christians, have been pointed out, it has been the invariable custom of the latter to say that it was the work of the Devil who forced the Pagans to imitate the Jews for the purpose of throwing a slur on the religion of the one, true living God. To this Faber says very justly: “Some have imagined that the Gentiles were servile copyists of the Israelites, and that each point of similitude was borrowed from the Mosaical Institutes. But this theory will by no means solve the problem. Both because we find the very same resemblance in the ceremonies of nations far distant from Palestine, as we do in the rites of those who are in its immediate vicinity, and because it seems incredible that all should have borrowed from one which was universally disliked and despised.” (Pagan Idolatry, i. 104.)

1082.

Luke, i. 28.

1083.

Their consecrated Pillars (unhewn stones) erected by Abraham and Jacob were Lingams.

1084.

Op. cit., p. 67.

1085.

See Introduction to the Old Testament, and also Bishop Colenso's Elohistic and Jehovistic Writers.

1086.

King's Gnostics and their Remains, p. 327, 2nd ed.

1087.

Ibid., p. 326.

1088.

Such a Pseudo-Kabalist was the Marquis de Mirville in France, who studied the Zohar and other old remnants of Jewish Wisdom under the “Chevalier” Drach, an ancient Rabbi Kabalist converted to the Romish Church, and with his help wrote half a dozen volumes full of slander and calumnies against every prominent Spiritualist and Kabalist. From 1848 up to 1860 he persecuted unrelentingly the old Count d'Ourches, one of the earliest Eastern Occultists in France, a man the scope of whose Occult knowledge will never be appreciated correctly by his survivors, because he screened his real beliefs and knowledge under the mask of Spiritism.

1089.

See Hibbert Lectures, 1887, pp. 101-115.

1090.

Exodus, xxii. 28.

1091.

Deut., iv. 19.

1092.

Jude, 8, 9.

1093.

See Isis Unveiled, ii. 487, et seqq.

1094.

Treat, Kiddusheem, 81. But see Myer's Qabbalah, pp. 92, 94.

1095.

Marangone, in his Delle Grandezze del Archangelo Sancti Mikaele, exclaims: “O grandest Star, who followest the Sun who is Christ!... O living image of Divinity! O great thaumaturgist of the Old Testament! O invisible Vicar of Christ in his Church!...” The work is held in great honour in the Latin Church.

1096.

Pneumatologie, v. 516.

1097.

Ibid., p. 515.

1098.

Ibid., p. 514.

1099.

Isaiah, lxiii. 8, 9.

1100.

Metator and ἡγεμών.

1101.

Pneumatologie, p. 515. “La Face et le Représentant du Verbe.”

1102.

That which is called in the Vendidâd Fravarshi, the immortal part of an individual; that which outlives man—the Higher Ego, say the Occultists, or the Divine Double.

1103.

Darmesteter's Trans., p. 208.

1104.

Orm. Ahr., §§ 112, 113; quoted by Darmesteter, “Sacred Books of the East,” vol. iv. introd., p. lxxiv.

1105.

De Idol., ii. 373.

1106.

See De Mirville, ibid., p. 515.

1107.

Ibid. See also plates in King's Gnostics and their Remains.

1108.

P. 518.

1109.

The Book of Enoch the Prophet, p. xlviii. Ed. 1883.

1110.

Op. cit., pp. xxxiv, xxxv.

1111.

Saith Uriel in the Book of Enoch (xxvi. 3): “Those who have received mercy shall for ever bless God ... the Everlasting King”—who will reign over them.

1112.

Vishnu Purâna, III. ii; Wilson's Trans., iii. 31.

1113.

Matthew, xxiv. 27.

1114.

Luke, x. 18.

1115.

The Protestant Bible defines Behemoth innocently—“The elephant as some think”; see marginal note (Job, xl. 15) in the Authorized Version.

1116.

Job, xl. 19.

1117.

Astronomy, however, knows nothing of stars that have disappeared, unless it be simply from visibility; but never from existence since the science of Astronomy became known. Temporary stars are only variable stars, and it is believed that even the new stars of Kepler and Tycho Brahé may still be seen.

1118.

This refers to the “Kings of Edom.”

1119.

Another proof, if any were needed, that the ancient Initiates knew of more than seven planets is to be found in the Vishnu Purâna (II. xii) where, describing the chariots attached to Dhruva (the Pole Star), Parâshara speaks of “the chariots of the nine planets,” which are attached by aërial cords.

1120.

Justin, Cum Tryphone, p. 284.

1121.

A division indicative of time.

1122.

Sanchuniathon calls Time the oldest Æon, Protogonos, the “First-born.”

1123.

Philo Judæus, Cain and his Birth, p. xvii.

