Searchable Theosophical Texts
Theosophy House
The
Secret Doctrine
Volume
3
Compilation
of H P Blavatskys writings
Published
after her death
The Secret Doctrine by H P Blavatsky
The Secret Doctrine,Volume 3
by H.P.Blavatsky
Published in the late 1800's
As for what thou hearest others say who
persuade the many that the soul when once freed from the
body neither suffers....evil nor is
conscious,I know that thou art better grounded in the doctrines
received by us from our ancestors and in the
sacred orgies of Dionysus than to believe them;for the
mystic symbols are well known to us who belong
to the Brotherhood.
Plutarch
The problem of life is man.Magic,or rather
Wisdom is the evolved knowledge of the potencies of man's
interior being which forces are divine
emanations,as intuition is the perception of their origin and
initiation our induction into that knowledge
...We begin with instinct;the end is omniscience.
A.Wilder
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The Secret Doctrine Volume 3 by H.P.Blavatsky
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TABLE OF CONTENTS Sect.Page
INTRODUCTORY 1
One Key to all Sacred Books 3
Assumptions Have to be Proven 5
The Spirit of Plato's Teaching 7
Self-Contradiction of the Critic 9
The Character of Ammonius Saccas 11
Plato a Follower of Pythagoras 13
Preliminary Survey 1 14
The Protectors of China 1 15
The A.B.C.Of Magic 1 17
Magic As Old As Man 1 19
The Tree of Knowledge 1 21
Occultism Must Win the Day 1 23
Black Magic at Work 1 25
Black Magic and Hypnotism 1 27
The Philosophy Stands on Its Own Merits 1 29
Modern Criticism and the Ancients 2 30
All Honour to Genuine Scientists 2 31
What is a Myth?2 33
Chaldean Oracles 2 35
The Origin of Magic 3 36
The Books of Hermes 3 37
What is the Origin of Magic?3 39
Pherecydes of
Cain Mathematical and Anthropomorphic 3 43
The Secrecy of Initiates 4 44
Exoteric and Esoteric Teachings 4 45
Origen on Genesis 4 47
The Dark Sayings of the Testaments 4 49
The Greatest Crime Ever Perpetrated 4 51
Asiatic Religions Proclaim Their Esoterism Openly 4 53
The Wisdom-Religion 4 55
Some Reasons for Secrecy 5 56
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The Secret Doctrine Volume 3 by H.P.Blavatsky
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TABLE OF CONTENTS Con't Sect.Page
The Key of Practical Theurgy 5 57
The Ladder of Being 5 59
Three Ways Open to the Adept 5 61
Man is God 5 63
Jesus Taught Reincarnation 5 65
The Dangers of Practical Magic 6 67
Names are Symbols 6 69
The Three Mothers 6 71
The Bible and Word 6 73
Moses and the Jews 6 75
Old Wine in New Bottles 7 76
Copies That Ante-Dated Originals 7 77
Which Were the Thieves?7 79
Character of the Bible 7 81
The Book of Enoch The Origin and the Foundation of
Christianity 8 82
The Book of Enoch and Christianity 8 83
Enoch Records The Races 8 85
The Book of Enoch Symbolical 8 87
Occultists Do Not Reject the Bible 8 89
Hermetic and Kabalistic Doctrines 9 91
The Kabalah and The Book of Enoch 9 93
Numbers and Measures 9 95
The Doctrine Belongs to All 9 97
Various Occult Systems of Interpretations -of Alphabets and
Numerals 10 98
Numbers and Magic 10 99
Gods and Numbers 10 101
The Universal Language 10 103
The Hexagon with the Central Point,or The Seventh Key 11 105
Occult Weapons 11 107
The Duty of the True Occultist Toward Religions 12 109
Christian and Non-Christian Adepts 12 111
Post-Christian Adepts and Their Doctrines 13 112
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The Secret Doctrine Volume 3 by H.P.Blavatsky
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TABLE OF CONTENTS Con't Sect.Page
Unfair Criticism 13 113
The Two Eternal Principles 13 115
Simon and His Biographer Hippolytus 14 117
Uneven Balances 14 119
Stones as Evidences.14 121
St.Paul the Real Founder of Present Christianity 15 122
Abrogation of Law by Initiates 15 123
Paul Changed to Simon 15 125
Peter a Jewish Kabalist,Not an Initiate 16 126
The Seat of Peter 16 127
Appollonius of Tyana 17 129
The Mysterious Teacher 17 131
Apollonius Cannot Be Destroyed 17 133
De Mirville on Apollonius 17 135
Apollonius No Fiction 17 137
Facts Underlying Adept Biographies 18 138
Jesus and Apollonius 18 139
Biographies of Initiates 18 141
Similarity of Legends 18 143
Nature of Christ 18 145
A Serious Mistranslation 18 147
Secret Doctrine of Jesus 18 149
The Cross and Crucifix 18 151
The Story of Jesus 18 153
The Primitive Woman 18 155
Kabalistic Reading of Gospels 18 157
Universal Teachings 18 159
St.Cyprian of
Magic in
Sorcerer Become Saint 19 163
The Eastern Gupta Vidya &The Kabalah 20 164
A Mystery Within a Mystery 20 165
Authorship of the Zohar 20 167
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TABLE OF CONTENTS Con't Sect.Page
Chaldaic and Hebrew 20 169
The First Men 20 171
Many Events Not Historical 20 173
The Real Hebrew Characters Lost 20 175
Hebrew Esotericism Not Primitive 20 177
The Concealed of all the Concealed 20 179
Three-in-one and Four 20 181
The Septenary Sephira 20 183
The Blind Leading the Blind 20 185
Hebrew Allegories 21 186
The Hebrew Bible does not Exist 21 187
Some Hebrews Were Initiates 21 189
The Seven Creative Gods 21 191
Seven Keys to all Allegories 21 193
Gerald Massey on the Seven Creators 21 195
The Father and Mother 21 197
The Zohar on Creation and the Elohim 22 199
Angels as Builders 22 201
Who are the Elohim?22 203
Monad Duad and Triad 22 205
The Creative Gods 22 207
God the Host 22 209
What the Occultists and Kabalists Have to Say 23 211
The Mystery of the Sun 23 213
Modern Kabalists in Science and Occult Astronomy 24 215
The Place of
Self-Generation Ex-Niholo?24 219
Are There Angels in Stars?24 221
Eastern and Western Occultism 25 222
Primordial Matter 25 223
The Great Deep 25 225
The Chaos of Genesis 25 227
The Bible of Humanity 25 229
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TABLE OF CONTENTS Con't Sect.Page
Chaos is Theos or Kosmos 25 231
One Hundred and Eight 25 233
The Idols and the Teraphim 26 234
Divining By Teraphim 26 235
Jehovah and Teraphim 26 237
Idol of the Moon 26 239
Egyptian Magic 27 241
Evidence of Papyri 27 243
Symbols and Their
Rebirth and Transmigration 27 247
The Egyptian Khous 27 249
Obsession in
Two Rituals of Magic 27 253
Magical Statues 27 255
Romances -But True 27 257
The Origin of the Mysteries 28 258
An Instant in Heaven 28 259
Growth of Popular Beliefs 28 261
A True Priesthood 28 263
The Egyptian Priests 28 265
Revealing and Reveiling 28 267
Atlanteans Degenerating 28 269
The Trial of the Sun Initiate 29 270
Vishvakarma and Vikarttana 29 271
The Transmission of Light 29 273
Masonry and the Jesuits 29 275
The Mystery Sun of Initiation 30 277
The Sun as God 30 279
The Objects of the Mysteries 31 281
Mysteries and Theophany 31 283
The Mysteries and Masonry 31 285
Traces of the Mysteries 32 287
Christos and Chrestos 32 289
The Symbolism of Narada 32 291
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TABLE OF CONTENTS Con't Sect.Page
Egyptian Initiation 32 293
The Self-Sacrificing Victim 32 295
Orpheus 32 297
The Last of the Mysteries in
Alesia and Bibractis 33 299
The Learning of
The Post-Christian Successors to the Mysteries 34 303
The Root Races 34 305
The False Gnosis 34 307
Teachers of Ammonius 34 309
Difficulties and Dangers 34 311
The
Symbolism of Sun and Stars 35 315
The Circle Dance 35 317
Christian Astrolatry 35 319
Michael the Conqueror 35 321
The Christian Sun-God 35 323
Pagan Sidereal Worship or Astrology 36 325
The Planetary Angels 36 327
Celestial Wheels 36 329
The Promethean Mystery 36 331
The Souls of the Stars Universal Heliolatry 37 332
Christian Star-Worship 37 333
A Singular Confession 37 335
Astrology and Astrolatry 38 337
The Defence of Astrology 38 339
Its Later Deterioration 38 341
Its Prominent Disciples 38 343
Cycles of Avatāras 39 345
An Unfulfilled Prophecy 39 347
Secret Cycles 39 349
Secret Cycles 40 350
The Naros 40 351
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TABLE OF CONTENTS Con't Sect.Page
Age of the Vedas 40 353
Testimony of the Song Celestial 40 355
Mackey's Arguments 40 357
The Doctrine of Avatāras 41 361
All Avatāras Identical 41 363
Voluntary Incarnation 41 365
Cardinal De Cusa 41 367
The Seven Rays 41 369
Special Cases 41 371
The Higher Astral 41 373
The Seven Principles 42 374
The Mystery of Buddha 43 376
Shankarāchārya 43 377
The Buddha Cannot Reincarnate 43 379
A Fuller Explanation 43 381
Sacrifice 43 383
Shankarāchārya Still Living 43 385
Reincarnations of Buddha 44 386
Vajradhara 44 387
Living Buddhas 44 389
An Obscure Passage 44 391
An Unpublished Discourse of Buddha 45 393
A Mistaken View 45 395
Nirvana-Moksha 46 396
The Ćkāsha 46 397
Matter is Ever Giving 46 399
Blind Faith Not Expected 46 401
What Annihilation Means 46 403
The Secret Books of Lam-Rin and Dzyan 47 405
Amita Buddha Kwan-Shai-Yin and Kwan-Yin What the
Book of Dzyan and the Lamaseries of Tsong-Kha-Pa Say 48
407
Tsong-Kha-Pa Lohans in
The Lost Word 49 411
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TABLE OF CONTENTS Con't Sect.Page
Tibetan Prophecies 49 413
A Few More Misconceptions Corrected 50 414
Misrepresentations of Buddhism 50 415
A Mysterious Land 50 417
Absurd Conclusions 50 419
Materialistic Orientalists 50 421
Introduction of Buddhism into
The 'Doctrine of the Eye'and The 'Doctrine of the Heart'or
the
'Heart's Seal'51 424
Swedenborg Claims 51 425
The God 'Who'51 427
More Misrepresentations 51 429
Āryāsanga 51 431
Note 52 434
A Warning 52 435
The Jewel of the Lotus 52 437
The Pythagorean Tetrad 52 439
Seven Correspondential Contents 52 441
Correspondence Between Races and Man 52 443
Man and The Logos 52 445
Cosmic Spiritual and Physical Centres 52 447
Woman and Alchemy 52 449
Sound and Colour 52 451
The Days of the Week 52 453
An Explanation 52 455
Astrology and Lunar Weeks 52 457
Seeing Sounds and Hearing Colours 52 459
Planetary and Human Bodies 52 461
Planets and Faculties 52 463
Simon Magnus the Magician 52 465
Series of Ęons 52 467
The Triple Ęon 52 469
Magic and Miracles 52 471
Magic a Divine Science 52 473
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TABLE OF CONTENTS Con't Sect.Page
The Seven Hierarchies 52 475
Origins 52 477
Colours and Principles 52 479
The Primordial Seven 52 481
The Hierarchies and Man 52 483
Wisdom and Truth 52 485
Occult Secrecy 52 487
The Light and Dark Sides of Nature 52 489
Nature's Finer Forces 52 491
The Seven Principles 52 493
The Auric Egg 52 495
Five or Seven Tattvas 52 497
The Tattvas 52 499
Esoteric and Tāntra Tables of the Tattvas 52 501
Hatha and Rāja Yoga 52 503
The Awakening of the Seventh Sense 52 505
The Master Chakras 52 507
The Human Harp 52 509
The Duality in Manas 52 511
The Living and the Dead 52 513
Gaining Immortality 52 515
Light and Life 52 517
The Two Egos 52 519
Death of the Soul 52 521
Reincarnation of Lower Soul 52 523
The Dweller on the Threshold 52 525
The Word 52 527
The Divine Witness 52 529
Appendix 52 530
A Mantra Operative 52 531
Colour and Spiritual Sound 52 533
Musical Table 52 535
Notes on Some Oral Teachings 52 537
The Dweller on the Threshold 52 539
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TABLE OF CONTENTS Con't Sect.Page
Fear and Hatred 52 541
Triangle and Quaternary 52 543
Prāna and Antahkarana 52 545
Sacred Centres of Body 52 547
Ćkāsha Nature's Sounding-Board 52 549
Kosmic Consciousness 52 551
Divisions of the Astral Plane 52 553
Kosmic Planes 52 555
Differentiation 52 557
Men and Pitris 52 559
Power of Imagination 52 561
Why Cycles Return 52 563
Talas and Lokas 52 565
States of Consciousness 52 567
Man and Lokas 52 569
Yogīs in Svarloka 52 571
Consciousness and Self-Consciousness 52 573
Scales of Consciousness 52 575
Vibrations and Impressions 52 577
The Crucifixion of the Christos 52 579
Rising Above the Brain 52 581
Christ and Apollonius 52 583
The Beginnings 52 585
Karmic Effects 52 587
Fire is Kriyāshakti 52 589
Responsibility and the Ego 52 591
Functions of the Astral Body 52 593
Page 11.
The Secret Doctrine Volume 3 by H.P.Blavatsky
--------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales--------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24-1DL
PREFACE
The task of preparing this volume for the
press has been a difficult and anxious one and it is necessary
to state clearly what has been done.The papers
given to me by H.P.B.were quite unarranged and had
no obvious order;I have therefore taken each
paper as a separate Section and have arranged them as
sequentially as possible.With the exception of
the correction of grammatical errors and the elimination of
obviously un-English idioms,the papers are as
H.P.B.left them save as otherwise marked.In a few
cases I have filled in a gap but any such
addition is enclosed within square brackets,so as to be
distinguished from the text.In "The
Mystery of Buddha"a further difficulty arose;some of the Sections
had been written four or five times over each
version containing some sentences that were not in the
others;I have pieced these versions together
taking the fullest as basis,and inserting therein everything
added in any other versions.It is,however with
some hesitation that I have included these Sections in
the Secret Doctrine .Together with some
most suggestive thought they contain very numerous errors of
fact and many statements based on exoteric
writings,not on esoteric knowledge.They were given into
my hands to publish as part of the Third
Volume of the Secret Doctrine,and I therefore do not feel
justified in coming between the author and the
public,either by altering the statements,to make them
consistent with fact or by suppressing the
Sections.She says she is acting entirely on her own authority
and it will be obvious to any instructed
reader that she makes -possibly deliberately -many statements
so confused that they are mere blinds,and
other statements -probably inadvertently -that are nothing
more than the exoteric misunderstandings of
esoteric truths.The reader must here as everywhere use
his own judgment but feeling bound to publish
these Sections,I cannot let them go to the public without
a warning that much in them is certainly
erroneous.Doubtless,had the author herself issued this book,
she would have entirely rewritten the whole of
this division;as it was it seemed best to give all she had
said in the different copies,and to leave it
in its rather unfinished state for students will best like to have
what she said as she said it even though they
may have to study it more closely than would have been
the case had she remained to finish her work.
The quotations made have been as far as
possible found and correct references given;in this most
laborious work a whole band of earnest and
painstaking students,under the guidance of Mrs.Cooper-
Oakley have been my willing assistants.Without
their aid it would not have been possible to give the
references,as often a whole book had to be
searched through in order to find a paragraph of a few lines.
This volume completes the papers left by
H.P.B.with the exception of a few scattered articles that yet
remain and that will be published in her own
magazine L cifer.Her pupils are well aware that few will be
found in the present generation to do justice
to the occult knowledge of H.P.B.and to her magnificent
sweep of thoughts but as she can wait to
future generations for the justification of her greatness as a
teacher so can her pupils afford to wait for
the justification of their trust.
ANNIE BESANT
Page 12.
The Secret Doctrine Volume 3 by H.P.Blavatsky
--------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales--------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24-1DL
INTRODUCTORY
(Page 1)"POWER belongs to him who
knows;"this is a very old axiom.Knowledge -the first step to
which is the power of comprehending the truth
of discerning the real from the false -is for those only
who have freed themselves from every prejudice
and conquered their human conceit and selfishness,
are ready to accept every and any truth once
it is demonstrated to them.Of such there are very few.The
majority judge of a work according to the
respective prejudices of its critics,who are guided in their turn
by the popularity or unpopularity of the
author rather than by its own faults or merits.Outside the
Theosophical circle therefore the present
volume is certain to receive at the hands of the general public
a still colder welcome than its two
predecessors have met with.In our day no statement can hope for a
fair trial or even hearing unless its arguments
run on the line of legitimate and accepted enquiry
remaining strictly within the boundaries of
official Science or orthodox Theology.
Our age is a paradoxical anomaly.It is
preėminently materialistic and as preėminently pietistic.Our
literature our modern thought and progress,so
called both run on these two parallel lines,so
incongruously dissimilar and yet both so
popular and so very orthodox,each in its own way.He who
presumes to draw a third line as a hyphen of
reconciliation between the two has to be fully prepared for
the worst.He will have his work mangled by
reviewers,mocked by the sycophants of Science and
Church misquoted by his opponents,and rejected
even by the pious lending libraries.The absurd
misconceptions,in so-called cultured circles
of society of the ancient Wisdom-Religion (Bodhism)after
the admirably clear and
scientifically-presented explanations in Esoteric B ddhism are a good
proof in
point.They might have served as a caution even
to those Theosophists who hardened in an almost life-
long struggle in the service of their Cause
are neither timid with their pen nor in the least appalled by
dogmatic (Page 2)assumption and scientific authority.Yet do what Theosophical
writers may neither
Materialism nor doctrinal pietism will ever
give their Philosophy a fair hearing.Their doctrines will be
systematically rejected and their theories
denied a place even in the ranks of those scientific ephemera
the ever-shifting "working
hypotheses"of our day.To the advocate of the "animalistic"theory
our
cosmogenetical and anthropogenetical teachings
are "fairy-tales"at best.For to those who would shirk
any moral responsibility it seems certainly
more convenient to accept descent from a common simian
ancestor and see a brother in a dumb tailless
baboon than to acknowledge the fatherhood of the Pitris,
the "Sons of God "and to have to
recognise as a brother a starveling from the slums.
"Hold back!"shout in their turn the
pietists."You will never make of respectable church-going Christians
Esoteric Buddhists!"
Nor are we in truth in any way anxious to
attempt the metamorphosis.But this cannot nor shall it
prevent Theosophists from saying what they
have to say especially to those who in opposing to our
doctrine Modern Science do so not for her own
fair sake but only to ensure the success of their private
hobbies and personal glorification.If we
cannot prove many of our points,no more can they;yet we may
show how instead of giving historical and
scientific facts -for the edification of those who knowing less
than they look to Scientists to do their
thinking and form their opinions -the efforts of most of our
scholars seem solely directed to killing
ancient facts,or distorting them into props to support their own
special views.This will be done in no spirit
of malice or even criticism as the writer readily admits that
most of those she finds fault with stand
immeasurably higher in learning than herself.But great
scholarship does not preclude bias and
prejudice nor is it a safeguard against self-conceit but rather the
Page 13.
The Secret Doctrine Volume 3 by H.P.Blavatsky
--------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales--------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24-1DL
reverse.Moreover it is but in the legitimate
defence of our own statements,i.e.the vindication of Ancient
Wisdom and its great truths,that we mean to
take our "great authorities"to task.
Indeed unless the precaution of answering
beforehand certain objections to the fundamental
propositions in the present work be adopted
-objections which are certain to be made on the authority of
this,that or another scholar concerning the
Esoteric character of all the archaic and ancient works on
Philosophy -our statements will be once more
contradicted and even discredited.One of the main points
in this Volume is to indicate in the works of
the old Aryan Greek and
One Key to all Sacred Books -(Page 3)other Philosophers of note as well as in all
the world-scriptures,
the presence of a strong Esoteric allegory and
symbolism.Another of the objects is to prove that the key
of interpretation as furnished by the Eastern
Hindu-Buddhistic canon of Occultism -fitting as well the
Christian Gospels as it does archaic Egyptian
Greek,Chaldean Persian and even Hebrew -Mosaic
Books -must have been one common to all the
nations,however divergent may have been their
respective methods and exoteric
"blinds."These claims are vehemently denied by some of the foremost
scholars of our day.In his Edinburgh
Lectures,Prof.Max Muller discarded this fundamental statement of
the Theosophists by pointing to the Hindu
Shastras and Pandits,who know nothing of such Esotericism.
[ The majority of the Pandits know nothing of the Esoteric
Philosophy now because they have lost the
key to it;yet not one of these if honest would
deny that the Upanishads and especially the P ranas are
allegorical and symbolical:nor that there
still remain in India a few great scholars who could if they
would give them the key to such
interpretations.Nor do they reject the actual existence of Mahātmās -
initiated Yogis and Adepts -even in this age
of Kali Yuga.] The learned
Sanskrit scholar stated in so
many words that there was no hidden meaning no
Esoteric element or "blinds,"either in the P rānas or
the Upanishads .Considering that the
word "Upanishad"means,when translated the "Secret
Doctrine."
the assertion is,to say the least
extraordinary.Sir M.Monier Williams again holds the same view with
regard to Buddhism.To hear him is to regard
Gautama the Buddha as an enemy of every pretence to
Esoteric teachings.He himself never taught
them!All such "pretences"to Occult learning and "magic
powers"are due to the later Arhats,the
subsequent followers of the "Light of Asia"!Prof.B.Jowett again
as contemptuously passes the sponge over the
"absurd"interpretations of Plato's Timae s and the
Mosaic Books by the Neoplatonists.There is not
a breath of the Oriental (Gnostic)spirit of Mysticism in
Plato's Dialog es the Regius Professor
of Greek tells us,nor any approach to Science either.Finally to
cap the climax,Prof.Sayce the Assyriologist
although he does not deny the actual presence in the
Assyrian tablets and cuneiform literature of a
hidden meaning -
"Many of the sacred texts ....so written
as to be intelligible only to the initiated"-
yet insists that the "keys and
glosses"thereof are now in the hands of the Assyriologists.The modern
scholars,he affirms,have in their possession
clues to the interpretation of the Esoteric Records.
"Which even the initiated priests [of
Chaldaea ] did not possess."
(Page 4)Thus,in the scholarly appreciation of our
modern Orientalists and Professors,Science was in its
infancy in the days of the Egyptian and
Chaldean Astronomers.Pānini the greatest Grammarian in the
world was unacquainted with the art of
writing.So was the Lord Buddha and everyone else in India until
300 B.C.The grossest ignorance reigned in the
days of the Indian Rishis,and even in those of Thales,
Pythagoras,and Plato.Theosophists must indeed
be superstitious ignoramuses to speak as they do in
Page 14.
The Secret Doctrine Volume 3 by H.P.Blavatsky
--------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales--------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24-1DL
the face of such learned evidence to the
contrary!
Truly it looks as if since the world's
creation there has been but one age of real knowledge on earth -
the present age.In the misty twilight in the
grey dawn of history stand the pale shadows of the old
Sages of world renown.They were hopelessly
groping for the correct meaning of their own Mysteries,the
spirit whereof has departed without revealing
itself to the Hierophants,and has remained latent in space
until the advent of the initiates of Modern
Science and Research.The noontide brightness of knowledge
has only now arrived at the "Know-All
"who basking in the dazzling sun of induction busies himself with
his Penelopeian task of "working
hypotheses,"and loudly asserts his rights to universal knowledge.Can
anyone wonder then that according to present
views the learning of the ancient Philosopher and even
sometimes that of his direct successors in the
past centuries,has ever been useless to the world and
valueless to himself?For as explained
repeatedly in so many words,while the Rishis and the Sages of
old have walked far over the arid fields of
myth and superstition the mediaeval Scholar and even the
average eighteenth century Scientist have
always been more or less cramped by their "supernatural"
religion and beliefs.True it is generally
conceded that some ancient and also mediaeval Scholars,such
as Pythagoras,Plato Paracelsus,and Roger Bacon
followed by a host of glorious names,had indeed
left not a few landmarks over precious mines
of Philosophy and unexpected lodes of Physical Science.
But then the actual excavation of these the
smelting of the gold and silver and the cutting of the
precious jewels they contain are all due to
the patient labours of the modern man of Science.And it is
not to be the unparalleled genius of the
latter that the ignorant and hitherto-deluded world owes a correct
knowledge of the real nature of the Kosmos,of
the true origin of the universe and man as revealed in the
automatic and mechanical theories of the
Physicists in accordance with strictly scientific Philosophy?
Assumptions Have to be Proven -(Page 5)Before our cultured era Science was but a name
Philosophy a delusion and a snare.According to
the modest claims of contemporary authority on genuine
Science and Philosophy the Tree of Knowledge
has only now sprung from the dead weeds of
superstition as a beautiful butterfly emerges
from an ugly grub.We have therefore nothing for which to
thank our forefathers.The Ancients have at
best prepared and fertilised the soil;it is the Moderns who
have planted the seeds of knowledge and reared
the lovely plants called blank negation and sterile
agnosticism.
Such however is not the view taken by
Theosophists.They repeat what was stated twenty years ago.It
is not sufficient to speak of the
"untenable conceptions of an uncultured past"(Tyndall):of the "parler
enfantin "of the Vaidic poets (Max Muller);of the "absurdities"of
the Neoplatonists (Jowett);and of the
ignorance of the Chaldaeo-Assyrian initiated
Priests with regard to their own symbols,when compared
with the knowledge thereon of the British
Orientalist (Sayce).Such assumptions have to be proven by
something more solid than the mere word of
these scholars.For no amount of boastful arrogance can
hide the intellectual quarries out of which
the representations of so many modern Philosophers and
Scholars have been carved.How many of the most
distinguished European Scientists have derived
honour and credit for the mere dressing-up of
the ideas of these old Philosophers,whom they are ever
ready to disparage is left to an impartial
posterity to say.Thus it does seem not altogether untrue as
stated in Isis Unveiled to say of
certain Orientalists and Scholars of dead languages,that they will allow
their boundless conceit and
self-opinionatedness to run away with their logic and reasoning powers
rather than concede to the ancient
Philosophers the knowledge of anything the modern do not know.
As part of this work treats of the Initiates
and the secret knowledge imparted during the Mysteries,the
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statements of those who in spite of the fact
that Plato was an Initiate maintain that no hidden Mysticism
is to be discovered in his works,have to be
first examined.Too many of the present scholars,Greek and
Sanskrit are but too apt to forego facts in
favour of their own preconceived theories based on personal
prejudice.They conveniently forget at every
opportunity not only the numerous changes in language
but also that the allegorical style in the
writings of old Philosophers and the secretiveness of the Mystics
had their raison d'źtre ;that both the
pre-Christian and the post-Christian (Page 6)classical writers -the
great majority at all events -were under the
sacred obligation never to divulge the solemn secrets
communicated to them in the sanctuaries;and
that this alone is sufficient to sadly mislead their
translators and profane critics.But these
critics will admit nothing of the kind as will presently be seen.
For over twenty-two centuries everyone who has
read Plato has been aware that like most of the other
Greek Philosophers of note he had been
initiated;that therefore being tied down by the Sodalian Oath
he could speak of certain things only in
veiled allegories.His reverence for the Mysteries is unbounded;
he openly confesses that he writes
"enigmatically "and we see him take the greatest precautions to
conceal the true meaning of his words.Every
time the subject touches the greater secrets of Oriental
Wisdom -the cosmogony of the universe or the
ideal preexisting world -Plato shrouds his Philosophy in
the profoundest darkness.His Timaeus is so
confused that no one but an Initiate can understand the
hidden meaning As already said in Isis
Unveiled:
The speculations of Plato in the Banq et on
the creation or rather the evolution of primordial men and
the essay on cosmogony in the Timaeus,must be
taken allegorically if we accept them at all.It is this
hidden Pythagorean meaning in Timae s
Cratyl s and Parmenides and a few other triologies and
dialogues,that the Neoplatonists ventured to
expound as far as the theurgical vow of secresy would
allow them.The Pythagoran doctrine that God is
the Universal Mind diffused through all things,and the
dogma of the soul's immortality are the
leading features in these apparently incongruous teachings.His
piety and the great veneration he felt for the
Mysteries are sufficient warrant that Plato would not allow
his indiscretion to get the better of that
deep sense of responsibility which is felt by every Adept.
"Constantly perfecting himself in perfect
Mysteries a man in them alone becomes truly perfect "says he
in the Phaedrus .
He took no pains to conceal his displeasure
that the Mysteries had become less secret than formerly.
Instead of profaning them by putting them
within the reach of the multitude he would have guarded them
with jealous care against all but the most
earnest and worthy of his disciples.[ This
assertion is clearly
corroborated by Plato himself who
writes:"You say that in my former discourse I have not sufficiently
explained to you the nature of the First.I
purposely spoke enigmatically that in case the tablet should
have happened with any accident either by sea
or land a person without some previous knowledge of
the subject might not be able to understand
its contents."(Plato.Ep.II.312 Cory.Ancient Fragments.
p.304 ]
While mentioning the Gods on every page his monotheism is unquestionable
for the whole
thread of his discourse indicates that by the
term "God"he means a class of beings lower in the scale
than Deities,and but one grade higher than
men.Even Josephus perceived and acknowledged this fact
despite the natural prejudice of his race.
The Spirit of Plato's Teaching -(Page 7)In his famous onslaught upon Apion this
historian says;"Those
however among the Greeks who philosophized in
accordance with truth were not ignorant of anything ..
.nor did they fail to perceive the chilling
superficialities of the mythical allegories,on which account they
justly despised them....By which thing Plato
being moved says it is not necessary to admit any one of
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the other poets into the Commonwealth 'and he
dismisses Homer blandly after having crowned him and
pouring unguent upon him in order that indeed
he should not destroy by his myths the orthodox belief in
respecting one God."[
And this is the "God"of every
Philosopher God infinite and impersonal.All this and much more which
there is no room here to quote leads one to
the undeniable certitude that (a )as all the Sciences and
Philosophies were in the hands of the temple
Hierophants Plato as initiated by them must have known
them;and (b),that logical inference alone is
amply sufficient to justify anyone in regarding Plato's writings
as allegories and "dark
sayings,"veiling truths which he had no right to divulge.
This established how comes it that one of the
best Greek scholars in
translator of Plato's works seeks to
demonstrate that none of the Dialogues -including even the
Timae s -have
any element of Oriental Mysticism about them?Those who can discern the true
spirit of
Plato's Philosophy will hardly be convinced by
the arguments which the Master of
before his readers."Obscure and
repulsive"to him,the Timae s may certainly be;but it is as certain
that
this obscurity does not arise as the Professor
tells his public,"in the infancy of physical science "but
rather in its days of secresy;not "out of
the confusion of theological mathematical and physiological
notions,"or "out of the desire to
conceive the whole of Nature without any adequate knowledge of the
parts."[ The Dialog es of Plato translated by B.Jowett.Regius
Professor of Greek at the University of
"Theology "and the physiological
notions of the ancient Sages are being daily verified by Science in our
age;at least to those who know to read and
understand ancient Esoteric works.The "knowledge of the
parts"avails us little if this knowledge
only leads us the more to ignorance of the Whole or the "nature
and the reason of the Universal "as Plato
called Deity and causes us to blunder most egregiously
because of our boasted inductive methods.
(Page 8)Plato may have been "incapable of
induction or generalization in the modern sense";[ Op.cit.
p.561 ]
he may have been ignorant also of the circulation of the blood which we
are told "was
absolutely unknown to him,"[ Op.cit.p.591 ]but then there is naught to disprove that he knew what
blood is -and this is more than any Physiologist
or Biologist can claim nowadays.
Though a wider and far more generous margin
for knowledge is allowed the "physical philosopher"by
Prof.Jowett than by nearly any other modern
commentator and critic,nevertheless,his criticism so
considerably outweighs his laudation that it
may be as well to quote his own words,to show clearly his
bias.Thus he says:
To bring sense under the control of reason;to
find some way through the labyrinth or chaos of
appearances,either the highway or
mathematics,or more devious paths suggested by the
analogy of man with the world and of the world
with man;to see that all things have a cause
and are tending towards an end -this is the
spirit of the ancient physical philosopher.[This
definition places (unwittingly of course),the
ancient "physical philosopher"many cubits higher
than his modern "physical"confrčre
since the ltima th le of the latter is to lead mankind to
believe that neither universe nor man have any
cause at all -not an intelligent one at all
events -and that they have sprung into
existence owing to blind chance and a senseless
whirling of atoms.Which of the two hypotheses
is the more rational and logical is left to the
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impartial reader to decide.] But we neither appreciate the
conditions of knowledge to which he
was subjected nor have the ideas which
fastened upon his imagination the same hold upon
us.For he is hovering between matter and
mind;he is under the dominion of abstractions;his
impressions are taken almost at random from
the outside of nature;he sees the light but not
the objects which are revealed by the
light;and he brings into juxtaposition things which to us
appear wide as the poles asunder because he
finds nothing between them.
The last proposition but one must evidently be
distasteful to the modern "physical philosopher "who sees
the "objects"before him but fails to
see the light of the Universal Mind which reveals them i.e .who
proceeds in a diametrically opposite
way.Therefore the learned Professor comes to the conclusion that
the ancient Philosopher whom he now judges
from Plato's Timae s must have acted in a decidedly
unphilosophical and even irrational way.For:
He passes abruptly from persons to ideas and
numbers,and from ideas and numbers to
persons;[ Italics are mine.Every tyro in Eastern Philosophy every Kabalist
will see the
reason for such an association of persons with
ideas,numbers,and geometrical figures.For
number says Philolaus,"is the dominant
and self-produced bond of the eternal continuance of
things."Alone the modern scholar remains
blind to the grand truth ] he
confuses subject and
object first and final causes,and
in dreaming of geometrical figures is lost in a flux of sense.
Self-Contradiction of the Critic -(Page 9)[ Here again the
ancient Philosopher seems to be ahead of
the modern.For he only "confuses ...first
and final causes"(which confusion is denied by those who
know the spirit of the ancient
scholarship),whereas his modern successor is confessedly and absolutely
ignorant of both.Mr.Tyndall shows Science
"powerless"to solve a single one of the final problems of
Nature and "disciplined [read modern
materialistic ] ,imagination
retiring in bewilderment from the
contemplation of the problems "of the
world of matter.He even doubts whether the men of present
Science possess "the intellectual
elements which would enable them to grapple with the ultimate
structural energies of Nature."But for
Plato and his disciples,the lower types were but the concrete
images of the higher abstract ones:the higher
abstract ones:the immortal Soul has an arithmetical as
the body has a geometrical beginning.This
beginning as the reflection of the great universal archaeus
(Anima Mundi ),is self-moving and from
the centre diffuses itself over the whole body of the Macrocosm.]
And now an effort of mind is required on our
parts in order to nderstand his do ble lang age or to
apprehend the twilight character of the
knowledge and the genius of ancient philosophers which under
such conditions [?] seems by a divine power in
many instances to have anticipated the truth.[ Op.cit.
page 523 .]
Whether "such conditions"imply those
of ignorance and mental stolidity in "the genius of ancient
philosophers"or something else we do not
know.But what we do know is that the meaning of the
sentences we have italicized is perfectly
clear.Whether the Regius Professor of Greek believes or
disbelieves in a hidden sense of geometrical
figures and of the Esoteric "jargon "he nevertheless admits
the presence of a "double
language"in the writings of these Philosophers.Thence he admits a hidden
meaning which must have had an
interpretation.Why then does he flatly contradict his own statement
on the very next page?And why should he deny
to the Timae s -that preėminently Pythagorean (mystic)
Dialogue -any Occult meaning and take such
pains to convince his readers that
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The influence which the Timaeus has exercised
upon posterity is partly due to a
misunderstanding.
The following quotation from his Introduction
is in direct contradiction with the paragraph which precedes
it as above quoted:
In the supposed depths of this dialogue the
Neo-Platonists found hidden meanings and
connections with the Jewish and Christian
Scriptures,and out of them they dictated doctrines
quite at variance with the spirit of
Plato.Believing that he was inspired by the Holy Ghost or
had received his wisdom from Moses,[ Nowhere are the Neoplatonists guilty
of such an
absurdity.The learned Professor of Greek must
have been thinking of two spurious works
attributed by Eusebius and St.Jerome to
Ammonius Saccas,who wrote nothing:or must have
confused the Neoplatonists with Philo
Judaeus.But then Philo lived over 130 years before the
birth of the founder of Neoplatonism.He
belonged to the School of Aristobulus the Jew who
lived under Ptolemy Philometer (150 years
B.C),and is credited with having inaugurated the
movement which tended to prove that Plato and
even the Peripatetic Philosophy were derived
from the "revealed"Mosaic
Books.Valckenaer tries to show that the author of the
Commentaries on the Books of Moses was not Aristobulus,the sycophant of Ptolemy.But
whatever he was he was not a Neoplatonist but
lived before or during the days of Philo
Judaeus -since the latter seems to know his
works and follow his methods.](Page 10)they
seemed to find in his writings the Christian
Trinity the Word the Church ...and the Neo-
Platonists had a method of interpretation
which could elicit any meaning out of any words.
They were really incapable of distinguishing
between the opinions of one philosopher and
another or between the serious thoughts of
Plato and his passing fancies.[Only
Clemens
Alexandrinus,a Christian Neoplatonist and a
very fantastic writer.]...[But ]
there is no danger
of the modern commentators on the Timae s falling
into the absurdity of the Neo-Platonists.
No danger whatever of course for the simple
reason that the modern commentators have never had the
key to Occult interpretations.And before
another word is said in defence of Plato and the Neoplatonists,
the learned master of Balliol College ought to
be respectfully asked:What does,or can he know of the
Esoteric canon of interpretation?By the term
"canon"is here meant that key which was communicated
orally from "mouth to ear"by the
Master to the disciple or by the Hierophant to the candidate for
initiation;this from time immemorial
throughout a long series of ages,during which the inner -not public -
Mysteries were the most sacred institution of
every land.Without such a key no correct interpretation of
either the Dialog es of Plato nor of
any Scripture from the Vedas to Homer from the Zend Avesta to the
Mosaic Books,is possible.How then can the
Rev.Dr.Jowett know that the interpretations made by the
Neoplatonists of the various sacred books of
the nations were "absurdities"?Where again has he found
an opportunity of studying these
"interpretations"?History shows that all such works were destroyed by
the Christian Church Fathers and their
fanatical catechumens,wherever they were found.To say that
such men as Ammonius,a genius and a saint
whose learning and holy life earned for him the title of
Theodidaktos ("God-taught"),such men
as Plotinus,Porphyry and Proclus,were "incapable of
distinguishing between the opinions of one
philosopher and another or between the serious thoughts of
Plato and his fancies,"is to assume an
untenable position for a Scholar.It amounts to saying that (a)
scores of the most famous Philosophers,the
greatest Scholars and Sages of Greece and of the Roman
Empire were dull fools,and (b)that all the
other commentators,lovers of Greek Philosophy some of
them the acutest intellects of the age -who do
not agree with Dr.Jowett -are also fools and no better
than those whom they admire.The patronising
tone of the last above-quoted passage is modulated with
the most naive conceit remarkable even
in our age of self-glorification and mutual admiration cliques.
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The Character of Ammonius Saccas -(Page 11)We have to compare the Professor's views with
those
of some other scholars.
Says Prof.Alexander Wilder of New York,one of
the best Platonists of the day speaking of Ammonius,
the founder of the Neoplatonic School:
His deep spiritual intuition his extensive
learning his familiarity with the Christian Fathers,
Pantaenus,Clement and Athenagoras,and with the
most erudite philosophers of the time all
fitted him for the labour which he performed
so thoroughly.[The labour of
reconciling the
different systems of religion.] He was successful in drawing to his
views the greatest scholars
and public men of the Roman Empire who had
little taste for wasting time in dialectic pursuits
or superstitious observances.The results of
his ministration are perceptible at the present day
in every country of the Christian world;every
prominent system of doctrine now bearing the
marks of his plastic hand.Every ancient
philosophy has had its votaries among the moderns;
and even Judaism ...has taken upon itself
changes which were suggested by the "God-
taught"Alexandrian ...He was a man of
rare learning and endowments,of blameless life and
amiable disposition.His almost superhuman ken
and many excellencies won for him the title
of Theodidaktos;but he followed the modest
example of Pythagoras,and only assumed the
title of Philalethian or lover of truth.[ New Platonism and Alchemy by
Alex.Wilder M.D.pp.
7.4.]
It would be happy for truth and fact were our
modern scholars to follow as modestly in the steps of their
great predecessors.But not they
-Philalethians!
Moreover we know that:
Like Orpheus,Pythagoras,Confucius,Socrates,and
Jesus himself [ It is well-known
that
though born of Christian parents,Ammonius had
renounced the tenets of the Church -
Eusebius and Jerome notwithstanding.Porphyry
the disciple of Plotinus,who had lived with
Ammonius for eleven years together and who had
no interest in stating an untruth positively
declares that he had renounced Christianity
entirely.On the other hand we know that
Ammonius believed in the bright
Gods,Protectors,and that the Neoplatonic Philosophy was
as "pagan"as it was mystical.But
Eusebius,the most unscrupulous forger and falsifier of old
texts and St.Jerome an out-and-out fanatic,who
had both an interest in denying the fact
contradict Porphyry.We prefer to believe the
latter who has left to posterity an unblemished
name and a great reputation for honesty .] Ammonius committed nothing to
writing.[ Two
works are falsely attributed to Ammonius.One
now lost called De Consensu Moysis et Jes
is mentioned by the same
"trustworthy"Eusebius,the Bishop of Caesaraea and the friend of
the Christian Emperor Constantine who died
however a heathen.All that is known of this
pseudo-work is that Jerome bestows great
praise upon it (Vir.Ill st .55:and Euseb.H.E ..
vi.19).The other spurious production is called
the Diatesseron (or the "Harmony of the
Gospels").This is partially extant.But
then again it exists only in the Latin version of Victor
Bishop of Capua (sixth century),who attributed
it himself to Tatian and as wrongly probably
as later scholars attributed the Diatesseron
to Ammonius.Therefore no great reliance can be
placed upon it nor on its
"esoteric"interpretation of the Gospels.Is it this work we wonder
which led Prof.Jowett to regard the
Neoplatonic interpretations as "absurdities"?] Instead
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he ...communicated his most (Page 12)important doctrines to persons duly instructed
and
disciplined imposing on them the obligations
of secresy as was done before him by Zoroaster
and Pythagoras,and in the Mysteries.Except a
few treatises of his disciples we have only the
declarations of his adversaries from which to
ascertain what he actually taught.[Op.cit
.p.7.]
It is from the biased statements of such
"adversaries."probably that the learned Oxford translator of
Plato's Dialogues came to the conclusion that:
That which was truly great and truly
characteristic of him [Plato ] his effort to realise and
connect abstractions,was not nderstood by
them [the Neoplatonists ] at all [?].
He states,contemptuously enough for the
ancient methods of intellectual analysis,that:
In the present day ...an ancient philosopher
is to be interpreted from himself and by the
contemporary history of thought.[ Op.cit .iii 524 .]
This is like saying that the ancient Greek
canon of proportion (if ever found),and the Athena Promachus
of Phidias,have to be interpreted in the
present day from the contemporary history of architecture and
sculpture from the Albert Hall and Memorial
Monument and the hideous Madonnas in crinolines
sprinkled over the fair face of
Italy.Prof.Jowett remarks that "mysticism is not criticism."No;but
neither
is criticism always fair and sound judgement.
La critiq e est aisée,mais l'art est difficile.
And such "art"our critic of the
Neoplatonists -his Greek scholarship notwithstanding -lacks from a to z
.
Nor has he very evidently the key to the true
spirit of the Mysticism of Pythagoras and Plato since he
denies even in the Timae s an element
of Oriental Mysticism and seeks to show Greek Philosophy
reacting upon the East forgetting that the
truth is the exact reverse;that it is "the deeper and more
pervading spirit of Orientalism"that had
-through Pythagoras and his own initiation into the Mysteries -
penetrated into the very depths of Plato's
soul.
But Dr.Jowett does not see this.Nor is he
prepared to admit that anything good or rational -in
accordance with the "contemporary history
of thought"-could ever come out of that Nazareth of the
Pagan Mysteries;nor even that there is
anything to interpret of a hidden nature in the Timae s or any
other Dialogue.For him,
The so-called mysticism of Plato is purely
Greek,arising out of his imperfect knowledge
[ "Imperfect knowledge"of what?That Plato was
ignorant of many of the modern working
hypotheses"-as ignorant as our immediate
posterity is sure to be of the said hypotheses
when they in their turn after exploding join
the "great majority"-is perhaps a blessing in
disguise .] and high aspirations,and is the growth of an age in which
philosophy is not wholly
separated from poetry and mythology.[ Op.cit .p.524 .]
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Plato a Follower of Pythagoras -(Page 13)Among several other equally erroneous
propositions,it is
especially the assumptions (a)that Plato was
entirely free from any element of Eastern Philosophy in his
writings,and (b)that every modern scholar
without being a Mystic and a Kabalist himself can pretend to
judge of ancient Esotericism -which we mean to
combat.To do this we have to produce more
authoritative statements than our own would be
and bring the evidence of other scholars as great as Dr.
Jowett if not greater specialists in their
subjects,moreover to bear on and destroy the arguments of the
Oxford Regius Professor of Greek.
That Plato was undeniably an ardent admirer
and follower of Pythagoras no one will deny.And it is
equally undeniable as Matter has it that Plato
had inherited on the one hand his doctrines,and on the
other had drawn his wisdom from the same
sources as the Samian Philosopher.[ I'Histoire
Critiq e d
Gnosticisme by M.J.Matter Professor of the Royal Academy of Strasburg."It
is in Pythagoras and Plato
that we find in Greece the first elements of
[Oriental ] Gnosticism."he says.(Vol.i.pp.48 and 50.)] And
the doctrines of Pythagoras are Oriental to
the backbone and even Brāhmanical;for this great
Philosopher ever pointed to the far East as
the source whence he derived his information and his
Philosophy and Colebrooke shows that Plato
makes the same profession in his Epistles,and says that
he has taken his teachings "from ancient
and sacred doctrines."[Asiat.Trans
.i.579.] Furthermore the
ideas of both Pythagoras and Plato coincide
too well with the systems of India and with Zoroastrianism to
admit any doubt of their origin by anyone who
has some acquaintance with these systems.Again:
Pantaenus,Athenagoras,and Clement were
thoroughly instructed in the Platonic philosophy
and comprehended its essential unity
with the Oriental systems.[ New
Platonism and
Alchemy .p.4.]
The history of Pantaenus and his
contemporaries may give the key to the Platonic,and at the same time
Oriental elements that predominate so
strikingly in the Gospels over the Jewish Scriptures.
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SECTION I
Preliminary Survey
(Page 14)INITIATES who have acquired powers and
transcendental knowledge can be traced back to the
Fourth Root Race from our own age.As the
multiplicity of the subjects to be dealt with prohibits the
introduction of such a historical chapter
which however historical in fact and truth would be rejected a
priori as
blasphemy and fable by both Church and Science -we shall only touch on the
subject.Science
strikes out at its own sweet will and fancy
dozens of names of ancient heroes,simply because there is
too great an element of myth in their
histories;the Church insists that biblical patriarchs shall be regarded
as historical personages,and terms her seven
"Star-angels"the "historical channels and agents of the
Creator."Both are right since each finds
a strong party to side with it.Mankind is at best a sorry herd of
Panurgian sheep following blindly the leader
that happens to suit it at the moment.Mankind -the
majority at any rate -hates to think for
itself.It resents as an insult the humblest invitation to step for a
moment outside the old well-beaten tracks,and
judging for itself to enter into a new path in some fresh
direction.Give it an unfamiliar problem to
solve and if its mathematicians,not liking its looks,refuse to
deal with it the crowd unfamiliar with
mathematics,will stare at the unknown quantity and getting
hopelessly entangled in sundry x 's and
y 's,will turn round trying to rend to pieces the uninvited disturber
of its intellectual Nirvana.This may perhaps,account
for the ease and extraordinary success enjoyed by
the Roman Church in her conversions of nominal
Protestants and Free-thinkers,whose name is legion
but who have never gone to the trouble of
thinking for themselves on these most important and
tremendous problems of man's inner nature.
And yet if the evidence of facts,the records
preserved in History and the uninterrupted anathemas of
the Church against "Black Magic"and
Magicians of the accursed race of Cain are not to be heeded our
efforts will prove very puny indeed.When for
nearly two millenniums a body of men has never ceased to
lift its voice against Black Magic,the
inference ought to be irrefutable that if Black Magic exists as a real
fact there must be somewhere its counterpart -White
Magic.
The Protectors of China -(Page 15)False silver coins could have no existence if
there were no genuine
silver money.Nature is dual in whatever she
attempts,and this ecclesiastical persecution ought alone to
have opened the eyes of the public long ago.However
much travellers may be ready to pervert every
fact with regard to abnormal powers with which
certain men are gifted in "heathen"countries;however
eager they may be to put false constructions
on such facts,and -to use an old proverb -"to call white
swan black goose "and to kill it yet the
evidence of even Roman Catholic missionaries ought to be taken
into consideration once they swear in a body
to certain facts.Nor is it because they choose to see
Satanic agency in manifestations of a certain
kind that their evidence as to the existence of such powers
can be disregarded.For what do they say of
China?Those missionaries who have lived in the country for
long years,and have seriously studied every
fact and belief that may prove an obstacle to their success
in making conversions,and who have become
familiar with every exoteric rite of both the official religion
and sectarian creeds -all swear to the
existence of a certain body of men whom no one can reach but
the Emperor and a select body of high officials.A
few years ago before the war in Tonkin the archbishop
in Pekin on the report of some hundreds of
missionaries and Christians,wrote to Rome the identical
story that had been reported twenty-five years
before and had been widely circulated in clerical papers.
They had fathomed it was said the mystery of
certain official deputations,sent at times of danger by the
Emperor and ruling powers to their Sheu and
Kiuay as they are called among the people.These Sheu
and Kiuay they explained were the Genii of the
mountains,endowed with the most miraculous powers.
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They are regarded as the protectors of China by
the "ignorant"masses;as the incarnation of Satanic
power by the good and
"learned"missionaries.
The Sheu and Kiuay are men belonging to
another state of being to that of the ordinary man
or to the state they enjoyed while they were
clad in their bodies.They are disembodied spirits,
ghosts and larvae living nevertheless,in
objective form on earth and dwelling in the
fastnesses of mountains,inaccessible to all
but those whom they permit to visit them.[ This
fact and others may be found in Chinese
Missionary Reports and in a work by Monseigneur
Delaplace a Bishop in China."Annales
de la Propagation de la Foi ".]
(Page 16)In Tibet certain ascetics are also called Lha
Spirits by those with whom they do not choose to
communicate.The Sheu and Kiuay who enjoy the
highest consideration of the Emperor and
Philosophers,and of Confucianists who believe
in no "Spirits "are simply Lohans -Adepts who live in the
greatest solitude in their unknown retreats.
But both Chinese exclusiveness and Nature seem
to have allied themselves against European curiosity
and -as it is sincerely regarded in Tibet
-desecration.Marco Polo the famous traveller was perhaps the
European who ventured farthest into the
interior of these countries.What was said of him in 1876 may
now be repeated.
The district of the Gobi wilderness,and in
fact the whole area of Independent Tartary and
Tibet is carefully guarded against foreign
intrusion.Those who are permitted to traverse it are
under the particular care and pilotage of certain
agents of the chief authority and are in duty
bound to convey no intelligence respecting
places and persons to the outside world.But for
this restriction many might contribute to
these pages accounts of exploration adventure and
discovery that would be read with interest.The
time will come sooner or later when the
dreadful sand of the desert will yield up its
long-buried secrets,and then there will indeed be
unlooked-for mortifications for our modern
vanity.
"The people of Pashai "[ The regions somewhere about Udyana
and Kashmir as the
translator and editor of Marco Polo (Colonel
Yule)believes (i.x75).] says
Marco Polo the
daring traveller of the thirteenth century
"are great adepts in sorceries and the diabolic arts."
And his learned editor adds:"This Paschai
or Udyana was the native country of Padma
Sambhava one of the chief apostles of Lamaism i.e
.of Tibetan Buddhism and a great
master of enchantments.The doctrines of Sakya
as they prevailed in Udyana in old times
were probably strongly tinged with Sivaitic
magic,and the Tibetans still regard the locality as
the classic ground of sorcery and
witchcraft."
The "old times"are just like the
"modern times";nothing is changed as to magical practices
except that they have become still more
esoteric and arcane and that the caution of the
adepts increases in proportion to the
traveller's curiosity.Hiouen-Thsang says of the
inhabitants:"The men ...are fond of study
but pursue it with no ardour.The science of
magical form lae has become a reg lar
professional b siness with them."[Voyage des
Pčlerins Bouddhistes.Vol.1..Histoire de la
Vie de Hio en-Thsang etc.traduit du chinois en
francais,par Stanislas Julien .]We will not contract the venerable
Chinese pilgrim on this point
and are willing to admit that in the seventh
century some people made "a professional
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business:of magic,so also do some people
now but certainly not the true adepts.
Moreoever in that century Buddhism had hardly
penetrated into Tibet and its races were
steeped in the sorceries of the Bhon -the
pre-lamaic religion.It is not Hiouen-Thsang the
pious,courageous man who risked his life a
hundred times to have the bliss of perceiving
Buddh's shadown in the cave of Peshwur who
would have accused the good lamas and
monkish thaumaturgists of "making a
professional business"of showing it to travellers.
The A.B.C.Of Magic -
(Page 17)The injunction of Gautama contained in his
answer to King Prasenajit his protector
who called on him to perform miracles,must
have been ever-present to the mind of Hiouen-
Thsang."Great king "said Gautama
"I do not teach the law to my pupils,telling them Go ye
saints and before the eyes of the Brahmans and
householders perform by means of your
supernatural powers miracles greater than any
man can perform.'I tell them when I teach
them the law Live ye saints,hiding yo r good
works,and showing yo r sins .'"
Struck with the accounts of magical
exhibitions witnessed and recorded by travellers of every
age who had visited Tartary and Tibet Colonel
Yule comes to the conclusion that the natives
must have had "at their command the whole
encyclopaedia of modern Spiritualists."Duhalde
mentions among their sorceries the art of
producing by their invocations the figures of Laotseu
[ Lao-tse the Chinese philosopher.] and their divinities in the air and of making a pencil
write
answers to q estions witho t anybody to
ching it ."[T he Book of Ser Marco Polo i.3x8.]
The former invocations pertain to the
religious mysteries of their sanctuaries;if done
otherwise or for the sake of gain they
are considered sorcery necromancy and strictly
forbidden.The latter art that of making a
pencil write without contact was known and
practised in China and other countries before
the Christian era.It is the A B C of magic in
those countries.
When Hiouen-Thsang desired to adore the shadow
of Buddha it was not to "professional
magicians"that he resorted but to the
power of his own soul-invocation;the power of prayer
faith and contemplation.All was dark and
dreary near the cavern in which the miracle was
alleged to sometimes take place.Hiouen-Thsang
entered and began his devotions.He made
one hundred salutations,but neither saw nor
heard anything.Then thinking himself too sinful
he cried bitterly and despaired.But as he was
about to give up all hope he perceived on the
eastern wall a feeble light but it
disappeared.He renewed his prayers,full of hope this time
and again he saw the light which flashed and
disappeared again.After this he made a solemn
vow:he would not leave the cave till he had
the rapture to at last see the shadow of the
"Venerable of the Age."He had to
wait longer after this,for only after two hundred prayers was
the dark cave suddenly "bathed in light
and the shadow of Buddha of a brilliant white colour
rose majestically on the wall as when the
clouds suddenly open and all at once display the
marvellous image of the Mountain of Light.'A
dazzling splendour lighted up the features of the
divine countenance.Hiouen-Thsang was lost in
contemplation and wonder and would not turn
his eyes away from the sublime and
incomparable object."Hiouen-Thsang adds in his own
diary See-yu-kee,that it is only when
man prays with sincere faith and if he has received
from above a hidden impression that he sees
the shadow clearly but he cannot enjoy the
sight for any length of time (Max Muller B
ddhist Pilgrims.)
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From one end to the other the country is full
of mystics,religious philosophers,Buddhist saints
and magicians.Belief in a spiritual world full
of invisible beings who on certain occasions,
appear to mortals objectively is
universal."According (Page 18)to the belief of the nations of
Central Asia "remarks I.J.Schmidt
"the earth and its interior as well as the encompassing
atmosphere are filled with spiritual
beings,which exercise an influence partly beneficent
partly malignant on the whole of organic and
inorganic nature....Especially are deserts and
other wild and uninhabited tracts,or regions
in which the influences of nature are displayed on
a gigantic and terrible scale regarded as the
chief abode or rendez-vo s of evil spirits.And
hence the steppes of Turan and in particular
the great sand desert of the Gobi have been
looked on as the dwelling place of malignant
beings,from the days of hoary antiquity."
The treasures exhumed by Dr.Schliemann at
Mycenae have awakened popular cupidity and
the eyes of adventurous speculators are being
turned toward the localities where the wealth of
ancient peoples is supposed to be buried in
crypt or cave or beneath sand or alluvial deposit.
Around no other locality not even Peru hang so
many traditions as around the Gobi Desert.In
independent Tartary this howling waste of
shifting sand was once if report speaks correctly
the seat of one of the richest empires the
world ever saw.Beneath the surface is said to lie
such wealth in gold jewels,statuary
arms,utensils,and all that indicates civilization luxury
and fine arts as no existing capital of
Christendom can show today.The Gobi sand moves
regularly from east to west before terrific
gales that blow continually.Occasionally some of the
hidden treasures are uncovered but not a
native dare touch them,for the whole district is
under the ban of a mighty spell.Death would be
the penalty.Bahti -hideous,but faithful
gnomes -guard the hidden treasures of this
prehistoric people awaiting the day when the
revolution of cyclic periods shall again cause
their story to be known for the instruction of
mankind.[ Isis Unveiled i.599-601 603 598.]
The above is purposely quoted from Isis
Unveiled to refresh the reader's memory.One of the cyclic
periods has just been passed and we may not
have to wait to the end of Maha Kalpa to have revealed
something of the history of the mysterious
desert in spite of the Bahti and even the Rakshasas of India
not less "hideous."No tales or
fictions were given in our earlier volumes,their chaotic state
notwithstanding to which chaos the writer
entirely free from vanity confesses publicly and with many
apologies.
It is now generally admitted that from time
immemorial the distant East India especially was the land of
knowledge and of every kind of learning.Yet
there is none to whom the origin of all her Arts and Sciences
has been so much denied as to the land of the
primitive Aryas.From Architecture down to the Zodiac,
every Science worthy of the name was imported
by the Greeks,the mysterious Yavanas -agreeably with
the decision of the Orientalists!Therefore it
is but logical that even the knowledge of Occult Science
should be refused to India since of its
general practice in that country less is known than in the case of
any other ancient people.
Magic As Old As Man -(Page 19)It is so simply because:
With the Hindus it was,and is,more esoteric,if
possible than it was even among the Egyptian
priests.So sacred was it deemed that its
existence was only half admitted and it was only
practised in public emergencies.It was more
than a religio s matter,for it was [and is still ]
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considered divine .The Egyptian hierophants,notwithstanding the practice of a
stern and pure
morality could not be compared for one moment
with the ascetical Gymnosophists,either in
holiness of life or miraculous powers
developed in them by the supernatural abjuration of
everything earthly.By those who knew them well
they were held in still greater reverence than
the magians of Chaldaea."Denying
themselves the simplest comforts of life they dwelt in
woods,and led the life of the most secluded
hermits,"[ Ammianus
Marcellinus,xxiii.6 .] while
their Egyptian brothers at least congregated
together.Notwithstanding the slur thrown on all
who practised magic and divination history has
proclaimed them as possessing the greatest
secrets in medical knowledge and unsurpassed
skill in its practice.Numerous are the volumes
preserved in Hindu Mathams,in which are
recorded the proofs of their learning.To attempt to
say whether these Gymnosophists were the real
founders of magic in India or whether they
only practised what has passed to them as an
inheritance from the earliest Rishis [The
Rishis
-the first group of seven in number lived in
days preceding the Vedic period.They are now
known as Sages and held in reverence like
demigods.But they may now be shown as
something more than merely mortal
Philosophers.There are other groups of ten twelve and
even twenty-one in number.Haug shows that they
occupy in the Brahmanical religion a
position answering to that of the twelve sons
of Jacob in the Jewish Bible The Brahmans claim
to descend directly from the Rishis.] -the seven primeval sages -would be
regarded as mere
speculation by exact scholars.[ Isis Unveiled i.90 .]
Nevertheless,this must be attempted.In Isis
Unveiled all that could be stated about Magic was set down
in the guise of hints;and thus,owing to the
great amount of material scattered over two large volumes,
much of its importance was lost upon the
reader while it still more failed to draw his attention on account
of the faulty arrangement.But hints may now
grow into explanations.One can never repeat it too often -
Magic is as old as man .It cannot any longer be called charlantry or hallucination
when its lesser
branches -such as mesmerism now miscalled
"hypnotism ""thought reading ""action by suggestion
"
and what not else only to avoid calling it by
its right and legitimate name -are being so seriously
investigated by the most famous Biologists and
Physiologists of both Europe and America.Magic is
indissolubly blended with Religion of every
country and is (Page
20)inseparable
from its origin.It is as
impossible for History to name the time when
it was not as that of the epoch when it sprang into
existence unless the doctrines preserved by
the Initiates are taken into consideration.Nor can Science
ever solve the problem of the origin of man if
it rejects the evidence of the oldest records in the world
and refuses from the hand of the legitimate
Guardians of the mysteries of Nature the key to Universal
Symbology.Whenever a writer has tried to
connect the first foundation of Magic with a particular country
or some historical event or character further
research has shown his hypothesis to be groundless.There
is a most lamentable contradiction among the
Symbologists on this point.Some would have it that Odin
the Scandinavian priest and monarch originated
the practice of Magic some 70 years B.C..although it is
spoken of repeatedly in the Bible.But as it
was proven that the mysterious rites of the priestesses Valas
(Voilers)were greatly anterior to Odin's age [See Munter "On the most Ancient
Religions of the North
before Odin.'Mémoires de la Société des
Antiquaires de France.ii.230.] then
Zoroaster came in for an
attempt on the ground that he was the founder
of Magian rites;but Ammianus Marcellinus,Pliny and
Arnobius,with other ancient Historians,have
shown that Zoroaster was but a reformer of Magic as
practised by the Chaldaeans and Egyptians,and
not at all its founder.[ Ammianus
Marcellinus,xxvi.6.]
Who then of those who have consistently turned
their faces away from Occultism and even Spiritualism
as being "unphilosophical"and
therefore unworthy of scientific thought has a right to say that he has
studied the ancients;or that if he has studied
them,he has understood all they have said?Only those
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who claim to be wiser than their generation
who think that they know all that the Ancients knew and
thus,knowing far more today fancy that they
are entitled to laugh at their ancient simple-mindedness
and superstition;those who imagine they have
discovered a great secret by declaring the ancient royal
sarcophagus,now empty of its King Initiate to
be a "corn-bin "and the Pyramid that contained it a
granary perhaps a wine-cellar!["The date of the hundreds of
pyramids in the Valley of the Nile is
impossible to fix by any of the rules of
modern science:Herodotus informs us that each successive king
erected one to commemorate his reign and serve
as his sepulchre.But Herodotus did not tell all
although he knew that the real purpose of the
pyramid was very different from that which he assigns to it.
Were it not for his religious scruples,he
might have added that externally it symbolized the creative
principle of Nature and illustrated also the
principles of geometry mathematics,astrology and
astronomy .]
The Tree of Knowledge -(Page 21)Modern society on the authority of some men of Science calls
Magic
charlatantry.But there are eight hundred
millions on the face of the globe who believe in it to this day;
there are said to be twenty millions of
perfectly sane and often very intelligent men and woman members
of that same society who believe in its
phenomena under the name of Spiritualism.The whole ancient
world with its Scholars and Philosophers,its
Sages and Prophets,believed in it.Where is the country in
which it was not practised?At what age was it
banished even from our own country?In the New World
as in the Old Country (the latter far younger
than the former),the Science of Sciences was known and
practised from the remotest antiquity.The
Mexicans had their Initiates,their Priest-Hierophants and
Magicians,and their crypts of Initiation.Of
the two statues exhumed in the Pacific States,one represents
a Mexican Adept in the posture prescribed for
the Hindu ascetic,and the other an Aztec Priestess,in a
head-gear which might be taken from the head
of an Indian Goddess;while the "Guatemalan Medal"
exhibits the "Tree of
Knowledge"-with its hundreds of eyes and ears,symbolical of seeing and
hearing -
encircled by the "Serpent of
Wisdom"whispering into the ear of the sacred bird.)Bernard Diaz de
Castilla a follower of Cortez,gives some idea
of the extraordinary refinement intelligence and
civilization and also of the magic arts of the
people whom the Spaniards conquered by brute force.Their
pyramid are those of Egypt built according to
the same secret canon of proportion as those of the
Pharaohs,and the Aztecs appear to have derived
their civilization and religion in more than one way from
the same source as the Egyptians and before
these the Indians.Among all these three peoples arcane
Natural Philosophy or Magic,was cultivated to
the highest degree.
That it was natural not supernatural and that
the Ancients so regarded it is shown by what Lucian says
of the "laughing Philosopher
"Democritus,who he tells his readers,
Believed in no [miracles ] ...but applied
himself to discover the method by which the
theurgists could produce them;in a word his
philosophy brought him to the conclusion that
magic was entirely confined to the application
and the imitation of the laws and the works of
nature.
[Internally it was a majestic fane in whose
sombre recesses were performed the Mysteries,
and whose walls had often witnessed the
initiation scenes of members of the royal family.The
porphyry sarcophagus,which Professor Piazzi
Smith Astronomer Royal of Scotland
degrades into a corn-bin was the baptismal
font upon emerging from which the neophyte
was born again 'and became an adept.'(Isis
Unveiled .i.518 519.)]
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(Page 22)Who then can still call the Magic of the
Ancients "superstition"?
In this respect the opinion of Democritus is
of the greatest importance to us,since the Magi left
by Xerxes,at Abdera were his instructors,and
he had studied magic,moreover for a
considerable time with the Egyptian priests.[ Diog.Laert.in
"Democrit.Vit."] For
nearly
ninety years of the one hundred and nine of
his life this great philosopher had made
experiments,and noted them down in a
book,which according to Petronius,[Satyric
ix.3.]
treated of nat re -facts that he had verified himself.And we find him not only
disbelieving in
and utterly rejecting miracles,but asserting
that every one of those that were authenticated by
eye-witnesses,had and could have taken place
for all even the most incredible were
produced according to the "hidden laws
of nat re ."[ Pliny Hist.Nat
.]...Add to this that
Greece the "later cradle of the arts and
sciences,"and India cradle of religions,were and
one of them still is,devoted to its study and
practice -and who shall venture to discredit its
dignity as a study and its profundity as a
science?[Isis Unveiled I.512
.]
No true Theosophist will ever do so.For as a
member of our great Oriental body he knows indubitably
that the Secret Doctrine of the East contains
the Alpha and the Omega of Universal Science;that in its
obscure texts,under the luxuriant though
perhaps too exuberant growth of allegorical Symbolism lie
concealed the corner and the key-stones of all
ancient and modern knowledge.That Stone brought
down by the Divine Builder is now rejected by
the too-human workman and this because in his lethal
materiality man has lost every recollection
not only of his holy childhood but of his very adolescence
when he was one of the Builders himself;when
"the morning stars sang together and the Sons of God
shouted for joy."after they had laid the
measures for the foundations of the earth -to use the deeply
significant and poetical language of Job the
Arabian Initiate.But those who are still able to make room in
their innermost selves for the Divine Ray and
who accept therefore the data of the Secret Sciences in
good faith and humility they know well that it
is in this Stone that remains buried the absolute in
Philosophy which is the key to all those dark
problems of Life and Death some of which at any rate
may find an explanation in these volumes.
The writer is vividly alive to the tremendous
difficulties that present themselves in the handling of such
abstruse questions,and to all the dangers of
the task.Insulting as it is to human nature to brand truth
with the name of imposture nevertheless we see
this done daily and accept it.
Occultism Must Win the Day -(Page 23)For every occult truth has to pass through such
denial and its
supporters through martyrdom before it is
finally accepted;though even then it remains but too often -
A crown
Golden in show yet but a wreath of thorns.
Truths that rest on Occult Mysteries will have
for one reader who may appreciate them a thousand who
will brand them as impostures.This is only
natural and the only means to avoid it would be for an
Occultist to pledge himself to the Pythagorean
"vow of silence."and renew it every five years.Otherwise
cultured society -two-thirds of which think
themselves in duty bound to believe that since the first
appearance of the first Adept one half of
mankind practised deception and fraud on the other half -
cultured society will undeniably assert its
hereditary and traditional right to stone the intruder.Those
benevolent critics,who most readily promulgate
the now famous axiom of Carlyle with regard to his
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countrymen of being "mostly
fools,"having taken preliminary care to include themselves safely in the
only fortunate exceptions to this rule will in
this work gain strength and derive additional conviction of the
sad fact that the human race is simply
composed of knaves and congenital idiots.But this matters very
little.The vindication of the Occultists and
their Archaic Science is working itself slowly but steadily into
the very heart of society hourly daily and
yearly in the shape of two monster branches,two stray off-
shoots of the trunk of Magic -Spiritualism and
the Roman Church.Fact works its way very often through
fiction.Like an immense boa-constrictor Error
in every shape encircles mankind trying to smother in
her deadly coils every aspiration towards
truth and light.But Error is powerful only on the surface
prevented as she is by Occult Nature from
going any deeper;for the same Occult Nature encircles the
whole globe in every direction leaving not
even the darkest corner unvisited.And whether by
phenomenon or miracle by spirit-hook or
bishop's crook,Occultism must win the day before the present
era reaches "Shani's (Saturn's)triple
septenary"of the Western Cycle in Europe in other words -before
the end of the twenty-first century
"A.D."
Truly the soil of the long by-gone past is not
dead for it has only rested.The skeletons of the sacred
oaks of the ancient Druids may still send
shoots from their dried-up boughs and be reborn to a new (Page
24)life like that handful of corn in the sarcophagus
of a mummy 4.000 years old which when planted
sprouted grew and "gave a fine
harvest."Why not?Truth is stranger than fiction.It may any day and
most unexpectedly vindicate its wisdom and
demonstrate the conceit of our age by proving that the
Secret Brotherhood did not indeed die out with
the Philalethians of the last Eclectic School that the
Gnosis flourishes still on earth and its
votaries are many albeit unknown.All this be done by one or
more of the great Masters visiting Europe and
exposing in their turn the alleged exposers and traducers
of Magic.Such secret Brotherhoods have been
mentioned by several well-known authors,and are
spoken of in Mackenzie's Royal Masonic
Cyclopaedia .The writer now in the face of the millions who
deny repeats boldly that which was said in Isis
Unveiled.
If they [the Initiates ] have been regarded as
mere fictions of the novelist that fact has only
helped the "brother-adepts"to keep
their incognito the more easily....
The St.Germains and Cagliostros of this
century having learned bitter lessons from the
vilifications and persecutions of the past
pursue different tactics now-a-days.[Op.cit
.ii.403 .]
These prophetic words were written in 1876 and
verified in 1886.Nevertheless,we say again
There are numbers of these mystic Brotherhoods
which have naught to do with "civilized"
countries;and it is in their unknown
communities that are concealed the skeletons of the past.
These "adepts"could if they chose
lay claim to strange ancestry and exhibit verifiable
documents that would explain many a mysterious
page in both sacred and profane history.
[ This is precisely what some of them are preparing to do and
many a "mysterious page"in
sacred and profane history are touched on in
these pages.Whether or not their explanations
will be accepted -is another question .]Had the keys to the hieratic
writings and the secret of
Egyptian and Hindu symbolism been known to the
Christian Fathers,they would not have
allowed a single monument of old to stand
unmutilated.[ Ibid.]
But there exists in the world another class of
adepts,belonging to a brotherhood also and mightier than
any other of those known to the profane.Many
among these are personally good and benevolent even
pure and holy occasionally as
individuals.Pursuing collectively however and as a body a selfish one-
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sided object with relentless vigour and
determination they have to be ranked with the adepts of the
Black Art.
Black Magic at Work -(Page 25)These are our modern Roman Catholic "fathers"and
clergy.Most of the
hieratic writings and symbols have been
deciphered by them since the Middle Ages.A hundred times
more learned in secret Symbology and the old
Religions than our Orientalists will ever be the
personification of astuteness and
cleverness,every such adept in the art holds the keys tightly in his
firmly clenched hand and will take care the
secret shall not be easily divulged if he can help it.There are
more profoundly learned Kabalists in Rome and
throughout Europe and America than is generally
suspected.Thus are the professedly public
"brotherhoods"of "black"adepts more powerful and
dangerous for Protestant countries than any
host of Eastern Occultists.People laugh at Magic!Men of
Science Physiologists and Biologists,deride
the potency and even the belief in the existence of what is
called in vulgar parlance "Sorcery"and
"Black Magic"?The Archaeologists have their Stonehenge in
England with its thousands of secrets,and its
twin-brother Karnac of Brittany and yet there is not one of
them who even suspects what has been going on
in its crypts and its mysterious nooks and corners,for
the last century.More than that they do not
even know of the existence of such "magic halls"in their
Stonehenge where curious scenes are taking
place whenever there is a new convert in view.Hundreds
of experiments have been and are being made
daily at the Salpetriere and also by learned hypnotisers
at their private houses.It is now proved that
certain sensitives -both men and women -when
commanded in trance by the practitioner who
operates on them to do a certain thing -from drinking a
glass of water up to simulated murder -on
recovering their normal state lose all remembrance of the
order inspired -"suggested"it is now
called by Science.Nevertheless,at the appointed hour and
moment the subject though conscious and
perfectly awake is compelled by an irresistible power within
himself to do that action which has been
suggested to him by his mesmeriser;and that too whatever it
may be and whatever the period fixed by him
who controls the subject that is to say holds the latter
under the power of his will as a snake holds a
bird under its fascination and finally forces it to jump into
its open jaws.Worse than this:for the bird is
conscious of the peril;it resists however helpless in its final
efforts,while the hypnotized subject does not
rebel but seems to follow the suggestions and voice of its
own free-will and soul.Who of our European men
of Science who believe in such scientific experiments
-and very (Page 26)few are they who still doubt them
now-a-days,and who do not feel convinced of their
actual reality -who of them it is asked is
ready to admit this as being Black Magic?Yet it is the gen ine
undeniable and actual fascination and sorcery
of old.The Mulu Kurumbas of Nilgiri do not proceed
otherwise in their envo tements when
they seek to destroy an enemy nor do the Dugpas of Sikkim and
Bhutan know of any more potential agent than
their wil l.Only in them that will does not proceed by jumps
and starts but acts with certainty;it does not
depend on the amount of receptivity or nervous
impressibility of the
"subjects."Having chosen his victim and placed himself en rapport with
them the
Dugpa's "fluid"is sure to find its
way for his will is immeasurably more strongly developed than the will of
the European experimenter -the self-made
untutored and nconscio s Sorcerer for the sake of Science
-who has no idea (or belief either)of the
variety and potency of the world-old methods used to develop
this power by the conscio s sorcerer
the "Black Magician"of the East and West.
And now the question is openly and squarely
asked:Why should not the fanatical and zealous priest
thirsting to convert some selected rich and
influential member of society use the same means to
accomplish his end as the French Physician and
experimenter uses in his case with his subject?The
conscience of the Roman Catholic priest is
most likely at peace.He works personally for no selfish
purpose but with the object of "saving a
soul"from "eternal damnation."In his view if Magic there be in
it it is holy meritorious and divine
Magic.Such is the power of blind faith.
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Hence when we are assured by trustworthy and
respectable persons of high social standing and
unimpeachable character that there are many
well-organised societies among the Roman Catholic
priests which under the pretext and cover of
Modern Spiritualism and mediumship hold séances for the
purposes of conversion by suggestion directly
and at a distance -we answer:We know it.And when
moreover we are told that whenever those
priest-hypnotists are desirous of acquiring an influence over
some individual or individuals,selected by
them for conversion they retire to an underground place
allotted and consecrated by them for such
purposes (viz .ceremonial Magic);and there forming a circle
throw their combined will-power in the
direction of that individual and thus by repeating the process,gain
a complete control over their victim -we again
answer:Very likely.
Black Magic and Hypnotism -(Page 27)In fact we know the practice to be so whether
this kind of
ceremonial Magic and envoūtement is
practised at Stonehenge or elsewhere.We know it we say
through personal experience;and also because
several of the writer's best and most loved friends have
been unconsciously drawn into the Romish
Church and under her "benign"protection by such means.
And therefore we can only laugh in pity at the
ignorance and stubbornness of those deluded men of
Science and cultured experimentalists who
while believing in the power of Dr.Charcot and his disciples
to "envoūté "their subjects
find nothing better than a scornful smile whenever Black Magic and its
potency are mentioned before them.Eliphas Levi
the Abbe-Kabalist died before Science and the
Faculté de Médecine of France had accepted hypnotism and influence par s
ggestion among its
scientific experiments,but this is what he
said twenty-five years go in his Dogme et Rit el de la Ha te
Magie,on
"Les Envo tements et les Sorts ":
That which sorcerers and necromancers sought
above all things in their evocations of the
Spirit of Evil was that magnetic potency which
is the lawful property of the true Adept and
which they desired to obtain possession of for
evil purposes....One of their chief aims was
the power of spells or of deleterious
influences....That power may be compared to real
poisonings by a current of astral light.They
exalt their will by means of ceremonies to the
degree of rendering it venomous at a distance....We
have said in our "Dogma"what we
thought of magic spells,and how this power was
exceedingly real and dangerous.The true
Magus throws a spell without ceremony and by
his sole disapproval upon those with whose
conduct he is dissatisfied and whom he thinks
it necessary to punish;[ This is
incorrectly
expressed.The true Adept of the "Right
Hand"never punishes anyone not even his bitterest
and most dangerous enemy:he simply leaves the
latter to his Karma and Karma never fails to
do so sooner or later.] he casts a spell even by his pardon over those who do him injury
and
the enemies of Initiates never long enjoy
impunity for their wrong-doing.We have ourselves
seen proofs of this fatal law in numerous
instances.The executioners of martyrs always perish
miserably;and the Adepts are the martyrs of
intelligence.Providence [Karma ] seems to
despise those who despise them and puts to
death those who would seek to prevent them
from living.The legend of the Wandering Jew is
the popular poetry of this arcanum.A people
had sent a sage to crucifixion;that people had
bidden him "Move on!"when he tried to rest for
one moment....well!That people will become
subject henceforth to a similar condemnation;it
will become entirely proscribed and for long
centuries it will be hidden "Move on!move on!"
finding neither rest nor pity.[Op.cit .ii.239.241 240.]
(Page 28)"Fables,"and "superstition
"will be the answer.Be it so.Before the lethal breath of selfishness
and indifference every uncomfortable fact is
transformed into meaningless fiction and every branch of
the once verdant Tree of Truth has become
dried up and stripped of its primeval spiritual significance.
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Our modern Symbologist is superlatively clever
only at detecting phallic worship and sexual emblems
even where none were ever meant.But for the
true student of Occult Lore White or Divine Magic could
no more exist in Nature without its
counterpart Black Magic,than day without night whether these be of
twelve hours or of six months duration.For him
everything in that Nature has an occult -a bright and a
night side to it.Pyramids and Druid's
oaks,dolmens and Bo-trees,plant and mineral -everything was full
of deep significance and of sacred truths of
wisdom when the Arch-Druid performed his magic cures and
incantations,and the Egyptian Hierophant
evoked and guided Chemnu the "lovely spectre "the female
Frankenstein-creation of old raised for the
torture and test of the soul-power of the candidate for
initiation simultaneously with the last
agonising cry of his terrestrial human nature.True Magic has lost
its name and along with it its rights to
recognition.But its practice is in daily use;and its progeny
"magnetic influence ""power of
oratory ""irresistible fascination ""whole audiences
subdued and held as
though under a spell "are terms
recognised and used by all generally meaningless though they now are.
Its effects,however are more determined and
definite among religious congregations such as the
Shakers,the Negro Methodists,and
Salvationists,who call it "the action of the Holy Spirit"and
"grace."
The real truth is that Magic is still in full
sway amidst mankind however blind the latter to its silent
presence and influence on its members,however
ignorant society may be and remain to its daily and
hourly beneficent and maleficent effects.The
world is full of such unconscious magicians -in politics as
well as in daily life in the Church as in the
strongholds of Free-Thought.Most of those magicians are
"sorcerers"unhappily not
metaphorically but in sober reality by reason of their inherent
selfishness,their
revengeful natures,their envy and malice.The
true student of Magic,well aware of the truth looks on in
pity and if he be wise keeps silent.For every
effort made by him to remove the universal cecity is only
repaid with ingratitude slander and often
curses,which unable to reach him,will react on those who
wish him evil.Lies and calumny -the latter a
teething lie adding actual bites to empty harmless
falsehoods -become his lot and thus the
well-wisher is soon torn to pieces,as a reward for his
benevolent desire to enlighten.
The Philosophy Stands on Its Own Merits -(Page 29)Enough has been given it is believed to show
that the existence of a Secret Universal
Doctrine besides its practical methods of Magic,is no wild
romance or fiction.The fact was known to the
whole ancient world and the knowledge of it has survived
in the East in India especially.And if there
be such a Science there must be naturally somewhere
professors of it or Adepts.In any case it
matters little whether the Guardians of the Sacred Lore are
regarded as living actually existing men or
are viewed as myths.It is their Philosophy that will have to
stand or fall upon its own merits,apart from
and independent of any Adepts.For in the words of the wise
Gamaliel addressed by him to the
Synedrion:"If this doctrine is false it will perish and fall of itself;but
if
true then -it cannot be destroyed.
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SECTION II
Modern Criticism and the Ancients
(Page 30)THE Secret Doctrine of the Aryan East is found
repeated under Egyptian symbolism and
phraseology in the Book of Hermes.At or near
the beginning of the present century all the books called
Hermetic were in the opinion of the average
man of Science unworthy of serious attention.They were
set down and loudly proclaimed as simply a
collection of tales,of fraudulent pretences and most absurd
claims.They "never existed before the
Christian era "it was said:"they were all written with the triple
object of speculation deceiving and pious
fraud;"they were all even the best of them silly apocrypha.[
See in this connection Pne matologie des
Esprits by the Marquis de Mirville who devotes six enormous
volumes to show the absurdity of those who
deny the reality of Satan and Magic,or the Occult Sciences -
the two being with him synonymous.] In this respect the nineteenth
century proved a most worthy scion
of the eighteenth for in the age of Voltaire
as well as in this century everything save what emanated
direct from the Royal Academy was false
superstitious,foolish.Belief in the wisdom of the Ancients was
laughed to scorn perhaps more so even than it
is now.The very thought of accepting as authentic the
works and vagaries of "a false Hermes,a
false Orpheus,a false Zoroaster "of false Oracles,false Sibyls,
and a thrice false Mesmer and his absurd fluid
was tabooed all along the line.Thus all that had its
genesis outside the learned and dogmatic
precincts of Oxford and Cambridge [ We
think we see the
sidereal phantom of the old Philosopher and
Mystic -once of Cambridge University -Henry More
moving about in the astral mist over the old
moss-covered roofs of the ancient town in which he wrote his
famous letter to Glanvil about
"witches."The "soul"seems restless and indignant as on that
day of May
1678 when the doctor complained so bitterly to
the author of Sadd cism s Tri mphat s of Scot Adie
and Webster."Our new inspired saints
"the soul is heard to mutter "sworn advocates of the witches....
who against all sense and reason ...Will have
no Samuel but a confederate knave ...these in-blown
buffoons,puffed up with ...ignorance vanity
and stupid infidelity!"(See "Letter to Glanvil "and Isis
Unveiled i 205 206)]or the Academy
of France was denounced in those days as unscientific,"and
"ridiculously absurd."This tendency
has survived to the present day.
All Honour to Genuine Scientists -(Page 31)Nothing can be further from the intention of
any true
Occultist -who stands possessed by virtue of
his higher psychic development of instruments of
research far more penetrating in their power
than any as yet in the hands of physical experimentalists -
than to look unsympathetically on the efforts
that are being made in the area of physical enquiry.The
exertions and labours undertaken to solve as
many as possible of the problems of Nature have always
been holy in his sight.The spirit in which Sir
Isaac Newton remarked that at the end of all his
astronomical work he felt a mere child picking
up shells beside the Ocean of Knowledge is one of
reverence for the boundlessness of Nature
which Occult Philosophy itself cannot eclipse.And it may
freely be recognised that the attitude of mind
which this famous simile describes is one which fairly
represents that of the great majority of gen
ine Scientists in regard to all the phenomena of the physical
plane of Nature.In dealing with this they are
often caution and moderation itself.They observe facts with
a patience that cannot be surpassed.They are
slow to cast these into theories,with a prudence that
cannot be too highly commended.And subject to
the limitations under which they serve Nature they are
beautifully accurate in the record of their
observations.Moreover it may be conceded further that modern
Scientists are exceedingly improbable that any
discovery will ever conflict with such or such a theory
now supported by such and such an aggregation
of recorded facts.But even in reference to the broadest
generalizations -which pass into a dogmatic
form only in brief popular text books of scientific knowledge
-the tone of "Science"itself if that
abstraction may be held to be embodied in the persons of its most
distinguished representatives,is one of
reserve and often of modesty.
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Far therefore from being disposed to scoff at
the errors into which the limitations of their methods may
betray men of Science the true Occultist will
rather appreciate the pathos of a situation in which great
industry and thirst for truth are condemned to
disappointment and often to confusion.
That which is to be deplored however in
respect to Modern Science is in itself an evil manifestation of
the excessive caution which in its most
favourable aspect protects Science from over-hasty conclusions:
(Page 32)namely the tardiness of Scientists to
recognise that other instruments of research may be
applicable to the mysteries of Nature besides
those of the physical plane and that it may consequently
be impossible to appreciate the phenomena of
any one plane correctly without observing them as well
from the points of view afforded by others.In
so far then as they wilfully shut their eyes to evidence which
ought to have shown them clearly that Nature
is more complex than physical phenomena alone would
suggest that there are means by which the
faculties of human perception can pass sometimes from one
plane to the other and that their energy is
being misdirected while they turn it exclusively on the minutiae
of physical structure or force they are less
entitled to sympathy than to blame.
One feels dwarfed and humbled in reading what
M.Renan that learned modern "destroyer"of every
religious belief past present and future has
to say of poor humanity and its powers of discernment.He
believes
Mankind has but a very narrow mind;and the
number of men capable of seizing acutely
(finement)the true analogy of things,is quite
imperceptible.[ Ét des
Religie ses .]
Upon comparing however this statement with
another opinion expressed by the same author namely
that:
The mind of the critic should yield to
facts,hand and feet bound to be dragged by them
wherever they may lead him.[Ét des Historiq es .]
one feels relieved.When moreover these two
philosophical statements are strengthened by a third
enunciation of the famous Academician which
declares that:
To t parti pris a priori,doit etre banni de
la science [Mémoire read at the
Academie des
Inscriptions des Belles Lettres,in 1859 .]
there remains little to fear.Unfortunately
M.Renan is the first to break this golden rule.
The evidence of Herodotus -called
sarcastically no doubt the "Father of History "since in every
question upon which Modern Thought disagrees
with him,his testimony goes for nought -the sober and
earnest assurances in the philosophical
narratives of Plato and Thucydides,Polybius,and Plutarch and
even certain statements of Aristotle himself
are invariably laid aside whenever they are involved in what
modern criticism is pleased to regard as
myth.It is some time since Strauss proclaimed that:
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What is a Myth?-
(Page 33)The presence of a supernatural element or
miracle in a narrative is an infallible sign
of the presence in it of a myth;
and such is the canon of criticism tacitly
adopted by every modern critic.But what is a myth -ģõčļņ-to
begin with?Are we not told distinctly by
ancient writers that the word means tradition?Was not the Latin
term fab la a fable synonymous with
something told as having happened in pre-historic times,and not
necessarily an invention.With such autocrats
of criticism and despotic rulers as are most of the French
English and German Orientalists,there may then
be no end of historical geographical ethnological
and philological surprises in store for the
century to come.Travesties in Philosophy have become so
common of late that the public can be startled
by nothing in this direction.It has already been stated by
one learned speculator that Homer was simply
"a mythical personification of the épopée ";[ See Alfred
Maury's Histoire des Religions de la Grčce .i.248:and
the speculations of Holzmann in Zeitschriftf r
Vergleichende Sprach forsch ng ann.1882 p.487.sq.] by
another that Hippocrates,son of Esculapius,
"could only be a chimera";that the
Asclepiades,their seven hundred years of duration notwithstanding
might after all prove simply a
"fiction";that "the city of Troy (Dr.Schliemann to the
contrary)existed only
on the maps."etc.Why should not the world
be invited after this to regard every hitherto historical
character of days of old as a myth?Were not
Alexander the Great needed by Philology as a sledge-
hammer wherewith to break the heads of
Brahmanical chronological pretensions,he would have become
long ago simply "a symbol for annexation
"or "a genius of conquest "as has been already suggested by
some French writer.
Blank denial is the only refuge left to the
critics.It is the most secure asylum for some time to come in
which to shelter the last of the sceptics.For
one who denies unconditionally the trouble of arguing is
unnecessary and he also thus avoids what is
worse having to yield occasionally a point or two before
the irrefutable arguments and facts of his
opponent.Creuzer the greatest of all the modern
Symbologists,the most learned among the masses
of erudite German Mythologists,must have envied
the placid self-confidence of certain
sceptics,when he found himself forced in a moment of desperate
perplexity to admit that:
We are compelled to return to the theories of
trolls and genii as they were understood by the
ancients;[it is a doctrine ] without which it
becomes absolutely impossible to explain to oneself
anything with regard to the Mysteries.[Creuzer's Introd ction des
Mystčres iii 456.]
of the Ancients,which Mysteries are
undeniable.
(Page 34)Roman Catholics,who are guilty of precisely
the same worship and to the very letter -having
borrowed it from the later Chaldaeans,the
Lebanon Nabathaeans,and the baptized Sabaeans,[The
later Nabathaeans adhered to the same belief
as the Nazarenes and the Sabaeans,honoured John the
Baptist and used Baptistm.(See Isis
Unveiled ii.127:Munck,Palestine p.525;Dunlap Sid,the Son of
Man .etc.)]and not from the learned Astronomers
and Initiates of the days of old -would now by
anathematizing it hide the source from which
it came.Theology and Churchianism would fain trouble the
clear fountain that fed them from the first to
prevent posterity from looking into it and thus seeing their
original prototype.The Occultists,however
believe the time has come to give everyone his due.As to
our other opponents -the modern sceptic and
the Epicurean the cynic and the Sadducee -they may find
an answer to their denials in our earlier
volumes.As to many unjust aspersions on the ancient doctrines,
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the reason for them is given in these words in
Isis Unveiled :
The thought of the present-day commentator and
critic as to the ancient learning is limited to
and runs round the exoterism of the
temples;his insight is either unwilling or unable to
penetrate into the solemn adyta of old where
the hierophant instructed the neophyte to regard
the public worship in its true light.No
ancient sage would have taught that man is the king of
creation and that the starry heaven and our
mother earth were created for his sake.[i.535.]
When we find such works as Phallicism [ By Hargrave Jennings .] appearing in our day in print it is
easy
to see that the day of concealment and
travesty has passed away.Science in Philology Symbolism and
Comparative Religion has progressed too far to
make wholesale denials any longer and the Church is
too wise and cautious not to be now making the
best of the situation.Meanwhile the "rhombs of Hecate"
and the "wheels of Lucifer "[ See de Mirville's Pne matologie iii
267 et seq.] daily exhumed on
the sites
of Babylonia can no longer be used as clear
evidence of a Satan-worship since the same symbols are
shown in the ritual of the Latin Church.The
latter is too learned to be ignorant of the fact that even the
later Chaldaeans,who had gradually fallen into
dualism reducing all things to two primal Principles,
never worshipped Satan or idols,any more than
did the Zoroastrians,who now lie under the same
accusation but that their Religion was as
highly philosophical as any;their dual and exoteric Theosophy
became the heirloom of the Jews,who in their
turn were forced to share it with the Christians.Parsis
are to this day charged with Heliolatry and
yet in the Chaldean Oracles,under the "Magical and
Philosophical Precepts of Zoroaster"one finds
the following:
Chaldean Oracles -(Page 35)
Direct not thy mind to the vast measures of
the earth;
For the plant of truth is not upon ground.
Nor measure the measures of the sun collecting
rules,
For he is carried by the eternal will of the
Father not for your sake.
Dismiss the impetuous course of the moon;for
she runs always by work of necessity.
The progression of the stars was not generated
for your sake.
There was a vast difference between the true
worship taught to those who showed themselves worthy
and the state religions.The Magians are
accused of all kinds of superstition but this is what the same
Chaldaean Oracle says:
The wide aerial flight of birds is not true
Nor the dissections of the entrails of
victims;they are all mere toys
The basis of mercenary fraud;flee from these
If you would open the sacred paradise of piety
Where virtue wisdom and equity are assembled.
[ Psellus,4:in Cory's Ancient Fragments.269.]
As we say in our former work:
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Surely it is not those who warn people against
"mercenary fraud"who can be accused of it;
and if they accomplished acts which seem
miraculous,who can with fairness presume to deny
that it was done merely because they possessed
a knowledge of natural philosophy and
psychological science to a degree unknown to
our schools?[ Isis Unveiled,i
535 536.]
The above q oted stanzas are a rather
strange teaching to come from those who are niversally
believed to have worshipped the s n,and
moon,and the starry hosts,as Gods.The sublime prof ndity
of the Magian precepts being beyond the
reach of modern materialistic tho ght,the Chaldean
Philosophers are acc sed of Sabaeanism and
S n-worship,which was the religion only of the
ned cated masses.
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SECTION III
The Origin of Magic
(Page 36)THINGS of late have changed true enough.The
field of investigation has widened;old religions
are a little better understood;and since that
miserable day when the Committee of the French Academy
headed by Benjamin Franklin investigated
Mesmer s phenomena only to proclaim them charlatanry and
clever knavery both heathen Philosophy and
Mesmerism have acquired certain rights and privileges,
and are now viewed from quite a different
standpoint.Is full justice rendered them however and are they
any better appreciated?We are afraid not.Human
nature is the same now as when Pope said of the
force of prejudice that:
The difference is as great between
The optics seeing as the objects seen.
All manners take a tincture from our own
Or some discolour d through our passions
shown
Or fancy s beam enlarges,multiplies,
Contracts,inverts,and gives ten thousand dyes.
Thus in the first decades of our century
Hermetic Philosophy was regarded by both Churchmen and men
of Science from two quite opposite points of
view.The former called it sinful and devilish;the latter
denied point-blank its authenticity
notwithstanding the evidence brought forward by the most erudite men
of every age including our own.The learned
Father Kircher for instance was not even noticed;and his
assertion that all the fragments known under
titles of works by Mercury Trismegistus,Berosus,
Pherecydes of Syros,etc.were rolls that had
escaped the fire which devoured 100 000 volumes of the
great Alexandrian Library -was simply laughed
at.Nevertheless the educated classes of Europe knew
then as they do now that the famous
Alexandrian Library the marvel of the ages, was founded by
Ptolemy Philadelphus;that numbers of its MSS
had been carefully copied from hieratic texts and the
oldest parchments,Chaldaean Phoenician Persian
etc;and that these transliterations and copies
amounted in their turn to another 100 000
rolls,as Josephus and Strabo assert.
The Books of Hermes -(Page 37)There is also the additional evidence of Clemens
Alexandrinus,that
ought to be credited to some extent.[ The forty-two Sacred Books of the
Egyptians mentioned by
Clement of Alexandria as having existed in his
time were but a portion of the Books of Hermes.
Iamblichus,on the authority of the Egyptian
priest Abammon attributes 1 200 of such books to Hermes,
and Manetho 36.000.But the testimony of
Iamblichus as a Neoplatonist and Theurgist is of course
rejected by modern critics.Manetho who is held
by Bunsen in the highest consideration as a purely-
historical personage with whom none of the
later native historians can be compared (see Egypte,i.
97)suddenly becomes a Pseudo-Manetho as soon
as the ideas propounded by him clash with the
scientific prejudices against Magic and the
Occult knowledge claimed by the ancient priests.However
none of the Archaeologists doubt for a moment
the almost incredible antiquity of the Hermetic books.
Champollion shows the greatest regard for
their authenticity and truthfulness,corroborated as it is by
many of the oldest monuments.And Bunsen brings
irrefutable proofs of their age.From his researches,
for instance we learn that there was a line of
sixty-one kings before the days of Moses,who preceded
the Mosaic period by a clearly-traceable civilization
of several thousand years.Thus we are warranted in
believing that the works of Hermes
Trismegistus were extant many ages before the birth of the Jewish
law-giver.Styli and inkstands were found on
monuments of the fourth Dynasty the oldest in the world
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says Bunsen.If the eminent Egyptologist
rejects the period of 48.863 years before Alexander to which
Diogenes Laertius carries back the records of
the priests he is evidently more embarrassed with the ten
thousand of astronomical observations,and
remarks that if they were actual observations,they must
have extended
over 10.000 years (p.44).We learn however he adds,from one of their own
old
chronological works ...that the genuine
Egyptian traditions concerning the mythological period treated
of myriads of years. (Egypte,i
15:Isis Unveiled i.33)] Clemens
testified to the existence of an
additional 30 000 volumes of the Books of
Thoth placed in the library of the Tomb of Osymandias,over
the entrance of which were inscribed the
words, A Cure for the Soul.
Since then as all know entire texts of the
apocryphal works of the false Pymander and the no less
false Asclepias,have been found by
Champollion in the most ancient monuments of Egypt.[ These
details are taken from Pne matologie,iii
pp 204 205 ] As said in Isis
Unveiled :
After having devoted their whole lives to the
study of the records of the old Egyptian wisdom
both Champollion-Figeac and Champollion Junior
publicly declared notwithstanding many
biased judgments hazarded by certain hasty and
unwise critics,that the Books of Hermes
truly contain a mass of Egyptian traditions
which are constantly corroborated by the most
authentic records and monuments of Egypt of
the hoariest antiquity.[ Egypte,p.143
Isis
Unveiled,i.625.]
The merit of Champollion as an Egyptologist
none will question and if he declare that everything
demonstrates the accuracy of the writings of
the mysterious Hermes Trismegistus,and if the assertion
that their antiquity runs back into the night
of time be corroborated by him in (Page 38)minutest details,
then indeed criticism ought to be fully
satisfied.Says Champollion:
These inscriptions are only the faithful echo
and expression of the most ancient verities.
Since these words were written some of the
apocryphal verses by the mythical Orpheus have also
been found copied word for word in
hieroglyphics,in certain inscriptions of the Fourth Dynasty
addressed to various Deities.Finally Creuzer
discovered and immediately pointed out the very
significant fact that numerous passages found
in Homer and Hesiod were undeniably borrowed by the
two great poets from the Orphic Hymns,thus
proving the latter to be far older than the Iliad or the
Odyssey.
And so gradually the ancient claims come to be
vindicated and modern criticism has to submit to
evidence.Many are now the writers who confess
that such a type of literature as the Hermetic works of
Egypt can never be dated too far back into the
prehistoric ages.The texts of many of these ancient
works,that of Enoch included so loudly
proclaimed apocryphal at the beginning of this century are now
discovered and recognised in the most secret
and sacred sanctuaries of Chaldaea India Phoenicia
Egypt and Central Asia.But even such proofs
have failed to convince the bulk of our Materialists.The
reason for this is very simple and evident.All
these texts -held in universal veneration in Antiquity found
in the secret libraries of all the great
temples,studied (if not always mastered)by the greatest statesmen
classical writers,philosophers,kings and
laymen as much as by renowned Sages -what were they?
Treatises on Magic and Occultism pure and
simple;the now derided and tabooed Theosophy -hence
the ostracism.
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Were people then so simple and credulous in
the days of Pythagoras and Plato?Were the millions of
Babylonia and Egypt of India and Greece with
their great Sages to lead them all fools,that during those
periods of great learning and civilization
which preceded the year one of our era -the latter giving birth
but to the intellectual darkness of mediaeval
fanaticism -so many otherwise great men should have
devoted their lives to a mere illusion a
superstition called Magic?It would seem so had one to remain
content with the word and conclusions of
modern Philosophy.