1124.

Principles of Psychology, 474.

1125.

It is suggestive of that spirit of paradoxical negation so conspicuous in our day, that while the evolution hypothesis has won its rights of citizenship in Science as taught by Darwin and Hæckel, yet both the Eternity of the Universe and the Preëxistence of a Universal Consciousness, are rejected by modern Psychologists. “Should the Idealist be right, the doctrine of evolution is a dream,” says Mr. Herbert Spencer.

1126.

Zohar, 9b.

1127.

Verse 6.

1128.

Mercure Trismegiste, Pimandre, chap. i, sec. 16: “Oh, ma pensée, que s'ensuit-il? car je désire grandement ce propos. Pimandre diet, ceci est un mystère celé, jusques à ce jour d'hui. Car nature, soit mestant avec l'hôme, a produit le miracle très merveilleux, aîant celluy qui ie t'av diet, la nature de l'harmonie des sept du père, et de l'esprit. Nature ne s'arresta pas là, mais incontinent a produict sept hômes, selon les natures des sept gouverneurs en puissance des deux sexes et esleuez.... La génération de ces sept s'est donnée en ceste manière....” And a gap is made in the translation, which can be filled partially by resorting to the Latin text of Apuleius. The commentator, the Bishop, says: “Nature produced in him [man] seven men” (seven principles).

1129.

xxviii. 2-8.

1130.

Ibid.

1131.

Ibid., 17.

1132.

Ibid., 13-16.

1133.

Ibid., 18.

1134.

Ibid., 19.

1135.

xxxi. 16, 17. The only Pharaoh whom the Bible shows going down into the Red Sea was the king who pursued the Israelites, and who remained unnamed, for very good reasons perhaps. The story was surely made up from the Atlantean legend.

1136.

xxviii. 13, 14.

1137.

xxxi. 3-9.

1138.

Vishnu Purâna. I. xv.

1139.

This is pure allegory. The Waters are a symbol of Wisdom and of Occult Learning. Hermes represented the Sacred Science under the symbol of Fire; the Northern Initiates, under that of Water. The latter is the production of Nara, the “Spirit of God,” or rather Paramâtman, the “Supreme Soul,” says Kullûka Bhatta; Nârâyana, meaning “he who abides in the deep” or is plunged in the Waters of Wisdom—“water being the body of Nara” (Vâyu Purâna). Hence arises the statement that for 10,000 years they remained in austerity “in the vast ocean”; and are shown emerging from it. Ea, the God of Wisdom, is the “Sublime Fish,” and Dagon or Oannes is the Chaldæan Man-Fish, who emerges from the Waters to teach Wisdom.

1140.

Chap. v; “Sacred Books of the East,” vol. viii. p. 257.

1141.

This is explained by the able translator of Anugîtâ in a foot-note (p. 258) in these words: “The sense appears to be this: The course of worldly life is due to the operations of the life-winds which are attached to the Self, and lead to its manifestations as individual souls.”

1142.

Vaishvânara is a word often used to denote the Self—explains Nîlakantha.

1143.

Ibid., p. 259. Translated by Kâshinâth Trimbak Telang, M.A., Bombay.

1144.

Matthew, iii. 10.

1145.

Isaiah, x. 19.

1146.

Op. cit., i. 133.

1147.

1845, p. 41.

1148.

See Dowson's Hindû Classical Dictionary for further information on above.

1149.

See Five Years of Theosophy, art., “The Elixir of Life.”

1150.

The partaker of Soma finds himself both linked to his external body, and yet away from it in his Spiritual Form. Freed from the former, he soars for the time being in the ethereal higher regions, becoming virtually “as one of the Gods,” and yet preserving in his physical brain the memory of what he sees and learns. Plainly speaking, Soma is the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge forbidden by the jealous Elohim to Adam and Eve or Yah-ve, “lest man should become as one of us.”

1151.

We see the same in the modern exoteric religions.

1152.

Historical View of the Hindû Astronomy. Quoting from the work in reference to “Argabhatta” [? Âryabhatta] who is said to give a near approach to the true relation among the various values for the computations of the value of π, the author of The Source of Measures reproduces a curious statement. “Mr. Bentley,” it is said, “was greatly familiar with the Hindû astronomical and mathematical knowledge.... This statement of his may then be taken as authentic. The same remarkable trait, among so many Eastern and ancient nations, of sedulously concealing the arcana of this kind of knowledge, is a marked one among the Hindûs. That which was given out to be popularly taught, and to be exposed to public inspection, was but the approximate of a more exact but hidden knowledge. And this very formulation of Mr. Bentley will strangely exemplify the assertion; and, explained, will show that it [the Hindû exoteric astronomy and sciences] was derived from a system exact beyond the European one, in which Mr. Bentley himself, of course, trusted, as far in advance of the Hindû knowledge, at any time, in any generation” (pp. 86, 87). This is Mr. Bentley's misfortune, and does not take away from the glory of the ancient Hindû Astronomers, who were all Initiates.

1153.

The Secret Doctrine teaches that every event of universal importance, such as geological cataclysms at the end of one Race and the beginning of a new one, involving a great change each time in mankind, spiritual, moral and physical—is precogitated and preconcerted, so to say, in the sidereal regions of our planetary system. Astrology is built wholly upon this mystic and intimate connection between the heavenly bodies and mankind; and it is one of the great secrets of Initiation and Occult Mysteries.

1154.

See Darmesteter's Vendidâd, Introd., p. lviii.

1155.

See Isaiah, xiv. 12.

1156.

Genesis, vi.

1157.

The Nâgas are described by the Orientalists as a mysterious people whose landmarks are found abundantly in India to this day, and who lived in Nâga-dvîpa, one of the seven continents or divisions of Bhâratavarsha (old India); the town of Nagpur being one of the most ancient cities in the country.

1158.

xxviii. 3, 4.

1159.

Not less suggestive are the qualities attributed to Rudra Shiva, the great Yogî, the forefather of all the Adepts—in Esotericism one of the greatest Kings of the Divine Dynasties. Called the “earliest” and the “last,” he is the patron of the Third, Fourth, and the Fifth Root-Races. For, in his earliest character, he is the ascetic Dig-ambara, “clothed with the elements,” Tri-lochana, the “three-eyed,” Pancha-ânana, the “five-faced,” an allusion to the past Four and the present Fifth Race, for, though five-faced, he is only “four-armed,” as the Fifth Race is still alive. He is the “God of Time,” Saturn-Cronus, as his “drum” Damaru, in the shape of an hour-glass, shows; and if he is accused of having cut off Brahma's fifth head, and left him with only four, it is again an allusion to a certain degree in Initiation, and also to the Races.

1160.

Gustav Seiffarth's idea that the signs of the Zodiac were in ancient times only ten is erroneous. Ten only were known to the profane; the Initiates, however, knew them all, from the time of the separation of mankind into sexes, whence arose the separation of Virgo-Scorpio into two. This separation, owing to the addition of a secret sign and the Libra invented by the Greeks, instead of the secret name which was not given, made twelve. (See Isis Unveiled, ii. 456.)

1161.

The above is, perhaps, a key to the Dalaï Lama's symbolical name—the “Ocean” Lama, meaning the Wisdom-Ocean. Abbé Huc speaks of this.

1162.

Zohar, iii. 9b, 10a, Brody Ed. Cremona Ed. iii. fol. 4a, col. 14. Myer's Qabbalah, pp. 416, 417.

1163.

Such was the name given in ancient Judea to the Initiates, called also the “Innocents” and the “Infants,” i.e., once more “reborn.” This key opens a vista into one of the New Testament mysteries; the slaughter by Herod of the 40,000 “Innocents.” There is a legend to this effect, and the event, which took place almost a century b.c., shows the origin of the tradition blended at the same time with that of Krishna and his uncle Kansa. In the case of the New Testament, Herod stands for Alexander Jannæus (of Lyda), whose persecution and murder of hundreds and thousands of Initiates led to the adoption of the Bible story.

1164.

Zohar, ii. 34.

1165.

i. § 16.

1166.

Op. cit., lxxiv. 13.

1167.

Ibid., § 33.

1168.

P. 16.

1169.

“Biographical and Critical Essay,” p. xxxviii.

1170.

Histoire de la Magic, pp. 16, 17.

1171.

Ibid., loc. cit.

1172.

What devil could be possessed of more cunning, craft and cruelty than the Whitechapel murderer, “Jack the Ripper” of 1888, whose unparalleled, blood-thirsty and cool wickedness led him to slaughter and mutilate in cold blood seven unfortunate and otherwise innocent women! One has but to read the daily papers to find in those wife- and child-beating, drunken brutes (husbands and fathers!), a small percentage of whom is daily brought before the courts, the complete personifications of the devils of the Christian Hell!

1173.

Psalm, lxxxii.

1174.

Genesis, xvii. 7.

1175.

Op. cit., p. 209.

1176.

Ibid., pp. 144, 145.

1177.

Ibid., p. 146.

1178.

Op. cit., p. 9. After the Polymorphic Pantheism of some Gnostics came the Exoteric Dualism of Manes, who was accused of personifying Evil and making of the Devil a God—the rival of God himself. We do not see that the Christian Church has so much improved on that exoteric idea of the Manicheans, for she calls God her King of Light, and Satan the King of Darkness, to this day.