Every Art and Science however whatever its
intrinsic merit has had its discoverer and practitioner and
subsequently its proficients to teach it.
What is the Origin of Magic?-(Page 39)What is the origin of the Occult Sciences,or
Magic?Who were
its professors,and what is known of them
whether in history or legend?Clemens Alexandrinus,one of
the most intelligent and learned of the early
Christian Fathers,answers this question in his Stromateis.
That ex-pupil of the Neoplatonic School
argues:
If there is instruction you must seek for the
master.[ Strom .VI
vii.The following paragraph
from the same chapter .]
And so he shows Cleanthes taught by Zeno Theophrastus
by Aristotle Metrodorus by Epicurus,Plato by
Socrates,etc.And he adds that when he had
looked further back to Pythagoras,Pherecydes,and
Thales,he had still to search for their
masters.The same for the Egyptians,the Indians,the Babylonians,
and the Magi themselves.He would not cease
questioning he says to learn who it was they all had for
their masters.And when he (Clemens)had traced
down the enquiry to the very cradle of mankind to the
first generation of men he would reiterate
once more his questioning and ask,Who is their teacher?
Surely he argues,their master could be no one
of men. And even when we should have reached as
high as the Angels,the same query would have
to be offered to them:Who were their (meaning the
divine and the fallen Angels)masters?
The aim of the good father s long argument is
of course to discover two distinct masters,one the
preceptor of biblical patriarchs,the other the
teacher of the Gentiles.But the students of the Secret
Doctrine need go to no such trouble.Their
professors are well aware who were the Masters of their
predecessors in Occult Sciences and Wisdom.
The two professors are finally traced out by
Clemens,and are as was to be expected God and his
eternal and everlasting enemy and opponent the
Devil;the subject of Clemens enquiry relating to the
d al aspect
of Hermetic Philosophy as cause and effect.Admitting the moral beauty of the
virtues
preached in every Occult work with which he
was acquainted Clemens desires to know the cause of the
apparent contradiction between the doctrine
and the practice good and evil Magic,and he comes to the
conclusion that Magic has two origins -divine
and diabolical.He perceives its bifurcation into two
channels,hence his deduction and inference.
We perceive it too without however necessarily
designating such bifurcation diabolical for we judge the
left-hand path as it (Page 40)issued from the hands of its founder.Otherwise
judging also by the effects
of Clemens own religion and walk in life of
certain of its professors,since the death of their Master the
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Occultists would have a right to come to
somewhat the same conclusion as Clemens.They would have a
right to say that while Christ the Master of
all true Christians,was in every way godly those who resorted
to the horrors of the Inquisition to the
extermination and torture of heretics,Jews and Alchemists,the
Protestant Calvin who burnt Servetus and his
persecuting Protestant successors,down to the whippers
and burners of witches in America must have
had for their Master the Devil.But Occultists,not believing
in the Devil are precluded from retaliating in
this way.
Clemens testimony however is valuable in so
far as it shows (1)the enormous number of works on
Occult Sciences in his day;and (2)the
extraordinary powers acquired through those Sciences by certain
men.
He devotes,for instance the whole of the sixth
book of his Stromat eis to this research for the first two
Masters or the true and the false
Philosophy respectively both preserved as he says,in the Egyptian
sanctuaries.Very pertinently too he
apostrophises the Greeks,asking them why they should not accept
the miracles of Moses as such since they
claim the very same privileges for their own Philosophers,
and he gives a number of instances.It is,as he
says,Aeachus obtaining through his Occult powers a
marvellous rain;it is Aristaeus causing the
winds to blow;Empedocles quieting the gale and forcing it to
cease etc.[ See Pne matologie,iii.207 Therefore Empedocles is called
źłėõčįõåģļņthe dominator of
the wind.Strom.,VI.iii.]
The books of Mercurius Trismegistus most
attracted his attention.[ Ibid.iv.] He is also warm in his praise
of Hystaspes (or Gushtasp),of the Sibylline
books,and even of the right Astrology.
There have been in all ages use and abuse of
Magic,as there are use and abuse of Mesmerism or
Hypnotism in our own.The ancient world had its
Apollonii and its Pherecydae and intellectual people
could discriminate then as they can now.While
no classical or pagan writer has ever found one word of
blame for Apollonius of Tyana for instance it
is not so with regard to Pherecydes.Hesychius of Miletia
Philo of Byblos and Eusthathius charges the
latter unstintingly with having built his Philosophy and
Science on demoniacal traditions -i.e.on
Sorcery.
Pherecydes of Syros -(Page 41)Cicero declares that Pherecydes is,poti s divin s q am
medicus,
rather a soothsayer than a physician and
Diogenes Laertius gives a vast number of stories relating to
his predictions.One day Pherecydes prophesies
the shipwreck of a vessel hundreds of miles away from
him;another time he predicts the capture of
Lacedaemonians by the Arcadians;finally he foresees his
own wretched end.[Summarised from Pne matologie,iii.209.]
Bearing in mind the objections that will be
made to the teachings of the Esoteric Doctrine as herein
propounded the writer is forced to meet some
of them beforehand.
Such imputations as those brought by Clemens
against the heathen Adepts,only prove the presence of
clairvoyant powers and prevision in every age
but are no evidence in favour of a Devil.They are
therefore of no value except to the
Christians,for whom Satan is one of the chief pillars of the faith.
Baronius and De Mirville for instance find an
unanswerable proof of Demonology in the belief in the co-
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eternity of Matter with Spirit!
De Mirville writes that Pherecydes
Postulates in principle the primordiality of
Zeus or Ether and then on the same plane a
principle coeternal and coactive which he
calls the fifth element or Ogenos.[ Loc.cit.]
He then points out that the meaning of Ogenos
is given as that which shuts up which holds captive and
that is Hades,or in a word hell.
The synonyms are known to every schoolboy
without the Marquis going to the trouble of explaining them
to the Academy;as to the deduction every
Occultist will of course deny it and only smile at its folly.And
now we come to the theological conclusion.
The resumé of the views of the Latin Church
-as given by authors of the same characters as the Marquis
de Mirville -amounts to this:that the Hermetic
Books,their wisdom -fully admitted in Rome -
notwithstanding are the heirloom left by Cain
the accursed to mankind. It is generally admitted says
that modern memorialist of Satan in History:
That immediately after the Flood Cham and his
descendants had propagated anew the
ancient teachings of the Cainites and of the
surmerged Race.[Op.cit.,iii
208 ]
(Page 42)This proves at any rate that Magic,or Sorcery
as he calls it is an antediluvian Art and thus
one point is gained.For as he says:-
The evidence of Berosius makes Ham identical
with the first Zoroaster founder of Bactria the
first author of all the magic arts of
Babylonia the Chemesen a or Cham [The
English
speaking people who spell the name of Noah's
disrespectful son Ham have to be reminded
that the right spelling is Kham or Cham ] the infamo s [ Black Magic,or Sorcery is the ev il
result obtain e d in any shape or way
through the practice of Occult Arts:hence it has to be
judged only by its effects.The name of neither
Ham nor Cain when pronounced has ever
killed any one;whereas,if we have to believe
that same Clemens Alexandrinus who traces the
teacher of every Occultist outside of
Christianity to the Devil the name of Jehovah
(pronounced Jevo and in a peculiar way)had the
effect of killing a man at a distance.The
mysterious Schemham-phorasch was not always
used for holy purposes by the Kabalists,
especially since the Sabbath or Saturday
sacred to Saturn or the evil Shani became -with
the Jews -sacred to Jehovah.] of the faithful Noachians,finally
the object of adoration for
Egypt which having received its name ÷ēģåéį
whence chemistry built in his honour a town
called Choemnis,or the city of fire. [Khoemnis,the pre-historic city may or
may not have
been built by Noah's son but it was not his
name that was given to the town but that of the
Mystery Goddess Khoemnu or Khoemnis (Greek
form);the deity that was created by the
ardent fancy of the neophyte who was thus
tantalised during his twelve labours of probation
before his final initiation.Her male
counterpart is Khem.The city of Choemnis or Khemmis
(today Akhmem)was the chief seat of the God
Khem.The Greeks identifying Khem with Pan
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called this city Panopolis.] Ham adored it it is said whence the
name Chammaim given to
the pyramids;which in their turn have been
vulgarised into our modern noun chimney.[
Pne matologie,iii 210.This looks more like pious vengeance than
philology.The picture
however seems incomplete as the author ought
to have added to the chimney a witch flying
out of it on a broomstick.]
This statement is entirely wrong.Egypt was the
cradle of Chemistry and its birth-place -this is pretty well
known by this time.Only Kenrick and others
show the root of the word to be chemi or chem,which is not
Chem or
Ham but Khem,the Egyptian phallic God of the Mysteries.
But this is not all.De Mirville is bent upon
finding a satanic origin even for the now innocent Tarot.
He goes on to say:
As to the means for the propagation of this
evil Magic,tradition points it out in certain runic
characters traced on metallic plates [or
leaves,des lames ] which have escaped destruction by
the Deluge [ How could they escape from the Deluge unless God so willed
it?This is scarcely
logical.] This might have been regarded as legendary had not subsequent
discoveries shown
it far from being so.Plates were found covered
with curious and utterly undecipherable
characters,characters of undeniable antiquity
to which the Chamites [Sorcerers,with the
author ] attribute the origin to their
marvellous and terrible powers.[Loc.cit.,p.210
]
The pious author may meanwhile be left to his
own orthodox beliefs.
Cain Mathematical and Anthropomorphic -(Page 43)He at any rate seems quite sincere in his
views.
Nevertheless,his able arguments will have to
be sapped at their very foundation for it must be shown on
mathematical grounds who or rather what Cain
and Ham really were.De Mirville is only the faithful son
of his Church interested in keeping Cain in
his anthropomorphic character and in his present place in
Holy Writ. The student of Occultism on the
other hand is solely interested in the truth.But the age has
to follow the natural course of evolution.
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SECTION IV
The Secrecy of Initiates
(Page 44)THE false rendering of a number of parables
and sayings of Jesus is not to be wondered at in
the least.From Orpheus,the first initiated
Adept of whom history catches a glimpse in the mists of the
pre-Christian era down through
Pythagoras,Confucius,Buddha Jesus,Apollonius of Tyana to
Ammonius Saccas,no Teacher or Initiate has
ever committed to writing for public use.Each and all of
them have invariably recommended silence and
secresy on certain facts and deeds,from Confucius,
who refused to explain publicly and
satisfactorily what he meant by his Great Extreme or to give the
key to the divination by straws down to
Jesus,who charged his disciples to tell no man that he was
Christ [
Matthew xvi.20.] (Chrestos),the
man of sorrows and trials,before his supreme and last
Initiation or that he had produced a miracle
of resurrection.[ Mark v.43
.] The Apostles had to
preserve silence so that the left hand should
not know what the right hand did;in plainer words,that the
dangerous proficients in the Left Hand Science
-the terrible enemies of the Right Hand Adepts,
especially before their supreme Initiation
-should not profit by the publicity so as to harm both the healer
and the patient.And if the above is maintained
to be simply an assumption then what may be the
meaning of these awful words:
Unto you it is given to know the mystery of
the Kingdom of God;but unto them that are without
all these things are done in parables;that
seeing they may see and not perceive;and hearing
they may hear and not understand;lest at any
time they should be converted and their sins
should be forgiven them.[ Mark iv.11 .]
Exoteric and Esoteric Teachings -(Page 45)Unless interpreted in the sense of the law of
silence and
Karma the utter selfishness and uncharitable
spirit of this remark are but too evident.These words are
directly connected with the terrible dogma of
predestination.Will the good and intelligent Christian cast
such a slur of cruel selfishness on his
Saviour?[ It is not evident that
the words:lest at any time they
should be converted (or:lest haply they
should turn again -as in the revised version)and their sins be
forgiven them -do not at all mean to imply
that Jesus feared that through repentance any outsider or
them that are without should escape
damnation as the literal dead-letter sense plainly shows -but
quite a different thing?Namely lest any of
the profane should by understanding his preaching
undisguised by parable get hold of some of the
secret teachings and mysteries of Initiation -and even of
Occult powers?Be converted is,in other
words,to obtain a knowledge belonging exclusively to the
Initiated:and their sins be forgiven them
that is,their sins would fall upon the illegal revealer on those
who had helped the unworthy reap there where
they have never laboured to sow and had given them,
thereby the means of escaping on this earth
their deserved Karma which must thus re-act on the
revealer who instead of good did harm and
failed.]
The work of propagating such truths in
parables was left to the disciples of the high Initiates.It was their
duty to follow the key-note of the Secret
Teaching without revealing its mysteries.This is shown in the
histories of all the great Adepts.Pythagoras
divided his classes into hearers of exoteric and esoteric
lectures.The Magians received their
instructions and were initiated in the far hidden caves of Bactria.
When Josephus declares that Abraham taught
Mathematics he meant by it Magic, for in the
Pythagorean code Mathematics mean Esoteric
Science or Gnosis.
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Professor Wilder remarks:
The Essenes of Judea and Carmel made similar
distinctions,dividing their adherents into
neophytes,brethren and the perfect
....Ammonius obligated his disciples by oath not to
divulge his higher doctrines,except to those
who had been thoroughly instructed and
exercised [prepared for initiation ].[New Platonism and Alchemy,1869.pp.7.9.]
One of the most powerful reasons for the
necessity of strict secresy is given by Jesus Himself if one may
credit Matthew.For there the Master is made to
say plainly:
Give not that which is holy unto the
dogs,neither cast ye your pearls before swine;lest they
trample them under their feet and turn again
and rend you.[vii.6.]
Profoundly true and wise words.Many are those
in our own age and even among us,who have been
forcibly reminded of them -often when too
late.[ History is full of proofs
of the same.Had not
Anaxagoras enunciated the great truth taught
in the Mysteries,viz .that the sun was surely larger than
the Peloponnesus,he would not have been
persecuted and nearly put to death by the fanatical mob.Had
that other rabble which was raised against
Pythagoras understood what the mysterious Sage of Crotona
meant by giving out his remembrances of having
been the Son of Mercury -God of the Secret Wisdom
-he would not have been forced to fly for his
life:nor would Socrates have been put to death had he
kept secret the revelations of his divine
Daimon.He knew how little his century -save those initiated -
would understand his meaning had he given out
all he knew of the moon.Thus he limited his statement
to an allegory which is now proven to have
been more scientific than was hitherto believed.He
maintained that the moon was inhabited and
that the lunar beings lived in profound vast and dark
valleys,our satellite being airless and
without any atmosphere outside such profound valleys;this,
disregarding the revelation full of meaning
for the few only must be so of necessity.If there is any
atmosphere on our bright Selene at all.The
facts recorded is the secret annals of the Mysteries had to
remain veiled under penalty of death.]
(Page 46)Even Maimonides recommends silence with regard
to the true meaning of the Bible texts.This
injunction destroys the usual affirmation that
Holy Writ is the only book in the world whose divine
oracles contain plain unvarnished truth.It may
be so for the learned Kabalists;it is certainly quite the
reverse with regard to Christians.For this is
what the learned Hebrew Philosopher says:
Whoever shall find out the true sense of the
Book of Genesis ought to take care not to divulge
it.This is a maxim that all our sages repeat
to us,and above all respecting the work of the six
days.If a person should discover the true meaning
of it by himself or by the aid of another
then he ought to be silent or if he speaks he
ought to speak of it obscurely in an enigmatical
manner as I do myself leaving the rest to be
guessed by those who can understand me.
The Symbology and Esoterism of the Old
Testament being thus confessed by one of the greatest Jewish
Philosophers,it is only natural to find
Christian Fathers making the same confession with regard to the
New Testament and the Bible in general.Thus we find Clemens
Alexandrinus and Origen admitting it as
plainly as words can do it.Clemens,who had
been initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries says,that:
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The doctrines there taught contained in them the
end of all instructions as they were taken
from Moses and the prophets,
a slight perversion of facts pardonable in the
good Father.The words admit after all that the Mysteries
of the Jews were identical with those of the
Pagan Greeks,who took them from the Egyptians,who
borrowed them in their turn from the Chaldaeans,who
got them from the Aryans,the Atlanteans and so
on -far beyond the days of that Race.The
secret meaning of the Gospel is again openly confessed by
Clemens when he says that the Mysteries of the
Faith are not to be divulged to all.
But since this tradition is not published
alone for him who perceives the magnificence of the
word;it is requisite therefore to hide in a
Mystery the wisdom spoken which the Son of God
taught.[
Stromateis,xii.]
Origen on Genesis -(Page 47)Not less explicit is Origen with regard to the Bible and
its symbolical
fables.He exclaims:
If we hold to the letter and must understand
what stands written in the law after the manner of
the Jews and common people then I should blush
to confess aloud that it is God who has
given these laws;then the laws of men appear
more excellent and reasonable.[See
Homilies
7.quoted in the So rce of Measures,p.307.]
And well he might have blushed the sincere
and honest Father of early Christianity in its days of
relative purity.But the Christians of this
highly literary and civilised age of ours do not blush at all;they
swallow on the contrary the light before
the formation of the sun the Garden of Eden Jonah s whale
and all notwithstanding that the same Origen
asks in a very natural fit of indignation:
What man of sense will agree with the
statement that the first second and third days in which
the evening is named and the morning
were without sun moon and stars,and the first day
without a heaven?What man is found such an
idiot as to suppose that God planted trees in
Paradise in Eden like a husbandman etc?I
believe that every man must hold these things
for images,under which a hidden sense lies
concealed.[ Origen:Huet.Origeniana,167:
quoted from Dunlop s Sid .p.176 .]
Yet millions of such idiots are found in
our age of enlightenment and not only in the third century.When
Paul s unequivocal statement in Galatians,iv.22-25
that the story of Abraham and his two sons is all an
allegory. and that Agar is Mount Sinai is
added to this,then little blame indeed can be attached to
either Christian or Heathen who declines to
accept the Bible in any other light than that of a very
ingenious allegory.
Rabbi Simeon Ben-Jochai the compiler of the
Zohar never imparted the most important points of his
doctrine otherwise than orally and to a very
limited number of disciples.Therefore without the final
initiation into the Mercavah the study
of the Kabalah will be ever incomplete and the Mercavah can be
taught only in darkness,in a deserted place
and after many and terrific trials. Since the death of that
great Jewish Initiate this hidden doctrine has
remained for the outside world an inviolate secret.
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Among the venerable sect of the Tanaim or
rather the Tananim the wise men there were
those who taught the secrets practically and
initiated some disciples into the grand and final
Mystery.But the Mishna Hagiga,2 nd
Section say that the table of contents of the Mercaba
must only be delivered to wise old ones.The Gemara
is still more dogmatic.The more
important secrets of the Mysteries (Page 48)were not even revealed to all priests.Alone
the
initiates had them divulged. And so we find
the same great secresy prevalent in every ancient
religion.[ Isis Unveiled ii.350 .]
What says the Kabalah itself?Its great
Rabbis actually threaten him who accepts their sayings verbatim.
We read in the Zohar :
Woe to the man who sees in the Thorah i.e.,Law
only simple recitals and ordinary words!
Because if in truth it only contained these we
would even today be able to compose a Thorah
much more worthy of admiration.For if we find
only the simple words we would only have to
address ourselves to the legislators of the
earth.[ The materialistic
law-givers the critics and
Sadducees who have tried to tear to shreds the
doctrines and teachings of the great Asiatic
Masters past and present -no scholars in the
modern sense of the word -would do well to
ponder over these words.No doubt that
doctrines and secret teachings had they been
invented and written in Oxford and Cambridge
would be more brilliant outwardly.Would they
equally answer to universal truths and facts
is the next question however .] to
those in whom
we most frequently meet with the most
grandeur.It would be sufficient to imitate them and
make a Thorah after their words and
example.But it is not so;each word of the Thorah
contains an elevated meaning and a sublime
mystery....The recitals of the Thorah are the
vestments of the Thorah.Woe to him who takes
this garment for the Thorah itself ....The
simple notice only of the garments or recitals
of the Thorah they know of no other thing they
see not that which is concealed under the
vestment.The more instructed men do not pay
attention to the vestment but to the body
which it envelops.[ iii.fol.1526
quoted in Myer s
Qabbalah,p.102.]
Ammonius Saccas taught that the Secret
Doctrine of the Wisdom-Religion was found complete in the
Books of Thoth (Hermes),from which both Pythagoras and Plato derived their
knowledge and much of
their Philosophy;and these Books were declared
by him to be identical with the teachings of the Sages
of the remote East. Professor A.Wilder
remarks:
As the name Thoth means a college or assembly
it is not altogether improbable that the books
were so named as being the collected oracles
and doctrines of the sacerdotal fraternity of
Memphis.Rabbi Wise has suggested the same
hypothesis in relation to the divine utterances
recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures.[ New-Platonism and Alchemy.p.6
]
This is very probable.Only the divine
utterances have never been so far understood by the profane.
Philo Judaeus,a non-initiate attempted to give
their secret meaning and -failed.
But Books of Thoth or Bible,Vedas or
Kabalah,all enjoin the same secresy as to certain mysteries of
nature symbolised in them.Woe be to him who
divulges nlawf lly the words whispered into the ear of
Manushi by the First Initiator.
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The Dark Sayings of the Testaments (Page 49)Who that Initiator was is made plain in the
Book of
Enoch:
From them [the angels ] I heard all things,and
understood what I saw that which will not take
place in this generation [Race ] but in a
generation which is to succeed at a distant period [ the
6 th and 7 th Races ]
on account of the elect [the Initiates ].[ i.2.]
Again it is said with regard to the judgment
of those who when they have learned every secret of the
angels, reveal them that:
They have discovered secrets,and they are those
who have been judged;but not thou my
son [Noah ] ...thou art pure and good and free
from the reproach of discovering [revealing ]
secrets.[ IXIV.10.]
But there are those in our century who having
discovered secrets unaided and owing to their own
learning and acuteness only and who being
nevertheless,honest and straightforward men undismayed
by threats or warning since they have never
pledged themselves to secresy feel quite startled at such
revelations.One of these is the learned author
and discoverer of one Key to the Hebrew-Egyptian
Mystery. As he says,there are some strange
features connected to the promulgation and condition of
the Bible.
Those who compiled this book were men as we
are.They knew saw handled and realized
through the key measure [ The key is shown to be in the
source of measures originating the
British inch and the ancient cubit as the
author tries to prove.] the law of the living ever active
God .[
The word as a plural might have better solved the mystery.God is ever-present
;if he
were ever-active he could no longer be
an infinite God -nor ever-present in his limitation.]
They needed no faith that He was that He
worked planned and accomplished as a mighty
mechanic and architect.[The author is evidently a Mason of the way of thinking of General
Pike.So long as the American and English
Masons will reject the Creative Principle of the
Grand Orient of France they will remain in
the dark.]What was it then that
reserved to them
alone this knowledge while first as men of God
and second as Apostles of Jesus the Christ
they doled out a blinding ritual service and
an empty teaching of faith and no substance as
proof properly coming through the exercise of
just those senses which the Deity has given all
men as the essential means of obtaining any
right understanding?Mystery and parable,and
dark saying,and cloaking of the true meanings are the burden of
the Testaments,Old and
New.Take it that the narratives of the Bible
were purposed inventions to deceive the ignorant
masses,even while enforcing a most perfect
code of moral obligations:How is it possible to
justify so great frauds,as part of the Divine
economy when to that economy the attribute of
simple and perfect truthf lness must in
the nature of things,be (Page
50)ascribed?What
has,
or what by possibility ought mystery to have
with the promulgation of the truths of God?[
So rce of Measures,pp.308 309 ]
Nothing whatever most certainly if those
mysteries had been given from the first.And so it was with
regard to the first semi-divine pure and
spiritual Races of Humanity.They had the truths of God and
lived up to them and their ideals.They
preserved them so long as there was hardly any evil and hence
scarcely a possible abuse of that knowledge
and those truths.But evolution and the gradual fall into
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materiality is also one of the truths and
also one of the laws of God. And as mankind progressed and
became with every generation more of the earth
earthly the individuality of each temporary Ego began
to assert itself.It is personal selfishness
that develops and urges man on to abuse of his knowledge and
power.And selfishness is a human building
whose windows and doors are ever wide open for every kind
of iniquity to enter into man s soul.Few were
the men during the early adolescence of mankind and
fewer still are they now who feel disposed to
put into practice Pope s forcible declaration that he would
tear out his own heart if it had no better
disposition than to love only himself and laugh at all his
neighbours.Hence the necessity of gradually
taking away from man the divine knowledge and power
which became with every new human cycle more
dangerous as a double-edged weapon whose evil side
was ever threatening one s neighbour and
whose power for good was lavished freely only upon self.
Those few elect whose inner natures had
remained unaffected by their outward physical growth thus
became in time the sole guardians of the
mysteries revealed passing the knowledge to those most fit to
receive it and keeping it inaccessible to
others.Reject this explanation from the Secret Teachings,and
the very name of Religion will become
synonymous with deception and fraud.
Yet the masses could not be allowed to remain
without some sort of moral restraint.Man is ever craving
for a beyond and cannot live without an idea
of some kind as a beacon and a consolation.At the same
time no average man even in our age of
universal education could be entrusted with truths too
metaphysical too subtle for his mind to
comprehend without the danger of an imminent reaction setting
in and faith in Gods and Saints making room
for an unscientific blank Atheism.No real philanthropist
hence no Occultist would dream for a moment of
a mankind without one title of Religion.
The Greatest Crime Ever Perpetrated -(Page 51)Even the modern day Religion in Europe
confined to
Sundays,is better than none.But if as Bunyan
put it Religion is the best armour that a man can have
it certainly is the worst cloak ;and it is
that cloak and false pretence which the Occultists and the
Theosophists fight against.The true ideal
Deity the one living God in Nature can never suffer in man s
worship if that outward cloak woven by man s
fancy and thrown upon the Deity by the crafty hand of the
priest greedy of power and domination is drawn
aside.The hour has struck with the commencement of
this century to dethrone the highest God of
every nation in favour of One Universal Deity -The God of
Immutable Law not charity;the God of Just
Retribution not mercy which is merely an incentive to evil-
doing and to a repetition of it.The greatest
crime that was ever perpetrated upon mankind was
committed on that day when the first priest
invented the first prayer with a selfish object in view.A God
who may be propitiated by iniquitous prayers
to bless the arms of the worshipper and send defeat and
death to thousands of his enemies -his
brethren;a Deity that can be supposed not to turn a deaf ear to
chants of laudation mixed with entreaties for
a fair propitious wind for self and as naturally disastrous to
the selves of other navigators who come from
an opposite direction -it is this idea of God that has
fostered selfishness in man and deprived him
of his self-reliance.Prayer is an ennobling action when it
is an intense feeling an ardent desire rushing
forth from our very heart for the good of other people and
when entirely detached from any selfish
personal object;the craving for a beyond is natural and holy in
man but on the condition of sharing that bliss
with others.One can understand and well appreciate the
words of the heathen Socrates,who declared
in his profound though untaught wisdom that:
Our prayers should be for blessings on all in
general for the Gods know best what is good for
us.
But official prayer -in favour of a public
calamity or for the benefit of one individual irrespective of losses
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to thousands -is the most ignoble of
crimes,besides being an impertinent conceit and a superstition.
This is the direct inheritance by spoliation
from the Jehovites -the Jews of the Wilderness and of the
Golden Calf.
It is Jehovah as will be presently shown
that suggested the necessity of veiling and screening this
substitute for the unpronounceable name and
that led to all this mystery parables,dark sayings (Page
52)and cloaking. Moses had at any rate initiated
his seventy Elders into the hidden truths,and thus the
writers of the Old Testament stand to a
degree justified.Those of the New Testament have failed to do
even so much or so little.They have disfigured
the grand central figure of Christ by their dogmas,and
have led people ever since into millions of
errors and the darkest crimes,in His holy name.
It is evident that with the exception of Paul
and Clement of Alexandria who had been both initiated into
the Mysteries,none of the Fathers knew much of
the truth themselves.They were mostly uneducated
ignorant people;and if such as Augustine and
Lactantius,or again the Venerable Bede and others,were
so painfully ignorant until the name of
Galileo [ In his Pne
matologie,in Vol.iv.pp.105-112 the Marquis
de Mirville claims the knowledge of the
heliocentric system -earlier than Galileo -for Pope Urban VIII.
The author goes further.He tries to show that
famous Pope not as the persecutor but as one persecuted
by Galileo and calumniated by the Florentine
Astronomer into the bargain.If so so much the worse for
the Latin Church since her Popes,knowing of it
still preserved silence upon this most important fact
either to screen Joshua or their own
infallibility.One can understand well that the Bible having been so
exalted over all the other systems,and its
alleged monotheism depending upon the silence preserved
nothing remained of course but to keep quiet
over its symbolism thus allowing all its blunders to be
fathered on its God.] of the most vital truths taught in the Pagan temples -of the
rotundity of the earth for
example leaving the heliocentric system out of
question -how great must have been the ignorance of
the rest!Learning the accusations of dealing
with the Devil lavished on the Pagan Philosophers.
But truth must out.The Occultists,referred to
as the followers of the accursed Cain by such writers as
De Mirville are now in a position to reverse
the tables.That which was hitherto known only to the ancient
and modern Kabalists in Europe and Asia is now
published and shown as being mathematically true.
The author of the Key to the
Hebrew-Egyptian Mystery or the So rce of Meas res has now proved to
general satisfaction it is to be hoped that
the two great God-names,Jehovah and Elohim stood in one
meaning of their numerical values,for a
diameter and a circumference value respectively;in other
words,that they are numerical indices of
geometrical relations;and finally that Jehovah is Cain and vice
versa.
This view says the author
Helps also to take the horrid blemish off from
the name of Cain as a put-up-job to destroy his
character;for even without these showings,by
the very text he [Cain ] was Jehovah.So the
theological schools had better be alive to
making the amend honorable if such a thing is
possible to the good name and fame of the God
they worship
Asiatic Religions Proclaim Their Esoterism Openly -(Page 53)[ Op.cit .App.vii.p.296.The writer
feels happy to find this fact now
mathematically demonstrated.When it was stated in Isis Unveiled that
Jehovah and Saturn were one and the same with
Adam Kadmon Cain Adam and Eve Able Seth.etc.
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and that all were convertible symbols in the
Secret Doctrine (see Vol ii.pp.446 448 464 et seq .):that
they answered in short to secret numerals and
stood for more than one meaning in the Bible as in other
doctrines -the author s statements remained
unnoticed.Isis had failed to appear under a scientific form
and by giving it too much in fact gave very
little to satisfy the enquirer.But now if mathematics and
geometry besides the evidence of the Bible and
Kabalah are good for anything the public must find itself
satisfied.No fuller more scientifically given
proof can be found to show that Cain is the transformation of
an Elohim (the Sephira Binah)into Jah-Veh (or
God-Eve)androgyne and that Seth is the Jehovah male
than in the combined discoveries of Seyffarth
Knight etc.and finally in Mr.Ralston Skinner s most
erudite work.The further relations of these
personifications of the first human races,in their gradual
development will be given later on in the
text.]
This is not the first warning received by the
theological schools. which however no doubt knew it from
the beginning as did Clemens of Alexandria and
others.But if it be so they will profit still less by it as the
admission would involve more for them than the
mere sacredness and dignity of the established faith.
But it may also be asked why is it that the
Asiatic religions,which have nothing of this sort to conceal
and which proclaim quite openly the Esoterism
of their doctrines,follow the same course?It is simply
this:While the present and no doubt enforced
silence of the Church on this subject relates merely to the
external or theoretical form of the Bible -the
unveiling of the secrets of which would have involved no
practical harm had they been explained from
the first -it is an entirely different question with Eastern
Esoterism and Symbology.The grand central
figure of the Gospels would have remained as unaffected
by the symbolism of the Old Testament being
revealed as would that of the Founder of Buddhism had
the Brahmanical writings of the P ranas,that
preceded his birth all been shown to be allegorical.Jesus
of Nazareth moreover would have gained more than
he would have lost had he been presented as a
simple mortal left to be judged on his own
precepts and merits,instead of being fathered on Christendom
as a God whose many utterances and acts are
now so open to criticism.On the other hand the symbols
and allegorical sayings that veil the grand
truths of Nature in the Vedas,the Brahmanas,the Upanishads
and especially in the Lamaist Chagpa
Thogmed and other works,are quite of a different nature and far
more complicated in their secret meaning.While
the Biblical glyphs have nearly all a triune foundation
those of the Eastern books are worked on the
septenary principle.They are (Page 54)as closely related to
the mysteries of Physics and Physiology as to
Psychism and the transcendental nature of cosmic
elements and Theogony;unriddled they would
prove more than injurious to the uninitiated;delivered into
the hands of the present generations in their
actual state of physical and intellectual development in the
absence of spirituality and even of practical
morality they would become absolutely disastrous.
Nevertheless the secret teachings of the
sanctuaries have not remained without witness;they have been
made immortal in various ways.They have burst
upon the world in hundreds of volumes full of the quaint
head-breaking phraseology of the
Alchemist;they have flashed like irrepressible cataracts of Occult
mystic lore from the pens of poets and
bards.Genius alone had certain privileges in those dark ages
when no dreamer could offer the world even a
fiction without suiting his heaven and his earth to biblical
text.To genius alone it was permitted in those
centuries of mental blindness,when the fear of the Holy
Office threw a thick veil over every cosmic
and psychic truth to reveal unimpeded some of the grandest
truths of Initiation.Whence did Ariosto in his
Orlando F rioso,obtain his conception of that valley of the
Moon where after our death we can find the
ideas and images of all that exists on earth?How came
Dante to imagine the many descriptions given
in his Inferno -a new Johannine Apolcalypse a true Occult
Revelation in verse -his visit and communion
with the Souls of the Seven Spheres?In poetry and satire
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every Occult truth has been welcomed -none has
been recognised as serious.The Comte de Gabalis is
better known and appreciated than Porphyry and
Iamblichus.Plato s mysterious Atlantis is proclaimed a
fiction while Noah s Deluge is to this day on
the brain of certain Archaeologists who scoff at the
archetypal world of Marcel Palingenius Zodiac
and would resent as a personal injury being asked to
discuss the four worlds of Mercury
Trismegistus -the Archetypal the Spiritual the Astral and the
Elementary with three others behind the opened
scene.Evidently civilised society is still but half
prepared for the revelation.Hence the
Initiates will never give out the whole secret until the bulk of
mankind has changed its actual nature and is
better prepared for truth.Clemens Alexandrinus was
positively right in saying It is requisite to
hide in a mystery the wisdom spoken -which the Sons of
God teach.
That Wisdom as will be seen relates to all the
primeval truths delivered to the first Races,the Mind-
born by the Builders of the Universe
themselves.
The Wisdom-Religion -(Page 55)There was in every ancient country having claims to
civilisation an
Esoteric Doctrine a system which was
designated WISDOM [ The writings
extant in olden times often
personified Wisdom as an emanation and
associate of the Creator.Thus we have the Hindu Buddha the
Babylonian Nebo the Thoth of Memphis,the
Hermes of Greece:also the female divinities,Neitha Metis,
Athena and the Gnostic potency Achamoth or
Sophia.The Samaritan Pentate ch denominated the
Book of Genesis,Akamouth or Wisdom and two remnants of old treatises,the Wisdom
of Solomon and
the Wisdom of Jesus,relate to the same
matters.The Book of Mashalim -the Disco rses of Proverbs of
Solomon -thus personifies Wisdom as the
auxiliary of the Creator.In the Secret Wisdom of the East that
auxiliary is found collectively in the first
emanations of Primeval Light the Seven Dhyani-Chohans,who
have been shown to be identical with the
Seven Spirits of the Presence of the Roman Catholics.] and
those who were devoted to its prosecution were
first denominated sages,or wise men...Pythagoras
termed this system ēćķłóéņ ōłķ äķōłķ the
Gnosis or Knowledge of things that are.Under the noble
designation of WISDOM the ancient teachers,the
sages of India the magians of Persia and Babylon
the seers and prophets of Israel the
hierophants of Egypt and Arabia and the philosophers of Greece
and the West included all knowledge which they
considered as essentially divine;classifying a part as
esoteric and the remainder as exterior.The
Rabbis called the exterior and secular series the Mercavah
as being the body or vehicle which contained
the higher knowledge.[New
Platonism and Alchemy,p.6 .]
Later on we shall speak of the law of silence
imposed on eastern chelās.
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SECTION V
Some Reasons for Secrecy
(Page 56)The fact that the Occult Sciences have been
withheld from the world at large and denied by the
Initiates to Humanity has often been made
matter of complaint.It has been alleged that the Guardians of
the Secret Lore were selfish in withholding
the treasures of Archaic Wisdom;that it was positively
criminal to keep back such knowledge -if any
-from the men of Science etc.
Yet there must have been some very good
reasons for it since from the very dawn of History such has
been the policy of every Hierophant and
Master.Pythagoras,the first Adept and real Scientist in pre-
Christian Europe is accused of having taught
in public the immobility of the earth and the rotary motion
of the stars around it while he was declaring
to his privileged Adepts his belief in the motion of the Earth
as a planet and in the heliocentric system.The
reasons for such secresy however are many and were
never made a mystery of.The chief cause as
given in Isis Unveiled .It may now be repeated.
From the very day when the first mystic,taught
by the first Instructor of the divine Dynasties
of the early races,was taught the means of communication
between this world and the worlds
of the invisible host between the sphere of
matter and that of pure spirit he concluded that to
abandon this mysterious science to the
desecration willing or unwilling of the profane rabble -
was to lose it.An abuse of it might lead
mankind to speedy destruction;it was like surrounding
a group of children with explosive
substances,and furnishing them with matches.The first
divine Instructor initiated but a select few
and these kept silence with the multitudes.They
recognised their God and each Adept
felt the great SELF within
himself.The Atman the
Self the mighty Lord and Protector once that
man knew him as the I am the Ego Sum the
Asmi showed his full power to him who could
recognise the still small voice. From the days
of the primitive man described by the first
Vedic poet down to our modern age there has not
been a philosopher worthy of that name who did
not carry in the silent sanctuary of his heart
the grand and mysterious truth.If initiated he
learnt it as a sacred science;if otherwise then
like Socrates,repeating to himself as well as
his fellow-men the noble injunction O man
know thyself he succeeded in recognising his
God within himself.
The Key of Practical Theurgy -
(Page 57)Ye are Gods,the king-psalmist tells us,and
we find Jesus reminding the scribes
that this expression was addressed to other
mortal men claiming for themselves the same
privilege without any blasphemy.And as a
faithful echo Paul while asserting that we are all
the temple of the living God cautiously
remarked elsewhere that after all these things are
only for the wise and it is unlawful to
speak of them.[ ii.317 318.Many
verbal alterations
from the original text of Isis Unveiled were
made by H.P.B.in her quotations therefrom and
these are followed throughout.]
Some of the reasons for this secresy may be
given.
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The fundamental law and master-key of
practical Theurgy in its chief applications to the serious study of
cosmic and sidereal of psychic and spiritual
mysteries was,and still is,that which was called by the
Greek Neoplatonist Theophania. In its generally-accepted
meaning this is communication between the
Gods (or God)and those initiated mortals who
are spiritually fit to enjoy such an intercourse.
Esoterically however it signifies more than
this.For it is not only the presence of a God but an actual -
howbeit temporary -incarnation the blending so
to say of the personal Deity the Higher Self with man -
its representative or agent on earth.As a
general law the Highest God the Over-soul of the human being
(Atma-Buddhi),only overshadows the individual
during his life for purposes of instruction and revelation;
or as Roman Catholics -who erroneously call
that Over-soul the Guardian Angel -would say It stands
outside and watches. But in the case of the
theophanic mystery it incarnates itself in the Theurgist for
purposes of revelation.When the incarnation is
temporary during those mysterious trances or ecstasy
which Plotinus defined as
The liberation of the mind from its finite
consciousness,becoming one and identified with the
Infinite
this sublime condition is very short.The human
soul being the offspring or emanation of its God the
Father and the Son become one the divine
fountain flowing like a stream into its human bed.
[ Proclus claims to have experienced this sublime ecstasy six
times during his mystic life:Porphyry
asserts that Appollonius of Tyana was thus
united four times to his deity -a statement which we believe
to be a mistake since Apollonius was a
Nirmanakaya (divine incarnation -not Avatara)-and he
(Porphyry)only once when over sixty years of
age.Theophany (or the actual appearance of a God to
man),Theopathy (or assimilation of divine
nature ),and Theopneusty (inspiration or rather the
mysterious power to hear orally the teachings
of a God)have never been rightly understood.] In
exceptional cases,however the mystery becomes
complete;the (Page 58)Word is made Flesh
in real
fact the individual becoming divine in the
full sense of the term since his personal God has made of him
his permanent life-long tabernacle -the
temple of God as Paul says.
Now that which is meant here by the personal
God of Man is,of course not his seventh Principle alone
as per se and in essence that is merely
a bean of the infinite Ocean of Light.In conjunction with our
Divine Soul the Buddhi it cannot be called a
Duad as it otherwise might since though formed from
Atma and Buddhi (the two higher
Principles),the former is no entity but an emanation from the Absolute
and indivisible in reality from it.The personal
God is not the Monad but indeed the prototype of the latter
what for want of a better term we call the manifested
Karanatma [ Karana Sharira
is the causal body
and is sometimes said to be the personal
God. And so it is,in one sense.] (Causal
Soul),one of the
seven and chief reservoirs of the human
Monads or Egos.The latter are gradually formed and
strengthened during their incarnation-cycle by
constant additions of individuality from the personalities in
which incarnates that androgynous,half-spiritual
half-terrestrial principle partaking of both heaven and
earth called by the Vedantins Jiva and
Vijnanamaya Kosha and by the Occultists the Manas (mind);
that in short which uniting itself partially
with the Monad incarnates in each new birth.In perfect unity
with its (seventh)Principle the Spirit
unalloyed it is the divine Higher Self as every student of
Theosophy knows.After every new incarnation
Buddhi-Manas culls,so to say the aroma of the flower
called personality the purely earthly residue
of which its dregs -is left to fade out as a shadow.This is
the most difficult -because so
transcendentally metaphysical -portion of the doctrine.
As is repeated many a time in this and other
works,it is not the Philosophers,Sages,and Adepts of
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antiquity who can ever be charged with
idolatry.It is they in fact who recognising divine unity were the
only ones,owing to their initiation into the
mysteries of Esotericism to understand correctly the
õšóķóéį(hyponea),or under-meaning of the
anthropomorphism of the so-called Angels,Gods,and
Spiritual Beings of every kind.Each
worshipping the one Divine Essence that pervades the whole world
of Nature reverenced but never worshipped or
idolised any of these Gods, whether high or low -not
even his own personal Deity of which he was a
Ray and to whom he appealed.[ This
would be in one
sense Self-worship.]
The Ladder of Being -
(Page 59)The holy Triad emanates from the One and is
the Tetraktys;the gods,daimons,and
souls are an emanation of the Triad.Heroes and
men repeat the hierarchy in themselves.
Thus said Metrodorus of Chios,the Pythagorean
the latter part of the sentence meaning that man has
within himself the seven pale reflections of
the seven divine Hierarchies;his Higher Self is,therefore in
itself but the refracted beam of the direct
Ray.He who regards the latter as an Entity in the usual sense
of the term is one of the infidels and
atheists, spoken of by Epicurus,for he fastens on that God the
opinions of the multitude -an
anthropomorphism of the grossest kind.[The
Gods exist said Epicurus,
but they are not what the hoi polloi (the
multitude)suppose them to be.He is not an infidel or atheist
who denies the existence of Gods whom the
multitude worship but he is such who fastens on the Gods
the opinions of the multitude. ] The Adept and the Occultist know
that what are styled the Gods are only
the first principles (Aristotle).None the
less they are intelligent conscious,and living Principles, the
Primary Seven Lights manifested from
Light nmanifested -which to us is Darkness.They are the Seven
-exoterically four -Kumaras or Mind-Born Sons
of Brahma.And it is they again the Dhyan Chohans,
who are the prototypes in the aeonic eternity
of lower Gods and hierarchies of divine Beings,at the
lowest end of which ladder of being are we
-men.
Thus perchance Polytheism when philosophically
understood may be a degree higher than even the
Monotheism of the Protestant say who limits
and conditions the Deity in whom he persists in seeing the
Infinite but whose supposed actions make of
that Absolute and Infinite the most absurd paradox in
Philosophy.From this standpoint Roman
Catholicism itself is immeasurably higher and more logical than
Protestantism though the Roman Church has been
pleased to adopt the exotericism of the heathen
multitude and to reject the Philosophy of
pure Esotericism.
Thus every mortal has his immortal counterpart
or rather his Archetype in heaven.This means that the
former is indissolubly united to the latter in
each of his incarnations,and for the duration of the cycle of
births;only it is by the spiritual and
intellectual Principle in him entirely distinct from the lower self never
through the earthly personality.Some of these
are even liable to break the union altogether in case of
absence in the moral individual of binding viz.,of
spiritual ties.Truly as Paracelsus puts it in his quaint
tortured (Page 60)phraseology man with his three (compound)Spirits is
suspended like a foetus by all
three to the matrix of the Macrocosm;the
thread which holds him united being the Thread-Soul
Sutratma and Taijasa (the Shining )of the
Vedantins.And it is through this spiritual and intellectual
Principle in man though Taijasa -the Shining
because it has the luminous internal organ as its
associate -that man is thus united to his
heavenly prototype never through his lower inner self or Astral
Body for which there remains in most cases
nothing but to fade out.
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Occultism or Theurgy teaches the means of
producing such union.But it is the actions of man -his
personal merit alone -that can produce it on
earth or determine its duration.This lasts from a few
seconds -a flash -to several hours,during
which time the Theurgist or Theophanist is that
overshadowing God himself;hence he becomes
endowed for the time being with relative omniscience
and omnipotence.With such perfect
(divine)Adepts as Buddha [ Esoteric,as
exoteric,Buddhism rejects
the theory that Gautama was an incarnation or
Avatara of Vishnu but teaches the doctrine as herein
explained.Every man has in him the
materials,if not the conditions,for theophanic intercourse and
Theopneusty the inspiring God being however
in every case his own Higher Self or divine prototype .]
and others such a hypostatical state of
avataric condition may last during the whole life;whereas in the
case of full Initiates,who have not yet
reached the perfect state of Jivanmukta [
One entirely and
absolutely purified and having nothing in
common with earth except his body.] Theopneusty
when in full
sway results for the high Adept in a full
recollection of everything seen heard or sensed.
Taijasa has fruition of the supersensible .[ Mand kyopanishad,4.]
For one less perfect it will end only in a
partial indistinct remembrance;while the beginner has to face in
the first period of his psychic experiences a
mere confusion followed by a rapid and finally complete
oblivion of the mysteries seen during this
super-hypnotic condition.The degree of recollection when one
returns to his waking state and physical
senses,depends on his spiritual and psychic purification the
greatest enemy of spiritual memory being man
s physical brain the organ of his sensuous nature.
The above states are described for a clearer
comprehension of terms used in this work.There are so
many and such various conditions and states
that even a Seer is liable to confound one with the other.
Three Ways Open to the Adept -(Page 61)To repeat:the Greek,rarely-used word
Theophania meant
more with the Neoplatonists than it does with
the modern maker of dictionaries.The compound word
Theophania (from theos, God and
phainomai to appear), does not simply mean a manifestation
of God to man by act al appearance
-an absurdity by the way -but the actual presence of a God in
man a divine incarnation.When Simon the
Magician claimed to be God the Father what he wanted to
convey was just that which has been explained
namely that he was a divine incarnation of his own
Father whether we see in the latter an Angel a
God or a Spirit;therefore he was called that power of
God which is called great [ Acts viii 10 (Revised
Version).] or that power which
causes the Divine Self
to enshrine itself in its lower self -man.
This is one of the several mysteries of being
and incarnation.Another is that when an Adept reaches
during his lifetime that state of holiness and
purity that makes him equal to the Angels, then at death his
apparitional or astral body becomes as solid
and tangible as was the late body and is transformed into
the real man.[ See the explanations given on the subject in The Elixir of
Life by G.M.(From a Chela s
Diary),Five Years of Theosophy.] The old physical body falling off
like the cast-off serpent s skin the
body of the new man remains either visible
or at the option of the Adept disappears from view
surrounded as it is by the Akashic shell that
screens it.In the latter case there are three ways open to the
Adept:
(1)He may remain in the earth s sphere (Vayu
or Kama-loka),in that ethereal locality concealed from
human sight save during flashes of
clairvoyance.In this case his astral body owing to its great purity and
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spirituality having lost the conditions
required for Akashic light (the nether or terrestrial ether)to absorb
its semi-material particles,the Adept will
have to remain in the company of disintegrating shells -doing
no good or useful work.This,of course cannot
be.
(2)He can by a supreme effort of will merge
entirely into and get united with his Monad.By doing so
however we would (a)deprive his Higher Self of
posthumous Samadhi -a bliss which is not real Nirvana
-the astral however pure being too earthly for
such state;and (b)he would thereby open himself to
Karmic law;the action being in fact the outcome
of personal selfishness -of reaping the fruits produced
by and for oneself -alone.
(3)The Adept has the option of renouncing
conscious Nirvana and (Page
62)rest
to work on earth for the
good of mankind.This he can do in a two-fold
way:either as above said by consolidating his astral body
into physical appearance he can reassume the
self-same personality;or he can avail himself of an
entirely new physical body whether that of a
newly-born infant or -as Shānkarācharya is reported to
have done with the body of a dead Rajah -by
entering a deserted sheath and living in it as long as he
chooses.This is what is called continuous
existence. The Section entitled The Mystery about Buddha
will throw additional light on this theory to
the profane incomprehensible or to the generality simply
absurd .Such
is the doctrine taught everyone having the choice of either fathoming it still
deeper or of
leaving it unnoticed.
The above is simply a small portion of what
might have been given in Isis Unveiled had the time come
then as it has now.One cannot study and profit
by Occult Science unless one gives himself up to it -
heart soul and body.Some of its truths are too
awful too dangerous,for the average mind.None can
toy and play with such terrible weapons with
impunity.Therefore it is,as St.Paul has it unlawful to
speak of them.Let us accept the reminder and
talk only of that which is lawful.
The quotation on p.56 relates,moreover only to
psychic or spiritual Magic.The practical teachings of
Occult Science are entirely different and few
are the strong minds fitted for them.As to ecstasy and
such like kinds of self-illumination this may
be obtained by oneself and without any teacher or initiation
for ecstasy is reached by an inward command
and control of Self over the physical Ego;as to obtaining
mastery over the forces of Nature this
requires a long training or the capacity of one born a natural
Magician. Meanwhile those who possess neither
of the requisite qualifications are strongly advised to
limit themselves to purely spiritual
development.But even this is difficult as the first necessary
qualification is an unshakable belief in one
s own powers and the Deity within oneself;otherwise a man
would simply develop into an irresponsible
medium.Throughout the whole mystic literature of the ancient
world we detect the same idea of spiritual
Esoterism that the personal God exists within nowhere
outside the worshipper.That personal Deity is
no vain breath or a fiction but an immortal Entity the
Initiator of the Initiates,now that the
heavenly or Celestial Initiators of primitive humanity -the Shishta of
the preceding cycles -are no more among
us.Like an undercurrent rapid and clear it runs without
mixing its crystalline purity with the muddy
troubled waters of dogmatism an enforced anthropomorphic
Deity and religious intolerance.
Man is God -(Page 63)We find this idea in the tortured and barbarous phraseology
of the Codex
Nazarae s,and in the superb Neoplatonic language of the Fourth Gospel
of the later Religion in the
oldest Veda and in the Avesta in
the Abhidharma,in Kapila s Sankhya,and the Bhagavad Gitā.We
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cannot attain Adeptship and Nirvana Bliss and
the Kingdom of Heaven unless we link ourselves
indissolubly with our Rex Lux the Lord of
Splendour and of Light our immortal God within us.Aham eva
param Brahman - I am verily the Supreme Brahman -has ever been the one
living truth in the heart
and mind of the Adepts,and it is this which
helps the Mystic to become one.One must first of all
recognize one s own immortal Principle and
then only can one conquer or take the Kingdom of Heaven
by violence.Only this has to be achieved by
the higher -not the middle nor the third -man the last one
being of dust.Nor can the second man the Son
-on this plane as his Father is the Son on a still
higher plane -do anything without the
assistance of the first the Father.But to succeed one has to
identify oneself with one s divine Parent.
The first man is of the earth earthy;the
second [inner our higher ] man is the Lord from
heaven....Behold I show you a mystery.[ I.Cor.,xv.47.50 .]
Thus says Paul mentioning but the dual and
trinitarian man for the better comprehension of the non-
initiated.But this is not all for the Dephic
injunction has to be fulfilled:man must know himself in order to
become a perfect Adept.How few can acquire the
knowledge however not merely in its inner mystical
but even in its literal sense for there are
two meanings in this command of the Oracle.This is the
doctrine of Buddha and the Bodhisattvas pure
and simple.
Such is also the mystical sense of what was
said to Paul to the Corinthians about their being the temple
of God for this meant Esoterically:
Ye are the temple of [the or your ] God and
the Spirit of [a or your ] God dwelleth in you.[ I
Cor .iii.16.Has
the reader ever meditated upon the suggestive words,often pronounced by
Jesus and his Apostles?Be ye therefore
perfect as your Father...is perfect (Matt .v.48),
says the Great Master.The words are as
perfect as your Father which is in heaven being
interpreted as meaning God.Now the utter
absurdity of any man becoming as perfect as the
infinite all-perfect omniscient and
omnipresent Deity is too apparent.If you accept it in such
a sense Jesus is made to utter the greatest
fallacy.What was Esoterically meant is,Your
Father who is above the material and astral
man the highest Principle (save the Monad)
within man his own personal God or the God of
his own personality of whom he is the
prison and the temple. If thou wilt be
perfect (i.e .an Adept and Initiate)go and sell that
thou hast (Matt .xix.21).Every man who
desired to become a neophyte a chela then as
now had to take the vow of poverty.The
Perfect was the name given to the Initiates of every
denomination.Plato calls them by that term.The
Essenes had their Perfect.and Paul plainly
states that they the Initiates,can only speak
before other Adepts.We speak wisdom among
them [only ] that are perfect (I.Cor .ii.6).]
(Page 64)This carries precisely the same meaning as the
I am verily Brahman of the Vedantin.Nor is the
latter assertion more blasphemous than the
Pauline -if there were any blasphemy in either which is
denied.Only the Vedantin who never refers to
his body as being himself or even a part of himself or
aught else but an illusory form for others to
see him in constructs his assertion more openly and
sincerely than was done by Paul.
The Delphic command Know thyself was
perfectly comprehensible to every nation of old.So it is now
save to the Christians,since with the
exception of the Mussulmans,it is part and parcel of every Eastern
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religion including the Kabalistically
instructed Jews.To understand its full meaning however
necessitates,first of all belief in
Reincarnation and all its mysteries;not as laid down in the doctrine of
the French Reincarnationists of the Allan
Kardec school but as they are expounded and taught by
Esoteric Philosophy.Man must in short know who
he was,before he arrives at knowing what he is.And
how many are there among Europeans who are
capable of developing within themselves an absolute
belief in their past and future
reincarnations,in general even as a law let alone mystic knowledge of
one s immediately precedent life?Early
education tradition and training of thought everything is
opposing itself during their whole lives to
such a belief.Cultured people have been brought up in that
most pernicious idea that the wide difference
found between the units of one and the same mankind or
even race is the result of chance;that the
gulf between man and man in their respective social positions,
birth intellect physical and mental capacities
-every one of which qualifications has a direct influence on
every human life -that all this is simply due
to blind hazard only the most pious among them finding
equivocal consolation in the idea that it is
the will of God. They have never analysed never stopped to
think of the depth of the opprobrium that is
thrown upon their God once the grand and most equitable
law of the manifold re-births of man upon this
earth is foolishly rejected.Men and women anxious to be
regarded as Christians,often truly and
sincerely trying to lead a Christ-like life have never paused to
reflect over the words of their own Bible.
Jesus Taught Reincarnation -(Page 65)Art thou Elias? the Jewish priests and Levites
asked the
Baptist.[ John,i.21.] Their
Saviour taught His disciples this grand truth of the Esoteric Philosophy but
verily if His Apostles comprehended it no one
else seems to have realised its true meaning.No;not
even Nicodemus,who to the assertion:Except a
man be born again [John,iii
Born from above viz.,
from his Monad or divine EGO
the seventh Principle which remains till the
end of the Kalpa the nucleus
of and at the same time the overshadowing
Principle as the Karanatma (Causal Soul)of the personality
in every rebirth.In this sense the sentence
born anew means descends from above the last two
words having no reference to heaven or space
neither of which can be limited or located since one is a
state and the other infinite hence having no
cardinal points.(See New Testament,Revised Version
loc.cit.)] he cannot see the Kingdom of God
answers:How can a man be born when he is old? and is
forthwith reproved by the remark:Art thou a
Master in Israel and knowest not these things?-as no one
had a right to call himself a Master and
Teacher without having been initiated into the mysteries (a)of a
spiritual re-birth through water fire and
spirit and (b)of the re-birth from flesh.[ This can have no
reference to Christian Baptism,since there was
none in the days of Nicodemus and he could not
therefore know anything of it even though a
Master.] Then again what can
be a clearer expression as
to the doctrine of manifold re-births than the
answer given by Jesus to the Sadducees,who deny that
there is any resurrection i.e.,any
re-birth since the dogma of the resurrection in the flesh is now
regarded as an absurdity even by the
intelligent clergy:
They who shall be accounted worthy to obtain
that world [Nirvana ] [ This
word translated in
the New Testament world to suit the
official interpretation means rather an age (as shown
in the Revised Version )or one of the
periods during the Manvantara a Kalpa or Aeon.
Esoterically the sentence would read:He who
shall reach through a series of births and
Karmic law the state in which Humanity shall
find itself after the Seventh Round and the
Seventh Race when comes Nirvana Moksha and
when man becomes equal unto the
Angels of Dhyan Chohans,is a son of the
resurrection and can die no more :then there will
be no marriage as there will be no difference
of sexes -a result of our present materiality and
animalism .]....neither marry ...Neither can they die any more
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which shows that they had already died and
more than once.And again:
Now that the dead are raised even Moses shewed
...He calleth the Lord the God of
Abraham and the God of Isaac,and the God of
Jacob for he is not a God of the dead but of
the living.[ L ke,xx.27-38.]
The sentence now that the dead are raised
evidently applied to the then actual re-births of the Jacobs
and the Isaacs,and not to their (Page 66)future resurrection;for in such case they
would have been still
dead in the interim and could not be referred
to as the living.
But in the most suggestive of Christ s
parables and dark sayings is found in the explanation given by
him to his Apostles about the blind man:
Master who did sin this man or his
parents,that he was born blind?Jesus answered Neither
hath this [blind physical ] man sinned nor his
parents;but that the works of [his ] God should be
made manifest in him.[ John ix.2.3.]
Man is the tabernacle the building only
of his God;and of course it is not the temple but its inmate -
the vehicle of God [The conscious Ego of Fifth Principle Manas,the vehicle of the
divine Monad or
God .]
that had sinned in a previous incarnation and had thus brought the Karma
of cecity upon the new
building.Thus Jesus spoke truly;but to this
day his followers have refused to understand the words of
wisdom spoken.The Saviour is shown by his
followers as though he were paving by his words and
explanation the way to a preconceived
programme that had to lead to an intended miracle.Verily the
Grand Martyr has remained thenceforward and
for eighteen centuries,the Victim crucified daily far more
cruelly by his clerical disciples and lay
followers than he ever could have been by his allegorical enemies.
For such is the true sense of the words that
the works of God should be made manifest in him in the
light of theological interpretation and a very
undignified one it is,if the Esoteric explanation is rejected.
Doubtless the above will be regarded as fresh
blasphemy.Nevertheless there are a number of Christians
whom we know -whose hearts go out as strongly
to their ideal of Jesus,as their souls are repelled from
the theological picture of the official Saviour
-who will reflect over our explanation and find in it no
offence but perchance a relief.
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SECTION VI
The Dangers of Practical Magic
(Page 67)MAGIC is a dual power:nothing is easier than
to turn it into Sorcery;an evil tho ght suffices for
it.Therefore
while theoretical Occultism is harmless,and may do good practical Magic,or the
fruits of
the Tree of Life and Knowledge [ Some Symbologists relying on the
correspondence of numbers and the
symbols of certain things and personages,refer
these secrets to the mystery of generation.But it is
more than this.The glyph of the Tree of
Knowledge of Good and Evil has no doubt a phallic and sexual
element in it as has the Woman and the
Serpent ;but it has also a psychical and spiritual significance.
Symbols are meant to yield more than one
meaning.] or otherwise the
Science of Good and Evil is
fraught with dangers and perils.For the study
of theoretical Occultism there are no doubt a number of
works that may be read with profit besides
such books as the Finer Forces of Nat re,etc.the Zohar,
Sepher Jetzirah,The Book of Enoch,Franck s Kabalah,and many Hermetic treatises.These
are scarce
in European languages,but works in Latin by
the mediaeval Philosophers,generally known as
Alchemists and Rosicrucians,are plentiful.But
even the perusal of these may prove dangerous for the
unguided student.If approached without the
right key to them and if the student is unfit owing to mental
incapacity for Magic,and is thus unable to
discern the Right from the Left Path let him take our advice
and leave this study alone;he will only bring
on himself and on his family unexpected woes and sorrows,
never suspecting whence they come nor what are
the powers awakened by his mind being bent on
them.Works for advanced students are many but
these can be placed at the disposal of only sworn or
pledged chelas (disciples),those who have
pronounced the ever-binding oath and who are therefore
helped and protected.For all other
purposes,well-intentioned as such works may (Page 68)be they can
only mislead the unwary and guide them
imperceptibly to Black Magic or Sorcery -if to nothing worse.
The mystic characters,alphabets and numerals
found in the divisions and sub-divisions of the Great
Kabalah are
perhaps,the most dangerous portions in it and especially the numerals.We say
dangerous,because they are the most prompt to
produce effects and results and this with or without the
experimenter s will even without his
knowledge.Some students are apt to doubt this statement simply
because after manipulating these numerals they
have failed to notice any dire physical manifestation or
result.Such results would be found the least
dangerous:it is the moral causes produced and the various
events developed and brought to an unforeseen
crisis,that would testify to the truth of what is now stated
had the lay students only the power of
discernment.
The point of departure of that special branch
of the Occult teaching known as the Science of
Correspondences,numerical or literal or
alphabetical has for its epigraph with the Jewish and
Christian Kabalists,the two mis-interpreted
verses which say that God ordered all things in
number measure and weight;[ Wisdom,xi.21.Douay version ]
and:
He created her in the Holy Ghost and saw her
and numbered her and measured her.[
Ecclesiasticus,i.9.Douay version.]
But the Eastern Occultists have another
epigraph:Absol te Unity,x,within number and plurality. Both
the Western and the Eastern students of the
Hidden Wisdom hold to this axiomatic truth.Only the latter
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are perhaps more sincere in their
confessions.Instead of putting a mask on their Science they show her
face openly even if they do veil carefully her
heart and soul before the inappreciative public and the
profane who are ever ready to abuse the most
sacred truths for their own selfish ends.But Unity is the
real basis of the Occult Sciences -physical
and metaphysical.This is shown even by Eliphas Levi the
learned Western Kabalist inclined as he is to
be rather jesuitical.He says:
Absolute Unity is the supreme and final reason
of things.Therefore that reason can be neither
one person nor three persons;it is Reason and
preeminently Reason (raison par excellence ).
[ Dogme et Rit el de la Ha te Magie,i,361 .]
Names are Symbols -(Page 69)The meaning of this Unity in Plurality in God or Nature
can be solved
only by the means of transcendental methods,by
numerals,as by the correspondences between soul
and the Soul.Names,in the Kabalah,as in
the Bible such as Jehovah Adam Kadmon Eve Cain Abel
Enoch are all of them more intimately
connected by geometrical and astronomical relations,with
Physiology (or Phallicism)than with Theology
or Religion.Little as people are as yet prepared to admit it
this will be shown to be a fact.If all those
names are symbols for things hidden as well as for those
manifested in the Bible as in the Vedas,their
respective mysteries differ greatly.Plato s motto God
geometrises was accepted by both Aryans and
Jews;but while the former applied their Science of
Correspondences to veil the most spiritual and
sublime truths of Nature the latter used their acumen to
conceal only one -to them the most divine -of
the mysteries of Evolution namely that of birth and
generation and then they deified the organs of
the latter.
Apart from this,every cosmogony from the
earliest to the latest is based upon interlinked with and most
closely related to numerals and geometric
figures.Questioned by an Initiate these figures and numbers
will yield numerical values based on the
integral values of the Circle -the secret habitat of the ever-
invisible Deity as the Alchemists have it
-as they will yield every other Occult particular connected with
such mysteries,whether anthropographical
anthroplogical cosmic,or psychical.In reuniting Ideas to
Numbers,we can operate upon Ideas in the same
way as upon Numbers,and arrive at the Mathematics
of Truth writes an Occultist who shows his
great wisdom in desiring to remain unknown.
Any Kabalist well acquainted with the
Pythagorean system of numerals and geometry can
demonstrate that the metaphysical views of
Plato were based upon the strictest mathematical
principles.True mathematics,says the Magicon
is something with which all higher sciences
are connected;common mathematics is but a
deceitful phantasmagoria whose much praised
infallibility only arises from this -that
materials,conditions and references are made to
foundation.
The cosmological theory of numerals which
Pythagoras learned in India and from the
Egyptian Hierophants is alone able to
reconcile the two units,matter and spirit and cause
each to demonstrate the other
mathematically.The sacred numbers of the universe in their
esoteric combination can alone solve the great
problem and explain the theory of radiation
and the cycle of the emanations.The lower
orders,before they develop into higher ones,must
emanate from the (Page 70)higher spiritual ones,and when arrived at the
turning-point be
reabsorbed into the infinite.[Isis Unveiled,i 6,7.]
It is upon these true Mathematics that the
knowledge of the Kosmos and of all mysteries rests,and to
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one acquainted with them it is the easiest
thing possible to prove that both Vaidic and Biblical structures
are based upon God-in-Nature and Nature-in-God
as the radical law.Therefore this law -as
everything else immutable and fixed in
eternity -could find a correct expression only in those purest
transcendental Mathematics referred to by
Plato especially in Geometry as transcendentally applied.
Revealed to men -we fear not and will not retract the expression -in this
geometrical and symbolical
garb Truth has grown and developed into
additional symbology invented by man for the wants and
better comprehension of the masses of mankind
that came too late in their cyclic development and
evolution to have shared in the primitive
knowledge and would never have grasped it otherwise.If later
on the clergy -crafty and ambitious of power
in every age -anthropomorphised and degraded abstract
ideals,as well as the real and divine Beings
who do exist in Nature and are the Guardians and
Protectors of our manvantaric world and period
the fault and guilt rests with those would-be leaders,not
with the masses.
But the day has come when the gross
conceptions of our forefathers during the Middle Ages can no
longer satisfy the thoughtful religionist.The
mediaeval Alchemist and Mystic are now transformed into the
sceptical Chemist and Physicist;and most of
them are found to have turned away from truth on account
of the purely anthropomorphic ideas,the gross
Materialism of the forms in which it is presented to them.
Therefore future generations have either to be
gradually initiated into the truths underlying Exoteric
Religions,including their own or to be left to
break the feet of clay of the last of the gilded idols.No
educated man or woman would turn away from any
of the now called superstitions, which they believe
to be based on nursery tales and ignorance if
they could only see the basis of fact that underlies every
superstition. But let them once learn for a
certainty that there is hardly a claim in the Occult Sciences
that is not founded on philosophical and
scientific facts in Nature and they will pursue the study of those
Sciences with the same if not with greater
ardour than that they have expended in shunning them.This
cannot be achieved at once for to benefit
mankind such truths have to be revealed gradually and with
great caution the public mind not being prepared
for them.
The Three Mothers -(Page 71)However much the Agnostics of our age may find themselves in
the
mental attitude demanded by Modern Science
people are always apt to cling to their old hobbies so long
as the remembrance of them lasts.They are like
the Emperor Julian -called the Apostate because he
loved truth too well to accept aught else -who
though in his last Theophany he beheld his beloved Gods
as pale worn-out and hardly discernible
shadows,nevertheless clung to them.Let then the world cling
to its Gods,to whatever plane or realm they
may belong.The true Occultist would be guilty of high
treason to mankind were he to break forever
the old deities before he could replace them with the whole
and unadulterated truth -and this he cannot do
as yet.Nevertheless,the reader may be allowed to learn
at least the alphabet of that truth.He may be
shown at any rate what the Gods and Goddesses of the
Pagans,denounced as demons by the Church are
not if he cannot learn the whole and final truth as to
what they are.Let him assure himself that the
Hermetic Tres Matres, and the Three Mothers of the
Sepher Jetzirah are one and the same thing;that they are no
Demon-Goddesses,but Light Heat and
Electricity and then perchance the learned
classes will spurn them no longer.After this,the Rosicrucian
Illuminati may find followers even in the
Royal Academies,which will be more prepared perhaps,than
they are now to admit the grand truths of
archaic Natural Philosophy especially when their learned
members shall have assured themselves that in
the dialect of Hermes,the Three Mothers stand as
symbols for the whole of the forces or
agencies which have a place assigned to them in the modern
system of the correlation of forces. [ Synesius mentions books of stone
which he found in the temple of
Memphis,on one of which was engraved the
following sentence:One nat re delights in another one
nature overcomes another one nature overrules
another and the whole of them are one . The inherent
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restlessness of matter is embodied in the
saying of Hermes:Action is he life of Phta :and Orpheus calls
nature ÷ļėõģē÷įķļņ ģįōēń the mother that
makes many things, or the ingenious,the contiving the
inventive mother.-Isis Unveiled.i.257.]Even the polytheism of the
superstitious Brāhman and idolater
shows its raison d źtre,since the
three Shaktis of the three great Gods,Brahma Vishnu and Shiva are
identical with the Three Mothers of the
monotheistic Jew.
The whole of the ancient religious and
mystical literature is symbolical.The Books of Hermes,the Zohar,
the Ya-Yakav,the Egyptian Book of
the Dead,(Page 72)the Vedas,the
Upanishads,and the Bible are as
full of symbolism as are the Nabathean
revelations of the Chaldaic Qu-tāmy;it is a loss of time to ask
which is the earliest;all are simply different
versions of the one primeval Record of prehistoric knowledge
and revelation.
The first four chapters of Genesis contain
the synopsis of all the rest of the Pentate ch,being only the
various versions of the same thing in
different allegorical and symbolical applications.Having discovered
that the Pyramid of Cheops with all its
measurements is to be found contained in its minutest details in
the structure of Solomon s Temple;and having
ascertained that the biblical names Shem Ham and
Japhet are determinative
of pyramid measures,in connection with the
600-year period of Noah and the 500-year period
of Shem Ham and Japhet:...the term Sons of
Elohim and Daughters of H-Adam [are ] for
one thing astronomical terms,[ So rce of Measures.p.x.]
the author of the very curious work already
mentioned -a book very little known in Europe we regret to
say -seems to see nothing in his discovery
beyond the presence of Mathematics and Metrology in the
Bible .He
also arrives at most unexpected and extraordinary conclusions,such as are very
little
warranted by the facts discovered.His impression
seems to be that because the Jewish biblical names
are all astronomical therefore the Scriptures
of all the other nations can be only this and nothing more.
But this is a great mistake of the erudite and
wonderfully acute author of The So rce of Measures,if he
really thinks so.The Key to the
Hebrew-Egyptian Mystery unlocks but a certain portion of the hieratic
writings of these two nations,and leaves those
of other peoples untouched.His idea is that the Kabalah
is only that sublime Science upon which
Masonry is based ,in fact he regards Masonry as the
substance of the Kabalah,and the latter
as the rational basis of the Hebrew text of Holy Writ. About this
we will not argue with the author.But why
should all those who may have found in the Kabalah
something beyond the sublime Science upon
which Masonry is alleged to have been built be held up to
public contempt?
In its exclusiveness and one-sidedness such a
conclusion is pregnant with future misconceptions and is
absolutely wrong.In its uncharitable criticism
it throws a slur upon the Divine Science itself.
The Bible and Word -Juggling -(Page 73)The Kabalah is indeed of the essence
of Masonry but it is
dependent on Metrology only in one of its
aspects the less Esoteric,as even Plato made no secret that
the Deity was ever geometrising.For the
uninitiated however learned and endowed with genius they
may be the Kabalah which treats only of
the garment of God or the veil and cloak of truth
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is built from the ground upward with a
practical application to present uses.[
Masonic Review,
July 1886 ]
Or in other words represents an exact Science
only on the terrestrial plane.To the initiated the Kabalistic
Lord descends from the primeval Race generated
spiritually from the Mind-born Seven.Having
reached the Earth the Divine Mathematics -a
synonym for Magic in his day as we are told by Josephus -
veiled her face.Hence the most important
secret yet yielded by her in our modern day is the identity of
the old Roman measures and the present British
measures of the Hebrew-Egyptian cubit and the
Masonic inch.[See So rce of Measures pp.47 -50 et pass.]
The discovery is most wonderful and has led to
further and minor unveilings of various riddles in
reference to Symbology and biblical names.It
is thoroughly understood and proven as shown by
Nachanides,that in the days of Moses the
initial sentence in Genesis was made to read B rash ithbara
Elohim,or
In the head-source [ or Mūlaprakriti -the Rootless Root ] developed [or
evolved ] the Gods
[Elohim ] the heavens and the earth;whereas
it is now owing to the Massora and theological cunning
transformed into B rashith bara Elohim,or
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth -
which word juggling alone has led to
materialistic anthropomorphism and dualism.] How many more
similar instances may not be found in the Bible
the last and latest of the Occult works of antiquity?There
is no longer any doubt in the mind of the
Occultist that notwithstanding its form and outward meaning
the Bible -as explained by the Zohar
or Midrash,the Yetsirah (Book of Creation)and the Commentary
on the Ten Sephiroth (by Azariel Ben Manachem of the X11th century)-is part and
parcel of the Secret
Doctrine of the Aryans,which explains in the
same manner the Vedas and all other allegorical books.The
Zohar in
teaching that the Impersonal One Cause manifests in the Universe through Its
Emanations,the
Sephiroth -that Universe being in its (Page 74)totality simply the veil woven from the Deity
s own
substance -is undeniably the copy and faithful
echo of the earliest Vedas .Taken by itself without the
additional help of the Vaidic and of
Brahmanical literature in general the Bible will never yield the
universal secrets of Occult Nature.The cubits
inches,and measures of this physical plane will never
solve the problems of the world on the
spiritual plane -for Spirit can neither be weighed nor measured.
The working out of these problems is reserved
for the mystics and the dreamers who alone are capable
of accomplishing it.
Moses was an initiated priest versed in all
the mysteries and the Occult knowledge of the Egyptian
temples -hence thoroughly acquainted with
primitive Wisdom.It is in the latter that the symbolical and
astronomical meaning of that Mystery of
Mysteries,the Great Pyramid has to be sought.And having
been so familiar with the geometrical secrets
that lay concealed for long aeons in her strong bosom -the
measurements and proportions of the Kosmos,our
little Earth included -what wonder that he should
have made use of his knowledge?The Esoterism
of Egypt was that of the whole world at one time.
During the long ages of the Third Race it had
been the heirloom in common of the whole of mankind
received from their Instructors,the Sons of
Light the primeval Seven.There was a time also when the
Wisdom-Religion was not symbolical for it
became Esoteric only gradually the change being
necessitated by misuse and by the Sorcery of
the Atlanteans.For it was the misuse only and not the
use of the divine gift that led the men of the
Fourth Race to Black Magic and Sorcery and finally to
become forgetful of Wisdom ;while those of
the Fifth Race the inheritors of the Rishis of the Treta
Yuga used their powers to atrophise such gifts
in mankind in general and then as the Elect Root
dispersed.Those who escaped the Great Flood
preserved only its memory and a belief founded on the
knowledge of their direct fathers of one
remove that such a Science existed and was now jealously
guarded by the Elect Root exalted by
Enoch.But there must again come a time when man shall once
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more become what he was during the second Yuga
(age),when his probationary cycle shall be over and
he shall gradually become what he was
-semi-corporeal and pure.Does not Plato the Initiate tell us in
the Phaedrus all that man once was and
that which he may yet again become:
Before man s spirit sank into sensuality and
became embodied through the loss of his wings,
he lived among the Gods in the airy spiritual
world where everything is true and pure.[
See
Cary's translation pp.322 323.]
Moses and the Jews -(Page 75 )Elsewhere he speaks of the time when men did not perpetuate
themselves,but lived as pure spirits.
Let those men of Science who feel inclined to
laugh at this,themselves unravel the mystery of the origin
of the first man.
Unwilling that his chosen people -chosen by
him -should remain as grossly idolatrous as the profane
masses that surrounded them Moses utilised his
knowledge of cosmogonical mysteries of the Pyramid
to build upon it the Genesiacal Cosmogony in
symbols and glyphs.This was more accessible to the
minds of the hoi polloi than the
abstruse truths taught to the educated in the sanctuaries.He invented
nothing but the outward garb added not one
iota;but in this he merely followed the example of older
nations and Initiates.If he clothed the grand
truths revealed to him by his Hierophant under the most
ingenious imagery he did it to meet the
requirements of the Israelites;that stiff-necked race would accept
no God unless He were as anthropomorphic as
those of the Olympus;and he himself failed to foresee
the times when highly educated statesmen would
be defending the husks of the fruit of wisdom that grew
and developed in him on Mount Sinai when
communing with his own personal God -his divine Self.
Moses understood the great danger of
delivering such truths to the selfish for he understood the fable of
Prometheus and remembered the past.Hence he
veiled them from the profanation of public gaze and
gave them out allegorically.And this is why
his biographer says of him that when he descended from
Sinai
Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone
...And he put a veil upon his face.[ Exod
s.
xxxiv.29 33.]
And so he put a veil upon the face of his Pentate
ch;and to such an extent that using orthodox
chronology only 3376 years after the event
people begin to acquire a conviction that it is a veil indeed.
It is not the face of God or even of a Johovah
shining through;not even the face of Moses,but verily the
faces of the later Rabbis.
No wonder if Clemens wrote in the Stromateis
that:
Similar then to the Hebrew enigmas in respect
to concealment are those of the Egyptians
also.[
Op,cit.,V,vii.]
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SECTION VII
Old Wine in New Bottles
(Page 76)IT is more than likely that the Protestants in
the days of the Reformation knew nothing of the
true origin of Christianity or to be more
explicit and correct of Latin Ecclesiasticism.Nor is it probable
that the Greek Church knew much of it the
separation between the two having occurred at a time when
in the struggle for political power the Latin
Church was securing at any cost the alliance of the highly
educated the ambitious and influential
Pagans,while these were willing to assume the outward
appearance of the new worship provided they
were themselves kept in power.There is no need to
remind the reader here of the details of that
struggle well-known to every educated man.It is certain that
the highly cultivated Gnostics and their
leaders -such men as Saturnilus,an uncompromising ascetic,as
Marcion Valentinus,Basilides,Menander and
Cerinthus -were not stigmatised by the (now)Latin
Church because they were heretics,nor because
their tenets and practices were indeed ob t rpit dinem
portentosam nimi m et horribilem,monstrous,revolting abominations, as Baronius says of
those of
Carpocrates ;but simply because they knew too
much of fact and truth.Kenneth R.H.Mackenzie
correctly remarks;
They were stigmatised by the later Roman
Church because they came into conflict with the
purer Church of Christianity -the possession
of which was usurped by the Bishops of Rome
but which original continues in its docility
towards the founder in the Primitive Orthodox Greek
Church.[
The Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia nder Gnosticism.]
Unwilling to accept the responsibility of
gratuitous assumptions,the writer deems it best to prove this
inference by more than one personal and
defiant admission of an ardent Roman Catholic writer evidently
entrusted with the delicate task by the
Vatican.
Copies That Ante-Dated Originals -(Page 77)The Marquis de Mirville makes desperate
efforts to
explain to the Catholic interest certain
remarkable discoveries in Archaeology and Palaeography though
the Church is cleverly made to remain outside
of the quarrel and defence.This is undeniably shown by
his ponderous volumes addressed to the Academy
of France between 1803 and 1865.Seizing the
pretext of drawing the attention of the
materialistic Immortals to the epidemic of Spiritualism the
invasion of Europe and America by a numberless
host of Satanic forces,he directs his efforts towards
proving the same by giving the full
Genealogies and the Theogony of the Christian and Pagan deities,
and by drawing parallels between the two.All
such wonderful likenesses and identities are only seeming
and superficial he assures the
reader.Christian symbols,and even characters,Christ the Virgin
Angels and Saints,tells them were all
personated centuries beforehand by the fiends of hell in order to
discredit eternal truth by their ungodly
copies.By their knowledge of futurity the devils anticipated events,
having discovered the secrets of the
Angels.Heathen Deities,all the Sun-Gods,named Sotors -
Saviours -born of immaculate mothers and dying
a violent death were only Ferouers [In
the Fero ers
and Devs of Jacobi (Letters F.and
D.)the word ferouer is explained in the following manner:The
Ferouer is a part of the creature (whether man
or animal)of which it is the type and which it survives.It is
the Nous of the Greeks,therefore divine and
immortal and thus can hardly be the Devil or the satanic
copy De Mirville would represent it (See Memoires
de l Academie des Inscriptions Vol.XXXV11 P.623
and chap.xxxix.p.749).Foucher contradicts him
entirely.The Ferouer was never the principle of
sensations,but always referred to the most
divine and pure portion of Man s Ego -the spiritual principle.
Anquetil says the Ferouer is the purest
portion of man s soul.The Persian Dev is the antithesis of the
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Ferouer for the Dev has been transformed by
Zoroaster into the Genius of Evil (whence the Christian
Devil),but even the Dev is only finite:for
having become possessed of the soul of man by s rpation it
will have to leave it at the great day of
Retribution.The Dev obsesses the soul of the defunct for three
days during which the soul wanders about the
spot at which it was forcibly separated from its body the
Ferouer ascends to the region of eternal
Light.It was an unfortunate idea that made the noble Marquis
de Mirville imagine the Ferouer to be a
satanic copy of a divine original.By calling all the Gods of the
Pagans -Apollo Osiris,Brahma Ormazd Bel
etc.the Ferouers of Christ and of the chief Angels,he
merely exhibits the God and the Angels he
would honour as inferior to the Pagan Gods,as man is inferior
to his Soul and Spirit:since the Ferouer is
the immortal part of the mortal being of which it is the type and
which it survives.Perchance the poor author is
unconsciously prophetic:and Apollo Brahma Ormazd
Osiris,etc.are destined to survive and replace
-as eternal cosmic verities -the evanescent fictions
about the God Christ and Angels of the Latin
Church!]-as they were called by
the Zoroastrians -the
demon-ante-dated copies (copies anticipées )of
the Messiah to come
The danger of recognition of such facsimiles
had indeed lately become dangerously great.It had lingered
threateningly in the air hanging like a sword
of Damocles over the Church since the days of Voltaire
Dupuis and other writers on similar lines.The
discoveries (Page 78)of the
Egyptologists,the finding of
Assyrian and Babylonian pre-Mosaic relics
bearing the legend of Moses [ See
George Smith's Babylon
and other works ]and especially the many rationalistic works published in England
such as S pernat ral
Religion made recognition unavoidable.Hence the appearance of Protestant and Roman
Catholic
writers deputed to explain the inexplicable;to
reconcile the face of Divine Revelation with the mystery
that the divine personages,rites,dogmas and
symbols of Christianity were so often identical with those
of the several great heathen religions.The
former -the Protestant defenders -tried to explain it on the
ground of prophetic,precursory ideas ;the
Latinists,such as De Mirville by inventing a double set of
Angels and Gods,the one divine and true the
other -the earlier -copies ante-dating the originals and
due to a clever plagiarism by the Evil One.The
Protestant stratagem is an old one that of the Roman
Catholics is so old that it has been forgotten
and is as good as new.Dr.Lundy s Mon mental Christianity
and A Miracle in Stone belong to the
first attempts.De.Mirville s Pne matologie to the second.In India
and China every such effort on the part of the
Scotch and other missionaries ends in laughter and does
no harm;the plan devised by the Jesuits is
more serious.De Mirville s volumes are thus very important
as they proceed from a source which has
undeniably the greatest learning of the age at its service and
this coupled with all the craft and casuistry
that the sons of Loyola can furnish.The Marquis de Mirville
was evidently helped by the acutest minds in
the service of Rome.
He begins by not only admitting the justice of
every imputation and charge made against the Latin
Church as to the originality of her dogmas,but
by taking a seeming delight in anticipating such charges;
for he points to every dogma of Christianity
as having existed in Pagan rituals in Antiquity.The whole
Pantheon of Heathen Deities is passed in
review by him and each is shown to have had some point of
resemblance with the Trinitarian personages
and Mary.There is hardly a mystery a dogma or a rite in
the Latin Church that is not shown by the
author as having been parodied by the Curvati -the Curved
the Devils.All this being admitted and
explained the Symbologists ought to be silenced.And so they
would be if there were no materialistic
critics to reject such omnipotency of the Devil in this world.For if
Rome admits the likenesses,she also claims the
right of judgment between the true and the false
Avatāra the real and the unreal God between
the original and the copy -though the copy precedes the
original by millenniums.
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Which Were the Thieves?-(Page 79)Our author proceeds to argue that whenever the
missionaries try
to convert an idolater they are invariably
answered:
We had our Crucified before yours.What do you
come to show us?[This is as
fanciful as it is
arbitrary.Where is the Hindu or Buddhist who
would speak of his Crucified ?] Again
what
should we gain by denying the mysterious side
of this copy under the plea that according to
Weber all the present P ranas are
remade from older ones,since here we have in the same
order of personages a positive precedence
which no one would ever think of contesting.[Op.
cit.,iv.237
]
And the author instances Buddha Krishna Apollo
etc.Having admitted all this he escapes the difficulty
in this wise:
The Church Fathers,however who recognised
their own property under all such sheep s
clothing ...knowing by means of the Gospel
...all the ruses of the pretended spirits of light;
the Fathers,we say meditating upon the
decisive words,all that ever came before me are
robbers (John,x.8),did not hesitate in
recognising the Occult agency at work the general
and superhuman direction given beforehand to
falsehood the universal attribute and
environment of all these false Gods of the
nations;omnes dii genti m daemonia (elilim ).
(Psalm xcv.)[ Loc cit.,250.]
With such a policy everything is made
easy.There is not one glaring resemblance not one fully proven
identity that could not thus be made away
with.The above-quoted cruel selfish self-glorifying words,
placed by John in the mouth of Him who was
meekness and charity personified could never have been
pronounced by Jesus.The Occultists reject the
imputation indignantly and are prepared to defend the
man as against the God by showing whence come
the words,plagiarised by the author of the Fourth
Gospel.They are taken bodily from the
Prophecies in the Book of Enoch .The evidence on this head of
the learned biblical scholar Archbishop
Laurence and of the author of the Evol tion of Christianity who
edited the translation may be brought forward
to prove the fact.On the last page of the Introduction to
the Book of Enoch is found the
following passage:
The parable of the sheep rescued by the good
Shepherd from hireling guardians and ferocious
wolves,is obviously borrowed by the fourth
Evangelist from (Page
80)Enoch,Ixxxix,in which
the author depicts the shepherds as killing
and destroying the sheep before the advent of the
Lord and this discloses the true meaning of
that hitherto mysterious passage in the Johannine
parable -All that ever came before me are
thieves and robbers -language in which we now
detect an obvious reference to the allegorical
shepherds of Enoch.
Obvious truly and something else besides.For
if Jesus pronounced the words in the sense attributed
to him then he must have read the Book of
Enoch -a purely Kabalistic,Occult work,and he therefore
recognised the worth and value of a treatise
now declared apocryphal by his Churches.Moreover he
could not have been ignorant that these words
belonged to the oldest ritual of Inititation.
[Q :Who knocks at the door?
A.:The good cowherd.
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Q.:Who preceded thee?
A.:The three robbers.
Q.:Who follows thee?
A.:The three murderers, etc.etc.
Now this is the conversation that took place
between the priest-initiators and the candidates
for initiation during the mysteries enacted in
the oldest sanctuaries of the Himalayan
fastnesses.The ceremony is still performed to
this day in one of the most ancient temples in a
secluded spot of Nepaul.It originated with the
Mysteries of the first Krishna passed to the
First Tirthankara and ended with Buddha and is
called the Kurukshetra rite being enacted as
a memorial of the great battle and death of
the divine Adept.It is not Masonry but an initiation
into the Occult teachings of that
Hero-Occultism pure and simple.]
And if he had not read it and the sentence
belongs to John or whoever wrote the Fourth Gospel then
what reliance can be placed on the
authenticity of other sayings and parables attributed to the Christian
Saviour?
Thus,De Mirville s illustration is an
unfortunate one.Every other proof brought by the Church to show the
infernal character of the
ante-and-anti-Christian copyists may be easily disposed of.This is perhaps
unfortunate but it is a fact nevertheless -Magna
est veritas et prevalebit.
The above is the answer to the Occultists to
the two parties who charge them incessantly the one with
Superstition.and the other with Sorcery.To
those of our Brothers who are Christians,and twit us with
the secresy imposed upon the Eastern
Chelas,adding invariably that their own Book of God is an open
volume for all to read understand and be
saved . we would reply by asking them to study what we
have just said in this Section and then to
refute it -if they can.There are very few in our days who are
still prepared to assure their readers that
the Bible had
God for its author salvation for its end and
truth without any mixture of error for its matter.
Character of the Bible -(Page 81)Could Locke be asked the question now he would
perhaps be
unwilling to repeat again that the Bible is
all pure all sincere nothing too much nothing
wanting.
The Bible,if it is not to be shown to
be the very reverse of all this,sadly needs an interpreter acquainted
with the doctrines of the East as they are to
be found in its secret volumes;nor is it safe now after
Archbishop Laurence's translation of the Book
of Enoch to cite Cowper and assure us that the Bible
...gives
a light to every age
It gives,but borrows none.
for it does borrow and that very
considerably;especially in the opinion of those who ignorant of its
symbolical meaning and of the university of
the truths underlying and concealed in it are able to judge
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only from its dead letter appearance.It is a
grand volume a master-piece composed of clever ingenious
fables containing great verities;but it
reveals the latter only to those who like the Initiates,have a key to
its inner meaning;a tale sublime in its
morality and didactics truly -still a tale and an allegory;a repertory
of invented personages in its older Jewish
portions,and of dark sayings and parables in its later
additions,and thus quite misleading to anyone
ignorant of its Esotericism.Moreover it is Astrolatry and
Sabaean worship pure and simple that is to be
found in the Pentate ch when it is read exoterically and
Archaic Science and Astronomy to a most
wonderful degree when interpreted -Esoterically.
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SECTION VIII
The Book of Enoch The Origin and the
Foundation of Christianity
(Page 82)WHILE making a good deal of the Mercavah the
Jews or rather their synagogues,rejected the
Book of Enoch,either because it was not included from the first in the
Hebrew Canon or else as
Tertullian thought it was disavowed
by the Jews like all other Scripture which
speaks of Christ [Book of
Enoch,Archbishop
Laurence s translation.Introduction p.v.]
But neither of these reasons was the real
one.The Synedrion would have nothing to do with it simply
because it was more of a magic than a purely
kabalistic work.The present day Theologians of both Latin
and Protestant Churches class it among
apocryphal productions.Nevertheless the New Testament
especially in the Acts and Epistles,teems
with ideas and doctrines,now accepted and established as
dogmas by the infallible Roman and other
Churches,and even with the whole sentences taken bodily
from Enoch or the pseudo-Enoch who wrote
under that name in Aramaic or Syro-Chaldaic,as
asserted by Bishop Laurence the translator of
the Ethiopian text.
The plagiarisms are so glaring that the author
of The Evol tion of Christianity who edited
Bishop Laurence s translation was compelled
to make some suggestive remarks in his
Introduction.On internal evidence [ The Book of Enoch was unknown
to Europe for a
thousand years when Bruce found in Abyssinia
some copies of it in Ethiopic;it was translated
by Archbishop Laurence in 1821 from the text
in the Bodleian Library Oxford .] this
book is
found to have been written before the
Christian period (whether two or twenty centuries does
not matter).As correctly argued by the Editor
it is
either the inspired forecast of a great Hebrew
prophet predicting with miraculous accuracy the
future teaching of Jesus of Nazareth or the
Semitic romance from which the latter borrowed
His conceptions of the triumphant return of
the Son of man to occupy a judicial throne in the
midst of rejoicing saints and trembling
sinners,expectant of everlasting happiness or eternal
fire;and whether these celestial visions be
accepted as human or Divine they have exercised
so vast an influence on the destinies of
mankind for nearly two thousand years that candid and
impartial seekers after religious truth can no
longer delay enquiry into the relationship of the
Book of Enoch with the revelation or the evolution of Christianity.[Op.cit.,p.xx.]
The Book of Enoch and Christianity -
(Page 83)The Book of Enoch
a lso
records the supernatural control of the elements,through the action of
individual angels
presiding over the winds,the sea hail frost
dew the lightening s flash and reverberating
thunder.The names of the principal fallen
angels are also given among whom we recognise
some of the invisible powers named in the
incantations [magical ] inscribed on the terracotta
cups of Hebrew-Chaldee conjurations.[ Loc.cit.]
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We also find on these cups the word
Halleluiah showing that
a word with which ancient Syro-Chaldeans
conjured has become through the vicissitudes of
language the Shibboleth of modern Revivalists.[Op.cit.,p.xiv.note.]
The Editor proceeds after this to give
fifty-seven verses from various parts of the Gospels and Acts,with
parallel passages from the Book of Enoch and
says:
The attention of theologians has been
concentrated on the passage in the Epistle of Jude
because the author specifically names the
prophet;but the cumulative coincidence of
language and ideas in Enoch and the authors of
the New Testament Scripture as disclosed in
the parallel passages which we have collated
clearly indicates that the work of the Semitic
Milton was the inexhaustible source from which
Evangelists and Apostles,or the men who
wrote in their names,borrowed their
conceptions of the resurrection judgement immortality
perdition and of the universal reign of
righteousness,under the eternal dominion of the Son of
man.This evangelical plagiarism culminates in
the Revelation of John which adapts the
visions of Enoch to Christianity with
modifications in which we miss the sublime simplicity of
the great master of apocalyptic prediction who
prophesied in the name of the antediluvian
patriarch.[Op.cit.,p.xxxv.]
In fairness to truth the hypothesis ought at
least to have been suggested that the Book of Enoch in its
present form is simply a transcript -with
numerous pre-Christian and post-Christian additions and
interpolations -from far older texts.Modern
research went so far as to point out that Enoch is made in
Chapter Ixxi to divide the day and night into
eighteen parts and to represent the longest day in the year
as consisting of twelve out of these eighteen
parts,while a day of sixteen (Page 84)hours in length could
not have occurred in Palestine.The translator
Archbishop Laurence remarks thus:
The region in which the author lived must have
been situated not lower than forty-one degrees
north latitude where the longest day is
fifteen hours and a half nor higher perhaps than forty-
nine degrees,where the longest day is precisely
sixteen hours.This will bring the country
where he wrote as high up at least as the
northern districts of the Caspian and Euxine Seas ..
.the author of the Book of Enoch was
perhaps a member of one of the tribes which
Shalmaneser carried away and placed in Halah
and in Habor by the river Goshen and in the
cities of the Medes.[Op.cit.,p.xiii.]
Further on it is confessed that:
It cannot be said that internal evidence
attests the superiority of the Old Testament to the
Book of Enoch ...The Book of Enoch teaches the pre-existence of the
Son of man the Elect
One the Messiah who from the beginning
existed in secret [The Seventh
Principle the First
Emanation.] and whose name was invoked in the presence of the Lord of
Spirits before the
sun and the signs were created.The author
also refers to the other Power who was upon
Earth over the water on that day -an
apparent reference to the language of Genesis i.2.[ Op
cit.,p.xxxvii
and xI.] [We maintain that it
applies as well to the Hindu Nārāyana -the mover
on the waters. ] We have thus the Lord of
Spirits,the Elect One and a third Power seemingly
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foreshadowing the Trinity [as much as the
Trimūrti ] of futurity;but although Enoch s ideal
Messiah doubtless exercised an important
influence on primitive conceptions of the Divinity of
the Son of man we fail to identify his obscure
reference to another Power with the
Trinitarianism of the Alexandrine school;more
especially as angels of power abound in the
visions of Enoch.[Op cit.,pp x1 and 1i .]
An Occultist would hardly fail to identify the
said Power. The Editor concludes his remarkable reflections
by adding:
Thus far we learn that the Book of Enoch was
published before the Christian Era by some
great Unknown of Semitic [?] race who
believing himself to be inspired in a post-prophetic
age borrowed the name of an antediluvian
patriarch [ Who stands for the
Solar or
Manvantaric Year.] to authenticate his own enthusiastic forecast of the Messianic
kingdom.
And as the contents of his marvellous book
enter freely into the composition of the New
Testament it follows that if the author was not an inspired prophet
who predicted the
teachings of Christianity he was a visionary
enthusiast whose illusions were accepted by
Evangelists and Apostles as revelation
-alternative conclusions which involve the Divine or
human origin of Christianity.[ Op Cit.,pp.xli xlii.]
Enoch Records The Races -(Page 85)The outcome of all of which is,in the words of
the same Editor:
The discovery that the language and ideas of
alleged revelation are found in a pre-existent
work,accepted by Evangelists and Apostles as
inspired but classed by modern theologians
among apocryphal productions.[ Op.cit.,p.xlviii.]
The accounts also for the unwillingness of the
reverend librarians of the Bodleian Library to publish the
Ethopian text of the Book of Enoch .
The prophecies of the Book of Enoch are
indeed prophetic,but they were intended for and cover the
records of the five Races out of the seven
-everything relating to the last two being kept secret.Thus
the remark made by the Editor of the English
translation that:
Chapter xcii.records a series of prophecies
extending from Enoch s own time to about one
thousand years beyond the present generation [Op.cit.,p.xxiii.]
is faulty.The prophecies extend to the end of
our present Race not merely to a thousand years hence.
Very true that:
In the system of [Christian ] chronology
adopted a day stands [occasionally ] for a hundred
and a week for seven hundred years.[Loc.cit.]
But this is an arbitrary and fanciful system
adopted by Christians to make Biblical chronology fit with facts
or theories,and does not represent the
original thought.The days stand for the undetermined periods
of the Side-Races,and the weeks for the
Sub-Races,the Root-Races being referred to by an
expression that is not even found in the
English translation.Moreover the sentence at the bottom of page
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150:
Subsequently in the fourth week ...the visions
of the holy and the righteous shall be seen
the order of generation after generation shall
take place [xcii.9.]
is quite wrong.It stands in the original:the
order of generation after generation has taken place on the
earth etc.;that is,after the first human
race procreated in the truly human way had sprung up in the
Third Root-Races:a change which entirely
alters the meaning.Then all that is given in the translation -
as very likely also in the Ethiopic text since
the copies have been sorely tampered with -as about things
which were to happen in the future is,we are
informed in the past tense of the original Chaldean MSS.
and is not prophecy but a narrative of what
had already come to pass.When Enoch begins -to speak
from a book [Op.cit.,xcii.4.] he
is reading the account (Page
86)given
by a great Seer and the
prophecies are not his own but are from the
Seer.Enoch or Enoichion means internal eye or Seer.
Thus every Prophet and Adept may be called
Enoichion without becoming a pseudo-Enoch.But here
the Seer who compiled the present Book of
Enoch is distinctly shown as reading out from a book:
I have been born the seventh in the first week
[the seventh branch or Side-Race of the first
Sub-Race after physical generation had begun
namely in the third Root-Race ] ...But after
me in the second week [second Sub-Race ] great
wickedness shall arise [arose rather ] and in
that week the end of the first shall take
place in which mankind shall be safe.But when the
first is completed iniquity shall grow up.[Op.cit.,xcii 4-7 ]
As translated it has no sense.As it stands in
the Esoteric text it simply means,that the First Root-Race
shall come to an end during the second
Sub-Race of the Third Root-Race in the period of which time
mankind will be safe;all this having no
reference whatever to the biblical Deluge.Verse 10 th
speaks of
the sixth week [sixth Sub-Race of the Third
Root Race ] when
All those who are in it shall be darkened the
hearts of all of them shall be forgetful of wisdom [
the divine knowledge will be dying out ] and
in it shall a man ascend.