1179.

To quote in this relation Mr. S. Laing, in his admirable work Modern Science and Modern Thought (p. 222): “From this dilemma [the existence of evil in the world] there is no escape, unless we give up altogether the idea of an anthropomorphic deity, and adopt frankly the scientific idea of a First Cause, inscrutable and past finding out; and of a universe whose laws we can trace, but of whose real essence we know nothing, and can only suspect or faintly discern a fundamental law which may make the polarity of good and evil a necessary condition of existence.” Were Science to know “the real essence,” instead of knowing nothing of it, the faint suspicion would turn into the certitude of the existence of such a law, and the knowledge that this law is connected with Karma.

1180.

Histoire de la Magie, pp. 196, 197.

1181.

Âkâsha is not the Ether of Science, as some Orientalists translate it.

1182.

Says Johannes Tritheim, the Abbot of Spanheim, the greatest Astrologer and Kabalist of his day: “The art of divine magic consists in the ability to perceive the essence of things in the Light of Nature [Astral Light], and by using the soul-powers of the spirit to produce material things from the unseen universe, and in such operations the Above and the Below must be brought together and made to act harmoniously. The Spirit of Nature [Astral Light] is a unity, creating and forming everything, and by acting through the instrumentality of man it may produce wonderful things. Such processes take place according to law. You will learn the law by which these things are accomplished, if you learn to know yourself. You will know it by the power of the spirit that is in yourself, and accomplish it by mixing your spirit with the essence that comes out of yourself. If you wish to succeed in such a work you must know how to separate spirit and life in Nature, and, moreover, to separate the astral soul in yourself and to make it tangible, and then the substance of the soul will appear visibly and tangibly, rendered objective by the power of the spirit.” (Quoted in Dr. Franz Hartmann's Paracelsus, pp. 164, 165.)

1183.

The real original text of I Corinthians, xv. 44, rendered kabalistically and Esoterically would read: “It is sown a soul body [not ‘natural’ body], it is raised a spirit body.” St. Paul was an Initiate, and his words have quite a different meaning when read Esoterically. The body “is sown in weakness [passivity]; it is raised in power” (v. 43)—or in spirituality and intellect.

1184.

“The War in Heaven” (Theosophist, iii. 24, 36, 67), by Godolphin Mitford, later in life Murad Ali Beg. Born in India, the son of a missionary, G. Mitford was converted to Islam, and died a Mahomedan in 1884. He was a most extraordinary Mystic, of great learning and remarkable intelligence. But he left the Right Path and forthwith fell under Karmic retribution. As well shown by the author of the article quoted, “The followers of the defeated ‘Elohim’ first massacred by the victorious Jews [the Jehovites], and then persuaded by the victorious Christians and Mohamedans, continued [nevertheless].... Some [of these scattered sects] ... have lost even the tradition of the true rationale of their belief—to worship in secrecy and mystery the Principle of Fire, Light, and Liberty. Why do the Sabean Bedouins (avowedly Monotheists when dwelling in the Mohamedan cities) in the solitude of the desert night yet invoke the starry ‘Host of Heaven’? Why do the Yezidis, the ‘Devil Worshippers,’ worship the ‘Muluk-Taoos’—the ‘Lord Peacock’—the emblem of Pride and of Hundred-eyed Intelligence [and of Initiation also], which was expelled from Heaven with Satan, according to an old Oriental tradition? Why do the Gholaites and their kindred Mesopotamo-Iranian Mohamedan Sects believe in the ‘Noor Illahee’—the ‘Light of the Elohim’—transmitted in anastasis through a hundred Prophet-Leaders? It is because they have continued in ignorant superstition the traditional religion of the ‘Light Deities’ whom Jahveh overthrew!” (p. 69)—is said to have overthrown rather; for by overthrowing them he would have overthrown himself. The Muluk-Taoos is Maluk, “Ruler,” as is shown in the foot-note. It is only a new form of Moloch, Melek, Molech, Malayak, and Malachim—Messengers, Angels, etc.

1185.

So does every Yogi and even Christian, for one must take the Kingdom of Heaven by violence—we are taught. Why then should such a desire make of any one a Devil?

1186.

Acad. des Inscrip., xxxix. 690.

1187.

Fargard, xix. 47; Darmesteter's Trans., p. 218.

1188.

Vendidad, Far. xx. 12; op. cit., p. 222.

1189.

Ibid., Far. xix. 43; op. cit., p. 218.

1190.

From the Vendidad Sadah, quoted by Darmesteter, op. cit., p. 223.

1191.

See the Gâtha in Yasna xliv.

1192.

Op. cit., p. 441.

1193.

Apollodorus, I. 7, 1.

1194.

Ovid., Metam., I. 81. Etym. M., v. Προμηθεύς.

1195.

Pausanias, X. 4, 4.

1196.

Op. cit., p. 264.

1197.

Pausanias, II. 19, 5; cf. 20, 3.

1198.

Timæus, p. 22.

1199.

Strom., I. p. 380.

1200.

Decharme, ibid., p. 265.

1201.

Opera et Dies, 142-145. According to the Occult Teaching, three Yugas passed away during the time of the Third Root-Race, i.e., the Satya, the Tretà, and the Dvâpara Yuga—answering to the Golden Age in its early innocence; to the Silver, when it reached its maturity; and to the Bronze Age, when, separating into sexes, it became the mighty Demi-gods of old.

1202.

Asgard and the Gods, pp. 11, 13.

1203.

Op. cit., p. 266.

1204.

Ibid., p. 258.

1205.

Ibid., p. 257.

1206.

Ibid., p. 258.

1207.

Op. cit., p. 145.

1208.

Transactions of the Royal Society, London, 1868.

1209.

The Age and Origin of Man.

1210.

The modern attempt of some Greek scholars (poor and pseudo scholars, they would have appeared in the day of the old Greek writers!) to explain the real meaning of the ideas of Æschylus—which, as being an ignorant ancient Greek, he could not express so well himself—is absurdly ludicrous!

1211.

Revue Germanique, 1861, pp. 356, et seqq. See also Mémoires de la Société de la Linguistique, i. pp. 337. et seqq.

1212.

Quoted by Decharme, op. cit., pp. 258, 259. There is the upper and nether piece of timber used to produce this sacred fire by attrition at sacrifices, and it is the Aranì which contains the socket. This is proven by an allegory in the Vâyu and other Purânas, which tell us that Nimi, the son of Ikshvàku, had left no successor, and that the Rishis, fearing to leave the Earth without a ruler, introduced the king's body into the socket of an Arani—like an upper Aranì—and produced from it a prince named Janaka. “It was by reason of the peculiar way in which he was engendered that he was called Janaka.” See also Goldstücker's Sanskrit Dictionary, sub voce. (Vishnu Purána, Wilson's Trans., iii. 330.) Devaki, Krishna's mother, in a prayer addressed to her, is called “the Aranî whose attrition engenders fire.”

1213.

The Monad of the animal is as immortal as that of man, yet the brute knows nothing of this; it lives an animal life of sensation just as the first human would have lived, on attaining physical development in the Third Race, had it not been for the Agnishvâtta and the Mânasa Pitris.

1214.

Op. cit., p. 259.

1215.

Ἰαπετιονίδης. Theog., p. 528.

1216.

Theog., 565.

1217.

The Fallen Angels, therefore; the Asuras of the Indian Pantheon.

1218.

Decharme, op. cit., pp. 259, 260.

1219.

Ibid., p. 263.

1220.

Ibid., p. 261.

1221.

Die Herabkunft des Feuers und des Göttertranks (Berlin, 1859).

1222.

The italics are ours; they show how assumptions are raised to laws in our day.

1223.

Decharme, op. cit., p. 262.

1224.

Philosoph. Placit., iii. 3.

1225.

Baudry, Revue Germanique, 14 avril, 1861, p. 368.

1226.

Op. cit., pp. 264, 265.

1227.

See Vishnu Purâna, Wilson's Trans., v. 96, note.

1228.

xiii. 55, 56.

1229.

“Womb of Light,” “Holy Vessel,” are the epithets of the Virgin.

1230.

The Virgin is often addressed as the “Morning Star” and the “Star of Salvation.”

1231.

Wilson translates: “Thou art kingly policy, the parent of order.”

1232.

Vishnu Purâna, Wilson's Trans., iv. pp. 264, 265.

1233.

iii. 290.

1234.

See Joshua, xv, 15.

1235.

Surât xix.

1236.

See Mackenzie's Royal Masonic Cyclopædia, sub voce “Enoch.”

1237.

Khanoch, or Hanoch, or Enoch Esoterically means the “Initiator” and “Teacher,” as well as Enos, the “Son of Man.” (See Genesis, iv. 26.)

1238.

De Mirville, Pneumatologie, iii. 70.

1239.

Mackenzie, op. cit., sub voc.

1240.

Hebrews, xi. 5.

1241.

De Mirville, ibid., p. 71.

1242.

Compare the “thieves and robbers” incident, p. 506, supra.

1243.

De Mirville, ibid., p. 73.

1244.

Ibid., p. 76.

1245.

Antiquities, ix. 2.

1246.

Cap. viii.

1247.