This man is taken by the interpreters,for
some mysterious reasons of their own to mean
Nebuchadnezzar;he is in reality the first
Hierophant of the purely human Race (after the allegorical fall
into generation)selected to perpetuate the
dying Wisdom of the Devas (Angels or Elohim).He is the first
Son of Man -the mysterious appellation
given to the divine Initiates of the first human school of the
Manushi (men),at the very close of the Third
Root-Race.He is also called the Saviour as it was He
with the other Hierophants who saved the Elect
and the Perfect from the geological conflagration
leaving to perish in the cataclysm of the
Close [ At the close of every
Root-Race there comes a
cataclysm in turn by fire or water.Immediately
after the Fall into generation the dross of the third Root-
Race -those who fell into sensuality by
falling off from the teaching of the Divine Instructors -were
destroyed after which the Fourth Root-Race
originated at the end of which took place the last Deluge.
(See the Sons of God mentioned in Isis
Unveiled.593 et seq.)] those who forgot the primeval wisdom
in sexual sensuality.
And during its completion [of the sixth week,
or the sixth Sub-Race ]he shall
burn the house
of dominion [the half of the globe or the then
inhabited continent ] with fire and all the race of
the elect root shall be dispersed.[ Op.cit.,xcii xx .]
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The Book of Enoch Symbolical -(Page 87)The above applies to the Elect Initiates,and
not at all to the
Jews,the supposed chosen people or to the Babylonian
captivity as interpreted by the Christian
theologians.Considering that we find Enoch or
his perpetuator mentioning the execution of the degree
upon sinners in several different weeks,[ Op.cit.,xcii 7 11 13 15.] saying that every work of the
ungodly shall disappear from the whole earth
during this fourth time (the Fourth Race),it surely can
hardly apply to the one solitary Deluge of the
Bible still less to the Captivity.
It follows,therefore that as the Book of
Enoch covers the five Races of the Manvantara with a few
allusions to the last two it does not contain
Biblical prophecies, but simply facts taken out of the Secret
Books of the East.The Editor moreover
confesses that:
The preceding six verses,viz .13 th
15 th 16 th 17 th
and 18 th are taken from between the 14 th
and 15 th verses of the nineteenth chapter where they are to be found
in the MSS.[ Op.cit .
note p.152 ]
By this arbitrary transposition he has made
confusion still more confused.Yet he is quite right in saying
that the doctrines of the Gospels and
even of the Old Testament have been taken bodily from the Book
of Enoch,for this is as evident as the sun in heaven.The whole of the Pentate
ch was adapted to fit in
with the facts given and this accounts for the
Hebrews refusing to give the book place in their Canon
just as the Christians have subsequently
refused to admit it among their canonical works.The fact that
the Apostle Jude and many of the Christian
Fathers referred to it as a revelation and a sacred volume is,
however an excellent proof that the early
Christians accepted it;among these the most learned -as,for
instance Clement of Alexandria -understood
Christianity and its doctrines in quite a different light from
their modern successors,and viewed Christ
under an aspect that Occultists only can appreciate.The
early Nazarenes and Chrestians,as Justin
Martyr calls them were the followers of Jesus,of the true
Chrestos and Christos of
Initiation;whereas,the modern Christians,especially those of the West may be
Papists,Greeks,Calvinists,or Lutherans,but can
hardly be called Christians,i.e.,the followers of Jesus,
the Christ.
Thus the Book of Enoch is entirely
symbolical.It relates to the history of the human Races and of their
early relation to Theogony the symbols being
interblended with astronomical and cosmic mysteries.
(Page 88)One chapter is missing however in the Noachian
records (from both the Paris and
the Bodleian MSS.),namely Chapter 1viii in
Sect X;this could not be remodelled and
therefore it had to disappear disfigured
fragments alone having been left out of it.The dream
about the cows,the black,red and white
heifers,relates to the first Races,their division and
disappearance.Chapter 1xxxviii in which one of
the four Angels went to the white cows and
taught them a mystery after which the mystery
being born became a man refers to (a)the
first group evolved of primitive Aryans (b)to
the mystery of the Hermaphrodite so called
having reference to the birth of the first
human Races as they are now.The well-known rite in
India one that has survived in that
patriarchal country to this day known as the passage or
rebirth through the cow -a ceremony to which
those of lower castes who are desirous of
becoming Brahmans have to submit -has
originated in this mystery.Let any Eastern Occultist
read with careful attention the above-named
chapter in the Book of Enoch,and he will find that
the Lord of the Sheep in whom Christians and
European Mystics see Christ is the
Hierophant Victim whose name in Sanskrit we
dare not give.Again that while the Western
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Churchmen see Egyptians and Israelites in the
sheep and wolves,all these animals relate in
truth to the trials of the Neophyte and the
mysteries of initiation whether in India or Egypt and
to that most terrible penalty incurred by the
wolves -those who reveal indiscriminately that
which is only for the knowledge of the Elect
and the Perfect.
The Christians who thanks to later
interpolations,[Those interpolations and alternations are
found in almost every case where figures are
given -especially whenever the numbers eleven
and twelve come in -as these are all made (by
the Christians)to relate to the numbers of
Apostles,and Tribes,and Patriarchs.The
translator of the Ethiopic text -Archbishop Laurence
-attributes them generally to mistakes of the
transcriber whenever the two texts the Paris
and the Bodleian MSS.differ.We fear it is no
mistake in most cases.] have made out in that
chapter a triple prophecy relating to the
Deluge Moses and Jesus,are mistaken as in reality it
bears directly on the punishment and loss of
Atlantis and the penalty of indiscretion.(The
Lord of the sheep is Karma and the Head of
the Hierophants also the Supreme Initiator on
earth.)He says to Enoch who implores him to
save the leaders of the sheep from being
devoured by the beasts of prey:
I will cause a recital to be made before me
...how many they have delivered up to
destruction and ...what they will do;whether
they will act as I have commanded them or not.
Occultists Do Not Reject the Bible -
(Page 89)Of this,however they shall be ignorant;neither
shalt thou make any explanation to
them neither shalt thou reprove them;but there
shall be an account of all the destruction done
by them in their respective seasons.[Op.cit.,1xxxviii.99 100.]
...He looked in silence rejoicing they were
devoured swallowed up and carried off and
leaving them in the power of every beast for
food..[ Loc.cit.,94.This
passage as will be
presently shown has led to a very curious
discovery.]
Those who labour under the impression that the
Occultists of any nation reject the Bible in its original
text and meaning are wrong.As well reject the Books
of Thoth the Chaldaean Kabalah or the Book of
Dzyan itself.Occultists
only reject the one-sided interpretations and the human element in the Bible
which is an Occult and therefore a sacred
volume as much as the others.And terrible indeed is the
punishment of all those who transgress the
permitted limits of secret revelations.From Prometheus to
Jesus,and from Him to the highest Adept as to
the lowest disciple every revealer of mysteries has had
to become a Chrestos,a man of sorrow and a
martyr.Beware said one of the greatest Masters,of
revealing the Mystery to those without -to
the profane the Sadducee and the unbeliever.All the great
Hierophants in history are shown ending their
lives by violent deaths -Buddha [ In
the profane history of
Gautama Buddha he dies at the good old age of
eighty and passes off from life to death peacefully with
all the serenity of a great saint as
Barthelemy St.Hilaire has it.Not so in the Esoteric and true
interpretation which reveals the real sense of
the profane and allegorical statement that makes Gautama
the Buddha die very unpoetically from the
effects of too much pork,prepared for him by Tsonda.How
one who preached that the killing of animals
was the greatest sin and who was a perfect vegetarian
could die from eating pork,is a question that
is never asked by our Orientalists,some of whom made [as
now do many charitable missionaries in Ceylon
] great fun at the alleged occurrence.The simple truth is
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that the said rice and pork are purely
allegorical.Rice stands for forbidden fruit like Eve's "apple"and
means Occult knowledge with the Chinese and
Tibetans;and pork for Brahmanical teachings -Vishnu
having assumed in his first Avatāra the form
of a boar in order to raise the earth on the surface of the
waters of space.It is not therefore from pork
that Buddha died but for having divulged some of the
Brahmanical mysteries,after which seeing the
bad effects brought on some unworthy people by the
revelation he preferred instead of availing
himself of Nirvana to leave his earthly form remaining still in
the sphere of the living in order to help
humanity to progress.Hence his constant reincarnations in the
hierarchy of the Dalai and Teshu Lamas,among
other bounties.Such is the Esoteric explanation.The life
of Gautama will be more fully discussed later
on.]Pythagoras,Zoroaster most of
the great Gnostics,the
founders of their respective schools;and in
our own more modern epoch a number of Fire-Philosophers
of Rosicrucians and Adepts.All of these are
shown -whether plainly or under the veil of allegory -as
paying the penalty for the revelations they
had made.This may seem to the profane reader only
coincidence.
(Page 90)To the Occultist the death of every Master
is significant and appears pregnant with meaning.
Where do we find in history that Messenger
grand or humble an Initiate or a Neophyte who when he
was made the bearer of some hitherto concealed
truth or truths,was not crucified and rent to shreds by
the dogs of envy malice and ignorance?Such
is the terrible Occult law;and he who does not feel in
himself the heart of a lion to scorn the
savage barking and the soul of a dove to forgive the poor ignorant
fools,let him give up the Sacred Science.To
succeed the Occultist must be fearless;he has to brave
dangers,dishonour and death to be forgiving
and to be silent on that which cannot be given.Those who
have vainly laboured in that direction must
wait in these days -as the Book of Enoch teaches -until the
evildoers be consumed and the power of the
wicked annihilated.It is not lawful for the Occultist to seek
or even to thirst for revenge:let him
Wait until sin pass away for their [the
sinners ] names shall be blotted out of the holy books
[the astral records ] their seed shall be
destroyed and their spirits slain.[Op.cit
.cv.21.]
Esoterically Enoch is the Son of man the
first;and symbolically the first Sub-Race of the Fifth Root
Race.[
In the Bible [Genesis,iv and v ] there are three distinct Enochs
[Kanoch or Chanoch ] -the son of
Cain the son of Seth and the son of Jared;but
they are all identical and two of them are mentioned for
the purpose of misleading.The years of only
the last two are given the first one being left without further
notice.]
And if his name yields for purposes of numerical and astronomical glyphs
the meaning of the
solar year or 365 in conformity to the age
assigned to him in Genesis,it is because being the seventh
he is,for Occult purposes,the personified
period of the two preceding Races with their fourteen Sub-
Races.Therefore he is shown in the Book as the
great grandfather of Noah who in his turn is the
personification of the mankind of the Fifth
struggling with that of the Fourth Root-Race -the great period
of the revealed and profaned Mysteries,when
the sons of God coming down on Earth took for wives
the daughters of men and taught them the
secrets of the Angels;in other words,when the mind-born
men of the Third Race mixed themselves with
those of the Fourth and the divine Science was gradually
brought down by men to Sorcery.
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SECTION IX
Hermetic and Kabalistic Doctrines
(Page 91)THE cosmogony of Hermes is as veiled as the
Mosaic system only it is upon its face far more in
harmony with the doctrines of the Secret
Sciences and even of Modern Science.Says the thrice great
Trismegistus,the hand that shaped the world
out of formless pre-existent matter is no hand ;to which
Genesis is
made to reply The world was created out of nothing although the Kabbalah denies
such a
meaning in its opening sentences.The Kabalists
have never any more than have the Indian Aryans
admitted such an absurdity.With them Fire or
Heat and Motion [ The eternal
and incessant inbreathing
and outbreathing of Parabrahman or Nature the
Universe of Space whether during Manvantara or
Pralaya .] were chiefly instrumental in the formation of the world out of
pre-existing Matter.The
Parabrahman and Mūlaprakriti of the Vedāntins
are the prototypes of the En Suph and Shekinah of the
Kabalists.Aditi is the original of Sephira and
the Prajāpatis are the elder brothers of the Sephiroth.The
nebular theory of Modern Science with all its
mysteries,is solved in the cosmogony of the Archaic
Doctrine;and the paradoxical though very
scientific enunciation that cooling causes contraction and
contraction causes heat;therefore cooling
causes heat is shown as the chief agency in the formation of
the worlds,and especially of our sun and solar
system.
All this is contained within the small compass
of Sepher Jetsirah in its thirty-two wonderful Ways of
Wisdom signed Jah Jehovah Sabaoth for
whomsoever has the key to its hidden meaning.As to the
dogmatic or theological interpretation of the
first verses in Genesis it is pertinently answered in the same
book,where speaking of the (Page 92)Three Mothers,Air Water and Fire the writer
describes them as a
balance with
The good in one scale the evil in the other
and the oscillating tongue of the Balance between
them.[Op.cit.,iii
x.]
One of the secret names of the One Eternal and
Ever-Present Deity was in every country the same and
it has preserved to this day a phonetic
likeness in the various languages.The Aum of the Hindus,the
sacred syllable had become the Aéųķ with the
Greeks,and the Aevum with the Romans -the Pan or All.
The thirtieth way is called in the Sepher
Jetzirah the gathering understanding because
Thereby gather the celestial adepts judgments
of the stars and celestial signs,and their
observations of the orbits are the perfection
of science.[Op.cit.,30.]
The thirty-second and last is called therein
the serving understanding and it is so-called because it is
A disposer of all those that are serving in
the work of the Seven Planets,according to their
Hosts.[Op.cit.,32
.]
The work was Initiation during which all
the mysteries connected with the Seven Planets were
divulged and also the mystery of the
Sun-Initiate with his seven radiances or beams cut off -the glory
and triumph of the anointed the Christos;a
mystery that makes plain the rather puzzling expression of
Clemens:
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For we shall find that very many of the dogmas
that are held by such sects [of Barbarian and
Hellenic Philosophy ] as have not become
utterly senseless,and are not cut out from the order
of nature [by cutting off Christ [ Those who are aware of the term
Christos was applied by
the Gnostics to the Higher Ego (the ancient
Pagan Greek Initiates doing the same),will readily
understand the allusion.Christos was said to
be cut off from the lower Ego Chrestos,after the
final and supreme Initiation when the two
became blended in one;Chrestos being conquered
and resurrected in the glorified Christos
-Franck,Die Kabbala,75:Dunlap Sod Vol.11.] or
rather Chrestos ] ...Correspond in their
origin and with the truth as a whole.[ Stromateis,1.
xiii.]
In Isis Unveiled [ Op.cit.,II.viii.] the reader will find fuller
information than can be given here on the Zohar
and its author the great Kabalist Simeon Ben
Jochai.It is said there that on account of his being known
to be in possession of the secret knowledge
and of the Mercaba which insured the reception of the
Word his very life was endangered and he
had to fly to the wilderness,where he lived in a cave for
twelve years surrounded by faithful
disciples,and finally died there amid signs and wonders.[ Many are
the marvels recorded as having taken place at
his death or we should rather say his translation;for he
did not die as others do but having suddenly
disappeared while a dazzling light filled the cavern with
glory his body was again seen upon its
subsidence.When this heavenly light gave place to the habitual
semi-darkness of the gloomy cave -then only
says Ginsburg the disciples of Israel perceived that the
lamp of Israel was extinguished. His
biographers tell us that there were voices heard from Heaven
during the preparation for his funeral and at
his interment when the coffin was lowered into the deep
cave prepared for it a flame broke forth and a
voice mighty and majestic pronounced these words:'This
is he who caused the earth to quake and the
kingdoms to shake!']
The Kabalah and The Book of Enoch -(Page 93)His teachings on the origin of the Secret
Doctrine or
as he also calls it the Secret Wisdom are the
same as those found in the East with the exception that in
place of the Chief of a Host of Planetary
Spirits he puts God saying that this Wisdom was first taught
by God himself to a certain number of Elect
Angels;whereas in the Eastern Doctrine the saying is
different as will be seen.
Some synthetic and Kabalistic studies on the
sacred Book of Enoch and the Taro (Rota)are before us.
We quote from the MS.copy of a Western
Occultist who is prefaced by these words:
There is but one Law one Principle one Agent
one Truth and one Word.That which is above
is analogically as that which is below.All
that which is,is the result of quantities and of
equilibriums.
The axiom of Eliphas Levi and this triple
epigraph show the identity of thought between the East and the
West with regard to the Secret Science which
as the same MS tells us,is:
The key of things concealed the key of the
sanctuary.This is the Sacred Word which gives to
the Adept the supreme reason of Occultism and
its Mysteries.It is the Quintessence of
Philosophies and of Dogmas;it is the Alpha and
Omega;it is the Light Life and Wisdom
Universal.
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The Taro of the sacred Book of Enoch,or
Rota is prefaced moreover with this explanation:
The antiquity of this book is lost in the
night of time.It is of Indian origin and goes back to an
epoch long before Moses ...It is written upon
detached leaves,which at the first were of fine
gold and precious metals ...It is symbolical
and its combinations adapt themselves to all the
wonders of the Spirit.Altered by its passage
across the Ages,it is nevertheless preserved -
thanks to the ignorance of the curious -in its
types and its most important primitive figures.
This is the Rota of Enoch now called Taro of
Enoch to which de Mirville alludes,as we saw as the
means used for evil Magic.the (Page 94)metallic plates [or leaves ] escaped from
destruction during the
Deluge and which are attributed by him to
Cain.They have escaped the Deluge for the simple reason
that this Flood was not Universal.And it is
said to be of Indian origin because its origin is with the
Indian Aryans of the first Sub-Race of the
Fifth Root-Race before the final destruction of the last
stronghold of Atlantis.But if it originated
with the forefathers of the primitive Hindus,it was not in India
that it was first used.Its origin is still
more ancient and must be traced beyond and into the Himaleh
[ Pockocke may be was not altogether wrong in deriving the
German Heaven Himmel from Himalaya;
nor can it be denied that it is the Hindu
Kailasa (Heaven)that is the father of the Greek Heaven (Koilon),
and of the Latin Coelum.] the Snowy Range.It was born in that
mysterious locality which no one is able
to locate and which is the despair of both
Geographers and Christian Theologians -the regions in which
the Brahman places his Kailasa the Mount
Sumeru and the Pārvatī Pamīr transformed by the Greeks
into Paropamisus.
Round this locality which still exists the
traditions of the Garden of Eden were built.From these regions
the Greeks obtained their Parnassus [ See Pockocke's India in Greece and
his derivation of Mount
Parnassus from Parnasa the leaf and branch
huts of the Hindu ascetics,half shrine and half habitation.
Part of the Par-o-Pamisus (the hill of
Bamian),is called Parnassus.These mountains are called
Devanica because they are so full of Devas of
Gods,called Gods of the Earth:Bhu Devas.They lived
according to the Puranas,in bowers or
huts,called Parnasas,because they were made of leaves;
(Parnas),p.302.] and thence proceeded most of the biblical personages,some of
them in their day men
some demigods and heroes,some -though very few
-myths,the astronomical double of the former.
Abram was one of them -a Chaldaean Brāhman [Rawlinson is justly very confident of
an Aryan and
Vedic influence on the early mythology and
history of Babylon and Chaldea .] says
the legend
transformed later after he had repudiated his
Gods and left his Ur (p r town ?)in Chaldaea into A-
brahms [This
is a Secret Doctrine affirmation and may or may not be accepted.Only Abrahm
Isaac and
Judah resemble terribly the Hindu Brahmā
Ikshvāku and Yadu.] (or A-braham
no-brāhman who
emigrated.Abram becoming the father of many
nations is thus explained.The student of Occultism has
to bear in mind that every God and hero in
ancient Pantheons (that of the Bible included),has three
biographies in the narrative so to say running
parallel with each other and each connected with one of
the aspects of the hero -historical
astronomical and perfectly mythical the last serving to connect the
other two together and smooth away the
asperities and discordancies in the narrative and gathering into
one or more symbols the verities of the first
two.Localities are made to correspond with astronomical and
even with psychic events.
Numbers and Measures -(Page 95)History was thus made captive by ancient
Mystery to become later
on the great Sphynx of the nineteenth
century.Only instead of devouring her too dull querists who will
unriddle her whether she acknowledges it or
not she is desecrated and mangled by the modern
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Oedipus,before he forces her into the sea of
speculations in which the Sphynx is drowned and perishes.
This has now become self-evident not only
through the Secret Teachings,parsimoniously as they may
be given but by earnest and learned
Symbologists and even Geometricians.The Key to the Hebrew
Egyptian Mystery in which a learned Mason of Cincinnati Mr.Ralston Skinner
unveils the riddle of a
God with such ungodly ways about him as the
Biblical Jah-ve is followed by the establishment of a
learned society under the presidentship of a
gentleman from Ohio and four vice-presidents one of whom
is Piazzi Smith the well-known Astronomer and
Egyptologist.The Director of the Royal Observatory in
Scotland and author of The Great
Pyramid,Pharaonic by name,H manitarian by fact,its Marvels,
Mysteries,and its Teachings,is seeking to prove the same problem as the American author
and Mason;
namely that the English system of measurement
is the same as that used by the ancient Egyptians in
the construction of their Pyramid or in
Mr.Skinner's own words that the Pharaonic source of measures
originated the British inch and the ancient
cubit. It originated much more than this,as will be fully
demonstrated before the end of the next
century.Not only is everything in Western religion related to
measures,geometrical figures,and
time-calculations,the principal period-durations being founded on
most of the historical personages,[ It is said in The Gnostics and
their Remains by C.W.King (p.13)with
regard to the names of Brahma and Abram:This
figure of the man Seir Anpin consists of 243 numbers,
being the numerical value of the letters in
the name Abram signifying the different orders in the celestial
Hierarchies.In fact the names Abram and Brahma
are equivalent in numerical value.Thus to one
acquainted with Esoteric Symbolism it does not
seem at all strange to find in the Loka-pālas (the four
cardinal and intermediate points of the
compass personified by eight Hindu Gods)Indra s elephant
names Abhra -(matanga)and his wife
Abhramu.Abhra is in a way a Wisdom Deity since it is this
elephant s head that replaced that of Ganesha
(Ganapati)the God of Wisdom cut off by Shiva.Now
Abhra means cloud and it is also the name of
the city where Abram is supposed to have resided -
when read backwards -Arba (Kirjath)the city
of four ...Abram is Abra with an appended m final and
Abra read backward is Arba (Key to the
Hebrew Egyptian Mystery).The author might have added that
Abra meaning in Sanskrit in or of the
clouds,the cosmo-astronomical symbol of Abram becomes still
plainer.All of these ought to be read in their
originals in Sanskrit.] but the
latter are also connected with
heaven and earth truly only with the
Indo-Aryan heaven and earth not with those of Palestine.
The prototypes of nearly all the biblical
personages are to be sought (Page 96)for in the early Pantheon of
India.It is the Mind-born Sons of Brahma or
rather of the Dhyāni-Pitara (the Father -Gods ),the Sons
of Light who have given birth to the Sons
of Earth -the Patriachs.For if the Rig Veda and its three
sister Vedas have been milked out from
fire air and sun or Agni Indra and Surya as Man -Smriti tells
us,the Old Testament was most
undeniably milked out of the most ingenious brains of Hebrew
Kabalists partly in Egypt and partly in
Babylonia -the seat of Sanskrit literature and Brahman learning
from her origin.as Colonel Vans Kennedy truly
declared.One of such copies was Abram or Abraham
into whose bosom every orthodox Jew hopes to
be gathered after death that bosom being localised as
heaven in the clouds or Abhra.[ Before these theories and
speculations -we are willing to admit they
are such -are rejected the following few
points ought to be explained.(1)Why after leaving Egypt was
the patriarch s name changed by Jehovah from
Abram to Abraham.(2)Why Sarai becomes on the same
principle Sarah (Gen.,xvii.).(3)Whence
the strange coincidence of names?(4)Why should Alexander
Polyhistor say that Abraham was born at
Kamarina or Uria a city of soothsayers and invented
Asrronomy?(5)The Abrahamic recollections go
back at least three millenniums beyond the grandfather
of Jacob says Bunsen (Egypt s Place in
History.v.35.)]
From Abraham to Enoch s Taro there seems to
be a considerable distance yet the two are closely
related by more than one link,Gaffarel has
shown that the four symbolical animals on the twenty-first key
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of the Taro at the third septenary are the
Teraphim of the Jews invented and worshipped by Abram s
father Terah and used in the oracles of the
Urim and Thummim.Moreover astronomically Abraham is
the sun-measure and a portion of the sun while
Enoch is the solar year as much as are Hermes or Thot;
and Thot numerically was the equivalent of
Moses,or Hermes,the lord of the lower realms,also
esteemed as a teacher of wisdom the same
Mason-mathematician tells us;and the Taro being
according to one of the latest bulls of the
Pope an invention of Hell the same as Masonry and
Occultism the relation is evident.The Taro
contains indeed the mystery of all such transmutations of
personages into sidereal bodies and vice
versa .The wheel of Enoch is an archaic invention the most
ancient of all for it is found in
China.Eliphas Levi says there was not a nation but had it its real meaning
being preserved in the greatest secrecy.It was
a universal heirloom.
As we see neither the Book of Enoch (his
Wheel ),nor the Zohar nor any other kabalistic volume
contains merely Jewish wisdom.
The Doctrine Belongs to All
(Page 97)The doctrine itself being the result of whole
millenniums of thought is therefore the
joint property of Adepts of every nation under
the sun.Nevertheless,the Zohar teaches
practical Occultism more than any other work
on that subject;not as it is translated and
commented upon by its various critics though
but with the secret signs on its margins.These
signs contain the hidden instructions,apart
from the metaphysical interpretations and apparent
absurdities so fully credited by Josephus,who
was never initiated and gave out the dead letter
as he had received it.[ Isis Unveiled,ii.350.]
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SECTION X
Various Occult Systems of Interpretations
-of Alphabets and Numerals
(Page 98)THE transcendental methods of the Kabalah must
not be mentioned in a public work;but its
various systems of arithmetical and
geometrical ways of unriddling certain symbols may be described.
The Zohar methods of calculation with
their three sections,the Gematria Notaricon and Temura also
the Albath and Algath are extremely difficult
to practice.We refer those who would learn more to
Cornelius Agrippa s works [ See Isis Unveiled ii.218-300.Gematria
is formed by a metathesis from the
Greek word ćńįģģįōåéįNotaricon may be compared
to stenography;Temura is permutation -a way of
dividing the alphabet and shifting letters.] But none of those systems can ever
be understood unless a
Kabalist becomes a real Master in his
Science.The Symbolism of Pythagoras requires still more arduous
labour.His symbols are very numerous,and to
comprehend even the general gist of his abstruse
doctrines from his Symbology would necessitate
years of study.His chief figures are the square (the
Tetraktys)the equilateral triangle the point
within a circle the cube the triple triangle and finally the
forty-seventh proposition of Euclid s
Elements of which proposition Pythagoras was the inventor.But
with the exception none of the foregoing
symbols originated with him,as some believe.Millenniums
before his day they were well known in India
whence the Samian Sage brought them not as a
speculation but as a demonstrated Science says
Porphyry quoting from the Pythagorean Moderatus.
The numerals of Pythagoras were hieroglyphical
symbols by means whereof he explains all
ideas concerning the nature of things.[ De Vita Pythag.]
Numbers and Magic -(Page 99)The fundamental geometrical figure of the Kabalah as
given in the Book
of N mbers,[ We
are not aware that a copy of this ancient work is embraced in the catalogue of
any
European library;but it is one of the Books
of Hermes, and it is referred to and quotations are made
from it in the works of a number of ancient
and mediaeval philosophical authors.Among these authorities
are Arnoldo di Villanova s Rosari m
Philosoph.,Francesco Arnuphi s Op s de Lapide Hermes
Trismegistus Tractat s de Transm tatione
Metallor m and Tab la Smaragdina and above all the treatise
of Raymond Lully Ab Angelis Op s Divin m de
Q inta Essentia.] that figure which tradition and the
Esoteric Doctrines tell us was given by the
Deity Itself to Moses on Mount Sinai [Exod
s,xxv.40.]
contains the key to the universal problem in
its grandiose because simple combinations.This figure
contains in itself all the others.
The Symbolism of numbers and their
mathematical interrelations is also one of the branches of Magic,
especially of mental Magic,divination and
correct perception in clairvoyance.Systems differ but the root
idea is everywhere the same.As shown in the Royal
Masonic Cyclopaedia by Kenneth R.H.Mackenzie:
One system adopts unity another trinity a
third quinquinity;again we have sexagons,
heptagons,novems,and so on until the mind is
lost in the survey of the materials alone of a
science of numbers.[S b voce Numbers.]
The Devanāgarī characters in which Sanscrit is
generally written have all that the Hermetic,Chaldaean
and Hebrew alphabets have and in addition the
Occult significance of the eternal sound and the
meaning given to every letter in its relation
to spiritual as well as terrestrial things.As there are only
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twenty-two letters in the Hebrew alphabet and
ten fundamental numbers,while in the Devanāgarī there
are thirty-five consonants and sixteen vowels,making
altogether fifty-one simple letters,with numberless
combinations in addition the margin for
speculation and knowledge is in proportion considerably wider.
Every letter has is equivalent in other
languages,and its equivalent in a figure or figures of the calculation
table.It has also numerous other
significations,which depend upon the special idiosyncrasies and
characteristics of the person object or
subject to be studied.As the Hindus claim to have received the
Devanagari characters from Sarasvati the
inventress of Sanskrit the language of the Devas or Gods
(in their exoteric pantheon),so most of the
ancient nations claimed the same privilege for the origin of
their letters and tongue.The Kabalah (Page 100)calls the Hebrew alphabet the letters of the
Angels,
which were communicated to the Patriarchs,just
as the Devanagari was to the Rishis by the Devas.The
Chaldaeans found their letters traced in the
sky by the yet unsettled stars and comets, says the Book of
N mbers ;while
the Phoenicians had a sacred alphabet formed by the twistings of the sacred
serpents.
The Natar Khari (hieratic alphabet)and secret
(sacerdotal)speech of the Egyptians is closely related to
the oldest Secret Doctrine Speech.It is a
Devanāgarī with mystical combinations and additions,into
which the Senzar largely enters.
The power and potency of numbers and
characters are well known to many Western Occultists as being
compounded from all these systems,but are
still unknown to Hindu students,if not to their Occultists.In
their turn European Kabalists are generally
ignorant of the alphabetical secrets of Indian Esoterism.At
the same time the general reader in the West
knows nothing of either;least of all how deep are the
traces left by the Esoteric numeral systems of
the world in the Christian Churches.
Nevertheless this system of numerals solves
the problem of cosmogony for whomsoever studies it while
the system of geometrical figures represents
the numbers objectively.
To realise the full comprehension of the
Deific and the Abstruse enjoyed by the Ancients,one has to
study the origin of the figurative
representations of their primitive Philosophers.The Books of Hermes are
the oldest repositories of numerical Symbology
in Western Occultism.In them we find that the number
ten [See Johannes
Meursius,Denari s Pythagoricus.]
is the Mother of the Soul Life and Light being
therein united.For as the sacred anagram
Teruph shows in the Book of Keys (Numbers),the number 1
(one)is born from spirit and the number 10
(ten)from Matter:the unity has made the ten the ten the
unity ;and this is only the Pantheistic axiom
in other words God in Nature and Nature in God.
The kabalistic Gematria is arithmetical not
geometrical.It is one of the methods for extracting the hidden
meaning from letters,words and sentences.It
consists in applying to the letters of a word the sense they
bear in numbers,in outward shape as well as in
their individual sense.As illustrated by Ragon:
The figure I signified the living man (a body
erect)man being the only living being enjoying
this faculty.A head being added to it the
glyph (or letter)P was obtained meaning paternity
creative potency;the R signifying the walking
man (with his foot forward)going iens,it rus
[ Ragon Maconnerie Occulte,p.426.note.]
Gods and Numbers -
(Page 101)The characters were also made supplementary to
speech every letter being at once
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a figure representing a sound for the ear and
idea to the mind;as,for instance the letter F
which is a cutting sound like that of air
rushing quickly through space;fury fusee fugue all
words expressive of and depicting what they
signify.[Ibid.,p.432
note.]
But the above pertains to another system that
of the primitive and philosophical formation of the letters
and their outward glyphic form -not to
Gematria.The Temura is another kabalistic method by which any
word could be made to yield its mystery out of
its anagram.So in Sepher Jetzirah we read One -the
spirit of the Alahim of Lives. In the oldest
kabalistic diagrams the Sephiroth (the seven and the three)are
represented as wheels or circles,and Adam Kadmon
the primitive Man as an upright pillar.Wheels and
seraphim and the holy creatures (Chioth)says
Rabbi Akiba.In still another system of the symbolical
Kabalah called
Albath -which arranges the letters of the alphabet by pairs in three rows -all
the couples
in the first row bear the numerical value
ten;and in the system of Simeon Ben Shetah (an Alexandrian
Neoplatonist under the first Ptolemy)the
uppermost couple -the most sacred of all -is preceded by the
Pythagorean cypher:one and a nought -10.
All beings,from the first divine emanation or
God manifested down to the lowest atomic existence
have their particular number which
distinguishes each of them and becomes the source of their
attributes and qualities as of their
destiny.Chance as taught by Cornelius Agrippa is in reality only an
unknown progression;and time but a succession
of numbers.Hence futurity being a compound of
chance and time these are made to serve Occult
calculations in order to find the result of an event or
the future of one s destiny.Said Pythagoras:
There is a mysterious connection between the
Gods and numbers,on which the science of
arithmancy is based.The soul is a world that
is self-moving;the soul contains in itself and is,
the quaternary the tetraktys [the perfect cube
].
There are lucky and unlucky or beneficent and
maleficent numbers.Thus while the ternary -the first of
the odd numbers (the one being the perfect and
standing by itself in Occultism)-is the divine figure or
the triangle;the duad was disgraced by the
Pythagoreans from the (Page
102)first.It
represented Matter
the passive and evil principle -the number of
Maya illusion.
While the number one symbolized harmony
order or the good principle (the one God
expressed in Latin by Solus,from which the
word Sol the Sun the symbol of the Deity),
number two expressed a contrary
idea.The science of good and evil began with it.All that is
double false opposed to the only reality was
depicted by the binary.It also expressed the
contrasts in Nature which are always
double:night and day light and darkness,cold and heat
dampness and dryness,health and sickness,error
and truth male and female etc....The
Romans dedicated to Pluto the second month of
the year and the second day of that month to
expiations in honour of the Manes.Hence the
same rite established by the Latin Church and
faithfully copied.Pope John XIX instituted in
1003 the Festival of the Dead which had to be
celebrated on the 2 nd
of November the second month of autumn.[ Extracted from Ragon
Maconnerie Occulte.p.427 note .]
On the other hand the triangle a purely
geometrical figure had great honour shewn it by every nation
and for this reason:
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In geometry a straight line cannot represent
an absolutely perfect figure any more than two
straight lines.Three straight lines,on the
other hand produce by their junction a triangle or
the first absolutely perfect figure.Therefore
it symbolized from the first and to this day the
Eternal -the first perfection.The word for
deity in Latin as in French begins with D in Greek
the delta or triangle Ä,whose three sides
symbolize the trinity or the three kingdoms,or
again divine nature.In the middle is the
Hebrew Yod the initial of Jehovah [see Eliphas Levi s
Dogme et Rit el,i.154 ] the animating spirit or fire the generating
principle represented by the
letter G the initial of God in the northern
languages,whose philosophical significance is
generation.[ Summarised from Ragon ibid .p.428 note.]
As stated correctly by the famous Mason Ragon
the Hindu Trimurti is personified in the world of ideas by
Creation Preservation and Destruction or
Brahma Vishnu and Shiva;in the world of matter by Earth
Water and Fire or the Sun and symbolised by
the Lotus,a flower that lives by earth water and the sun.
[ Ragon mentions the curious fact that the first four numbers
in German are named after the elements.
Ein or one means the air the element which
ever in motion penetrates matter throughout and whose
continual ebb and tide is the universal
vehicle of life.
Zwei two is derived from the old German Zweig
signifying germ fecundity;it stands for earth the fecund
mother of all.
Drei three is the trienos of the
Greeks,standing for water whence the Sea-gods,Tritons:and trident the
emblem of Neptune -the water or sea in general
being called Amphitrite (surrounding water).
Vier four a number meaning in Belgiam fire
...It is in the quaternary that the first solid figure is found
the universal symbol of immortality the
Pyramid whose first syllable means fire. Lysis and Timaeus of
Loeris claimed that there was not a thing one
could name that had not the quaternary for its root...The
ingenious and mystical idea which led to the
veneration of the ternary and the triangle was applied to
number four and its figure:it was said to
express a living being I the vehicle of the triangle 4 vehicle of
God or man carrying in him the divine
principle.
Finally the Ancients represented the world by
the number five.Diodorus explains it by saying that the
number represents earth fire water air and
ether or spiritus.Hence the origin of Pente (five)and of Pan
(the God)meaning in Greek all.(Compare Ragon.op.cit.,pp.428-430.)It
is left with the Hindu
Occultists to explain the relation this
Sanskrit word Pancha (five)has to the elements the Greek Pente
having for its root the Sanskrit term.] The Lotus,sacred to Isis had the
same significance in Egypt
whereas in the Christian symbol the Lotus,not
being found in either Judaea or Europe was replaced by
the water-lily.
The Universal Language -(Page 103)In every Greek and Latin Church in all the
pictures of the
Annunciation the Archangel Gabriel is depicted
with this trinitarian symbol in his hand standing before
Mary while above the chief altar or under the
dome the Eye of the Eternal is painted within a triangle
made to replace the Hebrew Yod or God.
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Truly says Ragon there was a time when numbers
and alphabetical characters meant something more
than they do now -the images of a mere
insignificant sound.
Their mission was nobler then.Each of them
represented by its form a complete sense which
besides the meaning of the word had a double [ The system of the so-called Senzar
characters is still more wonderful and
difficult since each letter is made to yield several
meanings,a sign placed at the commencement
showing the true meaning .] interpretation
adapted to a dual doctrine.Thus when the sages
desired to write something to be understood
only by the savants,they confabulated a story
a dream or some other fictitious subject with
personal names of men and localities,that
revealed by their lettered characters the true
meaning of the author by that narrative.Such
were all their religious creations.[Ragon
Op,
cit.,p.431
note.]
Every appellation and term had its raison
d'źtre.The name of a plant or mineral denoted its nature to the
Initiate at the first glance.The essence of
everything was easily perceived by him once that it was figured
by such characters.The Chinese characters have
preserved much of this graphic and pictorial character
to this day though the secret of the full
system is lost.Nevertheless,even now there are those among
that nation who can write a long narrative a
volume on one page;and the symbols that are explained
historically allegorically and astronomically
have survived until now.
Moreover there exists a universal language
among the Initiates,which an Adept and even a disciple of
any nation may understand by reading it in his
own language.We Europeans,on the contrary possess
only one graphic sign common to all
&(and);there is a language richer in metaphysical terms than any
on earth whose every (Page 104)word is expressed by like common signs.The
Litera Pythagorae so
called the Greek Y (the English capital Y)if
traced alone in a message was as explicit as a whole page
filled with sentences,for it stood as a symbol
for a number of things -for white and black Magic,for
instance.[The Y exoterically signifies only the two paths of virtue of vice
and stands also for the
numeral 150 and with a dash over the letter Y
for 150.000.]Suppose one man
enquired of another:To
what School of Magic does so and so belong?And
the answer came back with the letter traced with the
right branch thicker than the left then it
meant to right hand or divine Magic;but if the letter was traced
in the usual way with the left branch thicker
than the right then it meant the reverse the right or left
branch being the whole biography of a man.In
Asia especially in the Devanāgarī characters,every letter
had several secret meanings.
Interpretations of the hidden sense of such
apocalyptic writings are found in the keys given in the
Kabalah and
they are among its more secret lore.St.Hieronymus assures us that they were
known to
the School of the Prophets and taught therein
which is very likely.Molitor the learned Hebraist in his
work on tradition says that:
The two and twenty letters of the Hebrew
alphabet were regarded as an emanation or the
visible expression of the divine forces
inherent in the ineffable name.
These letters find their equivalent in and are
replaced by numbers,in the same way as in the other
systems.For instance the twelfth and the sixth
letter of the alphabet yield eighteen in a name;the other
letter of that name added being always
exchanged for that figure which corresponds to the alphabetical
letter;then all those figures are subjected to
an algebraical process which transforms them again into
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letters;after which the latter yield to the
enquirer the most hidden secrets of divine Permanency (eternity
in its immutability)in the Futurity.
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SECTION XI
The Hexagon with the Central Point or The
Seventh Key
(Page 105)Arguing the virtue in names (Baalshem),Molitor
thinks it impossible to deny that the Kabalah -
its present abuses notwithstanding -has some
very profound and scientific basis to stand upon.And if it
is claimed he argues,
That before the Name of Jesus every other Name
must bend why should not the
Tetragrammaton have the same power?[ Tradition chap on Numbers.]
This is good sense and logic.For if Pythagoras
viewed the hexagon formed of two crossed triangles as
the symbol of creation and the Egyptians,as
that of the union of fire and water (or of generation),the
Essenes saw in it the seal of Solomon the Jews
the Shield of David the Hindus the sign of Vishnu (to
this day);and if even in Russia and Poland the
double triangle is regarded as a powerful talisman -then
so widespread a use argues that there is
something in it.It stands to reason indeed that such an
ancient and universally revered symbol should
not be merely laid aside to be laughed at by those who
know nothing of its virtues or real Occult
significance.To begin with even the known sign is merely a
substitute for the one used by the
Initiates.In a Tāntrika work in the British Museum a terrible curse is
called down upon the head of him who shall
ever divulge to the profane the real Occult hexagon known
as the Sign of Vishnu Solomon s Seal etc.
The great power of the hexagon -with its
central mystic sign the T or the Svastika a septenary -is well
explained in the seventh key of Things
Concealed for it says
(Page 106)The seventh key is the hieroglyph of the
sacred septenary of royalty of the
priesthood [the Initiate ] of triumph and true
result by struggle.It is magic power in all its force
the true Holy Kingdom.In the Hermetic
Philosophy it is the quintessence resulting from the
union of the two forces of the great Magic
Agent [Akāsha Astral Light.] ...It is equally Jakin
and Boaz bound by the will of the Adept and
overcome by his omnipotence.
The force of this key is absolute in Magic.All
religions have consecrated this sign in their rites.
We can only glance hurriedly at present at the
long series of antediluvian works in their postdiluvian and
fragmentary often disfigured form.Although all
of these are the inheritance from the Fourth Race -now
lying buried in the unfathomed depths of the
ocean -still they are not to be rejected.As we have shown
there was but one Science at the dawn of
mankind and it was entirely divine.If humanity on reaching its
adult period has abused it -especially the
last Sub-Races of the Fourth Root-Race -it has been the fault
and sin of the practitioners who desecrated
the divine knowledge not of those who remained true to its
pristine dogmas.It is not because the modern
Roman Catholic Church faithful to her traditional
intolerance is now pleased to see in the
Occultist and even in the innocent Spiritualist and Masons,the
descendants of the Kischuph the Hamite the
Kasdim,the Cephene the Ophite and the Khartumim -all
these being the followers of Satan that they
are such indeed.The State or National Religion of every
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country has ever and at all times very easily
disposed of rival schools by professing to believe they were
dangerous heresies -the old Roman Catholic
State Religion as much as the modern one.
The anathema however has not made the public
any the wiser in the Mysteries of the Occult Sciences.
In some respects the world is all the better
for such ignorance.The secrets of nature generally cut both
ways and in the hands of the undeserving they
are more than likely to become murderous.Who in our
modern day knows anything of the real
significance of and the powers contained in certain characters
and signs -talismans -whether for beneficent
or evil purposes?Fragments of the Runes and the writing
of the Kischuph found scattered in old
mediaeval libraries;copies from the Ephesian and Milesian letters
or characters;the thrice famous Book of
Thoth,and the terrible treatises (still preserved)of Targes,the
Chaldaean and his disciple Tarchon the
Etruscan -who flourished long before the Trojan War -are so
many names and appellations void of sense
(though met with in classical literature)for the educated
modern scholar.Who in the nineteenth century
believes in the art described in such treatises as those
of Targes,of evoking and directing
thunderbolts?
Occult Weapons -
(Page 107)Yet the same is described in the Brāhmanical
literature and Targes copied his thunderbolts
from the Astra [This is a kind of magical bow and arrow calculated to destroy in
one moment whole
armies;it is mentioned in the Ramayana,the
P ranas and elsewhere.] those
terrible engines of
destruction known to the Mahabharatan Aryans.A
whole arsenal of dynamite bombs would pale before
this art -if it ever becomes understood by the
Westerns.It is from an old fragment that was translated to
him that the late Lord Bulwer Lytton got his
idea of Vril.It is a lucky thing indeed that in the face of the
virtues and philanthropy that grace our age of
iniquitous wars,of anarchists and dynamiters,the secrets
contained in the books discovered in Numa s
tomb should have been burnt.But the science of Circe and
Medea is not lost.One can discover it in the
apparent gibberish of the Tantrika Sutras,the K ku-ma of
the Bhutani and the Sikhim Dugpas and
Red-caps of Tibet and even in the sorcery of the Nilgiri Mula
Kurumbas.Very luckily few outside the high
practioners of the Left Path and of the Adepts of the Right -
in whose hands the weird secrets of the real
meaning are safe -understand the black evocations.
Otherwise the Western as much as the Eastern
Dugpas might make short work of their enemies.The
name of the latter is legion for the direct
descendants of the antediluvian sorcerers hate all those who
are not with them arguing that therefore they
are against them.
As for the Little Albert -though even this
small half-esoteric volume has become a literary relic -and the
Great Albert or the Red Dragon together
with the numberless old copies still in existence the sorry
remains of the mythical Mother Shiptons and the
Merlins -we mean the false ones -all these are
vulgarised imitations of the original works of
the same names.Thus the Petite Albert is the disfigured
imitation of the great work written in Latin
by Bishop Adalbert an Occultist of the eighth century
sentenced by the second Roman Concilium.His
work was reprinted several centuries later and named
Alberti Parvi L cii Libell s de Mirabilib s
Nat rae Arcanis.The severities of the Roman
Church have ever
been spasmodic.While one learns of this
condemnation which placed the Church as will be shown in
relation to the Seven Archangels,the Virtues
or Thrones of God in the most embarrassing position for
long centuries,it remains a (Page 108)wonder indeed to find that the Jesuits have
not destroyed the
archives with all their countless chronicles
and annals,of the History of France and those of the Spanish
Escurial along with them.Both history and the
chronicles of the former speak at length of the priceless
talisman received by Charles the Great from a
Pope.It was a little volume on Magic -or Sorcery rather -
all full of kabalistic figures,signs
mysterious sentences and invocations to the stars and planets.These
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were talismans against the enemies of the King
(les ennemis de Charlemagne ),which talismans,the
chronicler tells us,proved of great help as
every one of them [the enemies ] died a violent death.The
small volume Enchiridin m Leonis Papie,has
disappeared and is very luckily out of print.Again the
Alphabet of Thoth can be dimly traced in the
modern Tarot which can be had at almost every bookseller s
in Paris.As for its being understood or
utilised the many fortune-tellers in Paris,who make a
professional living by it are sad specimens of
failures of attempts at reading let alone correctly
interpreting the symbolism of the Tarot
without a preliminary philosophical study of the Science.The real
Tarot in its complete symbology can be found
only in the Babylonian cylinders,that any one can inspect
and study in the British Museum and
elsewhere.Any one can see these Chaldaean antediluvian
rhombs,or revolving cylinders,covered with
sacred signs;but the secrets of these divining wheels,or
as de Mirville calls them the rotating globes
of Hecate have to be left untold for some time to come.
Meanwhile there are the turning-tables of
the modern medium for the babes,and the Kabalah for the
strong.This may afford some consolation.
People are very apt to use terms which they do
not understand and to pass judgments on prima facie
evidence.The difference between White and
Black Magic is very difficult to realise fully as both have to
be judged by their motive upon which their
ultimate though not their immediate effects depend even
though these may not come for years.Between
the right and the left hand [Magic ] there is but a cobweb
thread says an Eastern proverb.Let us abide
by its wisdom and wait till we have learned more.
We shall have to return at greater length to
the relation of the Kabalah to Gupta Vidya and to deal further
with esoteric and numerical systems,but we
must first follow the line of Adepts in post Christian times.
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SECTION XII
The Duty of the True Occultist Toward
Religions
(Page 109)HAVING disposed of pre-Christian Initiates and
their Mysteries -though more has to be said
about the latter -a few words must be given to
the earliest post-Christian Adepts irrespective of their
personal belief and doctrines,or their
subsequent places in History whether sacred or profane.Our task
is to analyse this adeptship with its abnormal
thaumaturgical or as now called psychological powers;to
give each of such Adepts his due by
considering firstly what are the historical records about them that
have reached us at this late day and secondly
to examine the laws of probability with regard to the said
powers.
And at the outset the writer must be allowed a
few words in justification of what has to be said.It would
be most unfair to see in these pages,any
defiance to or disrespect for the Christian religion -least of all
a desire to wound anyone s feelings.The
Theosophist believes in neither Divine nor Satanic miracles.At
such a distance of time he can only obtain prima
facie evidence and judge of it by the results claimed.
There is neither Saint nor Sorcerer Prophet
nor Soothsayer for him;only Adepts,or proficients in the
production of feats of a phenomenal character
to be judged by their words and deeds.The only
distinction he is now able to trace depends on
the results achieved -on the evidence whether they were
beneficent or maleficent in their character as
affecting those for or against whom the powers of the Adept
were used.With the division so arbitrarily
made between proficients in miraculous doings of this or that
Religion by their respective followers and
advocates,the Occultist cannot and must not be concerned.
The Christian whose Religion commands (Page 110)him to regard Peter and Paul as Saints,and
divinely
inspired and glorified Apostles,and to view
Simon and Apollonius as Wizards and Necromancers,helped
by and serving the ends of supposed Evil
Powers -is quite justified in thus doing if he be a sincere
orthodox Christian.But so also is the
Occultist justified if he would serve truth and only truth in rejecting
such a one-sided view.The student of Occultism
must belong to no special creed or sect yet he is bound
to show outward respect to every creed and
faith if he would become an Adept of the Good Law.He
must not be bound by the prejudged and
sectarian opinions of anyone and he has to form his own
opinions and to come to his own conclusions in
accordance with the rules of evidence furnished to him
by the Science to which he is devoted.Thus,if
the Occultist is,by way of illustration a Buddhist then
while regarding Gautama Buddha as the grandest
of all the Adepts that lived and the incarnation of
unselfish love boundless charity and moral
goodness,he will regard in the same light Jesus -
proclaiming Him another such incarnation of
every divine virtue.He will reverence the memory of the
great Martyr even while refusing to recognise
in Him the incarnation on earth of the One Supreme Deity
and the Very God of Gods in Heaven.He will
cherish the ideal man for his personal virtues,not for the
claims made on his behalf by fanatical
dreamers of the early ages,or by a shrewd calculating Church
and Theology.He will even believe in most of
the assorted miracles,only explaining them in
accordance with the rules of his own Science
and by his psychic discernment.Refusing them the term
miracle -in the theological sense of an
event contrary to the established laws of nature -he will
nevertheless view them as a deviation from the
laws known (so far)to Science quite another thing.
Moreover the Occultist will on the prima
facie evidence of the Gospels -whether proven or not -class
most of such works as beneficent divine
Magic,though he will be justified in regarding such events as
casting out devils into a herd of swine [ Matthew,viii.30-34.] as allegorical and as pernicious to
true faith
in their dead-letter sense.This is the view a
genuine impartial Occultist would take.And in this respect
even the fanatical Mussulmans who regard Jesus
of Nazareth as a great Prophet and show respect to
Him are giving a wholesome lesson in charity
to Christians,who teach and accept that religious
tolerance is impious and absurd [ Dogmatic Theology,iii.345.] and who will never refer to the
prophet
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of Islam by any other term but that of a
false prophet.
Christian and Non-Christian Adepts -(Page 111)It is on the principles of Occultism then that
Peter and
Simon Paul and Apollonius,will now be
examined.
These four Adepts are chosen to appear in
these pages with good reason.They are the first in post-
Christian Adeptship -as recorded in profane
and sacred writings -to strike the key-note of miracles,
that is of psychic and physical phenomena.It
is only theological bigotry and intolerance that could so
maliciously and arbitrarily separate the two
harmonious parts into two distinct manifestations of Divine
and Satanic Magic,into godly and ungodly
works.
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SECTION XIII
Post-Christian Adepts and Their Doctrines
(Page 112)WHAT does the world at large know of Peter and
Simon for example?Profane history has no
record of these two while that which the
so-called sacred literature tells us of them is scattered about
contained in a few sentences in the Acts .As
to the Apocrypha their very name forbids critics to trust to
them for information.The Occultists,however
claim that one-sided and prejudiced as they may be the
apocryphal Gospels contain far more
historically true events and facts than does the New Testament the
Acts included.The
former are crude tradition the latter [the official Gospels ] are an
elaborately made up
legend.The sacredness of the New Testament is
a question of private belief and of blind faith and while
one is bound to respect the private opinion of
one s neighbour no one is forced to share it.
Who was Simon Magus,and what is known of
him?One learns in the Acts simply that on account of his
remarkable magical Arts he was called the
Great Power of God. Philip is said to have baptised this
Samaritan;and subsequently he is accused of
having offered money to Peter and John to teach him the
power of working true miracles, false
ones,it is asserted being of the Devil [
viii.9 10.] This is all
if we
omit the words of abuse freely used against
him for working miracles of the latter kind.Origen mentions
him as having visited Rome during the reign of
Nero [ Adv.Celsum.] and Mosheim places him along the
open enemies of Christianity;[ Eccles.Hist.,i.140.] but Occult tradition accuses him of
nothing worse
than refusing to recognise Simeon as
Vicegerent of God whether that Simeon was Peter or anyone
else being still left an open question with
the critics.
Unfair Criticism -(Page 113)That which Irenaeus [Contra Haereses,1.xxiii.1-4.]
and Epiphanius [
Comtra Haereses,ii 1-6.] say
of Simon Magus -namely that he represented himself as the incarnated
trinity;that in Samaria he was the Father in
Judaea the Son and had given himself out to the Gentiles as
the Holy Spirit -is simply backbiting.Times
and events change;human nature remains the same and
unaltered under every sky and in every age.The
charge is the result and product of the traditional and
now classical odi m theologic m.No
Occultists -all of whom have experienced personally more or less,
the effects of theological rancour -will ever
believe such things merely on the word of an Irenaeus,if
indeed he ever wrote the words himself.Further
on it is narrated of Simon that he took about with him a
woman whom he introduced as Helen of Troy who
had passed through a hundred reincarnations,and
who still earlier in the beginning of
aeons,was Sophia Divine Wisdom an emanation of his own
(Simon s)Eternal Mind when he (Simon)was the
Father ;and finally that by her he had begotten the
Archangels and Angels,by whom this world was
created etc.
Now we all know to what a degree of
transformation and luxuriant growth any bare statement can be
subjected and forced after passing through
only half a dozen hands.Moreover all these claims may be
explained and even shown to be true at bottom
Simon Magus was a Kabalist and a Mystic,who like so
many other reformers,endeavoured to found a
new Religion based on the fundamental teachings of the
Secret Doctrine yet without divulging more
than necessary of its mysteries.Why then should not Simon
a Mystic deeply imbued with the fact of serial
incarnations (we may leave out the number one hundred
as a very probable exaggeration of his
disciples),speak of any one whom he knew psychically as an
incarnation of some heroine of that name and
in the way he did -if he ever did so?Do we not find in our
own century some ladies and gentlemen not
charlatans but intellectual persons highly honoured in
society whose inner conviction assures them
that they were -one Queen Cleopatra another one
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Alexander the Great a third Joan of Arc,and
who or what not?This is a matter of inner conviction and is
based on more or less familiarity with Occultism
and belief in the modern theory of reincarnation.The
latter differs from the one genuine doctrine
of old as will be shown but there is no rule without its
exception.
(Page 114)As to the Magus being one with God the Father
God the Son and God the Holy Ghost this
again is quite reasonable if we admit that a
Mystic and Seer has a right to use allegorical language;and
in this case moreover it is quite justified by
the doctrine of Universal Unity taught in Esoteric Philosophy.
Every Occultist will say the same on (to
him)scientific and logical grounds,in full accordance with the
doctrine he professes.Not a Vedantin but says
the same thing daily:he is,of course Brahman and he is
Parabrahman once that he rejects the
individuality of his personal spirit and recognizes the Divine Ray
which dwells in his Higher Self as only a
reflection of the Universal Spirit.This is the echo in all times and
ages of the primitive doctrine of
Emanations.The first Emanation from the Unknown is the Father [Op
cit.,ii.337.] the second the Son and all and
everything proceeds from the One or that Divine Spirit
which is unknowable.Hence the assertion that
by her (Sophia or Minerva the Divine Wisdom)he
(Simon),when yet in the bosom of the Father
himself the Father (or the first collective Emanation),begot
the Archangels -the Son -who were the
creators of this world.
The Roman Catholics themselves,driven to the
wall by the irrefutable arguments of their opponents -the
learned Philologists and Symbologists who pick
to shreds Church dogmas and their authorities,and point
out the plurality of the Elohim in the Bible
-admit today that the first creation of God the Tsaba or
Archangels,must have participated in the
creation of the universe.Might not we suppose:
Although God alone created the heaven and the
earth ...that however unconnected they
[the angels ] may have been with the
primordial ex nihilo creation they may have received a
mission to achieve to continue and to sustain
it?[ Op cit.,ii.337.]
exclaims De Mirville in answer to Renan Lacour
Maury and the t tti q anti of the French Institute.With
certain alterations it is precisely this which
is claimed by the Secret Doctrine.In truth there is not a single
doctrine preached by the many Reformers of the
first and the subsequent centuries of our era that did
not base its initial teachings on this
universal cosmogony.Consult Mosheim and see what he has to say
of the many heresies he
describes.Cerinthus,the Jew
Taught that the Creator of this world ...the
Sovereign God of the Jewish people was a
Being ...who derived his birth from the
Supreme God;
that this Being moreover
Fell by degrees from his native virtue and
primitive dignity.
The Two Eternal Principles -(Page 115)Basildes,Carpocrates and Valentinus,the
Egyptian Gnostics of
the second century held the same ideas with a
few variations.Basilides preached seven Aeons (Hosts or
Archangels),who issued from the substance of
the Supreme.Two of them Power and Wisdom begot
the heavenly hierarchy of the first class and
dignity;this emanated a second;the latter a third and so on;
each subsequent evolution being of a nature
less exalted than the precedent and each creating for itself
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a Heaven as a dwelling the nature of each of
these respective Heavens decreasing in splendour and
purity as it approached nearer to the
earth.Thus the number of these Dwellings amounted to 365;and
over all presided the Supreme Unknown called
Abraxas,a name which in the Greek method of
numeration yields the number 365 which in its
mystic and numerical meaning contains the number 355
or the man value [Ten is the perfect number of the Supreme God among the manifested
deities,for
number "I"is the symbol of the
Universal Unit or male principle in Nature and a number "0"the
feminine
symbol Chaos,the Deep the two forming thus the
symbol of Androgyne nature as well as the full value
of the solar year which was also the value of
Jehovah and Enoch.Ten with Pythagoras,was the symbol
of the Universe;also of Enos,the Son of Seth
or the Son of Man who stands as the symbol of the solar
year of 365 days and whose years are therefore
given as 365 also.In the Egyptian Symbology Abraxas
was the Sun the Lord of the Heavens.The
Circle is the symbol of the one Unmanifesting Principle the
plane of whose figure is infinitude eternally
and this is crossed by a diameter only during Manvantaras.]
This was a Gnostic Mystery based upon that of
primitive Evolution which ended with man.
Saturnilus of Antioch promulgated the same
doctrine slightly modified.He taught two eternal principles,
Good and Evil which are simply Spirit and
Matter.The seven Angels who preside over the seven Planets
are the Builders of our Universe -a purely
Eastern doctrine as Saturnilus was an Asiatic Gnostic.These
Angels are the natural Guardians of the seven
Regions of our Planetary System one of the most
powerful among these seven creating Angels of
the third order being Saturn the presiding genius of the
Planet and the God of the Hebrew people:namely
Jehovah who was venerated among the Jews,and
to whom they dedicated the seventh day or
Sabbath Saturday -Saturn s day among the Scandinavians
and also among the Hindus.
Marcion who also held the doctrine of the two
opposed principles of Good and Evil asserted that there
was a third Deity between the two -one of a
mixed nature -the God of the Jews,the Creator (with his
Host)of the lower or our World.Though ever at
war with the Evil (Page
116)Principle
this intermediate
Being was nevertheless also opposed to the
Good Principle whose place and title he coveted.
Thus Simon was only the son of his time a
religious Reformer like so many others,and an Adept among
the Kabalists.The Church to which a belief in
his actual existence and great powers is a necessity -in
order the better to set off the miracle
performed by Peter and his triumph over Simon -extols
unstintingly his wonderful magic feats.On the
other hand Scepticism represented by scholars and
learned critics,tries to make away with him
altogether.Thus,after denying the very existence of Simon
they have finally thought fit to merge his
individuality entirely in that of Paul.The anonymous author of
S pernat ral Religion assiduously endeavoured to prove that by Simon Magus we must
understand the
Apostle Paul whose Epistles were
secretly as well as openly calumniated and opposed by Peter and
charged with containing dysnoetic learning.
Indeed this seems more than probable when we think of the
two Apostles and contrast their characters.
The Apostle of the Gentiles was brave
outspoken sincere and very learned;the Apostle of
Circumcision cowardly cautious,insincere and
very ignorant.That Paul had been partially at
least if not completely initiated into the
theurgic mysteries,admits of little doubt.His
language the phraseology so peculiar to the
Greek philosophers,certain expressions used
only by the Initiates,are so many sure
earmarks to that supposition.Our suspicion has been
strengthened by an able article entitled Paul
and Plato by Dr.A.Wilder in which the author
puts forward one remarkable and for us,very
precious observation.In the Epistles to the
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Corinthians he shows Paul abounding with expressions suggested by the
initiations of
Sabazius and Eleusis,and the lectures of the
(Greek)philosophers.He (Paul)designates
himself as idiotes -a person unskilful
in the Word but not in the gnosis or philosophical
learning.We speak wisdom among the perfect or
initiated he writes,even the hidden
wisdom not
the wisdom of this world nor of the Archons of this world but divine wisdom in
a
mystery secret -which none of the Archons
of this world knew.[I.Cor.,ii.6-8.]
What else can the Apostle mean by those
unequivocal words,but that he himself as
belonging to the Mystae (Initiated),spoke of
things shown and explained only in the
Mysteries?The divine wisdom in a mystery
which none of the Archons of this world knew,
has evidently some direct reference to the
Basileus of the Eleusinian Initiation who did know.
The Basileus belonged to the staff of the
great Hierophant and was an Archon of Athens,and
as such was one of the chief Mystae belonging
to the interior Mysteries,to which a very select
and small number obtained an entrance.[ Compare Taylor s Ele sinian and
Bacchic
Mysteries.] The
magistrates supervising the Eleusinia were called Archons.[ Isis Unveiled.ii.
89.]
We will deal however first with Simon the
Magician.
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SECTION XIV
Simon and His Biographer Hippolytus
(Page 117)AS shown in our earlier volumes,Simon was a
pupil of the Tanaim of Samaria and the
reputation he left behind him together with
the title of the Great Power of God testify in favour of the
ability and learning of his Masters.But the
Tanaim were Kabalists of the same secret school as John of
the Apocalypse whose careful aim it was
to conceal as much as possible the real meaning of the names
in the Mosiac Books.Still the calumnies so
jealously disseminated against Simon Magus by the unknown
authors and compilers of the Acts and
other writings,could not cripple the truth to such an extent as to
conceal the fact that no Christian could rival
him in thaumaturgic deeds.The story told about his falling
during an aerial flight breaking both his legs
and then committing suicide is ridiculous.Posterity has
heard but one side of the story.Were the
disciples of Simon to have a chance we might perhaps find that
it was Peter who broke his legs.But as against
this hypothesis we know that this Apostle was too prudent
ever to venture himself in Rome.On the
confession of several ecclesiastical writers,no Apostle ever
performed such supernatural wonders, but of
course pious people will say this only the more proves
that it was the Devil who worked through
Simon.He was accused of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost
only because he introduced as the Holy
Spiritus the Men's (Intelligence)or the Mother of all. But we
find the same expression used in the Book
of Enoch,in which in contradistinction to the Son of Man
he speaks of the Son of the Woman.In the Codex
of the Nazarenes,and in the Zohar as well as in the
Books of Hermes the same expression is used;and even in the apocryphal Evangeli
m of the Hebrews
we read that Jesus admitted the female sex of
the Holy Ghost by using the expression My Mother the
Holy Pneuma.
(Page 118)After long ages of denial however the actual
existence of Simon Magus has been finally
demonstrated whether he was Saul Paul or
Simon.A manuscript speaking of him under the last name
has been discovered in Greece and has put a
stop to any further speculation.
In his Histoire des Trois Premiers Siecles
de L Eglise,[ Op.cit.,ii.395.]M.de Pressensé gives his
opinion on this additional relic of early
Christianity.Owing to the numerous myths with which the history
of Simon abounds -he says -many Theologians
(among Protestants,he ought to have added)have
concluded that it was no better than a clever
tissue of legends.But he adds:
It contains positive facts,it seems,now
warranted by the unanimous testimony of the Fathers
of the Church and the narrative of Hippolytus
recently discovered.[ Quoted by
De Mirville.Op
cit.,vi.41
and 42.]
This MS.is very far from being complimentary
to the alleged founder of Western Gnosticism.While
recognizing great powers in Simon it brands
him as a priest of Satan -which is quite enough to show
that it was written by a Christian.It also
shows that like another servant of the Evil One -as Manes is
called by the Church -Simon was a baptised Christian;but
that both being too well versed in the
mysteries of true primitive Christianity
were persecuted for it.The secret of such persecution was then
as it is now quite transparent to those who
study the question impartially.Seeking to preserve his
independence Simon could not submit to the
leadership or authority of any of the Apostles,least of all to
that of either Peter or John the fanatical
author of the Apocalypse.Hence charges of heresy followed by
anathema maranatha.The persecutions by the
Church were never directed against Magic,when it was
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orthodox;for the new Theurgy established and
regulated by the Fathers,now known to Christendom as
grace and miracles,was and is still when
it does happen only Magic -whether conscious or
unconscious.Such phenomena as have passed to
posterity under the name of divine miracles were
produced though powers acquired by great
purity of life and ecstacy.Prayer and contemplation added to
asceticism are the best means of discipline in
order to become a Theurgist where there is no regular
initiation.For intense prayer for the
accomplishment of some object is only intense will and desire
resulting in unconscious Magic.In our own day
George Muller of Bristol has proved it.But divine
miracles are produced by the same causes that
generate effects of Sorcery.
Uneven Balances -(Page 119)The whole difference rests on the good or evil effects aimed
at and on the
actor who produces them.The thunders of the
Church were directed only against those who dissented
from the formulae and attributed to themselves
the production of certain marvellous effects,instead of
fathering them on a personal God;and thus
while those Adepts in Magic Arts who acted under her direct
instructions and auspices were proclaimed to
posterity and history as saints and friends of God all others
were hooted out of the Church and sentenced to
eternal calumny and curses from their day to this.
Dogma and authority have ever been the curse
of humanity the great extinguishers of light and truth.[
Mr.St.George Lane-Fox has admirably expressed
the idea in his eloquent appeal to the many rival
schools and societies in India. I feel sure
he said that the prime motive however dimly perceived by
which you as the promoters of these
movements,were actuated was a revolt against the tyrannical and
almost universal establishment throughout all
existing social and so-called religious institutions of a
usurped authority in some external form
supplanting and obscuring the only real and ultimate authority
the indwelling spirit of truth revealed to
each individual soul true conscience in fact that supreme source
of all human wisdom and power which elevates
man above the level of the brute.(To the Members of
the Aryan Samāj,the Theosophical
Society,Brahmo and Hind Samaj and other Religio s and
Progressive Societies in India.)]
It was perhaps the recognition of a germ of
that which later on in the then nascent Church grew into the
virus of insatiate power and ambition
culminating finally in the dogma of infallibility that forced Simon
and so many others,to break away from her at
her very birth.Sects and dissensions began with the first
century.While Paul rebukes Peter to his face
John slanders under the veil of vision the Nicolaitans,and
makes Jesus declare that he hates them.[Revelation,ii.6.] Therefore we pay little attention to
the
accusations against Simon in the MS.found in
Greece.
It is entitled Philosoph mena .Its
author regarded as Saint Hippolytus by the Greek Church is referred to
as an unknown heretic by the Papists only
because he speaks in it very slanderously of Pope
Callistus,also a Saint.Nevertheless,Greeks and
Latins agree in declaring the Philosoph mena to be an
extraordinary and very erudite work.Its
antiquity and genuineness have been vouched for by the best
authorities of Tubingen.
Whoever the author may have been he expresses
himself about Simon in this wise:
Simon a man well versed in magic arts,deceived
many persons partly by the (Page 120)art of
Thrasymedes,[This art is not common jugglery as some define it now:it s a
kind of
psychological jugglery if jugglery at all
where fascination and glamour are used as means of
producing illusions.It is hypnotism on a large
scale.] and partly with the
help of demons.[ The
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author asserts in this his Christian
persuasion.]...He determined to
pass himself off as a
god...Aided by his wicked arts,he turned to
profit not only the teachings of Moses,but those
of the poets ...His disciples use to this day
his charms.Thanks to incantations,to philtres,to
their attractive caresses [ Magnetic passes,evidently followed
by a trance and sleep.] and
what they call sleeps,they send demons to
influence all those whom they would fascinate.
With this object they employ what they call
familiar demons.[ Elementals
used by the
highest Adept to do mechanical not
intellectual work as a physicist uses gases and other
compounds.]
Further on the MS.reads:
The Magus (Simon)made those who wished to
enquire of the demon write what their
question was on a leaf of
parchment;this,folded in four was thrown into a burning brazier in
order that the smoke should reveal the
contents of the writing to the Spirit (demon)(Philos.,IV.
IV.)Incense was thrown by handfuls on the
blazing coals,the Magus adding on pieces of
papyrus,the Hebrew names of the Spirits he was
addressing and the flame devoured all.
Very soon the divine Spirit seemed to
overwhelm the Magician who uttered unintelligible
invocations,and plunged in such a state he
answered every question -phantasmal apparitions
being often raised over the flaming brazier (ibid
.iii.);at other times fire descended from
heaven upon objects previously pointed out by
the Magician (ibid.);or again the deity evoked
crossing the room would trace fiery orbs in
its flight.(ibid .ix.).[Quoted
from De Mirville.
op.cit.,vi.43.]
So far the above statements agree with those
of Anastasius the Sinaļte:
People saw Simon causing statues to
walk;precipitating himself into the flames without being
burnt;metamorphosing his body into that of
various animals [lycanthropy ];raising at banquets
phantoms and spectres;ca sing the f rnit re
in the rooms to move abo t,by invisible spirits .
He gave out that he was escorted by a number
of shades to whom he gave the name of souls
of the dead.Finally he used to fly in the air
...(Anast.Patrol,Grecq e,vol.lxxxix.col.523
quaest.xx.).[ Ibid.,vi.45 .]
Suetonius says in his Nero,
In those days an Icarus fell at his first
ascent near Nero s box and covered it with his blood.[
Ibid.,p.46.]
This sentence referring evidently to some
unfortunate acrobat who missed his footing and tumbled is
brought forward as a proof that it was Simon
who fell.[ Amédée Fleury.Rapports
de St.Pa l avec
Sénčq e.ii.100.The
whole of this is summarised from De Mirville.]
Stones as Evidences.-(Page 121)But the latter s name is surely too famous,if one must
credit the
Church Fathers,for the historian to have
mentioned him simply as an Icarus. The writer is quite aware
that there exists in Rome a locality names
Simonium near the Church of SS.Cosmas and Daimanus
(Via Sacra),and the ruins of the ancient
temple of Romulus,where the broken pieces of a stone on
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which it is alleged the two knees of the
Apostle Peter were impressed in thanksgiving after his supposed
victory over Simon are shown to this day.But
what does this exhibition amount to?For the broken
fragments of one stone the Buddhists of Ceylon
show a whole rock on Adam s Peak with another imprint
upon it.A crag stands upon its platform a
terrace of which supports a huge boulder and on the boulder
rests for nearly three thousand years the
sacred footprint of a foot five feet long.Why not credit the
legend of the latter if we have to accept that
of St.Peter?Prince of Apostles,or Prince of Reformers,
or even the First-born of Satan as Simon is
called all are entitled to legends and fictions.One may be
allowed to discriminate however.
That Simon could fly i.e.,raise himself
in the air for a few minutes,is no impossibility.Modern mediums
have performed the same feat supported by a
force that Spiritualists persist in calling spirits.But if
Simon did so it was with the help of a
self-acquired blind power that heeds little the prayers and
commands of rival Adepts,let alone Saints.The
fact is that logic is against the supposed fall of Simon at
the prayer of Peter.For had he been defeated
publicly by the Apostle his disciples would have
abandoned him after such an evident sign of
inferiority and would have become orthodox Christians.But
we find even the author of Philosoph mena,just
such a Christian showing otherwise.Simon had lost so
little credit with his pupils and the
masses,that he went on daily preaching in the Roman Campania after
his supposed fall from the clouds far above
the Capitolium in which fall he broke his legs only!Such a
lucky fall is in itself sufficiently
miraculous,one would say.
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SECTION XV
St.Paul the Real Founder of Present
Christianity
(Page 122)We may repeat with the author of Phallicism:
We are all for construction -even for Christian,although
of course philosophical construction.
We have nothing to do with reality in man s
limited mechanical scientific sense or with
realism .We
have undertaken to show that mysticism is the very life and soul of religion;[ But
we can never agree with the author that rites
and ritual and formal worship and prayers are of
absolute necessity of things,for the external
can develop and grow and receive worship only
at the expense of and to the detriment of the
internal the only real and true.]...that
the
Bible is only misread and misrepresented
when rejected as advancing supposed fab lo s and
contradictory things;that Moses did not make mistakes,but spoke to the children
of men in
the only way in which children in their
nonage can be addressed;that the world is indeed a
very different place from that which it is
assumed to be;that what is derided as superstition is
the only true and the only scientific knowledge
and moreover that modern knowledge and
modern science are to a great extent not only superstition,but
superstition of a very
destructive and deadly kind.[ H.Jennings,op.cit.,pp.37.38.]
All this is perfectly true and correct.But it
is also true that the New Testament the Acts and the Epistles
-
however much the historical figure of Jesus
may be true -all are symbolical and allegorical sayings,and
that it was not Jesus but Paul who was the
real founder of Christianity;[See
Isis Unveiled ii.574.] but
it
was not the official Church Christianity at
any rate.The disciples were called Christians first in Antioch
the Acts of the Apostles tell us,[ xi.26.] and they were not so called before nor for a long time after but
simply Nazarenes.
This view is found in more than one writer of
the present and the past centuries.But hitherto it has
always been laid aside as an unproven
hypothesis,a blasphemous assumption;though as the author of
Pa l,the Fo nder of Christianity [Art
by Dr.A.Wilder in Evol tion .] truly says:
Abrogation of Law by Initiates -
(Page 123)Such men as Irenaeus,Epiphanius and Eusebius
have transmitted to posterity a
reputation for such untruth and dishonest
practices that the heart sickens at the story of the
crimes of that period.
The more so since the whole Christian scheme
rests upon their sayings.But we find now another
corroboration and this time on the perfect
reading of biblical glyphs.In The So rce of Measures we find
the following:
It must be borne in mind that our present
Christianity is Pa line,not Jesus.Jesus,in his life
was a Jew conforming to the law;even more He
says:The scribes and pharisees sit in
Moses seat;whatsoever therefore they command
you to do that observe and do.And again:
I did not come to destroy but to fulfil the
law Therefore he was under the law to the day of
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his death and could not while in life abrogate
one jot or title of it.He was circumcised and
commanded circumcision.But Paul said of
circumcision that it availed nothing and he (Paul)
abrogated the law.Sa l and Pa l -that
is,Saul under the law and Paul freed from the
obligations of the law -were in one man but
parallelisms in the flesh of Jesus the man under
the law as observing it who thus died in Chrestos
and arose freed from its obligations,in the
spirit world as Christos,or the
triumphant Christ.It was the Christ who was freed but Christ
was the Spirit.Saul in the flesh was the
function of and parallel of Chrestos.Paul in the flesh
was the function and parallel of Jesus become
Christ in the spirit as an early reality to answer
to and act for the apotheosis;and so
armed with all authority in the flesh to abrogate human
law.[ Op.cit.,p.262.]
The real reason why Paul is shown as
abrogating the law can be found only in India where to this day
the most ancient customs and privileges are
preserved in all their purity notwithstanding the abuse
levelled at the same.There is only one class
of persons who can disregard the law of Brāhmanical
institutions,caste included with impunity and
that is the perfect Svāmis,the Yogis -who have reached
or are supposed to have reached the first step
towards the Jivanmukta state -or the full Initiates.And
Paul was undeniably an Initiate.We will quote
a passage or two from Iris Unveiled,for we can say now
nothing better than what was said then:
Take Paul read the little of original that is
left of him in the writings attributed to this brave
honest sincere man and see whether anyone can
find a word therein to show that Paul
meant by the word Christ anything more than
the abstract ideal of the personal divinity
indwelling in man.For Paul Christ is not a
person but (Page 124)an embodied
idea.If any
man is in Christ he is a new creation he
is reborn,as after initiation for the Lord is spirit -the
spirit of man.Paul was the only one of the
apostles who had understood the secret ideas
underlying the teachings of Jesus,although he
had never met him.
But Paul himself was not infallible or
perfect.
Bent upon inaugurating a new and broad reform
one embracing the whole of humanity he
sincerely set his own doctrines far above the
wisdom of the ages,above the ancient Mysteries
and final revelation to the Epoptae.
Another proof that Paul belonged to the circle
of the Initiates lies in the following fact.The
apostle had his head shorn at Cenchreae where
Lucius (Ap lei s)was initiated because he
had a vow.The Nazars -or set apart -as we see
in the Jewish Scriptures,had to cut their
hair which they wore long and which no razor
touched at any other time and sacrifice it on
the altar of initiation.And the Nazars were a
class of Chaldaean Theurgists or Initiates.
It is shown in Isis Unveiled that Jesus
belonged to this class.
Paul declares that:According to the grace of
God which is given unto me as a wise master-
b ilder I
have laid the foundation.(1.Corinth.,iii.10.)
The expression master-builder used only once
in the whole Bible,and by Paul may be
considered as a whole revelation.In the
Mysteries,the third part of the sacred rites was called
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Epoteia or revelation reception into the
secrets.In substance it means the highest stage of
clairvoyance -the diviner;...but the real
significance of the word is overseeing from
óšōļģįé -I see myself. In Sanskrit
the root āp had the same meaning originally though now
it is understood as meaning to obtain.[ In its most extensive meaning the
Sanskrit word has
the same literal sense as the Greek term:both
imply revelation by no human agent but
through the receiving of the sacred drink.In
India the initiated receive the Soma sacred
drink,which helped to liberate his soul from
the body:and in the Eleusinian Mysteries it was
the sacred drink offered at the Epopteia.The
Grecian Mysteries are wholly derived from the
Brahmanical Vaidic rites,and the latter from
the Ante-Vaidic religious Mysteries -primitive
Wisdom Philosophy.]
The word epopteia is compound from åšé
upon and óšōļģįé-to look, or an overseer an
inspector -also used for a master-builder.The
title of master-mason in Freemasonry is
derived from this,in the sense used in the
Mysteries.Therefore when Paul entitles himself a
master-builder he is using a word
pre-eminently kabalistic,theurgic,and masonic,and one
which no other apostle uses.He thus declares
himself an adept having the right to initiate
others.
If we search in this direction with those sure
guides,the Grecian Mysteries and the Kabalah,before us,it
will be easy to find the secret reason why
Paul was so persecuted and hated by Peter John and James.
The author of the Revelation was a
Jewish Kabalist p r sang,with all the hatred inherited by him from
his forefathers toward the Pagan Mysteries.[ It is needless to state that the Gospel
according to John
was not written by John but by a Platonist or
a Gnostic belonging to the Neoplatonic school.] His
jealousy during the life of Jesus extended
even to Peter;and it is but after the death of their common
master that we see the two apostles -the
former of whom wore the Mitre and the Petaloon of the Jewish
Rabbis -preach so zealously the rite of
circumcision.
Paul Changed to Simon -(Page 125)In the eyes of Peter Paul who had humiliated him and whom he
felt so much his superior in Greek learning
and philosophy must have naturally appeared as a
magician a man polluted with the Gnosis,with
the wisdom of the Greek Mysteries -hence perhaps,
Simon the Magician as a comparison not a
nickname.[Ibid.,loc.cit.The
fact that Peter persecuted the
Apostle of the Gentiles under that name does
not necessarily imply that there was no Simon Magus
individually distinct from Paul.It may have
become a generic name of abuse.Theodoret and
Chrysostom the earliest and most prolific
commentators on the Gnosticism of those days seem actually
to make of Simon a rival of Paul and to state
that between them passed frequent messages.The former
as a diligent propagandist of what Paul terms
the antithesis of the Gnosis (I Epistle to Timothy ),must
have been a sore thorn in the side of the
apostle.There are sufficient proofs of the actual existence of
Simon Magus.]
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SECTION XVI
Peter a Jewish Kabalist Not an Initiate
(Page 126)As to Peter biblical criticism has shown that
in all probability he had no more to do with the
foundation of the Latin Church at Rome than to
furnish the pretext so readily seized upon by the cunning
Irenaeus,of endowing the Church with a new
name for the Apostle -Petra or Kiffa -a name which by an
easy play upon words,could be readily
connected to Petroma.The Petroma was a pair of stone tablets
used by the Hierophants at the
Initiations,during the final Mystery.In this lies concealed the secret of the
Vatican claim to the seat of Peter.As already
quoted in Isis Unveiled,ii.92:
In the Oriental countries the designation
Peter (in Phoenician and Chaldaic an interpreter),
appears to have been the title of this
personage.[Taylor s Ele
sinian and Bacchic Mysteries,
Wilder s ed.p.x.]
So far and as the interpreters of Neo-Christianism,the
Popes have most undeniably the right to call
themselves successors to the title of Peter
but hardly the successors to least of all the interpreters of
the doctrines of Jesus,the Christ;for there is
the Oriental Church older and far purer than the Roman
hierarchy which having ever faithfully held to
the primitive teachings of the Apostles,is known
historically to have refused to follow the
Latin seceders from the original Apostolic Church though
curiously enough she is still referred to by
her Roman sister as the Schismatic Church.It is useless to
repeat the reasons for the statements above
made as they may all be found in Isis Unveiled [ ii.91-94.]
where the words,Peter Patar and Pitar are
explained and the origin of the Seat of Pitah is shown.
The reader will find upon referring to the
above pages that an inscription was found on the coffin of
Queen Mentuhept of the Eleventh Dynasty (2250
B.C.according to Bunsen),which in its turn was shown
to have been transcribed from the Seventeenth
Chapter of the Book of the Dead,dating certainly not
later than 4500 B.C.or 496 years before the
World s Creation in the Genesiacal chronology.
The Seat of Peter -(Page 127)Nevertheless,Baron Bunsen shows the group of the
hieroglyphics given
(Peter-ref-s ,the Mystery Word )and
the sacred formulary mixed up with a whole series of glosses and
various interpretations on a monument 4 000
years old.
This is identical with saying that the record
(the true interpretation)was at that time no longer
intelligible ...We beg our readers to
understand that a sacred text a hymn containing the
words of a departed spirit existed in such a
state about 4.000 years ago as to be all but
unintelligible to royal scribes.[ Bunsen Egypt s Place in History.v.90.]
Unintelligible to the non-initiated -this is
certain;and it is so proved by the confused and contradictory
glosses.Yet there can be no doubt that it was
-for it still is -a mystery word.The Baron further explains:
It appears to me that our PTR is literally the
old Aramaic and Hebrew Patar which occurs in
the history of Joseph as the specific word for
interpreting whence also Pitrum is the term for
interpretation of a text a dream.
This word PTR was partially interpreted owing
to another word similarly written in another group of
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hieroglyphics,on a stele the glyph used for it
being an opened eye interpreted by De Rougé [ Stele,
p.44.]
as to appear and by Bunsen as illuminator which is more
correct.However it may be the word
Patar or Peter would locate both master and
disciple in the circle of initiation and connect them with the
Secret Doctrine;while in the Seat of Peter
we can hardly help seeing a connection with Petroma the
double set of stone tablets used by the
Hierophant at the Supreme Initiation during the final Mystery as
already stated also with the Pitha-sthāna
(seat or the place of a seat),a term used in the Mysteries of
the Tantriks in India in which the limbs of
the Satī are scattered and then united again as those of Osiris
by Isis.[ See Dowson s Hind Classical Dict.,sub voc.,Pitha-sthānam.] Pitha is a Sanskrit word and is
also used to designate the seat of the
initiating Lama.
Whether all the above terms are due simply to
coincidences or otherwise is left to the decision of our
learned Symbologists and Philologists.We state
facts -and nothing more.Many other writers far (Page
128)more learned and entitled to be heard than the
author has ever claimed to be have sufficiently
demonstrated that Peter never had anything to
do with the foundation of the Latin Church;that his
supposed name Petra or Kiffa also the whole
story of his Apostleship at Rome are simply a play on the
term which meant in every country in one or
another form the Hierophant or interpreter of the
Mysteries;and that finally far from dying a
martyr at Rome where he had probably never been he died
at a good old age at Babylon.In Sepher
Tolaoth Jesh ,a Hebrew manuscript of great antiquity -
evidently an original and very precious
document if one may judge from the care the Jews took to hide it
from the Christians -Simon (Peter)is referred
to as a faithful servant of God who passed his life in
austerities and meditation a Kabalist and a
Nazarene who lived at Babylon at the top of a tower
composed hymns,preached charity and died
there.
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SECTION XVII
Appollonius of Tyana
(Page 129)IT is said in Isis Unveiled that the
greatest teachers of divinity agree that nearly all ancient
books were written symbolically and in a
language intelligible only to the Initiated.The biographical
sketch of Apollonius of Tyana affords an
example.As every Kabalist knows,it embraces the whole of the
Hermetic Philosophy being a counterpart in
many respects of the traditions left us of King Solomon.It
reads like a fairy story but as in the case of
the latter sometimes facts and historical events are
presented to the world under the colours of
fiction.The journey to India represents in its every stage
though of course allegorically the trials of a
Neophyte giving at the same time a geographical and
topographical idea of a certain country as it
is even now if one knows where to look for it.The long
discourses of Apollonius with the
Brāhmans,their sage advice and the dialogues with the Corinthian
Menippus would if interpreted give the
Esoteric Catechism.His visit to the empire of the wise men his
interview with their king Hiarchas,the oracle
of Amphiaraus,explain symbolically many of the secret
dogmas of Hermes -in the generic sense of the
name -and of Occultism.Wonderful is this to relate and
were not the statement supported by numerous
calculations already made and the secret already half
revealed the writer would never have dared to
say it.The travels of the great Magus are correctly
though allegorically described -that is to say
all that is related to Damis had actually taken place -but
the narrative is based upon the Zodiacal
signs.As transliterated by Damis under the guidance of
Appollonius and translated by
Philostratus,it is a marvel indeed.At the conclusion of what may now be
related of the wonderful Adept of Tyana our
meaning will become clearer.Suffice it to say for the present
that the dialogues spoken of would disclose if
correctly understood some of the most important secrets
of Nature.Eliphas Levi points out the great (Page 130)resemblance which exists between King Hiarchus
and the fabulous Hiram from whom Solomon
procured the cedars of Lebanon and the gold of Ophir.But
he keeps silent as to another resemblance of
which as a learned Kabalist he could not be ignorant.
Moreover according to his invariable custom he
mystifies the reader more than he teaches him
divulging nothing and leading him off the
right track.
Like most of the historical heroes of hoary
antiquity whose lives and works strongly differ from those of
commonplace humanity Apollonius is to this day
a riddle which has,so far found no Oedipus.His
existence is surrounded with such a veil of
mystery that he is often mistaken for a myth.But according to
every law of logic and reason it is quite
clear that Apollonius should never be regarded in such a light.If
the Tyanean Theurgist may be put down as a
fabulous character then history has no right to her Caesars
and Alexanders.It is quite true that this Sage
who stands unrivalled in his thaumaturgical powers to this
day -on evidence historically attested -came
into the arena of public life no one seems to know whence
and disappeared from it no one seems to know
whither.But the reasons for this are evident.Every
means was used -especially during the fourth
and fifth centuries of our era -to sweep from people s
minds the remembrance of this great and holy
man.The circulation of his biographies,which were many
and enthusiastic,was prevented by the
Christians,and for a very good reason as we shall see.The
diary of Damis survived most miraculously and
remained alone to tell the tale.But it must not be
forgotten that Justin Martyr often speaks of
Apollonius,and the character and truthfulness of this good
man are unimpeachable the more in that he had
good reason to feel bewildered.Nor can it be denied
that there is hardly a Church Father of the
first six centuries that left Apollonius unnoticed.Only
according to invariable Christian customs of
charity their pens were dipped as usual in the blackest ink of
odi m theologic m,intolerance and one-sidedness.St.Jerome (Hieronymus)gives at
length the story of
St.John s alleged contest with the Sage of
Tyana -a competition of miracles -in which of course the
truthful saint [ See Preface to St.Matthew s Gospel.Baroni s i.752 quoted
in De Mirville VI 63.
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Jerome is the Father who having found the
authentic and original Evangel (the Hebrew text)by Matthew
the Apostle-publican in the library of
Caesarea written by the hand of Matthew (Hieronymus:De Viris,
Illus.Chap.III)-as he himself admits -set it
down as heretical and substituted for it his own Greek text.
And it is also he who perverted the text in
the Book of Job to enforce belief in the resurrection in flesh
(see Isis Unveiled .Vol.II pp.181 and
182 et seq.)quoting in support the most learned authorities.]
describes in glowing colours the defeat of
Apollonius,and seeks corroboration in St.John s Apocrypha
proclaimed doubtful even by the Church.[ De Mirville gives the following
thrilling account of the contest.
John pressed as St.Jerome tells us,by all the
churches of Asia to proclaim more solemnly [in the face
of the miracles of Apollonius ] the divinity of Jesus Christ after a
long prayer with his disciples on the
Mount of Patmos and being in ecstasy by the
divine Spirit made heard amid thunder and lightning his
famous In Principio erat Verb m.When
that sublime extasis,that caused him to be named the Son of
Thunder had passed Apollonius was compelled
to retire and to disappear.Such was his defeat less
bloody but as hard as that of Simon the
Magician.(The Magician Theurgist. VI 63.)For our part we
have never heard of extasis producing thunder
and lightning and we are at a loss to understand the
meaning.]
The Mysterious Teacher (Page 131)Therefore it is that nobody can say where or when Apollonius
was
born and everyone is equally ignorant of the
date at which and of the place where he died.Some think
he was eighty or ninety years old at the time
of his death others that he was one hundred or even one
hundred and seventeen.But whether he ended his
days at Ephesus in the year 96 A.D.as some say or
whether the event took place at Lindus in the
temple of Pallas-Athene or whether again he disappeared
from the temple of Dictynna or whether as
others maintain he did not die at all but when a hundred
years old renewed his life by Magic,and went
on working for the benefit of humanity no one can tell.The
Secret Doctrine alone have noted his birth and
subsequent career.But then -Who hath believed in that
report?
All that history knows is that Apollonius was
the enthusiastic founder of a new school of contemplation.
Perhaps less metaphorical and more practical
than Jesus,he nevertheless inculcated the same
quintessence of spirituality the same high
moral truths.He is accused of having confined them to the
higher classes of society instead of doing
what Buddha and Jesus did instead of preaching them to the
poor and the afflicted.Of his reasons for
acting in such an exclusive way it is impossible to judge at so
late a date.But Karmic law seems to be mixed
up with it.Born as we are told among the aristocracy it
is very likely that he desired to finish the
work undone in this particular direction by his predecessor and
sought to offer peace on earth and good will
to all men and not alone to the outcast and the criminal.
Therefore he associated with the kings and
mighty ones of the age.Nevertheless,the three miracle-
workers exhibited striking similarity of
purpose.Like Jesus and like Buddha Apollonius was the
uncompromising enemy of all outward show of
piety all display of useless religious ceremonies,bigotry
and hypocrisy.That his miracles were more
wonderful more varied and far better attested in (Page 132)
History than any others,it is also
true.Materialism denies;but evidence and the affirmations of even the
Church herself however much he is branded by
her show this to be the fact.[ This
is the old old story.
Who of us,Theosophists,but knows by bitter
personal experiences what clerical hatred malice and
persecution can do in this direction;to what
an extent of falsehood calumny and cruelty these feelings
can go even in our modern day and what
exemplars of Christ like charity His alleged and self-
constituted servants have shown themselves to
be!]
The calumnies set afloat against Apollonius
were as numerous as they were false.So late as
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eighteen centuries after his death he was
defamed by Bishop Douglas in his work against
miracles.In this the Right Reverend bishop
crushed himself against historical facts.For it is
not in the miracles but in the identity
of ideas and doctrines preached that we have to look for
a similarity between Buddha Jesus and
Apollonius.If we study the question with a
dispassionate mind we shall soon perceive that
the ethics of Gautama Plato Apollonius,
Jesus,Ammonius Sakkas,and his disciples,were
all based on the same mystic philosophy -
that all worshipped one divine ideal whether
they considered it as the Father of humanity
who lives in man as man lives in Him or as the
Incomprehensible Creative Principle.All led
God-like lives.Ammonius,speaking of his
philosophy taught that their school dated from the
days of Hermes,who brought this wisdom from
India.It was the same mystical contemplation
throughout as that of the Yogin:the communion
of the Brahman with his own luminous Self -
the Atman. [ Isis Unveiled,ii.342 .]
The groundwork of the Eclectic School is thus
shown to be identical with the doctrines of the Yogis -the
Hindu Mystics;it is proved that it has a
common origin from the same source as the earlier Buddhism of
Gautama and of his Arhats.
The Ineffable Name in the search for
which so many Kabalists -unacquainted with any
Oriental or even European Adepts -vainly
consume their knowledge and lives,dwells latent in
the heart of every man.This mirific name which
according to the most ancient oracles,
rushes into the infinite worlds,įöļéōēōł
ļōńļöįėéćįé can be obtained in a twofold way:by
regular initiation and through the small
voice which Elijah heard in the cave of Horeb the
mount of God.And when Elijah heard it he
wrapped his face in his mantle and stood in the
entering of the cave.And behold there came the
voice.
When Apollonius of Tyana desired to hear the
small voice he used to wrap himself up
entirely in a mantle of fine wool on which he
placed both his feet after having performed
certain magnetic passes,and pronounced not the
name but an invocation well known to
every adept.Then he drew the mantle over his
head and face and his translucid or astral
spirit was free.On ordinary occasions he no
more wore wool than the priests of the temples.
The possession of the secret combination of
the name gave the Hierophant supreme power
over every being human or otherwise inferior
to himself in soul-strength.[ Loc.cit.,ii
343
344.]
Apollonius Cannot Be Destroyed (Page 133)To whatever school he belonged this fact is
certain that
Apollonius of Tyana left an imperishable name
behind him.Hundreds of works were written upon this
wonderful man;historians have seriously
discussed him;pretentious fools,unable to come to any
conclusion about the Sage have tried to deny
his very existence.As to the Church although she
execrates his memory she has ever tried to
present him in the light of a historical character.Her policy
now seems to be to direct the impression left
by him into another channel -a well known and a very old
stratagem.The Jesuits,for instance while
admitting his miracles, have set going a double current of
thought and they have succeeded as they
succeed in all they undertake.Apollonius is represented by
one party as an obedient medium of Satan
surrounding his theurgical powers by a most wonderful and
dazzling light;while the other party professes
to regard the whole matter as a clever romance written
with a predetermined object in view.
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In his voluminous Memoirs of Satan the Marquis
de Mirville in the course of his pleading for the
recognition of the enemy of God as the
producer of spiritual phenomena devotes a whole chapter to this
great Adept.The following translation of
passages in his book unveils the whole plot.The reader is asked
to bear in mind that the Marquis wrote every
one of his works under the auspices and authorisation of the
Holy See of Rome.
It would be to leave the first century
incomplete and to offer an insult to the memory of St.
John to pass over in silence the name of one
who had the honour of being his special
antagonist as Simon was that of St.Peter
Elymas that of Paul etc.In the first years of the
Christian era ...there appeared at Tyana in
Cappadocia one of those men of whom the
Pythagorean School was so very lavish.As great
a traveller as was his master initiated in all
the secret doctrines of India Egypt and
Chaldaea endowed therefore with all the theurgic
powers of the ancient Magi he bewildered each
in its turn all the countries which he visited
and which all -we are obliged to admit -seem
to have blessed his memory.We could not
doubt this fact without repudiating real
historical records.The details of his life are transmitted
to us by a historian of the fourth century
(Philostratus),himself the translator of a diary that
recorded day by day the life of the
philosopher written by Damis,his disciple and intimate
friend.[
Pne matologie,vi.62.]
De Mirville admits the possibility of some exaggerations
in both recorder and translator;but he does not
believe they hold a very wide space in the
narrative. Therefore he regrets to find the Abbe (Page 134)
Freppel in his eloquent Essays,[ Les Apologistes Chrétiens a
Second Sičcle.p.106.] calling
the diary
of Damis a romance.Why?
[Because ] the
orator bases his opinion on the prefect similitude calculated as he imagines,of
that legend with the life of the Saviour.But
in studying the subject more profoundly he [Abbe
Freppel ] can convince himself that neither Apollonius nor Damis,nor again
Philostratus ever
claimed a greater honour than a likeness to
St.John.This programme was in itself sufficiently
fascinating and the travesty as sufficiently
scandalous;for owing to magic arts Apollonius had
succeeded in counterbalancing in appearance
several of the miracles at Ephesus [produced
by St.John ] etc.[ Pne
matologie,vi.62.]
The ang is in herba has shown its
head.It is the perfect the wonderful similitude of the life of Apollonius
with that of the Saviour that places the
Church between Scylla and Charybdis.To deny the life and the
miracles of the former would amount to
denying the trustworthiness of the same Apostles and patristic
writers on whose evidence is built the life of
Jesus himself.To father the Adept s beneficent deeds,his
raisings of the dead acts of charity healing
powers,etc.on the old enemy would be rather dangerous
at this time.Hence the stratagem to confuse
the ideas of
those who rely upon authorities and
criticisms.The Church is far more clear-sighted than any of our great
historians.The Church knows that to
deny the existence of that Adept would lead her to denying the
Emperor Vespasian and his Historians,the
Emperors Alexander Severus and Aurelianus and their
Historians,and finally to deny Jesus and every
evidence about Him thus preparing the way to her flock
for finally denying herself .It becomes
interesting to learn what she says in this emergency through her
chosen speaker De Mirville.It is as follows:
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What is there so new and so impossible in the
narrative of Damis concerning their voyages to the
countries of the Chaldees and the
Gymnosophists?-he asks.Try to recall before denying what were in
those days those countries of marvels par
excellence as also the testimony of such men as Pythagoras,
Empedocles and Democritus,who ought to be
allowed to have known what they were writing about.With
what have we finally to reproach Apollonius?Is
it for having made as the Oracles did a series of
prophecies and predictions wonderfully
verified?No:because better studied now we know what they
are.[ Many
are they who do not know :hence they do not believe in them.] The Oracles have now
become to us,what they were to every one
during the past century from Van Dale to Fontenelle.
De Mirville on Apollonius (Page 135)Is it for having been endowed with second
sight and having had
visions at a distance?[ Just so.Apollonius,during a lecture he was delivering at Ephesus
before an
audience of many thousands,perceived the
murder of the Emperor Domitian in Rome and notified it at
the very moment it was taking place to the
whole town:and Swedenborg in the same manner saw from
Gothenburg the great fire at Stockholm and
told it to his friends,no telegraph being in use in those days.]
No;for such phenomena are at the present day
endemical in half Europe.Is it for having boasted of his
knowledge of every existing language under the
sun without having ever learned one of them?But who
can be ignorant of the fact that this is the
best criterion [ No criterion at
all.The Hindu Saddhus and
Adepts acquire the gift by the holiness of
their lives.The Yoga-Vidya teaches it and no spirits are
required.] of the presence and assistance of a spirit of whatever nature it
may be?Or is it for having
believed in transmigration (reincarnation)?It
is still believed in (by millions)in our day.No one has any
idea of the number of the men of Science who
long for the re-establishment of the Druidical Religion and
of the Mysteries of Pythagoras.Or is it for
having exorcised the demons and the plague?The Egyptians,
the Etruscans and all the Roman Pontiffs had
done so long before.[ As to the
Pontiffs,the matter is
rather doubtful.] For having conversed with the dead?We do the same today or
believe we do so -which
is all the same.For having believed in the
Empuses?Where is the Demonologist that does not know that
the Empuse is the south demon referred to
in David s Psalms,and dreaded then as it is feared even
now in all Northern Europe?[ But this alone is no reason why
people should believe in this class of
spirits.There are better authorities for such
belief.] For having made himself
invisible at will?It is one of
the achievements of mesmerism.For having
appeared after his (supposed)death to the Emperor
Aurelian above the city walls of Tyana and for
having compelled him thereby to raise the siege of that
town?Such was the mission of every hero beyond
the tomb and the reason of the worship vowed to the
Manes.[
De Mirville s aim is to show that all such apparitions of the Manes or
disembodied Spirits are
the work of the Devil.Satan s simulacra.] For having descended into the famous
den of Trophonius,
and taken from it an old book preserved for
years after by the Emperor Adrian in his Antium library?The
trustworthy and sober Pausanias had descended
into the same den before Apollonius,and came back
no less a believer.For having disappeared at
his death?Yes like Romulus,like Votan like Lycurgus,like
Pythagoras,(Page 136)[
He
might have added:like the great Shankaracharya Tsong-Kha-Pa and so
many other real Adepts -even his own Master
Jesus:for this is indeed a criterion of true Adeptship
though to disappear one need not fly up in
the clouds .] always under the
most mysterious
circumstances,ever attended by
apparitions,revelations,etc.Let us stop here and repeat once more:
had the life of Apollonius been simple romance
he would never have attained such a celebrity during his
lifetime or created such a numerous sect one
so enthusiastic after his death.
And so to add to this,had all this been a
romance never would a Caracalla have raised a haroon to his
memory [
See Dion Cassi s.XXVII XVIII 2 ] or Alexander Severus have placed his bust between those
of two Demi-Gods and of the true God [Lampridlius,Adrian,xxxix.2.] or an Empress have corresponded
with him.Hardly rested from the hardships of
the siege at Jerusalem Titus would not have hastened to
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write to Apollonius a letter asking to meet
him at Argos and adding that his father and himself (Titus)
owed all to him the great Apollonius,and that
therefore his first thought was for their benefactor.Nor
would the Emperor Aurelian have built a temple
and a shrine to that great Sage to thank him for his
apparition and communication at Tyana.That posth
mo s conversation as all knew saved the city
inasmuch as Aurelian had in consequence raised
the siege.Furthermore had it been a romance History
would not have had Vopiscus,[ The passage runs as
follows:Aurelian had determined to destroy Tyana
and the town owed its salvation only to a
miracle of Apollonius;this man so famous and wise this great
friend of the Gods,appeared suddenly before
the Emperor as he was returning to his tent in his own
figure and form and said to him in the
Pannonian language:Aurelian if thou wouldst conquer abandon
these evil designs against my
fellow-citizens:if thou wouldst command abstain from shedding innocent
blood;and if thou wouldst live abstain from
injustice. Aurelian familiar with the face of Apollonius,whose
portraits he had seen in many temples,struck
with wonder immediately vowed to him (Apollonius)
statue portrait and temple and returned
completely to ideas of mercy. And then Vopiscus adds:If I
have believed more and more in the virtues of the
majestic Apollonius,it is because after gathering my
information from the most serious men I have
found all these facts corroborated in the Books of the
Ulpian Library. (See Flavius Vopiscus,A
relian s ).Vopiscus wrote in 250 and consequently preceded
Philostratus by a century.] one of the most
trustworthy Pagan Historians,to certify to it.Finally Apollonius
would not have been the object of the
admiration of such a noble character as Epictetus,and even of
several of the Fathers of the Church;Jerome for
instance in his better moments,writing thus of
Apollonius:
This travelling philosopher found something to
learn wherever he went;and profiting
everywhere thus improved with every day.[ Ep.ad Pa lin m.]
Apollonius No Fiction (Page 137)As to his prodigies,without wishing to fathom them Jerome
most
undeniably admits them as such;which he would
assuredly never have done had he not been
compelled to do so by facts.To end the subject
had Apollonius been a simple hero of a romance
dramatised in the fourth century the Ephesians
would not in their enthusiastic gratitude have raised to
him a golden statue for all the benefits he
had conferred upon them.[ The
above is mostly summarised
from De Mirville.loc cit.,pp.66-69 ]
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SECTION XVIII
Facts Underlying Adept Biographies
(Page 138)THE tree is known by its fruits;the nature of
the Adept by his words and deeds.These words
of charity and mercy the noble advice put into
the mouth of Apollonius (or of his sidereal phantom),as
given by Vopiscus,show the Occultists who
Apollonius was.Why then call him the Medium of Satan
seventeen centuries later?There must be a
reason and a very potent reason to justify and explain the
secret of such a strong animus of the Church
against one of the noblest men of his age.There is a
reason for it and we give it in the words of
the author of the Key to the Hebrew-Egyptian Mystery in the
So rce of Measures,and of Professor Seyffarth.The latter analyses and explains
the salient dates in the
life of Jesus,and thus throws light on the
conclusions of the former.We quote both blending the two.
According to solar months (of thirty days,one
of the calendars in use among the Hebrews)all
remarkable events of the Old Testament happened
on the days of the equinoxes and the
solstices;for instance the foundations and
dedications of the temples and alters [and
consecration of the tabernacle ].On the same cardinal days,the most
remarkable events of
the New Testament happened;for instance
the annunciation the birth the resurrection of
Christ and the birth of John the Baptist.And
thus we learn that all remarkable epochs of the
New Testament were typically sanctified a long time before by the Old
Testament,beginning at
the day succeeding the end of the Creation
which was the day of the vernal equinox.During
the crucifixion on the 14 th day of Nisan
Dionysius Areopagita saw in Ethopia an eclipse of
the sun and he said Now the Lord (Jehovah)is
suffering something. Then Christ arose from
the dead on the 22d March 17 Nisan,Sunday
the day of the vernal equinox (Seyf.quoting
Philo de Septen)-that is,on Easter or on the
day when the sun gives new life to the earth.
The words of John the Baptist He must
increase but I must decrease serve to prove as is
affirmed by the fathers of the church that
John was born on the longest day of the year and
Christ who was six months younger on the
shortest 22d June and 22d December the
solstices.
Jesus and Apollonius-
(Page 139)This only goes to show that as to another
phase John and Jesus were but
epitomisers of the history of the same sun
under differences of aspect or condition;and one
condition following another of necessity the
statement L ke ix.7 was not only not an empty
one but it was true that which was said of
some that (in Jesus)John was risen from the
dead. (And this consideration serves to
explain why it has been that the Life of Apolloni s of
Tyana,by
Philostratus,has been so persistently kept back from translation and from
popular
reading.Those who have studied it in the
original have been forced to the comment that either
the Life of Apolloni s has been taken
from the New Testament,or that the New Testament
narratives have been taken from the Life of
Apolloni s,because of the manifest sameness of
the means of construction of the
narratives.The explanation is simple enough when it is
considered that the names of Jes s Hebrew
éł and Apollonius,or Apollo are alike names of
the sun in the heavens ;and necessarily the history of the one as to his travels
through the
signs with
the personifications of his sufferings,triumphs and miracles,could be but the
history of the other where there was a widespread common method of describing
those
travels by personification.)It seems also that
for long afterward all this was known to rest
upon an astronomical basis;for the secular
church so to speak,was founded by Constantine
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and the objective condition of the worship
established was that part of his decree in which it
was affirmed that the venerable day of the sun
should be the day set apart for the worship of
Jesus Christ as S n -day.There is
something weird and startling in some other facts about this
matter.The prophet Daniel (true prophet,as
says Graetz).[ A true prophet
because an
Initiate one perfectly versed in Occult
astronomy.] by use of the
pyramid numbers,or
astrological numbers,foretold the cutting off
of the Meshiac as it happened (which would go
to show the accuracy of his astronomical
knowledge if there was an eclipse of the sun at that
time)....Now however the temple was destroyed
in the year 71 in the month Virgo and 71
is the Dove number as shown or 71X5 =355 and
with the fish a Jehovah number.
Is it possible queries,further on the author
thus answering the intimate thought of every Christian and
Occultist who reads and studies his work:
Is it possible that the events of humanity do
run co-ordinately with these number forms?If so
while Jesus Christ as an astronomical figure
was true to all that has been advanced and
more possibly.He may as a man have filled up
under the numbers,answers in the sea of
life to predestined type.The personality of
Jesus does not appear to have been destroyed
because as a condition he was answering
to astronomical forms and relations.The Arabian
says Your destiny is written in the stars.[ Key to Hebrew-Egyptian Mystery.p.259
et seq.
Astronomy and physiology are the
bodies,astrology and psychology their informing souls:the
former being studied by the eye of sensual
perception the latter by the inner or soul-eye :
and both are exact sciences .]
Nor is the personality of Apollonius
destroyed for the same (Page 140)reason.The case of Jesus
covers the ground for the same possibility in
the cases of all Adepts and Avataras -such as Buddha
Shankaracharya Krishna etc.-all of these as
great and as historical for their respective followers and in
their countries,as Jesus of Nazareth is now
for Christians and in this land.
But there is something more in the old
literature of the early centuries.Iamblichus wrote a biography of
the great Pythagoras.
The latter so closely resembles the life of
Jesus that it may be taken for a travesty.Diogenes
Laėrtius and Plutarch relate the history of
Plato according to a similar style.[ New
Platonism
and Alchemy .p.12 .]
Why then wonder at the doubts that assail
every scholar who studies all these lives?The Church herself
knew all these doubts in her early stages;and
though only one of her Popes has been known publicly
and openly as a Pagan how many more were there
who were too ambitious to reveal the truth?
This mystery for mystery indeed it is to
those who not being Initiates,fail to find the key of the perfect
similitude between the lives of
Pythagoras,Buddha Apollonius,etc,-is only a natural result for those
who know that all these great characters were
Initiates of the same school.For them there is neither
travesty nor copy of one from the
other;for them they are all originals,only painted to represent one
and the same subject:the mystic,and at the
same time the public,life of the Initiates sent into the world
to save portions of humanity if they could not
save the whole bulk.Hence the same programme for all.
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The assumed immaculate origin for each referring
to their mystic birth during the Mystery of Initiation
and accepted literally by the
multitudes,encouraged in this by the better informed but ambitious clergy.
Thus,the mother of each one of them was
declared a virgin conceiving her son directly by the Holy Spirit
of God;and the Sons,in consequence were the
Sons of God though in truth none of them was any
more entitled to such recognition than were
the rest of his brother Initiates,for they were all -so far as
their mystic lives were concerned -only the
epitomisers of the history of the same Sun which epitome
is another mystery within the Mystery.The
biographies of the external personalities bearing the names of
such heroes have nothing to do with and are
quite independent of the private lives of the heroes,being
only the mystic records of their public and
parallel therewith of their inner lives,in their characters as
Neophytes and Initiates.
Biographies of Initiates-(Page 141)Hence the manifest sameness of the means of
construction of their
respective biographies.From the beginning of
Humanity the Cross,or Man with his arms stretched out
horizontally typifying his kosmic origin was
connected with his psychic nature and with the struggles
which lead to Initiation.But if it is once
shown that (a)every true Adept had and still has,to pass
through the seven and the twelve trials of
Initiation symbolised by the twelve labours of Hercules;(b)that
the day of his real birth is regarded as that
day when he is born into the world spiritually his very age
being counted from the hour of his second
birth which makes of him a twice-born a Dvija or Initiate on
which day he is indeed born of a God and from
an immaculate Mother;and (c)that the trials of all these
personages are made to correspond with the
Esoteric significance of initiatory rites -all of which
corresponded to the twelve zodiacal signs
-then every one will see the meaning of the travels of all those
heroes through the signs of the Sun in
Heaven;and that they are in each individual case a
personification of the sufferings,triumphs
and miracles of an Adept before and after his Initiation.When
to the world at large all this is explained
then also the mystery of all those lives,so closely resembling
each other that the history of one seems to be
the history of the other and vice versa,will like everything
else become plain.
Take an instance.The legends -for they are all
legends for exoteric purposes,whatever may be the
denials in one case -of the lives of Krishna
Hercules,Pythagoras,Buddha Jesus,Apollonius,
Chaitanya.On the worldly plane their
biographies,if written by one outside the circle would differ greatly
from what we read of them in the narratives
that are preserved of their mystic lives.Nevertheless,
however much masked and hidden from the
profane gaze the chief features of such lives will all be
found there in common.Each of those characters
is represented as a divinely begotten Soter (Saviour),a
title bestowed on deities,great kings and
heroes;everyone of them whether at their birth or afterwards
is searched for and threatened with death (yet
never killed)by an opposing power (the world of Matter
and Illusion),whether it be called a king
Kansa king Herod or king Mara (the Evil Power).They are all
tempted persecuted and finally said to have
been murdered at the end of the rite of Initiation i.e.in their
physical personalities,of which they are supposed to have been rid for ever after spirit
al resurrection
or birth. And having thus come (Page 142)to an end by this supposed violent death they
all descend to
the Nether World the Pit or Hell -the Kingdom
of Temptation Lust and Matter therefore of Darkness,
whence returning having overcome the
Chrest-condition they are glorified and become Gods.
It is not in the course of their everyday life
then that the great similarity is to be sought but in their inner
state and in the most important events of
their career as religious teachers.All this is connected with and
built upon an astronomical basis,which
serves,at the same time as a foundation for the representation
of the degrees and trials of
Initiation:descent into the Kingdom of Darkness and Matter for the last time
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to emerge therefrom as Suns of
Righteousness,is the most important of these and therefore is found
in the history of all the Soters -from Orpheus
and Hercules,down to Krishna and Christ.
Says Euripides:
Heracles,who has gone from the chambers of
earth
Leaving the nether home of Pluto.[ Heracles 807 ]
And Virgil writes:
At Thee the Stygian lakes trembled;Thee the
janitor of Orcus
Feared ...Thee not even Typhon frightened ...
Hail true son of Jove,glory added to
the Gods.[ Aeneid,viii.274
ff.]
Orpheus seeks,in the kingdom of Pluto Eurydice
his lost Soul;Krishna goes down into the infernal
regions and rescues therefrom his six
brothers,he being the seventh Principle;a transparent allegory of
his becoming a perfect Initiate the whole
of the six Principles merging into the seventh.Jesus is made
to descend into the kingdom of Satan to save
the soul of Adam or the symbol of material physical
humanity.
Have any of our learned Orientalists ever
thought of searching for the origin of this allegory for the parent
Seed of that Tree of Life which bears such
verdant boughs since it was first planted on earth by the
hand of its Builders ?We fear not.Yet it is
found as is now shown even in the exoteric,distorted
interpretations of the Vedas -of the Rig
Veda the oldest the most trustworthy of all the four -this root
and seed of all future Initiate-Saviours being
called in it the Visvakarmā the Father Principle beyond
the comprehension of mortals;in the second
stage Sūrya the Son who offers Himself as a sacrifice to
Himself;in the third the Initiate who
sacrifices His physical to His Spirit al Self.
Similarity of Legends-(Page 143)It is in Visvakarmā the omnificent who becomes
(mystically)
Vikkartana the sun shorn of his beams, who
suffers for his too ardent nature and then becomes
glorified (by purification),that the keynote
of the Initiation into the greatest Mystery of Nature was struck.
Hence the secret of the wonderful
similarity.
All this is allegorical and mystical and yet
perfectly comprehensible and plain to any student of Eastern
Occultism even superficially acquainted with
the Mysteries of Initiation.In our objective Universe of
Matter and false appearances the Sun is the
most fitting emblem of the life-giving beneficent Deity.In
the subjective boundless World of Spirit and
Reality the bright luminary has another and a mystical
significance which cannot be fully given to
the public.The so-called idolatrous Parsis and Hindus are
certainly nearer the truth in their religious
reverence for the Sun than the cold ever-analysing and as
ever-mistaken public is prepared to believe at
present.The Theosophists,who will be alone able to take
in the meaning may be told that the Sun is the
external manifestation of the Seventh Principle of our
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Planetary System while the Moon is its Fourth
Principle shining in the borrowed robes of her master
saturated with and reflecting every passionate
impulse and evil desire of her grossly material body Earth.
The whole cycle of Adeptship and Initiation
and all its mysteries are connected with and subservient to
these two and the Seven Planets.Spiritual
clairvoyance is derived from the Sun;all psychic states,
diseases,and even lunacy proceed from the
Moon.
According even to the data of History -her
conclusions being remarkably erroneous while her premises
are mostly correct -there is an extraordinary
agreement between the legends of every Founder of a
Religion (and also between the rites and
dogmas of all)and the names and course of constellations
headed by the Sun.It does not follow however
because of this,that both Founders and their Religions
should be the one myths and the other
superstitions.They are one and all the different versions of the
same natural primeval Mystery on which the
Wisdom-Religion was based and the development of its
Adepts subsequently framed
And now once more we have to beg the reader
not to lend an ear to the charge -against Theosophy in
general and the writer in particular -of disrespect
toward one of the greatest and noblest characters in
the History of Adeptship -Jesus of Nazareth
-nor even of hatred to the Church.The expression of truth
and fact can hardly be regarded (Page 144)with any approximation to justice as blasphemy
or hatred.
The whole question hangs upon the solution of
that one point:Was Jesus as Son of God and Saviour
of Mankind unique in the World s annals?Was
His case -among so many similar claims -the only
exceptional and unprecedented one;His birth
the sole supernaturally immaculate;and were others as
maintained by the Church but blasphemous
Satanic copies and plagiarisms by anticipation?Or was He
only the son of his deeds, a pre-eminently
holy man and a reformer one of many who paid with His life
for the presumption of endeavouring in the
face of ignorance and despotic power to enlighten mankind
and make its burden lighter by His Ethics and
Philosophy?The first necessitates a blind all-resisting
faith;the latter is suggested to every one by
reason and logic.Moreover had the Church always believed
as she does now -or rather as she pretends she
does,in order to be thus justified in directing her
anathema against those who disagree with her
-or has she passed through the same throes of doubt
nay of secret denial and belief suppressed
only by the force of ambition and love of power?
The question must be answered in the
affirmative as to the second alternative.It is an irrefutable
conclusion and a natural inference based on
facts known from historical records.Leaving for the present
untouched the lives of many Popes and Saints
that loudly belied their claims to infallibility and holiness,
let the reader turn to Ecclesiastical History
the records of the growth and progress of the Christian
Church (not of Christianity)and he will find
the answer on those pages.Says a writer:
The Church has known too well the suggestions
of freethought created by enquiry as also all
those doubts that provoke her anger today;and
the sacred truths she would promulgate
have been in turn admitted and repudiated
transformed and altered amplified and curtailed
by the dignitaries of the Church hierarchy
even as regards the most fundamental dogmas.
Where is that God or Hero whose origin
biography and genealogy were more hazy or more difficult to
define and finally agree upon than those of
Jesus?How was the now irrevocable dogma with regard to
His true nature settled at last?By His mother
according to the Evangelists,He was a man -a simple
mortal man;by His Father He is God!But how?Is
He then man or God or is He both at the same time?
asks the perplexed writer.Truly the
propositions offered on this point of the doctrine have caused floods
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of ink and blood to be shed in turn on poor
Humanity and still the doubts are not at rest.In this as in
everything else the wise Church Councils have
contradicted themselves and changed their minds a
number of times.
Nature of Christ-(Page 145)Let us recapitulate and throw a glance at the texts offered
for our
inspection.This is History.
The Bishop Paul of Samosata denied the
divinity of Christ at the first Council of Antioch;at the very origin
and birth of theological Christianity He was
called Son of God merely on account of His holiness and
good deeds.His blood was corruptible in the
Sacrament of the Eucharist.
At the Council of Nicaea held A.D.325 Arius
came out with his premisses,which nearly broke asunder
the Catholic Union.
Seventeen bishops defended the doctrines of
Arius,who was exiled for them.Nevertheless,thirty years
after A.D.355 at the Council of Milan three
hundred bishops signed a letter of adherence to the Arian
views notwithstanding that ten years earlier
A.D.345 at a new Council of Antioch the Eusebians had
proclaimed that Jesus Christ was the Son of
God and One with His Father.
At the Council of Sirmium A.D.357 the Son
had become no longer consubstantial.The Anomaeans,
who denied that consubstantiality and the
Arians were triumphant.A year later at the second Council of
Ancyra it was decreed that the Son was not
consubstantial but only similar to the Father in his
substance.Pope Liberius ratified the
decision.During several centuries the Council fought and
quarrelled supporting the most contradictory
and opposite views the fruit of their laborious travail being
the Holy Trinity which Minerva-like issued
forth from the theological brain armed with all the thunders of
the Church.The new mystery was ushered into
the world amid some terrible strifes,in which murder and
other crimes had a high hand.At the Council of
Saragossa A.D.380 it was proclaimed that the Father
Son and Holy Spirit are one and the same
Person Christ s human nature being merely an illusion -an
echo of the Avatāric Hindu doctrine.Once upon
this slippery path the Fathers had to slide down ad
absurd m -which they did not fail of doing. How deny human nature in him who was
born of a woman?
The only wise remark made during one of the
Councils of Constantinople came from Eutyches,who was
bold enough to say:May God preserve me from
reasoning on the nature of my God -for which he was
excommunicated by Pope Flavius.
At the Council of Ephesus,A.D.449 Eutyches had
his revenge.As Eusibius,the veracious Bishop of
Caesarea was forcing him into the (Page 146)admission of two distinct natures in
Jesus Christ the
Council rebelled against him and it was
proposed that Eusebius should be burned alive.The bishops
arose like one man and with fists clenched
foaming with rage demanded that Eusebius should be torn
into halves,and be dealt by as he would deal
with Jesus,whose nature he divided.Eutyches was re-
established in his power and office Eusebius
and Flavius deposed.Then the two parties attacked each
other most violently and fought.St.Flavius was
so ill-treated by Bishop Diodorus,who assaulted and
kicked him that he died a few days from the
injuries inflicted.
Every incongruity was courted in these
Councils,and the result is the present living paradoxes called
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Church dogmas.For instance at the first
Council of Ancyra A.D.314 it was asked In baptising a
woman with child is the unborn baby also
baptised by the fact?The Council answered in the negative;
because as was alleged the person thus
receiving baptism must be a consenting party which is
impossible to the child in the mother s
womb.Thus then unconsciousness is a canonical obstacle to
baptism,and thus no child baptised nowadays is
baptised at all in fact.And then what becomes of the
tens of thousands of starving heathen babies
baptised by the missionaries during famines,and otherwise
surreptitiously saved by the too zealous
Padres?Follow one after another the debates and decisions of
the numberless Councils,and behold on what a
jumble of contradictions the present infallible and
Apostolic Church is built!
And now we can see how greatly paradoxical
when taken literally is the assertion in Genesis :God
created man in his own image. Besides the
glaring fact that it is not the Adam of dust (of Chapter ii.)who
is thus made in the divine image but the
Divine Androgyne (of Chapter i.),or Adam Kadmon one can
see for oneself that God -the God of the
Christians at any rate -was created by man in his own image
amid the kicks,blows and murders of the early
Councils.
A curious fact one that throws a flood of
light on the claim that Jesus was an Initiate and a martyred
Adept is given in the work,(already so often
referred to)which may be called a mathematical revelation
-The So rce of Measures.
Attention is called to the part of the 46 th
verse of the 27 th Chapter of Matthew as follows:Eli Eli Lama
Sabachthani?-that is to say My God my God why
hast thou forsaken me?Of course our versions are
taken from the original Greek manuscripts
(the reason why we have no original Hebrew manuscripts
concerning these occurrences being because the
enigmas in Hebrew would betray themselves on
comparison with the sources of their
derivation the Old Testament).
A Serious Mistranslation
(Page 147)The Greek manuscripts,without exception give
these words as -
Hėé Hėé ėįģį .óįāį÷čįķé
They are Hebrew words,rendered into the
Greek and in Hebrew are as follows:
.
The scripture of these words says that is to
say My God my God why hast thou forsaken
me?as their proper translation.Here then are
the words beyond all dispute;and beyond all
question such is the interpretation given of
them by Scripture.Now the words will not bear this
interpretation and it is a false rendering.The
true meaning is j st the opposite of the one
given and
is -
My God,My God,how tho dost glorify me!
But even more for while lama is why or
how as a verbal it connected the idea of to dazzle or
adverbially it could run how dazzlingly, and
so on.To the unwary reader this interpretation is
enforced and made to answer as it were to the
fulfilment of a prophetic utterance by a
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marginal reference to the first verse
of the twenty-second Psalm which reads:
My God my God why hast thou forsaken me?
The Hebrew of this verse for these words is -
as to which the reference is correct and the
interpretation sound and good but with an utterly
different word.The words are -
Eli,Eli,lamah azabvtha-ni?
No wit of man however scholarly can save this
passage from falseness of rendering on its
face;and as so it becomes a most terrible blow
upon the proper first-face sacredness of the
recital.[ App.vii.p.301.]
For ten years or more sat the revisers (?)of
the Bible a most imposing and solemn array of the learned
of the land the greatest Hebrew and Greek
scholars of England purporting to correct the mistakes and
blunders,the sins of omission and of
commission of their less learned predecessors,the translators of
the Bible.Are we going to be told that none of
them saw the glaring difference between the Hebrew
words in Psalm xxii.Azabbvtha-ni and
sabachthani in Matthew ;that they were not aware of the
deliberate falsification?
For falsification it was.And if we are asked
the reason why the early Church Fathers resorted to it the
answer is plain:Because the Sacramental words
belonged in their true rendering to Pagan temple rites.
(Page 148)They were pronounced after the terrible trials
of Initiation and were still fresh in the memory of
some of the Fathers when the Gospel of
Matthew was edited into the Greek language.Because finally
many of the Hierophants of the Mysteries,and
many more of the Initiates were still living in those days,
and the sentence rendered in its true words
would class Jesus directly with the simple Initiates.The
words My God my Sun thou hast poured thy
radiance upon me?were the final words that concluded
the thanksgiving prayer of the Initiate the
Son and the glorified Elect of the Sun. In Egypt we find to this
day carvings and paintings that represent the
rite.The candidate is between two divine sponsors;one
Osiris-Sun with the head of a
hawk,representing life the other Mercury -the ibis-headed
psychopompic genius,who guides the Souls after
death to their new abode Hades -standing for the
death of the physical body figuratively.Both
are shown pouring the stream of life the water of
purification on the head of the Initiate the
two streams of which interlacing form a cross.The better to
conceal the truth this basso-relievo has
also been explained as a Pagan presentment of a Christian
truth.The Chevalier des Mousseaux calls this
Mercury:
The assessor of Osiris-Sol as St.Michael is
the assessor Ferouer of the Word.
The monogram of Chrestos and the Labarum the
standard of Constantine -who by the by died a
Pagan and was never baptised -is a symbol
derived from the above rite and also denotes life and
death.Long before the sign of the Cross was
adopted as a Christian symbol it was employed as a
secret sign of recognition among Neophytes and
Adepts.Says Eliphas Levi:
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The sign of the cross adopted by the
Christians does not belong exclusively to them.It is
kabalistic,and represents the oppositions and
quaternary equilibrium of the elements.We see
by the occult verse of the Pater to
which we have called attention in another work,that there
were originally two ways of making it or at
least two very different formulas to express its
meaning;one reserved for priests and
initiates;the other given to neophyte and the profane.
[Dogme et Rit el de la Ha te Magie,ii 88.]
One can understand now why the Gospel of
Matthew,the Evangel of the Ebionites,has been for ever
excluded in its Hebrew form from the world s
curious grace.
Jerome found the authentic and original Evangel
written in Hebrew by Matthew the Publican
at the library collected at Caesarea by the
martyr Pamphilius,I received permission from the
Nazaraeans,who at Beroea of Syria used this (gospel to translate it he
writes toward the
end of the fourth century.[ (Hieronymus,Des Viris Ill st.,III)It
is remarkable that while all
Church Fathers say that Matthew wrote
in Hebrew the whole of them use the Greek text as
the genuine apostolic writing without
mentioning what relation the Hebrew Matthew has to our
Greek one!It
had many peculiar additions which are wanting in our (Greek )Evangel
(Olshausen Nachweis der Echtheit der
Sammtlichen Schriften des Ne en Test.,p.32;Dunlap
Sod,the Son of Man,p.44.)]
Secret Doctrine of Jesus
(Page 149)In the Evangel which the Nazarenes and
Ebionites use said Jerome which
recently I translated from Hebrew into
Greek,and which is called by most persons the gen ine
gospel of Matthew etc.[Comment to Matthew (XII
13)Book 11.Jerome adds that it was
written in the Chaldaic language but with
Hebrew letters.]
That the apostles had received a secret
doctrine from Jesus,who confessed it in an
unguarded moment.Writing to the Bishops
Chromatius and Heliodorus,he complains that a
difficult work is enjoined since this
(translation)has been commanded me by your Felicities,
which St Matthew himself the Apostle
and Evangelist did not wish to be openly written.For if
this had not been secret he
(Matthew)would have added to the Evangel that what he gave
forth was his ;but he made up this book
sealed p in the Hebrew characters,which he put
forth even in such way that the
book,written in Hebrew letters and by the hand of himself
might be possessed by the men most religio
s ;who also in the course of time received it
from those who preceded them.But this very
book they never gave to any one to be
transcribed and its text they related
some one way and another. [St.Jerome.v.445:
Dunlap Sod,the Son of Man,p.46.] And he adds further on the same
page:And it happened
that this book,having been published by a
disciple of Manichaeus,named Seleucus,who also
wrote falsely The Acts of the Apostles exhibited
matter not for edification but for destruction;
and that this (book)was approved in a synod
which the ears of the Church properly refused to
listen to.[This accounts also for the rejection of the works of Justin
Martyr who used only this
Gospel according to the Hebrews as also did
most probably Tatian his disciple.At what a
later period the divinity of Christ was fully
established we can judge by the mere fact that even
in the fourth century Eusebius did not
denounce this book as spurious,but only classed it with
such as the Apocalypse of John:and
Credner (Z r Gesch.des Kan,p.129)shows
Nicephorus inserting it together with the Revelation
in his Stichometry,among the
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Antilegomena.The Ebionites,the gen ine primitive
Christians,rejecting the rest of the
Apostolic writings,make use only of this
Gospel (Adv Hev.,i.26)and the Ebionites,as
Epiphanius declares,firmly believed with the
Nazarenes,that Jesus was but a man of the
seed of a man.]
Jerome admits,himself that the book which he
authenticates as being written by the hand of
Matthew was nevertheless a book which
notwithstanding that he translated it twice was
nearly unintelligible to him for it was
arcane.Nevertheless,Jerome coolly sets down every
commentary upon it but his own as heretical.More
than that Jerome knew that this Gospel
was the only original one yet he
becomes more zealous than ever in his persecution of the
Heretics. Why?Because to accept it was
equivalent to reading the death sentence of the
established Church.The Gospel according to
the Hebrews was well known to have been the
(Page 150)only one accepted for four centuries by the
Jewish Christians,the Nazarenes and
the Ebionites.And neither of the latter
accepted the divinity of Christ.[
Isis Unveiled.II,182-3 .]
The Ebionites were the first the earliest
Christians,whose representative was the Gnostic
author of the Clementine Homilies,and
as the author of S pernat ral Religion shows 8 [Op.
cit.,II
5 ] Ebionitic Gnosticism had
once been the purest form of Christianity.They were the
pupils and followers of the early Nazarenes
-the kabalistic Gnostics.They believed in the
Aeons,as the Cerinthians did and that the
world was put together by Angels (Dhyan
Chohans),as Epiphanius complains (Contra
Ebionitas ):Ebion had the opinion of the
Nazarenes,the form of Cerinthians.They
decided that Christ was of the seed of a man he
laments.[ See also Isis Unveiled,ii.180 to end of chapter.] Thus again:
The badge of Dan-Scorpio is death-life,in
the symbol .as crossbones and skull ..
or life-death ...the standard of
Constantine the Roman Emperor.Abel has been shown to be
Jesus,and Cain-Vulcain or Mars,pierced
him.Constantine was the Roman Emperor whose
warlike god was Mars,and a Roman soldier pierced
Jesus on the cross ....
But the piercing of Abel was the consummation
of his marriage with Cain and this was proper
under the form of Mars Generator;hence the
double glyph one of Mars-Generator [Osiris-
Sun ] and Mars-Destroyer [Mercury the God of Death in the
Egyptian basso-relievo ] in
one;
significant again of the primal idea of the
living cosmos,or of birth and death as necessary to
the continuation of the stream of life.[So rce of Measure,p.299.This
stream of life being
emblematised in the Philloc basso-relievo just
mentioned by the water poured in the shape of
a Cross on the initiated candidate by Osiris -Life
and the Sun -and Mercury -Death.It was
the finale of the rite of Initiation
after the seven and the twelve tortures in the Crypts of Egypt
were passed through successfully.]
To quote once more from Isis Unveiled :
A Latin cross of a perfect Christian shape was
found hewn upon the granite slabs of the
Adytum of the Serapeum;and the monks did not
fail to claim that the cross had been hallowed
by the Pagans in a spirit of prophecy.At
least Sozomen with an air of triumph records the
fact.[
Another untrustworthy untruthful and ignorant writer an ecclesiastical
historian of the
fifth century.His alleged history of the
strife between the Pagans,Neoplatonists,and the
Christians of Alexandria and Constantinople
which extends from the year 324 to 439
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dedicated by him to Theodosius,the younger is
full of deliberate falsifications.] But
archaeology and symbolism,those tireless and
implacable enemies of clerical false pretences,
have found in the hieroglyphics of the legend
running round the design at least a partial
interpretation of its meaning.
According to King and other numismatists and
archaeologists,the cross was placed there as
the symbol of eternal life.
The Cross and Crucifix
(Page 151)Such a Tau or Egyptian cross,was used in the
Bacchic and Eleusinian Mysteries.
Symbol of the dual generative power it was
laid upon the breast of the Initiate after his new
birth was accomplished and the Mystae had
returned from their baptism in the sea.It was a
mystic sign that his spiritual birth had
regenerated and united his astral soul with his divine
spirit and that he was ready to ascend in
spirit to the blessed abodes of light and glory -the
Eleusinia.The Tau was a magic talisman at the
same time as a religious emblem.It was
adopted by the Christians through the Gnostics
and Kabalists,who used it largely as their
numerous gems testify.These in turn had the
Tau (or handled cross)from the Egyptians,and
the Latin Cross from the Buddhist
missionaries,who brought it from India (where it can be
found even now)two or three centuries B.C.The
Assyrians,Egyptians,ancient Americans,
Hindus and Romans had it in various,but very
slight modifications of shape.Till very late in
the middle ages,it was considered a potent
spell against epilepsy and demoniacal
possession and the signet of the living God
brought down in St.John s vision by the angel
ascending from the east to seal the servants
of our God in the foreheads,was but the same
mystic Tau -the Egyptian Cross.In the painted
glass of St.Denis (France)this angel is
represented as stamping this sign on the
forehead of the elect;the legend reads,SIGNUM
TAY.In King s Gnostics the author
reminds us that this mark is commonly borne by St.
Anthony an Egyptian recluse.[ Gems of the Orthodox Christians.Vol.1.p.135
.] What the
real meaning of the Tau was,is explained to us
by the Christian St.John the Egyptian
Hermes,and the Hindu Brahmans.It is but too
evident that with the Apostle at least it meant
the Ineffable Name as he calls this signet
of the living God a few chapters further on [
Revelation,XIV 1 ] Father
s name written in their foreheads.
The Brahmātmā the chief of the Hindu
Initiates,had on his headgear two keys symbol of the
revealed mystery of life and death placed
cross-like;and in some Buddhist pagodas of Tartary
and Mongolia the entrance of a chamber within
the temple generally containing the staircase
which leads to the inner dagoba.[ A Dagoba is a small temple of
globular form in which are
preserved the relics of Gautama.] and the porticos of some Prachidas
[ Prachidas are
buildings of all sizes and forms,like our
mausoleums,and are sacred to votive offerings to the
dead.]
are ornamented with a cross formed of two fishes,as found on some of the
zodiacs of
the Buddhists.We should not wonder at all at
learning that the sacred device in the tombs in
the catacombs at Rome the Vesica Piscis,was
derived from the said Buddhist zodiacal sign.
How general must have been that geometrical figure
in the world-symbols,may be inferred
from the fact that there is a Masonic
tradition that Solomon s temple was built on three
foundations,forming the triple Tau or three
crosses.
In its mystical sense the Egyptian cross owes
its origin as an emblem to the realisation by
the earliest philosophy of an androgyno s d
alism of every manifestation in nat re which
proceeds from the abstract ideal of a likewise
androgynous deity while the Christian emblem
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is simply due to chance.Had the Mosaic law (Page 152)prevailed Jesus should have been
lapidated.[The Talmudistic records claim that after having been hanged he
was lapidated
and buried under the water at the junction of
two streams.Mishna Sanhedrin Vol.V1.p.4:
Talm d,of Babylon same article 43a 67a.]
The crucifix was an instrument of torture and
utterly common among Romans as it was unknown
among Semitic nations.It was called the
Tree of Infamy.It is but later that it was
adopted as a Christian symbol;but during the first
two decades the apostles looked upon it with
horror .[ Coptic Legends of
the Crucifixion.MSS.
XI ].It
is certainly not the Christian Cross that John had in mind when speaking of the
signet
of the living God but the mystic Tau
-the Tetragrammaton or mighty name which on the
most ancient Kabalistic talismans,was
represented by the four Hebrew letters composing the
Holy Word.
The famous Lady Ellenborough known among the
Arabs of Damascus,and in the desert
after her last marriage as Hano m Medjo ye had
a talisman in her possession presented to
her by a Druse from Mount Lebanon.It was
recognised by a certain sign on its left corner as
belonging to that class of gems which is known
in Palestine as a Messianic amulet of the
second or third century B.C.It is a green
stone of a pentagonal form;at the bottom is
engraved a fish higher Solomon s Seal;[ We are at a loss to understand why
King in his
Gnostic Gems represents Solomon s Seal as a five-pointed star whereas it
is six-pointed and
is the signet of Vishnu in India .] and still higher the four Chaldaic
letters -Jod He Vau He
IAHO which form the name of the Deity.These
are arranged in quite an unusual way running
from below upward in reversed order and
forming the Egyptian Tau.Around these there is a
legend which as the gem is not our property we
are not at liberty to give.The Tau in its
mystical sense as well as the Crux ansata,is
the Tree of Life.
It is well known that the earliest Christian
emblems -before it was ever attempted to represent
the bodily appearance of Jesus -were the Lamb
the Good Shepherd and The Fish .The
origin of the latter emblem which has so
puzzled the archaeologists thus becomes
comprehensible.The whole secret lies in the
easily ascertained fact that while in the Kabalah
the King Messiah is called Interpreter or
Revealer of the Mystery and shown to be the fifth
emanation in the Talm d -for reasons we
will now explain -the Messiah is very often
designated as DAG or the Fish.This is an
inheritance from the Chaldees,and relates -as
the very name indicates -to the Babylonian Dagon
the man-fish who was the instructor and
interpreter of the people to whom he
appeared.Abarbanel explains the name by stating that
the sign of his (Messiah s)coming is the
conjuction of Saturn and Jupiter in the sign Pisces.
[ King (Gnostics )gives the figure of a Christian
symbol very common during the middle ages
of three fishes,interlaced into a triangle and
having the FIVE letters (a most sacred
Pythagorean number)É×ČÕ× engraved on it.The
number five relates to the same kabalistic
computation .] Therefore as the Christians were intent upon identifying their
Christos with the
Messiah of the Old Testament they
adopted it so readily as to forget that its true origin might
be traced still further back than the
Babylonian Dagon.How eagerly and closely the ideal of
Jesus was united by the early Christians,with
every imaginable kabalistic and pagan tenet
may be inferred from the language of
Clemens,of Alexandria addressed to his co-religionists.
The Story of Jesus
(Page 153)When they were debating upon the choice of the
most appropriate symbol to
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remind them of Jesus,Clemens advised them in
the following words.Let the engraving upon
the gem of your ring be either a dove or
a ship running before the wind (the Argha),or a fish .
Was the good father when writing this sentence
labouring under the recollection of Joshua
son of Nun (called Jes s in the Greek
and Slavonian versions);or had he forgotten the real
interpretation of these pagan symbols?[Op.cit.,II 253-256.]
And now with the help of all these passages
scattered hither and thither in Isis and other works of this
kind the reader will see and judge for himself
which of the two explanations -the Christian or that of the
Occultist -is the nearer to truth.If Jesus
were not an Initiate why should all these allegorical incidents of
his life be given?Why should such extreme
trouble be taken so much time wasted trying to make the
above:(a)answer and dovetail with purposely
picked out sentences in the Old Testament to show them
as prophecies ;and (b)to preserve in
them the initiatory symbols,the emblems so pregnant with Occult
meaning and all of these belonging to Pagan mystic
Philosophy?The author of the So rce of Measures
gives out that mystical intent;but only
once now and again in its one-sided numerical and kabalistic
meaning without paying any attention to or
having concern with the primeval and more spiritual origin
and he deals with it only so far as it related
to the Old Testament.He attributes the p rposed change in
the sentence Eli Eli lama sabachthani to the
principle already mentioned of the crossed bones and
skull in the Labarum.
As an emblem of death being placed over the
door of life and signifying birth or of the
intercontainment of two opposite principles in
one just as,mystically the Saviour was held to
be man-woman.[ Op.cit.,301.All this connects Jesus with great Initiates
and solar heroes:all
this is purely Pagan under a newly-evolved
variation the Christian scheme.] .
The author's idea is to show the mystic
blending by the Gospel writers of Jehovah Cain Abel etc.with
Jesus (in accordance with Jewish kabalistic
numeration);the better he succeeds,the more clearly he
shows that it was a forced blending and
that we have not a record of the real events of the life of Jesus,
narrated by eyewitnesses or the Apostles.The
narrative is all based on the signs of the Zodiac:
Each a double sign or male-female [ in ancient astrological Magic ] -viz.:it was Taurus-Eve
and Scorpio was Mars-Lupa or Mars with the
female wolf [ in relation to
Romulus ] .(Page 154)
So as these signs were opposites of each other
yet met in the centre they were connected;
and so in fact it was,and in a double sense
the conception of the year was in Taurus,as the
conception of Eve by Mars,her opposite in
Scorpio.The birth would be at the winter solstice
or Christmas.On the contrary by conception in
Scorpio -viz.,of Lupa by Taurus -birth would
be in Leo.Scorpio was Chrestos in h
miliation,while Leo was Christos in tri mph.While
Taurus-Eve fulfilled astronomical
functions,Mars-Lupa fulfilled spiritual ones by type.[ Op.
cit.,296.]
The author bases all this on Egyptian
correlations and meanings of Gods and Goddesses,but ignores
the Aryan which are far earlier.
Mooth or
Mo th was the Egyptian cognomen of Venus,(Eve mother of all living)[as Vach
mother of all living a permutation of Aditi
as Eve was one of Sephira ] or the moon.Plutarch
(Isis,374)hands it down that Isis was
sometimes called Muth,which word means mother ...
(Issa ąłē woman).(Isis,p.372).Isis,he
says is that part of Nature which as feminine
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contains in herself as (nutrix)nurse all
things to be born...Certainly the moon speaking
astronomically chiefly exercises this function
in Taurus,Venus being the house (in opposition
to Mars,generator,in Scorpio),because
the sign is luna hypsoma.Since...Isis Metheur
differs from Isis Muth and that in the
vocable Muth the notion of bringing forth may be
concealed and since fructification must take
place Sol being joined with L na in Libra,it is not
improbable that Muth first indeed signifies
Venus in Libra;hence Luna in Libra.(Beiträge zur
Kenntniss,pars 11 S.9 under Muth.)[ Pp.294.295 .]
Then Fuerst under Boh is quoted to show
The double play upon the word Muth by
help of which the real intent is produced in the occult
way ...sin,death,and woman are
one in the glyph and correlatively connected with
interco rse and death.[ P.295.]
All this is applied by the author only to
the exoteric and Jewish euhemerised symbols,whereas they
were meant first of all to conceal
cosmogonical mysteries,and then those of anthropological evolution
with reference to the Seven Races,already
evoluted and to come and especially as regards the last
branch races of the third Root-Race.However
the word void [primeval
Chaos ] is shown to be taken for
Eve-Venus-Naamah agreeably with Fuerst s
definition;for as he says:
In this primitive signification [ of void ] was (bohu)taken in the Biblical cosmogony and used in
establishing the dogma [Jes(us)m aven,Jes-us from nothing ] respecting creation.(Which
shows the writers of the New Testament considerably
skilled in the Kabalah and Occult Sciences,and
corroborates still more our assertion.)Hence
Aquila translates ļõäåķ vulg.vacua (hence vacca,cow )
[hence also the horns of Isis -Nature Earth and the Moon
-taken from Vąch the Hindu Mother of all
that lives, identified with Virąj and called
in Atharvaveda the daughter of Kąma the first desires:That
daughter of thine O kąma is called the cow,she
whom Sages name Vach-Viraj, who was milked by
Brihaspati the Rishi which is another mystery ] Onkelos and Samarit
The Primitive Woman-(Page 155)The Phoenician cosmogony has connected Boh āįįķBaav
into a personified expression denoting the primitive
substance,and as a deity the mother of races of the
Gods [ which is Aditi and
Vach ].The Aramean name āįöóņ
Buto for the mother of the gods,which
passed over to the Gnostics,Babylonians and Egyptians,is
identical then with Mōt (.our Muth)properly (āłč oriiginated in Phoenician
from an
interchange of b with m.[ Pp.295.296 ]
Rather one would say go to the origin.The
mystic euhemerisation of Wisdom and Intelligence operating
in the work of cosmic evolution or B ddhi under
the names of Brahma Purusha etc.as male power
and Aditi-Vąch etc.as female whence Sarasvati
Goddess of Wisdom who became under the veils of
Esoteric concealment Butos,Bythos -Depth
the grossly material personal female called Eve the
primitive woman of Irenaeus,and the world
springing out of Nothing.
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The workings out of this glyph of 4 th Genesis
help to the comprehension of the division of one character
into the forms of two persons;as Adam and Eve
Cain and Abel Abram and Isaac,Jacob and Esau and
so on [all
male and female ] ...Now as
linking together several great salient points in the Biblical
structure:(1)as to the Old and New
Testament;with also (2)as to the Roman Empire;(3)as to
confirming the meaning and uses of symbols;and
(4)as to confirming the entire explanation and reading
of the glyphs;as (5)recognizing and laying
down the base of the great pyramid as the fo ndation sq are
of the Bible construction;(6)as well as the
new Roman adoption under Constantine -the following given:
[ Had we known the learned author before his book was printed
he might have been perchance
prevailed upon to add a seventh link from
which all others,far preceding those enumerated in point of
time and surpassing them in universally
philosophical meaning have been derived aye even to the
great pyramid whose foundation square was,in
its turn the great Aryan Mysteries.]
Cain has been shown to be ...the 360 circle of
the Zodiac,the perfect and exact standard b a squared
division;hence his name of Melchizadik ...[The geometrical and numerical
demonstrations here follow.]
It has been repeatedly stated that the object
of the Great Pyramid construction was to measure the
heavens and the earth ...(the objective spheres as evoluting from the subjective
purely spiritual
Kosmos,we beg leave to add);therefore its
measuring containment would indicate all the substance of
measure of the heaven and the earth,or
agreeably to ancient recognition Earth,Air,Water and Fire.[ We
would say cosmic Matter Spirit Chaos,and
Divine Light for the Egyptians idea was identical in this with
the Aryan.However the author is right with
regard to the Occult Symbology of the Jews.They were a
remarkably matter of fact unspiritual people
at all times,yet even with them Ruach was Divine Spirit
not air.] (The base side of this pyramid was diameter to a circumference in
feet of 2400.The
characteristic of this is 24 feet or 6 X 4 =24
or this very Cain-Adam square.)Now by the restoration of
the encampment of the Israelites,as initiated
by Moses,by the great scholar (Page 156)Father
Athanasius Kircher the Jesuit priest the above
is precisely by Biblical record and traditionary sources,
the method of laying off this encampment.The fo
r interior sq ares were devoted to (1)Moses and
Aaron;(2)Kohath;(3)Gershom;and (4)Merari -the
last three being the head of the Levites.The
attributes of these squares were the primal
attributes of Adam-Mars and were concreted of the elements,
Earth,Air,Fire,Water,or =Iam =Water .Nour =Fire,=Rouach =Air,and
=Iabeshah =Earth.The initial letters of
these words are INRI.[The words
translated as Iesus
Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum -Jesus,King of the
Jews.]This square of INRI is
the Adam sq are,which
was extended from as a foundation into four
others of 145 X 2 =288 to the side of the large square of
288 X 4 =115 -2 =the whole circumference.But
this square is the display of also circular elements and
115-2 can denote this.Put INRI into a circle
or read it as the letters stand in the square as to its value of
1521 and we have which reads 115-2 of this
fact.
But as seen Cain denotes this as,or in the 115
of his name:which 115 was the very complement to
make up the 360 day year to agree with the
balances of the standard circle which were Cain.The
corner squares of the larger square are A =Leo
and B =Dan Scorpio;and it is seen that Cain pierces
Abel at the intersection of the equinoctial
with the solstice cross lines,referred to from Dan-Scorpio on
the celestial circle.But Dan-Scorpio borders
on Libra the scales,whose sign is (which sign is
that of the ancient pillow on which the
back of the head to the ears [Mr
Ralston Skinner shows that the
symbol the crossed bones and skull has the
letter P Koph,the half of the head behind the ears.]
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rested the pillow of Jacob),and is represented
for one symbol as Also the badge of Dan-
Scorpio is death-life in the symbol Now the
cross is the emblem of the origin of measures in the
Jehovah form
of a straight line ONE of a denomination of 20612,the perfect circumference;hence
Cain
was this as Jehovah for the text says that he
was Jehovah.But the attachment of a man to this cross
was that of 113:355 to 6561:5153 X 4 =20612 as
shown.Now over the head of Jesus crucified was
placed the inscription of which the initial
letters of the words have always been retained as symbolic,and
handed down and used as a monogram of Jesus
Chrestos -viz .INRI or Jes s Nazaren s Rex
Judaeor m;but they are located on the Cross or the cubed form
of the circular origin of measures which
measure the substance of Earth,Air,Fire and
Water,or INRI =1152 as shown.Here is the man on the
cross or
113;355 combined with 6561:5153 X 4 =20612.These are the pyramid-base numbers
as
coming from 113:355 as the Hebrew
source;whence the Adam-square which is the pyramid base and
the centre one to the larger square of the encampment
.Bend INRI into a circle and we have 1152 or the
circumference of the latter.But Jesus dying
(or Abel married)made use of the very words needed to set
forth all.He says,Eli,Eli,Lama Sabachthani ...Read
them by their power values,in circular form,as
produced from the Adam form as shown and we
have ..=113 =113 or 113-311:
=345 or Moses in the Cain-Adam pyramid
circle:=710 equals Dove or Jonah and 710
divided by 2 =355 or 355 -553:and finally as
determinative of all or ni .........where
=n n
fish =565 and =1 or 10;together 565 .=or the
Christ value.
Kabalistic Reading of Gospels-(Page 157)[All of the above ] throws light on the transfiguration
scene on
the mount.There were present there Peter and
James and John with Jesus;or Iami James,
Water ;Peter
Earth John Spirit Air,and Jesus,Fire,Life -together
INRI.But behold Eli and Moses met them there
or .and or Eli and Lamah,or 113
and 345.And this shows that the scene of
transfiguration was connected with the one above set forth.
[ Pp.296 -302 .By these numbers,explains the author.Eli is
113 (by placing the word in a circle):amah
being 345 is by change of letters to suit the
same value (in a circle)or Moses,while Sabachth
is John or the dove or Holy Spirit because (in
a circle)it is 710 (or 355 X 2).The termination ni as meni
or 5651 becomes Jehovah.]
This kabalistical reading of the Gospel
narratives -hitherto supposed to record the most important the
most mystically awful yet most real events of
the life of Jesus -must fall with terrible weight upon some
Christians.Every honest trusting believer who
has shed tears of reverential emotion over the events of
the short period of the public life of Jesus
of Nazareth has to choose one of the two ways opening before
him after reading the aforesaid:either his
faith has to render him quite impervious to any light coming
from human reasoning and evident fact;or he
must confess that he has lost his Saviour.The One whom
he had hitherto considered as the unique
incarnation on this earth of the One Living God in heaven
fades into thin air on the authority of the
properly read and correctly interpreted Bible itself.Moreover
since on the authority of Jerome himself and
his accepted and authentic confession the book written by
the hand of Matthew exhibits matter not for edification
but for destruction (of Church and h man
Christianity and only that)what truth can be
expected from his famous V lgate ?H man mysteries,
concocted by generations of Church Fathers
bent upon evolving a religion of their own invention are
seen instead of a divine Revelation;and
that this was so is corroborated by a prelate of the Latin Church.
Saint Gregory Nazianzen wrote to his friend
and confidant St.Jerome:
Nothing can impose better on a people than
verbiage;the less they understand the more they
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admire ...Our fathers and doctors have often
said not what they thought but that to which
circumstances and necessity forced them.
(Page 158)Which then of the two -clergy or the
Occultists and Theosophists -are the more blasphemous
and dangerous?Is it those who would impose
upon the world s acceptance a Saviour of their own
fashioning a God with human shortcomings,and
who therefore is certainly not a perfect divine Being;or
those others who say:Jesus of Nazareth was in
Initiate a holy grand and noble character but withal
human though truly a Son of God ?
If Humanity is to accept a so-called
supernatural Religion how far more logical to the Occultist and the
Psychologist seems the transparent allegory
given of Jesus by the Gnostics.They as Occultists and
with Initiates for their Chiefs differed only
in their renderings of the story and in their symbols,and not at
all in substance.What say the Ophites,the
Nazarenes,and other heretics ?Sophia the Celestial
Virgin is prevailed upon to send
Christos,her emanation to the help of perishing humanity from whom
Ilda-Baoth (the Jehovah of the Jews)and his
six Sons of Matter (the lower terrestrial Angels)are shutting
out the divine light.Therefore Christos,the
perfect [ The Western
personification of that power which
the Hindus call the Vija the one seed
or Maha Vishn -a power not the God -or that mysterious
Principle that contains in itself the Seed of
Avatārism .]
Uniting himself with Sophia [divine wisdom ] descended through the seven planetary regions,
assuming in each an analogous form ...[and ] entered into the man Jesus at the moment of
his baptism in the Jordan.From this time forth
Jesus began to work miracles;before that he
had been entirely ignorant of his own mission.
Ilda-Baoth discovering that Christos was
bringing to an end his kingdom of Matter stirred up the Jews,
his own people against Him and Jesus was put to
death.When Jesus was on the Cross Christos and
Sophia left His body and returned to Their own
sphere.The material body of Jesus was abandoned to
the earth but He Himself the Inner Man was
clothed with a body made up of aether.[ Arise into Nervi
from this decrepit body into which thou hast
been sent.Ascend into thy former abode O blessed
Avatār!]
Thenceforth he consisted merely of soul and
spirit ...During his sojourn upon earth of
eighteen months after he had risen he received from Sophia that perfect knowledge
that true
Gnosis,which he communicated to the small
portion of the Apostles who were capable of
receiving the same.[ The Gnostics and their Remains.King.pp.100 101.]
The above is transparently Eastern and
Hindu;it is the Esoteric Doctrine pure and simple save for the
names and the allegory.It is,more or less,the
history of every Adept who obtains Initiation.
Universal Teachings-(Page 159)The Baptism in the Jordan is the Rite of Initiation the
final purification
whether in sacred pagoda tank,river or temple
lake in Egypt or Mexico.The perfect Christos and
Sophia -divine Wisdom and Intelligence -enter
the Initiate at the moment of the mystic rite by
transference from Guru to Chela and leave the
physical body at the moment of the death of the latter to
re-enter the Nirmānakāya or the astral Ego of
the Adept.
The spirit of Buddha [collectively ] overshadows
the Bodhisattvas of his Church says the
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Buddhist Ritual of Aryasangha.
Says the Gnostic teaching:
When he [ the spirit of Christos ]
shall have collected all the Spiritual all the Light [ that exists
in matter ] out of Ildabaoth s empire Redemption is accomplished and the
end of the world
arrived.[Loc.Cit .]
Say the Buddhists;
When Buddha [the Spirit of the Church ]
hears the hour strike he will send Maitreya Buddha -
after whom the old world will be destroyed.
That which is said of Basilides by King may be
applied as truthfully to every innovator so called whether
of a Buddhist or of a Christian Church.In the
eyes of Clemens Alexandrinus,he says the Gnostics
taught very little that was blameable in their
mystical transcendental views.
In his eyes the latter (Basilides),was not a heretic
that is an innovator upon the accepted
doctrines of the Catholic Church but only a
theosophic speculator who sought to express old
truths by new formulae.[ Op.cit.,p.258 .]
There was a Secret Doctrine preached by
Jesus;and secrecy in those days meant Secrets,or
Mysteries of Initiation all of which have been
either rejected or disfigured by the Church.In the
Clementine Homilics we read:
And Peter said:We remember that our Lord and
Teacher commanding us,said Guard the
mysteries for me and the sons of my
house.Wherefore also he explained to His disciples
privately the Mysteries of the Kingdom of the
Heavens.[Homilies XIX.XX
I ]
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SECTION XIX
St.Cyprian of Antioch
(Page 160)THE Aeons (Stellar Spirits)-emanated from the
Unknown of the Gnostics,and identical with
the Dhyan Chohans of the Esoteric Doctrine
-and their Pleroma having been transformed into
Archangels and the Spirits of the Presence
by the Greek and Latin Churches,the prototypes have lost
caste.The Pleroma [ The Pleroma constituted the synthesis or entirety of all the
spiritual entities.St.Paul
still used the name in his Epistles.] was now called the Heavenly Host
and therefore the old name had
to become identified with Satan and his
Host. Might is right in every age and History is full of contrasts.
Manes has been called the Paraclete [ The Comforter second Messiah
intercessor. A term applied
to the Holy Ghost. Manes was the disciple of
Terebinthus,an Egyptian Philosopher who according to
the Christian Socrates (1.i.cited by Tillemont
iv.584).while invoking one day the demons of the air fell
from the roof of his house and was killed.] by his followers.He was an Occultist
but passed to posterity
owing to the kind exertions of the Church as a
Sorcerer so a match had to be found for him by way of
contrast.We recognise this match in
St.Cyprianus of Antioch a self-confessed if not a real Black
Magician it seems,whom the Church -as a
reward for his contrition and humility -subsequently raised
to the high rank of Saint and Bishop.
What history knows of him is not much and it
is mostly based on his own confession the truthfulness of
which is warranted we are told by St.Gregory
the Empress Eudoxia Photius and the Holy Church.This
curious document was ferreted out by the Marquis
de Mirville [Cy.Op.cit.,vi
169-183 .] in the Vatican
and by him translated into French for the
first time as he assures the reader.We beg his permission to
retranslate a few pages,not for the sake of
the penitent Sorcerer but for that of some students of
Occultism who will thus have an opportunity of
comparing the methods of ancient Magic (or as the
Church calls it Demonism)with those of modern
Theurgy and Occultism.
Magic in Antioch-(Page 161)The scenes described took place at Antioch about the middle
of the third
century 252 A.D.says the translator.This
Confession was written by the penitent Sorcerer after his
conversion;therefore we are not surprised to
find how much room he gives in his lamentations to reviling
his Initiator Satan or the Serpent Dragon
as he calls him.There are other and more modern
instances of the same trait in human
nature.Converted Hindus,Parsis and other heathen of India are
apt to denounce their forefathers religions
at every opportunity.Thus runs the Confession:
O all of you who reject the real mysteries of
Christ see my tears!...You who wallow in your
demoniacal practices,learn by my sad example
all the vanity of their [the
demons ] baits ...I
am that Cyprianus,who vowed to Apollo from his
infancy was early initiated into all the arts of
the dragon.[The great serpent placed to watch the temple, comments
de Mirville.How often
have we repeated that it was no symbol no
personification but really a serpent occupied by a
god! -he exclaims;and we answer that at Cairo
in a Mussulman not a heathen temple we
have seen as thousands of other visitors have
also seen a huge serpent that lived there for
centuries,we were told and was held in great
respect.Was it also occupied by a God or
possessed in other words?] Even before the age of seven I had
already been introduced into
the temple of Mithra:three years later my
parents taking me to Athens to be received as
citizen I was permitted likewise to penetrate
the mysteries of Ceres lamenting her daughter
[ The Mysteries of Demeter or the "afflicted
mother".] and I also became
the guardian of the
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Dragon in the Temple of Pallas.
Ascending after that to the summit of Mount
Olympus,the Seat of the Gods,as it is called
there too I was initiated into the sense and
the real meaning of their [the
Gods ] speeches and
their clamorous manifestations (strepit m ).It
is there that I was made to see in imagination
(phantasia )[or mayā ] those
trees and all those herbs that operate such prodigies with the help
of demons;...and I saw their dances,their
warfares,their snares,illusions and promiscuities.
I heard their singing.[ By the satyrs.]I
saw finally for forty consecutive days,the phalanx of
the Gods and Goddesses,sending from Olympus,as
though they were Kings,spirits to
represent them on earth and act in their name
among all the nations.[This
looks rather
suspicious and seems interpolated.De Mirville
tries to have what he says of Satan and his
Court sending their imps on earth to tempt
humanity and masquerade at seances
corroborated by the ex-sorcerer.]
At that time I lived entirely on fruit eaten
only after sunset the virtues of which were explained
to me by the seven priests of the sacrifices.[This does not look like sinful
food.It is the diet of
Chelas to this day.]
When I was fifteen my parents desired that I
should be made acquainted not only with all the
natural laws in connection with the generation
and corruption of (Page
162)bodies
on earth in
the air and in the seas,but also with all the
other forces grafted [Grafted
is the correct
expression.The seven Builders graft the
divine and the beneficent forces on to the gross
material nature of the vegetable and mineral
kingdoms every Second Round -says the
Catechism of Lanoos.] (insitas
)on these by the Prince of the World in order to counteract their
primal and divine constitution.[ Only the Prince of the World is not
Satan as the translator
would make us believe but the collective Host
of the Planetary.This is a little theological
backbiting.] At twenty I went to Memphis,where penetrating into the
Sanctuaries,I was taught
to discern all that pertains to the
communications of demons [Daimones
or Spirits ] with
terrestrial matters,their aversion for certain
places,they sympathy and attraction for others,
their expulsion from certain planets,certain
objects and laws,their persistence in preferring
darkness and their resistance to light.[ Here the Elemental and Elementary
Spirits are
evidently meant.] There I learned the number of the fallen Princes,[ The reader has already
learned the truth about them in the course of
the present work.] that which
takes place in
human souls and the bodies they enter into
communication with.
I learnt the analogy that exists between
earthquakes and the rains,between the motion of the
earth [
Pity the penitent Saint had not imparted his knowledge of the
rotation of the earth and
heliocentric system earlier to his Church.That
might have saved more than one human life -
that of Bruno for one.] and the motion of the seas;I saw the spirits of the Giants
plunged in
subterranean darkness and seemingly supporting
the earth like a man carrying a burden on is
shoulders.[ Chelas in their trials of initiation also see in trances
artificially generated for them
the vision of the Earth supported by an
elephant on the top of a tortoise standing on nothing -
and this,to teach them to discern the true
from the false.].
When thirty I travelled to Chaldaea to study
there the true power of the air placed by some in the fire and
by the more learned in light [Akāsha ].I was
taught to see that the planets were in their variety as
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dissimilar as the plants on earth and the
stars were like armies ranged in battle order.I knew the
Chaldaean division of Ether into 365 parts,[ Relating to the days of the year
also to 7X7 divisions of the
earth s sublunary sphere divided into seven
upper and seven lower spheres with their respective
Planetary Hosts or armies.] and I perceived that everyone of the
demons who divide it among
themselves [ Daimon is not demon as translated by De Mirville but Spirit.] was endowed with that
material force that permitted him to execute
the orders of the Prince and guide all the movements therein
[in the Ether ].[All this is to corroborate his
dogmatic assertions that Pater Aether or Jupiter is Satan!and
that pestilential diseases,cataclysms,and even
thunderstorms that prove disastrous,come from the
Satanic Host dwelling in Ether -a good warning
to the men of Science!] They
[the Chaldees ] explained
to me how those Princes had become
participants in the Council of Darkness,ever in opposition to the
Council of Light.
I got acquainted with the Mediatores [surely not mediums as De Mirville
explains!] [ The translator
replaces the word Mediators by
mediums,excusing himself in a footnote by saying that Cyprian m st
have meant modern mediums!] and upon seeing
the covenants they were mutually bound by I was
struck with wonder upon learning the nature of
their oaths and observances.[ Cypriannus
simply meant
to hint at the rites and mysteries of
Initiation and the pledge of secrecy and oaths that bound the Initiates
together.His translator however has made a
Witches Sabbath of it instead.]
Sorcerer Become Saint
(Page 163)Believe me I saw the Devil;believe me I have
embraced him [Twelve centuries
later in full renaissance and reform the world
saw Luther do the same [embrace
the Devil he
means?]-according
to his own confession and in the same conditions,explains De Mirville
in a footnote showing thereby the brotherly
love that binds Christians.Now Cyprianus meant
by the Devil (if the word is really in the
original text)his Initiator and Hierophant.No Saint -
even a penitent Sorcerer -would be so silly as
to speak of his (the Devil s )rising from his seat
to see him to the door were it otherwise.][like the witches at the Sabbath (?)] when I was yet
young and he saluted me by the title of the
new Jambres,declaring me worthy of my ministry
(initiation).He promised me continual help
during life and a principality after death.[ Every
Adept has a principality after his death.] Having become in great honour (an
Adept)under his
tuition he placed under my orders a phalanx of
demons,and when I bid him goodbye
Courage good success,excellent Cyprian he
exclaimed rising up from his seat to see me
to the door plunging thereby those present
into a profound admiration.[ Which
shows that it
was the Hierophant and his disciples.Cyprianus
shows himself as grateful as most of the
other converts (the modern included)to his
Teachers and Instructors.
Having bidden farewell to his Chaldaean
Initiator the future Sorcerer and Saint went to Antioch.His tale
of iniquity and subsequent repentance is
long but we will make it short.He became an accomplished
Magician surrounded by a host of disciples
and candidates to the perilous and sacrilegious art.He
shows himself distributing love-philtres and
dealing in deathly charms to rid young wives of old
husbands,and to ruin Christian virgins.
Unfortunately Cyprianus was not above love himself.He fell in
love with the beautiful Justine a converted
maiden after having vainly tried to make her share the
passion one named Aglaides,a profligate had
for her.His demons failed he tells us,and he got
disgusted with them.This disgust brings on a
quarrel between him and his Hierophant whom he insists
on indentifying with the Demon;and the dispute
is followed by a tournament between the latter and some
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Christian converts,in which the Evil One
is,of course worsted.The Sorcerer is finally baptised and
gets rid of his enemy.Having laid at the feet
of Anthimes,Bishop of Antioch all his books on Magic,he
became a Saint in company with the beautiful
Justine who had converted him;both suffered martyrdom
under the Emperor Diocletian;and both are
buried side by side in Rome in the Basilica of St.John
Lateran near the Baptistery.
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SECTION XX
The Eastern Gupta Vidya &The Kabalah
(Page 164)WE now return to the consideration of the
essential identity between the Eastern Gupta Vidya
and the Kabalah as a system while we must also
show the dissimilarity in their philosophical
interpretations since the Middle Ages.
It must be confessed that the views of the
Kabalists -meaning by the word those students of Occultism
who study the Jewish Kabalah and who
know little if anything of any other Esoteric literature or of its
teachings -are as varied in their synthetic
conclusions upon the nature of the mysteries taught even in
the Zohar alone and are as wide of the
true mark,as are the dicta upon it of exact Science itself.Like
the mediaeval Rosicrucian and the Alchemist
-like the Abbot Trithemius,John Reuchlin Agrippa
Paracelsus,Robert Fludd Philalethes,etc.-by
whom they swear the continental Occultists see in the
Jewish Kabalah alone the universal well
of wisdom;they find in it the secret lore of nearly all the
mysteries of Nature -metaphysical and divine
-some of them including herein as did Reuchlin those of
the Christian Bible .For them the Zohar
is an Esoteric Thesaurus of all the mysteries of the Christian
Gospel;and the Sephyr Yetsirah is the
light that shines in every darkness,and the container of the keys
to open every secret in Nature.Whether many of
our modern followers of the mediaeval Kabalists have
an idea of the real meaning of the symbology
of their chosen Masters is another question.Most of them
have probably never given even a passing
thought to the fact that the Esoteric language used by the
Alchemists was their own and that it was given
out as a blind necessitated by the dangers of the epoch
they lived in and not as the Mystery-language
used by the Pagan Initiates,which the Alchemists had
retranslated and re-veiled once more.
A Mystery Within a Mystery-(Page 165)And now the situation stands thus:as the old
Alchemists have
not left a key to their writings,the latter
have become a mystery within an older mystery.The Kabalah is
interpreted and checked only by the light
which mediaeval Mystics have thrown upon it and they in their
forced Christology had to put a theological
dogmatic mask on every ancient teaching the result being
that each Mystic among our modern European and
American Kabalists interprets the old symbols in his
own way and each refers his opponents to the
Rosicrucian and the Alchemist of three and four hundred
years ago.Mystic Christian dogma is the
central maelstrom that engulfs every old Pagan symbol and
Christianity -Anti-Gnostic Christianity the
modern retort that has replaced the alembic of the Alchemists -
has distilled out of all recognition the Kabalah,i.e.,the
Hebrew Zohar and other rabbinical mystic works.
And now it has come to this:The student
interested in the Secret Sciences has to believe that the whole
cycle of the symbolical Ancient of Days
every hair of the mighty beard of Macroprosopos,refers only to
the history of the earthly career of Jesus of
Nazareth!And we are told that the Kabalah was first taught
to a select company of angels by Jehovah
himself -who out of modesty one must think,made himself
only the third Sephiroth in it and a female
one into the bargain.So many Kabalists so many
explanations.Some believe -perchance with more
reason than the rest -that the substance of the
Kabalah is
the basis upon which masonry is built since modern Masonry is undeniable the
dim and hazy
reflection of primeval Occult Masonry of the
teaching of those divine Masons who established the
Mysteries of the prehistoric and prediluvian
Temples of Initiation raised by truly superhuman Builders.
Others declare that the tenets expounded in
the Zohar relate merely to mysteries terrestrial and profane
having no more concern with metaphysical
speculations -such as the soul or the post-mortem life of
man -than have the Mosaic books.Others,again
-and these are the real genuine Kabalists,who had
their instructions from initiated Jewish
Rabbis -affirm that if the two most learned Kabalists of the
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mediaeval period John Reuchlin and Paracelsus,differed
in their religious professions -the former being
the Father of the Reformation and the latter a
Roman Catholic,at least in appearance -the Zohar cannot
contain much of Christian dogma or tenet one
way or the other.In other words,they maintain that the
numerical language of the Kabalistic works
teaches universal truths -and not any one Religion in
particular.Those who make this (Page 166)statement are perfectly right in saying that
the Mystery-
language used in the Zohar and in other
Kabalistic literature was once in a time of unfathomable
antiquity the universal language of
Humanity.But they become entirely wrong if to this fact they add the
untenable theory that this lang age was
invented by,or was the original property of,the Hebrews,from
whom all the other nations borrowed it.
They are wrong because although the Zohar (.)The
Book of Splendo r of Rabbi
Simeon Ben Iochai did indeed originate with
him -his son Rabbi Eleazar helped by his secretary Rabbi
Abba compiling the Kabalistic teachings of his
deceased father into a work called the Zohar -those
teachings were not Rabbi Simeon s,as the
Gupta Vidya shows.They are as old as the Jewish nation
itself.and far older.In short the writings
which pass at present under the title of the Zohar of Rabbi
Simeon are about as original as were the
Egyptian synchronistic Tables after being handled by Eusebius,
or as St.Paul s Epistles after their
revision and correction by the Holy Church.[This is proved if we
take but a single recorded instance.J.Picus de
Mirandola finding that there was more Christianity than
Judaism in the Kabalah and discovering
in it the doctrines of the Trinity the Incarnation the Divinity of
Jesus,etc.wound up his proofs of this with a
challenge to the world at large from Rome.As Ginsburg
shows:In 1486 when only twenty-four years old
he [Pieus ] published nine hundred [Kabalistic ]
theses
which were placarded in Rome and undertook to
defend them in the presence of all European scholars
whom he invited to the Eternal City promising
to defray their travelling expenses .]
Let us throw a rapid retrospective glance at
the history and the tribulations of that very same Zohar as
we know of them from trustworthy tradition and
documents.We need not stop to discuss whether it was
written in the first century B.C.or in the
first century A.D.Suffice it for us to know that there was at all
times a Kabalistic literature among the
Jews;that though historically it can be traced only from the time of
the Captivity yet from the Pentate ch down
to the Talm d the documents of that literature were ever
written in a kind of Mystery-language were in
fact a series of a symbolical records which the Jews had
copied from the Egyptian and the Chaldaean
Sanctuaries,only adapting them to their own national
history -if history it can be called.Now that
which we claim -and it is not denied even by the most
prejudiced Kabalist is that although
Kabalistic lore had passed orally through long ages down to the
latest Pre-Christian Tanaim and although David
and Solomon may have been great Adepts in it as is
claimed yet no one dared to write it down till
the days of Simeon Ben Iochai.
Authorship of the Zohar-(Page 167)In short the lore found in Kabalistic
literature was never recorded in
writing before the first century of the modern
era.
This brings the critic to the following
reflection:While in India we find the Vedas and the Brahmanical
literature written down and edited ages before
the Christian era -the Orientalists themselves being
obliged to concede a couple of millenniums of
antiquity to the older manuscripts;while the most
important allegories in Genesis are
found recorded on Babylonian tiles centuries B.C.;while the Egyptian
sarcophagi yearly yield proofs of the origin
of the doctrines borrowed and copied by the Jews;yet the
Monotheism of the Jews is exalted and thrown
into the teeth of all the Pagan nations,and the so-called
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Christian Revelation is placed above all
others,like the sun above a row of street gas lamps.Yet it is
perfectly well known having been ascertained
beyond doubt or cavil that no manuscript whether
Kabalistic,Talmudistic,or Christian which has
reached our present generation is of earlier date than the
first centuries of our era whereas this can
certainly never be said of the Egyptian papyri or the
Chaldaean tiles,or even of some Eastern
writings.
But let us limit our present research to the Kabalah,and
chiefly to the Zohar -called also the Midrash .
This book,whose teachings were edited for the
first time between 70 and 110 A.D.is known to have
been lost and its contents to have been
scattered throughout a number of minor manuscripts,until the
thirteenth century.The idea that it was the
composition of Moses de Leon of Valladolid in Spain who
passed it off as a pseudograph of Simeon Ben
Iochai is ridiculous,and was well disposed of by Munk -
though he does point to more than one modern
interpolation in the Zohar .At the same time it is more
than certain that the present Book of Zohar
was written by Moses de Leon and owing to joint editorship
is more Christian in its colouring than is
many a genuine Christian volume.Munk gives the reason why
saying that it appears evident that the author
made use of ancient documents,and among these of
certain Midraschim,or collections of
traditions and Biblical expositions,which we do not now possess.
As a proof also that the knowledge of the
Esoteric system taught in the Zohar came to the Jews very
late indeed -at any rate that they had so far
forgotten it that the innovations and additions made by de
Leon provoked no criticism but were thankfully
received -Munk quotes from Tholuck,a Jewish authority
the following information:Haya Gaon who died
in 1038 is to our knowledge the first author who
developed (Page 168)(and perfected)the theory of the Sephiroth and
he gave them names which we find
again among the Kabalistic names used by
Dr.Jellinek.Moses Ben Schem-Tob de Leon who held
intimate intercourse with the Syrian and
Chaldaean Christian learned scribes was enabled through the
latter to acquire a knowledge of some of the
Gnostic writings.[ This account
is summarised from Isaac
Myer s Qabbalah p.10 et seq.]
Again the Sepher Jetzirah (Book of
Creation)-though attributed to Abraham and though very archaic as
to its contents -is first mentioned in the
eleventh century by Jehuda Ho Levi (Chazari).And these two
the Zohar and Jetzirah are the
storehouse of all the subsequent Kabalistic works.Now let us see how far
the Hebrew sacred canon itself is to be
trusted.
The word Kabalah comes from the root to
receive and has a meaning identical with the Sanskrit
Smriti (received by tradition )-a system
of oral teaching passing from one generation of priests to
another as was the case with the Brahmanical
books before they were embodied in manuscript.The
Kabalistic tenets came to the Jews from the
Chaldaeans;and if Moses knew the primitive and universal
language of the Initiates,as did every
Egyptian priest and was thus acquainted with the numerical
system on which it was based he may have -and
we say he has -written Genesis and other scrolls.
The five books that now pass current under his
name the Pentate ch,are not withal the original Mosaic
Records.[ There is not in the decalogue one idea that is not the
counterpart or the paraphrase of the
dogmas and ethics among the Egyptians long
before the time of Moses and Aaron.(The Mosaic Law a
transcript from the Egyptian Sources:vide Geometry
in Religion,1890)] Nor were they written in the old
Hebrew square letters,nor even in the
Samaritan characters,for both alphabets belong to a date later
than that of Moses,and Hebrew -as it is now
known -did not exist in the days of the great lawgiver
either as a language or as an alphabet.
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As no statements contained in the records of
the Secret Doctrine of the East are regarded as of any
value by the world in general and since to be
understood by and convince the reader one has to quote
names familiar to him and use arguments and
proofs out of documents which are accessible to all the
following facts may perhaps demonstrate that
our assertions are not merely based on the teachings of
Occult Records.
Chaldaic and Hebrew (Page 169)(1)The great Orientalist and scholar Klaproth denied
positively the
antiquity of the so-called Hebrew alphabet on
the ground that the square Hebrew characters in which the
Biblical manuscripts are written and which we
use in printing were probably derived from the Palmyrene
writing or some other Semitic alphabet so that
the Hebrew Bible is written merely in the Chaldaic
phonographs of Hebrew words.
The late Dr.Kenealy pertinently remarked that
the Jews and Christians rely on
A phonograph of a dead and almost unknown
language as abstruse as the cuneiform letters
on the mountains of Assyria [ Book of God.Kenealy p.383.The
reference to Klaproth is also
from this page.]
(2)The attempts made to carry back the square
Hebrew character to the time of Esdras (B.C.458)have
all failed.
(3)It is asserted that the Jews took their
alphabet from the Babylonians during their captivity.But there
are scholars who do not carry the now-known
Hebrew square letters beyond the late period of the fourth
century A.D.[ See Asiat.Jo r.,N.S.vii.p.275 quoted by Kenealy.]
The Hebrew Bible is precisely as if Homer were
printed not in Greek,but in English letters;or
as if Shakespeare s works were phonographed
in Burmese.[Book of
God,loc.cit.]
(4)Those who maintain that the ancient Hebrew
is the same as the Syraic or Chaldaic have to see what
is said in Jeremiah wherein the Lord is
made to threaten the house of Israel with bringing against it the
mighty and ancient nation of the Chaldaeans:
A nation whose language thou knowest not
neither understandest what they say.[ Op.cit.,
v.15.]
This is quoted by Bishop Walton [ Prolegomena.iii 13 quoted by
Kenealy.p.385.] against the
assumption of the identity of Chaldaic and
Hebrew and ought to settle the question.
(5)The real Hebrew of Moses was lost after the
seventy years captivity when the Israelites brought back
Chaldaic with them and grafted it on their own
language the fusion resulting in a dialectical variety of
Chaldaic,the Hebrew tincturing it very
slightly and ceasing from that time to be a spoken language.[See
Book of God.p.385.Care should be taken says Butler (quoted by
Kenealy.p489),to distinguish
between the Pentateuch in the Hebrew language
but in the letters of the Samaritan alphabet and the
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version of the Pentateuch in the Samaritan
language.One of the most important differences between the
Samaritan and the Hebrew text respects the
duration of the period between the deluge and the birth of
Abraham.The Samaritan text makes it longer by
some centuries than the Hebrew text;and the
Septuagint makes it longer by some centuries
than the Samaritan.It is observable that in the authentic
translation of the Latin Vulgate the Roman
Church follows the computation expressed in the Hebrew
text;and in her Martyrology follows that of
the Seventy both texts being inspired as she claims.]
(Page 170)As to our statement that the present Old
Testament does not contain the original Books of
Moses,this is proven by the facts that:
(1)The Samaritans repudiated the Jewish
canonical books and their Law of Moses.They will have
neither the Psalms of David nor the
Prophets,nor the Talm d and Mishna :nothing but the real Books of
Moses,and in quite a different edition.[ See Rev.Joseph Wolff s Jo rnal.p.200.]The Books of Moses
and of Joshua are disfigured out of
recognition by the Talmudists they say
(2)The black Jews of Cochin Southern India
-who know nothing of the Babylonian Captivity or of the
ten lost
tribes (the latter a pure invention of the Rabbis),proving that these Jews
must have come to
India before the year 600 B.C.-have their
Books of Moses which they will show to no one.And these
Books of Laws differ greatly from the present
scrolls.Nor are they written in the square Hebrew
characters (semi-Chaldaic and
semi-Palmyrean)but in the archaic letters,as we were assured by one of
them -letters entirely unknown to all but
themselves and a few Samaritans.
(3)The Karaim Jews of the Crimea -who call
themselves the descendants of the true children of Israel
i.e.of
the Sadducees -reject the Torah and the Pentate ch of the
Synagogue reject the Sabbath of the
Jews (keeping Friday),will have neither the
Books of the Prophets nor the Psalms -nothing but their own
Books of Moses and what they call his one and
real Law.
This makes it plain that the Kabalah of
the Jews is but the distorted echo of the Secret Doctrine of the
Chaldaeans,and that the real Kabalah is
found only in the Chaldaean Book of N mbers now in the
possession of some Persian Sufis.Every nation
in antiquity had its traditions based on those of the Aryan
Secret Doctrine;and each nation points to this
day to a Sage of its own race who had received the
primordial revelation from and had recorded it
under the orders of a more or less divine Being.Thus it
was with the Jews,as with all others.They had
received their Occult Cosmogony and Laws from their
Initiate Moses,and they have now entirely
mutilated them.
Adi is the generic name in our Doctrine of all
the first men i.e..the first speaking races,in each of the
seven zones -hence probably Ad-am.
The First Men (Page 171)And such first men in every nation are credited with having
been taught the
divine mysteries of creation.Thus,the Sabaeans
(according to a tradition preserved in the Sufi works)
say that when the Third First Man left the
country adjacent to India for Babel a tree [ A tree is
symbolically a book -as pillar is another
synonym of the same.]was given
to him,then another and a
third tree whose leaves recorded the history
of all the races;the Third First Man meant one who
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belonged to the Third Root-Race and yet the
Sabaeans call him Adam.The Arabs of Upper Egypt and
the Mohammedans generally have recorded a
tradition that the Angel Azaz-el brings a message from the
Wisdom-Word of God to Adam whenever he is
reborn;this the Sufis explain by adding that this book is
given to every Seli-Allah (the chosen one of
God )for his wise men.The story narrated by the Kabalists
-namely that the book given to Adam before his
Fall (a book full of mysteries and signs and events
which either had been were or were to be)was
taken away by the Angel Raziel after Adam's Fall but
again restored to him lest men might lose its
wisdom and instruction;that this book was delivered by
Adam to Seth who passed it to Enoch and the
latter to Abraham and so on in succession to the most
wise of every generation -relates to all
nations,and not to the Jews alone.For Berosus narrates in his
turn that Xisuthrus compiled a book,writing it
at the command of his deity which book was buried in
Zipara [
The wife of Moses,one of the seven daughters of a Midian priest is
called Zipora.It was Jethro
the priest of Midian who initiated
Moses,Zipora one of the seven daughters,being simply one of the
seven Occult powers that the Hierophant was
and is supposed to pass to the initiated novice.] or
Sippara the City of the Sun in Ba-bel-on-ya
and was dug up long afterwards and deposited in the
temple of Belos;it is from this book that
Berosus took his history of the antediluvian dynasties of Gods
and Heroes.Aelian (in Nimrod )speaks of
a Hawk (emblem of the Sun),who in the days of the
beginnings brought to the Egyptians a book
containing the wisdom of their religion.The Sam-Sam of the
Sabaeans is also a Kabalah,as is the
Arabic Zem-Zem (Well of Wisdom).[
See for these details the
Book of God,pp.244 250 ]
We are told by a very learned Kabalist that
Seyffarth assets that the old Egyptian tongue was only old
Hebrew or a Semitic dialect;and he proves
this,our correspondent thinks,by sending him some 500
words in common in the two languages.This
proves very little to our mind.It only shows that the two
nations lived together for centuries,and that
before adopting the Chaldaean for their phonetic (Page 172)
tongue the Jews had adopted the old Coptic or
Egyptian.The Israelitish Scriptures drew their hidden
wisdom from the primeval Wisdom-Religion that
was the source of other Scriptures,only it was sadly
degraded by being applied to things and
mysteries of this Earth instead of to those in the higher and
ever-present though invisible spheres.Their
national history if they can claim any autonomy before their
return from the Babylonian captivity cannot be
carried back one day earlier than the time of Moses.The
language of Abraham -if Zeruan (Saturn the
emblem of time -the Sar Saros,a cycle )can be said
to have any language -was not Hebrew but
Chaldaic,perhaps Arabic,and still more likely some old
Indian dialect.This is shown by numerous
proofs,some of which we give here;and unless,indeed to
please the tenacious and stubborn believers in
Bible chronology we cripple the years of our globe to the
Procrustean bed of 7 000 years,it becomes
self-evident that the Hebrew cannot be called an old
language merely because Adam is supposed to
have used it in the Garden of Eden.Bunsen says in
Egypt s Place in Universal History that in the
Chaldean tribe immediately connected with
Abraham we find reminiscences of dates
disfigured and misunderstood as genealogies of
single men or figures of epochs.The
Abrahamic recollections go back at least three
millennia beyond the grandfather of Jacob [
Op.cit.V.85
.]
The Bible of the Jews has ever been an
Esoteric Book in its hidden meaning but this meaning has not
remained one and the same throughout since the
days of Moses.It is useless,considering the limited
space we can give to this subject to attempt
anything like the detailed history of the vicissitudes of the
so-called Pentate ch and besides,the
history is too well known to need lengthy disquisitions.Whatever
was,or was not the Mosaic Book of Creation -from
Genesis down to the Prophets -the Pentate ch of
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today is not the same.It is sufficient to read
the criticisms of Erasmus,and even of Sir Isaac Newton to
see clearly that the Hebrew Scriptures had
been tampered with and re -modelled had been lost and
rewritten a dozen times before the days of
Ezra.This Ezra himself may yet one day turn out to have
been Azara;the Chaldaean priest of the Fire
and Sun-God a renegade who through his desire of
becoming a ruler and in order to create an
Ethnarchy restored that old lost Jewish Books in his own way.
Many Events Not Historical-(Page 173)It was an easy thing for one versed in the
secret system of
Esoteric numerals,or Symbology to put together
events from the stray books that had been preserved
by various tribes,and make of them an
apparently harmonious narrative of creation and of the evolution
of the Judaean race.But in its hidden meaning
from Genesis to the last word of De teronomy the
Pentateuch is the symbolical narrative of the
sexes,and is an apotheosos of Phallicism under
astronomical and physiological personations.[ As is fully shown in the So rce
of Measures and other
works.]
Its co-ordination however is only apparent;and the human hand appears at
every moment is
found everywhere in the Book of God.Hence
the Kings of Edom discuss in Genesis before any king
had reigned in Israel;Moses records his own
death and Aaron dies twice and is buried in two different
places,to say nothing of other trifles.For the
Kabalist they are trifles,for he knows that all these events
are not history but are simply the cloak
designed to envelope and hide various physiological
peculiarities;but for the sincere Christian
who accepts all these dark sayings in good faith it matters a
good deal.Solomon may very well be regarded as
a myth [ Surely even Masons
would never claim the
act al existence
of Solomon?As Kenealy shows,he is not noticed by Herodotus,nor by Plato nor by
any writer of standing.It is most
extraordinary he says that the Jewish nation over whom but a few
years before the mighty Solomon had reigned in
all his glory with a magnificence scarcely equalled by
the greatest monarchs,spending nearly eight
tho sand millions of gold on a temple was overlooked by
the historian Herodotus,writing of Egypt on
the one hand and of Babylon on the other -visiting both
places,and of course passing almost
necessarily within a few miles of the splendid capital of the national
Jerusalem?How can this be accounted for?he
asks (p.457).Nay not only are there no proofs of the
twelve tribes of Israel having ever existed
but Herodotus,the most accurate of historians,who was in
Assyria when Ezra flourished never mentions
the Israelites at all:and Herodotus was born in 484 B.C.
How is this?] by the Masons,as they lose
nothing by it for all their secrets are Kabalistic and allegorical -
for those few at any rate who understand
them.For the Christian however to give up Solomon the son
of David -from whom Jesus is made to descend
-involves a real loss.But how even the Kabalists can
claim great antiquity for the Hebrew texts of
the old Biblical scrolls now possessed by the scholars is not
made at all apparent.For it is certainly a
fact of history based on the confessions of the Jews
themselves,and of Christians likewise that:
The Scriptures having perished in the
captivity of Nabuchodonozar Esdras,the Levite the
priest in the times of Artaxerxes king of the
Persians,having become inspired in the exercise
of prophecy restored again the whole of the
ancient Scriptures.[ Clement Stromateis.XXII.]
(Page 174)One must have a strong belief in Esdras,and
especially in his good faith to accept the now-
existing copies as genuine Mosaic Books;for:
Assuming that the copies,or rather phonographs
which had been made by Hilkiah and
Esdras,and the various anonymous editors,were
really true and genuine they must have
been wholly exterminated by Antiochus;and the
versions of the Old Testament which now
subsist must have been made by Judas,or by
some unknown compilers,probably from the
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Greek of the Seventy long after the appearance
and death of Jesus.[ Book of
God .p.408 .]
The Bible therefore as it is now (the
Hebrew texts that is),depends for its accuracy on the genuineness
of the Sept agint ;this,we are again
told was written miraculously by the Seventy in Greek,and the
original copy having been lost since that time
our texts are retranslated back into Hebrew from that
language.But in this vicious circle of proofs
we once more have to rely upon the good faith of two Jews -
Josephus and Philo Judaeus of Alexandria
-these two Historians being the only witnesses that the
Septuagint was written under the circumstances
narrated.And yet it is just these circumstances that are
very little calculated to inspire one with
confidence.For what does Josephus tell us?He says that
Ptolemy Philadelphus,desiring to read the
Hebrew Law in Greek,wrote to Eleazar the high-priest of the
Jews,begging him to send him six men from
each of the twelve tribes who should make a translation for
him.Then follows a truly miraculous story
vouchsafed by Aristeas,of these seventy-two men from the
twelve tribes of Israel who shut up in an
island compiled their translation in exactly seventy-two days,
etc.
All this is very edifying and one might have
had very little reason to doubt the story had not the ten lost
tribes been made to play their part in it.How
could these tribes,lost between 700 and 900 B.C.each
send six men some centuries later to satisfy
the whim of Ptolemy and to disappear once more
immediately afterwards from the horizon?A
miracle verily.
We are expected nevertheless,to regard such
documents as the Sept agint as containing direct divine
revelation:Documents originally written in a
tongue about which nobody now knows anything;written by
authors that are practically mythical and at
dates as to which no one is able even to make a defensible
surmise;documents of the original copies of
which there does not now remain a shred.
The Real Hebrew Characters Lost -(Page 175)Yet people will persist in talking of the
ancient Hebrew
as if there were any man left in the world who
knows one word of it .So little indeed was Hebrew known
that both the Septuagint and the New
Testament had to be written in a heathen language (the Greek),
and no better reasons for it given than what
Hutchinson says,namely that the Holy Ghost chose to write
the New Testament in Greek.
The Hebrew language is considered to be very
old and yet there exists no trace of it anywhere on the
old monuments,not even in Chaldaea.Among the
great number of inscriptions of various kinds found in
the ruins of that country:
One in the Hebrew Chaldee letter and language has
never been fo nd;nor has a single
authentic medal or gem in this newfangled
character been ever discovered which could carry
it even to the days of Jesus.[ Book of God.p.453 .]
The original Book of Daniel is written
in a dialect which is a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic;it is not even
in Chaldaic,with the exception of a few verses
interpolated later on.According to Sir.W.Jones and other
Orientalists,the oldest discoverable languages
of Persia are the Chaldaic and Sanskrit and there is no
trace of the Hebrew in these.It would be
very surprising if there were since the Hebrew known to the
Philologists does not date earlier than 500
B.C.and its characters belong to a far later period still.Thus,
while the real Hebrew characters,if not altogether
lost are nevertheless so hopelessly transformed -
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A mere inspection of the alphabet showing that
it has been shaped and made regular in doing
which the characteristic marks of some of the
letters have been retrenched in order to make
them more square and uniform -[Asiatic Jo rnal VII.p.275
quoted by Kenealy.]
That no one but an initiated Rabbi of Samaria
or a Jain could read them the new system of the
masoretic points has made them a sphinx-riddle
for all.Punctuation is now to be found everywhere in all
the later manuscripts,and by means of it
anything can be made of a text;a Hebrew scholar can put on
the texts any interpretation he likes.Two
instances given by Kenealy will suffice:
In Genesis,x1ix.21 we read:
Naphtali is a hind let loose ;he
giveth goodly words.
By only a slight alternation of the points
Bochart changes this into:
Napthali is a spreading tree,shooting forth
bea tif l branches.
So again in Psalms (xxix.9),instead of:(Page 176)
The voice of the Lord maketh the hind to
calve and discovereth the forests;
Bishop Lowth gives:
The voice of the Lord striketh the oak,and
discovereth the forests.
The same word in Hebrew signifies God and
nothing etc.[ Book of God.p.385.]
With regard to the claim made by some
Kabalists that there was in antiquity one knowledge and one
language this claim is also our own and it is
very just.Only it must be added to make the thing clear
that this knowledge and language have both
been esoteric every since the submersion of the Atlanteans.
The Tower of Babel myth relates to that
enforced secrecy.Men falling into sin were regarded as no longer
trustworthy for the reception of such
knowledge and from being universal it became limited to the few.
Thus,the one-lip -or the Mystery-language
-being gradually denied to subsequent generations,all the
nations became severally restricted to their own
national tongue;and forgetting the primeval Wisdom-
language they stated that the Lord -one of the
chief Lords or Hierophants of the Mysteries of the Java
Aleim -had confounded the languages of all the
earth so that the sinners could understand one
another s speech no longer.But Initiates
remained in every land and nation and the Israelites,like all
others,had their learned Adepts.One of the
keys to this Universal Knowledge is a pure geometrical and
numerical system the alphabet of every great
nation having a numerical value for every letter [ Speaking
of the hidden meaning of the Sanskrit
words,Mr.T.Subba Row in his able article on The Twelve Signs
of the Zodiac.gives some advice as to the way
in which one should proceed to find out the deep
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significance of ancient Sanskrit nomenclature
in the old Aryan myths.1.Find out the synonyms of the
word used which have other meanings.2.Find out
the numerical value of the letters composing of the
word according to the methods of the ancient
Tāntrik works [Tāntrika
Shastra -works on Incantation and
Magic ].3.Examine
the ancient myths or allegories if there are any which have any special
connection
with the word in question.4.Permute the
different syllables composing the word and examine the new
combinations that will thus be formed and
their meanings.etc.But he does not give the principal rule.
And no doubt he is quite right.The Tāntrika Shāstras
are as old as Magic itself.Have they also borrowed
their Esotericism from the Hebrews?] and moreover a system of permutation
of syllables and synonyms
which is carried to perfection in the Indian
Occult methods,and which the Hebrew certainly has not.This
one system containing the elements of Geometry
and Numeration was used by the Jews for the
purpose of concealing their Esoteric creed
under the mask of a popular and national monotheistic
Religion.The last who knew the system to
perfection were the learned and atheistical Sadducees,the
greatest enemies of the pretensions of the
Pharisees and of their confused notions brought from
Babylon.
Hebrew Esotericism Not Primitive-(Page 177)Yes the Sadducees,the Illusionists who
maintained that
the Soul the Angels,and all similar
Beings,were illusions because they were temporary -thus showing
themselves at one with Eastern Esotericism.And
since they rejected every book and Scripture with the
exception of the Law of Moses,it seems that
the latter must have been very different from what it is now.
[Their founder Sadoc,was the pupil through Antigonus Saccho
of Simon the Just.They had their own
secret Book of the Law ever since the
foundation of their sect (about 400 B.C.)and this volume was
unknown to the masses.At the same time of the
Separation the Samaritans recognized only the Book of
the Law of Moses and the Book of Josh a,and their Pentate ch is
far older and is different from the
Septuagint.In 168 B.C.Jerusalem had its temple
plundered and its Sacred Books -namely the Bible
made up by Ezra and finished by Judas
Maccabeus -were lost (see Burder s Joseph s vol.ii.pp.
331-335):after which the Massorah completed
the work of destruction (even of Ezra s once-more
adjusted Bible )begun by the change
into square from horned letters.Therefore the later Pentate ch
accepted by the Pharisees was rejected and
laughed at by the Sadducees.They are generally called
atheists;yet since those learned men who made
no secret of their freethought furnished from among
their number the most eminent of the Jewish
high-priests,this seems impossible.How could the
Pharisees and the other two believing and
pious sects allow notorious atheists to be selected for such
posts?The answer is difficult to find for
bigotry and for believers in a personal anthropomorphic God but
very easy for those who accept facts.The
Sadducees were called atheists because they believed as the
initiated Moses believed thus differing very
widely from the latter made-up Jewish legislator and hero of
Mount Sinai.]
The whole of the foregoing is written with an
eye to our Kabalists.Great scholars as some of them
undoubtedly are they are nevertheless wrong to
hang the harps of their faith on the willows of Talmudic
growth -on the Hebrew scrolls,whether in
square or pointed characters,now in our public libraries,
museums,or even in the collections of
Paleographers.There do not remain half-a-dozen copies from the
true Mosaic Hebrew scrolls in the whole world.And
those who are in possession of these -as we
indicated a few pages back -would not part
with them or even allow them to be examined on any
consideration whatever.How then can any
Kabalist claim priority for Hebrew Esotericism and say as
does one of our correspondents,that the
Hebrew has come down from a far remoter antiquity than any
of them [whether Egyptian or even Sanskrit!] and that it was the source or nearer to the old original
source than any of them ?[ The measurements of the Great Pyramid
being those of the temple of
Solomon of the Ark of the Covenant
etc.according to Piazzi Smythe and the author of the So rce of
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Measures and the Pyramid of Gizeh being shown on astronomical calculations to have
been built 4950
B.C.and Moses having written his books
-for the sake of argument -not even half that time before our
era how can this be?Surely if any one borrowed
from the other it is not the Pharaohs from Moses.Even
philology shows not only the Egyptian but even
the Mongolian older than the Hebrew.]
As our correspondent says:It becomes more
convincing to me every day that in a far past time there
was a mighty civilization with (Page 178)enormo s learning,which had a common lang
age over the
earth,as to which its essence can be
recovered from the fragments which now exist.
Aye there existed indeed a mighty civilization
and a still mightier secret learning and knowledge the
entire scope of which can never be discovered
by Geometry and the Kabalah alone:for there are seven
keys to the large entrance-door and not one
nor even two keys can ever open it sufficiently to allow
more than glimpses of what lies within.
Every scholar must be aware that there are two
distinct styles -two schools,so to speak -plainly
traceable in the Hebrew Scriptures:the
Elohistic and the Jehovistic.The portions belonging to these
respectively are so blended together so
completely mixed up by later hands,that often all external
characteristics are lost.Yet it is also known
that the two schools were antagonistic;that the one taught
esoteric,the other exoteric,or theological
doctrines;that the one the Elohists,were Seers (Roch),
whereas the other the Jehovists were prophets
(Nabhi)[This alone shows how the
Books of Moses
were tampered with.In Sam el (ix.9),it
is said:He that is now a prophet [Nabhi
]was beforetime called a
Seer [Roch
].Now since before Sam el the
word Roch is met nowhere in the Pentate ch but its place
is always taken by that of Nabhi this
proves clearly that the Mosaic text has been replaced by that of
the later Levites.(See for fuller details Jewish
Antiq ities,by the Rev.D.Jennings.D.D.)] and that the
latter -who later became Rabbis -were
generally only nominally prophets by virtue of their official
position as the Pope is called the infallible
and inspired vicegerent of God.That again the Elohists
meant by Elohim forces,identifying their
Deity as in the Secret Doctrine with Nature;while the
Jehovists made of Jehovah a personal God
externally and used the term simply as a phallic symbol -a
number of them secretly disbelieving even in
metaphysical abstract Nature and synthesizing all on the
terrestrial scale.Finally the Elohists made of
man the divine incarnate image of the Elohim emanated
first in all Creation;and the Jehovists show
him as the last the crowning glory of the animal creation
instead of his being the head of all the
sensible beings on earth.(This is reversed by some Kabalists,but
the reversion is due to the
designedly-produced confusion in the texts,especially in the first four
chapters
of Genesis .)