Says the Zohar, “Hanokh had a book which was one with the Book of the Generations of Adam; this is the Mystery of Wisdom.”

1248.

Noah is heir to the Wisdom of Enoch; in other words, the Fifth is heir to the Fourth Race.

1249.

See Isis Unveiled, i. 575, et seqq.

1250.

See the illustration in Isis Unveiled, ii. 452.

1251.

See Danielo's criticisms upon De Sacy, in the Annales de Philosophie, p. 393, deuxième article.

1252.

De Mirville, ibid., pp. 77, 78.

1253.

Ch. lxxix, Laurence's Trans.

1254.

Ibid., ch. lxiv.

1255.

Ibid., loc. cit., v. 6.

1256.

Bailly, Astronomie Ancienne, i. 203, and ii. 216; De Mirville, ibid., p. 79.

1257.

De Mirville, ibid., p. 80.

1258.

City of God, XV. xxiii.

1259.

Op. cit., xxxii. 8, 9.

1260.

Of the Protestant Biblical Society of Paris, according to the version revised in 1824 by J. E. Ostervald.

1261.

With the Egyptian Gnostics it was Thoth (Hermes), who was chief of the Seven (see Book of the Dead). Their names are given by Origen, as Adonai (of the Sun), Iao (of the Moon), Eloi (Jupiter), Sabao (Mars), Orai (Venus), Astaphai (Mercury), and, finally, Ildabaoth (Saturn). See King's Gnostics and their Remains, p. 344.

1262.

See Origen's Copy of the Chart or Diagramma of the Ophites, in his Contra Celsum.

1263.

See Part III of this Volume, Section IV, B, “On Chains of Planets and their Plurality.”

1264.

Exodus, xxxiii. 18, 19; see Myer's Qabbalah, p. 226.

1265.

Ibid., loc. cit.

1266.

Supra, p. 481.

1267.

See Revelation, xxii. 16.

1268.

Op. cit., ii. 301.

1269.

Gnostics and their Remains.

1270.

II Samuel.

1271.

By very few though, for the creators of the material universe were always considered as subordinate Gods to the Most High Deity.

1272.

Op. cit., ii. 296, 297. Fürst gives citations from Lydus and Cedrenus in support of his statements.

1273.

See plate 77 in vol. i of Montfaucon's Antiquities. The disciples of Hermes, after their death, go to his planet, Mercury—their Kingdom of Heaven.

1274.

Cornutus.

1275.

Lydus, De Mensibus, iv.

1276.

Preparat. Evang., I. iii. 2.

1277.

But see p. 480, supra, concerning the Gnostic Priapus.

1278.

Op. cit., p. 52.

1279.

Ibid., pp. 3, 4.

1280.

Let the reader refer to the Zohar and the two Qabbalahs of Isaac Myer and S. L. MacGregor Mathers, with interpretations, if he would satisfy himself of this.

1281.

Ibid., p. 5.

1282.

Ibid., p. 12.

1283.

See Book of the Dead, xvii. 45-47.

1284.

Op. cit., i. 421, 422.

1285.

De la Croix Ansée, Mem. de l'Académie des Sciences, pl. 2, Nos. 8, 9, also 16, 2, p. 320; quoted in Natural Genesis, p. 423.

1286.

Vol. xviii. p. 393, pl. 4; Inman, fig. 38; Gerald Massey, op. cit., ibid., p. 422.

1287.

Certainly not; for very often there are symbols made to symbolize other symbols, and these are in turn used in ideographs.

1288.

The R of the Slavonian and Russian alphabets (the Kyriletza alphabet) is also the Latin P.

1289.

Ibid., p. 423.

1290.

See Moor's Hindû Pantheon, plate xiii.

1291.

See Dowson's Hindû Classical Dictionary, sub voc. “Rudra.”

1292.

Described in the Mission des Juifs, by the Marquis St. Yves d'Alveydre, the hierophant and leader of a large party of French Kabalists, as the Golden Age!

1293.

V. xxiii.

1294.

Translated from Burnouf's French Translation, quoted by Fitzedward Hall, in Wilson's Vishnu Purâna, ii. 307.

1295.

The more so since he is the reputed slayer of Tripurâsura and the Titan Târaka. Michael is the conqueror of the dragon, and Indra and Kârttikeya are often made identical.

1296.

Ibid., iv. 235.

1297.

Op. cit., XII. ii. 26-32; quoted in Vishnu Purâna, Wilson's Trans., iv. 230. Nanda is the first Buddhist sovereign, Chandragupta, against whom all the Brâhmans were so arrayed, he of the Morya Dynasty, and the grandfather of Ashoka. This is one of those passages that do not exist in the earlier Paurânic MSS. They were added by the Vaishnavas, who, out of sectarian spite, were almost as great interpolators as the Christian Fathers.