Take the Zohar and find in it the
description relating to Ain-Suph the Western or Semitic Parabrahman.
What passages have come so nearly up to the
Vedantic ideal as the following:
The creation [the evolved Universe ] is
the garment of that which has no name the garment
woven from the Deity s own substance.[Zohar.i.2a.]
The Concealed of all the Concealed-(Page 179)Between that which is Ain or nothing and the
Heavenly Man there is an Impersonal First
Cause however of which it is said:
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Before It gave any shape to this world before
It produced any form It was alone without form
or similitude to anything else.Who can
comprehend It how It was before the creation since It
was formless?Hence it is forbidden to
represent It by any form similitude or even by Its
sacred name by a single letter or a single
point.[Zohar 42b .]
The sentence that follows,however is an
evident later interpolation;for it draws attention to a complete
contradiction:
And to this the words (De t.iv.15),refer
-Ye saw no manner of similitude on the day the Lord
spake unto you.
But this reference to Chapter iv.of De
teronomy,when in Chapter v God is mentioned as speaking face
to face with the people is very clumsy.
Not one of the names given to Jehovah in the Bible
has any reference whatever to either Ain-Suph or the
Impersonal First-Cause (which is the Logos)of
the Kabalah ;but they all refer to the Emanations.
It says;
For although to reveal itself to us,the
concealed of all the concealed sent forth the Ten
Emanations [Sephiroth ]called
the Form of God Form of the Heavenly Man yet since even
this luminous form was too dazzling for our
vision it had to assume another form or had to put
on another garment which is the Universe .The
Universe therefore or the visible world is a
farther expansion of the Divine Substance and
is called in the Kabalah The Garment of God.
[Zohar i.2a.See
Dr.Ch.Ginsburg s essay on The Cabbalah,its Doctrines,Developments and
Literat re.]
This is the doctrine of all the Hindu
Puranas,especially that of the Vishn P rāna .Vishnu pervades the
Universe and is that Universe;Brahmā enters
the Mundane Egg and issues from it as the Universe;
Brahmā even dies with it and there remains
only Brahman the impersonal the eternal the unborn and
the unqualifiable.The Ain-Suph of the
Chaldeans and later of the Jews is assuredly a copy of the Vaidic
Deity;while the Heavenly Adam the Macrocosm
which unites in itself the totality of beings and is the
Esse of
the visible Universe finds his original in the Puranic Brahmā.In Sod,the
Secret of the Law one
recognizes the expressions used in the oldest
fragments of the Gupta Vidyā the Secret Knowledge.And
it is not venturing too much to say that even
a Rabbi quite familiar with his own special Rabbinical
Hebrew would
only comprehend its secrets thoroughly if he added to (Page 180)his learning a serious
knowledge of the Hindu philosophies.Let us
turn to Stanza I.of the Book of Dzyan for an example.
The Zohar premises,as does the Secret
Doctrine a universal eternal Essence passive -because
absolute -in all that men call attributes.The
pregenetic or pre-cosmical Triad is a pure metaphysical
abstraction.The notion of a triple hypostasis
in one Unknown Divine Essence is as old as speech and
thought.Hiranyagarbha Hari and Shankara -the
Creator the Preserver and the Destroyer -are the
three manifested attributes of it appearing
and disappearing with Kosmos;the visible Triangle so to
speak,on the plane of the ever-invisible
Circle.This is the primeval root-thought of thinking Humanity;
the Pythagorean Triangle emanation from the
ever-concealed Monad or the Central Point.
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Plato speaks of it and Plotinus calls it an
ancient doctrine on which Cudworth remarks that:
Since Orpheus,Pythagoras,and Plato who all of
them asserted a Trinity of divine hypostases,
unquestionably derived their doctrine from the
Egyptians,it may be reasonably suspected that
the Egyptians did the like before them.[ Cudworth I.iii.quoted by Wilson.Vishn
P rana,i.
14 note.]
The Egyptians certainly derived their Trinity
from the Indians.Wilson justly observes:
As,however the Grecian accounts and those of
the Egyptians are much more perplexed and
unsatisfactory than those of the Hindus,it is
most probable that we find amongst them the
doctrine in its most original as well as most
methodical and significant form.[Vishn
P rana.
I 14 ]
This,then is the meaning:
Darkness alone filled the Bo ndless
All,for Father,Mother and Son were once more One.[
Stanza i.4.]
Space was and is ever as it is between the
Manvantara.The Universe in its pre-kosmic state was once
more homogeneous and one -outside its
aspects.This was a Kabalistic,and is now a Christian teaching.
As is constantly shown in the Zohar the
Infinite Unity or Ain-Suph is ever placed outside human thought
and appreciation;and in Sepher Jetzirah we
see the Spirit of God -the Logos,not the Deity itself -
One is the Spirit of the Living God ..Who
liveth forever.Voice Spirit [of
the spirit ] and Word:
this is the Holy Spirit [Mishna,i.9 .]
Three-in-one and Four -(Page 181)-and the Quaternary.From this Cube emanates the whole
Kosmos.
Says the Secret Doctrine:
It is called to life.The mystic C be in
which rests the Creative Idea,the manifesting Mantra [or articulate
speech -Vāch ] and the holy Pūrusha [both radiations of prima material ] exist in the Eternity in the Divine
S bstance in their latent state.
-during Pralaya.
And in the Sepher Jetzirah,when the
Three-in-One are to be called into being -by the manifestation of
Shekinah the first effulgency or radiation in
the manifesting Kosmos -the Spirit of God or Number
One [ In
its manifested state it becomes Ten the Universe.In the Chaldaean Kabalah it
is sexless.In the
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Jewish Shekinah is female and the early
Christians and Gnostics regarded the Holy Ghost as a female
potency.In the Book of N mbers Shekina
is made to drop the final h that makes it a female potency.
Nārāyana the Mover on the Waters,is also
sexless:but it is our firm belief that Shekinah and
Daiviprakriti the Light of the Logos,are one
and the same thing philosophically.] fructifies
and awakens
the dual Potency Number Two Air and Number
Three Water;in these are darkness and emptiness,
slime and dung -which is Chaos,the
Tohu-Vah-Bohu.The Air and Water emanate Number Four Ether
or Fire the Son.This is the Kabalistic
Quaternary.This Fourth Number which in the manifested Kosmos
is the One or the Creative God is with the
Hindus the Ancient Sanat the Prajāpati of the Vedas and
the Brahmā of the Brāhmans -the heavenly Androgyne
as he becomes the male only after separating
himself into two bodies,Vāch and Virāj.With
the Kabalists,he is at first the Jah-Havah only later
becoming Jehovah like Virāj his
prototype;after separating himself as Adam-Kadmon into Adam and
Eve in the formless,and into Cain-Abel in the
semi-objective world he became finally the Jah-Havah or
man and woman in Enoch the son of Seth.
For the true meaning of the compound name of
Jehovah -of which unvoweled you can make almost
anything -is:men and women or humanity
composed of its two sexes.From the first chapter to the end
of the fourth chapter of Genesis every
name is a permutation of another name and every personage is at
the same time somebody else.A Kabalist traces
Jehovah from the Adam of earth to Seth the third son -
or rather race -of Adam.[ The Elohim create the Adam of dust
and in him Jehovah-Binah separates
himself into Eve after which the male portion
of God becomes the Serpent tempts himself in Eve then
creates himself in her as Cain passes into Seth
and scatters from Enoch the Son of Man or Humanity
as Jodheva .] Thus Seth is Jehovah male;and Enos,(Page 182)being a permutation of Cain and Abel is
Jehovah male and female or our mankind.The
Hindu Brahmā-Virāj Virāj-Manu and Manu-Vaivasvata
with his daughter and wife Vāch present the
greatest analogy with these personages -for anyone who
will take the trouble of studying the subject
in both the Bible and the P rānas.It is said of Brahma that he
created himself as Manu and that he was born
of and was identical with his original self while he
constituted the female portion Shāta-rupa
(hundred-formed)In this Hindu Eve the mother of all living
beings, Brahmā created Virāj who is himself
but on a lower scale as Cain is Jehovah on an inferior
scale:both are the first males of the Third
Race.The same idea is illustrated in the Hebrew name of God
(ēē)Read from right to left Jod (")is
the father.He (ē)the mother Vau (ź)the son and He (ē),
repeated at the end of the word is generation
the act of birth materiality.This is surely a sufficient
reason why the God of the Jews and Christians
should be personal as much as the male Brahma
Vishnu or Shiva of the orthodox exoteric
Hindu.
Thus the term of Jhvh alone -now accepted as
the name of One living [male ] God -will yield if
seriously studied not only the whole mystery
of Being (in the Biblical sense )but also that of the Occult
Theogony from the highest divine Being the
third in order down to man.As shown by the best
Hebraists:
The verbal or Hāyāh or E-y-e means to be,to
exist,while or Chayah or H-
y-e means to live,as motion of
existence.[The So rce of
Measures.p.5 ]
Hence Eve stands as the evolution and the
never-ceasing becoming of Nature.Now if we take the
almost untranslatable Sanskrit word Sat which
means the quintessence of absolute immutable Being or
Be-ness -as it has been rendered by an able
Hindu Occultist -we shall find no equivalent for it in any
language;but it may be regarded as most
closely resembling Ain or En-Suph Boundless Being.Then
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the term Hāyāh to be as passive
changeless,yet manifested existence may perhaps be rendered by
the Sanskrit Jivatma universal life or soul in
its secondary or cosmic meaning;while Chāyāh to live
as motion of existence is simply Prāna the
ever-changing life in its objective sense.It is at the head of
this third category that the Occultist finds
Jehovah -the Mother Binah and the Father Arelim.
The Septenary Sephira-(Page 183)This is made plain in the Zohar,when the emanation
and evolution of
the Sephiroth are explained:First Ain-Suph
then Shekinah the Garment or Veil of Infinite Light then
Sephira or the Kadmon and thus making the
fourth the spiritual Substance sent forth from the Infinite
Light.This Sephira is called the Crown Kether
and has besides,six other names -in all seven.These
names are:1.Kether;2.the Aged;3.the Primordial
Point;4.the White Head;5.the Long Face;6.the
Inscrutable Height;and 7.Ehejeh ( I am .)[ This identifies Sephira the third
potency with Jehovah the
Lord who says to Moses out of the burning
bush:(Here)I am.(Exod s iii.4).At this time the Lord has
not yet become Jehovah.It was not the one male
God who spoke but the Elohim manifested or the
Sephiroth in their manifested collectivity of
seven contained in the triple Sephira.]
This Septenary
Sephira is said to contain in itself the nine
Sephiroth.But before showing how she brought them forth let
us read an explanation about the Sephiroth in
the Talm d which gives it as an archaic tradition or
Kabalah.
There are three groups (or orders)of
Sephiroth:1.The Sephiroth called divine attributes (the Triad in
the Holy Quaternary);2.the sidereal
(personal)Sephiroth;3.the metaphysical Sephiroth or a
periphrasis of Jehovah who are the first three
Sephiroth (Kether Chokmah and Binah),the rest of the
seven being the personal Seven Spirits of the
Presence (also of the planets,therefore).Speaking of
these the angels are meant though not because
they are seven but because they represent the seven
Sephiroth which contain in them the
universality of the Angels.
This shows (a)that when the first four
Sephiroth are separated as a Triad-Quaternary -Sephira being
its synthesis -there remain only seven
Sephiroth as there are seven Rishis;these become ten when the
Quaternary or the first divine Cube is
scattered into units;and (b)that while Jehovah might have been
viewed as the Deity if he be included in the
three divine groups or orders of the Sephiroth the collective
Elohim or the quaternary indivisible Kether
once that he becomes a male God he is not more than one
of the Builders of the lower group -a Jewish
Brahmā.[ The Brahmans were wise
in their generation
when they gradually for no other reason than
this,abandoned Brahmā and paid less attention to him
individually than to any other deity.As an
abstract synthesis they worshipped him collectively and in
every God each of which represents him.As
Brāhma the male he is far lower than Shiva the Lingam
who personates universal generation or Vishnu
the preserver -both Shiva and Vishnu being the
regenerators of life after destruction.The
Christians might do worse than follow their example and
worship God in Spirit and not in the male
Creator.] A demonstration is now
attempted.
The first Sephira containing the other nine
brought them forth in (Page
184)this
order:(2)Hokmah
(Chokmah or Wisdom),a masculine active potency
represented among the divine names as Jah;and
as a permutation or an evolution into lower
forms in this instance -becoming the Auphanim (or the
Wheels -cosmic rotation of matter)among the
army or the angelic hosts.From this Chokmah emanated
a feminine passive potency called
(3)Intelligence Binah whose divine name is Jehovah and whose
angelic name among the Builders and Hosts,is Arelim.[ A plural word signifying a
collective host
generically:literally the strong lion.]It is from the union of these two
potencies,male and female (or
Chokmah and Binah)that emanated all the other
Sephiroth the seven orders of the Builders.Now if we
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call Jehovah by his divine name then he
becomes at best and forthwith a female passive potency in
Chaos.And if we view him as a male God he is
no more than one of many an Angel Arelim.But
straining the analysis to its highest point
and if his male name Jah that of Wisdom be allowed to him,
still he is not the Highest and the one
Living God;for he is contained with many others within Sephira
and Sephira herself is a third Potency in
Occultism though regarded as the first in the exoteric Kabalah -
and is one moreover of lesser importance than
the Vaidic Aditi or the Primordial Water of Space which
becomes after many a permutation of the Astral
Light of the Kabalist.
Thus the Kabalah as we have it now is
shown to be of the greatest importance in explaining the
allegories and dark sayings of the Bible .As
an Esoteric work upon the mysteries of creation however it
is almost worthless as it is now disfigured
unless checked by the Chaldaean Book of N mbers or by the
tenets of the Easter Secret Science or
Esoteric Wisdom.The Western nations have neither the original
Kabalah nor
yet the Mosaic Bible.
Finally it is demonstrated by internal as well
as by external evidence on the testimony of the best
European Hebraists,and the confessions of the
learned Jewish Rabbis themselves,that an ancient
document forms the essential basis of the Bible,which
received very considerable insertions and
supplements; and that the Pentateuch arose
out of the primitive or older document by means of a
supplementary one.Therefore in the absence of
the Book of N mbers,[ The
writer possesses only a
few extracts some dozen pages in all verbatim
quotations from that priceless work of which but two or
three copies,perhaps,are still extant .] the Kabalists of the West are only
entitled to come to definite
conclusions,when they have at hand some data
at least from that ancient document -(Page 185)data
now found scattered throughout Egyptian papyri
Assyrian tiles,and the traditions preserved by the
descendants of the disciples of the last
Nazars.Instead of that most of them accept as their authorities
and infallible guides Fabre d Olivet -who was
a man of immense erudition and of speculative mind but
neither a Kabalist nor an Occultist either
Western or Eastern -and the Mason Ragon the greatest of the
Widow s sons, who was even less of an
Orientalist than d Olivet for Sanskrit learning was almost
unknown in the days of both these eminent
scholars.
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SECTION XXI
Hebrew Allegories
(Page 186)How can any Kabalist acquainted with the
foregoing deduce his conclusions with regard to
the true Esoteric beliefs of the primitive
Jews,from only that which he now finds in the Jewish scrolls?
How can any scholar -even though one of the
keys to the universal language be now positively
discovered the true key to the numerical
reading of a pure geometrical system -give out anything as his
final conclusion?Modern
Kabalistic speculation is on a par now with modern speculative Masonry; for
as the latter tries vainly to link itself with
the ancient -or rather the archaic -Masonry;of the Temples,
failing to make the link because all its
claims have been shown to be inaccurate from an archaeological
standpoint so fares it also with Kabalistic
speculation.As no mystery of Nature worth running after can
be revealed to humanity by settling whether
Hiram Abif was a living Sidonian Builder or a solar myth so
no fresh information will be added to Occult
Lore by the details of the exoteric privileges conferred on the
Collegia Fabrorum by Numa Pompilius.Rather
must the symbols used in it be studies in the Aryan light
since all the Symbolism of the ancient
Initiations came to the West with the light of the Eastern Sun.
Nevertheless,we find the most learned Masons
and Symboligists declaring that all these weird symbols
and glyphs,that run back to a common origin of
immense antiquity were nothing more than a display of
cunning natural phallicism or emblems of
primitive typology.How much nearer the truth is the author of
The So rce of Measures,who declares that the elements of human and numerical
construction in the
Bible do
not shut out the spiritual elements in it albeit so few now understand them.The
words we quote
are as suggestive as they are true:
How desperately blinding becomes a
superstitious use through ignorance of such emblems
when they are made to possess the power of
bloodshed and torture through orders of
propaganda of any species of religious cultus.
The Hebrew Bible does not Exist
(Page 187)When one thinks of the horrors of a Moloch,or
Baal,or Dagon worship;of the
correlated blood deluges under the Cross
baptized in gore by Constantine at the initiative of
he secular Church;...when one thinks of all
this and then that the cause of all has been
simply ignorance of the real radical reading
of the Moloch and Baal and Dagon,and the
Cross and
the Tphillin,all running back to a common origin and after all being
nothing more
than a display of pure and natural
mathematics,...one is apt to feel like cursing ignorance
and to lose confidence in what are called int
itions of religion;one is apt to wish for a return of
the day when all the world was of one lip and
of one knowledge ....But while these elements
[of the construction of the pyramid ] are rational and scientific,....let no man consider that
with this discovery comes a cutting off of the
spirit ality [ Aye:but
that spirit ality can never be
discovered far less proved unless we turn to
the Aryan Scriptures and Symbology.For the
Jews it was lost save for the Sadducees,from
the day that the chosen people reached the
Promised Land the national Karma preventing
Moses from reaching it .] of the
Bible intention
or of man s relation to this spiritual
foundation.Does one wish to build a house?No house was
ever actually built with tangible material ntil
first the architect ral design of b ilding had been
accomplished no matter whether the structure was palace or hovel.So with
these elements
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and numbers.They are not of man nor are they
of his invention.They have been revealed to
him to the extent of his ability to realize a
system which is the creative system of the eternal
God....But spirit ally,to man the value
of this matter is that he can actually in contemplation
bridge over all material construction of the
cosmos,and pass into the very tho ght and mind of
God to the extent of recognizing this system
of design for cosmic creation -yea even before
the words went forth:Let there be. [ Op.cit.,pp.317-319 ]
But true as above words may be when coming
from one who has rediscovered more completely than
anyone else has done during the past
centuries,one of the keys to the universal Mystery Language it is
impossible for an Eastern Occultist to agree
with the conclusion of the able author of The So rce of
Measures .He has set out to find the truth and yet he still believes that:
The best and most authentic vehicle of
communication from [the creative
]God to man ...is to
be found in the Hebrew Bible.
To this we must and shall demur giving our
reasons for it in a few words.The Hebrew Bible exists no
more as has been shown in the foregoing
pages,and the garbled accounts the falsified and pale copies
we have of the real Mosaic Bible of the
Initiates,warrant the making of no such sweeping assertion and
claim.All that the scholar can fairly claim is
that the Jewish Bible,as now extant -in its latest and final
interpretation and according to the
newly-discovered key -may give (Page 188)a partial presentment of
the truths it contained before it was
mangled.But how can he tell what the Pentate ch contained before it
has been recomposed by Esdras;then corrupted
still more by the ambitious Rabbis in later times,and
otherwise remodelled and interfered
with?Leaving aside the opinion of the declared enemies of the
Jewish Scripture one may quote simply what
their most devoted followers say.
Two of these are Horne and Prideaux.The
avowels of the former will be sufficient to show how much
now remains of the original Mosaic
books,unless indeed we accept his sublimely blind faith in the
inspiration and editorship of the Holy
Ghost.He writes that when a Hebrew scribe found a writing of any
author he was entitled if he thought fit being
conscious of the aid of the Holy Spirit to do exactly as he
pleased with it -to cut it up or copy it or
use as much of it as he deemed right and so to incorporate it
with his own manuscript.Dr.Kenealy aptly
remarks of Horne that it is almost impossible to get any
admission from him.
That makes against his church so remarkably
guarded is he [Horne ] in his phraseology and
so wonderfully discreet in the use of words
that his language like a diplomatic letter
perpetually suggests to the mind ideas other
than those which he really means;I defy any
unlearned person to read his chapter on
Hebrew characters and to derive any knowledge
from it whatever on the subject on which he
professes to treat.[ The Book
of God.pp.388
389 ]
And yet this same Horne writes:
We are persuaded that the things to which
reference is made proceeded from the original writers or
compilers of the books [Old
Testament ].Sometimes they
took other writings,annals,genealogies,and
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such like with which they incorporated
additional matter,or which they put together with greater or less
condensation.The Old Testament authors
used the sources they employed (that is,the writing of other
people)with freedom and independence.Conscious
of the aid of the Divine Spirit they adapted their own
productions,or the productions of others,to
the wants of the times.But in these respects they cannot be
said to have corrupted the text of Scriptures.They
made the text.
But of what did they make it?Why of the
writings of other persons,justly observes Kenealy:
And this is Horne s notion of what the Old
Testament is -a cento from the writings of unknown persons
collected and put together by those who he
says,were divinely inspired.No infidel that I know of has
ever made so damaging a charge as this against
the authenticity of the Old Testament.[ See Horne s
Introd ction (10th edition),vol.ii.p.33.as quoted by Dr.Kenealy.p.389.]
Some Hebrews Were Initiates-(Page 189)This is quite sufficient we think,to show that
no key to the
universal language-system can ever open the
mysteries of Creation in a work in which whether through
design or carelessness,nearly every sentence
has been made to apply to the latest outcome of religious
views -to Phallicism,and to nothing else.There
are a sufficient number of stray bits in the Elohistic
portions of the Bible to warrant the
inference that the Hebrews who wrote it were Initiates;hence the
mathematical coordinations and the perfect
harmony between the measures of the Great Pyramid and
the numerals of the Biblical glyphs.But surely
if one borrowed from the other it cannot be the architects
of the Pyramid who borrowed from Solomon s
Temple if only because the former exists to this day as a
stupendous living monument of Esoteric
records,while the famous temple has never existed outside of
the far later Hebrew scrolls.[The author says that Parker s q
adrat re is that identical measure which
was used anciently as the perfect measure by
the Egyptians,in the construction of the Great Pyramid
which was built to mon ment it and its ses.and
that from it the sacred cubit-val e was derived,which
was the cubit-value used in the construction
of the Temple of Solomon the Ark of Noah and the Ark of
the Covenant (p.22).This is a grand
discovery no doubt but it only shows that the Jews profited well by
their captivity in Egypt and that Moses was a
great Initiate.] Hence there is
a great distance between the
admission that some Hebrew Bible must
be the best standard as being the highest representative of the
archaic Esoteric System.
Nowhere does the Bible say moreover
that the Hebrew is the language of God;of this boast at any
rate the authors are not guilty.Perhaps
because in the days when the Bible was last edited the claim
would have been too preposterous -hence
dangerous.The compilers of the Old Testament,as it exists
in the Hebrew canon knew well that the
language of the Initiates in the days of Moses was identical with
that of the Egyptian Hierophants;and that none
of the dialects that had sprung from the old Syriac and
the pure old Arabic of Yarab -the father and
progenitor of the primitive Arabians,long before the time of
Abraham in whose days the ancient Arabic had
already become vitiated -that none of those languages
was the one sacerdotal universal
tongue.Nevertheless all of them included a number of words which
could be traced to common roots.And to do this
is the business of modern Philology though to this day
with all the respect due to the labours of the
eminent Philologists of Oxford and Berlin that Science
seems to be hopelessly floundering in the
Cimmerian darkness of mere hypothesis.
(Page 190)Ahrens,when speaking of the letters as
arranged in the Hebrew sacred scrolls,and remaking
that they were musical notes,had probably
never studied Aryan Hindu music.In the Sanskrit language
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letters are continually arranged in the sacred
Ollas so that they may become musical notes.For the
whole Sanskrit alphabet and the Vedas from
the first word to the last are musical notations reduced to
writing;the two are inseparable.[ See Theosophist .1879.art.Hindu
Music,p.47.] As Homer
distinguished between the language of Gods
and the language of men.[ The
Sanskrit letters are far
more numerous than the poor twenty-two letters
of the Hebrew alphabet.They are all musical and they
are read -or rather chanted -according to a
system given in very old Tāntrika works,and are called
Devanāgari the speech or language of the
Gods.And since each letter answers to a numeral the
Sanskrit affords a far larger scope for
expression and it must necessarily be far more perfect than the
Hebrew which followed the same system but
could apply it only in a very limited way.If either of these
two languages were taught to humanity by the
Gods,surely it would more likely be the Sanskrit the
perfect form of the most perfect language on
earth than the Hebrew the roughest and the poorest.For
once anyone believes in a language of divine
origin he can hardly believe at the same time that Angels
or Gods or any divine Messengers have had to
develop it from a rough monosyllable form into a perfect
one as we see in terrestrial linguistic
evolution.] so did the Hindus.The Devanagari the Sanskrit
characters,are the speech of the Gods,and
Sanskrit is the divine language.
It is argued in defence of the present version
of the Mosaic Books that the mode of language adopted
was an accommodation to the ignorance of the
Jewish people.But the said mode of language drags
down the sacred text of Esdras and his
colleagues to the level of the most unspiritual and gross phallic
religions.This plea confirms the suspicions
entertained by some Christian Mystics and many
philosophical critics,that;
(a)Divine Power as an Absolute Unity had never
anything more to do with the Biblical Jehovah and the
Lord God than with any other Sephiroth or
number.The Ain-Suph of the Kabalah of Moses is as
independent of any relation with the created
Gods as is Parabrahman Itself.
(b)The teachings veiled in the Old
Testament under allegorical expressions are all copied from the
Magical Texts of Babylonia by Esdras and
others,while the earlier Mosaic Text had its source in Egypt.
A few instances known to almost all
Symbologists of note and especially to the French Egyptologists
may help to prove the statement.Furthermore no
ancient Hebrew Philosopher Philo no more than the
Sadducees,claimed as do now the ignorant Christians,that
the events in the Bible should be taken
literally.Philo says most explicitly:
The verbal statements are fabulous [in the Book of Law ]:it is in the allegory that we shall
find
the truth.
The Seven Creative Gods-(Page 191)Let us give a few instances,beginning with the
latest narrative the
Hebrew and thus if possible trace the
allegories to their origin.
1.Whence the Creation in six days the seventh
day as day of rest the seven Elohim [In
the first
chapter of Genesis the word God
represents the Elohim -Gods in the plural not one God.This is a
cunning and dishonest translation.For the
whole Kabalah explains sufficiently that the Alhim (Elohim)are
seven:each creates one of the seven things
enumerated in the first chapter and these answer
allegorically to the seven creations.To make
this clear count the verses in which it is said And God saw
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that it was good and you will find that this
is said seven times -in verses 4 10 12 18 21 25 and 31.
And though the compilers cunningly represent
the creation of man as occurring on the sixth day yet
having made man male and female in the image
of God the Seven Elohim repeat the sacramental
sentence.It was good for the seventh time
thus making of man the seventh creation and showing the
origin of this bit of cosmogony to be in the
Hindu creations.The Elohim are of course the seven
Egyptian Khnūmū the assistant-architects
:the seven Amshaspends of the Zoroastrians:the Seven
Spirits subordinate to Ildabaoth of the
Nazareans;the seven Prajāpati of the Hindus,etc.] and the
division of space into heaven and earth in the
first chapter of Genesis ?
The division of the vault above from the
Abyss,or Chaos,below is one of the first acts of creation or
rather of evolution in every cosmogony.Hermes
in Pymander speaks of a heaven seen in seven circles
with seven Gods in them.We examine the
Assyrian tiles and find the same on them -the seven creative
Gods busy each in his own sphere.The cuneiform
legends narrate how Bel prepared the seven
mansions of the Gods;how heaven was separated
from the earth.In the Brahmanical allegory everything
is septenary from the seven zones,or
envelopes,of the Mundane Egg down to the seven continents,
islands,seas,etc.The six days of the week and
the seventh the Sabbath are based primarily on the
seven creations of the Hindu Brahma the
seventh being that of man;and secondarily on the number of
generation.It is pre-eminently and most
conspicuously phallic.In the Babylonian system the seventh day
or period was that in which man and the
animals were created.
2.The Elohim make a woman out of Adam s rib.[Gen.ii.21 22.] This process is found in the Magical
Texts translated by G.Smith.
The seven Spirits bring forth the woman from
the loins of the man
explains Mr.Sayce in his Hibbert Lect res.[ Op.cit.p.395 note.]
(Page 192)The mystery of the woman who was made from the
man is repeated in every national religion
and in Scriptures far antedating the
Jewish.You find it in the Avestan fragments,in the Egyptian Book of
the Dead and finally in Brahmā the male separating from himself as a female self
Vāch in whom he
creates Virāj.
3.The two Adams of the first and second
chapters in Genesis originated from garbled exoteric accounts
coming from the Chaldaeans and the Egyptian
Gnostics,revised later from the Persian traditions,most of
which are old Aryan allegories.As Adam Kadmon
is the seventh creation [ The
seventh esoterically
exoterically the sixth.] so the Adam of dust is the eighth;and in the Purānas one finds
an eighth the
Anugraha creation and the Egyptian Gnostics
had it.Irenaeus,complaining of the heretics says of the
Gnostics:
Sometimes they will have him [man ] to have been made on the sixth day and sometimes on
the eighth.[ Contra Hereses.1.xviii.2.]
The author of The Hebrew and Other
Creations writes:
These two creations of man on the sixth day
and on the eighth were those of the Adamic,or
fleshly man and of the spiritual man who were
known to Paul and the Gnostics as the first
and second Adam the man of earth and the man
of Heaven.Irenaeus also says they insisted
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that Moses began with the Ogdoad of the Seven
Powers and their mother Sophia (the old
Kefa of Egypt who is the Living Word at
Ombos).Op.cit,by Gerald Massey.p.19 ]
Sophia is also Aditi with her seven sons.
One might go on enumerating and tracing the
Jewish revelations ad infinit m to their original sources,
were it not that the task is superfluous,since
so much is already done in that direction by others -and
done thoroughly well as in the case of Gerald
Massey who has sifted the subject to the very bottom.
Hundreds of volumes,treatises,and pamphlets
are being written yearly in defence of the divine-
inspiration claim for the Bible ;but
symbolical and archaeological research is coming to the rescue of
truth and fact -therefore of the Esoteric
Doctrine -upsetting every argument based on faith and breaking
it as an idol with feet of clay.A curious and
learned book,The Approaching End of the Age,by H.Gratton
Guinness,professes to solve the mysteries of
the Bible chronology and to prove thereby God s direct
revelation to man.Among other things its
author thinks that:
It is impossible to deny that a septiform
chronology was divinely appointed in the elaborate
ritual of Judaism.
Seven Keys to all Allegories-(Page 193)This statement is innocently accepted and
firmly believed in by
thousands and tens of thousands,only because
they are ignorant of the Bibles of other nations.Two
pages from a small pamphlet a lecture by
Mr.Gerald Massey [Op cit.,p.278
]so upset the arguments
and proofs of the enthusiastic Mr.Grattan
Guinness,spread over 760 pages of small print as to prevent
them from ever raising their heads any
more.Mr.Massey treats of the Fall and says:
Here as before the genesis does not begin at
the beginning.There was an earlier Fall than
that of the Primal Pair.In this the number of
those who failed and fell was seven.We meet
with those seven in Egypt -eight with the
mother -where they are called the Children of
Inertness,who were cast out from Am-Smen the
Paradise of the Eight;also in a Babylonian
legend of Creation as the Seven Brethren who
were Seven Kings,like the Seven Kings in the
Book of Revelation ;and the Seven Non-Sentient Powers who became the Seven
Rebel
Angels that made war in heaven.The Seven
Kronidae described as the Seven Watchers,who
in the beginning were formed in the interior
of heaven.The heaven like a vault they extended
or hollowed out;that which was not visible
they raised and that which had no exit they
opened;their work of creation being exactly
identical with that of the Elohim in the Book of
Genesis.These
are the Seven elemental Powers of space who were continued as Seven
Timekeepers.It is said of them:In watching
was their office but among the stars of heaven
their watch they kept not and their failure
was the Fall.In the Book of Enoch the same Seven
Watchers in heaven are stars which
transgressed the commandment of God before their time
arrived for they came not in their proper
season therefore was he offended with them and
bound them until the period of the
consummation of their crimes,at the end of the secret or
great year of the World i.e.,the Period
of Precession when there was to be restoration and
rebeginning.The Seven deposed constellations
are seen by Enoch looking like seven great
blazing mountains overthrown -the seven
mountains in Revelation,on which the Scarlet Lady
sits.[
The Hebrew and other Creations;with a reply to Prof.A.H.Sayce,p.19.]
There are seven keys to this,as to every other
allegory whether in the Bible or in pagan religions.While
Mr.Massey has hit upon the key in the
mysteries of cosmogony John Bentley in his Hind Astronomy
claims that the Fall of the Angels,or War
in Heaven as given by the Hindus,is but a figure of the
calculations of time-periods,and goes on to
show that among the Western nations the same war with
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like results took the form of the war of the
Titans.
In short he makes it astronomical.So
does the author of The So rce of Measures:
(Page 194)The celestial sphere with the earth was
divided into twelve compartments
[astronomically ] and
these compartments were esteemed as sexed the lords or h
sbands
being respectively the planets presiding over
them.This being the settled scheme want of
proper correction would bring it to pass,after
a time that error and confusion would ensue by
the compartments coming under the lordship of
the wrong planets.Instead of lawful wedlock,
there would be illegal intercourse as between
the planets sons of Elohim. and these
compartments,daughters of H-Adam or the earth-man:and
in fact the fourth verse of sixth
Genesis will
bear this interpretation for the usual one viz.,In the same
days,or periods,there
were untimely births in the earth;and also
behind that when the sons of Elohim came to the
daughters of H-Adam,they begat to them the
offspring of harlotry etc.astronomically
indicating this confusion.[ Op.cit.,p.243 .]
Do any of these learned explanations explain
anything except a possible ingenious allegory and a
personification of the celestial bodies,by the
ancient Mythologists and Priests?Carried to their last word
they would undeniably explain much and would
thus furnish one of the right seven keys fitting a great
many of the Biblical puzzles yet opening none
naturally and entirely instead of being scientific and
cunning master-keys.But they prove one thing
-that neither the septiform chronology nor the septiform
theogony and evolution of all things is of
divine origin in the Bible .For let us see the sources at which the
Bible sipped
its divine inspiration with regard to the sacred number seven.Says Mr.Massey in
the same
lecture:
The Book of Genesis tells us nothing
about the nature of these Elohim erroneously rendered
God who are creators of the Hebrew beginning
and who are themselves preextant and
seated when the theatre opens and the curtain
ascends.It says that in the beginning the
Elohim created the heaven and the earth.In
thousands of books the Elohim have been
discussed but ...with no conclusive result
...The Elohim are Seven in number whether as
nature-powers,gods of constellations,or
planetary gods,...as the Pitris and Patriarchs,
Manus and Fathers of earlier times.The
Gnostics,however and the Jewish Kabalah preserve
an account of the Elohim of Genesis by
which we are able to identify them with other forms of
the seven primordial powers ...Their names are
Ildabaoth Jehovah (or Jao),Sabaoth
Adonai Eloeus,Orfus,and astanphaeus.Ildabaoth
signifies the Lord God of the fathers,that
is the fathers who preceded the Father;and
thus the seven are identical with the seven Pitris
or Fathers of India
(Irenaeus,B.L.xxx.5).Moreover the Hebrew Elohim were preextant by
name and nature as Phoenician divinities or
powers.Sanchoniathon mentions them by name
and describes them as Auxiliaris of Kronos or
Time.In this phase then the Elohim are
timekeepers in heaven!In the Phoenician
mythology the Elohim are the Seven sons of Sydik
[Melchizedek ] identical
with the Seven Kabiri who in Egypt are the Seven sons of Ptah and
the Seven Spirits of Ra in The Book of the
Dead;...in America with the seven Hohgates,...
in Assyria with the seven Lumazi ...
Gerald Massey on the Seven Creators-(Page 195)They are always seven in number ...who Kab -that
is,turn round together whence the Kab-iri.
...They are also the Ili or Gods,in Assyrian who were
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seven in number!...They were first born of the
Mother in Space [ When they are
the Anupādakas
(Parentless)of the Secret Doctrine.See
Stanzas,i.9 Vol.i.56.] and then
the Seven Companions passed
into the sphere of time as auxiliaries of
Kronus,or Sons of the Male Parent.As Damascius says in his
Primitive Principles,the Magi consider that space and time were the source of
all;and from being powers
of the air the gods were promoted to become
timekeepers for men.Seven constellations were assigned
to them ....As the seven turned round in the
ark of the sphere they were designated the Seven Sailors
Companions,Rishis,or Elohim.The first Seven
Stars are not planetary.They are the leading stars of
seven constellations which turned round with
the Great Bear in describing the circle of the year.[These
originated with the Aryans,who placed therein
their bright-crested (Chitra-Shikhandan)Seven Rishis.
But all this is far more Occult than appears
on the surface.] These the
Assyrians called the seven
Lumazi or leaders of the flocks of
stars,designated sheep.On the Hebrew line of descent or
development these Elohim are identified for us
by the Kabalists and Gnostics,who retained the hidden
wisdom or gnosis,the clue of which is
absolutely essential to any proper understanding of mythology or
theology....There were two constellations with
seven stars each.We call them the Two Bears.But the
seven stars of the Lesser Bear were once
considered to be the seven heads of the Polar Dragon which
we meet with -as the beast with seven heads
-in the Akkadian Hymns and in Revelation.The mythical
dragon originated in the crocodile which is
the dragon of Egypt....Now in one particular cult the Sut-
Typhonian the first god was Sevekh [the sevenfold ] who wears the crocodile s head as well as the
Serpent and who is the Dragon or whose
constellation was the Dragon....In Egypt the Great Bear was
the constellation of Typhon or Kepha,the
old genetrix,called the Mother of Revolutions;and the Dragon
with seven heads was assigned to her son
Sevekh-Kronus,or Saturn called the Dragon of Life.That is,
the typical dragon or serpent with seven heads
was female at first and then the type was continued as
male in her son Sevekh the Sevenfold Serpent
in Ea the Sevenfold ....Iao Chnubis,and others.We
find these two in The Book of Revelation.One
is the Scarlet Lady the mother of mystery the great harlot
who sat on a scarlet-coloured beast with seven
heads,which is the Red Dragon of the Pole.She held in
her hand the unclean things of her
fornication.That means the emblems of the male and female imaged
by the Egyptians at the Polar Centre the very
uterus of creation as was indicated by the Thigh
constellation called the Khepsh of Typhon the
old Dragon in the northern birthplace of Time in heaven.
The two revolved about the pole of heaven or
the Tree as it was called which was figured at the centre
of the starry motion.In The Book of Enoch these
two constellations are identified as Leviathan and
Behemoth-Bekhmut or the Dragon and Hippopotamus=Great
Bear and they are the primal pair that
were first created in the Garden of Eden.So
that the Egyptian first (Page
196)mother
Kefa [or Kepha ]
whose name signifies mystery was the
original of the Hebrew Chavah our Eve;and therefore Adam is
one with Sevekh the sevenfold one the solar
dragon in whom the powers of light and darkness were
combined and the sevenfold nature was shown in
the seven rays worn by the Gnostic Iao-Chnubis,god
of the number seven who is Sevekh by name and
a form of the first father as head of the Seven.[
Op.cit.,pp.19-22
]
All this gives the key to the astronomical
prototype of the allegory in Genesis but it furnishes no other
key to the mystery involved in the sevenfold
glyph.The able Egyptologist shows also that Adam himself
according to Rabbinical and Gnostic tradition
was the chief of the Seven who fell from Heaven and he
connects these with the Patriarchs,thus
agreeing with the Esoteric Teaching.For by mystic permutation
and the mystery of primeval rebirths and adjustment
the Seven Rishis are in reality identical with the
seven Prajāpatis,the fathers and creators of
mankind and also with the Kumāras,the first sons of
Brahmā who refused to procreate and
multiply.This apparent contradiction is explained by the sevenfold
nature -make it fourfold on metaphysical
principles and it will come to the same thing -of the celestial
men the Dhyan Chohans.This nature is made to
divide and separate;and while the higher principles
(Atma-Buddhi)of the Creators of Men are said
to be the Spirits of the seven constellations,their middle
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and lower principles are connected with the
earth and are shown.
Without desire or passion inspired with holy
wisdom estranged from the Universe and
undesirous of progeny [Vishn P rana,Wilson s Translation I 101.The period of
these
Kumaras is Pre-Adamic.i.e.before the
separation of the sexes,and before humanity had
received the creative or sacred fire of
Prometheus.]
remaining Kaumāric (virgin and
undefiled):therefore it is said they refuse to create.For this they are
cursed and sentenced to be born and reborn
Adams, as the Semites would say.
Meanwhile let me quote a few lines more from
Mr.G.Massey s lecture the fruit of his long researches in
Egyptology and other ancient lore as it shows
that the septenary division was at one time a universal
doctrine:
Adam as the father among the Seven is
identical with the Egyptians Atum ...whose other
name of Adon is identical with the Hebrew
Adonai.In this way the second Creation in Genesis
reflects and continues the later creation in
the mythos which explains it.The Fall of Adam to
the lower world led to his being humanised on
earth by which process the celestial was turned
into the mortal and this,which belongs to the
astronomical allegory got literalised as the Fall
of Man or descent of the soul into matter and
the conversion of the angelic into an earthly
being ....
The Father and Mother-
(Page 197)It is found in the [Babylonian ] texts,when
Ea the first father is said to grant
forgiveness to the conspiring gods,for whose
redemption did he create mankind.(Sayce;
Hib.Lec.,p.140)...The Elohim,then are the Egyptian Akkadian Hebrew and Phoenician
form of the universal Seven Powers who are
Seven in Egypt Seven in Akkad Babylon
Persia India Britain and Seven among the
Gnostics and Kabalists.They were the Seven
fathers who preceded the Father in Heaven
because they were earlier than the individualised
fatherhood on earth ...
When the Elohim said:Let us make man in our
image after our likeness.there were seven
of them who represented the seven
elements,powers,or souls that went to the making of the
human being who came into existence before the
Creator was represented
anthropomorphically or could have conferred
the human likeness on the Adamic man.It was
in the sevenfold image of the Elohim that was
first created with his seven elements,
principles,or souls,[The Secret Doctrine says that this was the second creation nor
the first
and that it took place during the Third Race
when men separated i.e.,began to be born as
distinct men and women.See Vol.ii.of this
work,Stanzas and Commentaries.] and
therefore
he could not have been formed in the image of
the one God.The seven Gnostic Elohim tried
to make a man in their own image but could not
for lack of virile power.[This
is a Western
mangling of the Indian doctrine of the Kumaras.] Thus their creation in earth and
heaven was
a failure ...because they themselves were
lacking in the soul of the fatherhood!When the
Gnostic Ildabaoth [He was regarded by several Gnostic sects as one with Jehovah.See Isis
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Unveiled vol ii.p.184.] chief of the Seven cried: I am the father and God his
mother Sophia
[Achamoth ] replied:Do
not tell lies,Ildabaoth for the first man (Anthropos,son of Anthropos [
Or man son of man.The Church found in this a
prophecy and a confession of Christ the
Son of Man!] )is above thee.That is,man who had now been created in the
image of the
fatherhood was superior to the gods who were
derived from the Mother-Parent alone![ See
Stanza ii.Secret Doctrine.ii.16.] For as it had been first on earth so
was it afterwards in
heaven [the
Secret Doctrine reaches the reverse ];and
thus the primary gods were held to be
soulless like the earliest races of men
....The Gnostics taught that the Spirits of Wickedness,
the inferior Seven derived their origin from
the great Mother alone who produced without the
fatherhood!It was in the image then of the
sevenfold Elohim that the seven races were
formed which we sometimes hear of as the
Pre-Adamite races of men because they were
earlier than the fatherhood which was
individualised only in the second Hebrew Creation.[
See Stanza ii.5 Secret Doctrine.ii.16 ]
This shows sufficiently how the echo of the
Secret Doctrine -of the Third and Fourth Races of men
made complete by the incarnation in humanity
of the Manasa Putra Sons of Intelligence or Wisdom -
reached every corner of the globe.The
Jews,however although they borrowed of the older nations the
groundwork on which to build their (Page 198)revelation never had more than three keys out
of the seven
in their mind while composing their national
allegories -the astronomical or numerical (metrology)and
above all the purely anthropological or rather
physiological key.This resulted in the most phallic religion
of all and has now passed part and parcel into
Christian theology as is proved by the lengthy
quotations made from a lecture of an able
Egyptologist who can make naught of it save astronomical
myths and phallicism as is implied by his
explanations of fatherhood in the allegories.
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SECTION XXII
The Zohar on Creation and the Elohim
(Page 199)THE opening sentence in Genesis,as
every Hebrew scholar knows,is:
Now there are two well-known ways of rendering
this line as any other Hebrew writing:one exoteric,as
read by the orthodox Bible interpreters
(Christian),and the other Kabalistic,the latter moreover being
divided into the Rabbinical and the purely
Kabalistic or Occult method.As in Sanskrit writing the words
are not separated in the Hebrew but are made
to run together -especially in the old systems.For
instance the above divided would read:B
rashith bara Elohim eth hashamayim v eth h areths; and it
can be made to read thus:B rash ithbara
Elohim ethhashamayim v eth arets, thus changing the
meaning entirely.The latter means,In the
beginning God made the heavens and the earth whereas the
former precluding the idea of any beginning
would simply read that out of the ever-existing Essence
[divine ] [or out of the womb -also
head -thereof ] the dual [or androgyne ] Force [Gods ] shaped the
double heaven; the upper and the lower heaven
being generally explained as heaven and earth.The
latter word means Esoterically the Vehicle
as it gives the idea of an empty globe within which the
manifestation of the world takes place.Now
according to the rules of Occult symbolical reading as
established in the old Sepher Jetzirah (in
the Chaldaean Book of N mbers )[
The Sepher Jetzirah now
known is but a portion of the original one
incorporated in the Chaldean Book of N mbers .The fragment
now in possession of the Western Kabalists is
one greatly tampered with by the Rabbis of the Middle
Ages,as its masoretic points show.The Masorah
scheme is a modern blind dating after our era and
perfected in Tiberias.(See Isis Unveiled.vol.ii.pp.430-431.)] the initial fourteen letters (or B
rasitb
raalaim )are in themselves quite sufficient
to explain the theory of creation without any further
explanation (Page 200)or qualification.Every letter of them is a
sentence;and placed side by side with
the hieroglyphic or pictorial initial version
of creation in the Book of Dzyan the origin of the Phoenician
and Jewish letters would soon be found out.A
whole volume of explanations would give no more to the
student of primitive Occult Symbology than
this:the head of a bull within a circle a straight horizontal
line a circle or sphere then another one with
three dots in it a triangle then the Svastika (or Jaina
cross);after these come an equilateral
triangle within a circle seven small bulls heads standing in three
rows,one over the other;a black round dot (an
opening),and then seven lines,meaning Chaos or Water
(feminine).
Anyone acquainted with the symbolical and
numerical value of the Hebrew letters will see at a glance
that this glyph and the letters of B rasitb
raalaim are identical in meaning.Beth is abode or region;
Resh a circle of head; Aleph bull
(the symbol of generative or creative power);[ In the oldest
symbolism -that used in the Egyptian
hieroglyphics -when the bull s head only is found it means the
Deity the Perfect Circle with the procreative
power latent in it.When the whole bull is represented a
solar God a personal deity is meant for
it is then the symbol of the acting generative power.] Shin a
tooth (300 exoterically -a trident or three
in one in its Occult meaning);Jodh the perfect unity or one
;[ It
took three Root-Races to degrade the symbol of the One Abstract Unity
manifested in Nature as a
Ray emanating from infinity (the Circle)into a
phallic symbol of generation as it was even in the
Kabalah.This
degradation began with the Fourth Race and had its raison d etre in
Polytheism as the
latter was invented to screen the One
Universal Deity from profanation.The Christians may plead
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ignorance of its meaning as an excuse for its
acceptance.But why sing never-ceasing laudations to the
Mosaic Jews who repudiated all the other
Gods,preserved the most phallic,and then most impudently
proclaimed themselves Monotheists?Jesus ever
steadily ignored Jehovah.He went against the Mosaic
commandments.He recognized his Heavenly Father
alone and prohibited public worship.] Tau
the
root or foundation (the same as the
cross with the Egyptians and Aryans):again Beth Resh and
Aleph. Then Aleph or seven bulls for the
seven Alaim:an ox-goad Lamedh active procreation;
He the opening or matrix: Yodh the
organ of procreation;and Mem water or chaos, the
female Power near the male that precedes it.
The most satisfactory and scientific exoteric
rendering of the opening sentence of Genesis -on which
was hung in blind faith the whole Christian
religion synthesized by its fundamental dogmas -is
undeniably the one given in the Appendix to The
So rce of Measures by Mr.Ralston Skinner.He gives,
and we must admit in the ablest clearest and
most scientific way the numerical reading of this first
sentence and chapter in Genesis.
Angels as Builders-(Page 201)By the means of number 31 or the word El (1 for Aleph
and 30 for
Lamedh ),and other numerical Bible symbols,compared
with the measures used in the great pyramid of
Egypt he shows the perfect identity between
its measurements -inches,cubits,and plan -and the
numerical values of the Garden of Eden Adam
and Eve and the Patriarchs.In short the author shows
that the pyramid contains in itself
architecturally the whole of Genesis and discloses the astronomical
and even the physiological secrets in its
symbols and glyphs;yet he will not admit it would seem the
psycho-cosmical and spiritual mysteries involved
in these.Nor does the author apparently see that the
root of all this has to be sought in the
archaic legends and the Pantheon of India.[ Is it everything to have
found out that the celestial circle of 360
degrees is determined by the full word-form of Elohim and that
this yields,when the word is placed in a
circle 3'1415 or the relation of circumference to a diameter of
one .
This is only its astronomical or mathematical aspect.To know the full septenary
significance of the
Primordial Circle the pyramid and the
Kabalistic Bible must be read in the light of the figure on which
the temples of India are built.The
mathematical squaring of the circle is only the terrestrial résumé of
the
problem.The Jews were content with the six
days of activity and the seventh of rest.The progenitors of
mankind solved the greatest problem of the
Universe with their seven Rays or Rishis.] Failing this,
whither does his great and admirable labour
lead him?Not further than to find out that Adam the earth
and Moses of Jehovah are the same -or to
the a-b-c of comparative Occult Symbology -and that the
days in Genesis being circles
displayed by the Hebrews as squares, the result of the sixth-day s
labour culminates in the fructifying
principle.Thus the Bible is made to yield Phallicism,and that alone.
Nor -read in this light and as its Hebrew
texts are interpreted by Western scholars -can it ever yield
anything higher or more sublime than such
phallic elements,the root and the corner-stone of its dead-
letter meaning.Anthropomorphism and Revelation
dig the impassable chasm between the material world
and the ultimate spiritual truths.That
creation is not thus described in the Esoteric Doctrine is easily
shown.The Roman Catholics give a reading far
more approaching the true Esoteric meaning than that of
the Protestant.For several of their saints and
doctors admit that the formation of heaven and earth of the
celestial bodies,etc.belongs to the work of
the Seven Angels of the Presence. St.Denys calls the
Builders the coöperators of God and
St.Augustine goes even farther and credits the Angels with the
possession of the divine thought the prototype
as he says,of everything created.[ Genesis
begins with
the third stage of creation skipping
the preliminary two.] And
finally St.Thomas Aquinas has a long
(Page 202)dissertation upon this topic,calling God the
primary and the Angels the secondary cause of all
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visible effects.In this,with some dogmatic
differences of form the Angelic Doctor approaches very
nearly the Gnostic ideas.Basilides speaks of
the lowest order of Angels as the Builders of our material
world and Saturnilus held as did the
Sabaeans,that the Seven Angels who preside over the planets are
the real creators of the world;the
Kabalist-monk,Trithemius,in his De Secundis Deis,taught the same.
The eternal Kosmos the Macrocosm is
divided in the Secret Doctrine,like man the Microcosm into
three Principles and four Vehicles,[ The three root-principles are
exoterically:Man Soul and Spirit
(meaning by man the intelligent
personality)and esoterically:Life Soul and Spirit:the four vehicles
are Body Astral double Animal (or human)Soul
and Divine Soul (Sthula-Sharira Linga-Sharira Kāma-
rūpa and Buddhi the vehicle of Atma or
Spirit).Or to make it still clearer:(1)the seventh Principle has
for its vehicle the Sixth (Buddhi):(2)the
vehicle of Manas is Kāma-rūpa;(3)that of Jiva or Prana (life)is
the Linga-Sharira (the double of man:the
Linga-Sharira proper can never leave the body till death;that
which appears is an astral body reflecting the
physical body and serving as a vehicle for the human soul
or intelligence);and (4)the Body the physical
vehicle of all the above collectively.The Occultist
recognizes the same order as existing for the
cosmical totality the psycho-cosmical Universe.] which in
their collectivity are the seven Principles.In
the Chaldaean of Jewish Kabalah,the Kosmos is divided into
seven worlds:the Original the Intelligible the
Celestial the Elementary the Lesser (Astral),the Infernal
(Kāma-loka or Hades),and the Temporal (of
man).In the Chaldaean system it is in the Intelligible World
the second that appear the Seven Angels of
the Presence or the Sephiroth (the three higher ones
being in fact one and also the sum total of
all).They are also the Builders of the Eastern Doctrine:and
it is only in the third the celestial world
that the seven planets and our solar system are built by the
seven Planetary Angels,the planets becoming
their visible bodies.Hence -as correctly stated -if the
universe as a whole is formed out of the
Eternal One Substance or Essence it is not that everlasting
Essence the Absolute Deity that builds it into
shape;this is done by the first Rays the Angels or Dhyān
Chohans,that emanate from the One Element
which becoming periodically Light and Darkness,remains
eternally in its Root-Principle the one
unknown yet existing Reality.
A learned Western Kabalist.Mr.S.L.MacGregor
Mathers,whose reasoning and conclusions will be the
more above suspicion since he is untrained in
Eastern Philosophy and unacquainted with its Secret
Teachings,writes on the first verse of Genesis
in an unpublished essay:
Berashith Bara Elohim -in the beginning the Elohim created! Who are these
Elohim of
Genesis ?
Who are the Elohim?
(Page 203)Va-Vivra Elohim
Ath Ha-Adam Be-Tzalmo,Be-Tzelem Elohim Bara Otho.Zakhar
Vingebah Bara Otham -And the Elohim created the Adam in Their own Image in the
Image
of the Elohim created They them Male and
Female created They them! Who are they the
Elohim?The ordinary English translation of the
Bible renders the word Elohim by God: it
translates a pl ral noun by a sing
lar one.The only excuse brought forward for this is the
somewhat lame one that the word is certainly
plural but is not to be used in a plural sense:
that it is a plural denoting excellence.But
this is only an assumption whose value may be
justly gauged by Genesis i.26
translated in the orthodox Biblical version thus:And God
[Elohim ] said Let us make man in our own
image after our likeness.Here is a distinct
admission of the fact that Elohim is not a
plural of excellence but a plural noun denoting
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more than one being.[ St.Denys,the Areopagite the supposed contemporary of St.Paul his
co-disciple and first Bishop of St.Denis,near
Paris,teaches that the bulk of the work of
creation was performed by the Seven Spirits
of the Presence -God s co-operators,owing to
a participation of the divinity in them.(Hierarch.,p.196)And
St.Augustine also thinks that
things were rather created in the angelic
minds than in Nature that is to say that the angels
perceived and knew them (all things)in their
thoughts before they could spring forth into actual
existence. (Vid De Genesis ad Litteram p.11.)(Summarized
from De Mirville.Vol.II.pp.
337-338.)Thus the early Christian Fathers,even
a non-initiate like St-Augustine ascribed the
creation of the visible world to Angels,or
Secondary Powers while St.Denys not only
specifies these as the Seven Spirits
of the Presence but shows them owing their power to
the informing divine energy -Fohat in the
Secret Doctrine.But the egotistical darkness which
caused the Western races to cling so
desperately to the Geo-centric System made them also
neglect and despise all those fragments of the
true Religion which would have deprived them
and the little globe they took for the centre
of the Universe of the signal honour of having been
expressly created by the One
Secondless,Infinite God!]
What then is the proper translation of Elohim
and to whom is it referable?Elohim is not
only a plural but a feminine pl ral!And
yet the translators of the Bible have rendered it by a
masculine sing lar!Elohim is the plural of the feminine noun El-h for the final
letter -h marks
the gender.It however instead of forming the
plural in -oth takes the usual termination of the
masculine plural which is -im.
Although in the great majority of cases the
nouns of both genders take the terminations
appropriated to them respectively there are
yet many masculines which form the plural in -oth
as well as feminine which form it in -im while
some nouns of each gender take alternately
both.It must be observed however that the
termination of the plural does not affect its
gender which remains the same as in the
singular ...
To find the real meaning of the symbolism
involved in this word Elohim we must go to that key
of Jewish Esoteric Doctrine the little-known
and less-understood Kabalah.There we shall find
that this word represents two united masculine
and feminine Potencies,co-equal and co-
eternal conjoined in everlasting union for the
maintenance of the Universe -the great Father
and Mother of Nature into whom the Eternal One
conforms himself before the Universe can
subsist.For the teaching of the Kabalah is
that before the Deity conformed himself thus -i.e.
as (Page 204)male and female -the Worlds of the Universe could not
subsist;or in the words of
Genesis that
the earth was formless and void. Thus,then is the conformation of the Elohim
the end of the Formless and the Void and the
Darkness,for only after conformation can the
R ach Elohim -the Spirit of the Elohim -vibrate upon the countenance of
the Waters.But
this is a very small part of the information
which the Initiate can derive from the Kabalah
concerning this word Elohim.
Attention must here be called to the confusion
-if not worse -which reigns in the Western interpretations
of the Kabalah.The eternal One is
said to conform himself into two:the Great Father and Mother of
Nature.To begin with it is a horribly
anthropomorphic conception to apply terms implying sexual
distinction to the earliest and first
differentiations of the One.And it is even more erroneous to identify
these first differentiations -the Purusha and
Prakriti of Indian Philosophy -with the Elohim the creative
powers here spoken of;and to ascribe to these
(to our intellects)unimaginable abstractions,the
formation and construction of this visible
world full of pain sin and sorrow.In truth the creation by the
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Elohim spoken of here is but a much later
creation and the Elohim far from being supreme or even
exalted powers in Nature are only lower
Angels.This was the teaching of the Gnostics,the most
philosophical of all the early Christian
Churches.They taught that the imperfections of the world were
due to the imperfection of its Architects or
Builders -the imperfect and therefore inferior Angels.The
Hebrew Elohim correspond to the Prajāpati of
the Hindus,and it is shown elsewhere from the Esoteric
interpretation of the Purānas that the
Prajāpati were the fashioners of man s material and astral form
only :that
they could not give him intelligence or reason and therefore in symbolical
language they failed
to create man.But not to repeat what the
reader can find elsewhere in this work his attention needs
only to be called to the fact that creation
in this passage is not the Primary Creation and that the
Elohim are not God nor even the
higher Planetary Spirits,but the Architects of this visible physical
planet and of man s material body or
encasement.
A fundamental doctrine of the Kabalah is
that the gradual development of the Deity from
negative to positive Existence is symbolized
by the gradual development of the Ten Numbers
of the denary scale of numeration from the
Zero through the Unity into the plurality.This is
the doctrine of the Sephiroth or Emanations.
For the inward and concealed Negative Form
concentrates a centre which is the primal Unity.
But the Unity is one and indivisible:it can
neither be increased by multiplication nor decreased
by division for 1x1=1 and no more;and 1
divided by1 =1 and no less.And it is this
changelessness of the Unity or Monad which
makes it a fitting type of the One and
Changeless Deity.It answers thus to the
Christian idea of God the Father for as the Unity is
the parent of the other numbers,so is the
Deity the Father of All.
Monad Duad and Triad-(Page 205)The philosophical Eastern mind would never fall into the
error which
the connotation of these words
implies.With them the One and Changeless -Parabrahman -the
Absolute All and One cannot be conceived as
standing in any relation to things finite and conditioned
and hence they would never use such terms as
these which in their very essence imply such a relation.
Do they then absolutely sever man from God?On
the contrary.They feel a closer union than the
Western mind has done in calling God the
Father of All for they know that in his immortal essence man
is himself
the Changeless,Secondless One.
But we have just said that the Unity is one
and changeless by either multiplication or division;
how then is two the Duad formed?By
reflection.For unlike Zero the Unity is partly definable
-that is,in its positive aspect;and the
definition creates an Eikon or Eidolon of itself which
together with itself forms a Duad;and thus the
number two is to a certain extent analogous to
the Christian idea of the Son as the Second
Person.And as the Monad vibrates,and recoils
into the Darkness of the Primary Thought so is
the Duad left as its vice-gerent and
representative and thus co-equal and
co-eternal with the Duad in the bosom of the Unity yet
as it were proceeding therefrom in the
numerical conception of its sequence.
This explanation would seem to imply that
Mr.Mathers is aware that this creation is not the truly divine
or primary one since the Monad -the first
manifestation on o r plane of objectivity -recoils into the
Darkness of the Primal Thought i.e.,into
the subjectivity of the first divine Creation.
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And this,again also partly answers to the
Christian idea of the Holy Ghost and of the whole
three forming a Trinity in unity.This also
explains the fact in geometry of the three right lines
being the smallest number which will make a
plane rectilineal figure while two can never
enclose a space being powerless and without
effect till completed by the number Three.
These three first numbers of the decimal scale
the Qabalists call by the names of Kether the
Crown Chokmah Wisdom and Binah
Understanding;and they furthermore associate with
them these divine names:with the Unity Eheich
I exist; with the Duad Yah;and with the
Triad Elohim;they especially also call the
Duad Abba -the Father and the Triad Aima -the
Mother whose eternal conjunction is symbolized
in the word Elohim.
But what especially strikes the student of the
Kabalah is the malicious persistency (Page 206)
with which the translators of the Bible have
jealously crowded out of sight and suppressed
every reference to the feminine form of the
Deity.They have as we have just seen translated
the feminine plural Elohim by the masculine
singular God. But they have done more than
this:they have carefully hidden the fact that
the word Ruach -the Spirit -is feminine and
that consequently the Holy Ghost of the New
Testament is a feminine Potency.How many
Christians are cognizant of the fact that in
the account of the Incarnation in L ke (i.35)two
divine Potencies are mentioned?
The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee and the
Power of the Highest shall overshadow thee.
The Holy Ghost (the feminine Potency)descends,and
the Power of the Highest (the
masculine Potency)is united
therewith.Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of
thee shall be called the Son of God -of the
Elohim namely seeing that these two Potencies
descend.
In the Sepher Yetzirah,or Book of
Formation,we read:
One is She the Ruach Elohim Chum -(Spirit of
the Living Elohim)....Voice Spirit and
Word;and this is She the Spirit of the Holy
One. Here again we see the intimate connection
which exists between the Holy Spirit and the
Elohim.Furthermore farther on in this same
Book of Formation -which is be it remembered one of the oldest of the
Kabalistical Books,
and whose authorship is ascribed to Abraham
the Patriarch -we shall find the idea of a
Feminine Trinity in the first place from whom
a masculine Trinity proceeds;or as it is said in
the text:Three Mothers whence proceed three
Fathers.And yet this double Triad forms,as it
were but one complete Trinity.Again it is
worthy of note that the Second and Third Sephiroth
(Wisdom and Understanding)are both
distinguished by feminine names,Chokmah and Binah
notwithstanding that to the former more
particularly the masculine idea and to the latter the
feminine are attributed under the titles of
Abba and Aima (or Father and Mother).This Aima
(the Great Mother)is magnificently symbolized
in the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse which
is undoubtedly one of the most Kabalistical
books in the Bible .In fact without the Kabalistical
keys its meaning is utterly unintelligible.
Now in the Hebrew as in the Greek,alphabet
there are no distinct numeral characters,and
consequently each letter has a certain
numerical value attached to it.From this circumstance
results the important fact that every Hebrew
word constitutes a number and every number a
word.This is referred to in the Revelations
(xiii.18)in mentioning the number of the beast !In
the Kabalah words of equal numerical
values are supposed to have a certain explanatory
connection with each other.This forms the
science of Gematria which is the first division of
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the Literal Kabalah.Furthermore each
letter of the Hebrew alphabet had for the Initiates of the
Kabalah a
certain hieroglyphical value and meaning which rightly applied gave to each
word
the value of a mystical sentence;and this
again was variable according to the relative
positions of the letters with regard to each
other.From these various Kabalistical points of view
let us now examine this word Elohim.
First then we can divide the word into the two
words,which signify The Feminine Divinity of
the Waters; compare with the Greek Aphrodite
sprung from the foam of the sea.
The Creative Gods
(Page 207)Again it is divisive into the Mighty One Star
of the Sea or the Mighty One
breathing forth the Spirit upon the
Waters.Also by combination of the letters we get the Silent
Power of Iah.And again My God the Former of
the Universe for Mah is a secret
Kabalistical name applied to the idea of
Formation.Also we obtain Who is my God.
Furthermore the Mother in Iah.
The total number is 1+30+5+10+40=86 Violent
heat or the Power of Fire. If we add
together the three middle letters we obtain 45
and the first the last letter yield 41 making thus
the Mother of Formation. Lastly we shall
find the two divine names El and Yah together
with the letter m which signifies Water
for Mem the name of this letter means water.
If we divide it into its component letters and
take them as hieroglyphical signs we shall have:
Will perfected through Sacrifice progressing
through successive Transformation by
Inspiration.
The last few paragraphs of the above in which
the word Elohim is Kabalistically analysed show
conclusively enough that the Elohim are not
one nor two nor even a trinity but a Host -the army of the
creative powers.
The Christian Church in making of Jehovah -one
of these very Elohim -the one Supreme God has
introduced hopeless confusion into the
celestial hierarchy in spite of the volumes written by Thomas
Aquinas and his school on the subject.The only
explanation to be found in all their treatises on the
nature and essence of the numberless classes
of celestial beings mentioned in the Bible -Archangels,
Thrones,Seraphim Cherubim Messengers,etc.-is
that The angelic host is God s militia. They are
Gods the creat res,while he is God the
Creator but of their true functions -of their actual place in the
economy of Nature -not one word is said.They
are
More brilliant than the flames,more rapid than
the wind and they live in love and harmony
mutually enlightening each other feeding on
bread and a mystic beverage -the communion
wine and water?-surrounding as with a river
of fire the throne of the Lamb and veiling their
faces with their wings.This throne of love and
glory they leave only to carry to the stars,the
earth the kingdoms and all the sons of God
their brothers and pupils,in short to all creatures
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like themselves the divine influence....As to their number it is that of the
great army of
Heaven (Sabaoth),more numerous than the stars
....Theology shows us these rational
luminaries,each constituting a species,and
containing in their natures such or another
position of Nature covering immense space
though of a determined area;residing -
incorporeal though they are -within
circumscribed limits;....more rapid than light or
thunderbolt disposing of all the elements of
Nature providing at will inexplicable mirages
[illusions?] objective and subjective (Page 208)in turn speaking to men a language at one time
articulate at another purely spiritual.[ De Mirville ii.295 .]
We learn farther on in the same work that it
is these Angels and their hosts who are referred to in the
sentence of verse I chapter ii.of Genesis :Igitur
perfecti sunt coeli et terra et omnis ornatus eorum:and
that the Vulgate has peremptorily substituted
for the Hebrew word tsaba (host that of ornament;
Munck shows the mistake of substitution and
the derivation of the compound title Tsabaoth-Elohim
from tsaba.Moreover Cornelius a Lapide the
master of all Biblical commentators, says de Mirville
shows us that such was the real meaning.Those
Angels are stars.
All this,however teaches us very little as to
the true functions of this celestial army and nothing at all as
to its place in evolution and its relation to
the earth we live on.For an answer to the question.Who are
the true Creators? we must go to the Esoteric
Doctrine since there only can the key be found which will
render intelligible the Theogonies of the
various world-religions.
There we find that the real creator of the
Kosmos,as of all visible Nature -if not of all the invisible hosts
of Spirits not yet drawn into the Cycle of
Necessity or evolution -is the Lord -the Gods, or the
Working Host the Army collectively taken
the One in many.
The One is infinite and unconditioned.It
cannot create for It can have to relation to the finite and
conditioned.If everything we see from the
glorious suns and planets down to the blades of grass and the
specks of dust had been created by the
Absolute Perfection and were the direct work of even the First
Energy that proceeded from It [ To the Occultists and Chela the
difference made between Energy and
Emanation need not be explained.The Sanskrit
word Sakti is untranslatable.It may be Energy but it is
one that proceeds through itself not being due
to the active or conscious will of the one that produces it.
The First-Born or Logos,is not an Emanation
but an Energy inherent in and co-eternal with
Parabrahman the One.The Zohar speaks of
emanations,but reserves the word for the seven Sephiroth
emanated from the first three -which form one
triad -Kether Chokmah and Binah.As for these three it
explains the difference by calling them
immanations, something inherent to and coeval with the subject
postulated or in other words,Energies.
It is these Auxiliaries, the Auphanim the
half human Prajāpatis,the Angels,the Architects under the
leadership of the Angel of the Great Council
with the rest of the Kosmos-Builders of other nations,that
can alone explain the imperfection of the
Universe.This imperfection is one of the arguments of the
Secret Science in favour of the existence and
activity of these Powers. And who know better than the
few philosophers of our civilised lands how
near the truth Philo was in ascribing the origin of evil to the
admixture of inferior potencies in the
arrangement of matter and even in the formation of man -a task
entrusted to the divine Logos.] then every
such thing would have been perfect eternal and
unconditioned like its author.
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God the Host-(Page 209)The millions upon millions of imperfect works found in
Nature testify loudly that
they are the products of finite conditioned
beings -though the latter were and are Dhyān Chohans,
Archangels,or whatever else they may be
named.In short these imperfect works are the unfinished
production of evolution under the guidance of
the imperfect Gods.The Zohar gives us this assurance as
well as the Secret Doctrine.It speaks of the
auxiliaries of the Ancient of Days,the Sacred Aged and
calls them Auphanim or the living Wheels of
the celestial orbs,who participate in the work of the creation
of the Universe.
Thus it is not the Principle One and
Unconditioned nor even Its reflection that creates,but only the
Seven Gods who fashion the Universe out of
the eternal Matter vivified into objective life by the
reflection into it of the One Reality.
The Creator is they -God the Host -called
in the Secret Doctrine the Dhyan Chohans;with the Hindus
the Prajāpatis;with the Western Kabalists the
Sephiroth;and with the Buddhist the Devas -impersonal
because blind forces.They are the Amshaspends
with the Zoroastrians,and while with the Christian
Mystic the Creator is the Gods of the God
with the dogmatic Churchman he is the God of the Gods,
the Lord of lords,etc.
Jehovah is only the God who is greater than
all Gods in the eyes of Israel.
I know that the lord [of Israel ] is great and
that our Lord is above all gods.[ Psalms
cxxxv.5.]
And again:
For all the gods of the nations are idols,but the
Lord made the heavens.[Psalms
xcvi.5.]
The Egyptian Neteroo translated by Champollion
the other Gods, are the Elohim of the Biblical writers,
behind which stands concealed the One God
considered in the diversity of his powers.[ Rather as
Ormazd or Ahura-Mazda Vit-nam-Ahmi and all the
unmanifested Logoi.Jehovah is the manifested Virāj
corresponding to Binah the third Sephira in
the Kabalah,a female Power which would find its prototype
rather in the Prajāpati than in Brahma the
Creator .] This One is not
Parabrahman but the Unmanifested
Logos,the Demiurgos,the real Creator or
Fashioner that follows him standing for the Demiurgi
collectively taken.Further on the great
Egyptologist adds:
We see Egypt concealing and hiding so to say the
God of Gods behind the agents she
surrounds him with ;she gives the precedence
to her great gods before the one (Page 210)and
sole Deity so that the attributes of that God
become their property.Those great Gods proclaim
themselves uncreate ....Neith is that
which is as Jehovah;[Neith
is Aditi evidently .]
Thoth is self-created [ The Self-created Logos,Narāyana Purushottama and others.]
without
having been begotten etc.Judaism annihilating
these potencies before the grandeur of its
God they cease to be simply Powers,like Philo
s Archangels,like the Sephiroth of the
Kabalah like
the Ogdoades of the Gnostics -they merge together and become transformed
into God himself.[ Mčre d'Apis.pp.32-35.Quoted by De Mirville.]
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Jehovah is thus,as the Kabalah teaches,at
best but the Heavenly Man Adam Kadmon used by the
self-created Spirit the Logos,as a chariot a
vehicle in His descent towards manifestation in the
phenomenal world.
Such are the teachings of the Archaic Wisdom
nor can they be repudiated even by the orthodox
Christian if he be sincere and open-minded in
the study of his own Scripture.For if he reads St.Paul s
Epistles carefully he will find that the Secret Doctrine and the Kabalah are
fully admitted by the Apostle
of the Gentiles. The Gnosis which he appears
to condemn is no less for him than for Plato the supreme
knowledge of the truth and of the One Being; [ See Rep blic .I.vi.] for what St.Paul condemns is not
the true but only the false Gnosis and its
abuses:otherwise how could he use the language of a
Platonist p r sang ?The Ideas,types
(Archai),of the Greek Philosopher;the Intelligences of Pythagoras;
the Aeons or Emanations of the Pantheist;the
Logos or Word Chief of these intelligences;the Sophia or
Wisdom;the Demiurgos,the Builder of the world
under the direction of the Father the Unmanifested
Logos,from which He emanates;Ain-Suph the
Unknown of the Infinite;the angelic Periods;the Seven
Spirits who are the representatives of the Seven
of all the older cosmogonies -are all to be found in his
writings,recognized by the Church as canonical
and divinely inspired.Therein too may be recognized
the Depths of Ahriman Rector of this our World
the God of this World; the Pleroma of the Intelligences;
the Archontes of the air;the
Principalities,the Kabalistic Metatron;and they can easily be identified again
in the Roman Catholic writers when read in the
original Greek and Latin texts,English translations giving
but a very poor idea of the real contents of
these.
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SECTION XXIII
What the Occultists and Kabalists Have to
Say
(Page 211)THE Zohar an unfathomable store of
hidden wisdom and mystery is very often appealed to by
Roman Catholic writers.A very learned Rabbi
now the Chevalier Drach having been converted to
Roman Catholicism and being a great Hebraist
thought fit to step into the shoes of Picus de Mirando
and John Reuchlin and to assure his new
co-religionists that the Zohar contained in it pretty nearly all
the dogmas of Catholicism.It is not our
province to show here how far he has succeeded or failed;only
to bring one instance of his explanations and
preface it with the following.
The Zohar is already shown is not a
genuine production of the Hebrew mind.It is the repository and
compendium of the oldest doctrine of the East
transmitted orally at first and then written down in
independent treatises during the Captivity at
Babylon and finally brought together by Rabbi Simeon Ben
Iochai toward the beginning of the Christian
era.As Mosaic cosmogony was born under a new form in
Mesopotamian countries,so the Zohar was
a vehicle in which were focussed rays from the light of
Universal Wisdom.Whatever likenesses are found
between it and the Christian teachings,the compilers
of the Zohar never had Christ in their
minds.Were it otherwise there would not be one single Jew of the
Mosaic law left in the world by this
time.Again if one is to accept literally what the Zohar says,then any
religion under the sun may find corroboration
in its symbols and allegorical sayings;and this,simply
because this work is the echo of the primitive
truths,and every creed is founded on some of these;the
Zohar being
but a veil of the Secret Doctrine.This is so evident that we have only to point
to the said ex-
Rabbi the Chevalier Drach to prove the fact.
(Page 212)In Part III fol.87 (col.346 th )the Zohar treats
of the Spirit guiding the Sun its Rector
explaining that it is not the Sun itself that
is meant thereby but the Spirit on or nder the Sun.Drach is
anxious to show that it was Christ who was
meant by that Sun or the Solar Spirit therein.In his
comment upon that passage which refers to the
Solar Spirit as that stone which the builders rejected
he asserts most positively that this
Sun-stone (pierre soleil )is identical
with Christ who was that stone
and that therefore
The sun is undeniably (sans contredit )the
second hypostasis of the Deity [Harmonie
entre
l Eglise et la Synagog e.t.11.p.427 by the Chevalier Drach.See de Mirville.]or Christ.
If this be true then the Vaidic or pre-Vaidic
Aryans Chaldaeans and Egyptians,like all Occultists past
present and future Jews included have been
Christians from all eternity.If this be not so then modern
Church Christianity is Paganism pure and
simple exoterically and transcendental and practical Magic or
Occultism Esoterically.
For this stone has a manifold significance
a dual existence with gradations,a regular progression and
retrogression.It is a mystery indeed.
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The Occultists are quite ready to agree with
St.Chrystostom that the infidels -the profane rather -
Being blinded by sun-light thus lose sight of
the true Sun in the contemplation of the false
one.
But if that Saint and along with him now the
Hebraist Drach chose to see in the Zohar and the Kabalistic
Sun the second hypostasis, this is
no reason why all others should be blinded by them.The mystery of
the Sun is the grandest perhaps,of all the
innumerable mysteries of Occultism.A Gordian knot truly but
one that cannot be severed with the
double-edged sword of scholastic casuistry.It is a true deo dign s
vindice nod s and can be untied only by the Gods .The meaning of
this is plain and every Kabalist will
understand it.
Contra solem ne loq aris was not said by Pythagoras with regard to the visible Sun.It
was the Sun of
Initiation that was meant in its triple form
-two of which are the Day-Sun and the Night-Sun.
If behind the physical luminary there were no
mystery that people sensed instinctively why should every
nation from the primitive peoples down to the
Parsis of today have turned towards the Sun during
prayers?
The Mystery of the Sun-(Page 213)The Solar Trinity is not Mazdean but is universal and is as
old as
man .All the temples in Antiquity were
invariably made to face the Sun their portals to open to the East.
See the old temples of Memphis and Baalbec,the
Pyramids of the Old and of the New (?)Worlds,the
Round Towers of Ireland and the Serapeum of
Egypt.The Initiates alone could give a philosophical
explanation of this,and a reason for it -its
mysticism notwithstanding -were only the world ready to
receive it which alas!it is not.The last of
the Solar Priests in Europe was the Imperial Initiate Julian
now called the Apostate.[ Julian died for the same crime as
Socrates.Both divulged a portion of the
solar mystery the heliocentric system being
only a part of what was given during Initiation -one
consciously the other unconsciously the Greek
Sage never having been initiated.It was not the real
solar system that was preserved in such
secrecy but the mysteries connected with the Sun s
constitution.Socrates was sentenced to death
by earthly and worldly judges:Julian died a violent death
because the hitherto protecting hand was
withdrawn from him and no longer shielded by it he was
simply left to his destiny or Karma.For the
student of Occultism there is a suggestive difference between
the two kinds of death.Another memorable
instance of the unconscious divulging of secrets pertain to
mysteries is that of the poet P.Ovidius Naso
who like Socrates,had not been initiated.In his case the
Emperor Augustus,who was an Initiate
mercifully changed the penalty of death into banishment to
Tomos on the Euxine.This sudden change from
unbounded royal favour to banishment has been a
fruitful scheme of speculation to classical
scholars not initiated into the Mysteries.They have quoted
Ovid s own lines to show that it was some
great and heinous immorality of the Emperor of which Ovid
had become unwillingly cognizant.The
inexorable law of the death penalty always following upon the
revelation of any portion of the Mysteries to
the profane was unknown to them.Instead of seeing the
amiable and merciful act of the Emperor in its
true light they have made it an occasion for traducing his
moral character.The poet s own words can be
no evidence because as he was not an Initiate it could
not be explained to him in what his offence
consisted.There have been comparatively modern instances
of poets unconsciously revealing in their
verses so much of the hidden knowledge as to make even
Initiates suppose them to be
fellow-Initiates,and come to talk to them on the subject.This only shows
that the sensitive poetic temperament is
sometimes so far transported beyond the bounds of ordinary
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sense as to get glimpses into what has been
impressed on the Astral Light.In the Light of Asia there are
two passages that might make an Initiate of
the first degree think that Mr.Edwin Arnold had been initiated
himself in the Himalyan ashrams,but
this is not so.] He tried to
benefit the world by revealing at least a
portion of the great mystery of the ōńåšėįóļņ
and -he died.There are three in one he said of the Sun -
the central Sun [ A proof that Julian was acquainted with the heliocentric system.] being a precaution of
Nature:the first is the universal cause of all
Sovereign Good and perfection;the Second Power is
paramount Intelligence having dominion over
all reasonable beings,ķļåńļéņ;the third is the visible Sun.
The pure energy of solar intelligence proceeds
from the luminous seat occupied by our Sun in the centre
of heaven that pure energy being the Logos of
our system;the Mysterious Word Spirit produces all
through the Sun and never operates through any
other medium says Hermes Trismegistus.For it is in
the Sun more than in any other heavenly body
that the [unknown ] Power placed the (Page 214)seat of its
habitation.Only neither Hermes Trismegistus
nor Julian an initiated Occultist nor any other meant by
this Unknown Cause Jehovah or Jupiter.They
referred to the cause that produced all the manifested
great Gods or Demiurgi (the Hebrew God
included)of our system.Nor was our visible material Sun
meant for the latter was only the manifested
symbol.Philolaus the Pythagorean explains and completes
Trismegistus by saying:
The Sun is a mirror of fire the splendour of
whose flames by their reflection in that mirror [the
Sun ] is poured upon us,and that splendour we
call image.
It is evident that Philolaus referred to the
central spiritual Sun whose beams and effulgence are only
mirrored by our central Star the Sun.This is
as clear to the Occultists as it was to the Pythagoreans.As
for the profane of pagan antiquity it was of
course the physical Sun that was the highest God for them
as it seems -if Chevalier Drach s view be
accepted -to have now virtually become for the modern
Roman Catholics.If words mean anything the
statements made by the Chevalier Drach that this sun is,
undeniably the second hypostasis of the Deity
imply what we say;as this Sun refers to the Kabalistic
Sun and hypostasis means substance or
subsistence of the Godhead or Trinity -distinctly personal.As
the author being an ex-Rabbi thoroughly versed
in Hebrew and in the mysteries of the Zohar ought to
know the value of words;and as,moreover in
writing this,he was bent upon reconciling the seeming
contradictions, as he puts it between Judaism
and Christianity -the fact becomes quite evident.
But all this pertains to questions and
problems which will be solved naturally and in the course of the
development of the doctrine.The Roman Catholic
Church stands accused not of worshipping under
other names the Divine Beings worshipped by
all nations in Antiquity but of declaring idolatrous,not only
the Pagans ancient and modern but every
Christian nation that has freed itself from the Roman yoke.
The accusation brought against herself by more
than one man of Science of worshipping the stars like
true Sabaeans of old stands to this day
uncontradicted yet no star-worshipper has ever addressed his
adoration to the material stars and planets,as
will be shown before the last page of this work is written;
none the less it is true that those
Philosophers alone who studied Astrology and Magic knew that the last
word of those sciences was to be sought in and
expected from the Occult forces emanating from those
constellations.
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SECTION XXIV
Modern Kabalists in Science and Occult
Astronomy
(Page 215)THERE is a physical an astral and a
super-astral Universe in the three chief divisions of the
Kabalah ;as
there are terrestrial super-terrestrial and spiritual Beings.The Seven
Planetary Spirits
may be ridiculed by Scientists to their hearts
content yet the need of intelligent ruling and guiding Forces
in so much felt to this day that scientific
men and specialists,who will not hear of Occultism or of ancient
systems,find themselves obliged to generate in
their inner consciousness some kind of semi-mystical
system.Metcalf s sun-force theory and that
of Zaliwsky a learned Pole which made Electricity the
Universal Force and placed its storehouse in
the Sun [ La Gravitation par
l Electricité,p.7.quoted by De
Mirville iv.156 ] were revivals of the Kabalistic teachings.Zaliwsky tried to
prove that Electricity
producing the most powerful attractive
calorific,and luminous effects, was present in the physical
constitution of the Sun and explained its
peculiarities.This is very near the Occult teaching.It is only by
admitting the gaseous nature of the
Sun-reflector and the powerful Magnetism and Electricity of the solar
attraction and repulsion that one can explain
(a)the evident absence of any waste of power and
luminosity in the Sun -inexplicable by the
ordinary laws of combustion;and (b)the behaviour of the
planets so often contradicting every accepted
rule of weight and gravity.And Zaliwsky makes this solar
electricity differ from anything known
on earth.
Father Secchi may be suspected of having
sought to introduce
Forces of q ite a new order and quite foreign to gravitation which he had discovered in
Space.[
De Mirville.iv.157.](Page 216)
in order to reconcile Astronomy with
theological Astronomy.But Nagy a member of the Hungarian
Academy of Sciences,was no clerical and yet he
develops a theory on the necessity of intelligent
Forces whose complacency would lent itself to
all the whims of the comets. He suspects that:
Notwithstanding all the actual researches on
the rapidity of light -that dazzling prod ct of an nknown
force ....which we see too frequently to understand that light is
motionless in reality.
[ C.E.Love the well-known railway builder and
engineer in France tired of blind forces,made all the
(then)imponderable agents -now called
forces -subordinates of Electricity and declares the latter to
be
an Intelligence -albeit molecular in nature
and material.[ Essai sur
l'Identité des Agents
Prod cte rs d Son,de la L miere,etc.p.15 ibid .]
In the author s opinion these Forces are
atomistic agents,endowed with intelligence spontaneous will
and motion [Ibid.,p.218 .] and
he thus,like the Kabalists,makes the cousal Forces substantial while the
Forces that act on this plane are only the
effects of the former as with him matter is eternal and the
Gods also;[ Summarised from Ibid.,p.213.De Mirville iv.158 .] so is the Soul likewise though it
has
inherent in itself a still higher Soul [Spirit
] preėxistent endowed with memory and superior to Electric
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Force;the latter is subservient to the higher
Souls,those superior Souls forcing it to act according to the
eternal laws.The concept is rather hazy but is
evidently on the Occult lines.Moreover the system
proposed is entirely pantheistic,and is worked
out in a purely scientific volume.Monotheists and Roman
Catholics fall foul of it of course;but one
who believes in the Planetary Spirits and who endows Nature
with living Intelligences,must always expect
this.
In this connection however it is curious that
after the moderns have so laughed at the ignorance of the
ancients
Who knowing only of seven planets [yet having
an ogdoad which did not include the earth!]
invented therefore seven Spirits to fit in
with the number
Babinet should have vindicated the
superstition unconsciously to himself.In the Rev e des De x
Mondes this
eminent French Astronomer writes:
The Place of Neptune -
(Page 217)The ogdoad of the Ancients included the earth
[which is an error ] i.e.,eight or seven
according to whether or not the earth was
comprised in the number.[ May.1855.Ibid.,p.139
.]
De Mirville assures his readers that:
M.Babinet was telling me but a few days ago
that we had in reality only eight big planets,
including the earth and so many small ones
between Mars and Jupiter ....Herschell offering
to call all those beyond the seven primary
planets asteroids![ La Terre
et notre Systieme
solaire.De
Mirville iv.139.]
There is a problem to be solved in this
connection.How do Astronomers know that Neptune is a planet
or even that it is a body belonging to our
system?Being found on the very confines of our Planetary
World so called the latter was arbitrarily
expanded to receive it;but what really mathematical and
infallible proof have Astronomers that it is
(a)a planet and (b)one of o r planets?None at all!It is as
such an immeasurable distance from us,
the apparent diameter of the sun being to
Neptune but one-fortieth of the sun s apparent
diameter to us,
and it is so dim and hazy when seen through
the best telescope that it looks like an astronomical
romance to call it one of our planets.Neptune
s heat and light are reduced to 1/900th part of the heat and
light received by the earth.His motion and
that of his satellites have always looked suspicious.They do
not agree -in appearance at least -with those
of the other planets.His system is retrograde etc.But
even the latter abnormal fact resulted only in
the creation of new hypotheses by our Astronomers,who
forthwith suggested a probable overturn of
Neptune his collision with another body etc.Was Adams and
Leverrier s discovery so welcomed because
Neptune was as necessary as was Ether to throw a new
glory upon astronomical prevision upon the
certitude of modern scientific data and principally upon the
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power of mathematical analysis?It would so
appear.A new planet that widens our planetary domain by
more than four hundred million leagues is
worthy of annexation.Yet as in the case of terrestrial
annexation scientific authority may be proved
right only because it has might. Neptune s motion
happens to be dimly perceived:Eureka!it is a
planet!A mere motion however proves very little.It is now
an ascertained fact in Astronomy that there
are no absolutely fixed stars in Nature [
If as Sir W.
Herschel thought the so-called fixed stars
have resulted from and owe their origin to nebular
combustion they cannot be fixed any more than
is our sun which was believed to be motionless and is
now found to rotate around its axis every
twenty-five days.As the fixed star nearest to the sun however
is eight-thousand times farther away from him
than is Neptune the illusions furnished by the telescopes
must be also eight-thousand times as great.We
will therefore leave the question at rest repeating only
what A.Maury said in his work (La Terre et
l Homme,published in 1858):It is utterly impossible so far
to decide anything concerning Neptune s
constitution analogy alone authorising us to ascribe to him a
rotary motion like that of other planets.(De
Mirville iv.140).] even though
such stars should (Page
218)
continue to exist in astronomical parlance
while they have passed from the scientific imagination.
Occultism however has a strange theory of its
own with regard to Neptune.
Occultism says that if several hypotheses
resting on mere assumption -which have been accepted only
because they have been taught by eminent men
of learning -are taken away from the Science of Modern
Astronomy to which they serve as props,then
even the presumably universal law of gravitation will be
found to be contrary to the most ordinary
truths of mechanics.And really one can hardly blame Christians
-foremost of all the Roman Catholics -however
scientific some of these may themselves be for refusing
to quarrel with their Church for the sake of
scientific beliefs.Nor can we even blame them for accepting in
the secresy of their hearts -as some of them
do -the theological Virtues and Archons of Darkness,
instead of all the blind forces offered them
by Science.
Never can there be intervention of any sort in
the marshalling and the regular precession of
the celestial bodies!The law of gravitation is
the law of laws;who ever witnessed a stone
rising in the air against gravitation?The
permanence of the universal law is shown in the
behaviour of the sidereal worlds and globes
eternally faithful to their primitive orbits;never
wandering beyond their respective paths.Nor is
there any intervention needed as it could only
be disastrous.Whether the first sidereal
incipient rotation took place owing to an intercosmic
chance or to the spontaneous development of
latent primordial forces;or again whether that
impulse was given once for all by God or Gods
-it does not make the slightest difference.At
this stage of cosmic evolution no intervention
superior or inferior is admissible.Were any to
take place the universal clock-work would stop
and Kosmos would fall into pieces.
Such are stray sentences,pearls of
wisdom,fallen from time to time from scientific lips,and now chosen
at random to illustrate a query.We lift our
diminished heads and look heavenward.Such seems to be the
fact:worlds,suns,and stars,the shining myriads
of the heavenly hosts,remind the Poet of an infinite
shoreless ocean whereon move swiftly
numberless squadrons of ships,millions upon millions of
cruisers,large and small crossing each other
whirling and gyrating in every direction;and Science
teaches us,that though they be without rudder
or compass or any beacon to guide them they are
nevertheless secure from collision -almost
secure at any rate save in chance accidents -as the whole
celestial machine is built upon and guided by
an immutable albeit blind law and by constant and
accelerating force or forces.
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Self-Generation Ex-Niholo?-(Page 219)Built upon by whom?By self-evolution is
the answer.
Moreover as dynamics teach that
A body in motion tends to continue in the same
state of relative rest or motion unless acted
upon by some external force
this force has to be regarded as
self-generated -even if not eternal since this would amount to the
recognition of perpetual motion -and so well
self-calculated and self-adjusted as to last from the
beginning to the end of Kosmos.But
self-generation has still to generate from something generation
ex-nihilo being as contrary to reason as it is to Science.Thus we are
placed once more between the
horns of a dilemma:are we to believe in
perpetual motion or in self-generation ex-nihilo ?And if in neither
who or what is that something which first
produced that force or those forces?
There are such things in mechanics as superior
levers,which give the impulse and act upon secondary
or inferior levers.The former however need an
impulse and occasional renovation otherwise they would
themselves very soon stop and fall back into
their original status.What is the external force which puts
and retains them in motion?Another dilemma!
As to the law of cosmical non-intervention,it
could be justified only in one case namely if the celestial
mechanism were perfect;but it is not.The
so-called unalterable motions of celestial bodies alter and
change incessantly;they are very often
disturbed and the wheels of even the sidereal locomotive itself
occasionally jump off their invisible rails,as
may be easily proved.Otherwise why should Laplace speak
of the probable occurrence at some future time
of an out-and-out reform in the arrangements of the
planets;[ Exposition d vrai System d Monde .p.282.] or Lagrange maintain the gradual
narrowing of
the orbits;or our modern Astronomers,again
declare that the fuel in the sun is slowly disappearing?If
the laws and forces which govern the behaviour
of the celestial bodies are immutable such modifications
and wearing-out of substance or fuel of force
and fluids,would be impossible;yet they are not denied.
Therefore (Page 220)one has to suppose that such modifications
will have to rely upon the laws of forces,
which will have to self-regenerate themselves
once more on such occasions,thus producing an astral
antinomy and a kind of physical palinomy since
as Laplace says,one would then see fluids disobeying
themselves and reacting in a way contrary to
all their attributes and properties.
Newton felt very uncomfortable about the
moon.Her behaviour in progressively narrowing the
circumference of her orbit around the earth
made him nervous,lest it should end one day in our satellite
falling upon the earth.The world he confessed
needed repairing and that very often.[ See
the passage
quoted by Herschel in Nat ral Philosophy,p.165.De
Mirville.iv.165 .] In this he
was corroborated by
Herschel.[ l,oc.cit .] He speaks of real and quite
considerable deviations,besides those which are only
apparent but gets some consolation from his
conviction that somebody or something will probably see to
things.
We may be answered that the personal beliefs
of some pious Astronomers,however great they may be
as scientific characters,are no proofs of the
actual existence and presence in space of intelligent
supramundane Beings,of either Gods or
Angels.It is the behaviour of the stars and planets themselves
that has to be analysed and inferences must be
drawn therefrom.Renan asserts that nothing that we
know of the sidereal bodies warrants the idea
of the presence of any Intelligence whether internal or
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external to them.
Let us see says Reynaud if this is a fact or
only one more empty scientific assumption.
The orbits traversed by the planets are far
from being immutable.They are on the contrary
subject to perpetual mutation in position as
in form.Elongations,contractions,and orbital
widenings,oscillations from right to left
slackening and quickening of speed ....And all this
on a plane which seems to vacillate.[ Terre et Ciel.p.28.Ibid .]
As is very pertinently observed by des
Mousseux:
Here is a path having little of the
mathematical and mechanical precision claimed for it;for we
know of no clock which having gone slow for
several minutes should catch up the right time of
itself and
witho t the t rn of a key.
So much for blind law and force.As for the
physical impossibility -a miracle indeed in the sight of
Science -of a stone raised in the air against
the law of gravitation this is what Babinet -the deadliest
enemy and opponent of the phenomena of levitation
-(cited by Arago)says:
Are There Angels in Stars?-
(Page 221)Everyone knows the
theory of bolides [meteors ] and aerolithes ....In Connecticut
an immense aerolith was seen [a mass of
eighteen hundred feet in diameter ] bombarding a
whole American zone and returning to the spot
[in mid-air ] from which it had started.[
Oe vres
d'Arago.vol.i.219:quoted
by De Mirville iii.462.]
Thus we find in both of the cases above cited
-that of self-correcting planets and meteors of gigantic size
flying back into the air -a blind force
regulating and resisting the natural tendencies of blind matter
and even occasionally repairing its mistakes
and correcting its failures.This is far more miraculous and
even extravagant one would say than any
Angel-guided Element.
Bold is he who laughs at the idea of Von
Haller who declares that:
The stars are perhaps an abode of glorious
Spirits;as here Vice reigns,there is Virtue master.
[Die Sterne sind vielleicht ein Sitz Verklarter Geister;
Wie hier das Laster herrscht,ist dort die T
gend Meister.]
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SECTION XXV
Eastern and Western Occultism
(Page 222)IN The Theosophist for March 1886 [ Op.cit.,p.411 ] in an answer to the Solar Sphinx,
a
member of the London Lodge of the Theosophical
Society wrote as follows:
We hold and believe that the revival of Occult
Knowledge now in progress will some day demonstrate
that the Western system represents ranges of
perceptions which the Eastern -at least as expounded in
the pages of The Theosophist has yet
to attain .[ Whenever Occult
doctrines were expounded in the
pages of The Theosophist care was taken
each time to declare a subject incomplete when the whole
could not be given in its fullness,and no
writer has ever tried to mislead the reader.As to the Western
ranges of perception concerning doctrines
really Occult the Eastern Occultists have been made
acquainted with them for some time past.Thus
they are enabled to assert with confidence that the West
may be in possession of Hermetic philosophy as
a speculative system of dialectics,the latter being used
in the West admirably well but it lacks
entirely the knowledge of Occultism.The genuine Eastern
Occultist keeps silent and unknown never
publishes what he knows,and rarely even speaks of it as he
knows too well the penalty of indiscretion.]
The writer is not the only person labouring
under this erroneous impression.Greater Kabalists than he
had said the same in the United States.This
only proves that the knowledge possessed by Western
Occultists of the true Philosophy and the
ranges of perceptions and thought of the Eastern doctrines,is
very superficial.This assertion will be easily
demonstrated by giving a few instances,instituting
comparisons between the two interpretations of
one and the same doctrine---the Hermetic Universal
Doctrine.It is the more needed since were we
to neglect bringing forward such comparisons,our work
would be left incomplete.
Primordial Matter-(Page 223)We may take the late Éliphas Lévi rightly referred to by
another Western
Mystic Mr.Kenneth Mackenzie as one of the
greatest representatives of modern Occult Philosophy [
See The Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia,art.Sepher
Jetzirah.] as presumably the
best and most learned
expounder of the Chaldaean Kabalah,and
compare his teaching with that of Eastern Occultists.In his
unpublished manuscripts and letters,lent to us
by a Theosophist who was for fifteen years his pupil we
had hoped to find that which he was unwilling
to publish.What we do find however disappoints us
greatly.We will take these teachings,then as
containing the essence of Western or Kabalistic Occultism
analyzing and comparing them with the Eastern
interpretation as we go on.
Éliphas Lévi teaches correctly though in
language rather too rhapsodically rhetorical to be sufficiently
clear to the beginner that
Eternal life is Motion equilibrated by the
alternate manifestations of force.
But why does he not add that this perpetual
motion is independent of the manifested Forces at work?He
says:
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Chaos is the Tohu-vah-bohu of perpetual motion
and the sum total of primordial matter;
and he fails to add that Matter is primordial
only at the beginning of every new reconstruction of the
Universe:matter in abscondito,as it is
called by the Alchemists,is eternal indestructible without
beginning or end.It is regarded by Eastern
Occultists as the eternal Root of all the Mūlaprakriti of the
Vedāntin and the Svabhāvat of the Buddhist;the
Divine Essence in short or Substance;the radiations
from This are periodically aggregated into
graduated forms,from pure Spirit to gross Matter;the Root or
Space is in its abstract presence the Deity
Itself the Ineffable and Unknown One Cause.
Ain-Suph with him also is the Boundless,the
infinite and One Unity secondless and causeless as
Parabrahman.Ain-Suph is the indivisible point
and therefore as being everywhere and nowhere is the
absolute All.It is also Darkness because it
is absolute Light and the Root of the seven fundamental
Cosmic Principles.Yet Éliphas Lévi by simply
stating that Darkness was upon the face of the Earth
fails to show (a)that Darkness in this
sense is Deity Itself and he is (Page 224)therefore withholding the
only philosophical solution of this problem
for the human mind;and (b)he allows the unwary student to
believe that by Earth our own little globe
an atom in the Universe is meant.In short this teaching
does not embrace the Occult Cosmogony but
deals simply with Occult Geology and the formation of our
cosmic speck.This is further shown by his
making a resume of the Sephirothal Tree in this wise:
God is harmony the astronomy of Powers and
Unity outside of the World.
This seems to suggest (a)that he teaches the
existence of an extra-cosmic God thus limiting and
conditioning both the Kosmos and the divine
Infinity and Omnipresence which cannot be extraneous to or
outside of one single atom;and (b)that by
skipping the whole of the pre-cosmic period the manifested
Kosmos here being meant the very root of Occult
teaching he explains only the Kabalistic meaning of
the dead-letter of the Bible and Genesis
leaving its spirit and essence untouched.Surely the ranges of
perception of the Western mind will not be
greatly enlarged by such a limited teaching.
Having said a few words on Tohu-vah-bohu the
meaning of which Wordsworth rendered graphically as
higgledy-piggledy and having explained that
this term denoted Cosmos,he teaches that:
Above the dark abyss [ Chaos ]were the
Waters ....the earth [la
terre!] was Tohu-vah-bohu
i.e.,in
confusion and darkness covered the face of the Deep and vehement Breath moved
on
the Waters when the Spirit exclaimed [?] Let there be light and there was light.Thus the
earth [our
globe of course ] was in a state
of cataclysm;thick vapours veiled the immensity of
the sky the earth was covered with waters and
a violent wind was agitating this dark ocean
when at a given moment the equilibrium
revealed itself and light reappeared;the letters that
compose the Hebrew word Bereshith (the first
word of Genesis )are Beth the binary the
verb manifested by the act a feminine letter;then
Resch the Verbum and Life number 20
the disc multiplied by 2;and Aleph the
spiritual principle the Unit a masculine letter.
Place these letters in a triangle and you have
the absolute Unity that without being included
into numbers creates the number the first
manifestation which is 2 and these two united by
harmony resulting from the analogy of
contraries [opposites ] make I only.This is why God is
called Elohim (plural).
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All this is very ingenious,but is very
puzzling besides being incorrect.For owing to the first sentence
Above the dark abyss were the Waters,the
French Kabalist leads the student away from the right track.
This an Eastern Chela will see at a glance and
even one of the profane may see it.For if the Tohu-vah-
bohu is under and the Waters are above
then these two are quite distinct from each other and this is
not the case.
The Great Deep -(Page 225)This statement is a very important one inasmuch as it
entirely changes the
spirit and nature of Cosmogony and brings it
down to a level with exoteric Genesis gerhaps it was so
stated with an eye to this result.The
Tohu-vah-bohu is the Great Deep and is identical with the Waters
of Chaos, or the primordial Darkness.By
stating the fact otherwise it makes both the Great Deep and
the Waters which cannot be separated except
in the phenomenal world ---limited as to space and
conditioned as to their nature.Thus Éliphas in
his desire to conceal the last word of Esoteric Philosophy
fails whether intentionally or otherwise does
not matter to point out the fundamental principle of the
one true Occult Philosophy namely the unity
and absolute homogeneity of the One Eternal Divine
Element and he makes of the Deity a male
God.Then he says:
Above the Waters was the powerful Breath of
the Elohim [the creative Dhyan
Chohans ].
Above the Breath appeared the Light and above
the Light the Word ...that created it.
Now the fact is quite the reverse of this:it
is the Primeval Light that creates the Word or Logos,Who in
His turn creates physical light.To prove and
illustrate what he says he gives the following figure:
Now any Eastern Occultist upon seeing this
would not hesitate to pronounce it a left hand magic figure.
It is entirely reversed and it represents the
third stage of religious thought that
current in Dvapara Yuga when the one principle
is already separated into male
and female and humanity is approaching the
fall into materiality (Page
226)
which brings the Kali Yuga.A student of
Eastern Occultism would draw it thus:
For the Secret Doctrine teaches us that the
reconstruction of the Universe
takes place in this wise:At
the periods of new
generation perpetual
Motion becomes Breath;
from the Breath comes
forth primordial Light
through whose radiance
manifest the Eternal
Thought concealed in
darkness,and this
becomes the Word
(Mantra).[ In the exoteric sense the Mantra (or that psychic faculty or
power that conveys perception or
thought)is the older portion of the Vedas the
second part of which is composed of the Brāhmanas.In
Esoteric phraseology Mantra is the Word made
flesh or rendered objective through divine magic.] It is
That (the
Mantra or Word)from which all This (the Universe)sprang into being.
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Further on Éliphas Lévi says:
This [
the concealed Deity ]radiated
a ray into the Eternal Essence [ Waters
of Space ] and
fructifying thereby the primordial germ the
Essence expanded.[The secret
meaning of the
word Brahmā is expansion increase or
growth.]giving birth to the
Heavenly Man from
whose mind were born all forms.
The Kabalah states very nearly the
same.To learn what it really teaches one has to reverse the order in
which Éliphas Lévi gives it replacing the word
above by that of "in"as there cannot surely be any
"above"or "under"in the
Absolute.This is what he says:
Above the waters the powerful breath of the
Elohim;above the Breath the Light;above Light
the Word or the Speech that created it.We see
here the spheres of evolution:the soul [?]
driven from the dark centre (Darkness)toward
the luminous circumference.At the bottom of
the lowest circle is the Tohu-vah-bohu or the
chaos which precedes all manifestation [
Naissances g eneration ];then
the region of Water;then Breath;then Light;and lastly the
Word.
The Chaos of Genesis -(Page 227)The construction of the above sentences shows that the
learned
Abbé had a decided tendency to
anthropomorphize creation even though the latter has to be shaped out
of preėxisting material as the Zohar shows
plainly enough.
This is how the great Western Kabalist gets
out of the difficulty:he keeps silent on the first stage of
evolution and imagines a second Chaos.Thus he
says:
The Tohu-vah-bohu is the Latin Limbus,or
twilight of the morning and evening of life [ Why not
give at once its theological meaning as we
find it in Webster?With the Roman Catholics it
means simply purgatory the borderland
between heaven and hell (Limb s patrum and
Limb s infant m ),the one for all men whether good bad or indifferent:the
other for the souls
of unbaptized children!With the ancients it
meant simply that which in Esoteric B ddhism is
called the Kāma Loka between Devachan and
Avitchi.] It is in perpetual
motion [As Chaos,
the eternal Element not as the Kāma Loka
surely?] it decomposes
continually [A proof that
by this word Éliphas Lévi means the lowest
region of the terrestrial Akasha.] and
the work of
putrefaction accelerates,because the world is
advancing towards regeneration [Evidently
he
is concerned only wiht our periodical world or
the terrestrial globe.] .The Tohu-vah-bohu of
the Hebrews is not exactly the confusion of
things called Chaos by the Greeks,and which is
found described in the commencement of the
Metamorphosis of Ovid;it is something greater
and more profound;it is the foundation of
religion it is the philosophical affirmation of the
immateriality of God.
Rather an affirmation of the materiality of a
personal God.If a man has to seek his Deity in the Hades of
the ancients for the Tohu-vah bohu or the
Limbus of the Greeks,is the Hall of Hades then one can
wonder no longer at the accusations brought
forward by the Church against the witches and sorcerers
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versed in Western Kabalism that they adored
the goat Mendes,or the devil personified by certain
spooks and Elementals.But in face of the task
Éliphas Lévi had set before himself that of reconciling
Jewish Magic with Roman ecclesiasticism he
could say nothing else.
Then he explains the first sentence in Genesis
:
Let us put on one side the vulgar translation
of the sacred texts and see what is hidden in the
first chapter of Genesis.
He then gives the Hebrew text quite correctly
but transliterates it:
Bereschith Bara Eloim uth aschamam ouatti
aares ouares ayete Tohu-vah-bohu....Ouimas
Eloim rai avur ouiai aour.
And he then explains:
The first word Bereschith signifies
genesis,a word equivalent to nature. (Page 228)The
act of generation or production we maintain;not
nature.He then continues:
The phase then is incorrectly translated in
the Bible .It is not in the beginning for it should
be at the stage of the generating force .[ In the reawakening of the Forces would be more
correct.]which would thus exclude every idea of the ex-nihilo ....as
nothing cannot produce
something.The word Eloim or Elohim
signifies the generating Powers and such is the
Occult sense of the first verse
....Bereschith (nature or genesis ),Bara (created )
Eloim (the forces )Athat-ashamaim
(heavens )ouath and oaris (the earth );that is to
say The generative potencies created
indefinitely (eternally)[ An
action which is incessant in
eternity cannot be called creation;it is
evolution and the eternally or ever becoming of the
Greek Philosopher and the Hindu Vedantin:it is
the Sat and the one Beingness of
Parmenides,or the Being identical with
Thought.Now how can the Potencies be said to
create movement once it is seen movement
never had any beginning but existed in the
Eternity?Why not say that the reawakened
Potencies transferred motion from the eternal to
the temporal plane of being?Surely this is not
Creation.] those forces that are
the equilibrated
opposites that we call heaven and earth
meaning the space and the bodies,the volatile and
the fixed the movement and the weight.
Now this,if it be correct is too vague to be
understood by any one ignorant of the Kabalistic teaching.
Not only are his explanations unsatisfactory
and misleading in his published works they are still worse
but his Hebrew transliteration is entirely
wrong;it precludes the student who would compare it for
himself with the equivalent symbols and
numerals of the words and letters of the Hebrew alphabet from
finding anything of that he might have found
were the words correctly spelt in the French transliteration.
Compared even with exoteric Hindu Cosmogony
the philosophy which Éliphas Lévi gives out as
Kabalistic is simply mystical Roman
Catholicism adapted to the Christian Kabalah.His Histoire de la
Magie shows
it plainly and reveals also his object which he does not even care to
conceal.For while
stating with his Church that
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The Christian religion has imposed silence on
the lying oracles of the Gentiles and put an end
to the prestige of the false gods,[ Histoire de la Magie.Int.p.1.]
he promises to prove in his work that the real
Sanctum Regnum the great Magic Art is in that Star of
Bethlehem which led the three Magi to adore
the Savior of this World.He says:
We will prove that the study of the sacred
Pentagram had to lead all the Magi to know the new
name which should be raised above all
names,and before which every being capable of
worship has to bend his knees.[ Histoire de la Magic.Int.p.2.]
The Bible of Humanity -(Page 229)This shows that Lévi s Kabalah is mystic
Christianity and not
Occultism;for Occultism is universal and knows
no difference between the Saviours (or great Avatāras)
of the several old nations.Éliphas Lévi was
not an exception in preaching Christianity under a disguise of
Kabalism.He was undeniably the greatest
representative of modern Occult Philosophy as it is studied
in Roman Catholic countries generally where it
is fitted to the preconceptions of Christian students.But
he never taught the real universal Kabalah and
least of all did he teach Eastern Occultism.Let the
student compare the Eastern and Western
teaching and see whether the philosophy of the Upanishads
has yet to attain the ranges of perception
of this Western system.Everyone has the right to defend the
system he prefers,but in doing this,there is
no need to throw slurs upon the system of one s brother.
In view of the great resemblance between many
of the fundamental truths of Christianity and the
myths of Brāhmanism there have been serious
attempts made lately to prove that the Bhagavad Gita
and most of the Brāhamanas and the P
rānas are of a far later date than the Mosaic Books and even
than the Gospels.But were it possible
that an enforced success should be obtained in this direction such
argument cannot achieve its object since the Rig
Veda remains.Brought down to the most modern limits
of the age assigned to it its date cannot be
made to overlap that of the Pentate ch which is admittedly
later.
The Orientalists know well that they cannot
make away with the landmarks,followed by all subsequent
religions,set up in that Bible of Humanity
called the Rig Veda .It is there that at the very dawn of
intellectual humanity were laid the
foundation-stones of all the faiths and creeds,of every fane and
church built from first to last;and they are
still there.Universal myths, personifications of Powers divine
and cosmic,primary and secondary and
historical personages of all the now-existing as well as of extinct
religions are to be found in the seven chief
Deities and their 330 000 000 correlations of the Rig Veda
and those Seven with the odd millions,are the
Rays of the one boundless Unity.
But to THIS can never be offered profane
worship.It can only be the object of the most abstract
meditation which Hindus practice in order to
obtain absorption in it. At the beginning of every dawn of
Creation eternal Light which is darkness
assumes the aspect of so-called Chaos chaos to the
human intellect;the eternal Root to the
superhuman or spiritual sense.
(Page 230)Osiris is a black God. These were the words
pronounced at low breath at Initiation in Egypt
because Osiris Noumenon is darkness to the
mortal.In this Chaos are formed the Waters, Mother Isis,
Aditi etc.They are the Waters of Life in
which primordial germs are created or rather reawakened
by the primordial Light.It is Purushottama or
the Divine Spirit which in its capacity of Nārāyna the
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Mover on the Waters of Space fructifies and
infuses the Breath of life into that germ which becomes the
Golden Mundane Egg in which the male Brahmā
is created;[ The Vaishnavas,who
regard Vishnu as
the Supreme God and the fashioner of the
Universe claim that Brahmā sprang from the navel of Vishnu
the imperishable or rather from the lotus
that grew from it.But the word navel here means the Central
point the mathematical symbol of infinitude or
Parabrahman the One and the Secondless.]
and from
this the first Prajapāti the Lord of
Beings,emerges,and becomes the progenitor of mankind.And though
it is not he but the Absolute that is said to
contain the Universe in Itself yet it is the duty of the male
Brahmā to manifest it in a visible form.Hence
he has to be connected with the procreation of species,
and assumes,like Jehovah and other male Gods
in subsequent anthropomorphism a phallic symbol.At
best every such male God the Father of all
becomes the Archetypal Man. Between him and the
Infinite Deity stretches an abyss.In the
theistic religions of personal Gods the latter are degraded from
abstract Forces into physical potencies.The
Water of Life the Deep of Mother Nature is viewed in its
terrestrial aspect in anthropomorphic
religions.Behold how holy it has become by theological magic!It is
held sacred and is deified now as of old in
almost every religion.But if Christians use it as a means of
spiritual purification in baptism and
prayer;if Hindus pay reverence to their sacred streams,tanks and
rivers;if Pārsi Mahommedan and Christian alike
believe in its efficacy surely that element must have
some great and Occult significance.In
Occultism it stands for the Fifth Principle of Kosmos,in the lower
septenary:for the whole visible Universe was
built by Water say the Kabalists who know the difference
between the two waters the Waters of Life
and those of Salvation so confused together in dogmatic
religions.The King-Preacher says of himself:
I the Preacher was king over Israel in
Jerusalem and I gave my heart to seek and search out
by wisdom concerning all things that
are done under heaven.[ Ecclesiastes.i.12.13.]
Speaking of the great work and glory of the
Elohim [ It is probably needless
to say here what everyone
knows.The translation of the Protestant Bible
is not a word for word rendering of the earlier Greek and
Latin Bibles :the sense is very often
disfigured and God is put where Jahve and Elohim stand.]
unified into the Lord God in the English Bible
whose garment he tells us,is light and heaven the
curtain he refers to the builder
Chaos is Theos or Kosmos -
(Page 231)Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the
waters,[ Psalms.civ.2.3.]
that is,the divine Host of the Sephiroth who
have constructed the Universe out of the Deep the Waters
of Chaos.Moses and Thales were right in saying
that only earth and water can bring forth a living Soul
water being on this plane the principle of all
things.Moses was an Initiate Thales a Philosopher -i.e.,a
Scientist for the words were synonymous in his
day.
The secret meaning of this is that water and
earth stand in the Mosaic Books for the prima materia and
the creative (feminine)Principle on our
plane.In Egypt Osiris was Fire and Isis was the Earth or its
synonym Water;the two opposing elements just
because of their opposite properties being necessary
to each other for a common object;that of
procreation.The earth needs solar heat and rain to make her
throw out her germs.But these procreative
properties of Fire and Water or Spirit and Matter are symbols
but of physical generation.While the Jewish
Kabalists symbolized these elements only in their
application to manifested things,and
reverenced them as the emblems for the production of terrestrial
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life the Eastern Philosophy noticed them only
as an illusive emanation from their spiritual prototypes,
and no unclean or unholy thought marred its
Esoteric religious symbology.
Chaos,as shown elsewhere is Theos,which
becomes Kosmos:it is Space the container of everything
in the Universe.As Occult Teachings assert it
is called by the Chaldaeans,Egyptians,and every other
nation Tohu-vah-bohu or Chaos,Confusion
because Space is the great storehouse of Creation whence
proceed not forms alone but also ideas,which
could receive their expression only through the Logos,the
Word Verbum or Sound.
The n mbers 1,2,3,4 are the successive
emanations from Mother [Space ] as she forms running
downward her garment,spreading it pon the
seven steps of Creation.[ To avoid misunderstanding of the
word creation so often used by us,the
remarks of the author of Thro gh the Gates of Gold may be
quoted owing to their clearness and
simplicity.The words to create are often understood by the
ordinary mind to convey the idea of evolving something
out of nothing.This is clearly not its meaning.We
are mentally obliged to provide our Creator
with chaos from which to produce the worlds.The tiller of the
soil who is the typical producer of social
life must have his material:his earth his sky rain and sun and
the seeds to place within the earth.Out of
nothing he can produce nothing.Out of a void nature cannot
arise:there is that material beyond behind or
within from which she is shaped by our desire for a
Universe. (P.72)] The roller ret rns pon itself,as one end joins the other (Page 232)in infinit de,and
the n mbers 4,3,and 2 are displayed,as it
is the only side of the veil that we can perceive,the first
n mber being lost in its inaccessible solit
de.
....Father,which is Bo ndless Time,generates
Mother,which is infinite Space,in Eternity;and Mother
generates Father in Manvantaras,which are
divisions of d rations,that Day when that world becomes
one ocean.Then the Mother becomes Nārā [Waters the Great Deep ] for Nara [ the S preme Spirit ] to
rest or move upon,when,it is said,that
1,2,3,4 descend and abide in the world of the nseen,while
the 4,3,2,become the limits in the visible
world to deal with the manifestations of Father [Time ].
[ Commentary on Stanza ix.on Cycles .]
This relates to the Mahāyugas which in figures
become 432 and with the addition of noughts,4 320.000.
Now it is surpassingly strange if it be a mere
coincidence that the numerical value of Tohu-vah-bohu or
Chaos in the Bible which Chaos,of
course is the Mother Deep or the Waters of Space should
yield the same figures.For this is what is
found in a Kabalist manuscript:
It is said of the Heavens and the Earth in the
second verse of Genesis that they were Chaos
and Confusion that is,they were
Tohu-vah-bohu; and darkness was upon the face of the
deep. i.e.,the perfect material out
of which construction was to be made lacked
organization. The order of the digits of
these words as they stand i .e.,[
Or read from right to
left the letters and their corresponding numerals
stand thus:t 4:h. 5:bh 2:v 6:v 6:
h 5:v or w 6:which yields thuvbhu
4566256 or Tohu-vah-bohu.]the
letters
rendered by their numerical value is 6 526
654 and 2 386.By art speech these are key-
working numbers loosely shuffled together the
germs and keys of construction but to be
recognized one by one as used and
required.They follow symmetrically in the work as
immediately following the first sentence of
grand enunciation:In Rash developed itself Gods,
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the heavens and the earth.
Multiply the numbers of the letters of
Tohu-vah-bohu together continuously from right to left
placing the consecutive single products as we
go and we will have the following series of
values,viz.,(a)30 60 360 2 160 10 800
43 200 or as by the characterizing digits;3 6 36
216 108 and 432;(b)20 120 720 1 440 7 200 or 2
12 72 144 72 432 the series
closing in 432 one of the most famous numbers
of antiquity and which though obscured
crops out in the chronology up to the Flood.[ Mr.Ralston Skinner s MSS.]
One Hundred and Eight -(Page 233)This shows that the Hebrew usage of play upon the numbers
must
have come to the Jews from India.As we have
seen the final series yields,besides many another
combination the figures 108 and 1008 the
number of the names of Vishnu whence the 108 grains of
the Yogi s rosary and close with 432 the
truly famous number in Indian and Chaldaean antiquity
appearing in the cycle of 4 320 000 years in
the former and in the 432 000 years,the duration of the
Chaldaean divine dynasties.
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SECTION XXVI
The Idols and the Teraphim
(Page 234)THE meaning of the fairy-tale told by the
Chaldaean Qū-Tāmy is easily understood.His
mod s operandi with the idol of the moon was that of all the Semites
before Terah Abraham s father
made images the Teraphim,called after him or
the chosen people of Israel ceased divining by them.
These teraphim were just as much idols as in
any pagan image or statue.[ That
the teraphim was a
statue and no small article either is shown in
Sam el xix.where Michal takes a teraphim (image as it
is translated)and puts it in bed to represent
David her husband who ran away from Saul (see verse 13
et seq.)It
was thus of the size and shape of a human figure a statue or real idol .] The injunction Thou
shalt not bow to a graven image or teraphim
must have either come at a later date or have been
disregarded since the bowing-down to and the
divining by the teraphim seems to have been so orthodox
and general that the Lord actually threatens
the Israelites,through Hosea to deprive them of their
teraphim.
For the children of Israel shall abide many
days without a king ...without a sacrifice and
without an image.
Matzebah or statue or pillar is explained in
the Bible to mean without an ephod and without teraphim.
[ Op.cit.,iii..4.]
Father Kircher supports very strongly the idea
that the statue of the Egyptian Serapis was identical in
every way with those of the seraphim or
teraphim in the temple of Solomon.Says Louis de Dieu:
They were perhaps,images of angels,or statues
dedicated to the angels,the presence of
one of these spirits being thus attracted into
a teraphim and answering the inquirers
[consultants ] ;and
even in this hypothesis the word teraphim would become the equivalent of
seraphim by changing the t into s in the
manner of the Syrians.[Louis de
Dieu Genesis,
XXI.19.See de Mirville iii.257 .]
Divining By Teraphim -(Page 235)What says the Sept agint?The teraphim are translated
successively
by åéäłėį forms in someone s
likeness;eidolon an astral body;ćėõšōį the sculptured;źåķļōįöéį
sculptures in the sense of containing
something hidden or receptacles;öēėļõņ.
manifestations;įėēöåéįņ.truths or
realities;ģóńöłģįōį.or öłōéóģļéņ.luminous,shining likenesses.
The latter expression shows plainly what the
teraphim were.The V lgate translates the term by
annuntientes,the messengers who announce and
it thus becomes certain that the teraphim were the
oracles.They were the animated statues,the
Gods who revealed themselves to the masses through the
Initiated Priests and Adepts in the Egyptian
Chaldaean Greek,and other temples.
As to the way of divining or learning one s
fate and of being instructed by the teraphim [The teraphim
of Abram s father Terah the maker of
images, were the Kabeiri Gods,and we see them worshipped by
Micah by the Danites,and others.(Judges xvii.xviii
etc)Teraphim were identical with seraphim and
these were serpent images,the origin of which
is in the Sanskrit Sarpa (the serpent )a symbol sacred
to all the deities as a symbol of
immortality.Kiyun or the God Kivan worshipped by the Hebrews in the
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wilderness,is Shiva the Hindu Saturn.(The
Zendic h is s in India;thus,Hapta is Sapta: Hindu is
Sindhaya. (A.Wilder).The s continually
softens to h from Greece to Calcutta from the Caucasus to
Egypt says Dunlap.Therefore the letters k
h and s are interchangeable.The Greek story shows that
Dardanus,the Arcadian having received them as
a dowry carried them to Samothrace and thence to
Troy:and they were worshipped long before the
days of glory of Tyre or Sidon though the former had
been built 2760 B.C.From where did Dardanus
derive them?Isis Unveiled.1.570.]
it is explained quite
plainly by Maimonides and Seldenus.The former
says:
The worshippers of the teraphim claimed that
the light of the principal stars [planets
]
penetrating into and filling the carved statue
through and through the angelic virtue [of
the
regents,or animating principle in the planets ]conversed with them teaching them
many most
useful arts and sciences.[ Maimon.More Nevochim,III.xxx .]
In his turn Seldenus explains the same adding
that the teraphim [ Those
dedicated to the sun were
made in gold and those to the moon in silver.]
were built and fashioned in accordance with the position
of their respective planets,each of the
teraphim being consecrated to a special star-angel those that
the Greeks called stoichae as also according
to figures located in the sky and called the tutelary Gods :
Those who traced out the óōļé÷åéį.were called
óōļé÷åéłģįōéźļé.[ or the
diviners by the planets ]
and the óōļé÷åéį.[ De Diis Syriis,Teraph,11.Syat.p.31.]
Ammianus Marcellinus states that the ancient
divinations were always (Page
236)accomplished
with the
help of the spirits of the elements
(spiritus elementorum),or as they were called in Greek ēķåķģįōį ōłķ
ļōļé÷åéłķ.Now the latter are not the spirits
of the stars (planets),nor are they divine Beings;they are
simply the creatures inhabiting their
respective elements,called by the Kabalists elementary spirits,and
by the Theosophists elementals.[ Those that the Kabalists call elementary
spirits are sylphs,gnomes,
undines and salamanders,nature-spirits in
short.The spirits of the angels formed a distinct class.]
Father Kircher the Jesuit tells the reader:
Every god had such instruments of divination
to speak through.Each had his speciality.
Serapis gave instruction on agriculture;Anubis
taught sciences;Horus advised upon psychic and spiritual
matters;Isis was consulted on the rising of
the Nile and so on.[OEdip s.ii.444
].
This historical fact furnished by one of the
ablest and most erudite among the Jesuits,is unfortunate for
the prestige of the Lord God of Israel with
regard to his claims to priority and to his being the one living
God.Jehovah on the admission of the Old
Testament itself conversed with his elect in no other way
and this places him on a par with every other
Pagan God even of the inferior classes.In Judges xvii.
we read of Micah having an ephod and a
teraphim fabricated and consecrating them to Jehovah (see
the Sept agint and the V lgate );these
objects were made by a founder from the two hundred shekels of
silver given to him by his mother.True King
James Holy Bible explains this little bit of idolatry by
saying:
In those days there was no king in Israel but
every man did that which was right in his own
eyes.
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Yet the act must have been orthodox since
Micah after hiring a priest a diviner for his ephod and
teraphim declares:Now know I that the Lord
will do me good. And if Micah s act who
Had an house of Gods,and made an ephod and
teraphim and consecrated one of his sons
to their service as also to that of the
graven image dedicated unto the Lord by his mother now
seems prejudicial it was not so in those days
of one religion and one lip.How can the Latin Church
blame the act since Kircher one of her best
writers,calls the teraphim the holy instruments of primitive
revelations; since Genesis shows us
Rebecca going to enquire of the Lord [
Op.cit.,xxv.22 et seq.]
and the Lord answering her (certainly through
his teraphim),and delivering to her several prophecies?
Jehovah and Teraphim -(Page 237)And if this be not sufficient there is Saul who deplores the
silence
of the ephod [The ephod was a linen garment worn by the high priest but as the
thummim was
attached to it the entire paraphernalia of
divination was often comprised in that single word ephod.See I
Sam .xxviii.6
and xxx.7.8.] and David who
consults the thummim and receives oral advice from the
Lord as to the best way of killing his
enemies.
The thumim and urim however the object in our
days of so much conjecture and speculation was not
an invention of the Jews,nor had it originated
with them despite the minute instruction given about it by
Jehovah to Moses.For the priest-hierophant of
the Egyptian temples wore a breastplate of precious
stones,in every way similar to that of the
high priest of the Israelites.
The high-priests of Egypt wore suspended on
their necks an image of saphire called Truth
the manifestation of truth becoming evident in
it.
Seldenus is not the only Christian writer who
assimilates the Jewish to the Pagan teraphim and
expressed a conviction that the former had
borrowed them from the Egyptians.Moreover we are told by
Döllinger a preeminently Roman Catholic
writer:
The teraphim were used and remained in many
Jewish families to the days of Josiah.
[Paganism and Judaism,iv.I
97 ] .
As to the personal opinion of Döllinger a
papist and of Seldenus,a Protestant both of whom trace
Jehovah in the teraphim of the Jews and evil
spirits in those of the Pagans it is the usual one-sided
judgment of odi m theologicum and
sectarianism.Seldenus is right however in arguing that in the days
of old all such modes of communication had
been primarily established for purposes of divine and
angelic communications only.But
The holy Spirit [spirits,rather ]spake
[not ] to the children of Israel [alone ] by urim
and
thummim,while the tabernacle remained
as Dr.A.Cruden would have people believe.Nor
had the Jews alone need of a tabernacle for such a
kind of theophanic,or divine communication;for
no Bath-Kol (or Daughter of the divine Voice ),called
thummim could be heard whether by Jew Pagan or
Christian were there not a fit tabernacle for it.The
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tabernacle was simply the archaic telephone
of those days of Magic when Occult powers were acquired
by Initiation just as they are now.The
nineteenth century (Page
238)has
replaced with an electric
telephone the tabernacle of specified
metals,wood and special arrangements and has natural
mediums instead of high priests and
hierophants.Why should people wonder then that instead of
reaching Planetary Spirits and Gods,believers
should now communicate with no greater beings than
elementals and animated shells -the demons of
Porphyry?Who these were he tells us candidly in his
work On the Good and Bad Demons :
They whose ambition is to be taken for
Gods,and whose leader demands to be recognized as
the Supreme God.
Mmost decidedly and it is not the
Theosophists who will ever deny the fact there are good as well as
bad spirits beneficent and malevolent Gods
in all ages.The whole trouble was and still is,to know
which is which.And this,we maintain the
Christian Church knows no more than her profane flock.If
anything proves this,it is,most decidedly the
numberless theological blunders made in this direction.It is
idle to call the Gods of the heathen
devils,and then to copy their symbols in such a servile manner
enforcing the distinction between the good and
the bad with no weightier proof than that they are
respectively Christian and Pagan.The planets
the elements of the Zodiac have not figured only at
Heliopolis as the twelve stones called the
mysteries of the elements (elementorum arcana).On the
authority of many an orthodox Christian writer
they were found also in Solomon s temple and may be
seen to this day in several old Italian
churches,and even in Notre Dame of Paris.
One would really say that the warning in
Clement s Stromateis has been given in vain though he is
supposed to quote words pronounced by
St.Peter.He says:
Do not adore God as the Jews do who think they
are the only ones to know Deity and fail to
perceive that instead of God they are
worshipping angels,the lunar months,and the moon.
[Op cit.,I.vi.5.]
Who after reading the above can fail to feel
surprise that notwithstanding such understanding of the
Jewish mistake the Christians are still
worshipping the Jewish Jehovah the Spirit who spoke through his
teraphim!That this is so and that Jehovah was
simply the tutelary genius, or spirit of the people of
Israel -only one of the pneuma ton stoicheion
(or great spirits of the elements ),not even a high
Planetary is demonstrated on the authority
of St.Paul and of Clemens Alexandrinus,if the words they
use have any meaning.
Idol of the Moon -(Page 239 )With the latter the word óōļé÷åéį signifies not only
elements,but also
Generative cosmological principles,and notably
the signs [or constellations ] of the Zodiac,of
the months,days the sun and the moon.[Disco rse to the Gentiles,p.I46.]
The expression is used by Aristotle in the
same sense.He says,ōłķ įóōńłķ óōļé÷åéį.[De
Gener.,III.iv .]
while Diogenes Laertius calls äłäåźį
óōļé÷åéį.the twelve signs of the Zodiac.[See
Cosmos by Ménage
I.vi.p 101.] Now having the positive evidence of Ammianus Marcellinus to the
effect that
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Ancient divination was always accompanied with
the help of the spirits of the elements,
or the same šķåįģįōį ōłķ óōļé÷åéłķ.and seeing
in the Bible numerous passages that (a)the Israelites,
including Saul and David resorted to the same
divination and used the same means;and (b)that it was
their Lord namely Jehovah who answered
them what else can we believe Jehovah to be than a
spiritus elementorum ?
Hence one sees no great difference between the
idol of the moon the Chaldaean teraphim through
which spoke Saturn and the idol or urim and
thummim the organ of Jehovah.Occult rites,scientific at
the beginning and forming the most solemn and
sacred of sciences have fallen through the
degeneration of mankind into Sorcery now
called superstition.As Diogenes explains in his History :
The Kaldhi having made long observations on
the planets and knowing better than anyone
else the meaning of their motions and their
influences,predict to people their futurity.They
regard their doctrine of the five great
orbs which they call interpreters,and we planets as
the most important.And though they allege that
it is the sun that furnishes them with most of
the predictions for great forthcoming
events,yet they worship more particularly Saturn.Such
predictions made to a number of
kings,especially to Alexander Antigonus,Seleucus,Nicanor
etc....have been so marvellously realised that
people were struck with admiration.[Op
Cit.,
I .ii.]
It follows from the above that the declaration
made by Qū-tāmy the Chaldean Adept to the effect that all
that he means to impart in his work to the
profane had been told by Saturn to the moon by the latter to
her idol and by that idol or teraphim to
himself the scribe no more implied idolatry than did the
practice of the same method by King (Page 240)David.One fails to perceive
in it therefore either an
apocrypha or a fairy-tale.The above-named
Chaldaean Initiate lived at a period far anterior to that
ascribed to Moses in whose day the Sacred
Science of the sanctuary was still in a flourishing condition.
It began to decline only when such scoffers as
Lucian had been admitted and the pearls of the Occult
Science had been too often thrown to the
hungry dogs of criticism and ignorance.
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SECTION XXVII
Egyptian Magic
(Page 241)FEW of our students of Occultism have had the
opportunity of examining Egyptian papyri
those living or rather re-arisen witnesses
that Magic,good and bad was practised many thousands of
years back into the night of time.The use of
the papyrus prevailed up to the eighth century of our era
when it was given up and its fabrication fell
into disuse.The most curious of the exhumed documents
were immediately purchased and taken away from
the country.Yet there are a number of beautifully-
preserved papyri at Bulak,Cairo though the
greater number have never been yet properly read.[ The
characters employed on those parchments,
writes De Mirville are sometimes hieroglyphics,placed
perpendicularly a kind of lineary tachygraphy
(abridged characters),where the image is often reduced to
a single stroke;at other times placed in
horizontal lines;then the hieratic or sacred writing going from
right to left as in all Semitic
languages;lastly the characters of the country used for official documents,
mostly contracts,etc.but which since the
Ptolemies has been also adopted for the monuments. [v.81.
80.A copy of the Harris papyrus translated by
Chabas-Papyrus Magiq e -may be studied at the British
Museum.]
Others those that have been carried away and
may be found in the museums and public libraries of
Europe have fared no better.In the days of
the Vicomte de Rougé some twenty-five years ago only a
few of them were two-thirds deciphered; and
among those some most interesting legends,inserted
parenthetically and for purposes of explaining
royal expenses,are in the Register of the Sacred
Accounts.
This may be verified in the so-called Harris
and Anastasi collections,and in some papyri recently
exhumed;one of these gives an account of a
whole series of magic feats performed before the Pharaohs
Ramses II and III.A curious document the
first-mentioned truly.It is a papyrus of the fifteenth century
B.C.written during the reign of Ramses V.the
last king of the eighteenth dynasty and is the work of the
scribe Thoutmes,who notes down some of the
events with (Page 242)regard to
defaulters occurring on
the twelfth and thirteenth days of the month
of Paophs.The document shows that in those days of
miracles in Egypt the taxpayers were not
found among the living alone but every mummy was
included.All and everything was taxed;and the
Khou of the mummy in default was punished by the
priest-exorciser who deprived it of the
liberty of action.Now what was the Khou?Simply the astral body
or the aerial simulacrum of the corpse or the
mummy that which in China is called the Hauen and in
India the Bhūt.
Upon reading this papyrus today an Orientalist
is pretty sure to fling it aside in disgust attributing the
whole affair to the crass superstition of the
ancients.Truly phenomenal and inexplicable must have been
the dullness and credulity of that otherwise
highly philosophical and civilized nation if it could carry on for
so many consecutive ages,for thousands of
years such a system of mutual deception!A system
whereby the people were deceived by the
priests,the priests by their King-Hierophants,and the latter
themselves were cheated by the ghosts,which
were in their turn but the fruits of hallucination. The
whole of antiquity from Menes to Cleopatra
from Manu to Vikramaditya from Orpheus down to the last
Roman augur were hysterical we are told.This
must have been so if the whole were not a system of
fraud.Life and death were guided by and were
under the sway of sacred conjuring. For there is hardly
a papyrus,though it be a simple document of
purchase and sale a deed belonging to daily transactions
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of the most ordinary kind and that has not
Magic,white or black,mixed up in it.It looks as though the
sacred scribes of the Nile had purposely and
in a prophetic spirit of race-hatred carried out the (to them)
most unprofitable task of deceiving and
puzzling the generations of a future white race of unbelievers yet
unborn!Anyhow the papyri are full of Magic,as
are likewise the stelae.We learn moreover that the
papyrus was not merely a smooth-surfaced
parchment a fabric made of
Ligneous matter from a shrub the pellicles of
which superposed one over the other formed a
kind of writing paper;
but that the shrub itself the implements and
tools for fabricating the parchment etc.were all previously
subjected to a process of magical preparation
according to the ordinance of the Gods,who had taught
that art as they had all others,to their
Priest-Hierophants.
There are however some modern Orientalists who
seem to have an inkling of the true nature of such
things,and especially of the analogy and the
relations that exist between the Magic of old and our
modern-day phenomena.
Evidence of Papyri -
(Page 243)Chabas is one of these for he indulges,in his
translation of the Harris papyrus,in the
following reflections:
Without having recourse to the imposing
ceremonies of the wand of Hermes,or to the obscure
formulae of an unfathomable mysticism a
mesmeriser in our own day will by means of a few
passes,disturb the organic faculties of a
subject inculcate the knowledge of a foreign
language transport him to a far-distant
country or into secret places,make him guess the
thoughts of those absent read in closed letters,etc....The
antre of the modern sybil is a
modest-looking room the tripod has made room
for a small round table a hat a plate a piece
of furniture of the most vulgar kind;only the
latter is even superior to the oracle of antiquity
[how does M.Chabas know?] ,inasmuch as the latter only spoke [ And what of the Mene
mene tekel upharsin the words that the
fingers of a man s hand whose body and arm
remained invisible wrote on the walls of
Belshazzar s palace?(Daniel.v.)What of the writings
of Simon the Magician and the magic characters
on the walls and in the air of the crypts of
Initiation without mentioning the tables of
stone on which the finger of God wrote the
commandments?Between the writing of one God
and other Gods the difference if any lies
only in their respective natures;and if the
tree is to be known by its fruits,then preference
would have to be given always to the Pagan
Gods.It is the immortal To be or not to be.
Either all of them are -or at any rate may be
-true or all are surely pious frauds and the
result of credulity.] while the oracle of our day writes its answers.At the command of
the
medium the spirits of the dead descend to make
the furniture creak,and the authors of bygone
centuries deliver to us works written by them
beyond the grave.Human credulity has no
narrower limits today than it had at the dawn
of historical times ....As teratology is an
essential part of general physiology now so
the pretended Occult Sciences occupy in the
annals of humanity a place which is not
without its importance and deserve for more than one
reason the attention of the philosopher and
the historian.[ Papyrus Magiq
e.p.186.]
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Selecting the two Champollions,Lenormand
Bunsen Victomte de Rougé and several other
Egyptologists to serve as our witnesses,let us
see what they say of Egyptian Magic and Sorcery.They
may get out of the difficulty by accounting
for each superstitious belief and practice by attributing them
to a chronic psychological and physiological
derangement and to collective hysteria if they like;still facts
are there staring us in the face from the
hundreds of these mysterious papyri exhumed after a rest of
four five and more thousands of years with
their magical containments and evidence of antediluvian
Magic.
A small library found in Thebes,has furnished
fragments of every kind of ancient literature many of
which are dated and several of which have thus
been assigned to the accepted age of Moses.Books or
manuscripts on ethics,history religion and
medicine calendars and (Page
244)registers,poems
and
novels everything may be had in that
precious collection;and old legends -traditions of long forgotten
ages (please to remark this:legends recorded
during the Mosaic period)are already referred to therein
as belonging to an immense antiquity to the
period of the dynasties of Gods and Giants.Their chief
contents,however are formulae of exorcisms
against black Magic,and funeral rituals:true breviaries,or
the vade mecum of every
pilgrim-traveller in eternity.These funeral texts are generally written in
hieratic
characters.At the head of the papyrus is invariably
placed a series of scenes,showing the defunct
appearing before a host of Deities
successively who have to examine him.Then comes the judgement of
the Soul while the third act begins with the
launching of that Soul into the divine light.Such papyri are
often forty feet long.[ See Maspero s G ide to the B lah Muse m,among others.]
The following is extracted from general
descriptions.It will show how the moderns understand and
interpret Egyptian (and other)Symbology.
The papyrus of the priest Nevo-loo (or
Nevolen),at the Louvre may be selected for one case.First of all
there is the bark carrying the coffin a black
chest containing the defunct s mummy.His mother
Ammenbem-Heb and his sister Hooissanoob are
near;at the head and feet of the corpse stand
Nephtys and Isis clothed in red and near them
a priest of Osiris clad in his panther s skin his censer in
his right hand and four assistants carrying
the mummy s intestines.The coffin is received by the God
Anubis (of the jackal s head),from the hands
of female weepers.Then the Soul rises from its mummy
and the Khou (astral body)of the defunct.The
former begins its worship of the four genii of the East of
the sacred birds,and of Ammon as a ram.Brought
into the Palace of Truth the defunct is before his
judges.While the Soul a scarabaeus,stands in
the presence of Osiris,his astral Khou is at the door.
Much laughter is provoked in the West by the
invocations to various Deities,presiding over each of the
limbs of the mummy and of the living human
body.Only judge:in the papyrus of the mummy
Petamenoph the anatomy becomes theographical
astrology is applied to physiology or rather to the
anatomy of the human body the heart and the
soul. The defunct s hair belongs to the Nile his eyes to
Venus (Isis),his ears to Macedo the guardian
of the tropics;his nose to Anubis,his left temple to the
Spirit dwelling in the sun ....What a series
of intolerable absurdities and ignoble prayers ....to Osiris,
imploring him to give the defunct in the other
world geese eggs,pork,etc. [ De
Mirville (from whom
much of the preceding is taken).v 8I 85 ]
Symbols and Their Reading -(Page 245)It might have been prudent perhaps,to have
waited to
ascertain whether all these terms of geese
eggs,and pork had not some other Occult meaning.The
Indian Yogi who in an exoteric work is
invited to drink a certain intoxicating liquor till he loses his senses,
was also regarded as a drunkard representing
his sect and class,until it was found that the Esoteric
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sense of that spirit was quite
different;that it meant divine light and stood for the ambrosia of Secret
Wisdom.
The symbols of the dove and the lamb which
abound now in Eastern and Western Christian Churches
may also be exhumed long ages hence and
speculated upon as objects of present-day worship.And
then some Occidentalist in the forthcoming
ages of high Asiatic civilization and learning may write
karmically upon the same as follows:The
ignorant and superstitious Gnostics and Agnostics of the sects
of Pope and Calvin (the two monster Gods
of the Dynamite-Christian period)adored a pigeon and a
sheep! There will be portable hand-fetishes
in all and every age for the satisfaction and reverence of the
rabble and the Gods of one race will always be
degraded into devils by the next one.The cycles revolve
within the depths of Lethe and Karma shall
reach Europe as it has Asia and her religions.
Nevertheless,
This grand and dignified language [in the Book of the Dead ] these pictures full of majesty this
orthodoxy of the whole evidently proving a
very precise doctrine concerning the immortality of
the soul and its personal survival
as shown by De Rougé and Abbe Van Drival have
charmed some Orientalists.The psychostasy (or
judgment of the Soul)is certainly a whole poem
to him who can read it correctly and interpret the images
therein.In that picture we see Osiris,the
horned with his sceptre hooked at the end the original of the
pastoral bishop s crook or crosier the Soul
hovering above encouraged by Tmei daughter of the Sun of
Righteousness and Goddess of Mercy and
Justice;Horus and Anubis,weighing the deeds of the soul.
One of these papyri shows the Soul found
guilty of gluttony sentenced to be re-born on earth as a hog;
forthwith comes the learned conclusion of an
Orientalist (Page 246)This is an
indisputable proof of belief
in metempsychosis of transmigration into
animals etc.
Perchance the Occult law of Karma might
explain the sentence otherwise.It may for all our Orientalists
know refer to the physiological vice in store
for the Soul when re-incarnated a vice that will lead that
personality into a thousand and one scrapes
and mis-adventures.
Tortures to begin with then metempsychosis d
ring 3 000 years as a hawk,an angel a lotus-
flower a heron a stork,a swallow a serpent and
a crocodile:one sees that the consolation of
such a progress was far from being
satisfactory.
argues De Mirville in his work on the Satanic
character of the Gods of Egypt.[See
De Mirville.v.84 85 .]
Again a simple suggestion may throw on this a
great light.Are the Orientalists quite sure they have read
correctly the metempsychosis during 3 000
years ?The Occult Doctrine teaches that Karma waits at the
threshold of Devachan (the Amenti of the
Egyptians)for 3 000 years;that then the eternal Ego is
reincarnated de novo to be punished in
its new temporary personality for sins committed in the
preceding birth and the suffering for which in
one shape or another will atone for past misdeeds.And the
hawk the lotus-flower the heron serpent or
bird every object in Nature in short had its symbolical
and manifold meaning in ancient religious
emblems.The man who all his life acted hypocritically and
passed for a good man but had been in sober
reality watching like a bird of prey his chance to pounce
upon his fellow creatures,and had deprived
them of their property will be sentenced by Karma to bear
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the punishment for hypocrisy and covetousness
in a future life.What will it be?Since every human unit
has ultimately to progress in its evolution
and since that man will be reborn at some future time as a
good sincere well-meaning man his sentence to
be re-incarnated as a hawk may simply mean that he
will be regarded metaphorically as such.That
notwithstanding his real good intrinsic qualities,he will
perhaps during a long life be unjustly and
falsely charged with and suspected of greed and hypocrisy
and of secret exactions,all of which will make
him suffer more than he can bear.The law of retribution
can never err and yet how many such innocent
victims of false appearance and human malice do we not
meet in this world of incessant illusion of
mistakes and deliberate wickedness.We see them every day
and they may be found within the personal
experience of each of us.
Rebirth and Transmigration -(Page 247)What Orientalist can say with any degree of
assurance that he
has understood the religions of old?The metaphorical
language of the priests has never been more than
superficially revealed and the hieroglyphics
have been very poorly mastered to this day.[ One sees this
difficulty arise even with a perfectly known
language like Sanskrit the meaning of which is far easier to
comprehend than the hieratic writings of
Egypt.Everyone knows how hopelessly the Sanskritists are
often puzzled over the real meaning and how
they fail in rendering the meaning correctly in their
respective translations,in which one
Orientalist contradicts the other.
What says Isis Unveiled on this
question of Egyptian rebirth and transmigration and does it clash with
anything that we say now?
It will be observed that this philosophy of
cycles which was allegorized by the Egyptian
Hierophants in the cycle of necessity
explains at the same time the allegory of the Fall of
Man According to the Arabian
descriptions,each of the seven chambers of the pyramids
those grandest of all cosmic symbols was
known by the name of a planet.The peculiar
architecture of the pyramids shows in itself
the drift of the metaphysical thought of their
builders.The apex is lost in the clear blue
sky of the land of the Pharaohs,and typifies the
primordial point lost in the unseen Universe
from whence started the first race of the spiritual
prototypes of man.Each mummy from the moment
that it was embalmed lost its physical
individuality in one sense:it symbolised the
human race.Placed in such a way as was best
calculated to aid the exit of the Soul the
latter had to pass through the seven planetary
chambers before it made its exit through the
symbolical apex.Each chamber typified at the
same time one of the seven spheres [ of our Chain ] and one of the seven higher types of
physico-spiritual humanity alleged to be above
our own.Every 3000 years the soul
representative of its race had to return to
its primal point of departure before it underwent
another evolution into a more perfected
spiritual and physical transformation.We must go
deep indeed into the abstruse metaphysics of
Oriental mysticism before we can realise fully
the infinitude of the subjects that were
embraced at one sweep by the majestic thought of its
exponents.[Op.cit.,i.297.]
This is all Magic when once the details are
given;and it relates at the same time to the evolution of our
seven Root-Races,each with the characteristics
of its special guardian or God and his Planet.The
astral body of each Initiate after death had
to reenact in its funeral mystery the drama of the birth and
death of each Race the past and the future
and pass through the seven planetary chambers, which
as said above typified also the seven spheres
of our Chain.
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The mystic doctrine of Eastern Occultism
teaches that
The Spirit al Ego [not the astral Kho ] has
to revisit,before it incarnates into a new body,the scenes it
left at its last disincarnation.It (Page 248)has to see for itself and take cognizance
of all the effects
prod ced by the ca ses [the Nidānas ] generated by its actions in a previo s life;that,seeing,it sho
ld
recognize the j stice of the decree,and
help the law of Retrib tion [Karma
] instead of impeding it.[ Book
II.Commentary.]
The translations by Vicomte de Rougé of
several Egyptian papyri imperfect as they may be give us one
advantage:they show undeniably the presence in
them of white divine Magic,as well as of Sorcery and
the practice of both throughout all the
dynasties.The Book of the Dead,far older than Genesis [Bunsen
and Champollion so declare and Dr.Carpenter
says that the Book of the Dead,sculptured on the oldest
monuments,with the very phrases we find in
the New Testament in connection with the Day of
Judgment ...was engraved probably 2 000 years
before the time of Christ.(See Isis Unveiled i.518.)]
or any other book of the Old Testament shows
it in every line.It is full of incessant prayers and
exorcisms against the Black Art.Therein Osiris
is the conquerer of the aerial demons.The worshipper
implores his help against Matat from whose
eye proceeds the invisible arrow. This invisible arrow that
proceeds from the eye of the Sorcerer (whether
living or dead)and that circulates throughout the world
is the evil eye cosmic in its origin
terrestrial in its effects on the microcosmical plane.It is not the Latin
Christians whom it behoves to view this as a
superstition.Their Church indulges in the same belief and
had even a prayer against the arrow
circulating in darkness.
The most interesting of all those
documents,however is the Harris papyrus,called in France le
papyrus magiq e de Chabas,as it was first translated by the latter.It is a
manuscript written in hieratic
characters,translated commented upon and
published in 1860 by M.Chabas,but purchased at Thebes
in 1855 by Mr.Harris.Its age is given at
between twenty-eight and thirty centuries.We quote a few
extracts from these translations:
Calendar of lucky and unlucky days ...He who
makes a bull work on the 20 th of the month of
Pharmuths will surely die;he who on the 24 th
day of the same month pronounces the name of
Seth aloud will see trouble reigning in his
house from that day;....he who on the 5 th day of
Patchous leaves his house falls sick and dies.
Exclaims the translator whose cultured
instincts are revolted:
If one had not these words under our eyes,one
could never believe in such servitude at the
epoch of the Ramessides.[ De Mirville v.88.Just such a
calendar and horoscope interdictions
exist in India in our day as well as in China
and all the Buddhist countries.]
The Egyptian Khous -(Page 249)We belong to the nineteenth century of the Christian era and
are
therefore at the height of civilization and
under the benign sway and enlightening influence of the
Christian Church instead of being subject to
Pagan Gods of old.Nevertheless we personally know
dozens,and have heard of hundreds,of educated
highly-intellectual persons who would as soon think of
committing suicide as of starting on any
business on a Friday of dining at a table where thirteen sit down
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or of beginning a long journey on a
Monday.Napoleon the Great became pale when he saw three
candles lit on a table.Moreover we may gladly
concur with De Mirville in this,at any rate that such
superstitions are the outcome of
observation and experience. If the former had never agreed with
facts,the authority of the Calendar,he
thinks,would not have lasted for a week.But to resume:
Genethliacal infl ences :The child born on the 5 th day of Paophi will be killed by
a bull;on the
27 th by a serpent.Born on the 4 th of the
month of Athyr he will succumb to blows.
This is a question of horoscopic
predictions;judiciary astrology is firmly believed in in our own age and
has been proven to be scientifically possible
by Kepler.
Of the Khous two kinds were
distinguished:first the justified Khous,i.e.,those who had been absolved
from sin by Osiris when they were brought
before his tribunal;these lived a second life.Secondly here
were the guilty Khous,the Khous dead a second
time; these were the damned.Second death did not
annihilate them but they were doomed to wander
about and to torture people.Their existence had
phases analogous to those of the living man a
bond so intimate between the dead and the living that one
sees how the observation of religious funeral
rites and exorcisms and prayers (or rather magic
incantations)should have become necessary.[See De Mirville.iii.65 ] .Says one prayer:
Do not permit that the venom should master his
limbs [of the defunct ] ,...that he should be
penetrated by any male dead or any female
dead;or that the shadow of any spirit should
haunt him (or her).
M.Chabas adds:
These Khous were beings of that kind to which
human beings belong after their death;they
were exorcised in the name of the god Chons
....The Manes then could enter the bodies of
the living haunt and obsess the formulae and
talismans,and especially statues or divine
fig res were
used against such formidable invasions.[ Ibid.p.168 ].They
were combatted by
the help of the divine power the god (Page 250)Chons being famed for such deliverances.The
Khou in obeying the order of the god none the
less preserved the precious faculty inherent in
him of accommodating himself in any other body
at will.
The most frequent formula of exorcism is as
follows.It is very suggestive;
Men gods,elect dead
spirits,amous,negroes,menti-u do not look at this soul to show
cruelty toward it.
This is addressed to all who were acquainted with
Magic.
Amulets and mystic names. This chapter is
called very mysterious, and contains invocations to
Penhakahakaherher and Uranaokarsankrobite and
other such easy names.Says Chabas:
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We have proofs that mystic names similar to
these were in common use during the stay of the
Israelites in Egypt.
And we may add that whether got from the
Egyptians or the Hebrews,these are sorcery names.The
student can consult the works of Éliphas Lévi
such as his Grimoire des Sorciers.In these exorcisms
Osiris is called Mamuram-Kahab and is implored
to prevent the twice-dead Khou from attacking the
justified Khou and his next of kin since the
accursed (astral spook)
Can take any form he likes and penetrate at
will into any locality or body.
In studying Egyptian papyri one begins to find
that the subjects of the Pharaohs were not very much
inclined to the Spiritism or Spiritualism of
their day.They dreaded the blessed spirit of the dead more
than a Roman Catholic dreads the devil!
But how uncalled-for and unjust is the charge
against the Gods of Egypt that they are these devils, and
against the priests of exercising their magic
powers with the help of the fallen angels, may be seen in
more than one papyrus.For one often finds in
them records of Sorcerers sentenced to the death penalty
as though they had been living under the
protection of the holy Christian Inquisition.Here is one case
during the reign of Ramses III quoted by De
Mirville from Chabas.
The first page begins with these words:From
the place where I am to the people of my
country.There is reason to suppose as one
will see that the person who wrote this,in the
first personal pronoun is a magistrate making
a report and attesting it before men after an
accustomed formula for here is the main part
of this accusation:This Hai a bad man was an
overseer [or perhaps keeper ] of
sheep:he said:Can I have a book that will give me great
power? ....And a book was given him with the
formulae of Ramses-Meri-Amen the great
God his royal master;and he succeeded in
getting a divine power enabling him to fascinate
men.
Obsession in Egypt -
(Page 251)He also succeeded in building a place and in
finding a very deep place,and
produced men of Menh [magical homunculi?] and
...love-writings ..stealing them from the
Khen [
the occult library of the palace ]
by the hand of the stonemason Atirma ...by forcing
one of the supervisors to go aside and acting
magically on the others.Then he sought to read
futurity by them and succeeded.All the horrors
and abominations he had conceived in his
heart he did them really he practised them all
and other great crimes as well such as the
horror [?] of all the Gods and
Goddesses.Likewise let the prescriptions great [severe?] nto
death be
done unto him such as the divine words order to be done to him.The accusation
does not stop there it specifies the
crimes.The first line speaks of a hand paralysed by means
of the men of Menh,to whom it is simply
said Let such an effect be prod ced, and it is
produced.Then come the great abominations,such
as deserve death....The judges who
had examined him (the culprit)reported saying
Let him die according to the order of
Pharaoh and according to what is written in
the lines of the divine language.
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M.Chabas remarks:
Documents of this kind abound but the task of
analysing them all cannot be attempted with
the limited means we possess.[ Maimonides in his Treatise on
Idolatry says,speaking of
Jewish teraphim:They talked with men.To this
day Christian Sorcerers in Italy and negro
Voodoos at New Orleans fabricate small wax
figures in the likeness of their victims,and
transpierce them with needles,the wo nd as
on the teraphim or Menh being repercussed on
the living often killing them.Mysterious
deaths are still many and not all are traced to the
guilty hand.
Then there is an inscription taken in the
temple of Khous,the God who had power over the elementaries,
at Thebes.It was presented by M.Prisse d
Avenue to the Imperial now National Library of Paris,and
was translated first by Mr.S.Birch.There is in
it a whole romance of Magic.It dates from the day of
Ramses XII.[The Ramses of Lepsius,who reigned some 1300 years before our era.] of the twentieth
dynasty;it is from the rendering of Mr.de
Rougé as quoted by De Mirville that we now translate it.
This monument tells us that one of the Ramses
of the twentieth dynasty while collecting at
Naharain the tributes paid to Egypt by the
Asiatic nations,fell in love with a daughter of the
chief of Bakhten one of his
tributaries,married her and bringing her to Egypt with him,raised
her to the dignity of Queen under the royal
name of Ranefrou.Soon afterwards the chief of
Bakhten dispatched a messenger to
Ramses,praying the assistance of Egyptian science for
Bent-Rosh a young sister of the queen attacked
with illness in all her limbs.
The messenger asked expressly that a wise-man
(an Initiate -Reh-Het)should be sent.The
king gave orders that all the hierogrammatists
of the palace and the guardians of the secret
books of the Khen should be sent for and
choosing from among them the royal scribe Thoth-
em-Hebi an intelligent man well versed in
writing charged him to examine the sickness.(Page
252)Arrived at Bakhten Thoth-em-Hebi found that
Bent-Rosh was possessed by a Khou (Em-
seh-eru ker h ou),but declared himself too
weak to engage in a struggle with him.[
One may
judge how trustworthy are the translations of
such Egyptian documents when the sentence is
rendered in three different ways by three
Egyptologists.Rougé says:He found her in a state
to fall nder the power of spirits or with her limbs quite stiff.(?)another version:and
Chabas translates:And the Scribe found the
Khou too wicked.Between her being in
possession of an evil Khou and with her limbs
quite stiff.there is a difference.]
Eleven years elapsed and the young girl s
state did not improve.The chief of Bakhten again
sent his messenger and on his formal demand
Khons-peiri-Seklerem-Zam one of the divine
forms of Chons -God the Son of the Theban
Trinity -was dispatched to Bakhten....
The God [incarnate ] having
saluted (besa )the patient she felt immediately relieved and the
Khou who was in her manifested forthwith with
his intention of obeying the orders of the God.
O great God who forces:the phantom to vanish
said the Khou I am thy slave and I will
return whence I came! [De Mirville v.247 248 ].
Evidently Khons-peiri-Seklerem-Zam was a real
Hierophant of the class named the Sons of God since
he is said to be one of the forms of the God
Khons;which means either that he was considered as an
incarnation of that God an Avatāra or that
he was a full Initiate.The same text shows that the temple
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to which he belonged was one of those to which
a School of Magic was attached.There was a Khen in it
or that portion of the temple which was inaccessible
to all but the highest priest the library or depository
of sacred works,to the study and care of which
special priests were appointed (those whom all the
Pharaohs consulted in cases of great
importance),and wherein they communicated with the Gods and
obtained advice from them.Does not Lucian tell
his readers in his description of the temple of Hierapolis,
of Gods who manifest their presence
independently? [ Some
translators would have Lucian speak of
the inhabitants of the city but they fail to show
that this view is maintainable .] And
further on that he once
travelled with a priest from Memphis,who told
him he had passed twenty-three years in the subterranean
crypts of his temple receiving instructions on
Magic from the Goddess Isis herself.Again we read that it
was by Mercury himself that the great
Sesostris (Ramses II.)was instructed in the Sacred Sciences.On
which Jablonsky remarks that we have here the
reason why Amun (Ammon)whence he thinks our
Amen is derived was the real evocation to the
light.[ De Mirville v.256 257 .]
In the Papyrus Anastasi which teems with
various formulae for the evocation of Gods,and with
exorcisms against Khous and the elementary
demons,the seventh paragraph shows plainly the
difference made between the real Gods,the
Planetary Angels,and those shells of mortals which are left
behind in Kama-loka as though to tempt mankind
and to puzzle it the more hopelessly in its vain search
after the truth outside the Occult Sciences
and the veil of Initiation.
Two Rituals of Magic -(Page 253)This seventh verse says with regard to such divine evocation
or
theomantic consultations:
One must invoke that divine and great name [ How can De Mirville see Satan in the
Egyptian
God of the great divine Name when he himself
admits that nothing was greater than the name
of the oracle of Dodona as it was that of the
God of the Jews IAO or Jehovah?That oracle
had been brought by the Pelasgians to Dodona
more then fourteen centuries B.C.and left with
the forefathers of the Hellenes,and its
history is well-known and may be read in Herodotus.
Jupiter who loved the fair nymph of the
ocean.Dodona had ordered Pelasgus to carry his cult
to Thessaly.The name of the God of that oracle
at the temple of Dodona was Zeus
Pelasgicos,the Zeuspater (God the Father),or
as De Mirville explains:It was the name par
excellence the name that the Jews held as the ineffable the
unpronounceable Name in
short Jaoh-pater,i.e.,he who was who
is,and who will be otherwise the Eternal.And the
author admits that Maury is right in
discovering in the name of the Vaidic Indra the Biblical
Jehovah and does not even attempt to deny the
etymological connection between the two
names -the great and the lost name
with the sun and the thunder-bolts.Strange
confessions,and still stranger contradictions .] only in cases of absolute necessity
and when
one feels absolutely pure and irreproachable.
Not so in the formula of black
Magic.Reuvens,speaking of the two rituals of Magic of the Anastasi
collection remarks that they
Undeniably form the most instructive
commentary upon the Egyptian Mysteries attributed to
Jamblichus,and the best pendant to that
classical work,for understanding the thaumaturgy of
the philosophical sects thaumaturgy based on
ancient Egyptian religion.According to
Jamblichus,thaumaturgy was exercised by the
ministry of secondary genii.[Reuvens
Letter
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to Letronne on the 75 th n mber of the
Papyri A nastasi.See De Mirville v.255 .]
Reuvens closes with a remark which is very
suggestive and is very important to the Occultists who
defend the antiquity and genuineness of their
documents for he says:
All that he [Jamblichus ] gives
out as theology we find as history in our papyri.
But then how deny the authenticity the
credibility and beyond all the trustworthiness of those classical
writers,who all wrote about Magic and its
Mysteries in a most worshipful spirit of admiration and
reverence?Listen to Pindarus,who exclaims:
Happy he who descends into the grave thus
initiated for he knows the end of his life and the
kingdom [The Eleusinian Fields .] given
by Jupiter.[ Fragments.ix.]
(Page 254)Or to Cicero:
Initiation not only teaches us to feel happy
in this life but also to die with better hope.[ De
Legib s.11.iv.]
Plato Pausanias,Strabo Diodorus and dozens of
others bring their evidence as to the great boon of
Initiation;all the great as well as the
partially-initiated Adepts,share the enthusiasm of Cicero.
Does not Plutarch thinking of what he had
learned in his initiation console himself for the loss
of his wife?Had he not obtained the certitude
at the Mysteries of Bacchus that the soul
[ spirit ] remains
incorruptible and that there is a hereafter ?...Aristophanes went even
further:All those who participated in the
Myseries,he says led an innocent calm and holy
life;they died looking for the light of the
Eleusinian Fields [Devachan ] while the rest could
never expect anything but eternal darkness [ ignorance?].
...And when one thinks about the importance
attached by the States to the principle and the
correct celebration of the Mysteries,to the
stipulations made in their treaties for the security of
their celebration one sees to what degree
those Mysteries had so long occupied their first and
their last thought.
It was the greatest among public as well as
private preoccupations,and this is only natural
since according to Döllinger the Eleusinian
Mysteries were viewed as the efflorescence of all
the Greek religion as the purest essence of
all its conceptions.[Judaism
and Paganism.i.
184.]
Not only conspirators were refused admittance
therein but those who had not denounced
them;traitors,perjurers,debauchees,[Frag of Styg.,ap.Stob .]...so that Porphyry could say
that:Our soul has to be at the moment of
death as it was during the Mysteries.i.e.,exempt
from any blemishes,passion envy hatred or
anger.[De Special.Legi.]
Truly
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Magic was considered a Divine Science which
led to a participation in the attributes of the
Divinity itself.[ De Mirville.v.278 279.]
Herodotus,Thales,Parmenides,Empedocles,Orpheus,Pythagoras,all
went each in his day in search
of the wisdom of Egypt s great Hierophants in
the hope of solving the problems of the universe.
Says Philo:
The Mysteries were known to unveil the secret
operations of Nature.[Isis
Unveiled.i.25 ] The
prodigies
accomplished by the priests of theurgic magic
are so well authenticated and the evidence if human
testimony is worth anything at all is so
overwhelming that rather than confess that the pagan theurgists
far outrivalled the Christians in miracles,Sir
David Brewster conceded to the former the greatest
proficiency in physics and everything that
pertains to natural philosophy.Science finds herself in a very
disagreeable dilemma ....
Magical Statues
(Page 255)Magic,says Psellus,formed the last part of
the sacerdotal science.It investigated
the nature power and quality of everything sublunary:of
the elements and their parts,of
animals,of various plants and their fruits,of
stones and herbs.In short it explored the
essence and power of everything.From hence
therefore it produced its effects.And it formed
stat es [magnetized ]which procure health and made all
various figures and things
[talismans ] which
could equally become the instruments of disease as well as of health.
Often too celestial fire is made to appear
through magic,and then statues laugh and lamps
are spontaneously enkindled.[ Isis Unveiled.I.282.283.]
This assertion of Psellus that Magic made
statues which procure health is now proven to the world to
be no dream no vain boast of a hallucinated
Theurgist.As Reuvens says it becomes history. For it is
found in the Papyrus Magiq e of Harris
and on the votive stele just mentioned.Both Chabas and De
Rougé state that:
On the eighteenth line of this very mutilated
monument is found the formula with regard to the
acquiescence of the God (Chons)who made his
consent known by a motion he imparted to
his statue.[ De Mirville.v.248 ]
There was even a dispute over it between the
two Orientalists.While M.de Rougé wanted to translate
the word Han by favour or grace
M.Chabas insisted that Han meant a movement or a sign
made by the statue.
Excesses of power abuse of knowledge and
personal ambition very often led selfish and unscrupulous
Initiates to black Magic,just as the same
causes led to precisely the same thing among Christian popes
and cardinals;and it was black Magic that led
finally to the abolition of the Mysteries,and not Christianity
as is often erroneously thought.Read Mommsen
s Roman History vol.i.and you will find that it was the
Pagans themselves who put an end to the
desecration of the Divine Science.As early as 560 B.C.the
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Romans had discovered an Occult association a
school of black Magic of the most revolting kind;it
celebrated mysteries brought from Etruria and
very soon the moral pestilence had spread all over Italy.
More than seven thousand Initiates were
prosecuted and most of them were sentenced to
death ...
Later on Titus-Livius shows us another three
thousand Initiates sentenced during a single
year for the crime of poisoning.[ De Mirville.v.281.]
(Page 256)And yet black Magic is derided and denied!
Paulthier may or may not be too enthusiastic
in saying that India appears to him as
The grand and primitive hearth of human
thought that has ended by embracing the whole
ancient world
but he was right in his idea.That primitive
thought led to Occult knowledge which is our Fifth Race is
reflected from the earliest days of the
Egyptian Pharaohs down to our modern times.Hardly a hieratic
papyrus is exhumed with the tightly swathed-up
mummies of kings and high priests that does not contain
some interesting information for the modern
students of Occultism.
All that is,of course derided Magic,the
outcome of primitive knowledge and of revelation though it was
practised in such ungodly ways by the
Atlantean Sorceres that it has since become necessary for the
subsequent Race to draw a thick veil over the
practices which were used to obtain so-called magical
effects on the psychic and on the physical
planes.In the letter no one in our century will believe the
statements,with the exception of the Roman
Catholics,and these will give the acts a satanic origin.
Nevertheless,Magic is so mixed up with the
history of the world that if the latter is ever to be written it
has to rely upon the discoveries of
Archaeology Egyptology and hieratic writings and inscriptions;if it
insists that they must be free from that
superstition of the ages it will never see the light.One can well
imagine the embarrassing position in which
serious Egyptologists,Assyriologists savants and
academicians find themselves.Forced to
translate and interpret the old papyri and the archaic
inscriptions on stelae and Babylonian
cylinders,they find themselves compelled from first to last to face
the distasteful and to them repulsive subject
of Magic,with its incantations and paraphernalia.Here they
find sober and grave narratives from the pens
of learned scribes,made up under the direct supervision of
Chaldaean or Egyptian Hierophants the most
learned among the Philosophers of antiquity.These
statements were written at the solemn hour of
the death and burial of Pharaohs,High Priests,and other
mighty ones of the land of Chemi;their purpose
was the introduction of the newly-born Osirified Soul
before the awful tribunal of the Great Judge
in the region of Amenti there where a lie was said to
outweigh the greatest crimes.Were the Scribes
and Hierophants,Pharaohs,and King Priests all fools
or frauds to have either believed in or tried
to make others believe in such cock-and-bull stories as are
found in the most respectable papyri?Yet there
is no help for it.
Romances -But True -(Page 257)Corroborated by Plato and Herodotus,by Manetho and Syncellus,as
by all the greatest and most trustworthy
authors and philosophers who wrote upon the subject those
papyri note down as seriously as they note
any history or any fact well known and accepted as to need
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no commentary whole royal dynasties of
Manes,to wit of shadows and phantoms (astral bodies),and
such feats of magic skill and such Occult
phenomena that the most credulous Occultist of our own times
would hesitate to believe them to be true.
The orientalists have found a plank of
salvation while yet publishing and delivering the papyri to the
criticism of literary Sadducees:they generally
call them romances of the days of Pharaoh So-and-So.
The idea is ingenious,if not absolutely fair.
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SECTION XXVIII
The Origin of the Mysteries
(Page 258)ALL that is explained in the preceding
Sections and a hundredfold more was taught in the
Mysteries from time immemorial.If the first
appearance of those institutions is a matter of historical
tradition with regard to some of the later
nations,their origin must certainly be assigned to the time of the
Fourth Root Race.The Mysteries were imparted
to the elect of that Race when the average Atlantean
had begun to fall too deeply into sin to be
trusted with the secrets of Nature.Their establishment is
attributed in the Secret Works to the
King-Initiates of the divine dynasties,when the Sons of God had
gradually allowed their country to become
Kookarma-des (land of vice).
The antiquity of the Mysteries may be inferred
from the history of the worship of Hercules in Egypt.This
Hercules,according to what the priests told
Herodotus,was not Grecian for he says:
Of the Grecian Hercules I could not in no part
of Egypt procure any knowledge:...the name
was never borrowed by Egypt from Greece
....Hercules,....as they [the priests ] affirm is
one of the twelve (great Gods,)who were
reproduced from the earlier eight Gods 17 000 years
before the year of Amasis.
Hercules is of Indian origin and his Biblical
chronology put aside Colonel Tod was quite right in his
suggestion that he was Balarāma or
Baladeva.Now one must read the P rānas with the Esoteric key in
one s hand in order to find out how on almost
every page they corroborate the Secret Doctrine.The
ancient classical writers so well understood
this truth that they unanimously attributed to Asia the origin of
Hercules.
A section of the Mahābhārata is devoted
to the history of the Hercūla of which race was
Vyasa....Diodorus has the same legend with
some variety.
An Instant in Heaven -(Page 259)He says:Hercules was born amongst the Indians and like the
Greeks,they furnish him with a club and lion
s hide. Both [Krishna and Baladeva ] are (lords)of the race
(cūla)of Heri (Heri-cul-es)of which the Greeks
might have made the compound Hercules.[Tod
s
Rajasthań i.28.]
The Occult Doctrine explains that Hercules was
the last incarnation of one of the seven Lords of the
Flame as Krishna s brother Baladeva.That his
incarnations occurred during the Third Fourth and Fifth
Root-Races,and that his worship was brought
into Egypt from Lanka and India by the later immigrants.
That he was borrowed by the Greeks from the
Egyptians is certain the more so as the Greeks place his
birth at Thebes,and only his twelve labours at
Argos.Now we find in the Vishn P rāna a complete
corroboration of the statement made in the
Secret Teachings,of which Purānic allegory the following is a
short summary:
Raivata a grandson of Sharyāti Manu s fourth
son finding no man worthy of his lovely daughter
repaired with her to Brahmā s region to
consult the God in this emergency.Upon his arrival Hā Hā Hāhū
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and other Gandharvas were singing before the
throne and Raivata waiting till they had done imagined
that but one Muhūrta (instant)had passed
whereas long ages had elapsed.When they had finished
Raivata prostrated himself and explained his
perplexity.Then Brahmā asked him whom he wished for a
son-in-law and upon hearing a few personages
named the Father of the World smiled and said:Of
those whom you have named the third and fourth
generation [Root-Races ] no longer survive for many
successions of ages [Chatur-Yuga or the four
Yuga cycles ] have passed away while you were listening
to our songsters.Now on earth the
twenty-eighth great age of the present Manu is nearly finished and
the Kali period is at hand.You must therefore
bestow this virgin-gem upon some other husband.For you
are now alone.
Then the Rāja Raivata is told to proceed to
Kushasthaī his ancient capital which was now Dvārakā and
where reigned in his stead a portion of the
divine being (Vishnu)in the person of Baladeva the brother of
Krishna regarded as the seventh incarnation of
Vishnu whenever Krishna is taken as a full divinity.
Being thus instructed by the Lotus-born
[Brahmā ] Raivata returned with his daughter to earth where he
found the race of men dwindled in stature [see
what is said in the Stanzas and Commentaries of the
races of mankind gradually decreasing in
stature ];...(Page 260)reduced in vigour and enfeebled in
intellect.Repairing to the city of Kushasthalī
he found it much altered Krishna had reclaimed from the
sea a portion of the country which means in
plain language that the continents had all been changed
meanwhile -and had renovated the city -or
rather built a new one Dvārakā;for one reads in the
Bhagavad P rāna [Op.cit.,ix.iii.28.] that Kushasthalī was founded and
built by Raivata within the sea;
and subsequent discoveries showed that it was
the same or on the same spot as Dvārakā.Therefore it
was on an island before.The allegory in Vishn
P rāna shows King Raivata giving his daughter to the
wielder of the ploughshare or rather the
plough-bannered Baladeva who beholding the damsel of
excessively lofty height ....shortened her
with the end of his ploughshare and she became his wife.
[Vishn P rāna.iv.i.Wilson
s translation iii.248-254.]
This is a plain allusion to the Third and
Fourth Races -to the Atlantean giants and the successive
incarnations of the Sons of the Flame and
other orders of Dhyān Chohans in the heroes and kings of
mankind down to the Kali Yuga or Black Age the
beginning of which is within historical times.Another
coincidence :Thebes is the city of a hundred gates,and Dvārakā is so
called from its many gateways or
doors,from the word Dvāra gateway. Both
Hercules and Baladeva are of a passionate hot temper
and both are renowned for the fairness of
their white skins.There is not the slightest doubt that Hercules
is Baladeva in Greek dress.Arrian notices the
great similarity between the Theban and the Hindu
Hercules,the latter being worshipped by the
Suraseni who built Methorea or Mathūrā Krishna s
birthplace.The same writer places Sandracottus
(Chandragupta the grandfather of King Asoka of the
clan of Morya)in the direct line of the
descendants of Baladeva.
There were no Mysteries in the beginning we
are taught.Knowledge (Vidyā)was common property and
it reigned universally throughout the Golden
Age (Satya Yuga).As says the Commentary:
Men had not created evil yet in those days
of bliss and p rity,for they were of God-like more
than of h man nat re.
But when mankind rapidly increasing in
numbers,increased also in variety of idiosyncrasies of body and
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mind then incarnated Spirit showed its
weakness.Natural exaggerations,and along with these
superstitions,arose in the less cultured and
healthy minds.
Growth of Popular Beliefs -(Page 261)Selfishness was born out of desires and
passions hitherto
unknown and but too often knowledge and power
were abused until finally it became necessary to limit
the number of those who knew.Thus arose
Initiation.
Every separate nation now arranged for itself
a religious system according to its enlightenment and
spiritual wants.Worship of mere form being
discarded by the wise men these confined true knowledge
to the very few.The need of veiling truth to
protect it from desecration becoming more apparent with
every generation a thin veil was used at first
which had to be gradually thickened according to the
spread of personality and selfishness,and this
led to the Mysteries.They came to be established in
every country and among every people while to
avoid strife and misunderstanding exoteric beliefs were
allowed to grow up in the minds of the profane
masses.Inoffensive and innocent in their incipient stage
like a historical event arranged in the form
of a fairy tale adapted for and comprehensible to the child s
mind in those distant ages such beliefs could
be allowed to grow and make the popular faith without
any danger to the more philosophical and
abstruse truths taught in the sanctuaries.Logical and scientific
observation of the phenomena in Nature which
alone leads man to the knowledge of eternal truths
provided he approaches the threshold of
observation unbiassed by preconception and sees with his
spiritual eye before he looks at things from
their physical aspect does not lie within the province of the
masses.The marvels of the One Spirit of Truth
the ever-concealed and inaccessible Deity can be
unravelled and assimilated only through Its
manifestations by the secondary Gods,Its acting powers.
While the One and Universal Cause has to
remain for ever in abscondito Its manifold action may be
traced through the effects in Nature.The
latter alone being comprehensible and manifest to average
mankind the Powers causing those effects were
allowed to grow in the imagination of the populace.
Ages later in the Fifth the Aryan Race some
unscrupulous priests began to take advantage of the too-
easy beliefs of the people in every country
and finally raised those secondary Powers to the rank of God
and Gods,thus succeeding in isolating them
altogether from the One Universal Cause of all causes.
[There were no Brāhmans as a hereditary caste in days of
old.In those long-departed ages a man
became a Brāhman through personal merit and
Initiation.Gradually however despotism crept in and
the son of a Brāhman was created a Brāhman by
right of protection first then by that of heredity.The
rights of blood replaced those of real merit
and thus arose the body of Brāhmans which was soon
changed into a powerful caste.]
(Page 262)Henceforward the knowledge of the primeval
truths remained entirely in the hands of the
Initiates.
The Mysteries had their weak points and their
defects,as every institution welded with the human
element must necessarily have.Yet Voltaire has
characterised their benefits in a few words:
In the chaos of popular superstitions there
existed an institution which has ever prevented
man from falling into absolute brutality:it
was that of the Mysteries.
Verily as Ragon puts it of Masonry;
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Its temple has Time for duration the Universe
for space ....Let us divide that we may rule have said
the crafty;Let us unite to resist have said
the first Masons.[Des
Initiations Anciennes et Modernes.
The mysteries, says Ragon were the gift of
India. In this he is mistaken for the Āryan race had
brought the mysteries of Initiation from
Atlantis.Nevertheless he is right in saying that the mysteries
preceded all civilisations,and that by
polishing the mind and morals of the peoples they served as a base
for all the laws civil political and
religious.]
Or rather the Initiates whom the Masons have
never ceased to claim as their primitive and direct
Masters.The first and fundamental principle of
moral strength and power is association and solidarity of
thought and purpose.The Sons of Will and Yoga
united in the beginning to resist the terrible and ever-
growing iniquities of the left-hand Adepts the
Atlanteans.This led to the foundation of still more Secret
Schools,temples of learning and of Mysteries
inaccessible to all except after the most terrible trials and
probations.
Anything that might be said of the earliest
Adepts and their divine Masters would be regarded as fiction.It
is necessary therefore if we would know
something of the primitive Initiates to judge of the tree by its
fruits;to examine the bearing and the work of
their successors in the Fifth Race as reflected in the works
of the classic writers and the great
philosophers.How were Initiation and the Initiates regarded during
some 2 000 years by the Greek and Roman
writers?Cicero informs his readers in very clear terms.He
says:
An Initiate must practise all the virtues in
his power:justice fidelity liberality modesty
temperance;these virtues cause men to forget
the talents that he may lack.[De
Off.,i.e.33 .]
Ragon says"
When the Egyptian priests said:All for the
people nothing through the people they were
right:in an ignorant nation truth must be
revealed only to trustworthy persons ....We have
seen in our days,all through the people
nothing for the people a false and dangerous
system.The real axiom ought to be:All for the
people and with the people. [ Des
Initiations,
p22.]
A True Priesthood -(Page 263)But in order to achieve this reform the masses have to pass
through a
dual transformation:(a)to become divorced from
every element of exoteric superstition and priestcraft
and (b)to become educated men free from every
danger of being enslaved whether by a man or an
idea.
This,in view of the preceding may seem
paradoxical.The Initiates were priests, we may be told at
any rate all the Hindu Egyptian Chaldaean
Greek,Phoenician and other Hierophants and Adepts were
priests in the temples,and it was they who
invented their respective exoteric creeds.To this the answer
is possible:The cowl does not make the
friar. If one may believe tradition and the unanimous opinion of
ancient writers,added to the examples we have
in the priests of India the most conservative nation in
the world it becomes quite certain that the
Egyptian priests were no more priests in the sense we give to
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the word than are the temple Brāhmans.They
could never be regarded as such if we take as our
standard the European clergy.Laurens observes
very correctly that:
The priests of Egypt were not strictly
speaking ministers of religion.The word priest which translation
has been badly interpreted had an acceptation
very different from the one that is applied to it among us.
In the language of antiquity and especially in
the sense of the initiation of the priests of ancient Egypt
the word priest is synonymous with that of
philosopher.....The institution of the Egyptian priests
seems to have been really a confederation of
sages gathered to study the art of ruling men to centre the
domain of truth modulate its propagation and
arrest its too dangerous dispersion.[ Essais
Historiq es
sur la Franc-Maēonnerie,pp.142.143.]
The Egyptian Priests,like the Brāhmans of old
held the reins of the governing powers a system that
descended to them by direct inheritance from
the Initiates of the great Atlantis.The pure cult of Nature in
the earliest patriarchal days the word
patriarch applying in its first original sense to the Progenitors of
the human race [The word patriarch is composed of the Greek word Patria
(family. tribe or
nation )and Archos (a chief ,the
paternal principle.The Jewish Patriarchs who were pastors,passed
their name to the Christian Patriarchs,yet
they were no priests,but were simply the heads of their tribes,
like the Indian Rishis.] the Fathers,Chiefs,and Instructors of primitive men became the
heirloom of
those (Page 264)alone who could discern the noumenon beneath the phenomenon.Later
the Initiates
transmitted their knowledge to the human
kings,as their divine Masters had passed it to their forefathers.
It was their prerogative and duty to reveal
the secrets of Nature that were useful to mankind the hidden
virtues of plants,the art of healing the
sick,and of bringing about brotherly love and mutual help among
mankind.No Initiate was one if he could not
heal aye recall to life from apparent death (coma)those
who too long neglected would have indeed died
during their lethargy.[There is
no need to observe here
that the resurrection of a really dead body is
an impossibility in Nature.] Those
who showed such powers
were forthwith set above the crowds,and were
regarded as Kings and Initiates .Gautama Buddha was a
King-Initiate a healer and recalled to life
those who were in the hands of death.Jesus and Apollonius
were healers,and were both addressed as Kings
by their followers.Had they failed to raise those who
were to all intents and purposes the dead none
of their names would have passed down to posterity;for
this was the first and crucial test the
certain sign that the Adept had upon Him the invisible hand of a
primordial divine Master or was an incarnation
of one of the Gods.
The later royal privilege descended to our
Fifth Race kings through the kings of Egypt.The latter were all
initiated into the mysteries of medicine and
they healed the sick,even when owing to the terrible trials
and labours of final Initiation they were
unable to become full Hierophants.They were healers by
privilege and by tradition and were assisted
in the healing art by the Hierophants of the temples,when
they themselves were ignorant of Occult
curative Science.So also in far later historical times we find
Pyrrhus curing the sick by simply touching
them with his foot;Vespasian and Hadrian needed only to
pronounce a few words taught to them by their
Hierophants,in order to restore sight to the blind and
health to the cripple.From that time onward
history has recorded cases of the same privilege conferred
on the emperors and kings of almost every
nation.[The kings of Hungary
claimed that they could cure
the jaundice;the Dukes of Burgandy were
credited with preserving people from the plague;the kings of
Spain delivered those possessed by the
devil.The prerogative of curing the king s evil was given to the
kings of France in reward for the virtues of
good King Robert.Francis the First during a short stay at
Marseilles for his son s wedding touched and
cured of that disease upwards of 500 persons.The kings
of England had the same privilege.]
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The Egyptian Priests -(Page 265)That which is known of the Priests of Egypt and of the
ancient
Brāmans,corroborated as it is by all the
ancient classics and historical writers,gives us the right to
believe in that which is only traditional in
the opinion of sceptics.Whence the wonderful knowledge of the
Egyptian Priests in every department of
Science unless they had it from a still more ancient source?The
famous Four the seats of learning in old
Egypt are more historically certain than the beginnings of
modern England.It was in the great Theban
sanctuary that Pythagoras upon his arrival from India
studied the Science of Occult numbers.It was
in Memphis that Orpheus popularized his too-abstruse
Indian metaphysics for the use of Magna
Grecia;and thence Thales,and ages later Democritus,
obtained all they knew.It is to Saļs that all
the honour must be given of the wonderful legislation and the
art of ruling people imparted by its Priests
to Lycurgus and Solon who will both remain objects of
admiration for generations to come.And had
Plato and Eudoxus never gone to worship at the shrine of
Heliopolis,most probably the one would have
never astonished future generations with his ethics,nor the
other with his wonderful knowledge of
mathematics.[ See Laurens Essais
Historiq es for further
information as to the world-wide universal
knowledge of the Egyptian Priests .]
The great modern writer on the Mysteries of
Egyptian Initiation one however who knew nothing of
those in India the late Ragon has not
exaggerated in maintaining that:
All the notions possessed by Hindustan Persia
Syria Arabia Chaldaea Sydonia and the
priests of Babylonia [on the secrets of Nature
] was known to the Egyptian priests.It is thus
Indian philosophy without mysteries,which
having penetrated into Chaldaea and ancient
Persia gave rise to the doctrine of Egyptian
Mysteries.[Des Initiations.p.24
.]
The Mysteries preceded the hieroglyphics.[The word comes from the Greek hieros
(sacred )and
glupho ( I grave ).The Egyptian characters
were sacred to the Gods,as the Indian Devanāgarī is the
language of the Gods.]They gave birth to the latter as permanent records were needed to
preserve and
commemorate their secrets.It is primitive
Philosophy [The same author had
(as Occultists have)a very
reasonable objection to the modern etymology
of the word philosophy which is interpreted love of
wisdom and is nothing of the kind.The
philosophers were scientists,and philosophy was a real science
not simply verbiage as it is in our day.The
term is composed of two Greek words whose meaning is
intended to convey its secret sense and ought
to be interpreted as wisdom of love. Now it is in the last
word love that lies hidden the esoteric
significance:for love does not stand here as a noun nor does
it mean affection or fondness.but is the
term used for Eros,that primordial principle in divine creation
synonymous with ÷óöļę the abstract desire in
Nature for procreation resulting in an everlasting series of
phenomena.It means divine love that
universal element of divine omnipresence spread throughout
Nature and which is at once the chief cause
and effect.The wisdom of love (or philosophia )meant
attraction to and love of everything hidden
beneath objective phenomena and the knowledge thereof.
Philosophy meant the highest Adeptship love
of and assimilation with Deity.In his modesty Pythagoras
even refused to be called a Philosopher (or
one who knows every hidden thing in things visible:cause
and effect or absolute truth),and called
himself simply a Sage an aspirant to philosophy or to Wisdom
of Love love in its exoteric meaning being as
degraded by men then as it is now by its purely terrestrial
application.] that has served as the (Page 266)foundation-stone for modern philosophy;only the progeny
while perpetuating the features of the
external body has lost on its way the Soul and Spirit of its parent.
Initiation though it contained neither rules
and principles,nor any special teaching of Science as now
understood was nevertheless Science and the
Science of sciences.And though devoid of dogma of
physical discipline and of exclusive ritual it
was yet the one true Religion that of eternal truth.
Outwardly it was a school a college wherein
were taught sciences,arts ethics,legislation philanthropy
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the cult of the true and real nature of cosmic
phenomena;secretly during the mysteries,practical proofs
of the latter were given.Those who could learn
on all things i.e.,those who could look the great Isis in
her unveiled face and bear the awful majesty
of the Goddess became Initiates.But the children of the
Fifth Race had fallen too deeply into matter
always to do so with impunity.Those who failed disappeared
from the world without leaving a trace
behind.Which of the highest kings would have dared to claim any
individual however high his social standing
from the stern priests once that the victim had crossed the
threshold of their sacred Adytum?
The noble precepts taught by the Initiates of
the early races passed to India Egypt and Greece to China
and Chaldaea and thus spread all over the
world.All that is good noble and grand in human nature
every divine faculty and aspiration were
cultured by the Priest-Philosophers who sought to develop them
in their Initiates.Their code of ethics,based
on altruism has become universal.It is found in Confucius,
the atheist who taught that he who loves
not his brother has no virtue in him and in the Old
Testament precept Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.[Lev.,xix.18.] The greater Initiates
became like unto Gods,and Socrates,in Plato s
Phaedo is represented as saying:
The Initiates are sure to come into the
company of the Gods.
Revealing and Reveiling -(Page 267)In the same work the great Athenian Sage is
made to say:
It is quite apparent that those who have
established the Mysteries,or the secret assemblies of
the Initiates,were no mean persons,but
powerful genii who from the first ages had
endeavoured to make us understand under those
enigmas that he who will reach the invisible
regions unpurified will be hurled into the
abyss [the Eighth Sphere of the
Occult Doctrine;that
is,he will lose his personality for ever ] while he who will attain them purged
of the
maculations of this world and accomplished in
virtues,will be received in the abode of the
Gods.
Said Clemens Alexandrinus,referring to the
Mysteries:
Here ends all teaching.One sees Nature and all
things.
A Christian Father of the Church speaks then
as did the Pagan Pretextatus,the pro-consul of Achaia
(fourth century A.D.) a man of eminent
virtues,who remarked that to deprive the Greeks of the sacred
Mysteries which bind in one the whole of
mankind was to render their very lives worthless to them.
Would the Mysteries have ever obtained the
highest praise from the noblest men of antiquity had they
not been of more than human origin?Read all
that is said of this unparalleled institution as much by
those who had never been initiated as by the
Initiates themselves.Consult Plato Euripides,Socrates,
Aristophanes,Pindar Plutarch
Isocrates,Diodorus,Cicero Epictetus,Marcus Aurelius,not to name
dozens of other famous Sages and writers.That
which the Gods and Angels had revealed exoteric
religions,beginning with that moses,reveiled
and hid for ages from the sight of the world.Joseph the
son of Jacob was an Initiate otherwise he
would not have married Aseneth the daughter of Petephre
(Potiphar he who belongs to Phre the
Sun-God),priest of Heliopolis and governor of On.[On the
Sun the Egyptian name of Heliopolis (the
City of the Sun )].Every truth
revealed by Jesus,and which
even the Jews and early Christians understood
was reviled by the Church that pretends to serve Him.
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Read what Seneca says,as quoted by Dr.Kenealy:
"The world being melted and having
reėntered the bosom of Jupiter [or
Parabrahman ] ,this
God continues for some time totally concentred
in himself and remains concealed as it were
wholly immersed in the contemplation of his
own ideas.Afterwards we see a new world spring
from him ....An innocent race of men is
formed.And again speaking of mundane dissolution
as involving the destruction or death of all
he [Seneca ] teaches us that when the laws of
Nature shall be buried in ruin and the last day
of the world shall come the Southern Pole shall
crush as it falls,all the regions of
Africa;and the North Pole shall overwhelm all the countries
beneath its axis.The affrighted s n shall
be deprived of its light:(Page 268)the palace of
heaven falling to decay shall produce at once
both life and death and some kind of
dissolution shall equally seize upon all the
deities,who thus shall return to their original chaos.
[Book of God,p.160.]
One might fancy oneself reading the Purānic
account by Parąshara of the great Pralaya.It is nearly the
same thing idea for idea.Has Christianity
nothing of the kind?Let the reader open any English Bible and
read chapter iii of the Second Epistle of
Peter and he will find there the same ideas.
There shall come in the last days
scoffers,....saying Where is the promise of his coming?
For since the fathers fell asleep all things
continue as they were from the beginning of the
creation.For this they willingly are ignorant
of that by the word of God the heavens were of
old and the earth standing out of the water
and in the water:whereby the world that then was
being overflowed with water perished.But the
heavens and the earth which are now by the
same word are ....reserved unto fire ....in
the which the heavens shall pass away with a
great noise and the elements shall melt with
fervent heat...Nevertheless we ....look for
new heavens and a new earth.
If the interpreters chose to see in this a
reference to a creation a deluge and a promised coming of
Christ when they will live in a New Jerusalem
in heaven that is no fault of Peter.What he meant was the
destruction of the Fifth Race and the
appearance of a new continent for the Sixth Race.
The Druids understood the meaning of the Sun
in Taurus,therefore when all the fires were extinguished
on the 1 st of November their sacred and
inextinguishable fire remained alone to illumine the horizon like
those of the Magi and the modern
Zoroastrian.And like the early Fifth Race and the later Chaldaeans
and Greeks,and again like the Christians (who
do it to this day without suspecting the real meaning),
they greeted the Morning-Star the beautiful
Venus-Lucifer.[Mr Kenealy
quotes,in his Book of God
Vallancey who says: I had not been a week
landed in Ireland from Gibraltar where I had studied
Hebrew and Chaldaic under Jews of various
countries,when I heard a peasant girl say to a boor
standing by her Feach an Maddin Nag (Behold
the morning star)pointing to the planet Venus,the
Maddena Nag of the Chaldeans.] Strabo speaks of an island near
Britannia where Ceres and
Persephone were worshipped with the same rites
as in Samothrace and this was the sacred Ierna
where a perpetual fire was lit.The Druids
believed in the rebirth of man not as Lucian explains,
That the same Spirit shall animate a
new body not here but in a different world
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but in a series of reļncarnations in this same
world;for as Diodorus says,they declared that the souls of
men after a determinate period would pass into
other bodies.[There was a time
when the whole world
the totality of mankind had one religion as
they were of one lip.All the religions of the earth were at
first one and emanated from one centre.says
Faber.]
Atlanteans Degenerating -(Page 269)These tenets came to the Fifth Race Aryans
from their ancestors
of the Fourth Race the Atlanteans.They piously
preserved the teachings,while their parent Root-Race
becoming with every generation more arrogant
owing to the acquisition of superhuman powers,were
gradually approaching their end.
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SECTION XXIX
The Trial of the Sun Initiate
(Page 270)WE will begin with the ancient Mysteries
those received from the Atlanteans by the primitive
Äryans whose mental and intellectual state
Professor Max Müller has described with such a masterly
hand yet left so incomplete withal.
He says:We have in it [ in the Rig Veda ]
a period of the intellectual life of man to which there is no
parallel in any other part of the world.In the
hymns of the Veda we see man left to himself to solve the
riddle of this world....He invokes the gods
around him he praises,he worships them.But still with all
these gods ....beneath him and above him the
early poet seems ill at rest within himself.There too in
his own breast he has discovered a power that
is never mute when he prays,never absent when he
fears and trembles.It seems to inspire his
prayers and yet to listen to them;it seems to live in him and
yet to support him and all around him.The only
name he can find for this mysterious power is Brahman;
for brahman meant originally force will wish
and the propulsive power of creation.But this impersonal
brahman too as soon as it is named grows into
something strange and divine.It ends by being one of
many gods,one of the great triad worshipped to
the present day.And still the thought within him has no
real name;that power which is nothing but
itself which supports the gods,the heavens,and every living
being floats before his mind conceived but not
expressed.At last he calls it Ćtman for ātman originally
breath or spirit comes to mean Self and Self
alone whether divine or human;Self whether creating of
suffering;Self whether One or All;but always
Self independent and free.Who has seen the first-born?
says the poet when he who has no bones (i.e.,form)bore
him that had bones?Where was the life the
blood the Self of the world?Who went to ask
this from any one who knew it? (Rig Veda I 164 4.)This
idea of a divine Self once expressed
everything else must acknowledge its supremacy;Self is the Lord
of all things;it is the King of all things;as
all the spokes of a wheel are contained in the nave and
circumference all things are contained in this
Self;all selves are contained in this Self . (Brihadāranyaka
IV.v.15).[Chips from a German Workshop i.69.70.]
Vishvakarma and Vikarttana -(Page 271)This Self the highest the one and the
universal was
symbolised on the plane of mortals by the Sun
its life-giving effulgence being in its turn the emblem of
the Soul killing the terrestrial passions
which have ever been an impediment to the re-union of the Unit
Self (the Spirit)with the All-Self.Hence the
allegorical mystery only the broad features of which may be
given here.It was enacted by the Sons of the
Fire-Mist and of Light.The second Sun (the second
hypostasis of Rabbi Drach)appeared as put on
his trial Vishvakarma the Hierophant cutting off seven
of his beams,and replacing them with a crown
of brambles,when the Sun became Vikarttana shorn of
his beams or rays.After that the Sun enacted
by a neophyte ready to be initiated was made to
descend into Pātāla the nether regions,on a
trial of Tantalus.Coming out of it triumphant he emerged
from this region of lust and iniquity to
re-become Karmasākshin witness of the Karma of men [Sūrya
the Sun is one of the nine divinities that
witness all human actions.] and
arose once more triumphant in
all the glory of his regeneration as the
Graha-Rājah King of the Constellations,and was addressed as
Gabhastiman re-possessed of his rays.
The fable in the popular Pantheon of India
founded upon and born out of the poetical mysticism of the
Rig-Veda the sayings of which were mostly all dramatised during the religious
Mysteries grew in the
course of its exoteric evolution into the
following allegory.It may be found now in several of the P rānas
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and in other Scriptures.In the Rig-Veda and
its Hymns,Vishvakarma a Mystery-God is the Logos,the
Demiurgos,one of the greatest Gods,and spoken
of in two of the hymns as the highest.He is the
Omnificent (Vishvakarma)called the Great
Architect of the Universe the
All seeing God ....the father the generator
the disposer who gives the gods their names,
and is beyond the comprehension of mortals,
as is every Mystery-God.Esoterically He is the
personification of the creative manifested Power;and
mystically He is the seventh principle in man
in its collectivity.For He is the son of Bhuvana the self-
created luminous Essence and of the
virtuous,chaste and lovely Yoga-Siddhā the virgin Goddess,
whose name speaks for itself since it
personified Yoga-power the chaste mother that creates the
Adepts.In the Rig-Vaidic Hymns,Vishvakarma
performs the great sacrifice i.e.,sacrifices himself for
the world;or as the Nir kta is made to
say translated by the Orientalists:
(Page 272)Vishvakarma first of all offers up all the
world in a sacrifice and then ends by
sacrificing himself
In the mystical representations of his
character Vishvakarma is often called Vittoba and is pictured as
the Victim the Man-God or the Avatąra
crucified in space.
[Of the true Mysteries,the real Initiations,nothing of course
can be said in public:they can be known
only to those who are able to experience
them.But a few hints can be given of the great ceremonial
Mysteries of Antiquity which stood to the
public as the real Mysteries,and into which candidates were
initiated with much ceremony and display of
Occult Arts.Behind these in silence and darkness,were the
true Mysteries,as they have always existed and
continue to exist.In Egypt as in Chaldaea and later in
Greece the Mysteries were celebrated at stated
times,and the first day was a public holiday on which
with much pomp the candidates were escorted to
the Great Pyramid and passed thereinto out of sight.