1298.

Historical View of the Hindû Astronomy, p. 65, as quoted by Wilson, op. cit., p. 233.

1299.

See Ezekiel, i.

1300.

In Quint. Lib. Euclid.

1301.

The Goddess Basht, or Pasht, was represented with the head of a cat. This animal was held sacred in Egypt for several reasons. It was a symbol of the Moon, the “Eye of Osiris” or the “Sun,” during night. The cat was also sacred to Sokhit. One of the mystic reasons was because of its body being rolled up in a circle when asleep. The posture is prescribed for occult and magnetic purposes, in order to regulate, in a certain way, the circulation of the vital fluid, with which the cat is preëminently endowed. “The nine lives of a cat” is a popular saying based on good physiological and occult reasons. Mr. Gerald Massey gives also an astronomical reason for it which may be found in vol. i. pp. 322, 323, of the present work. “The cat saw the sun, had it in its eye by night [was the eye of night], when it was otherwise unseen by men [for as the Moon reflects the light of the Sun, so the cat was supposed to reflect it on account of its phosphorescent eyes]. We might say the moon mirrored the solar light, because we have looking glasses. With them the cat's eye was the mirror.” (Luniolatry Ancient and Modern, p. 2.)

1302.

Ezekiel, i. 4, 15, 16, 20.

1303.

Eccles., i. 6.

1304.

Fol. 87, col. 346.

1305.

Vol. ii. pp. 299, 300.

1306.

Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, i. 124. Also in T'sang-t-ung-ky, by Wei-Pa-Yang.

1307.

Cocker's Christianity and Greek Philosophy, xi. p. 377.

1308.

The cry of despair uttered by Count de Montlosier, in his Mystères de la Vie Humaine (p. 117), is a warrant that the Cause of “excellence and goodness,” supposed by Plato to pervade the Universe is neither his Deity, nor our World. “Au spectacle de tant de grandeur opposé à celui de tant de misère, l'esprit qui se met à observer ce vaste ensemble, se represente je ne sais quelle grande divinité, qu' une divinité, plus grande et plus pressante encore, aurait comme brisée et mise en pièces en dispersant les débris dans tout l'Univers.” The “still greater and still more exacting divinity” than the God of this world, supposed to be so “good”—is Karma. And this true Divinity shows well that the lesser one, our inner God (personal for the time being), has no power to arrest the mighty hand of this greater Deity—the Cause awakened by our actions generating smaller causes—which is called the Law of Retribution.

1309.

See Isis Unveiled, i. xii and xviii.

1310.

Stobæus, Ecl., i. 862.

1311.

The Svastika is certainty one of the oldest symbols of the Ancient Races. In our century, says Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie (Royal Masonic Cyclopædia), the Svastika “has survived in the form of the mallet” in the Masonic Fraternity. Among the many “meanings,” given by the author, we do not find the most important, Masons evidently being ignorant of it.

1312.

Isis Unveiled, i. 508.

1313.

Ibid., p. 506.

1314.

Ibid., p. 572.

1315.

Ezekiel, ix. 4.

1316.

Exodus, xii. 22.

1317.

viii. 29.

1318.

Op. cit., p. 204.

1319.

See Dowson's Hindû Classical Dictionary.

1320.

The Source of Measures, p. 204.

1321.

Ibid., p. 205.

1322.

See Moor's Hindû Pantheon, where Vittoba's left foot, in the figure of his idol, bears the mark of the nails.

1323.

See Dr. Lundy's Monumental Christianity, fig. 72.

1324.

Source of Measures, p. 52.

1325.

Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, ii. 88.

1326.

The “Heavens” are identical with “Angels,” as already stated.

1327.

Philosophumena, vi. 48; quoted by King, op. cit., p. 200.

1328.

Op. cit., x. 3, 4.

1329.

Pistis Sophia, pag. 378; King, ibid., loc. cit.

1330.

See the Section on “The Chronology of the Brâhmans,” p. 69, supra.

1331.

As confessed by C. W. King, the great authority on Gnostic antiquities, these “Gnostic” gems are not the work of the Gnostics, but belong to Pre-Christian periods, and are the work of “magicians” (op. cit., p. 241).

1332.

King, ibid., p. 218.

1333.

The lack of intuition in Orientalists and Antiquarians past and present, is remarkable. Thus, Wilson, the translator of Vishnu Purâna, declares in his Preface that in the Garuda Purâna he found “no account of the birth of Garuda.” Considering that an account of “Creation” in general is given therein, and that Garuda is coëternal with Vishnu, the Mahâ Kalpa, or Great Life-Cycle, beginning with and ending with the manifesting Vishnu, what other account of Garuda's birth could be expected!