The second day was devoted to ceremonies of
purification at the close of which the candidate was
presented with a white robe;on the third day ] [There is a gap in H.P.B s MS.and
the paragraph in
brackets supplies what was missing.A.B .] he was tried and examined as to his
proficiency in Occult
learning.On the fourth day after another
ceremony symbolical of purification he was sent alone to pass
through various trials,finally becoming
entranced in a subterranean crypt in utter darkness,for two days
and two nights.In Egypt the entranced neophyte
was placed in an empty sarcophagus in the Pyramid
where the initiatory rites took place.In India
and Central Asia he was bound on a lathe and when his
body had become like that of one dead
(entranced),he was carried into the crypt.Then the Hierophant
kept watch over him guiding the apparitional
soul (astral body)from this world of Samsąra (or delusion)
to the nether kingdoms,from which if
successful he had the right of releasing seven suffering so ls
(Elementaries).Clothed with his
Anandamayakosha the body of bliss the Srotāpanna remained there
where we have no right to follow him and upon
returning received the Word with or without the heart s
blood of the Hierophant.[ In Isis Unveiled Vol.II.pp.41
42 a portion of this rite is referred to.Speaking
of the dogma of Atonement it is traced to
ancient heathendom again.We say:This cornerstone of a
church which had believed herself built on a
firm rock for long centuries,is now excavated by science
and proved to come from the Gnostics.Professor
Draper shows it as hardly known in the days of
Tertullian and as having originated among the
Gnostic heretics (see Conflict Between Religion and
Science,p.224)....But
there are sufficient proofs to show that it originated among them no
more than
did their anointed Christos and Sophia.The
former they modelled on the original of the King Messiah the
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male principle of wisdom and the latter on the
third Sephiroth from the Chaldaean Kabalah,and even
from the Hindu Brahmā and Sarasvati and the
Pagan Dionysius and Demeter.And here we are on firm
ground if it were only because it is now
proved that the New Testament never appeared in its complete
form such as we find it now till 300 years
after the period of the apostles,and the Zohar and other
Kabalistic books are found to belong to the
first century before our era if not to be far older still.
The Gnostics entertained many of the Essenean
ideas;and the Essenes had their greater and minor
Mysteries at least two centuries before our
era.They were the Isarim or Initiates,the descendants of the
Egyptian Hierophants in whose country they had
been settled for several centuries before they were
converted to Buddhistic monasticism by the
missionaries of King Asoka and amalgamated later with the
earliest Christians;and they existed probably
before the old Egyptian temples were desecrated and
ruined in the incessant invasions of
Persians,Greeks and other conquering hordes.The hierophants had
their atonement enacted in the Mystery of
Initiation ages before the Gnostics,or even the Essenes,had
appeared.It was known among hierophants as the
Baptism of Blood and was considered not as an
atonement for the fall of man in Eden but
simply as an expiation for the past present and future sins of
ignorant but nevertheless polluted mankind.The
hierophant had the option of either offering his pure and
sinless life as a sacrifice for his race to
the gods whom he hoped to rejoin or an animal victim.The
former depended entirely on their own will.At
the last moment of the solemn new birth the Initiator
passed the word to the initiated and
immediately after the latter had a weapon placed in his right hand
and was ordered to strike .This is the
true origin of the Christian dogma of atonement.
As Ballanche says quoted by Ragon:Destruction
is the great God of the World justifying therefore the
philosophical conception of the Hindu
Shiva.According to this immutable and sacred law the Initiate was
compelled to kill the Initiator:otherwise
initiation remained incomplete ....It is death that generates life.
Orthodoxie maēonniq e,p.104.All that however was emblematic and exoteric.Weapon
and killing
must be understood in their allegorical sense.]
The Transmission of Light -(Page 273)Only in truth the Hierophant was never killed
neither in India
nor elsewhere the murder being simply feigned
unless the Initiator had chosen the Initiate for his
successor and had decided to pass to him the
last and supreme WORD after which he had to die only
one man in a nation having the right to know
that word.Many are those grand Initiates who have thus
passed out of the world s sight disappearing.
As mysteriously from the sight of men as Moses
from the top of Mount Pisgah (Nebo oracular
Wisdom),after he had laid his hands upon
Joshua who thus became full of the spirit of
wisdom;i.e.,initiated.
But he died he was not killed.For killing if
really done would belong to black,not to divine Magic.It is
the transmission of light rather than a
transfer of life of life spiritual and divine and it is the shedding of
Wisdom not of blood.But the initiated inventors
of theological Christianity took the allegorical language ą
la lettre ;and instituted a dogma the crude misunderstood expression
of which horrifies and repels the
spiritual heathen.
All these Hierophants and Initiates were types
of the Sun and of the Creative Principle (spiritual potency)
as were Vishvakarma and Vikarttana (Page 274)from the origin of the Mysteries.Ragon the
famous
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Mason gives curious details and explanations
with regard to the Sun rites.He shows that the biblical
Hiram the great hero of Masonry (the widow s
son )a type taken from Osiris,is the Sun-God the
inventor of arts,and the architect the name
Hiram meaning the elevated a title belonging to the Sun.
Every Occultist knows how closely related to
Osiris and the Pyramids are the narratives in Kings
concerning Solomon his Temple and its
construction;he knows also that the whole of the Masonic rite of
Initiation is based upon the Biblical allegory
of the construction of that Temple Masons conveniently
forgetting or perhaps ignoring the fact that
the latter narrative is modelled upon Egyptian and still earlier
symbolisms.Ragon explains it by showing that
the three companions of Hiram the three murderers,
typify the three last months of the year;and
that Hiram stands for the Sun from its summer solstice
downwards when it begins decreasing the whole
rite being an astronomical allegory.
During the summer solstice the Sun provokes
songs of gratitude from all that breathes;hence
Hiram who represents it can give to whomsoever
has the right to it the sacred Word that is
to say life.When the Sun descends to the
inferior signs all Nature becomes mute and Hiram
can no longer give the sacred Word to the
companions,who represent the three inert months
of the year.The first companion strikes Hiram
feebly with a rule twenty-four inches long
symbol of the twenty-four hours which make up each
diurnal revolution;it is the first
distribution of time which afer the exaltation
of the mighty star feebly assails his existence
giving him the first blow.The second companion
strikes him with an iron sq are symbol of the
last season figured by the intersections of
two right lines,which would divide into four equal
parts the Zodiacal circle whose centre
symbolises Hiram s heart where it touches the point of
the four squares representing the four
seasons;second distribution of time which at that
period strikes a heavier blow at the solar
existence.The third companion strikes him mortally
on his forehead with a heavy blow of his
mallet whose cylindrical form symbolises the year
the ring or circle:third distribution of time
the accomplishment of which deals the last blow to
the existence of the expiring Sun.From
this interpretation it has been inferred that Hiram,a
fo nder of
metals,the hero of the new legend with the title of architect is Osiris
(the Sun)of
modern initiation;that Isis his widow
is the Lodge,the emblem of the Earth (loka in Sanskrit
the world)and that Horus,son of Osiris
(or of light)and the widow s son is the free Mason,
that is to say the Initiate who
inhabits the terrestrial lodge (the child of the Widow,and of
Light.)[Orthodoxie maēonniq e.pp.102-104
]
And here again our friend the Jesuits have to
be mentioned for the above rite is of their making.To give
one instance of their success in throwing dust
into the eyes of ordinary individuals to prevent their seeing
the truths of Occultism we will point out what
they did in what is now called Freemasonry.
Masonry and the Jesuits -(Page 275)This Brotherhood does possess a considerable
portion of the
symbolism formulae and ritual of Occultism
handed down from time immemorial from the primeval
Initiations.To render this Brotherhood a mere
harmless negation the Jesuits sent some of their most
able emissaries into the Order who first made
the simple brethren believe that the true secret was lost
with Hiram Abiff;and then induced them to put
this belief into their formularies.They then invented
specious but spurious higher
degrees,pretending to give further light upon this lost secret to lead the
candidate on and amuse him with forms borrowed
from the real thing but containing no substance and
all artfully contrived to lead the aspiring
Neophyte to nowhere.And yet men of good sense and abilities,
in other respects,will meet at intervals,and
with solemn face zeal and earnestness,go through the
mockery of revealing substituted secrets
instead of the real thing.
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If the reader turns to a very remarkable and
very useful work called The Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia Art
Rosicrucianism he will find its author a
high and learned Mason showing what the Jesuits have done
to destroy Masonry.Speaking of the period when
the existence of this mysterious Brotherhood (of which
many pretend to know something if not a good
deal and know in fact nothing)was first made known
he says:
There was a dread among the great masses of
society in byegone days of the unseen a
dread as recent events and phenomena show very
clearly not yet overcome in its entirety.
Hence students of Nature and mind were forced
into an obscurity not altogether
unwelcome....The Kabalistic reveries of a
Johann Reuchlin led to the fiery action of a Luther
and the patient labours of Trittenheim
produced the modern system of diplomatic cipher
writing.....It is very worthy of remark,that
one particular century and that in which the
Rosicrucians first showed themselves,is
distinguished in history as the era in which most of
these efforts at throwing off the trammels of
the past [Popery and
Ecclesiasticism ] occurred.
Hence the opposition of the losing party and
their virulence against anything mysterious or
unknown.They freely organised
pseudo-Rosicrucian and Masonic societies in return;and
these societies were instructed to irregularly
entrap the weaker brethren of the True and
Invisible Order and then triumphantly betray
anything they may be so inconsiderate as to
communicate to the superiors of these
transitory and unmeaning associations.Every wile was
adopted to the authorities,fighting in
self-defence against the progress of truth to engage by
persuasion interest or terror such as might be
cajoled into receiving the Pope as Master
when (Page 276)gained as many converts to that faith know but dare not own
they are treated
with neglect and left to battle of life as
best they may not even being admitted to the
knowledge of such miserable aporrheta as the
Romish faith considers itself entitled to
withhold.
But if Masonry has been spoiled none is able
to crush the real invisible Rosicrucian and the Eastern
Initiate.The symbolism of Vishvakarma and
Sūrya Vikarttana has survived where Hiram Abiff was
indeed murdered and we will now return to
it.It is not simply an astronomical but is the most solemn
rite an inheritance from the Archaic Mysteries
that has crossed the ages and is used to this day.It
typifies a whole drama of the Cycle of Life of
progressive incarnations,and of psychic as well as of
physiological secrets,of which neither the
Church nor Science knows anything though it is this rite that
has led the former to the greatest of its
Christian Mysteries.
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SECTION XXX
The Mystery Sun of Initiation
(Page 277)THE antiquity of the Secret Doctrine may be
better realised when it is shown at what point of
history its Mysteries had already been
desecrated by being made subservient to the personal ambition
of despot-ruler and crafty priest.These
profoundly philosophical and scientifically composed religious
dramas,in which were enacted the grandest
truths of the Occult or Spiritual Universe and the hidden lore
of learning and become subject to persecution
long before the days when Plato and even Pythagoras
flourished.Withal primal revelations given to
Mankind have not died with the Mysteries;they are still
preserved as heirlooms for future and more
spiritual generations.
It has been already stated in Isis Unveiled,[Op.cit.,i.15.] that so far back in the days of
Aristotle the
great Mysteries had already lost their
primitive grandeur and solemnity.Their rites had fallen into
desuetude and they had to a great degree
degenerated into mere priestly speculations and had become
religious shams.It is useless to state when
they first appeared in Europe and Greece since recognised
history may almost be said to begin with
Aristotle everything before him appearing to be in an
inextricable chronological confusion.Suffice
it to say that in Egypt the Mysteries had been known since
the days of Menes,and that the Greeks received
them only when Orpheus introduced them from India.In
an article Was writing known before Pānini? [Five Years of Theosophy p.258.A
curious question to
start and to deny when it is well-known even
to the Orientalists that to take but one case there is Yaska
who was a predecessor of Pānini and his work
still exists;there are seventeen writers of Nirukta
(glossary)known to have prescribed Yaska.] it is stated that the Pāndus had
acquired universal dominion
and had taught the sacrificial Mysteries to
other races as far back as 3 300 B.C.Indeed when Orpheus,
the son of Apollo or Helios,received from his
father the phorminx the seven-stringed lyre symbolical of
the sevenfold mystery (Page 278)of Initiation these Mysteries were already
hoary with age in Central.
Asia and India.According to Herodotus it was
Orpheus who brought them from India and Orpheus is far
anterior to Homer and Hesiod.Thus even in the
days of Aristotle few were the true Adepts left in Europe
and even in Egypt.The heirs of those who had
been dispersed by the conquering swords of various
invaders of old Egypt had been dispersed in
their turn.As 8 000 or 9 000 years earlier the stream of
knowledge had been slowly running down from
the tablelands of Central Asia into India and towards
Europe and Northern Africa so about 500 years
B.C.it had begun to flow backward to its old home and
birthplace.During the two thousand subsequent
years the knowledge of the existence of great Adepts
nearly died out in Europe.Nevertheless,in some
secret places the Mysteries were still enacted in all their
primitive purity.The Sun of Righteousness
still blazed high on the midnight sky ;and while darkness
was upon the face of the profane world there
was the eternal light in the Adyta on the nights of Initiation.
The true Mysteries were never made
public.Eleusinia and Agrae for the multitudes;the God Åõāļõėē
of the good counsel the great Orphic Deity
for the neophyte.
This mystery God mistaken by our Symbologists
for the Sun who was He?Everyone who has any
idea of the ancient Egyptian exoteric faith is
quite aware that for the multitudes Osiris was the Sun in
Heaven the heavenly King Ro-Imphab;that by
the Greeks the Sun was called the Eye of Jupiter as
for the modern orthodox Pārsi he is the eye
of Ormuzd: that the Sun moreover was addressed as the
All-seeing God (šļėõļöčįėģļņ )as the God
Saviour and the saving God (Įéōéļķ ōēņ ółōēńéįņ).
Read the papyrus of Papheronmes at Berlin and
the stela as rendered by Mariette Bey;[La
Mére d Apis
p.47.]and
see what they say:
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Glory to thee O Sun divine child!....thy rays
carry life to the pure and to those ready....The Gods
[the Sons of God ] who
approach thee tremble with delight and awe....Thou art the first born the Son
of God the Word.[One just initiated is called the first-born and in India he
becomes dwija twice-born
only after his final and supreme
Initiation.Every Adept is a Son of God and a Son of Light after
receiving the Word when he becomes the
Word himself after receiving the seven divine attributes or
the lyre of Apollo.]
The Church has now seized upon these terms and
sees presentments of the coming Christ in these
expressions in the initiatory rites and
prophetic utterances of the Pagan Oracles.
The Sun as God -(Page 279)They are nothing of the kind for they were applied to every
worthy Initiate.If
the expressions that were used in hieratic
writings and glyphs thousands of years before our era are now
found in the laudatory hymns and prayers of
Christian Churches,it is simply because they have been
unblushingly appropriated by the Latin
Christians,in the full hope of never being detected by posterity.
Everything that could be done had been done to
destroy the original Pagan manuscripts and the Church
felt secure.Christianity has undeniably had
her great Seers and Prophets,like every other religion;but
their claims are not strengthened by denying
their predecessors.
Listen to Plato:
Know then Glaucus,that when I speak of the
production of good it is the Sun I mean.The
Son has a perfect analogy with his Father.
Iamblichus calls the Sun the image of divine
intelligence or Wisdom. Eusebius,repeating the words of
Philo calls the rising Sun (įķįōļėē )the chief
Angel the most ancient adding that the Archangel who is
polyonymo s (of many names)is the Verbum of Christ.The word Sol
(Sun)being derived from sol s the
One or the He alone. and its Greek name
Helios meaning the Most High the emblem becomes
comprehensible.Nevertheless,the Ancients made
a difference between the Sun and its prototype.
Socrates saluted the rising Sun as does a true
Pārsī or Zoroastrian in our own day;and Homer and
Euripides,as Plato did after them several
times,mention the Jupiter-Logos,the Word or the Sun.
Nevertheless,the Christians maintain that
since the oracle consulted on the God Iao answered:It is the
Sun therefore
The Jehovah of the Jews was well known to the
Pagans and Greeks;[See De
Mirville iv.15 ]
and Iao is our Jehovah. The first part of
the proposition has nothing it seems to do with the second
part and least of all can the conclusion be
regarded as correct.But if the Christians are so anxious to
prove the identity Occultists have nothing
against it.Only in such case Jehovah is also Bacchus.It is
very strange that the people of civilised
Christendom should until now hold on so desperately to the skirts
of the idolatrous Jews Sabaeans and Sun
worshippers as they were [ II.Kings,xxiii
4-13.] like the
rabble of Chaldaea and that they should fail
to see that the later Jehovah is but a Jewish development
of the Ja-va or the (Page 280)Iao of the Phoenicians;that this name in short
was the secret name of a
Mystery-God one of the many Kabiri.Highest
God as He was for one little nation he never was so
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regarded by the Initiates who conducted the
Mysteries;for them he was but a Planetary Spirit attached to
the visible Sun;and the visible Sun is only
the central Star not the central spiritual Sun.
And the Angel of the Lord said unto him [Manoah ] Why askest thou thus after my name
seeing it is secret. [Judges,xiii 18.Samson Manoah s son was an Initiate of
that Mystery
Lord Ja-va:he was consecrated before his birth
to become a Nazarite (a chela),an Adept.
His sin with Delilah and the cropping of his
long hair that no razor was to touch shows how
well he kept his sacred vow.The allegory of
Samson proves the Esotericism of the Bible as
also the character of the Mystery Gods of
the Jews.True Mōvers gives a definition of the
Phoenician idea of the ideal sunlight as a
spiritual influence issuing from the highest God Iao
the light conceivable only by intellect the
physical and spiritual Principle of all things:out of
which the soul emanates. It was the male
Essence or Wisdom while the primitive matter or
Chaos was
the female.Thus the first two principles,co-eternal and infinite were already
with
the primitive Phoenicians,spirit and
matter.But this is the echo of Jewish thought not the
opinion of Pagan Philosophers .]
However this may be the identity of the
Jehovah of Mount Sinai with the God Bacchus is hardly
disputable and he is surely as already shown
in Isis Unveiled Dionysos.[See
Isis Unveiled.ii.526 ]
Wherever Bacchus was worshipped there was a
tradition of Nyssa [Beth-San or
Scythopolis in Palestine
had that designation:so had a spot on Mount
Parnassus.But Diodorus declares that Nyssa was between
Phoenicia and Egypt:Euripides states that
Dionysos came to Greece from India:and Diodorus adds his
testimony:Osiris was brought up in Nyssa in
Arabia the Happy:he was the son of Zeus,and was
named from his father (nominative
Zeus,genitive Dios )and the place Dio-Nysos the Zeus or Jove of
Nyssa.This identity of name or title is very
significant.In Greece Dionysos was second only to Zeus,and
Pindar says:So Father Zeus governs all
things,and Bacchus he governs also.] and
a cave where he
was reared.Outside Greece Bacchus was the
all-powerful Zagreus,the highest of Gods, in whose
service was Orpheus,the founder of the
Mysteries.Now unless it be conceded that Moses was an
initiated Priest an Adept whose actions are
all narrated allegorically then it must be admitted that he
personally together with his hosts of
Israelites,worshipped Bacchus.
And Moses built an altar and called the name
of it Jehovah Nissi [or
Iao-nisi or again
Dionisi ].[Ex.,xvii.15.]
To strengthen the statement we have further to
remember that the place where Osiris,the Egyptian
Zagreus or Bacchus,was born was Mount Sinai which
is called by the Egyptians Mount Nissa.The
brazen serpent was a nis,and the month of the
Jewish Passover is Nisan.
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SECTION XXXI
The Objects of the Mysteries
(Page 281)THE earliest Mysteries recorded in history are
those of Samothrace.After the distribution of
pure Fire a new life began.This was the new
birth of the Initiate after which like the Brāhmans of old in
India he became a dwija a twice born
Initiated into that which may be rightly
called the most blessed of all Mysteries ...being
ourselves pure [Phaedrus,Cary s translation p.326.]
says Plato.Diodorus Siculus,Herodotus and
Sanchoniathon the Phoenician the oldest of Historians
say that these Mysteries originated in the
night of time thousands of years probably before the historical
period.Iamblichus informs us that Pythagoras
Was initiated in all the Mysteries of Byblus
and Tyre in the sacred operations of the Syrians,
and in the Mysteries of the Phnicians.[Life of Pythagoras p.297.Since
Pythagoras,he
adds,also spent two and twenty years in the
adyta of the temples in Egypt associated with
the Magians in Babylon and was instructed by
them in their venerable knowledge it is not at
all wonderful that he was skilled in Magic or
Theurgy and was therefore able to perform things
which surpass merely human power and which
appear to be perfectly incredible to the vulgar.
(p.298).]
As was said in Isis Unveiled:
When men like Pythagoras,Plato and
Iamblichus,renowned for their severe morality took
part in the mysteries and spoke of them with
veneration it ill behoves our modern critics to
judge them [and their Initiates ] upon their
merely external aspect.
Yet this is what has been done until now
especially by the Christian Fathers.Clement Alexandrinus
stigmatises the Mysteries as indecent and
diabolical though his words,showing that the Eleusinian
Mysteries were identical with and even as he
would allege borrowed from those of the Jews,are
quoted elsewhere in this work.The Mysteries
were composed of two parts,of which the Lesser were
performed at Agrae (Page 282)and the Greater at Eleusis,and Clement had
been himself initiated.But
the Katharsis,or trials of purification have
ever been misunderstood.Iamblichus explains the worst;and
his explanation ought to be perfectly
satisfactory at any rate for every unprejudiced mind.
He says:--
Exhibitions of this kind in the Mysteries were
designed to free us from licentious passions,by
gratifying the sight and at the same time
vanquishing all evil thought through the awful
sanctity with which these rites were
accompanied.
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Dr.Warburton remarks:
The wisest and best men in the Pagan world are
unanimous in this,that the Mysteries were
instituted pure and proposed the noblest ends
by the worthiest means.
Although persons of both sexes and all classes
were allowed to take part in the Mysteries,and a
participation in them was even obligatory very
few indeed attained the higher and final Initiation in these
celebrated rites.The gradation of the
Mysteries is given us by Proclus in the fourth book of his Theology
of Plato.
The perfective rite precedes in order the
initiation Telete Muesis,and the initiation Epopteia,
or the final apocalypse [revelation ].
Theon of Smyrna in Mathematica,also
divides the mystic rites into five parts:
The first of which is the previous
purification;for neither are the Mysteries communicated to all who are
willing to receive them;but there are certain
persons who are prevented by the voice of the crier......
since it is necessary that such as are not
expelled from the mysteries should first be refined by certain
purifications;but after purification the
reception of the sacred rites succeeds.The third part is
denominated epopteia or reception.And
the fourth which is the end and design of the revelation is (the
investiture)the binding of the head and fixing
of the crowns [This expression
must not be understood
simply literally:for as in the initiation of
certain Brotherhoods,it has a secret meaning that we have just
explained;it was hinted at by Pythagoras,when
he describes his feelings after the Initiation and says
that he was crowned by the Gods in whose
presence he had drunk the waters of life in the Hindu
Mysteries there was the fount of life and soma
the sacred drink.]...whether
after this he [the initiated
person ] becomes a torchbearer or an
hierophant of the Mysteries,or sustains some other part of the
sacerdotal office.But the fifth which is
produced from all these is friendship and interior communion with
God.And
this was the last and most awful of all the Mysteries.[Ele sinian and Bacchic Mysteries,
T.Taylor p.46 47.]
The chief objects of the Mysteries,represented
as diabolical by the Christian Fathers and ridiculed by
modern writers,were instituted with the
highest and most moral purpose in view.
Mysteries and Theophany (Page 283)There is no need to repeat here that which has
been already
described in Isis Unveiled [ii.III 113 ]that whether through temple Initiation or the private study of
Theurgy every student obtained the proof of
the immortality of his Spirit and the survival of his Soul.
What the last epopteia was is alluded
to by Plato in Phaedrus:
Being initiated in those Mysteries which
it is lawful to call the most blessed of all mysteries....
we were freed from the molestations of
evils,which otherwise await us in a future period of
time.Likewise in consequence of this divine initiation
we become spectators of entire simple
immovable and blessed visions,resident in a
pure light.[Ele sinian and
Bacchic Mysteries,
p.63.]
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This veiled confession shows that the
Initiates enjoyed Theophany saw visions of Gods and of real
immortal spirits.As Taylor correctly infers:
The most sublime part of the epopteia or
final revealing consisted in beholding the Gods [the
high Planetary Spirits ] themselves,invested
with a resplendent light.[Op.cit
p.65 ]
The statement of Proclus upon the subject is
unequivocal:
In all the Initiations and Mysteries,the Gods
exhibit many forms of themselves,and appear in
a variety of shapes;and sometimes indeed a
formless light of themselves if held forth to the
view;sometimes this light is according to a
h man form and sometimes it proceeds into a
different shape.[Quoted by Taylor.p.66.]
Again we have
Whatever is on earth is the resemblance and
shadow of something that is in the sphere while
that resplendent thing [the prototype of the
Soul-Spirit ] remaineth in nchangeable condition it
is well also with its shadow.When that
resplendent one removeth far from its shadow life
removeth [from the latter ] to a
distance.Again that light is the shadow of something more
resplendent than itself.[Verses 35-38 ]
Thus speaks the Desatir,in the Book
of Shet (the prophet Zirtusht),thereby showing the identity of its
Esoteric doctrines with those of the Greek
Philosophers.
The second statement of Plato confirms the
view that the Mysteries of the Ancients were identical with
the Initiations practised even now among the
Buddhist and the Hindu Adepts.The higher (Page 284)
visions,the most truthful were produced
through a regular discipline of gradual Initiations,and the
development of psychical powers.In Europe and
Egypt the Mystę were brought into close union with
those whom Proclus calls mystical natures,
resplendent Gods, because as Plato says:
[We ] were ourselves pure and immaculate being
liberated from this surrounding vestment
which we denominate body and to which we are
now bound like an oyster to its shell.
[Phaedrus 64 quoted by
Taylor p.64.]
As to the East
The doctrine of planetary and terrestrial
Pitris was revealed entirely in ancient India as well as
now only at the last moment of initiation and
to the adepts of superior degrees.[Isis
Unveiled
ii 114.]
The word Pitris may now be explained
and something else added.In India the chela of the third degree
of Inititation has two Gurus:One the living
Adept;the other the disembodied and glorified Mahātmā Who
remains the adviser or instructor or even the
high Adepts.Few are the accepted chelas who even see
their living Master their Guru till the day
and hour of their final and for ever binding vow.It is this that
was meant in Isis Unveiled when it was
stated that few of the fakirs (the word chela being unknown to
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Europe and America in those days)however
Pure and honest and self-devoted have yet ever
seen the astral form of a purely h man
pitar (an
ancestor or father),otherwise than at the solemn moment of their first and last
initiation.It is in the presence of his instructor
the Guru and just before the vato -fakir [the
just initiated chela ] is despatched into the
world of the living with his seven-knotted bamboo
wand for all protection that he is suddenly
placed face to face with the unknown PRESENCE
[of his Pitar or Father the glorified
invisible Master or disembodied Mahātmā ].He sees it and
falls prostrate at the feet of the evanescent
form but is not entrusted with the great secret of
its evocation for it is the supreme mystery of
the holy syllable.
The Initiate says Éliphas Lévi knows ;therefore
he dares all and keeps silent. Says the great French
Kabalist:
You may see him often sad never discouraged or
desperate;often poor never humbled or
wretched;often persecuted never cowed down or
vanquished.For he remembers the
widowhood and the murder of Orpheus,the exile
and solitary death of Moses,the martyrdom
of the prophets,the tortures of Apollonius,the
Cross of the Savior.He knows in what forlorn
state died Agrippa whose memory is slandered
to this day;he knows the trials that broke
down the great Paracelsus,and all that Raymond
Lully had to suffer before he arrived at a
bloody death.
The Mysteries and Masonry -(Page 285)He remembers Swedenborg having to feign
insanity and losing
even his reason before his knowledge was
forgiven to him;St.Martin who had to hide himself all life;
Cagliostro who died forsaken in the cells of
the inquisition;[This is false
and the Abbé Constant (Éliphas
Lévy)knew it was so.Why did he
promulgate the untruth?] Cazotte
who perished on the guillotine.
Successor of so many victims,he
dares,nevertheless,but understands the more the necessity to keep
silent.[Dogme
de la Ha te Magie,i.219.220.]
Masonry not the political institution known
as the Scotch Lodge but real Masonry some rites of which
are still preserved in the Grand Orient of
France and that Elias Ashmole a celebrated English Occult
Philospher of the XVIIth century tried in vain
to remodel after the manner of the Indian and Egyptian
Mysteries Masonry rests,according to Ragon
the great authority upon the subject upon three
fundamental degrees:the triple duty of a Mason
is to study whence he comes,what he is,and whither
he goes;the
study that is,of God of himself and of the future transformation.[Orthodoxie Maconniq e,
p.99.]
Masonic Initiation was modelled on that in the lesser mysteries.The
third degree was one used in
both Egypt and India from time immemorial and
the remembrance of it lingers to this day in every Lodge
under the name of the death and resurrection
of Hiram Abiff the Widow s Son. In Egypt the latter was
called Osiris; in India Loka-chakshu (Eye
of the World),and Dinakara (day-maker)or the Sun and
the rite itself was everywhere named the gate
of death.The coffin or sarcophagus,of Osiris,killed by
Typhon was brought in and placed in the middle
of the Hall of the Dead with the Initiates all around it
and the candidate near by.The latter was asked
whether he had participated in the murder and
notwithstanding his denial and after sundry
and very hard trials,the Initiator feigned to strike him on the
head with a hatchet;he was thrown down swathed
in bandages like a mummy and wept over.Then
came lightening and thunder the supposed
corpse was surrounded with fire and was finally raised.
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Ragon speaks of a rumour that charged the
Emperor Commodus when he was at one time enacting
the part of the Initiator with having played
this part in the initiatory drama so seriously that he actually
killed the postulant when dealing him the blow
with the hatchet.This shows that the lesser Mysteries had
not quite died out in the second century A.D.
(Page 286)The Mysteries were carried into South and
Central America Northern Mexico and Peru by the
Atlanteans in those days when
A pedestrian from the North [of what was once
upon a time also India ] might have reached
hardly wetting his feet the Alaskan Peninsula
through Manchooria across the f t re Gulf of
Tartary the Kurile and Aleutian Islands;while
another traveller furnished with a canoe and
starting from the South could have walked over
from Siam crossed the Polynesian Islands
and trudged into any part of the continent of
South America.[Five Years of
Theosophy.p.214.]
They continued to exist down to the day of the
Spanish invaders.These destroyed the Mexican and
Peruvian records,but were prevented from
laying their desecrating hands upon the many Pyramids the
lodges of an ancient Initiation whose ruins
are scattered over Puente Nacional Cholula and
Teotihuacan.The ruins of Palenque of Ococimgo
in Chiapas,and others in Central America are known to
all.If the pyramids and temples of Guiengola
and Mitla ever betray their secrets,the present Doctrine will
then be shown to have been a forerunner of the
grandest truths in Nature.Meanwhile they have all a
claim to be called Mitla the place of sadness
and the abode of the (desecrated)dead.
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SECTION XXXII
Traces of the Mysteries
(Page 287)SAYS the Royal Masonic Cyclopędia,art
Sun:
In all times,the Sun has necessarily played an
important part as a symbol and especially in
Freemasonry.The W.M.represents the rising sun
the J.W.the sun at the meridian and the
S.W.the setting sun.In the Druidical rites,the
Arch-Druid represents the sun and was aided
by two other officers,one representing the
Moon in the West and the other the Sun at the
South in its meridian.It is quite unnecessary
to enter into any lengthened discussion on this
symbol.
It is the more unnecessary since J.M.Ragon
has discussed it very fully as one may find at the end of
Section XXIX.where part of his explanations
have been quoted.Freemasonry derived her rights from
the East as we have said.And if it be true to
say of the modern Rosicrucians that they are invested with
a knowledge of chaos,not perhaps a very
desirable acquisition the remark is still more true when
applied to all the other branches of Masonry
since the knowledge of their members about the full
signification of their symbol is nil .Dozens
of hypotheses are resorted to one more unlikely than the
other as to the Round Towers of Ireland;one
fact is enough to show the ignorance of the Masons,
namely that according to the Royal Masonic
Encylopędia,the idea that they were connected with
Masonic Initiation may be at once dismissed as
unworthy of notice.The Towers, which are found
throughout the East in Asia were connected
with the Mystery-Initiations,namely with the Vishvakarma
and the Vikarttana rites.The candidates for
Initiation were placed in them for three days and three nights
whenever there was no temple with a
subterranean crypt close at hand.These round towers were built
for no other purposes.Discredited as are all
such monuments of Pagan origin by the Christian clergy
who thus soil their own nest they are still
the living and indestructible relics of the Wisdom of old.(Page
288)Nothing exists in this objective and illusive
world of ours that cannot be made to serve two purposes
a good and a bad one.Thus in later ages,the
Initiates of the Left Path and the anthropomorphists took
in hand most of those venerable ruins,then
silent and deserted by their first wise inmates,and turned
them indeed into phallic monuments.But this
was a deliberate wilful and vicious misinterpretation of
their real meaning a deflection from their
first use.The Sun though ever even for the multitudes,ģļķļņ
ļõńįķļõ öåļņ the only and one King and God in
heaven and the Åõāļõėē the God of Good Counsel
of Orpheus had in every exoteric popular
religion a dual aspect which was anthropomorphised by the
profane.Thus the Sun was Osiris-Typhon,Ormuzd-Ahriman,Bel-Jupiter
and Baal the life-giving and the
death -giving
luminary.And thus one and the same monolith pillar pyramid tower or temple
originally
built to glorify the first principle or aspect
might become in time an idol-fane or worse a phallic emblem
in its crude and brutal form.The Lingam of the
Hindus has a spiritual and highly philosophical meaning
while the missionaries see in it but an
indecent emblem; it has just the meaning which is to be found in
all those baalim chammanim and the bamoth with
the pillars of unhewn stone of the Bible set up for the
glorification of the male Jehovah.But this
does not alter the fact that the pureia of the Greeks,the nur-
hags of Sardinia the teocalli of Mexico
etc.were all in the beginning of the same character as the
Round Towers of Ireland.They were sacred
places of Initiation.
In 1877 the writer quoting the authority and
opinions of some most eminent scholars,ventured to assert
that there was a great difference between the
terms Chrestos and Christos ,a difference having a
profound and Esoteric meaning.Also that while Christos
means to live and to be born into a new life
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Chrestos,in Initiation phraseology signified the death of the inner lower or
personal nature in man;
thus is given the key to the Brąhmanical title
the twice-born;and finally
There were Chrestians long before the
era of Christianity and the Essenes belonged to them.
[In I Peter .ii.3 Jesus is called the Lord Chrestos.]
For this epithets sufficiently opprobrious to
characterise the writer could hardly be found.And yet then as
well as now the author never attempted a
statement of such a serious nature without showing as many
learned authorities for it as could be
mustered.
Christos and Chrestos -(Page 289)Thus on the next page it was said:
Lepsius shows that the word Nofre means
Chrestos,good and that one of the titles of Osiris,
Onnofre must be translated the goodness of
God made manifest. The worship of Christ
was not universal at this early date
explains Mackenzie by which I mean that Christolatry
had not been introduced;but the worship of Chrestos
the Good Principle had preceded it
by many centuries,and even survived the
general adoption of Christianity as shown on
monuments still in existence ....Again we have
an inscription which is pre-Christian on an
epitaphial tablet (Spon.Misc.Er d.,Ant.x
xviii.2)..
.and de Rossi (Roma Sotteranea tome
i.tav.xxi.)gives us
another example from the catacombs Ęlia
Chreste in Pace.[Isis
Unveiled.ii.323.]
Today the writer is able to add to all those
testimonies the corroboration of an erudite author who proves
whatever he undertakes to show on the
authority of geometrical demonstration.There is a most curious
passage with remarks and explanations in the So
rce of Measures,whose author has probably never
heard of the Mystery-God Visvakarma of the
early Āryans.Treating on the difference between the terms
Chrest and Christ he ends by saying that:
There were two Messiahs:one who went down into
the pit for the salvation of this world;this
was the Sun shorn of his golden rays and
crowned with blackened ones (symbolising this
loss),as the thorns:the other was the
triumphant Messiah mounting up to the summit of the
arch of heaven and personified as the Lion
of the Tribe of J dah .In both instances he had the
cross;once in humiliation and once holding it
in his control as the law of creation He being
Jehovah.
And then the author proceeds to give the fact
that there were two Messiahs, etc.as quoted above.
And this leaving the divine and mystic
character and claim for Jesus entirely independent of this event
of His mortal life shows Him beyond any doubt
as an Initiate of the Egyptian Mysteries,where the
same rite of Death and of spiritual
Resurrection for the neophyte or the suffering Chrestos on his trial
and new birth by Regeneration was enacted for
this was a universally adopted rite.
The pit into which the Eastern Initiate was
made to descend was,as shown before Pātāla one of the
seven regions of the nether world over which
rules Vāsuki the great snake God. This pit Pātāla has
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(Page 290)in the Eastern Symbolism precisely the same
manifold meaning as is found by Mr.Ralston
Skinner in the Hebrew word shiac in its
application to the case in hand.For it was the synonym of
Scorpio Pātāla s depths being impregnated
with the brightness of the new Sun represented by the
newly born into the glory;and Pātāla was
and is in a sense a pit a grave the place of death and the
door of Hades or Sheol as,the partially
exoteric Initiations in India the candidate had to pass through
the matrix of the heifer before proceeding to
Pātāla.In its non-mystic sense it is the Antipodes America
being referred to in India as Pātāla.But in
its symbolism it meant all that and much more.The fact alone
that Vāsuki the ruling Deity of Pātāla is
represented in the Hindu Pantheon as the great Nāga (Serpent)
who was used by the Gods and Asuras as a rope
round the mountain Mandara at the churning of the
ocean for Amrita the water of immortality
connects him directly with Initiation
For he is Shesha Nāga also serving as a couch
for Vishnu and upholding the seven worlds;and he is
also Ananta the endless, and the symbol of
eternity hence the God of Secret Wisdom degraded by
the Church to the rōle of the tempting
Serpent of Satan.That what is now said is correct may be verified
by the evidence of even the exoteric rendering
of the attributes of various Gods and Sages both in the
Hindu and the Buddhist Pantheons.Two instances
will suffice to show how little our best and most
erudite Orientalists are capable of dealing
correctly and fairly with the symbolism of Eastern nations,
while remaining ignorant of the corresponding
points to be found only in Occultism and the Secret
Doctrine.
(1)The learned Orientalist and Tibetan
traveller Professor Emil Schlagintweit mentions in one of his
works on Tibet a national legend to the effect
that
Nāgārjuna [a mythological personage without
any real existence the learned German
scholar thinks ] received the book Paramārtha
or according to others,the book Avatamsaka
from the Nāgas,fabulous creatures of the
nature of serpents,who occupy a place among the
beings superior to man and are regarded as
protectors of the law of Buddha.To these
spiritual beings Shākyamuni is said to have
taught a more philosophical religious system than
to men who were not sufficiently advanced to
understand it at the time of his appearance.
[B ddhism in Tibet,p.31.]
The Symbolism of Narada -(Page 291)Nor are men sufficiently advanced for it
now;for the more
philosophical religious system is the Secret
Doctrine the Occult Eastern Philosophy which is the corner-
stone of all sciences rejected by the unwise
builders even at this day and more today perhaps than ever
before in the great conceit of our age.The
allegory means simply that Nāgārjuna having been initiated
by the Serpents the Adepts,the wise ones
and driven out from India by the Brāhmans,who
dreaded to have their Mysteries and sacerdotal
Science divulged (the real cause of their hatred of
Buddhism),went away to China and Tibet where
he initiated many into the truths of the hidden Mysteries
taught by Gautama Buddha.
(2)The hidden symbolism of Nārada the great
Rishi and the author of some of the Rig-Vaidic hymns,
who incarnated again later on during Krishna
s time has never been understood.Yet in connection with
the Occult Sciences,Nārada the son of Brahmā
is one of the most prominent characters;he is directly
connected in his first incarnation with the
Builders hence with the seven Rectors of the Christian
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Church who helped God in the work of
creation. This grand personification is hardly noticed by our
Orientalists,who refer only to that which he
is alleged to have said of Pātāla namely that it is a place of
sexual and sensual gratifications. This is
thought to be amusing and the reflection is suggested that
Nārada no doubt found the place delightful.
Yet this sentence simply shows him to have been an
Initiate connected directly with the
Mysteries,and walking as all the other neophytes,before and after
him had to walk in the pit among the thorns
in the sacrificial Chrest condition as the suffering victim
made to descend thereinto a mystery truly!
Nārada is one of the seven Rishis,the
mind-born sons of Brahmā.The fact of his having been during
his incarnation a high Initiate he like
Orpheus,being the founder of the Mysteries is corroborated and
made evident by his history.The Mahābhārata
states that Nārada having frustrated the scheme formed
for peopling the universe in order to remain
true to his vow of chastity was cursed by Daksha and
sentenced to be born once more.Again when born
during Krishna s time he is accused of calling his
father Brahmā a false teacher because the
latter advised him to get married and he refused to do so.
This shows him to have been an Initiate going
against the orthodox worship and religion.It is curious to
find this Rishi and leader among the Builders
and the Heavenly Host as (Page 292)the prototype of the
Christian leader of the same Host the
Archangel Mikael.Both are the male Virgins, and both are
the only ones among their respective Hosts
who refuse to create.Nārada is said to have dissuaded the
Hari-ashvas,the five thousand sons of Daksha
begotten by him for the purpose of peopling the Earth
from producing offspring.Since then the
Hari-ashvas have dispersed themselves through the regions,
and have never returned.The Initiates are
perhaps,the incarnations of these Hari-ashvas?
It was on the seventh day the third of his
ultimate trial that the neophyte arose a regenerated man who
having passed through his second spiritual
birth returned to earth a glorified and triumphant conqueror of
Death a Hierophant.
An Eastern neophyte in his Chrest condition
may be seen in a certain engraving in Moor s Hind
Pantheon,whose author mistook another form of the crucified Sun or Vishnu Vittoba
for Krishna and
calls it Krishna crucified in space.The
engraving is also given in Dr.Lundy s Mon mental Christianity in
which work the reverend author has collected
as many proofs as his ponderous volume could hold of
Christian symbols before Christianity
as he expresses it.Thus he shows us Krishna and Apollo as good
shepherds,Krishna holding the cruciform Conch
and the Chakra and Krishna crucified in Space as he
calls it.Of this figure it may be truly said
as the author says of it himself:
This representation I believe to be anterior
to Christianity ....It looks like a Christian crucifix
in many respects ....The drawing the attitude
the nail marks in hands and feet indicate a
Christian origin while the Parthian coronet of
seven points,the absence of the wood and of
the usual inscription and the rays of glory
above would seem to point to some other than a
Christian origin.Can it be the victim-man or
the priest and victim both in one of the Hindu
Mythology who offered himself a sacrifice
before the worlds were?
It is surely so.
Can it be Plato s Second God who impressed
himself on the universe in the form of the cross?
Or is it his divine man who would be scourged
tormented fettered have his eyes burnt out;
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and lastly ...wo ld be crucified ?
It is all that and much more;archaic religious
Philosophy was universal and its Mysteries are as old as
man.It is the eternal symbol of the
personified Sun astronomically purified in its mystic meaning
regenerated and symbolised by all the
Initiates in memory of a sinless Humanity when all were Sons of
God.
Egyptian Initiation -(Page 293)Now mankind has become the Son of Evil truly.Does all
this take
anything away from the dignity of Christ as an
ideal or of Jesus as a divine man?Not at all.On the
contrary made to stand alone glorified above
all other Sons of God He can only forment evil feelings
in all those many millioned nations who do not
believe in the Christian system provoking their hatred and
leading to iniquitous wars and strifes.If on
the other hand we place Him among a long series of Sons
of God and Sons of divine Light every man
may then be left to choose for himself among those many
ideals,which he will choose as a God to call
to his help and worship on earth as in Heaven.
Many among those called Saviours were good
shepherds, as was Krishna for one and all of them are
said to have crushed the serpent s head in
other words to have conquered their sensual nature and to
have mastered divine and Occult Wisdom.Apollo
killed Python a fact which exonerates him from the
charge of being himself the great dragon
Satan:Krishna slew the snake Kalināga the Black Serpent;
and the Scandinavian Thor bruised the head of
the symbolical reptile with his crucifixion mace.
In Egypt every city of importance was
separated from its burial-place by a sacred lake.The same
ceremony of judgement as is described in The
Book of the Dead that precious and mysterious book
(Bunsen)as taking place in the world of
Spirit took place on earth during the burial of the mummy.
Forty-two judges or assessors assembled on the
shore and judged the departed Soul according to its
actions when in the body.After that the
priests returned within the sacred precincts and instructed the
neophytes upon the probable fate of the Soul
and the solemn drama that was then taking place in the
invisible realm whither the Soul had fled.The
immortality of the Spirit was strongly inculcated on the
neophytes by the Al-om-jalt the name
of the highest Egyptian Hierophant.In the Crata Nepoa the
priestly Mysteries in Egypt the following are
described as four out of the seven degrees of Initiation.
After a preliminary trial at Thebes,where the
neophyte had to pass through many probations,called the
Twelve Tortures, he was commanded in order
that he might come out triumphant to govern his
passions and never lose for a moment the idea
of his inner God or seventh Principle.Then as a symbol
of the wanderings of the unpurified Soul he
had to ascend several ladders and wander in darkness in a
cave with many doors,all of which were
locked.Having (Page
294)overcome
all he received the degree
of Pastophoris,after which he became in the
second and third degrees,the Neocoris and Melancphoris.
Brought into a vast subterranean chamber
thickly furnished with mummies lying in state he was placed
in presence of the coffin which contained the
mutilated body of Osiris.This was the hall called the Gates
of Death whence the verse in Job:
Have the gates of Death been opened to thee
Hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of
death?
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Thus asks the Lord the Hierophant the
Al-om-jah the Initiator of Job alluding to this third degree of
Initiation.For the Book of Job is the
poem of Initiation par excellence.
When the neophyte had conquered the terrors of
this trial he was conducted to the Hall of Spirits to be
judged by them.Among the rules in which he was
instructed he was commanded:
Never to either desire or seek revenge;to be
always ready to help a brother in danger even
unto the risk of his own life;to bury every
dead body;to honour his parents above all;to
respect old age and protect those weaker than
himself;and finally to ever bear in mind the
hour of death and that of resurrection in a
new and imperishable body.
Purity and chastity were highly recommended
and adultery was threatened with death.Thus the
Egyptian neophyte was made a Kristophoros.In
this degree the mystery-name of IAO was
communicated to him.
Let the reader compare the above sublime
precepts with the precepts of Buddha and the noble
commandments in the Rule of Life for the
ascetics of India and he will understand the unity of the
Secret Doctrine everywhere.
It is impossible to deny the presence of a
sexual element in many religious symbols,but this fact is not in
the least open to censure once it becomes
generally known that in the religious traditions of every
country man was not born in the first human
race from father and mother.From the bright mind-born
Sons of Brahmā the Rishis,and from Adam
Kadmon with his Emanations,the Sephiroth down to the
parentless, the Anupādaka or the Dhyāni
Buddhas,from whom sprang the Bodhisattvas and Manushi-
Buddhas,the earthly Initiates men the first
race of men was with every nation held as being born
without father or mother.Man the Manushi
Buddha the Manu the Enosh son of Seth or the Son of
Man as he is called is born in the present
way only as the consequence the unavoidable fatality of the
law of natural evolution.
The Self-Sacrificing Victim -(Page 295)Mankind having reached the last limit and
that turning point
where its spiritual nature had to make room
for mere physical organization had to fall into matter and
generation.But man s evolution and involution
are cyclic.He will end as he began.Of course to our
grossly material minds even the sublime
symbolism of Kosmos conceived in the matrix of Space after the
divine Unit had entered into and fructified it
with Its holy fiat will no doubt suggest materiality.Not so with
primitive mankind.The initiatory rite in the
Mysteries of the self-sacrificing Victim that dies a spiritual
death to save the world from destruction
really from depopulation was established during the Fourth
Race to commemorate an event which
physiologically has now become the Mystery of Mysteries
among the world-problems.In the Jewish script
it is Cain and the female Abel who are the sacrificed and
sacrificing couple both immolating themselves
(as permutations of Adam and Eve or the dual Jehovah)
and shedding their blood of separation and
union for the sake of and to save mankind by inaugurating
a new physiological race.Later still when the
neophyte as already mentioned in order to be re-born
once more into his lost spiritual state had to
pass through the entrails (the womb)of a virgin heifer [The
Aryans replaced the living cow by one made of
gold silver or any other metal and the rite is preserved to
this day when one desires to become a Brāhman
a twice-born in India.] killed
at the moment of the rite
it involved again a mystery and one as great
for it referred to the process of birth or rather the first
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entrance of man on to this earth through Vāch
the melodious cow who milks forth sustenance and
water and who is the female Logos.It had
also reference to the same self-sacrifice of the divine
Hermaphrodite of the third Root-Race the
transformation of Humanity into truly physical men after
the loss of spiritual potency.When the fruit
of evil having been tested along with the fruit of good there
was as a result the gradual atrophy of
spirituality and a strengthening of the materiality in man then he
was doomed to be born thenceforth through the
present process.This is the Mystery of the
Hermaphrodite which the Ancients kept so
secret and veiled.It was neither the absence of moral feeling
nor the presence of gross sensuality in them
that made them imagine their Deities under a dual aspect;
but rather their knowledge of the mysteries
and processes of primitive Nature.The Science of Physiology
was better known to them than it is to us
now.It is in this (Page
296)that
lies buried the key to the
Symbolism of old the true focus of national
thought and the strange dual-sexed images of nearly every
God and Goddess in both pagan and monotheistic
Pantheons.
Says Sir William Drummond in dip s
Judaļcus:
The truths of science were the arcana of the
priests because these truths were the
foundations of religion.
But why should the missionaries so cruelly
twit the Vaishnavas and Krishna worshippers for the
supposed grossly indecent meaning of their
symbols,since it is made clear beyond the slightest doubt
and by the most unprejudiced writers,that
Chrestos in the pit whether the pit to be taken as meaning
the grave or hell had likewise a sexual
element in it from the very origin of the symbol.
This fact is no longer denied today.The
Brothers of the Rosy Cross of the Middle Ages were as good
Christians as any to be found in Europe
nevertheless,all their rites were based on symbols whose
meaning was pre-eminently phallic and
sexual.Their biographer Hargrave Jennings,the best modern
authority on Rosicrucianism speaking of this
mystic Brotherhood describes how
The tortures and the sacrifice of Calvary the
Passion of the Cross,were in their [the Rose-
Croix s ] glorious blessed magic and triumph
the protest and appeal.
Protest by whom?The answer is,the protest of
the crucified Rose the greatest and the most unveiled
of all sexual symbols the Yoni and Lingam the
victim and the murderer the female and male
principles in Nature.Open the last work of
that author Phallicism,and see in what glowing terms he
describes the sexual symbolism in that which
is most sacred to the Christian:
The flowing blood streamed from the crown or
the piercing circlet of the thorns of Hell.The
Rose is feminine.Its lustrous carmine petals
are guarded with thorns.The Rose is the most
beautiful of flowers.The Rose is the Queen of
God s Garden (Mary the Virgin).It is not the
Rose alone which is the magical idea or
truth.But it is the crucified rose or the martyred
rose (by the grand mystic apocalyptic
figure)which is the talisman the standard the object of
adoration of all the Sons of Wisdom or the
true Rosicrucians.[Op.cit.,p.141.]
Not of all the Sons of Wisdom by any
means,not even of the true Rosicrucian.For the latter would
never put in such sickening relievo in such a
purely sensual and terrestrial not to say animal light the
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grandest the noblest of Nature s symbols.
Orpheus -(Page 297)To the Rosicrucian the Rose was the symbol of Nature of
the ever prolific and
virgin Earth or Isis,the mother and nourisher
of man considered as feminine and represented as a
virgin woman by the Egyptian Initiates.Like
every other personification of Nature and the Earth she is the
sister and wife of Osiris,as the two
characters answer to the personified symbol of the Earth both she
and the Sun being the progeny of the same
mysterious Father because the Earth is fecundated by the
Sun according to the earliest Mysticism by
divine insufflation.It was the pure ideal of mystic Nature
that was personified in the World Virgins,
the Celestial Maidens, and later on by the human Virgin
Mary the Mother of the Saviour the Salvator
Mundi now chosen by the Christian World.And it was the
character of the Jewish maiden that was
adopted by Theology to archaic Symbolism,[ In Ragon s
Orthodoxie Maconniq e p.105 note we find the following statement borrowed
from Albumazar the
Arabian probably:The Virgin of the Magi
and Chaldęans.The Chaldęan sphere [globe
] showed in its
heavens a newly-born babe called Christ and
Jesus;it was placed in the arms of the Celestial Virgin.It
was to this Virgin that Eratosthenes,the
Alexandrian Librarian born 276 years before our era gave the
name of Isis,mother of Horus. This is only
what Kircher gives (in Ędip s Ęgyptic s,iii.5),quoting
Albumazar:In the first decan of the Virgin
rises a maid called Aderenosa that is pure immaculate virgin
...sitting upon an embroidered throne nursing
a boy ...a boy named Jesus ...which signifies Issa
whom they also call Christ in Greek. (See Isis
Unveiled,ii.491)] and not
the Pagan symbol that was
modelled for the new occasion.
We know through Herodotus that the Mysteries
were brought from India by Orpheus a hero far anterior
to both Homer and Hesiod.Very little is really
known of him,and till very lately Orphic literature and even
the Argonauts,were attributed to Onamacritus,a
contemporary of Pisistratus,Solon and Pythagoras
who was credited with their compilation in the
present form toward the close of the sixth century B.C.or
800 years after the time of Orpheus.But we are
told that in the days of Pausanias there was a sacerdotal
family who like the Brāhmans with the Vedas
had committed to memory all the Orphic Hymns,and that
they were usually thus transmitted from one
generation to another.By placing Orpheus so far back as
1200 B.C.official Science so careful in her
chronology to choose in each case as late a period as
possible admits that the Mysteries,or in
other words Occultism dramatised belong to a still earlier
epoch than the Chaldęans and Egyptians.
The downfall of the Mysteries in Europe may
now be mentioned.
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SECTION XXXIII
The Last of the Mysteries in Europe
(Page 298)AS was predicted by the great Hermes in his dialogue
with Ęsculapius,the time had indeed
come when impious foreigners accused Egypt of
adoring monsters,and naught but the letters engraved
in stone upon her monuments survived enigmas
unintelligible to posterity.Her sacred Scribes and
Hierophants became wanderers upon the face of
the earth.Those who remained in Egypt found
themselves obliged for fear of a profanation
of the sacred Mysteries to seek refuge in deserts and
mountains,to form and establish secret
societies and brotherhoods such as the Essenes;those who
had crossed the oceans to India and even to
the (now-called)New World bound themselves by solemn
oaths to keep silent and to preserve secret
their Sacred Knowledge and Science;thus these were buried
deeper than ever out of human sight.In Central
Asia and on the northern borderlands of India the
triumphant sword of Aristotle s pupil swept
away from his path of conquest every vestige of a once pure
Religion:and its Adepts receded further and
further from that path into the most hidden spots of the
globe.The cycle of****being at its close the
first hour for the disappearance of the Mysteries struck on
the clock of the Races,with the Macedonian
conqueror.The first strokes of its last hour sounded in the
year 47 B.C..Alesia [Now called St.Reine (Cote d Or)on the two streams,the Ose
and the Oserain.Its
fall is a historical fact in Keltic Gaulish
History.]the famous city in Gaul
the Thebes of the Kelts,so
renowned for its ancient rites of Initiation
and Mysteries,was,as J.M.Ragon well describes it:
The ancient metropolis and the tomb of
Initiation of the religion of the Druids and of the
freedom of Gaul.[Orthodoxie Maconniq e,p.22.]
Alesia and Bibractis -(Page 299)It was during the first century before our era that the last
and supreme
hour of the great Mysteries had struck.History
shows the populations of Central Gaul revolting against
the Roman yoke.The country was subject to
Cęsar and the revolt was crushed;the result was the
slaughter of the garrison at Alesia (or
Alisa),and of all its inhabitants,including the Druids,the college-
priests and the neophytes;after this the whole
city was plundered and razed to the ground.
Bibractis,a city as large and as famous,not
far from Alesia perished a few years later.J.M.Ragon
describes her end as follows:
Bibractis,the mother of sciences,the soul of
the early nations [in Europe ] a town equally
famous for its sacred college of Druids,its
civilisation its schools,in which 40 000 students
were taught philosophy literature grammar
jurisprudence medicine astrology occult
sciences,architecture etc.Rival of Thebes,of
Memphis,of Athens and of Rome it possessed
an amphitheatre surrounded with colossal
statues,and accommodating 100 000 spectators,
gladiators,a capital temples of Janus,Pluto
Prosperpine Jupiter Apollo Minerva Cybele
Venus and Anubis;and in the midst of these
sumptuous edifices the Naumachy with its vast
basin an incredible construction a gigantic
work wherein floated boats and galleys devoted to
naval games;then a Champ de Mars an
aqueduct fountains,public baths;finally fortifications
and walls,the construction of which dated from
the heroic ages.[Op.cit.,p.22
.]
Such was the last city in Gaul wherein died
for Europe the secrets of the Initiations of the Great
Mysteries,the Mysteries of Nature and of her
forgotten Occult truths.The rolls and manuscripts of the
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famous Alexandrian Library were burned and
destroyed by the same Cęsar [ The
Christian mob in 389
of our era completed the work of destruction
upon what remained:most of the priceless works were
saved for students of Occultism but lost to
the world .] but while History
deprecates the action of the Arab
general Amrus,who gave the final touch to this
act of vandalism perpetrated by the great conqueror it
has not a word to say to the latter for his
destruction of nearly the same amount of precious rolls in Alesia
nor to the destroyer of Bibractis.While
Sacrovir chief of the Gauls,who revolted against Roman
despotism under Tiberius,and was defeated by
Silius in the year 21 of our era was burning himself
alive with his fellow conspirators on a
funeral pyre before the gates of the city as Ragon tells us,the
latter was sacked and plundered and all her
treasures of literature on the Occult Sciences perished by
fire.The once majestic city Bibractis,has now
become Autun Ragon explains.
(Page 300 )A few monuments of glorious antiquity are
still there such as the temples of Janus
and Cybele.
Ragon goes on:
Arles,founded two thousand years before Christ
was sacked in 270.This metropolis of Gaul
restored 40 years later by Constantine has
preserved to this day a few remains of its ancient
splendour;amphitheatre capitol an obelisk,a
block of granite 17 metres high a triumphal
arch catacombs,etc.Thus ended Kelto Gaulic
civilisation.Cęsar as a barbarian worthy of
Rome had already accomplished the destruction
of the ancient Mysteries by the sack of the
temples and their initiatory colleges,and by
the massacre of the Initiates and the Druids.
Remained Rome;but she never had but the lesser
Mysteries,shadows of the Secret
Sciences.The Great Initiation was extinct.[Op.cit.,p.23.J.M.Ragon a
Belgian by birth and
a Mason knew more about Occultism than any
other non-initiated writer.For fifty years he
studied the ancient mysteries wherever he
could find accounts of them.In 1805 he founded at
Paris the Brotherhood of Les Trinosophes in
which Lodge he delivered for years lectures on
Ancient and Modern Initiations (in 1818 and
again in 1841),which were published and now
are lost.Then he became the writer in chief of
Hermes a masonic paper.His best works were
La Maconnerie Occulte and the Fastes Initiatiq es.After his death in 1866 a
number of his
MSS remained in the possession of the Grand
Orient of France.A high Mason told the writer
that Ragon had corresponded for years with two
Orientalists in Syria and Egypt one of whom
is a Kopt gentleman.]
A few further extracts may be given from his Occult
Masonry,as they bear directly upon our subject.
However learned and erudite some of the
chronological mistakes of that author are very great.He says:
After deified man (Hermes)came the King-Priest
[the Hierophant ] Menes was the first
legislator and the founder of Thebes of the
hundred palaces.He filled that city with magnificent
splendour;it is from his day that the
sacerdotal epoch of Egypt dates.The priests reigned for
it is they who made the laws.It is said that
there have been three hundred and twenty-nine
[Hierophants ] since his time all of whom
have remained unknown.
After that genuine Adepts having become scarce
the author shows the Priests choosing false ones from
the midst of slaves whom they exhibited having
crowned and deified them for the adoration of the
ignorant masses.
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Tired of reigning in such a servile way the
kings rebelled and freed themselves.Then came
Sesostris,the founder of Memphis (1613 they
say before our era).To the sacerdotal election
to the throne succeeded that of the
warriors....Cheops who reigned from 1178 to 1122 built
the great Pyramid which bears his name.He is
accused of having persecuted theocracy and
closed the temples.
This is utterly incorrect though Ragon repeats
History. The Pyramid called by the name of Cheops is
the Great Pyramid the building of which even
Baron Bunsen assigned to 5 000 B.C.He says in Egypt s
Place in Universal History :
The Learning of Egypt -
(Page 301)The Origins of Egypt go back to the ninth
millennium before Christ.[Op.cit.,iv.462.]
And as the Mysteries were performed and the
Initiations took place in that Pyramid for indeed it was
built for that purpose it looks strange and
an utter contradiction with known facts in the history of the
Mysteries to suppose that Cheops,if the
builder of that Pyramid ever turned against the initiated Priests
and their temples.Moreover as far as the
Secret Doctrine teaches,it was not Cheops who built the
Pyramid of that name whatever else he might
have done.
Yet it is quite true that
Owing to an Ethiopian invasion and the
federated government of twelve chiefs,royalty fell into
the hands of Amasis,a man of low birth.
This was in 570 B.C.and it was Amasis who
destroyed priestly power.And
Thus perished that ancient theocracy which
showed its crowned priests for so many centuries
to Egypt and the whole world.
Egypt had gathered the students of all
countries around her Priests and Hierophants before Alexandria
was founded.Ennemoser asks:
How comes it that so little has become known
of the Mysteries and of their particular contents,
through so many ages,and amongst so many
different times and people?The answer is that it
is again owing to the universally strict
silence of the initiated.Another cause may be found in
the destruction and total loss of all the
written memorials of the secret knowledge of the
remotest antiquity.
Numa's books,described by Livy consisting of
natural philosophy were found in his tomb;but
they were not allowed to be made known lest
they should reveal the most secret mysteries of
the state religion....The senate and the
tribunes of the people determined ...that the books
themselves should be burned which was done.[History
of Magic,ii II.]
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Cassain mentions a treatise well-known in the
fourth and fifth centuries,which was accredited to Ham
the son of Noah who in his turn was reputed to
have received it from Jared the fourth generation from
Seth the son of Adam.
Alchemy also was first taught in Egypt by her
learned Priests,though the first appearance of this system
is as old as man.Many writers have declared
that Adam was the first Adept;but that was a blind and a
pun upon the name which is red earth in one
of its meanings.The correct information under its
allegorical veil is found in the sixth
chapter of Genesis,which speaks of the Sons of God who took
wives of the daughters of men after which they
communicated to (Page
302)these
wives many a mystery
and secret of the phenomenal world.The cradle
of Alchemy says Olaus Borrichius,is to be sought in the
most distant times.Democritus of Abdera was an
Alchemist and a Hermetic Philosopher.Clement of
Alexandria wrote considerably upon the Science
and Moses and Solomon are called proficients in it.We
are told by W.Godwin;
The first authentic record on this subject is
an edict of Diocletian about 300 years A.D.
ordering a diligent search to be made in Egypt
for all the ancient books which treated of the art
of making gold and silver that they might without
distinction be consigned to the flames.
The Alchemy of the Chaldęans and the old
Chinamen is not even the parent of that Alchemy which
revived among the Arabians many centuries
later.There is a spiritual Alchemy and a physical
transmutation.The knowledge of both was
imparted at the Initiations.
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SECTION XXXIV
The Post-Christian Successors to the
Mysteries
(Page 303)THE Eleusinian Mysteries were no more.Yet it
was these which gave their principle features to
the Neo-platonic school of Ammonius Saccas,for
the Eclectic System was chiefly characterised by its
Theurgy and ecstasis.It was Iamblichus who
added to it the Egyptian doctrine of Theurgy with its
practices,and Porphyry the Jew who opposed
this new element.The school however with but few
exceptions,practised asceticism and
contemplation its mystics passing through a discipline as rigorous
as that of the Hindu devotee.Their efforts
never tended so much to develop the successful practice of
thaumaturgy necromancy or sorcery such as
they are now accused of as to evolve the higher
faculties of the inner man the Spiritual
Ego.The school held that a number of spiritual beings,denizens
of spheres quite independent of the earth and
of the human cycle were mediators between the Gods
and men and even between man and the Supreme
Soul.To put it in plainer language the soul of man
became owing to the help of the Planetary
Spirits,recipient of the soul of the world as Emerson puts it.
Apollonius of Tyana asserted his possession of
such a power in these words (quoted by Professor Wilder
in his Neo-Platonism ):
I can see the present and the future in a
clear mirror.The sage [Adept ] need not wait for the
vapours of the earth and the corruption of the
air to foresee plagues and fevers;he must know
them later than God but earlier than the
people.The theoi or gods see the future;common
men the present;sages that which is about to
take place.My peculiar abstemious mode of
living produces such an acuteness of the
senses,or creates some other faculty so that the
greatest and most remarkable things may be performed.[Neo-Platonism and Alchemy.p.15
]
(Page 304)Professor A.Wilder s comment thereupon is
remarkable:
This is what may be termed Spirit al
photography .The soul is the camera in which facts and
events,future past and present are alike
fixed;and the mind becomes conscious of them.
Beyond our everyday world of limits,all is as
one day or state the past and future comprised
in the present.Probably this is the great day
the last day the day of the Lord.of the Bible
writers the day into which everyone passes by
death or ecstasis.Then the soul is freed from
the constraint of the body and its nobler part
is united to higher nature and becomes partaker
in the wisdom and foreknowledge of the higher
beings.[ Loc.cit.]
How far the system practised by the
Neo-Platonists was identical with that of the old and the modern
Vedāntins may be inferred from what
Dr.A.Wilder says of the Alexandrian Theosophists.
The anterior idea of the New Platonists was
that of a single Supreme Essence...All the old
philosophies contained the doctrine that öåļé,theoi,gods
or disposers,angels,demons,and
other spiritual agencies,emanated from the
Supreme Being.Ammonius accepted the doctrine
of the Books of Hermes,that from the divine
All proceeded the Divine Wisdom or Amun;that
from Wisdom proceeded the Demiurge or
Creator;and from the Creator the subordinate
spiritual beings;the world and its people
being the last.The first is contained in the second
the first and second in the third and so on
through the entire series.[Op.cit.,pp.9.10
]
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This is a perfect echo of the belief of the
Vedāntins,and it proceeds directly from the secret teachings of
the East.The same author says:
Akin to this is the doctrine of the Jewish
Kabala which was taught by the Pharsi or Pharisees,
who probably borrowed it as their sectarian
designation would seem to indicate from the
Magians of Persia.It is substantially embodied
in the following synopsis.
The Divine Being is the All the source of all
existence the Infinite;and He cannot be known.
The Universe reveals Him and subsists by
Him.At the beginning His effulgence went forth
everywhere.[This Divine Effulgence and Essence is the light of the Logos:only
the Vedāntin
would not use the pronoun He but would say
It.]Eventually He retired
within Himself and
so formed around Him a vacant space.Into this
He transmitted His first Emanation a Ray
containing in it the generative and conceptive
power and hence the name IE or Jah.This in
turn produced the tikkun the pattern
or idea or form;and in this emanation which also
contained the male and female or generative
and conceptive potencies,were the three
primitive forces of Light Spirit and Life.This
Tikkun is united to the Ray or first emanation and
pervaded by it;and by that union is also in
perpetual communication with the infinite source.It
is the pattern the primitive man the Adam
Kadmon the macrocosm of Pythagoras and other
philosophers.
The Root Races -
(Page 305)From it proceeded the Sephiroth ....From
the Sephiroth in turn emanated the four
worlds,each proceeding out of the one
immediately above it and the lower one enveloping its
superior.These worlds became less pure as they
descended in the scale the lowest of all
being the material world.[Loc.cit.,note.p.10 ]
This veiled enunciation of the Secret Teaching
will be clear to our readers by this time.These worlds are:
Azil th is
peopled with the purest emanations [ the
First almost spiritual Race of the human
beings that were to inhabit [the Fourth;] the second Beriah,by a lower order the servants of
the former [ the second Race ];the
third Jesirah,by the cherubim and seraphim the Elohim
and B ni Elohim [Sons of Gods or Elohim,our Third Race ] .The fourth world Asiah,is
inhabited by the Klipputh of whom Belial is
chief [the Atlantean Sorcerers ] .[ Loc.cit.,note.]
These worlds are all the earthly duplicates of
their heavenly prototypes the mortal and temporary
reflections and shadows of the more durable if
not eternal races dwelling in other to us,invisible worlds.
The souls of the men of our Fifth Race derive
their elements from these four worlds Root Races that
preceded ours:namely our intellect.Manas,the
fifth principle our passions and mental and corporeal
appetites.A conflict having arisen called war
in heaven among our prototypical worlds,war came to
pass,ęons later between the Atlanteans [See Esoteric B ddhism,by
A.P.Sinnett.Fifth Edition.] of
Asiah and those of the third Root Race the B
ni Elohim or the Sons of God [See
Isis Unveiled .Vol.I .
pp.589-595.The Sons of God and their war
with the giants and magicians .]and
then evil and
wickedness were intensified.Mankind (in the last
sub-race of the third Root Race)having
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Sinned in their first parent [a physiological allegory truly!] from whose soul every human soul
is an emanation
says the Zohar men were exiled into
more material bodies to
Expiate that sin and become proficient in
goodness.
To accomplish the cycle of necessity rather
explains the doctrine;to progress on their task of evolution
from which task none of us can be freed
neither by death nor suicide for each of us have to pass
through the Valley of Thorns before he
emerges into the plains of divine light and rest.And thus men
will continue to be born in new bodies.
Till they have become sufficiently pure to
enter a higher form of existence.
(Page 306)This means only that Mankind from the First
down to the last or Seventh Race is composed
of one and the same company of actors,who have
descended from higher spheres to perform their
artistic tour on this our planet
Earth.Starting as pure spirits on our downward journey around the world
(verily!)with the knowledge of truth now
feebly echoed in the Occult Doctrines inherent in us,cyclic
law brings us down to the reversed apex of
matter which is lost down here on earth and the bottom of
which we have already struck;and then the same
law of spiritual gravity will make us slowly ascend to
still higher still purer spheres than those we
started from.
Foresight prophecy oracular powers!Illusive
fancies of man s dwarfed perceptions,which see actual
images in reflections and shadows,and mistakes
past actualities for prophetic images of a future that
has no room in Eternity.Our macrocosm and its
smallest microcosm man are both repeating the same
play of universal and individual events at
each station as on every stage on which Karma leads them to
enact their respective dramas of life.False
prophets could have no existence had there been no true
prophets.And so there were and many of both
classes,and in all ages.Only none of these ever saw
anything but that which had already come to
pass,and had been before prototypically enacted in higher
spheres if the event foretold related to
national or public weal or woe or in some preceding life if it
concerned only an individual for every such
event is stamped as an indelible record of the Past and
Future which are only after all the ever
Present in Eternity.The worlds and the purifications spoken of
in the Zohar and other Kabalistic
books,relate to our globe and races no more and no less than they
relate to other globes and other races that
have preceded our own in the great cycle.It was such
fundamental truths as these that were
performed in allegorical plays and images during the Mysteries,
the last Act of which the Epilogue for the
Mystę was the anastasis or continued existence as also the
Soul transformation.
Hence the author of Neo-platonism and
Alchemy shows us that all such Eclectic doctrines were strongly
reflected in the Epistles of Paul and
were
Inculcated more or less among the
Churches.Hence such passages as these Ye were dead
in errors and sins;ye walked according to the
ęon of this world according to the archon that
has the domination of the air. We wrestle
not against flesh and blood but against the
dominations,against potencies,against the
lords of darkness,and against the
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mischievousness of spirits and the empryrean
regions.
The False Gnosis -(Page 307)But Paul was evidently hostile to the effort to blend his
gospel
with the gnostic ideas of the Hebrew-Egyptian
school as seems to have been attempted at
Ephesus;and accordingly wrote to Timothy his
favorite disciple Keep safe the precious
charge entrusted to thee;and reject the new
doctrines and the antagonistic principles of the
gnosis,falsely so-called of which some have
made profession and gone astray from the faith.
[ Loc.cit.note.]
But as the Gnosis is the Science pertaining to
our Higher Self as blind faith is a matter of temperament
and emotionalism and as Paul s doctrine was still
newer and his interpretations far more thickly veiled to
keep the inner truths hidden far away from the
Gnostic,preference has been given to the former by every
earnest seeker after truth.
Besides this,the great Teachers who professed
the so-called false Gnosis were very numerous in the
days of the Apostles,and were as great as any
converted Rabbi could be.If Porphyry the Jew Malek,
went against Theurgy on account of old
traditional recollections,there were other teachers who practised
it.Plotinius,Iamblichus,Proclus,were all
thaumaturgists,and the latter:
Elaborated the entire theosophy and theurgy of
his predecessors into a complete system.[Op.
cit.,p.18.]
As to Ammonius,
Countenanced by Clemens and Athenagoras,in the
Church and by learned men of the
Synagogue the Academy and the Grove he
fulfilled his labour by teaching a common
doctrine for all.[Op.cit.,p.8.]
Thus it is not Judaism and Christianity that
re-modelled the ancient Pagan Wisdom but rather the latter
that put its heathen curb quietly and
insensibly on the new faith;and this,moreover was still further
influenced by the Eclectic Theosophical system
the direct emanation of the Wisdom Religion.All that is
grand and noble in Christian theology comes
from Neo-Platonism.It is too well-known to now need much
repetition that Ammonius Saccas,the God-taught
(theodidaktos )and the lover of truth (philalethes ),in
establishing his school made a direct attempt
to benefit the world by teaching those portions of the
Secret Science that were permitted by its
direct guardians to be revealed in those days.[No orthodox
Christian has ever equalled far less surpassed
in the practice of true Christ-like virtues and ethics,or in
the beauty of his moral nature Ammonius,the
Alexandrian pervert from Christianity (he was born from
Christian parents.)] The modern movement of our own Theosophical Society (Page 308)was begun on the
same principles;for the Neo-Platonic school of
Ammonius aimed as we do at the reconcilement of all
sects and peoples,under the once common faith
of the Golden Age trying to induce the nations to lay
aside their contentions in religious matters
at any rate by proving to them that their various beliefs are
all the more or less legitimate children of
one common parent the Wisdom Religion.
Nor was the Eclectic Theosophical system as
some writers inspired by Rome would make the world
believe developed only during the third
century of our era;but it belongs to a much earlier age as has
been shown by Diogenes Laertius.He traces it
to the beginning of the dynasty of the Ptolemies;to the
great seer and prophet the Egyptian Priest
Pot-Amun of the temple of the God of that name for Amun
is the God of Wisdom.Unto that day the
communication between the Adepts of Upper India and Bactria
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and the Philosophers of the West had never
ceased.
Under Philadelphus ...the Hellenic teachers
became rivals of the College of Rabbis of
Babylon.The Buddhistic,Vedāntic and Magian
systems were expounded along with the
philosophies of Greece ....Aristobulus,the Jew
declared that the ethics of Aristotle were
derived from the law of Moses (!);and Philo
after him attempted to interpret the Pentateuch
in accordance with the doctrines of Pythagoras
and the Academy.In Josephus it is said that in
the Book of the Genesis,Moses wrote
philosophically that is,in the figurative style;and the
Essenes of Carmel were reproduced in the
Therapeutę of Egypt who in turn were declared
by Eusebius to be identical with the
christians,though they actually existed long before the
Christian era.Indeed in its turn Christianity
also was taught at Alexandria and underwent an
analogous metamorphosis.Pantęnus,Athenagoras
and Clement were thoroughly instructed
in the Platonic philosophy and comprehended
its essential unity with the oriental systems.
[Op.cit.,pp.3 4.]
Ammonius,though the son of Christian
parents,was a lover of the truth a true Philaletheian foremost of
all.He set his heart upon the work of
reconciling the different systems into a harmonious whole for he
had already perceived the tendency of
Christianity to raise itself on the hecatomb which it had
constructed out of all other creeds and
faiths.What says history?
The ecclesiastical historian Mosheim declares
that
Ammonius,conceiving that not only the
philosophers of Greece but also all those of the
different barbarous nations,were perfectly in
unison with each other with regard to every
essential point made it his business so to
temper and expound the tenets of all these various
sects,as to make it appear they had all of
them originated from one and the same source and
all tended to one and the same end.
Teachers of Ammonius -(Page 309)Again Mosheim says that Ammonius taught that the
religion of the multitude went hand in hand
with philosophy and with her had shared the fate
of being by degrees corrupted and obscured
with mere human conceits,superstition and lies;
that it ought therefore to be brought back to
its original purity by purging it of this dross and
expounding it upon philosophical
principles;and that the whole which Christ had in view was
to reinstate and restore to its primitive
integrity the Wisdom of the Ancients.[Quoted
by Dr.
Wilder.p.5 ]
Now what was that Wisdom of the Ancients
that the Founder of Christianity had in view ?The system
taught by Ammonius in his Eclectic
Theosophical School was made of the crumbs permitted to be
gathered from the antediluvian lore;those
Neo-Platonic teachings are described in the Edinb rgh
Encyclopdia as follows:
He [ Ammonius
]adopted the doctrines which
were received in Egypt concerning the Universe
and the Deity considered as constituting one
great whole;concerning the eternity of the world
the nature of souls,the empire of Providence [Karma ]and the government of the world by
demons [daimons
or spirits,archangels ].He
also established a system of moral discipline
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which allowed the people in general to live
according to the laws of their country and the
dictates of nature;but required the wise to
exalt their minds by contemplation and to mortify
the body [ Mortification is here meant in the moral not the physical
sense:to restrain every
lust and passion and live on the simplest diet
possible.] so that they might be
capable of
enjoying the presence and assistance of the
demons [including their own daimon
or Seventh
Principle ]...and ascending after death to the presence of the Supreme [ Soul ]Parent.In
order to reconcile the popular religions,and
particularly the Christian with this new system he
made the whole history of the heathen gods an
allegory maintaining that they were only
celestial ministers [ This is a Neo-Platonic teaching adopted as a doctrine in the
Roman
Catholic Church with its worship of the Seven
Spirits.] entitled to an
inferior kind of worship;
and he acknowledged that Jesus Christ was an
excellent man and the friend of God but
alleged that it was not his design entirely to
abolish the worship of demons,[The
Church has
made of it the worship of devils,Daimon is
Spirit and relates to our divine Spirit the seventh
Principle and to the Dhyān Chohans.Jesus
prohibited going to the temple or church as
Pharisees do but commanded that man should
retire for prayer (communion with his God)
into a private closet.Is it Jesus who would
have countenanced in the face of the starving
millions,the building of the most gorgeous
churches?] and that his only
intention was to purify
the ancient religion.
No more could be declared except for those
Philaletheians who were initiated persons duly instructed
and disciplined to whom Ammonius communicated
his more important doctrines,
Imposing on them the obligations of secrecy as
was done before him by Zoroaster and
Pythagoras,and in the Mysteries [where an oath was required from the (Page 310)neophytes
or catechumens not to divulge what they had
learned ].The great Pythagoras
divided his
teachings into exoteric and esoteric.[Op.cit.,p.7.]
Has not Jesus done the same since He declared
to His disciples that to them it was given to know the
mysteries of the kingdom of heaven whereas to
the multitudes it was not given and therefore he spoke
in parables which has a two-fold meaning?
Dr.A.Wilder proceeds:
Thus Ammonius found his work ready to his
hand.His deep spiritual intuition his extensive
learning and his familiarity with the
Christian fathers,Pantęnus,Clement and Athenagoras,
and with the most erudite philosophers of the
time all fitted him for the labour he performed so
thoroughly ....The results of his ministration
are perceptible at the present day in every
country of the Christian world;every prominent
system of doctrine now bearing the marks of
his plastic hand.Every ancient philosophy has
had its votaries among the moderns;and even
Judaism oldest of them all has taken upon
itself changes which were suggested by the God-
taught Alexandrian.[Op.cit.,p.7.]
The Neo-Platonic School of Alexandria founded
by Ammonius the prototype proposed for the
Theosophical Society taught Theurgy and
Magic,as much as they were taught in the days of
Pythagoras,and by others far earlier than his
period.For Proclus says that the doctrines of Orpheus,
who was an Indian and came from India were the
origin of the systems afterwards promulgated.
What Orpheus delivered in hidden
allegories,Pythagoras learned when he was initiated into
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the Orphic Mysteries;and Plato next received a
perfect knowledge of them from Orphic and
Pythagorean writings.[Op.cit.,p.18.]
The Philaletheians had their division into
neophytes (chelas )and Initiates,or Masters;and the eclectic
system was characterised by three distinct
features,which are purely Vedāntic;a Supreme Essence
One and Universal;the eternity and
indivisibility of the human spirit;and Theurgy which is Mantricism.
So also as we have seen they had their secret
or Esoteric teachings like any other mystic school.Nor
were they allowed to reveal anything of their
secret tenets any more than were the Initiates of the
Mysteries.Only the penalties incurred by the
revealers of the secrets of the latter were far more terrible
and this prohibition has survived to this day
not only in India but even among the Jewish Kabalists in
Asia.
[The Talm d gives the story of the four Tanaim who are
made in allegorical terms,to enter into the
garden of delights,i.e.,to be initiated into the occult and final science.
According to the teaching of our holy masters
the names of the four who entered the garden
of delight are:Ben Asai Ben Zoma Acher and
Rabbi Akiba ....
Ben Asai looked and lost his sight.Ben Zoma
looked and lost his reason.Acher made
depredations in the plantation (mixed up the
whole and failed).But Akiba who had entered in
peace came out of it in peace;for the saint
whose name he blessed had said This old man
is worthy of serving us with glory.
The learned commentators of the Talm d the
Rabbis of the synagogue explain that the
garden of delight in which those four personages are made to enter is but that
mysterious
science the most terrible of sciences for weak
intellects,which it leads directly to insanity
says A.Franck,in his Kabbalah.It is not
the pure at heart and he who studies but with a view
to perfecting himself and so more easily
acquiring the promised immortality who need have
any fear:but rather he who makes of the
science of sciences a sinful pretext for worldly
motives,who should tremble.The latter will
never understand the kabalistic evocations of the
supreme initiation.Isis Unveiled.ii.119.]
Difficulties and Dangers -(Page 311)One of the reasons for such secrecy may be the
undoubtedly
serious difficulties and hardships of
chelaship and the dangers attending Initiation.The modern
candidate has,like his predecessor of old to
either conquer or die;when which is still worse he does
not lose his reason.There is no danger to him
who is true and sincere and especially unselfish.For he
is thus prepared beforehand to meet any
temptation.
He who fully recognised the power of his
immortal spirit and never doubted for one moment
its omnipotent protection had naught to
fear.But woe to the candidate in whom the slightest
physical fear sickly child of matter made
him lose sight and faith in his own invulnerability.
He who was not wholly confident of his moral
fitness to accept the burden of these
tremendous secrets was doomed.[ Isis Unveiled.ii.119.]
There were no such dangers in Neo-Platonic
Initiations.The selfish and unworthy failed in their object
and in the failure was the punishment.The
chief aim was reunion of the part with the all.This All was
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One with numberless names.Whether called D
i the bright Lord of Heaven by the Aryan;Iao by the
Chaldęan and Kabalist;Iabe by the
Samaritan;the Ti or T isco by the Northman;D w by the
Briton;
Ze s,by
the Thracian or Jupiter by the Roman it was the Being the Facit.One
and Supreme [See
Neo-Platonism.p.9.]the
unborn and the inexhaustible source of every emanation the fountain of life and
light eternal a Ray of which every one of us
carries in him on this earth.The knowledge of this Mystery
had reached the Neo-Platonists from India
through Pythagoras,and still later through Apollonius of Tyana
and the rules and methods for producing
ecstasy had come from the same lore of the divine Vidyā the
Gnosis.For Āryavarta the bright focus into
which has been poured in the beginning of time the flames
(Page 312)of Divine Wisdom had become the centre from
which radiated the tongues of fire into every
portion of the globe.What was Samādhi but that
Sublime ecstasy in which state things divine
and the mysteries of Nature are revealed to us,
of which Porphyry speaks?
The efflux from the divine soul is imparted to
the human spirit in unreserved abundance
accomplishing for the soul a union with the
divine and enabling it while in the body to be
partaker of the life which is not in the body
he explains elsewhere.
Thus under the title of Magic was taught every
Science physical and metaphysical natural or deemed
supernatural by those who are ignorant of the
omnipresence and universality of Nature.
Divine Magic makes of man a God;human magic
creates a new friend.
We wrote in Isis Unveiled :
In the oldest documents now in the possession
of the World the Vedas and the older laws of
Manu we find many magical rites practised and
permitted by the Brāhmans.[See
the Code
published by Sir William Jones,Chapter
ix.p.11.] Tibet Japan and China
teach in the
present age that which was taught by the
oldest Chaldęns.The clergy of these respective
countries prove moreover what they teach
namely that the practice of moral and physical
purity and of certain austerities,develops the
vital soul-power of self-illumination.Affording to
man the control over his own immortal spirit
it gives him truly magical powers over the
elementary spirits inferior to himself.In the
West we find magic of as high an antiquity as in the
East.The Druids of Great Britain practised it
in the silent crypts of their deep caves;and Pliny
devotes many a chapter to the wisdom [Pliny:Hist.Nat.,xxx.i
:ib.xvi.14:xxv.9.etc.]of the
leaders of the Celts.The Semothees the Druids
of the Gauls expounded the physical as
well as the spiritual sciences.They taught the
secrets of the universe the harmonious
progress of the heavenly bodies,the formation
of the earth and above all the immortality of
the Soul.[Pomponius ascribes to them the knowledge of the highest sciences.] In their sacred
groves natural academies built by the hand of
the Invisible architect the initiates
assembled at the still hour of midnight to
learn about what man once was and what he will
be.[Cęsar
iii.14 ] They needed no
artificial illumination nor life-drawing gas,to light up their
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temples,for the chaste goddess of night beamed
her most silvery rays on their oak-crowned
heads;and their white-robed sacred bards knew
how to converse with the solitary queen of
the starry vault.[Pliny.xxx.Isis Unveiled.i.18.]
During the palmy days of Neo-Platonism these
Bards were no more for their cycle had run its course
and the last of the Druids had perished at
Bibractis and Alesia.
The Neo-Platonic School -(Page 313)But the Neo-Platonic school was for a long
time successful
powerful and prosperous.Still while adopting
Āryan Wisdom in its Doctrines,the school failed to follow
the wisdom of the Brāhmans in practice.It
showed its moral and intellectual superiority too openly caring
too much for the great and powerful of this
earth.While the Brāhmans and their great Yogis experts in
matters of philosophy metaphysics,astronomy
morals and religion preserved their dignity under the
sway of the most powerful princes,remained
aloof from the world and would not condescend to visit
them or to ask for the slightest favour [The care which they took in
educating youth in familiarizing it
with generous and virtuous sentiments,did them
peculiar honour and their maxims and discourses,as
recorded by historians,prove that they were
expert in matters of philosophy metaphysics,astronomy
morality and religion says a modern
writer.If kings or princes desired the advice or the blessings of the
holy men they were either obliged to go
themselves,or to send messengers.To these men no secret
power of either plant or mineral was
unknown.They had fathomed nature to its depths,while psychology
and physiology were to them open books,and the
result was that science that is now termed so
superciliously magic.] the Emperors Alexander Severus,and
Julian and the greatest among the
aristocracy of the land embraced the tenets of
the Neo-Platonists,who mixed freely with the world.The
system flourished for several centuries and
comprised within the ranks of its followers the ablest and
most learned among the men of the time;Hypatia
the teacher of the Bishop Synesius,was one of the
ornaments of the School until the fatal and
shameful day when she was murdered by the Christian mob
at the instigation of Bishop Cyril of
Alexandria.The school was finally removed to Athens,and closed by
order of the Emperor Justinian.
How accurate is Dr.Wilder s remark that
Modern writers have commentated upon the
peculiar views of the Neo-Platonists upon these
[metaphysical ] subjects,seldom
representing them correctly even if this was desired or
intended.[Op.cit.,p.9 .]
The few speculations on the sublunary material
and spiritual universes that they did put into writing
Ammonius never having himself written a line
after the wont of reformers could not enable posterity to
judge them rightly even had not the early
Christian Vandals,the later crusaders,and the fanatics of the
Middle Ages,destroyed three parts of that
which remained of the Alexandrian Library and its later
schools.
Professor Draper shows that Cardinal Ximenes
alone
(Page 314)Delivered to the flames in the squares of
Granada eighty thousand Arabic
manuscripts,many of them translations of
classical authors.
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In the Vatican Library whole passages in the
most rare and precious treatises of the Ancients were found
erased and blotted out for the sake of
interlining them with absurd psalmodies! Moreover it is well
known that over thirty-six volumes written by
Porphyry were burnt and otherwise destroyed by the
Fathers.Most of the little that is known of
the doctrines of the Eclectics is found in the writings of
Plotinus and of those same Church Fathers.
Says the author of Neo-Platonism :
What Plato was to Socrates,and the Apostle
John to the head of the Christian faith Plotinus became to
the God-taught Ammonius.To
Plotinus,Origenes,and Longinus we are indebted for what is known of the
Philaletheian system.They were duly instructed
initiated and entrusted with the interior doctrines.[Op.
cit.,p.11.]
This accounts marvellously for Origen s
calling people idiots who believe in the Garden of Eden and
Adam and Eve fables;as also for the fact that
so few of the writings of that Church Father have passed
to posterity.Between the secrecy imposed the
vows of silence and that which was maliciously destroyed
by every foul means,it is indeed miraculous
that even so much of the Philaletheian tenets has reached
the world.
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SECTION XXXV
Symbolism of Sun and Stars
(Page 315)And the Heaven was visible in Seven Circles
and the planets appeared with all their signs,in
star-form and the stars were divided and
numbered with the rulers that were in them and their revolving
course through the agency of the divine
Spirit.[ Hermes,iv.6 ]
Here Spirit denotes Pneuma collective Deity
manifested in its Builders, or as the Church has it the
seven Spirits of the Presence the mediantib
s angelis of whom Thomas Aquinas says that God never
works but through them.
These seven rulers or mediating Angels were
the Kabiri Gods of the Ancients.This was so evident that
it forced from the Church together with the
admission of the fact an explanation and a theory whose
clumsiness and evident sophistry are such that
it must fail to impress.The world is asked to believe that
while the Planetary Angels of the Church are
divine Beings,the genuine Seraphim [From
Saraph
fiery burning plural (see Isaiah,vi.2-6).They
are regarded as the personal attendants of the
Almighty his messengers, angels or
metratons.In Revelation they are the seven burning lamps in
attendance before the throne.] these very same angels,under
identical names and planets,were and are
false as Gods of the ancients.They are no
better than pretenders;the cunning copies of the real
Angels,produced beforehand through the craft
and power of Lucifer and of the fallen Angels.Now what
are the Kabiri?
Kabiri as a name is derived from Habir great
and also from Venus,this Goddess being called
to the present day Kabar as in also her
star.The Kabiri were worshipped at Hebron the city of the
Anakim or anakas (kings,princes).They are the
highest Planetary Spirits,the greatest Gods and the
powerful. Varro following Orpheus,(Page 316 )calls these Gods åõäõķįōļé divine Powers.The
word
Kabirim when applied to men and the words
Heber Gheber (with reference to Nimrod or the giants of
Genesis vi.)and
Kabir are all derived from the mysterious Word the Ineffable and the
Unprounceable. Thus it is they who represent
tsaba the host of heaven.The Church however
bowing before the angel Anael (the regent of
Venus).[ Venus with the
Chaldęans and Egyptians was the
wife of Prote s and is regarded as the
mother of the Kabiri the sons of Phta or Emepth the divine light
or the Sun.The angels answer to the stars in
the following order:The Sun the Moon Mars,Venus,
Mercury Jupiter and Saturn:Michael Gabriel
Samael Anael Raphael Zachariel and Orifiel:this is in
religion and Christian Kabalism;astrologically
and esoterically the places of the regents stand
otherwise as also in the Jewish or rather the
real Chaldęan Kabalah.] connects
the planet Venus with
Lucifer the chief of the rebels under Satan
so poetically apostrophized by the prophet Isaiah as O
Lucifer son of the morning. [ Loc.cit.,xiv.12.] All the Mystery Gods were Kabiri.As
these seven lictors
relate directly to the Secret Doctrine their
real status is of the greatest importance.
Suidas defines the Kabiri as the Gods who
command all the other dęmons (Spirits),
Macrobius introduces them as
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Those Penates and tutelary deities,through
whom we live and learn and know (Sat rn,I.iii.
ch.iv.).
The teraphim through which the Hebrews
consulted the oracles of the Urim and the Thummim were the
symbolical hieroglyphics of the
Kabiri.Nevertheless,the good Fathers have made of Kibir the synonym
of devil and of daimon (spirit)a demon.
The Mysteries of the Kabiri at Hebron (Pagan
and Jewish)were presided over by the seven Planetary
Gods,among the rest by Jupiter and Saturn
under their mystery names,and they are referred to as
and and by Euripides as Creuzer moreover
shows that whether in Phnicia or in Egypt the
Kabiri were always the seven planets as known in
antiquity who together with their Father the
Sun referred to elsewhere as their elder brother
composed a powerful ogdoad;[This is one more proof that the
Ancients knew of seven planets besides
the Sun:for otherwise which is the eighth in
such a case?The seventh with two others,as stated were
mystery planets,whether Uranus or any
other.] the eight superior
powers as .or solar
assessors,danced around him the sacred
circular dance the symbol of the rotation of the planets around
the Sun.Jehovah and Saturn moreover are one.
It is quite natural therefore to find a French
writer D Anselme applying the same terms of
to Jehovah and his word and they are correctly
so applied.
The Circle Dance -(Page 317)For if the circle dance prescribed by the Amazons for the
Mysteries
being the circle dance of the planets,and
characterised as the motion of the divine Spirit carried on the
waves of the great Deep can now be called
infernal and lascivious when performed by the Pagans,
then the same epithets ought to be applied to
David s dance;[ II.Sam.,vi.20-22.] and to the dance of
the daughters of Shiloh [Judges.xxi.21 et seq.] and to the leaping of the prophets
of Baal;[ I.Kings.
xviii.26 ] they were all identical and all belonged to Sabęan worship.King
David s dance during which
he uncovered himself before his maid-servants
in a public thoroughfare saying:
I will play (act wantonly)before
.(Jehovah),and I will yet be more vile than this,
was certainly more reprehensible than any
circle dance during the Mysteries,or even than the modern
Rāsa Mandala in India.[This dance Rāsa Mandala enacted by the Gopis or shepherdesses of
Krishna
the Sun-God is enacted to this day in
Rājputāna in India and is undeniably the same theo-astronomical
and symbolical dance of the planets and the
Zodiacal signs,that was danced thousands of years before
our era.] which is the same thing.It was David who introduced Jehovistic
worship into Judea after
sojourning so long among the Tyrians and
Philistines,where these rites were common.
David knew nothing of Moses;and if he
introduced the Jehovah-worship it was not in its monotheistic
character but simply as that of one of the
many (Kabirean )gods of the neighbouring nations,a tutelary
deity of his own to whom he had given the
preference whom he had chosen among all
other (Kabeiri)gods,[ Isis Unveiled.ii.45 .]
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and who was one of the associates,Chabir of
the Sun.The Shakers dance the circle dance to this
day when turning round for the Holy Ghost to
move them.In India it is Nārā-yana who is the mover on
the waters; and Nārāyana is Vishnu in his
secondary form and Vishnu has Krishna for an Avatāra in
whose honour the circle dance is still
enacted by the Nautch-girls of the temples,he being the Sun-God
and they the planets as symbolised by the
gopis.
Let the reader turn to the works of De
Mirville a Roman Catholic writer or to Mon mental Christianity,by
Dr.Lundy a Protestant (Page 318)divine if he wants to appreciate to any degree
the subtlety and
casuistry of their reasonings.No one ignorant
of the occult version can fail to be impressed with the
proofs brought forward to show how cleverly
and perseveringly Satan has worked for long millenniums
to tempt a humanity unblessed with an
infallible Church in order to have himself recognized as the One
living God and his fiends as holy Angels.The
reader must be patient and study with attention what the
author says on behalf of his Church.To compare
it the better with the versions of the Occultists,a few
points may be quoted here verbatim.
St.Peter tells us:May the divine Lucifer
arise in your hearts [ II Epistle.i.19.The
English
text says:Until the day-star arise in your
heart a trifling alteration which does not really
matter as L cifer is the day as well
as the morning star and it is less shocking to pious
ears.There are a number of such alterations in
the Protestant bibles .] [ Now
the Sun is Christ
].... I will send my Son from the Sun said the Eternal
through the voice of prophetic
traditions;and prophecy having become history
the Evangelists repeated in their turn:The
S n rising from on high visited us.[Again the English translation changes the world Sun into
day-spring.The Roman Catholics are decidedly
braver and more sincere than the Protestant
theologians.De Mirville.iv.34.38.]
Now God says through Malachi that the Sun
shall arise for those who fear his name What Malachi
meant by the Sun of Righteousness the
Kabalists alone can tell;but what the Greek,and even the
Protestant theologians understood by the term
is of course Christ referred to metaphorically.Only as
the sentence I will send my Son from the Sun
is borrowed verbatim from a Sibylline Book,it becomes
very hard to understand how it can be
attributed to or classed with any prophecy relating to the Christian
Savior unless,indeed the latter is to be
identified with Apollo.Virgil again says,Here comes the
Virgin s and Apollo s reign and Apollo or
Apollyon is to this day viewed as a form of Satan and is taken
to mean the Antichrist.If the Sibylline
promise He will send his Son from the Sun applies to Christ then
either Christ and Apollo are one and then why
call the latter a demon?or the prophecy had nothing to
do with the Christian Savior and in such a
case why appropriate it at all?
But De Mirville goes further.He shows us
St.Denys,the Areopagite affirming that
The Sun is the special signification and the
statue of God.[Thus said the
Egyptians and the
Sabęans in days of old the symbol of whose
manifested gods,Osiris and Bel was the sun.
But they had a higher deity.]....It is by the Eastern door that
the glory of the Lord penetrated
into the temples [of the Jews and Christians,that divine glory being Sun-light.]..We build
our churches towards the east says in his
turn St.Ambrose for during the Mysteries we
begin by renouncing him who is in the west.
Christian Astrolatry -(Page 319)He who is in the west is Typhon the Egyptian god of
darkness the
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west having been held by them as the Typhonic
Gate of Death.Thus,having borrowed Osiris from the
Egyptians,the Church Fathers thought little of
helping themselves to his brother Typhon.Then again:
The prophet Baruch [ Exiled from the Protestant bible but left in the Apocrypha which
according to Article VI of the Church of
England she doth read for example of life and
instruction of manners (?),but not to
establish any doctrine.] speaks
of the stars that rejoice
in their vessels and citadels (Chap.iii.);and
Ecclesiastes applies the same terms to the sun
which is said to be the admirable vessel of
the most High and the citadel of the Lord
öõėį÷ē [
Corneli s a Lapide.v.248 ]
In every case there is no doubt about one
thing for the sacred writer says.It is a Spirit who
rules the sun s course.Hear what he says (in Eccles
.i.6),The sun also ariseth and its spirit
lighting all in its circular path (gyrat
gyrans)returneth according to his circuits. [Ecclesiastes.
xIiii.The above quotations are taken from Dr
Mirville s chapter On Christian and Jewish Solar
Theology iv.35-38.]
De Mirville seems to quote from texts either
rejected by or unknown to Protestants in whose bible there
is no forty-third chapter of Ecclesiastes ;nor
is the sun made to go in circuits in the latter but the wind.
This is a question to be settled between the
Roman and the Protestant Churches.Our point is the strong
element of Sabęanism or Heliolatry present in
Christianity.
An cumenical Council having authoritatively
put a stop to Christian Astrolatry by declaring that there
was no sidereal Souls in sun moon or
planets,St.Thomas took upon himself to settle the point in
dispute.The angelic doctor announced that
such expressions did not mean a soul but only an
Intelligence not resident in the sun or
stars,but one that assisted them a guiding and directing
intelligence. [ Nevertheless the Church has preserved in her most sacred rites
the star-rites of the
Pagan Initiates.In the pre-Christian Mithraic
Mysteries,the candidate who overcame successfully the
twelve Tortures which preceded the final
Initiation received a small round cake or wafer of unleavened
bread symbolising in one of its meanings,the
solar disc,and known as the manna (heavenly bread)....
A lamb or a bull even was killed and with the
blood the candidate had to be sprinkled as in the case of
the Emperor Julian s initiation.The seven
rules or mysteries that are represented in the Revelation as the
seven seals which are opened in order were
then delivered to the newly born.]