1334.

Ibid., loc. cit.

1335.

See Revelation, xvii. 2 and 10; and Leviticus, xxiii. 15 to 18; the first passage speaking of the “seven Kings,” of whom five have gone; and the second about the “seven Sabbaths,” etc.

1336.

Op. cit., x. 5-7.

1337.

Pistis Sophia is an extremely important document, a genuine Evangel of the Gnostics, ascribed, at random to Valectinus, but much more probably a Pre-Christian work as to its original. A Coptic MS. of this work was brought back by Bruce from Abyssinia and discovered by Schwartze, in the British Museum, quite accidentally, and translated by him into Latin. The text and Schwartze's version were published by Petermann in the year 1853. In the text itself the authorship of this Book is ascribed to Philip the Apostle, whom Jesus bids sit down and write the revelation. It is genuine and ought to be as canonical as any other Gospel. Unfortunately it remains to this day untranslated into English.

1338.

King, op. cit., p. 200.

1339.

In the Cycle of Initiation, which was very long, Water represented the first and lower steps toward purification, while trials connected with Fire came last. Water could regenerate the Body of Matter; Fire alone, that of the Inner Spiritual Man.

1340.

Chap. ix.

1341.

See the Introduction by Káshináth Trimbak Telang, M.A.

1342.

“Sacred Books of the East,” vol. viii. p. 276.

1343.

Ibid.

1344.

Ibid.

1345.

Pp. 258, 259.

1346.

Ibid., p. 257.

1347.

Ibid., p. 259.

1348.

In the astronomical and cosmical key, Vaishvânara is Agni, son of the Sun, or Vishvânara, but in the psycho-metaphysical symbolism it is the Self, in the sense of non-separateness, i.e., both divine and human.

1349.

Here the speaker personifies the said divine Self.

1350.

Ibid.

1351.

Compare with these “pairs of opposites,” in the Anugîtâ, the “pairs” of Æons, in the elaborate system of Valentinus, the most learned and profound Master of the Gnosis. As the “pairs of opposites,” male and female, are all derived from Âkâsha (undeveloped and developed, differentiated and undifferentiated, or Self or Prajâpati), so are the Valentinian “pairs” of male and female Æons shown to emanate from Bythos, the preëxisting eternal Depth, and in their secondary emanation from Ampsiu-Ouraan, or sempiternal Depth and Silence, the second Logos. In the Esoteric emanation there are seven chief “pairs of opposites”; and so also in the Valentinian system there were fourteen, or twice seven. Epiphanius “copied one pair twice over,” Mr. C. W. King thinks, “and thus adds one pair to the proper fifteen.” (The Gnostics and their Remains, pp. 263, 264.) Here King falls into the opposite error; the pairs of Æons are not 15 (a “blind”) but 14, as the first Æon is That from which others emanate, Depth and Silence being the first and only emanation from Bythos. As Hippolytus shows: “The Æons of Valentinus are confessedly the six Radicals of Simon (Magus),” with the seventh, Fire, at their head. And these are: Mind, Intelligence, Voice, Name, Reason and Thought, subordinate to Fire, the Higher Self, or precisely the “Seven Winds” or the “Seven Priests” of Anugîtâ.

1352.

Not necessarily at death only, but during Samâdhi or mystic trance.

1353.

All the words and sentences between parenthetical marks are the writer's. This is translated directly from the Latin translation. King's translation conforms too much to Gnosticism as explained by the Church Fathers.

1354.

Barbelo is one of the three “Invisible Gods,” and, as C. W. King believes, includes the “Divine Mother of the Saviour,” or rather Sophia Achamoth (cf. Pistis Sophia, pag. 359).

1355.

Pagg. 378, 379.

1356.

In other Purânas Jatâyu is the son of Aruna, Garuda's brother, both the sons of Kashyapa. But all this is external allegory.

1357.

IX. viii. 12, 13.

1358.

From Burnouf's Translation; see Wilson's Vishnu Purâna, iii. 300.

1359.

Wilson, ibid., p. 302, note.

1360.

See Vâyu Purâna, which places him in the list of the forty renowned sons of Kashyapa.

1361.

The Ordinances of Manu, i. 16; Burnell's Translation, p. 3, note.

1362.

Ibid., 27; p. 5.

1363.

Vol. i. pp. 355, et seqq.

1364.

Orthodoxie Maçonnique Suivie de la Maçonnerie Occulte et de l'Initiation Hermétique, J. M. Ragon, p. 430; see also the whole of Chapter XXVII, “Puissance des Nombres d'après Pythagore” for what follows.