(Page 320)Thereupon the author comforted by the
explanation quotes Clement the Alexandrian and
reminds the reader of the opinion of that
philosopher the inter-relation that exists between the seven
branches of the candlestick the seven stars
of the Revelation and the sun:
The six branches (says Clement)fixed to the
central candlestick have lamps,but the sun
placed in the midst of the wandering ones
(šėįķēōłķ)pours his beams on them all;this
golden candlestick hides one more mystery:it
is the sign of Christ not only in shape but
because he sheds his light through the
ministry of the seven spirits primarily created and who
are the Seven Eyes of the Lord.Therefore the
principal planets are to the seven primeval
spirits according to St.Clement that which the
candlestick-sun is to Christ Himself namely
their vessels,their öõėį÷įé
Plain enough to be sure;though one fails to
see that this explanation even helps the situation.The
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seven-branched chandelier of the Israelites,as
well as the wanderers of the Greeks,had a far more
natural meaning a purely astrological one to
begin with.In fact from Magi and Chaldęans down to the
much-laughed-at Zadkiel every astrological
work will tell its reader that the Sun placed in the midst of the
planets with Saturn Jupiter and Mars on one
side and Venus,Mercury and the Moon on the other the
planets line crossing through the whole
Earth has always meant what Hermes tells us,namely the
thread of destiny or that whose action
(influence)is called destiny.[Truly
says S.T.Coleridge:
Instinctively the reason has always pointed
out to men the ultimate end of various sciences ....There
is no doubt but that astrology of some sort or
other will be the last achievement of astronomy:there must
be chemical relations between the planets
....the difference of their magnitude compared with that of
their distances is not explicable
otherwise.Between planets and our earth with its mankind we may
add.] But
symbol for symbol we prefer the sun to a candlestick.One can understand how the
latter came
to represent the sun and planets,but no one
can admire the chosen symbol.There is poetry and
grandeur in the sun when it is made to
symbolise the Eye of Ormuzd or of Osiris,and is regarded as
the Vąhan (vehicle)of the highest Deity.But
one must for ever fail to perceive that any particular glory is
rendered to Christ by assigning to him the
trunk of a candlestick.[ Christ
then .the author says (p 40),
is represented by the trunk of the
candlestick.] in a Jewish
synagogue as mystical seat of honour.
There are then positively two suns,a sun
adored and a sun adoring.The Apocalypse proves it.
The Word is found in Chap.vii.in the angel who
ascends with the rising of the sun having the
seal of the living God....While commentators
differ on the personality of this angel St.
Ambrose and many other theologians see in him
Christ himself ....He is the S n adored.
Michael the Conqueror -(Page 321)But in Chap.xix.we find an angel standing in the sun
inviting all the nations to gather to the
great supper of the Lamb.This time it is literally and
simply the angel of the sun who cannot be
mistaken for the Word since the prophet
distinguishes him from the Word the King of
Kings and Lord of Lords....The angel in the sun
seems to be an adoring sun.Who may be the
latter?And who else can he be but the Morning
Star the guardian angel of the Word his fero
er,or angel of the face,as the Word is the angel
of the Face (presence)of his Father his
principal attribute and strength as his name itself
implies (Mikael),powerful rector glorified by
the Church the Rector potens who will fell the
Antichrist the Vice-Word in short who
represents his master and seems to be one with him.[
De Mirville.iv.41 42.]
Yes,Mikael is the alleged conqueror of Ormuzd
Osiris,Apollo Krishna Mithra etc.of all the Solar
Gods,in short known and unknown now treated as
demons and as Satan. Nevertheless,the
Conqueror has not disdained to don the
war-spoils of the vanquished foes their personalities,
attributes,even their names to become the alter
ego of these demons.
Thus the Sun-God here is Honover or the
Eternal.The prince is Ormuzd since he is the first
of the seven Amshaspends [ the demon copies of the seven
original angels ] (cap t
angelor m);the lamb (hamal ),the Shepherd of the Zodiac and the
antagonist of the snake.
But the Sun (the Eye of Ormuzd)has also his
rector Korshid or the Mitraton,who is the
Fero er of
the face of Ormuzd his Ized or the morning star.The Mazdeans had a triple Sun..
..For us this Korshid-Mitraton is the
first of the psychopompian genii and the guide of the
sun the immolator of the terrestrial Bull [or lamb ] whose wounds are licked by the serpent [
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on the famous Mithraic monument ] .[De Mirville.iv.42 ]
St.Paul in speaking of the rulers of this
world the Cosmocratores,only said what was said by all the
primitive Philosophers of the ten centuries
before the Christian era only he was scarcely understood
and was often wilfully
misinterpreted.Damascius repeats the teachings of the Pagan writers when he
explains that
There are seven series of cosmocratores or
cosmic forces,which are double:the higher ones
commissioned to support and guide the superior
world;the lower ones,the inferior world [our
own ].
And he is but saying what the ancients
taught.Iamblichus gives this dogma of the duality of all the
planets and celestial bodies,of gods and
daimons (spirits).He also divides the Archontes into two
classes the more and the less spiritual;the
latter more connected with and clothed with matter as
having a form,while the former are
bodiless (Page 322)(arūpa ).But
what have Satan and his angels to do
with all this?Perhaps only that the identity
of the Zoroastrian dogma with the Christian and of Mithra
Ormuzd and Ahriman with the Christian Father
Son and Devil might be accounted for.And when we
say Zoroastrian dogmas we mean the exoteric
teaching.How explain the same relations between
Mithra and Ormuzd as those between the
Archangel Mikael and Christ?
Ahura Mazda says to holy Zaratushta:When I created
[ emanated ] Mithra ...I created him
that he should be invoked and adored equally
with myself.
For the sake of necessary reforms,the
Zoroastrian Āryans transformed the Devas,the bright Gods of
India into devs or devils.It was their Karma
that in their turn the Christians should vindicate on this point
the Hindus.Now Ormuzd and Mithra have become
the devs of Christ and Mikael the dark lining and
aspect of the Saviour and Angel.The day of the
Karma of Christian theology will come in its turn.Already
the Protestants have begun the first chapter
of the religion that will seek to transform the Seven Spirits
and the host of the Roman Catholics into
demons and idols.Every religion has its Karma as has every
individual.That which is due to human
conception and is built on the abasement of our brothers who
disagree with us,must have its day.There is
no religion higher than truth.
The Zoroastrians,Mazdeans,and Persians
borrowed their conceptions from India:the Jews borrowed
their theory of angels from Persia;the
Christians borrowed from the Jews.
Hence the latest interpretation by Christian
theology to the great disgust of the synagogue forced to
share the symbolical candlestick with the
hereditary enemy that the seven-branched candlestick
represents the seven Churches of Asia and the
seven planets which are the angels of those Churches.
Hence also the conviction that the Mosaic
Jews,the investors of that symbol for their tabernacle were a
kind of Sabęans,who blended their planets and
the spirits thereof into one and called them only far
later Jehovah.For this we have the testimony
of Clemens Alexandrinus,St.Hieronymus and others.
And Clement as an Initiate of the Mysteries
at which the secret of the heliocentric system was taught
several thousands of years before Galileo and
Copernicus proves it by explaining that
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By these various symbols connected with
(sidereal)phenomena the totality of all the creatures
which bind heaven with earth are
figured....The chandelier represented the motion of the
seven luminaries,describing their astral
revolution.To the right and left of that candelabrum
projected the six branches,each of which has
its lamp because the Sun placed as a
candelabrum in the middle of other planets
distributes light to them.[ Notwithstanding
the
above written in the earliest Christian period
by the renegade Neo-Platonist:the Church
persists to this day in her wilful
error.Helpless against Galileo she now tries to throw a doubt
even on the heliocentric system!].....As to the cherubs having twelve
wings between the
two they represent to us the sensuous world in
the twelve zodiacal signs.[Stromateis.V.vi.]
The Christian Sun-God -(Page 323)And yet in the face of all this evidence sun moon planets
all are
shown as being demoniacal before and divine
only after the appearance of Christ.All know the Orphic
verse:It is Zeus,it is Adas,it is the Sun it
is Bacchus,these names having been all synonymous for
classic poets and writers.Thus for Democritus
Deity is but a soul in an orbicular fire and that fire is the
Sun.For Iamblichus the sun was the image of
divine intelligence ;for Plato an immortal living Being.
Hence the oracle of Claros when asked to say
who was the Jehovah of the Jews answered It is the
Sun. We may add the words in Psalm xix.4:
In the sun hath he placed a tabernacle for
himself [The English bible
has:In them (the
Heavens)hath he set a tabernacle for the sun
which is incorrect and has no sense in view of
the verse that follows,for there are things
hid from the heat thereof if the latter word is to be
applied to the sun.]....his going forth is from the end of the heaven and his circuit
unto the
ends of it;and there is nothing hid from the
heat thereof.
Jehovah then is the sun and thence also the
Christ of the Roman Church.And now the criticism of
Dupuis on that verse becomes comprehensible as
also the despair of the Abbé Foucher.Nothing is
more favorable to Sabęism than this text of
the Vulgate! he exclaims.And however disfigured may be
the words and sense in the English authorised
bible the Vulgate and the Septuagint both give the correct
text of the original and translate the
latter:In the sun he established his abode ;while the vulgate
regards the heat as coming direct from God
and not from the sun alone since it is God who issues forth
from and dwells in the sun and performs the
circuit:in sole pos it ....et ipse exultavit.From these facts
it will be seen that the Protestants were
right in charging St.Justin with saying that
God has permitted us to worship the sun.
(Page 324)And this,notwithstanding the lame excuses that
what was really meant was that
God permitted himself to be worshipped in or
within the sun
which is all the same.
It will be seen from the above that while the
Pagans located in the sun and planets only the inferior
powers of Nature the representative Spirits so
to say of Apollo Bacchus,Osiris,and other solar gods
the Christians,in their hatred of Philosophy
appropriated the sidereal localities,and now limit them to the
use of their anthropomorphic deity and his
angels new transformations of the old old gods.Something
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had to be done in order to dispose of the
ancient tenants,so they were disgraced into demons, wicked
devils.
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SECTION XXXVI
Pagan Sidereal Worship or Astrology
(Page 325)THE Teraphim of Abram s father Terah,the
maker of images,and the Kabiri Gods are directly
connected with ancient Sabęan worship or
Astrolatry.Kiyun or the God Kivan worshipped by the Jews
in the wilderness,is Saturn and Shiva later on
called Jehovah.Astrology existed before astronomy and
Astronom s was the title of the highest hierophant in Egypt.[ When the hierophant took his last
degree
he emerged from the sacred recess called Manneras
and was given the golden Ta the Egyptian Cross,
which was subsequently placed upon his breast
and buried with him.] One of the
names of the Jewish
Jehovah Saboath or the Lord of Hosts (tsabaoth
),belongs to the Chaldęan Sabęans (or
Tsabęans ),and has for its root the word tsab meaning a car a ship and
an army ;sabaoth thus
meaning literally the army of the ship,the
crew,or a naval host,the sky being metaphorically referred to
as the upper ocean in the doctrine.
In his interesting volumes,The God of
Moses,Lacour explains that all such words as
The celestial armies or the hosts of heaven
signify not only the totality of the heavenly
constellations,but also the Aleim on whom they
are dependent;the aleitzbao t are the forces
or so ls of the constellations,the
potencies that maintain and guide the planets in this order
and procession;....the Jae-va Tzbaout
signifies Him the supreme chief of those celestial
bodies.
In his collectivity as the chief Order of
Spirits, not a chief Spirit.
The Sabęans having worshipped in the graven
images only the celestial hosts angels and gods whose
habitation were the planets,never in truth
worshipped the stars.For on Plato s authority we know that
among the stars and constellations,the (Page 326)planets alone had a right to the title of theoi
(Gods),as
that name was derived from the verb öåéķ to
run or to circulate.Seldenus also tells us that they were
likewise called
öåļ āļõėįéóé (God-Councillors)and ńįāļóļńļé(lictors
)as they (the planets)were present at
the sun s consistory solis consistoris
adstantes.
Says the learned Kircher:
The sceptres the seven presiding angels were
armed with explain these names of
Rhabdophores and lictors given to them.
Reduced to its simplest expression and popular
meaning this is of course fetish worship.Yet esoteric
astrolatry was not at all the worship of
idols,since under the names of Councillors and Lictors, present
at the Sun s consistory it was not the
planets in their material bodies that were meant but their Regents
or Souls (Spirits).If the prayer Our Father
in heaven or Saint so-and-so in Heaven is not an
idolatrous invocation then Our Father in
Mercury.or Our Lady in Venus,Queen of Heaven etc.is
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no more so;for it is precisely the same thing
the name making no difference in the act.The word used in
the Christian prayers,in heaven cannot mean
anything abstract.A dwelling whether of Gods,angels
or Saints (every one of these being
anthropomorphic individualities and beings)must necessarily mean
a locality some defined spot in that heaven
;hence it is quite immaterial for purposes of worship
whether that spot be considered as heaven in
general meaning nowhere in particular or in the Sun
Moon or Jupiter.
The argument is futile that there were
Two deities,and two distinct hierarchies or tsabas
in heaven in the ancient world as in our
modern times ...the one the living God and his
host and the other Sat rn Lucifer with his
councillors and lictors,or the fallen angels.
Our opponents say that it is the latter which
Plato with the whole of antiquity worshipped and which two-
thirds of humanity worship to this day.The
whole question is to know how to discern between the two.
Protestant Christians fail to find any mention
of angels in the Pentateuch we may therefore leave them
aside.The Roman Catholics and the Kabalists
find such mention ;the former because they have
accepted Jewish angelology without suspecting
that the tsabęan Hosts were colonists and settlers on
Judęan territory from the lands of the
Gentiles;the latter because they accepted the bulk of the Secret
Doctrine keeping the kernel for themselves and
leaving the husks to the unwary.
The Planetary Angels -(Page 327)Cornelius a Lapide points out and proves the meaning of the
word
tsaba in
the first verse of Chapter ii.of Genesis ;and he does so correctly
guided as he probably was by
learned Kabalists.The Protestants are
certainly wrong in their contention for angels are mentioned in the
Peutateuch under the word tsaba which
means hosts of angels.In the Vulgate the word is translated
ornat s meaning
the sidereal army the ornament also of the sky kabalistically.The
biblical scholars
of the Protestant Church and the savants among
the materialists who failed to find angels mentioned
by Moses,have thus committed a serious
error.For the verse reads:
Thus the heaven and the earth were finished
and all the host of them
the host meaning the army of stars and
angels ;the last two words being it seems,convertible terms
in Church phraseology.A Lapide is cited as an
authority for this;he says that
Tsaba does
not mean either one or the other but the one and the other, or
both siderum ae
angelor m
If the Roman Catholics are right on this point
so are the Occultists when they claim that the angels
worshipped in the Church of Rome are none else
than their Seven Planets, the Dhyān Chohans of
Buddhistic Esoteric Philosophy or the
Kumarās,the mind-born sons of Brahmā known under the
patronymic of Vaidhātra.The identity between
the Kumarās,the Builders or cosmic Dhyān Chohans,and
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the Seven Angels of the Stars,will be found
without one single flaw if their respective biographies are
studied and especially the characteristics of
their chiefs,Sanat-Kumāra (Sanat Sujāta),and Michael the
Archangel.Together with the Kabirim
(Planets),the name of the above in Chaldęa they were all divine
Powers (Forces).Fuerot says that the name
Kabiri was used to denote the seven sons of
meaning Pater Sadic,Cain or Jupiter or again
of Jehovah.There are seven Kumāras four exoteric and
three secret the names of the latter being
found in the Sānkhya Bhāshya by Gaudapādāchārya.[ The
three secret names are Sana Sanat Sujāta and
Kapila:while the four exoteric Gods are called Sanat
Kumāra Sananda Sanaka and Sanātana.] They are all Virgin Gods,who
remain eternally pure and
innocent and decline to create progeny.In
their primitive aspect these Āryan seven mind-born sons of
God are not the regents of (Page 328)the planets,but dwell far beyond the planetary
region.But the same
mysterious transference from one character or
dignity to another is found in the Christian Angel-scheme.
The Seven Spirits of the Presence attend
perpetually on God and yet we find them under the same
names of Mikael Gabriel Raphael etc.as
Star-regents or the informing deities of the seven planets.
Suffice it is to say that the Archangel
Michael is called the invincible virgin combatant as he refused to
create which would connect him with both
Sana Sujāta and the Kumāra who is the God of War.
[ Another Kumāra the God of War is called in the Hindu the
eternal celibate the virgin warrior. He is
the Ćryan St.Michael.]
The above has to be demonstrated by a few
questions.Commenting upon St.John s Seven Golden
Candlesticks,Cornelius a Lapide says:
These seven lights relate to the seven
branches of the candlestick by which were represented
the seven [principal ] planets
in the temples of Moses and Solomon ...or better still to the
seven principal Spirits,commissioned to watch
over the salvation of men and churches.
St.Jerome says:
In truth the candlestick with the seven
branches was the type of the world and its planets.
St.Thomas Aquinas,the great Roman Catholic
doctor writes:
I do not remember having ever met in the works
of saints or philosophers a denial that the
planets are guided by spiritual beings ....It
seems to me that it may be proved to
demonstration that the celestial bodies are
guided by some intelligence either directly by God
or by the mediation of angels.But the latter
opinion seems to be far more consonant with the
order of things asserted by St.Denys to be
without exception that everything on earth is,as a
rule governed by God through intermediary
agencies.[ We give the
original:Coelestia
corpora moveri a spiritual creatura a nemine
Sanctorum vel philosophorum negatum legisse
me memini.(Op se.X.art.iiil)...Mihi
autam videtur quod Demonstrative probari posset quod
ab aliquo intellectu corpora coelestia
moveantur vel a Deo immediate vel a mediantibus
angelis.Sed quod mediantibus angelis ca moveat
congruit rerum ordine quem Dionysius
infallibilem asserit ut inferiora a Deo per Media
secundum cursum communem administrentur
(Op sc.II.art .ii.)and if so and God never
meddles with the once for ever established laws of
Nature leaving it to his administrators,why
should their being called Gods by the heathen to
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be deemed idolatrous?]
And now let the reader recall what the Pagans
say of this.All the classical authors and philosophers who
have treated the subject repeat with Hermes
Trismegistus,that the seven Rectors the planets including
the sun were the associates,or the
co-workers,of the Unknown All represented by the Demiurgos
commissioned to contain the Cosmos our
Planetary world within seven circles.
Celestial Wheels -(Page 329)Plutarch shows them representing the circle of the
celestial worlds.Again
Denys of Thracia and the learned Clemens of
Alexandria both describe the Rectors as being shown in
the Egyptian temples in the shape of
mysterious wheels or spheres always in motion which made the
Initiates affirm that the problem of perpetual
motion had been solved by the celestial wheels in the
Initiation Adyta.[ In one of Des Mousseaux's volumes on Demonology ( vres des
Demons )if we do
not mistake.)the statement of the Abbé Huc is
found and the author testifies to having heard the
following story repeatedly from the Abbé
himself.In a lamasery of Tibet the missionary found the
following:
It is a simple canvas without the slightest
mechanical apparatus attached as the visitor may prove by
examining it at his leisure.It represents a
moonlit landscape but the moon is not at all motionless or
dead:quite the reverse for according to the
Abbé one would say that our moon herself or at least her
living double lighted the picture.Each phase
each aspect each movement of our satellite is repeated in
her facsimile in the movement and progress of
the moon in the sacred picture.You see this planet in the
painting ride as a crescent or full shine
brightly pass behind the clouds,peep out or set in a manner
corresponding in the most extraordinary way
with the real luminary.It is,in a word a most perfect and
resplendent reproduction of the pale queen of
the night which received the adoration of so many people
in the days of old.We know from the most
reliable sources and numerous eye-witnesses,that such
machines not canvas paintings do exist in
certain temples of Tibet:as also the sidereal wheels
representing the planets,and kept for the same
purposes astrological and magical.Huc s statement
was translated in Isis Unveiled from
Des Mousseaux s volume.]This
doctrine of Hermes was that of
Pythagoras and of Orpheus before him.It is
called by Proclus the God-given doctrine.Iamblichus
speaks of it with greatest
reverence.Philostratus tell his readers that the whole sidereal court of the
Babylonian heaven was represented in the
temples.
In globes made of sapphires and supporting the
golden images of their respective gods.
The temples of Persia were especially famous
for these representations.If Cedrenus can be credited
The Emperor Heraclius on his entry into the
city of Bazaeum was struck with admiration and
wonder before the immense machine fabricated
for King Chosroes,which represented the
night-sky with the planets and all their
revolutions,with the angels presiding over them.
[ Cedrenus,p.338.Whether produced by clockwork or magic
power such machines whole
celestial spheres with planets rotating were
found in the Sanctuaries,and some exist to this
day in Japan in a secret subterranean temple
of the old Mikados,as well as in two other
places.]
It was on such spheres that Pythagoras
studied Astronomy in the adyta arcana of the temples to which
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he had access.And it was there on his
Initiation that the eternal rotation of those spheres the
mysterious wheels as they are called by
Clemens and Denys and which Plutarch calls world-wheels
demonstrated to him the verity (Page 330)of what had been divulged to him namely the
heliocentric
system the great secret of the Adyta.All the
discoveries of modern astronomy like all the secrets that
can be revealed to it in future ages,were
contained in the secret observatories and Initiation Halls of the
temples of old India and Egypt.It is in them
that the Chaldęan made his calculations revealing to the
world of the profane no more than it was fit
to receive.
We may and shall be told no doubt that Uranus
was unknown to the ancients,and that they were forced
to reckon the sun amongst the planets and as
their chief.How does anyone know?Uranus is a modern
name ;but
one thing is certain:the ancients had a planet a mystery planet that they
never named and
that the highest Astronomus,the Hierophant
alone could confabulate with.But this seventh planet was
not the sun but the hidden Divine Hierophant
who was said to have a crown and to embrace within its
wheel seventy-seven smaller wheels.In the
archaic secret system of the Hindus,the sun is the visible
Logos Sūrya ,over him there is another the
divine or heavenly Man who after having established the
system of the world of matter on the archetype
of the Unseen Universe or Macrocosm conducted during
the Mysteries the heavenly Rąsa Mandala;when
he was said:
To give with his right foot the impulse to Tyam
or Bhūmi [ Earth ] that makes her rotate in a
double revolution.
What says Hermes again?When explaining
Egyptian Cosmology he explains:
Listen O my son ...the Power has also formed
seven agents,who contain within their circles
the material world and whose action is called
destiny ....When all became subject to man
the Seven willing to favour human intelligence
communicated to him their powers.But as
soon as man knew their true essence and his
own nature he desired to penetrate within and
beyond the circles and thus break their
circumference by usurping the power of him who has
dominion over the Fire [ Sun ]itself;after
which having robbed one of the Wheels of the Sun
of the sacred fire he fell into slavery.[Champollion s Egypte Moderne.p.42
.]
It is not Prometheus who is meant
here.Prometheus is a symbol and a personification of the whole of
mankind in relation to an event which occurred
during its childhood so to say the Baptism by Fire
which is a mystery within the great Promethean
Mystery one that may be at present mentioned only in its
broad general features.
The Promethean Mystery -(Page 331)By reason of the extraordinary growth of human
intellect and the
development in our age of the fifth principle
(Manas)in man its rapid progress has paralysed spiritual
perceptions.It is at the expense of wisdom
that intellect generally lives,and mankind is quite unprepared
in its present condition to comprehend the
awful drama of human disobedience to the laws of Nature and
the subsequent Fall as a result.It can only be
hinted at in its place.
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SECTION XXXVII
The Souls of the Stars Universal
Heliolatry
(Page 332)IN order to show that the Ancients have never
mistaken stars for Gods, or Angels and the sun
for the highest Gods and God but have
worshipped only the Spirit of all and have reverenced the minor
Gods supposed to reside in the sun and planets
the difference between these two worships has to be
pointed out.Saturn the Father of Gods must
not be confused with his namesake the planet of the
same name with its eight moons and three
rings.The two though in one sense identical as are for
instance physical man and his soul must be
separated in the question of worship.This has to be done
the more carefully in the case of the seven
planets and their Spirits,as the whole formation of the
universe is attributed to them in the Secret
Teachings.The same difference has to be shown again
between the stars of the Great Bear the Riksha
and the Chitra Shikhandina the bright-crested and the
Rishis the mortal Sages who appeared on earth
during the Satya Yuga.If all of these have been so far
closely united in the visions of the seers of
every age the bible seers included there must have been a
reason for it.Nor need one go back so far as
into the periods of superstition and unscientific fancies to
find great men in our epoch sharing in them.It
is well known that Kepler the eminent astronomer in
common with many other great men who believed
that the heavenly bodies ruled favourably or adversely
the fates of men and nations fully credited
besides this the fact that all heavenly bodies,even our own
earth are endowed with living and thinking
souls.
Le Couturier s opinion is worthy of notice in
this relation:
Christian Star-Worship -(Page 333)We are too inclined to criticize unsparingly
everything
concerning astrology and its
ideas;nevertheless our criticism to be one ought at least to
know lest it should be proved aimless,what
those ideas in truth are.And when among the
men we thus criticize we find such names as
those of Regiomontanus,Tycho Brahe Kepler
etc.there is reason why we should be
careful.Kepler was an astrologer by profession and
became an astronomer in consequence.He was
earning his livelihood by genethliac figures,
which indicating his state of the heavens at
the moment of the birth of individuals,were a
means to which everyone resorted for
horoscopes.That great man was a believer in the
principles of astrology without accepting all
its foolish results.[Musée
des Sciences.p.230.]
But astrology is nevertheless proclaimed as a
sinful science and together with Occultism is tabooed by
the Churches.It is very doubtful however
whether mystic star-worship can be so easily laughed down
as people imagine at any rate by
Christians.The hosts of Angels,Cherubs and Planetary Archangels
are identical with the minor Gods of the
Pagans.As to their great Gods,if Mars has been shown on
the admission of even the enemies of the Pagan
astrologers to have been regarded by the latter simply
as the personified strength of the one highest
impersonal Deity Mercury being personified as its
omniscience Jupiter as its omnipotency and so
on then the superstition of the Pagan has indeed
become the religion of the masses of the
civilized nations.For with the latter Jehovah is the synthesis
of the seven Elohim the eternal centre of all those
attributes and forces,the Alei of the Aleim and the
Adonai of the Adonim.And if with them Mars is
now called St.Michael the strength of God Mercury
Gabriel the omniscience and fortitude of the
Lord and Raphael the blessing or healing power of God
this is simply a change of names,the
characters behind the masks remaining the same.
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The Dalai-lama s mitre has seven ridges in
honour of the seven chief Dhyāni Buddhas.In the funeral
ritual of the Egyptians the defunct is made to
exclaim:
Salutation to you O Princes,who stand in the
presence of Osiris ....Send me the grace to
have my sins destroyed as you have done for
the seven spirits who follow the Lord!
[ Translated by the Vicomte de Rougemont.See Les Annales de
Philosophie Chrétienne,7 th
year.1861 ]
Brahmā s head is ornamented with seven rays
and he is followed by the seven Rishis,in the seven
Svargas.China has her seven Pagodas;(Page 334)the Greeks had their seven Cyclopes,seven
Demiurgi and the Mystery Gods,the seven Kabiri
whose chief was Jupiter-Saturn and with the Jews,
Jehovah.Now the latter Deity has become chief
of all by Mikael (Michael).He is the Chief of the Host
(tsaba );the Archistrategus of the
Lord s army ;the Conqueror of the Devil Victor diaboli and the
Archisatrap of the Sacred Militia he who
slew the Great Dragon.Unfortunately astrology and
symbology having no inducement to veil old
things with new masks,have preserved the real name of
Mikael that was Jehovah Mikael being the
Angel of the face of the Lord [ Isaiah,IXIII.9.] the
guardian of the planets,and the living image
of God.He represents the Deity in his visits to earth for as
it is well expressed in Hebrew he is one who
is as God or who is like unto God.It is he who
cast out the serpent.[ Chap xii of Revelation :There was war in heaven Mikael
and his angels fought
against the Dragon etc.(7)and the great
dragon was cast out (9).]
Mikael being the regent of the planet Saturn
is Sat rn .[ He is also
the informing Spirit of the Sun and
Jupiter and even of Venus.] His mystery-name is Sabbathiel
because he presides over the Jewish
Sabbath as also over the astrological
Saturday.Once identified the reputation of the Christian
conqueror of the devil is in still greater
danger from further identifications.Biblical angels are called
Malachim the messengers between God (or rather
the gods )and men.In Hebrew .Malach is
also a King and Malech or Melech was
likewise Moloch or again Saturn the Seb of Egypt to whom
Dies Sat rni,or the Sabbath was dedicated.The Sabęans separated and
distinguished the planet
Saturn from its God far more than the Roman
Catholics do their angels from their stars;and the Kabalists
make of the Archangel Mikael the patron of the
seventh work of magic.
In theological symbolism....Jupiter [the Sun ]is the risen and glorious Saviour and Saturn God the
Father or the Jehovah of Moses,[ Dogme et Rit el.ii.116 ]says Éliphas Lévi who o ght to
know.
Jehovah and the Saviour Saturn and Jupiter
being thus one and Mikael being called the living image of
God it does seem dangerous for the Church to
call Saturn Satan le die ma vais .However Rome is
strong in casuistry and will get out of this
as she got out of every other identification with glory to herself
and to her own full satisfaction.
A Singular Confession -(Page 335)Nevertheless all her dogmas and rituals seem like so many
pages
torn out from the history of Occultism and
then distorted.The extremely thin partition that separates the
Kabalistic and Chaldęan Theogony from the
Roman Catholic Angelology and Theodicy is now confessed
by at least one Roman Catholic writer.One can
hardly believe one s eyes in finding the following (the
passages italicized by us should be carefully
noticed):
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One of the most characteristic features of our
Holy Scriptures is the calculated discretion sed
in the en nciation of the mysteries less
directly sef l to salvation.....Thus,beyond
those
myriads of myriads of angelic creatures just
noticed [If enumerated they will
be found to be
the Hindu divisions and choirs of Devas,and
the Dhyān Chohans of Esoteric Buddhism.]
and
all these prudently elementary divisions,there
are certainly many others,whose very names
have not yet reached us.[ But this fact has not prevented the
Roman Church from adopting
them all the same accepting them from ignorant
though perchance sincere Church Fathers,
who had borrowed them from Kabalists Jews and
Pagans.] For excellently says
St.John
Chrysostom there are doubtless,(sine d
bio,)many other Virt es [celestial
beings ] whose
denominations we are yet far from knowing
....The nine orders are not by any means the
only populations in heaven where on the
contrary are to be fo nd n mberless tribes of
inhabitants infinitely varied and of which it
would be impossible to give the slightest idea
through human tongue ....Paul who had
learned their names,reveals to us their existence.
(De Incomprehensibili Nat ra Dei,Bk.IV.)...
It would thus amount to a gross mistake to
see merely errors in the Angelology of the Kabalists
and Gnostics,so severely treated by the
Apostle of the Gentiles,for his imposing censure
reached only their exaggerations and vicio
s interpretations,and still more the application of
those noble titles to the miserable personalities of demoniacal
surpers.[To call usurpers
those who preceded the Christian Beings for
whose benefit these same titles were borrowed
is carrying paradoxical anachronism a little
too far!]Often nothing so
resemble each other as
the lang age of the j dges and that of the
convicts [of saints and Occultists ].One has to
penetrate deeply into this d al study [of creed and profession ] and what is still better to trust
blindly to the a thority of the trib nal [ the
Church of Rome of course ] to
enable oneself to
seize precisely the point of the error.The Gnosis
condemned by St.Paul remains,
nevertheless,for him as for Plato the supreme
knowledge of the truths,and of the Being par
excellence,ó óķōłņ (Rep bl.Bk.VI).The Ideas,types įń÷įé of the
Greek philosopher the
Intelligences of Pythagoras,the aeons or emanations,the
occasion of so much reproach to
the first heretics,the Logos or Word Chief of
these Intelligences,the Demi rgos the architect
of the world under his father s direction [ of the Pagans ] the unknown God the En-soph or
the It of the Infinite [ of the Kabalists ] the angelical periods,[ Or the divine ages the days
and years of Brahmā.] the seven spirits,the Depths of Ahriman,the World
s Rectors,the
Archontes of the air the God of this world,the pleroma of
the (Page 336)intelligences,down
to
Metatron the angel of the Jews all this is fo nd word for word,as so many
truths,in the works
of o r greatest doctors,and in St.Pa l.[ De
Mirville.ii.325 326.So we say too.And this
shows that it is to the Kabalists and Magicians
that the Church is indebted for her dogmas and
names.Paul never condemned real Gnosis,but
the false one now accepted by the Church.]
If an Occultist eager to charge the Church
with a numberless series of plagiarisms were to write the
above could he have written more strongly?And
have we or have we not the right after such a
complete confession to reverse the tables and
to say of Roman Catholics and others what is said of the
Gnostics and Occultists.They used our
expressions and rejected our doctrines. For it is not the
promoters of the false Gnosis who had all
those expressions from their archaic ancestors who
helped themselves to Christian expressions,but
verily the Christian Fathers and Theologians,who
helped themselves to our nest and have tried
ever since to soil it.
The words above quoted will explain much to
those who are searching for truth and for truth only.They
will show the origin of certain rites in the
Church inexplicable hitherto to the simple-minded and will give
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the reasons why such words as Our Lord the
Sun were used in prayer by Christians up to the fifth and
even sixth century of our era and embodied in
the Liturgy until altered into Our Lord the God.Let us
remember that the early Christians painted
Christ on the walls of their subterranean necropolis,as a
shepherd in the guise of and invested with all
the attributes of Apollo driving away the wolf.Fenris,who
seeks to devour the Sun and his Satellites.
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SECTION XXXVIII
Astrology and Astrolatry
(Page 337)The books of Hermes Trismegistus contain the
exoteric meaning still veiled for all but the
Occultist of the Astrology and Astrolatry of
the Khaldi.The two subjects are closely connected.Astrolatry
or the adoration of the heavenly host is the
natural result of only half-revealed Astrology whose Adepts
carefully concealed from the non-initiated
masses its Occult principles and the wisdom imparted to them
by the Regents of the Planets the Angels.
Hence divine Astrology for the Initiates;superstitious
Astrolatry for the profane.St.Justin asserts
it:
From the first invention of the hieroglyphics
it was not the vulgar but the distinguished and
select men who became initiated in the secrecy
of the temples into the science of every kind of
Astrology even into its most abject kind:that
Astrology which later on found itself prostituted
in the public thoroughfares.
There was a vast difference between the Sacred
Science taught by Petosiris Necepso the first
Astrologers mentioned in the Egyptian
manuscripts,believed to have lived during the reign of Ramses II.
(Sesostris)[Sesostris,or Pharaoh Ramses II.whose mummy was unswathed in 1886
by Maspero of
the Bulak Museum and recognised as that of the
greatest king of Egypt whose grandson Ramses III.
was the last king of an ancient kingdom.] and the miserable charlatanry of
the quacks called
Chaldęans,who degraded the Divine Knowledge
under the last Emperors of Rome.Indeed one may
fairly describe the two as the high
ceremonial Astrology and astrological Astrolatry.The first depended
on the knowledge by the Initiates of those (to
us)immaterial Forces or Spiritual Entities that effect matter
and guide it.Called by the ancient
Philosophers the Archontes and the Cosmocratores,they were the
types or paradigms on the higher planes of the
lower and more material beings on the scale of evolution
whom we call Elementals and Nature-Spirits to
whom the Sabęans bowed and whom they worshipped
without suspecting the essential
difference.Hence (Page
338)the
latter kind when not a mere pretence
degenerated but too often into Black Magic.It
was the favourite form of popular or exoteric Astrology
entirely ignorant of the apotelesmatic
principles of the primitive Science the doctrines of which were
imparted only at initiation.Thus,while the
real Hierophants soared like Demi-Gods to the very summit of
spiritual knowledge the hoi polloi among
the Sabęans crouched steeped in superstition ten
millenniums back,as they do now in the cold
and lethal shadow of the valleys of matter.Sidereal
influence is dual.There is the physical and
physiological influence that of exotericism;and the high
spiritual intellectual and moral influence
imparted by the knowledge of the former called Astrology so
far back as the eighteenth century The very
foolish mother of a very wise daughter Astronomy.On the
other hand Arago a luminary of the nineteenth
century supports the reality of the sidereal influence of
the Sun Moon and Planets.He asks:
Where do we find lunar influences refuted by
arguments that science would dare to avow?
But even Bailly having as he thought put down
Astrology as publicly practised dares not to do the
same with the real Astrology.He says:
Judiciary Astrology was at its origin the
result of a profound system the work of an enlightened
nation that would wander too far into the
mysteries of God and Nature.
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A Scientist of a more recent date a member of
the Institute of France and a professor of history Ph.
Lebas,discovers (unconsciously to himself)the
very root of Astrology in his able article on the subject in
the Dictionnaire Encyclopédiq e de France .He
well understands,he tells his readers,that the adhesion
to that Science of such a number of highly
intellectual men should be in itself a sufficient motive for
believing that all Astrology is not folly:
While proclaiming in politics the sovereignty
of the people and of public opinion can we admit
as heretofore that mankind allowed itself to
be radically deceived in this only:that an absolute
and gross absurdity reigned in the minds of
whole nations for so many centuries without being
based on anything save on one hand human
imbecility and on the other charlatanry?How
for fifty centuries and more can most men have
been either dupes or knaves?....Even
though we may find it impossible to decide
between and separate the realities of Astrology
from the elements of invention and empty
dreaming in it ...let us,nevertheless,repeat with
Bossuet and all modern philosophers,that
nothing that has been dominant could be
absolutely false.Is it not true at all
events,that there is a physical reaction on one another
among the planets.
The Defence of Astrology -(Page 339)It is not again true that the planets have an
influence on the
atmosphere and consequently at any rate a
mediate action on vegetation and animals?Has not modern
science demonstrated now these two points
beyond any doubt?...Is it any less true that human liberty
of action is not absolute;that all is bound
that all weighs,planets as the rest on each individual will;that
Providence [ or Karma ] acts
on us and directs men through those relations that it has established
between them and the visible objects and the
whole universe?...Astrolatry in its essence is nothing
but that;we are bound to recognise that an
instinct superior to the age they lived in guided the efforts of
the ancient Magi.As to the materialism and
annihilation of human moral freedom with which Bailly
charges their theory (Astrology)the reprobate
has no sense whatever.All the great astrologers admitted
without one single exception that man could
reäct against the influence of the stars.This principle is
established in the Ptolemian Tetrabiblos,the
true astrological Scriptures,in chapters ii and iii of book
i.[Op.cit.,p.422.]
Thomas Aquinas had corroborated Lebas in
anticipation;he says:
The celestial bodies are the ca se of all
that happens in this subl nary world,they act
indirectly on human actions;but not all the
effects produced by them are unavoidable.[
S mma.Quest.xv.Art
v.upon Astrologers,and Vol.III.pp.2-29.]
The Occultists and Theosophists are the first
to confess that there is white and black Astrology.
Nevertheless,Astrology has to be studied in
both aspects by those who wish to become proficient in it;
and the good or bad results obtained do not
depend upon the principles,which are the same in both
kinds,but in the Astrologer himself.Thus
Pythagoras,who established the whole Copernican system by
the Book of Hermes,2 000 years before Galileo
s predecessor was born found and studied in them the
whole Science of divine Theogony of the
communication with and the evocation of the world s Rectors
the Princes of the Principalities of
St.Paul the nativity of each Planet and of the Universes itself the
formulę of incantations and the consecretation
of each portion of the human body to the respective
Zodiacal sign corresponding to it.All this
cannot be regarded as childish and absurd still less
devilish save by those who are and wish to
remain tyros in the Philosophy of the Occult Sciences.
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No true thinker no one who recognises the
presence of a common bond between man and visible as
well as invisible Nature would see in the old
relics of Archaic Wisdom such as the Petemenoph
Papyrus,for
instance childish nonsense and absurdity as many Academicians (Page 340)and
Scientists have done.But upon finding in such
ancient documents the application of the Hermetic rules
and laws,such as
The consecration of one s hair to the
celestial Nile;of the left temple to the living Spirit in the
sun and the right one to the spirit of Ammon
he will endeavour to study and comprehend
better the laws of correspondences.Nor will he disbelieve
in the antiquity of Astrology on the plea that
some Orientalists have thought fit to declare that the Zodiac
was not very ancient being only the invention
of the Greeks of the Macedonian period.For this
statement besides having been shown to be
entirely erroneous by a number of other reasons,may be
entirely disproved by facts relating to the
latest discoveries in Egypt and by the more accurate readings
of hieroglyphics and inscriptions of the
earliest dynasties.The published polemics on the contents of the
so-called Magic Papyri of the Anastasi
collection indicate the antiquity of the Zodiac.As the Lettres ą
Lettrone say:The papyri discourse at length upon the four bases or
Foundations of the world the identity of which
it is impossible according to Champollion to
mistake as one is forced to recognise in them
the Pillars of the World of St.Paul.It is they
who are invoked with the gods of all the
celestial zones,quite analogous,once more to the
Spirit alia neq itia in clestib s of the same apostle.[The
principalities and powers [ born
] in heavenly places.(Ephes.,iii.10).The verse.For
though there be that are called Gods,
whether in heaven or on earth as there be Gods
many and lords many (I.Corinth.viii.5),
shows at any rate the recognition by Paul of a
plurality of Gods whom he calls dęmons
(spirits never devils ).Principalities,Thrones,Dominions.Rectors,etc.are
all Jewish and
Christian names for the Gods of the ancients
the Archangels and Angels of the former being
in every case the Devas and the Dhyān Chohans
of the more ancient religions.]
That invocation was made in the proper terms
....of the formula reproduced far too faithfully
by Jamblichus for it to be possible to refuse
him any longer the merit of having transmitted to
posterity the ancient and primitive spirit of
the Egyptian Astrologers.[ Answer
by Reuvens to
Letronne with regard to his mistake notion
about the Zodiac of Dendera.]
As Letronne had tried to prove that all the
genuine Egyptian Zodiacs had been manufactured during the
Roman period the Sensaos mummy is brought
forward to show that:
All the Zodiacal monuments in Egypt were
chiefly astronomical.Royal tombs and funereal
rituals are so many tables of constellations
and of their influences for all the hours of every
month.
Thus the genethliac tables themselves prove
that they are far older than the period assigned to their
origin;all the Zodiacs of the sarcophagi of
later epochs being simple reminiscences of the Zodiacs
belonging to the mythological [ archaic ]period.
Its Later Deterioration -(Page 341)Primitive Astrology was as far above modern
judiciary Astrology so-
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called as the guides (the Planets and Zodiacal
signs)are above the lamp-posts.Berosus shows the
sidereal sovereignty of Bel and Mylitta (Sun
and Moon),and only the twelve lords of the Zodiacal Gods,
the thirty-six Gods Counsellors and the
twenty-four Stars,judges of this world which support and
guide the Universe (our solar system),watch
over mortals and reveal to mankind its fate and their own
decrees.Judiciary Astrology as it is now known
is correctly denominated by the Latin Church the
Materialistic and pantheistic prophesying by
the objective planet itself independently of its
Rector [
the Mlac of the Jews,the ministers of the Eternal commissioned by him to
announce
his will to mortals ];the ascension or conjunction of the planet at the moment of the
birth of an
individual deciding his fortune and the moment
and mode of his death.[ St.Ausgustine
(De
Gen .I.iii.)and
Delrio (Disq isit.,Vol.IV.chap iii.)are quoted by De Mirville to show
that the
more astrologers speak the truth and the
better they prophesy it the more one has to feel
diffident seeing that their agreement with the
devil becomes thereby the more apparent.The
famous statement made by Juvenal (Satires,vi.)to
the effect that not one single astrologer
could be found who did not pay dearly for the
help he received from his genius no more
proves the latter to be a devil than the death
of Socrates proves his daimon to have been a
native from the nether world if such there
be.Such argument only demonstrates human
stupidity and wickedness,once reason is made
subservient to prejudice and fanaticism of
every sort.Most of the great writers of
antiquity Cicero and Tacitus among them believed in
Astrology and the realization of its
prophecies:and the penalty of death decreed nearly
everywhere against those mathematicians [astrologers ] who happened to predict falsely
diminished neither their number nor their
tranquility of mind.]
Every student of Occultism knows that the
heavenly bodies are closely related during each Manvantara
with the mankind of that special cycle;and
there are some who believe that each great character born
during that period has as every other mortal
has,only in a far stronger degree his destiny outlined
within his proper constellation or star traced
as a self-prophecy an anticipated autobiography by the
indwelling Spirit of that particular star.The
human Monad in its first beginning is that Spirit or the Soul of
that star (Planet)itself.As our Sun radiates
its light and beams on every body in space within the
boundaries of its system so the Regent of
every Planet-star the Parent-monad shoots out from itself the
Monad of every pilgrim Soul born under its
house within its own group.The Regents are esoterically
seven whether in the Sephiroth the Angels of
the Presence the Rishis,or the Amshaspends.The
One is no number is said in all the esoteric
works.
(Page 342)From the Kasdim and Gazzim (Astrologers)the
noble primitive science passed to the
Khartumim Asaphim (or Theologians)and the
Hakamin (or scientists the Magicians of the lower class),
and from these to the Jews during their
captivity.The Books of Moses had been buried in oblivion for
centuries,and when rediscovered by Hilkiah had
lost their true sense for the people of Israel.Primitive
Occult Astrology was on the decline when
Daniel the last of the Jewish Initiates of the old school
became the chief of the Magi and Astrologers
of Chaldęa.In those days even Egypt who had her
wisdom from the same source as Babyon had
degenerated from her former grandeur and her glory had
begun to fade out.Still the science of old
habit left her eternal imprint on the world and the seven great
Primitive Gods reigned for ever in the
Astrology and the division of time of every nation upon the face of
the earth.The names of the days of our
(Christian)week are those of the Gods of the Chaldęans,who
translated them from those of the Āryans;the
uniformity of these antediluvian names in every nation
from the Goths back to the Indians,would
remain inexplicable as Sir W.Jones thought had not the
riddle been explained to us by the invitation
made by the Chaldęan oracles,recorded by Porphyry and
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quoted by Eusebius:
To carry those names first to the Egyptian and
Phnician colonies,then to the Greeks,with
the express recommendation that each God
should be invoked only on that day that had been
called by his name.....
Thus Apollo says in those oracles: I must be
invoked on the day of the sun ;Mercury after his
directions,then Chronos [Saturn ] then Venus,and do not fail to call seven times each of
those gods. [Preparatio Evangelica.I.xiv.]
This is slightly erroneous.Greece did not get
her astrological instruction from Egypt or from Chaldęa but
direct from Orpheus,as Lucian tells us.[ Ast .iv.60 ] It was Orpheus,as he says,who
imparted the
Indian Sciences to nearly all the great
monarchs of antiquity;and it was they the ancient kings favoured
by the Planetary Gods,who recorded the
principles of Astrology as did Ptolemus,for instance.Thus
Lucian writes:
The Botian Tiresias acquired the greatest
reputation in the art of predicting futurity ....In
those days divination was not as slightly
treated as it is now;and nothing was ever undertaken
without previous consultation with
diviners,whose oracles were all directed by astrology ....
At Delphos the virgin commissioned to announce
futurity was the symbol of the Heavenly
Virgin ....and Our Lady.
Its Prominent Disciples -(Page 343)On the sarcophagus of an Egyptian Pharaoh
Neith mother of Ra
the heifer that brings forth the Sun her body
spangled with stars,and wearing the solar and lunar discs,
is equally referred to as the Heavenly Virgin
and Our Lady of the Starry Vault.
Modern judiciary Astrology in its present form
began only during the time of Diodorus,as he apprises the
world.[Hist.,I.ii.] But Chaldęan Astrology was believed
in by most of the great men in History such as
Cęsar Pliny Cicero whose best friends,Nigidius
Figulus and Lucius Tarrutius,were themselves
Astrologers,the former being famous as a
prophet.Marcus Antonius never travelled without an
Astrologer recommended to him by
Cleopatra.Augustus,when ascending the throne had his horoscope
drawn by Theagenes.Tiberius discovered
pretenders to his throne by means of Astrology and divination.
Vitellius dared not exile the Chaldęans,as
they had announced the day of their banishment as that of
his death.Vespasian consulted them
daily;Domitian would not move without being advised by the
prophets;Adrian was a learned Astrologer
himself;and all of them ending with Julian (called the
Apostate because he would not become one),believed in and addressed their prayers
to the Planetary
Gods.The Emperor Adrian moreover predicted
from the January calends up to December 31 st every
event that happened to him daily.Under the
wisest emperors Rome had a School of Astrology wherein
were secretly taught the occult influences of
the Sun Moon and Saturn.[All
these particulars may be
found more fully and far more completely in
Champollion Figeac s Egypte.] Jndiciary
Astrology is used to
this day by the Kabalists;and Éliphas Lévi the
modern French Magus,teaches its rudiments in his
Dogme et Rit el de la Ha te Magic.But the key to ceremonial or ritualistic Astrology with the
teraphim
and the urim and thummim of Magic,is lost to
Europe.Hence our century of Materialism shrugs it
shoulders and sees in Astrology a pretender.
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Not all scientists scoff at it however and one
may rejoice in reading in the Musée des Sciences [ Op.
cit.,p.230.]the suggestive and fair remarks made
by Le Couturier a man of science of no mean
reputation.He thinks it curious (Page 344)to notice that while the bold speculations of
Democritus are
found vindicated by Dalton
The reveries of the alchemists are also on
their way to a certain rehabilitation.They receive
renewed life from the minute investigations of
their successors,the chemists;a very
remarkable thing indeed is to see how much
modern discoveries have served to vindicate of
late the theories of the Middle Ages from the
charge of absurdity laid at their door.Thus,if as
demonstrated by Col.Sabine the direction of a
piece of steel hung a few feet above the soil
may be influenced by the position of the moon
whose body is at a distance of 240 000 miles
from our planet who then could accuse of
extravagance the belief of the ancient astrologers
[ or the modern either ]in
the influence of the stars on human destiny.[ Op.cit.,p.230.]
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SECTION XXXIX
Cycles of Avatāras
(Page 345)We have already drawn attention to the facts
that the record of the life of a World-Savior is
emblematical and must be read by its mystic
meaning and that the figures 432 have a cosmic
evolutionary significance.We find these two
facts throwing light on the origin of the exoteric Christian
religion and clearing away much of the
obscurity surrounding its beginnings.For is it not clear that the
names and characters in the Synoptical Gospels
and in that of St.John are not historical?Is it not
evident that the compilers of the life of
Christ desirous to show that the birth of their Master was a
cosmic,astronomical and divinely-preördained
event attempted to coördinate the same with the end of
the secret cycle 4 320?When facts are collated
this answers to them as little as does the other cycle of
thirty-three solar years seven months,and
seven days which has also been brought forward as
supporting the same claim the soli-lunar cycle
in which the Sun gains on the Moon one solar year.The
combination of the three figures,4 3 2 with
cyphers according to the cycle and Manvantara concerned
was,and is,preėminently Hindu.It will remain a
secret even though several of its significant features are
revealed.It relates,for instance to the
Pralaya of the races in their periodical dissolution before which
events a special Avatāra has always to descend
and incarnate on earth.These figures were adopted by
all the older nations,such as those of Egypt
and Chaldęa and before them were current among the
Atlanteans.Evidently some of the more learned
among the early Church Fathers who had dabbled
whilst Pagans,in temple secrets,knew them to
relate to the Avatāric or Messianic Mystery ,and tried to
apply this cycle to the birth of their
Messiah;they failed because the figures relate to the respective ends
of the Root-Races and not to any individual.In
their badly-directed efforts,moreover an error of five
years occurred.Is it possible if their claims
as to the (Page 346)importance and
universality of the event
were correct that such a vital mistake should
have been allowed to creep into a chronological
computation preördained and traced in the
heavens by the finger of God?Again what were the Pagan
and even Jewish Initiates doing if this claim
as to Jesus be correct?Could they the custodians of the
key to the secret cycles and Avatāras,the
heirs of the Āryan Egyptian and Chaldęan wisdom have
failed to recognize their great God-Incarnate
one with Jehovah [In the 1 326
places in the New
Testament where the word God is mentioned nothing signifies that in
God are included more beings
than God.On the contrary in 17 places God is
called the only God.The places where the Father is so-
called amount to 320.In 105 places God is
addressed with high-sounding titles.In 90 places all prayers
and thanks are addressed to the Father:300
times in the New Testament is the Son declared to be
inferior to the Father;85 times is Jesus
called the Son of Man;70 times is he called a man.In not one
single place in the Bible is it said that God
holds within him three different Beings or Persons,and yet is
one Being or Person Dr.Karl Von Bergen s Lect
res in Sweden.] their
Saviour of the latter days,him
whom all the nations of Asia still expect as
their Kalki Avatāra Maitreya Buddha Sosiosh Messiah etc.?
The simple secret is this:There are cycles
within greater cycles,which are all contained in the one Kalpa
of 4 320 000 years.It is at the end of this
cycle that the Kalki Avatāra is expected the Avatāra Whose
name and characteristics are secret Who will
come forth from Shamballa the City of Gods,which is in
the West for some nations,in the East for
others,in the North or South for yet others.And this is the
reason why from the Indian Rishi to Virgil and
from Zoroaster down to the latest Sibyl all have since the
beginning of the Fifth Race prophesied sung
and promised the cyclic return of the Virgin Virgo the
constellation and the birth of a divine child
who should bring back to our earth the Golden Age.
No one however fanatical would have sufficient
hardihood to maintain that the Christian era has ever
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been a return to the Golden Age Virgo having
actually entered into Libra since then.Let us trace as
briefly as possible the Christian traditions
to their true origin.
First of all they discover in a few lines from
Virgil a direct prophecy of the birth of Christ.Yet it is
impossible to detect in this prophecy any
feature of the present age.It is in the famous fourth Eclogue in
which half a century before our era Pollio is
made to ask the Muses of Sicily to sing to him about greater
events.
The last era of Cumęan song is now arrived and
the grand series of ages [ that
series which
recurs again and again in the course of our
mundane revolution ] begins
afresh.Now the
Virgin Astęa returns,and the reign of Saturn
recommences
An Unfulfilled Prophecy -(Page 347)Now a new progeny descends from the
celestial realms.
Do thou chaste Lucina smile propitious to the
infant Boy who will bring to a close the present
Age of Iron [ Kali Yuga the Black or Iron Age.] and introduce throughout the whole world the
Age of Gold.....He shall share the life of
Gods and shall see heroes mingled in society with
Gods,himself to be seen by them and all the
peaceful world....Then shall the herds no
longer dread the huge lion the serpent also
shall die:and the poison s deceptive plant shall
perish.Come then dear child of the Gods,great
descendant of Jupiter!....The time is near.
See the world is shaken with its globe
saluting thee:the earth the regions of the sea and the
heavens sublime.[ Virgil Eclog e.iv.]
It is in these few lines,called the Sibylline
prophecy about the coming of Christ that his followers now
see a direct foretelling of the event.Now who
will presume to maintain that either at the birth of Jesus or
since the establishment of the so-called
Christian religion any portion of the above-quoted sentences
can be shown as prophetic?Has the last age
the Age of Iron or Kali Yuga closed since then?Quite
the reverse since it is shown to be in full
sway just now not only because the Hindus use the name but
by universal personal experience.Where is that
new race that has descended from the celestial
realms ?Was it the race that emerged from
Paganism into Christianity?Or is it our present race with
nations ever red-hot for fight jealous and
envious,ready to pounce upon each other showing mutual
hatred that would put to blush cats and
dogs,ever lying and deceiving one another?Is it this age of ours
that is the promised Golden Age in which
neither the venom of the serpent nor of any plant is any
longer lethal and in which we are all secure
under the mild sway of God-chosen sovereigns?The wildest
fancy of an opium-eater could hardly suggest a
more inappropriate description if it is to be applied to our
age or to any age since the year one of our
era.What of the mutual slaughter of sects,of Christians by
Pagans,and of Pagans and Heretics by
Christians;the horrors of the Middle Ages and of the Inquisition;
Napoleon and since his day an armed peace at
best at the worst torrents of blood shed for
supremacy over acres of land and a handful of
heathen :millions of soldiers under arms,ready for
battle;a diplomatic body playing at Cains and
Judases;and instead of the mild sway of a divine
sovereign the universal though unrecognised
sway of Cęsarism of might in lieu of right and the
breeding therefrom of anarchists
socialists,pétroleuses,and destroyers of every description?
(Page 348)The Sibylline prophecy and Virgil s
inspirational poetry remain unfulfilled in every point as we
see.
The fields are yellow with soft ears of corn;
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but so they were before our era:
The blushing grapes shall hang from the rude
brambles,and dewy honey shall [ or
may ] distil
from the rugged oak;
but they have not thus done so far.We must
look for another interpretation.What is it?The Sibylline
Prophetess spoke as thousands of other
Prophets and Seers have spoken though even the few such
records that have survived are rejected by
Christian and infidel and their interpretations are only allowed
and accepted among the Initiated.The Sibyl
alluded to cycles in general and to the great cycle especially.
Let us remember how the Purānas corroborate
the above among others the Vishn P rāna:
When the practices taught by the Vedas,and the
Institutes of Law shall have nearly ceased
and the close of the Kali Yuga [the Iron Age of Virgil ] shall be nigh an aspect of that
divine
Being who exists of his own spiritual nature
in the character of Brahmā and even is the
beginning of the end [ Alpha and Omega ]
...shall descend upon earth:he will be born in the
family of Vishnuyashas,an eminent Brāhman of
Shamballah ....endowed with the eight
superhuman powers.By his irresistible might he
will destroy ...all whose minds are devoted
to iniquity.He will then reėstablish
righteousness upon earth;and the minds of those who live
at the end of the [ Kali ] Age shall
be awakened and shall be as pellucid as crystal.[ At the
close of our Race people it is said through
suffering and discontent will become more
spiritual.Clairvoyance will become a general
faculty.We shall be approaching the spiritual
state of the Third and Second Races.] The men who are thus changed by
virtue of that
peculiar time shall be as the seeds of human
beings [ the Shistha the
survivors of the future
cataclysm ] and shall give birth to a race who shall follow the laws of the
Krita [ or Satya ]
Yuga [the age of purity or the Golden Age ] For it is said:When the sun and
moon and
Tishya [asterisms
] and the planet Jupiter are in
one mansion the Krita Age [the
Golden ]shall
return.[Vishn
P rāna.IV.228.Wilson s translation.]
The astronomical cycles of the Hindus those
taught publicly have been sufficiently well understood
but the esoteric meaning thereof in its
application to transcendental subjects connected with them has
ever remained a dead-letter.The number of
cycles was enormous;it ranged from the Mahā Yuga cycle of
4 320 000 years down to the small septenary
and quinquennial cycles,the latter being composed of the
five years called respectively the Samvatsara
Parivatsara Idvatsara Anuvatsara and Vatsara each
having secret attributes or qualities attached
to them.
Secret Cycles -(Page 349)Vriddhagarga gives these in a treatise now the property of a
Trans-
Himālayan Matham (or temple);and describes the
relation between this quinquennial and the Brihaspati
cycle based on the conjunction of the Sun and
Moon every sixtieth year:a cycle as mysterious for
national events in general and those of the
Āryan Hindu nation especially as it is important.
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SECTION XL
Secret Cycles
(Page 350)THE former five-year cycle comprehends sixty
solar-sidereal months or 1800 days sixty-one
solar months (or 1830);sixty-two lunar months
(or 1860 lunations),and sixty-seven lunar-asterismal
months (or 1809 such days).
In his Kāla Sankalita,Col.Warren very
properly regards these years as cycles;this they are for each
year has its own special importance as having
some bearing upon and connection with specified events
in individual horoscopes.He writes that in the
cycle of sixty there.
Are contained five cycles of twelve years,each
supposed equal to one year of the planet
(Brihaspati or Jupiter)...I mention this cycle
because I found it mentioned in some books,
but I know of no nation or tribe that reckons
time after that account.[ Op.cit.,p.212.]
The ignorance is very natural since Col.Warren
could know nothing of the secret cycles and their
meanings.He adds:
The names of the five cycles of Yugas
are:....(1)Samvatsara (2)Parivatsara (3)Idvatsara
(4)Anuvatsara (5)Udravatsara.
The learned Colonel might however have assured
himself that there were other nations which had the
same secret cycle if he had but remembered
that the Romans also had their l strum of five years (from
the Hindus undeniably)which represented the
same period if multiplied by 12.[ At
any rate the temple
secret meaning was the same.] Near Benares there are still the
relics of all these cycle-records,and of
astronomical instruments cut out of solid
rock,the everlasting records of Archaic Initiation called by Sir
W.Jones (as suggested by the prudent Brāhmans
who surrounded him)old back records or
reckonings.
The Naros -(Page 351)But in Stonehenge they exist to this day.Higgins says that
Waltire found the
barrows of tumuli surrounding this
giant-temple represented accurately the situation and magnitude of
the fixed stars,forming a complete orrery or
planisphere.As Colebrook found out it is the cycle of the
Vedas recorded
in the Jyotisha,one of the Vedąngas,a treatise on Astronomy which is the
basis of
calculation for all other cycles,larger or
smaller;[ Aiat.Res.,vol.viii
p.470.et seq ] and the Vedas
were
written in characters,archaic though they be
long after those natural observations,made by the aid of
their gigantic mathematical and astronomical
instruments had been recorded by the men of the Third
Race who had received their instruction from
the Dhyān Chohans.Maurice speaks truly when he
observes that all such
Circular stone monuments were intended as
durable symbols of astronomical cycles by a race
who not having or for political
reasons,forbidding the use of letters,had no other permanent
method of instructing their disciples or
handing down their knowledge to posterity.
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He errs only in the last idea.It was to
conceal their knowledge from profane posterity leaving it as an
heirloom only to the Initiates,that such
monuments,at once rock observatories and astronomical
treatises,were cut out.
It is no news that as the Hindus divided the
earth into seven zones,so the more western peoples
Chaldęans,Phnicians,and even the Jews,who got
their learning either directly or indirectly from the
Brąhmans made all their secret and sacred
numerations by 6 and 12 though using the number 7
whenever this would not lend itself to
handling.Thus the numerical base of 6 the exoteric figure given by
Ćrya Bhatta was made good use of.From the
first secret cycle of 600 the Naros,transformed
successively into 60 000 and 60 and 6 and with
other noughts added into other secret cycles down to
the smallest an Archęologist and Mathamatician
can easily find it repeated in every country known to
every nation.Hence the globe was divided into
60 degrees,which multiplied by 60 become 3 600 the
great year. Hence also the hour with its 60
minutes of 60 seconds each.The Asķatic people count a
cycle of 60 years also after which comes the
lucky seventh decad and the Chinese have their small
cycle of 60 days the Jews of 6 days,the Greeks
of 6 centuries the Naros again.
(Page 352)The Babylonians had a great year of 3 600
being the Naros multiplied by 6.The Tartar cycle
called Van was 180 years,or three sixties;this
multiplied by 12 times 12=144 makes 25 920 years,the
exact period of revolution of the heavens.
India is the birthplace of arithmetic and
mathematics;as Our Figures,in Chips from a German
Workshop,by Prof.Max Müller shows beyond a doubt.As well explained by Krishna
Shāstra Godbole in
The Theosophist :
The Jews ...represented the units (1-9)by the
first nine letters of our alphabet;the tens (10-90)by the
next nine letters;the first four hundreds
(100-400)by the last four letters and the remaining ones
(500-900)by the second forms of the letters
kāf (11 th ),mīm (13 th ),nūn (13 th ),pe (17 th ),and sād
(18 th );and they represented other numbers by
combining these letters according to their value ....The
Jews of the present period still adhere to
this practice of notation in their Hebrew books.The Greeks had
a numerical system similar to that used by the
Jews,but they carried it a little farther by using letters of
the alphabet with a dash or slant-line behind
to represent thousands (1000-9000),tens of thousands
(10 000-90 000)and one hundred of thousands
(100 000)the last for instance being represented by
rho with a dash behind while rho singly
represented 100.The Romans represented all numerical
values by the combination (additive when the
second letter is of equal or less value)of six letters of their
alphabet:i (=I),v (=5),x (=10),c (for centum
=100),d (=500),and m (=1000):thus 20=xx 15=xv and
9=ix.These are called the Roman numerals,and
are adopted by all European nations when using the
Roman alphabet.The Arabs at first followed
their neighbours,the Jews,in their method of computation
so much so that they called it Abjad from the
first four Hebrew letters alif beth gimel or rather
jimel that is jim (Arabic being wanting in
g ,and daleth representing the first four units.But when in
the early part of the Christian era they came
to India as traders,they found the country already using for
computation the decimal scale of notation
which they forthwith borrowed literally;viz.,without altering its
method of writing from left to right at
variance with their own mode of writing which is from right to left.
They introduced this system into Europe
through Spain and other European countries lying along the
coast of the Mediterranean and under their
sway during the dark ages of European history.It has thus
become evident that the Äryas knew well
mathematics or the science of computation at a time when all
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other nations knew but little if anything of
it.It has also been admitted that the knowledge of arithmetic
and algebra was first introduced from the
Hindus by the Arabs,and then taught by them to the Western
nations.This fact convincingly proves that the
Āryan civilisation is older than that of any other nation in
the world:and as the Vedas are avowedly
proved the oldest work of that civilisation a presumption is
raised in favour of their great antiquity.[Theosophist,August.1881 .]
Age of the Vedas -(Page 353)But while the Jewish nation for instance regarded so long
as the first
and oldest in the order of creation knew
nothing of arithmetic and remained utterly ignorant of the
decimal scale of notation the latter existed
for ages in India before the actual era.
To become certain of the immense antiquity of
the Āryan Asiatic nations and of their astronomical records
one has to study more than the Vedas .The
secret meaning of the latter will never be understood by the
present generation of Orientalists;and the
astronomical works which give openly the real dates and
prove the antiquity of both the nation and its
science elude the grasp of the collectors of ollas and old
manuscripts in India the reason being too obvious
to need explanation.Yet there are Astronomers and
Mathematicians to this day in India humble
Shāstris and Pandits,unknown and lost in the midst of that
population of phenomenal memories and
metaphysical brains,who have undertaken the task and have
proved to the satisfaction of many that the Vedas
are the oldest works in the world.One of such is the
Shāstri just quoted who published in The
Theosophist [ Aug.1881x to
Feb.1882.] an able treatise
proving astronomically and mathematically
that:
If the Post-Vaidika works alone the
Upanishads,the Brāhmanas,etc.down to the Purānas,
when examined critically carry us back to 20
000 B.C.then the time of the composition of the
Vedas themselves
cannot be less than 30 000 B.C.in round numbers,a date which we may
take at present as the age of that Book of
books.[Loc.cit.,iv.127 ]
And what are his proofs?
Cycles and the evidence yielded by the
asterisms.Here are a few extracts from his rather lengthy
treatise selected to give an idea of his
demonstrations and bearing directly on the quinquennial cycle
spoken of just now.Those who feel interested
in the demonstrations and are advanced mathematicians
can turn to the article itself The Antiquity
of the Vedas [Theosophist
vol.iii.p.22.] and judge for
themselves.
10.Somākara in his commentary on the Shesha
Jyotisha quotes a passage from the
Satapatha Brāhmana,which contains an observation on the change of the
topics,and which is
also found in the Sākhāyana Brāhmana,as
has been noticed by Prof.Max Müller in his
preface to Rigveda Samhitā (p.xx.foot-note
vol.iv.).The passage is this:...The full-moon
night in Phālguna is the first night of
Samvatsara the first year of the quinquennial age.This
passage clearly shows that the quinquennial
age which according to the sixth verse of the
Jyotisha,begins on the 1 st of Māgha (January-February),once began on the 15 th of
Phālguna
(February-March).(Page 354)Now when the 15 th of Phālguna of the first
year called
Samvatsara of the quinquennial age begins,the
moon according to the Jyotisha is in
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position of the four principal points on the
ecliptic was then as follows:
The winter solstice in 3 .29 of Purva
Bhādrapadā.
The vernal equinox in the beginning of
Mrigashīrsha.
The summer solstice in 10 of Purva Phālgunī.
The autumnal equinox in the middle of Jyeshtha.
The vernal equinoctial point we have seen
coincided with the beginning of Krittikā in 1421
B.C.;and from the beginning of Krittikā to
that of Mrigashīrsha was,consequence 1421+26
2/3x72=1421+1920=3341 B.C.supposing the rate
of precession to be 50 a year.When we
take the rate to be 3 .20"in 247
years,the time comes up to 1516+1960.7=3476.7 B.C.
When the winter solstice by its retrograde
motion coincided after that with the beginning of
Pūrva Bhādrapadā then the commencement of the
quinquennial age was changed from the
15 th to the 1 st of Phālguna
(February-March).This change took place 240 years after the date
of the above observation that is,in 3101
B.C.This date is most important as from it an era
was reckoned in after times.The commencement
of the Kali or Kali Yuga (derived from kal
to reckon ),though said by European scholars
to be an imaginary date becomes thus an
astronomical fact.
Interchange for Krititkā and Ashvinī
[The impartial study of Vaidic and Post-Vaidic works shows
that the ancient Ćryans knew well
the precession of the equinoxes,and that they
changed their position from a certain asterism
to two (occasionally three)asterisms back
whenever the precession amounted to two properly
speaking to 2 11/61 asterisms or about 29 .
being the motion of the sun in a lunar month and
so caused the seasons to fall back a complete
lunar month....It appears certain that at the
date of Sūrya Siddhānta,Brahmā Siddānta,and
other ancient treatises on astronomy the
vernal equinoctial point had not actually
reached the beginning of Ashvini but was a few
degrees east of it...The astronomers of Europe
change westward the beginning of Aries and
of all other signs of the Zodiac every year by
about 50"25 and thus make the names of the
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signs meaningless.But these signs are as much
fixed as the asterisms themselves,and
hence the Western astronomers of the present
day appear to us in this respect less wary and
scientific in their observations than their
very ancient brethren the Ćryas.Theosophist,iii.
23.
We thus see that the asterisms,twenty-seven in
number were counted from the Mrigashīrsha
when the vernal equinox retrograded was in its
beginning and that the practice of thus
counting was adhered to till the vernal
equinox retrograded to the beginning of Krittikā when it
became the first of the asterisms.For then the
winter solstice had changed receding from
Phālguna (February-March)to Māgha
(January-February)one complete lunar month.
Testimony of the Song Celestial -(Page 355)And in like manner the place of Krittikā was
occupied by Ashvini that is,the latter became
the first of the asterisms,heading all others,
when its beginning coincided with the vernal
equinoctial point or in other words,when the
winter solstice was in Pansha
(December-February).Now from the beginning of Krittikā to that
of Ashvinī there are two asterisms,or 26 Øų.
and the time the equinox takes to retrograde this
distance at the rate of 1 in 72 years is 1920
years;and hence the date at which the vernal
equinox coincided with the commencement of
Ashvinī or with the end of Revatī is
1920-1421=499 A.D.
Bentley s Opinion
12.The next and equally-important observation
we have to record here is one discussed by
Mr.Bentley in his researches into his
researches into the Indian antiquities.The first lunar
asterism he says in the division of twenty-eight
was called Mūla that is to say the root or
origin.In the division of twenty-seven the
first lunar asterism was called Jyestha that is to say
the eldest at first and consequently of the
same import as the former (vide his View of the
Hind Astronomy,p.4).From this it becomes manifest that the vernal equinox
was once in the
beginning of Mūla and Mūla was reckoned the
first of the asterisms when they were twenty-
eight in number including Abhijit.Now there
are fourteen asterisms,of 180 . from the
beginning of Mrigashīrsha to that of Mūla and
hence the date at which the vernal equinox
coincided with the beginning of Mūla was at
least 3341+180x72=16 301 B.C.The position of
the four principal points on the ecliptic was
then as given below:
The winter solstice in the beginning of Uttara
Phālgunī in the month of Shrāvana.
The vernal equinox in the beginning of Mūla in
Kārittka
The summer solstice in the beginning of Pūrva
Bhādrapadā in Māgha
The autumnal equinox in the beginning of
Mrigashīrsha in Vaishākha.
A Proof from the Bhagavad Gītā
13.The Bhagavad Gītā as well as the Bhāgavata,makes
mention of an observation which
points to a still more remote antiquity than
the one discovered by Mr.Bentley.The passages
are given in order below:
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I am the Mārgashīrsha [ viz.the first morning for
months ] and the spring [viz .the first among
the seasons ].
This shows that at one time the first month of
spring was Mārgashīrsha.A season includes two
months,and the mention of a month suggests the
season.
I am the Samvatsara among the years [ which are five in number ] and the spring among the
seasons,and the Mārgashīrsha among the months
and the Abhijitamong the asterisms
[ which are twenty-eight in number ].
This clearly points out that at one time in
the first year called Samvatsara of the quinquennial
age the Madhu that is the first month of
spring was Mārgashīrsha and Abhijit was the first of
the asterisms.It then concided with the vernal
equinoctial point and thence from it the
asterisms were counted.To find the date of
this observation:There are three asterisms from
the beginning of Mūla to the beginning of Abhijit
and hence the date in question is at least
16 301+3/7 x 90 x 72 =19 078 (Page 356)or about 20 000 B.C.The Samvatsara at this
time
began in Bhādrapadā the winter solstitial
month.
So far then 20 000 years are mathematically
proven for the antiquity of the Vedas .And this is simply
exoteric.Any mathematician provided he be not
blinded by preconception and prejudice can see this,
and an unknown but very clever amateur
Astronomer S.A.Mackey has proved it some sixty years back.
His theory about the Hindu Yugas and their
length is curious as being so very near the correct doctrine.
It is said in volume ii.p.131 of Asiatic
Researches that:The great ancestor of Yudhister
reigned 27 000 years ...at the end of the
brazen age.In volume ix.p.364 we read:
In the beginning of the Cali Y ga,in
the reign of Yudhister.And Yudhister ...began his reign
immediately after the flood called Pralaya.
Here we find three different statements
concerning Yudhister ...to explain these seeming differences we
must have recourse to their books of science
where we find the heavens and the earth divided into five
parts of
unequal dimensions,by circles parallel to the equator.Attention to these
divisions will be found to
be of the utmost importance ...as it will be
found that from them arose the division of their Maha-Yuga
into its four component parts.Every astronomer
knows that there is a point in the heavens called the
pole round which the whole seems to turn in twenty-four
hours;and that at ninety degrees from it they
imagine a circle called the eq ator which
divides the heavens and the earth into two equal parts,the
north and the south.Between this circle and
the pole there is another imaginary circle called the circle of
perpet al apparition :between which and the equator there is a point in the
heavens called the zenith
through which let another imaginary circle
pass,parallel to the other two;and then there wants but the
circle of perpetual occultation to complete
the round....No astronomer of Europe besides myself has
ever applied them to the development of the
Hindu mysterious numbers.We are told in the Asiatic
Researches that Yudhister brought Vicramāditya to reign in Cassimer
which is in the latitude of 36
degrees.And in that latitude the circle of
perpetual apparition would extend up to 72 degrees altitude
and from that to the zenith there are but 18
degrees,but from the zenith to the equator in that latitude
there are 36 degrees,and from the equator to
the circle of perpetual occultation there are 54 degrees.
Here we find the semi-circle of 180 degrees
divided into four parts,in the proportion of 1 2 3 4 i.e.,18
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36 54 72.Whether the Hindu astronomers were
acquainted with the motion of the earth or not is of no
consequence since the appearances are the
same;and if it will give those gentlemen of tender
consciences any pleasure I am willing to admit that they imagined the
heavens rolled round the earth but
they had observed the stars in the path of the
sun to move forward through the equinoctial points,at the
rate of fifty-four seconds of a degree in a year
which carried the whole zodiac round in 24 000 years;in
which time they also observed that the angle
of obliquity varied so as to extend or contract the width of
the tropics 4 degrees on each side which rate
of motion would carry the tropics from the equator to the
poles in 540 000 years:in which time the
Zodiac would have made twenty-two and a half revolutions,
which are expressed by the parallel circles
from the equator to the poles ..or what amounts to the same
thing the north pole of the ecliptic would
have moved from the north pole of the earth to the equator ....
Mackey's Arguments -(Page 357)Thus the poles become inverted in 1 080 000 years,which is
their
Maha Yuga and which they had divided into four
unequal parts,in the proportions of 1 2 3 4 for the
reasons mentioned above;which are 108 000 216
000 324 000 and 432 000.Here we have the most
positive proofs that the above numbers
originated in ancient astronomical observations and
consequently are not deserving of those
epithets which have been bestowed upon them by the Essayist
echoing the voice of Bentley Wilford
Dupuis,etc.
I have now to show that the reign of Yudhister
for 27 000 years is neither absurd nor disg sting,but
perhaps the Essayist is not aware that there
were several Yudhisters or Judhisters.In volume ii.p.131
Asiatic Researches :The great ancestor of Yudhister reigned 27 000 years at
the end of the brazen or
third age. Here I must again beg your
attention to this projection.This is a plane of that machine which
the second gentleman thought so very clumsy;it
is that of a prolong spheroid,called by the ancients an
atroscope.Let the longest axis represent the
poles of the earth making an angle of 28 degrees with the
horizon;then will the seven divisions above
the horizon to the North Pole the temple of Buddha and the
seven from the North Pole to the circle of
perpetual apparition represent the fourteen Manvantaras,or
very long periods of time each of which
according to the third volume of Asiatic Researches,p.258 or
259 was the reign of a Manu.But Capt.Wilford
in volume v.p.243 gives us the following information:
The Egyptians had fourteen dynasties,and the
Hindus had fourteen dynasties,the rulers of which are
called Menus....
Who can here mistake the fourteen very long
periods of time for those which constituted the Cali Yuga of
Delhi or any other place in the latitude of 28
degrees,where the blank space from the foot of Meru to the
seventh circle from the equator constitutes
the part passed over by the tropic in the next age;which
proportions differ considerably from those in
the latitude of 36;and because the numbers in the Hindu
books differ Mr.Bentley asserts that:This
shows what little dependence is to be put in them. But on
the contrary it shows with what accuracy the
Hindus had observed the motions of the heavens in
different latitudes.
Some of the Hindus inform us that the earth
has two spindles which are surrounded by seven tiers of
heavens and hells at the distance of one Raj each. This needs but
little explanation when it is
understood that the seven divisions from the
equator to their zenith are called Rishis or Rashas .But what
is most to our present purpose to know is that
they had given names to each of those divisions which the
tropics passed over during each revolution of
the Zodiac.In the latitude of 36 degrees where the Pole or
Meru was nine steps high at Cassimere they
were called Shastras;in latitude 28 degrees at Delhi
where the Pole of Meru was seven steps high
they were called Menus;but in 24 degrees at Cacha
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where the Pole or Meru was but six steps high
they were called Sacas.But in the ninth volume (Asiatic
Researches )Yudhister the son of Dherma or Justice was the first
of the six Sacas;(Page
358)the
name
implies the end and as everything has
two ends.Yudhister is as applicable to the first as to the last.And
as the division on the north of the circle of
perpetual apparition is the first of the Cali Yuga supposing the
tropics to be ascending it was called the
division or reign of Yudhister.But the division which immediately
precedes the circle of perpetual apparition is
the last of the third or brazen age,and was therefore called
Yudhister and his reign preceded the reign of
the other as the tropic ascended to the Pole or Meru he
was called the father of the other
the great ancestor of Yudhister who reigned twenty-seven tho sand
years,at the end of the brazen age. (Vol.ii.Asiatic Researches.)
The ancient Hindus observed that the Zodiac
went forward at the rate of fifty-four seconds a year and to
avoid greater fractions,stated it at that
which would make a complete round in 24 000 years;and
observing the angle of the poles to vary
nearly 4 degrees each round stated the three numbers as such
which would have given forty-five ro nds of
the Zodiac to half a revolution of the poles;but finding that
forty-five rounds would not bring the northern
topic to coincide with the circle of perpetual apparition by
thirty minutes of a degree which required the
Zodiac to move one sign and a half more which we all
know it could not do in less that 3 000
years,they were in the case before us,added to the end of the
brazen age ;which lengthen the reign of that Yudhister to 27 000
years instead of 24 000 but at another
time they did not alter the regular order of
24 000 years to the reign of each of these long-winded
monarchs,but rounded up the time by allowing a
regency to continue three or four thousand years.In
volume ii.p.134 Asiatic Researches we
are told that:Paricshit the great nephew and successor of
Yudhister is allowed without controversy to
have reigned in the interval between the brazen and earthen
or Cali Ages,and to have died at the
setting-in of the Cali Yug. Here we find an interregn m at the end
of the brazen age and before the
setting-in of the Cali Yug:and as there can be but one brazen or Treta
Yug i.e.,the third age in a Maha Yuga
of 1 080 000 years:the reign of this Paricshit must have been in
the second Maha Yuga when the pole had
returned to its original position which must have taken
2 160 000 years:and this is what the Hindus
call the Prajanatha Yuga.Analogous to this custom is that of
some nations more modern who fond of even
numbers,have made the common year to consist of
twelve months of thirty days each and the five
days and odd measure have been represented as the
reign of a little serpent biting his tail and
divided into five parts,etc.
But Yudhister began his reign immediately after
the flood called Pralaya, i.e.,at the end of the Cali Yug
(or age of heat),when the tropic had passed
from the pole to the other side of the circle of perpetual
apparition which coincides with the northern
horizon;here the tropics of summer solstice would be again
in the same parallel of north declination at
the commencement of their first age as he was at the end of
their third age or Treta Yug called the
brazen age.
Enough has been said to prove that the Hindu
books of science are not disgusting absurdities,originated
in ignorance vanity and credulity;but books
containing the most profound knowledge of astronomy and
geography.
What therefore can induce these gentlemen of
tender consciences to insist that Yudhister was a real
mortal man I have no guess;unless it be that
they fear for the fate of Jared and his grandfather
Methuselah?
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The "Mystery of the Buddha"(Pages 359-360)Note
It is with some hesitation that I include the
following Sections in the Secret Doctrine.Together with some
most suggestive thought they contain very
numerous errors of fact and many statements based on
exoteric writings,not on esoteric
knowledge.They were given into my hands to publish as part of the
Third Volume of the Secret Doctrine,and
I therefore do not feel justified in coming between the author
and the public,either by altering the
statements,to make them consistent with fact or by suppressing the
Sections.She says she is acting entirely on
her own authority and it will be obvious to any instructed
reader that she makes possibly deliberately
many statements so confused that they are merely blinds,
and other statements probably inadvertently
that are nothing more than the exoteric
misunderstandings of esoteric truths.The
reader must here as everywhere use his own judgment but
feeling bound to publish these Sections,I
cannot let them go to the public without a warning that much in
them is certainly erroneous.
Annie Besant
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SECTION XLI
The Doctrine of Avatāras
(Page 361)A STRANGE STORY a legend rather is
persistently current among the disciples of some
great Himālayan Gurus,and even among laymen to
the effect that Gautama the Prince of Kapilavastu
has never left the Terrestrial regions,though
his body died and was burnt and its relics preserved to this
day.There is an oral tradition among the
Chinese Buddhists,and a written statement among the secret
books of the Lamaists of Tibet as well as a
tradition among the Ćryans,that Gautama BUDDHA has two
doctrines:one for the masses and His lay
disciples,the other for His elect the Arhats.His policy and
after Him that of His Arhats was,it appears,to
refuse no one admission into the ranks of candidates for
Arhatship but never to divulge the final
mysteries except to those who had proved themselves,during
long years of probation to be worthy of
Initiation.These once accepted were consecrated and initiated
without distinction of race caste or wealth as
in case of His western successor.It is the Arhats who have
set forth and allowed this tradition to take
root in the people s mind and it is the basis,also of the later
dogma of Lamaic reincarnation or the
succession of human Buddhas.
The little that can be said here upon the
subject may or may not help to guide the psychic student in the
right direction.It being left to the option
and responsibility of the writer to tell the facts as she personally
understood them the blame for possible
misconceptions created must fall only upon her.She has been
taught the doctrine but it was left to her
sole intuition as it is now left to the sagacity of the reader to
group the mysterious and perplexing facts
together.The incomplete statements herein given are
fragments of what is contained in certain
secret volumes,but it is not lawful to divulge the details.
The esoteric version of the mystery given in
the secret volumes may (Page
362)be
told briefly.The
Buddhists have always stoutly denied that
their BUDDHA was as alleged by the Brāhmans,an Avatāra
of Vishnu in the same sense as a man is an
incarnation of his Karmic ancestor.They deny it partly
perhaps,because the esoteric meaning of the
term Mahā Vishnu is not known to them in its full
impersonal and general meaning.There is a
mysterious Principle in Nature called Mahā Vishnu which
is not the God of that name but a principle
which contains Bīja the seed of Avatārism or in other words,
is the potency and cause of such divine
incarnations.All the World Saviours,the Bodhisattvas and the
Avatāras,are the trees of salvation grown out
from the one seed the Bija or Maha Vishnu.Whether it
be called Adi-Buddha (Primeval Wisdom)or Mahā
Vishnu it is all the same.Understood esoterically
Vishnu is both Saguna and Nirguna (with and
without attributes).In the first aspect Vishnu is the object
of exoteric worship and devotion;in the second
as Nirguna he is the culmination of the totality of
spiritual wisdom in the Universe Nirvanā [A great deal if misconception is
raised by a confusion of
planes of being and misuse of expressions.For
instance certain spiritual states have been confounded
with the Nirvāna of BUDDHA.The Nirvāna of
BUDDHA is totally different from any other spiritual state of
Samādhi or even the highest Theophania enjoyed
by lesser Adepts.After physical death the kinds of
spiritual states reached by Adepts differ
greatly.] in short and has as
worshippers all philosophical
minds.In this esoteric sense the Lord BUDDHA was
an incarnation of Mahā Vishnu.
This is from the philosophical and purely
spiritual standpoint.From the plane of illusion however as one
would say or from the terrestrial standpoint
those initiated know that He was a direct incarnation of one
of the primeval Seven Sons of Light who are
to be found in every Theogony the Dhyān Chohans
whose mission it is,from one eternity (ęon)to
the other to watch over the spiritual welfare of the regions
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under their care.This has been already
enunciated in Esoteric B ddhism.
One of the greatest mysteries of speculative
and philosophical Mysticism and it is one of the mysteries
now to be disclosed is the mod s operandi in
the degrees of such hypostatic transferences.As a matter
of course divine as well as human incarnations
must remain a closed book to the theologian as much as
to the physiologist unless the esoteric
teachings be accepted and become the religion of the world.This
teaching may never be fully explained to an
unprepared public;but one thing is certain and may be said
now:that between the dogma of a newly created
soul for each new birth and the physiological
assumption of a temporary animal soul there
lies the vast region of Occult teaching [This
region is the
one possible point of conciliation between the
two diametrically opposed poles of religion and science
the one with its barren fields of dogmas on
faith the other over-running with empty hypotheses,both
overgrown with the weeds of error.They will
never meet.The two are at feud at an everlasting warfare
with each other but this does not prevent them
from uniting against Esoteric Philosophy which for two
millenniums has had to fight against
infallibility in both directions,or mere vanity and pretence as
Antoninus defined it and now finds the
materialism of Modern Science arrayed against its truths .] with its
logical and reasonable demonstrations,the
links of which may all be traced in logical and philosophical
sequence in nature.
All Avatāras Identical -(Page 363)This Mystery is found for him who
understands its right meaning in
the dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna in the
Bhagavad Gītā,chapter iv.Says the Avatāra:
Many births of mine have passed as also of
yours O Arjuna!All those I know but you do not
know yours,O harasser of your enemies.
Although I am unborn with exhaustless Ćtmā and
am the Lord of all that is,yet taking up the
domination of my nature I am born by the power
of illusion.[ Whence some of the
Gnostic
ideas?Cerinthus taught that the world and
Jehovah having fallen off from virtue and primitive
dignity the Supreme permitted one of his
glorious Ęons,whose name was the Anointed
(Christ)to incarnate in the man Jesus.Basildes
denied the reality of the body of Jesus,and
calling it an illusion held that it was
Simon of Cyrene who suffered on the Cross in his stead.
All such teachings are echoes of the Eastern
Doctrines.]
Whenever O son of Bhārata there is decline of
Dharma [the right law ] and the rise of
Adharma [ the opposite of Dharma ]
here I manifest myself.
For the salvation of the good and the
destruction of wickedness,for the establishment of the
law I am born in every yuga.
Whoever comprehends truly my divine birth and
action he O Arjuna having abandoned the
body does not receive re-birth;he comes to me.
Thus,all the Avatāras are one and the same:the
Sons of their Father in a direct descent and line the
Father or one of the seven Flames becoming
for the time being the Son and these two being one in
Eternity.What is the Father?Is it the absolute
Cause of all?the fathomless Eternal?No;most
decidedly.It is Kāranātma the Causal Soul
which in its general sense is called by the Hindus Īshvara
the Lord and by Christians.God the One and
Only.From the standpoint of unity it is so;but then the
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lowest of the Elementals could equally be
viewed in such case as the One and Only.Each human being
has,moreover his own divine Spirit or personal
God.That divine Entity or Flame from which Buddhi
emanates stands in the same relation to man
though on a lower plane (Page
364)as
the Dhyāni-Buddha
to his human Buddha.Hence monotheism and
polytheism are not irreconcilable;they exist in Nature.
Truly for the salvation of the good and the
destruction of wickedness,the personalities known as
Gautama Shankara Jesus and a few others were
born each in his age as declared I am born in every
Yuga and they were all born through the same
Power.
There is a great mystery in such incarnations
and they are outside and beyond the cycle of general re-
births.Rebirths may be divided into three
classes:the divine incarnations called Avatāras;those of
Adepts who give up Nirvana for the sake of
helping on humanity the Nirmānakāyas;and the natural
succession of rebirths for all the common
law.The Avatāra is an appearance one which may be termed
a special illusion within the natural illusion
that reigns on the planes under the sway of that power Māyā;
the Adept is re-born consciously at his will
and pleasure;[ A genuine
initiated Adept will retain his
Adeptship though there may be for our world of
illusion numberless incarnations of him.The propelling
power that lies at the root of a series of
such incarnations is not Karma as ordinarily understood but a
still more inscrutable power.During the period
of his lives the Adept does not lose his Adeptship though
he cannot rise in it to a higher degree.]the units of the common herd
unconsciously follow the great law
of dual evolution.
What is an Avatāra?for the term before
being used ought to be well understood.It is a descent of the
manifested Deity whether under the specific
name of Shiva Vishnu or Ādi-Buddha into an illusive
form of individuality an appearance which to
men on this illusive plane is objective but it is not so in
sober fact.That illusive form having neither
past nor future because it has neither previous incarnation
nor will have subsequent rebirths,had naught
to do with Karma which has therefore no hold on it.
Gautama BUDDHA was born an Avatāra in one
sense.But this,in view of unavoidable objections on
dogmatic grounds,necessitates
explanation.There is a great difference between an Avatāra and a
Jīvanmukta:one as already stated is an
illusive appearance Karmaless,and having never before
incarnated;and the other the Jīvanmukta is one
who obtains Nirvāna by his individual merits.To this
expression again an uncompromising
philosophical Vedāntin would object.He might say that as the
condition of the Avatāra and the Jivanmukta
are one and the same state no amount of personal merit in
howsoever many incarnations,can lead its
possessor to Nirvāna.Nirvāna he would say is actionless;
how can then any action lead to it?
Voluntary Incarnation -(Page 365)It is neither a result nor a cause but an ever-present
eternal Is as
Nāgasena defined it.Hence it can have no
relation to or concern with action merit or demerit since
these are subject to Karma.All this is very
true but still to our mind there is an important difference
between the two.An Avatātara is ;a
Jīvanmukta becomes one.If the state of the two is identical not so
are the causes which lead to it.An Avatāra is
a descent of a God into an illusive form;a Jīvanmukta who
may have passed through numberless
incarnations and may have accumulated merit in them certainly
does not become a Nirvāni because of that
merit but only because of the Karma generated by it which
leads and guides him in the direction of the
Guru who will initiate him into the mystery of Nirvāna and
who alone can help him to reach this abode.
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The Shāstras say that from our works alone we
obtain Moksha and if we take no pains there will be no
gain and we shall be neither assisted nor
benefited by Deity [the
Mahā-Guru ] .Therefore it is
maintained
that Gautama though an Avatāra in one sense is
a true human Jīvanmukta owing his position to
personal merit and thus more than an
Avatāra.It was personal merit that enabled him to achieve
Nirvāna.
On the voluntary and conscious incarnations of
Adepts there are two types those of Nirmānakāyas,and
those undertaken by the probationary chelās
who are on their trial.
The greatest as the most puzzling mystery of
the first type lies in the fact that such re-birth in a human
body of the personal Ego of some particular Adept
when it has been dwelling in the Māyāvi or the Kāma
Rūpa and remaining in the Kāma Loka may
happen even when his Higher Principles are in the state
of Nirvāna.[ From the so-called Brahmā Loka the seventh and higher world
beyond which all is arūpa
formless,purely spiritual to the lowest world
and insect or even to an object such as a leaf there is
perpetual revolution of the condition of
existence evolution and re-birth.Some human beings attain
states or spheres from which there is only a
return in a new Kalpa (a day of Brahmā):there are other
states or spheres from which there is only
return after 100 years of Brahmā (Mahā Kalpa a period
covering 311 040.000.000.000 years).Nirvāna it
is said is a state from which there is no return.Yet it is
maintained that there may be as exceptional
cases,re-incarnation from that state:only such
incarnations are illusion like everything else
on this plane as will be shown.] Let
it be understood that
the above expressions are used for popular
purposes,and therefore that what is written does not deal
with this deep and mysterious question from
the highest plane that of absolute spirituality nor again from
the highest philosophical point of view
comprehensible but to the very few.It must not be supposed that
anything can go (Page 366)into Nirvāna which is not eternally there;but
human intellect in conceiving the
Absolute must put It as the highest term in an
indefinite series.If this be borne in mind a great deal of
misconception will be avoided.The content of
this spiritual evolution is the material on various planes
with which the Nirvānī was in contact prior to
his attainment of Nirvāna.The plane on which this is true
being in the series of illusive planes,is
undoubtedly the highest.Those who search for that must go to
the right source of study the teachings of the
Upanishads and must go in the right spirit.Here we
attempt only to indicate the direction in
which the search is to be made and in showing a few of the
mysterious Occult possibilities we do not
bring our readers actually to the goal.The ultimate truth can be
communicated only from Guru to initiated
pupil.
Having said so much the statement still will
and must appear incomprehensible if not absurd to many.
Firstly to all those who are unfamiliar with
the doctrine of the manifold nature and various aspects of the
human Monad;and secondly to those who view the
septenary division of the human entity from a too
materialistic standpoint.Yet the intuitional
Occultist who has studied thoroughly the mysteries of Nirvāna
who knows it to be identical with Parabrahman
and hence unchangeable eternal and no Thing but the
Absolute All will seize the possibility of
the fact.They know that while a Dharmakāya a Nirvāni without
remains,as our Orientalists have translated
it being absorbed into that Nothingness,which is the one
real because Absolute Consciousness cannot be
said to return to incarnation on Earth the Nirvānī
being no longer a he a she or even an it the
Nirmānakāya or he who has obtained Nirvāna with
remains,i.e.,who is clothed in a
subtle body which makes him impervious to all outward impressions
and to every mental feeling and in whom the
notion of his Ego has not entirely ceased can do so.
Again every Eastern Occultist is aware of the
fact that there are two kinds of Nirmānakāyas the natural
and the assumed;that the former is the name or
epithet given to the condition of a high ascetic,or
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Initiate who has reached a stage of bliss
second only to Nirvāna;while the latter means the self-sacrifice
of one who voluntary gives up the absolute Nirvāna
in order to help humanity and be still doing it good
or in other words,to save his fellow-creatures
by guiding them.It may be objected that the Dharmakāya
being a Nirvānī or Jīvanmukta can have no
remains left behind him after death for having attained that
state from which no further incarnations are
possible there is no need for him of a subtle body or of the
individual Ego that reincarnates from one
birth to another and that therefore the latter disappears of
logical necessity;to this it is answered:it is
so for all exoteric purposes and a general law.
Cardinal De Cusa -(Page 367)But the case with which we are dealing is an exceptional one
and its
realization lies within the Occult powers of
the high Initiate who before entering into the state of Nirvāna
can cause his remains (sometimes,though not
very well called his Māyāvi Rūpa),to remain behind
[This fact of the disappearance of the vehicle of Egotism in
the fully developed Yogi who is supposed to
have reached Nirvāna on earth years before his
corporeal death has led to the law in Manu sanctioned
by millenniums of Brāhmanical authority that
such a Paramātmā should be held as absolutely blameless
and free from sin or responsibility do
whatever he may (see last chapter of the Laws of Man ).Indeed
caste itself that most
despotic,uncompromising and autocratic tyrant in India can be broken with
impunity by the Yogi who is above caste.This
will give the key to our statements.] whether
he is to
become a Nirvānī or to find himself in a lower
state of bliss.
Next there are cases rare yet more frequent
than one would be disposed to expect which are the
voluntary and conscious reincarnations of
Adepts [The word Adept is very
loosely used by H.P.B who
often seems to have implied by it no more than
the possession of special knowledge of some kind.Here
it seems to mean first as uninitiated disciple
and then an initiated one.Eds .] on
their trial.Every man
has an Inner a Higher Self and also an
Astral Body.But few are those who outside the higher degrees
of Adeptship can guide the latter or any of
the principles that animate it when once death has closed
their short terrestrial life.Yet such guidance
or their transference from the dead to a living body is not
only possible but is of frequent occurrence according
to Occult and Kabalistic teachings.The degrees of
such power of course vary greatly.To mention
but three:the lowest of these degrees would allow an
Adept who has been greatly trammelled during
life in his study and in the use of his powers,to choose
after death another body in which he could go
on with his interrupted studies,though ordinarily he would
lose in it every remembrance of his previous
incarnation.The next degree permits him in addition to this,
to transfer the memory of his past life to his
new body;while the highest has hardly any limits in the
exercise of that wonderful faculty.
As an instance of an Adept who enjoyed the
first mentioned power some medięval Kabalists cite a well-
known personage of the fifteenth century
Cardinal de Cusa;Karma due to his wonderful devotion to
(Page 368)Esoteric study and the Kabalah led the
suffering Adept to seek intellectual recuperation and
rest from ecclesiastical tyranny in the body
of Copernicus.Si non e vero e ben trovato ;and the perusal of
the lives of the two men might easily lead a
believer in such powers to a ready acceptance of the alleged
fact.The reader having at his command the
means to do so is asked to turn to the formidable folio in
Latin of the fifteenth century called De
Docta Ignorantia written by the Cardinal de Cusa in which all the
theories and hypotheses all the ideas of
Copernicus are found as the key-notes to the discoveries of
the great astronomer.[About fifty years before the birth of Copernicus,De Cusa wrote as
follows:
Though the world may not be absolutely finite
no one can represent it to himself as finite since human
reason is incapable of assigning to it any
term ...For in the same way that our earth cannot be in the
centre of the Universe as thought no more
could the sphere of the fixed stars be in it....Thus this
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world is like a vast machine having its centre
[Deity ] everywhere and its circumference nowhere [
machina m ndi,q asi habens biq e centrum,et
n llibi circ mferenti m ] ....Hence the earth not being
in the centre cannot therefore be motionless
...and though it is far smaller than the sun one must not
conclude for all that that she is worse [vilior more vile ]....One cannot see whether its
inhabitants are
superior to those who dwell nearer to the sun
or in other stars,as sidereal space cannot be deprived of
inhabitants....The earth very likely [fortasse ] one of the smallest globes,is
nevertheless the cradle of
intelligent beings,most noble and perfect.
One cannot fail to agree with the biographer of Cardinal de
Cusa who having no suspicion of the Occult
truth and the reason of such erudition in a writer of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,simply
marvels at such a miraculous foreknowledge and attributes it to
God saying of him that he was a man
incomparable in every kind of philosophy by whom many a
theological mystery inaccessible to the human
mind (!),veiled and neglected for centuries (velata et
neglecta)were once more brought to light.Pascal might have read De Cusa s
works:but whence could
the Cardinal have borrowed his ideas?asks
Moreri.Evidently from Hermes and the works of Pythagoras,
even if the mystery of his incarnation and
re-incarnation be dismissed.] Who
was this extraordinary
learned Cardinal?The son of a poor boatman
owing all his career his Cardinal s hat and the reverential
awe rather than friendship of the Popes
Eugenius IV.Nicholas V.and Pius II.to the extraordinary
learning which seemed innate in him since he
had studied nowhere till comparatively late in life.De
Cusa died in 1473;moreover his best works were
written before he was forced to enter orders to
escape persecution.Nor did the Adept escape
it.
In the voluminous work of the Cardinal
above-quoted is found a very suggestive sentence the authorship
of which has been variously attributed to
Pascal to Cusa himself and to the Zohar and which belongs
by right to the Books of Hermes:
The world is an infinite sphere whose centre
is everywhere and whose circumference is
nowhere.
This is changed by some into:The centre being
nowhere and the circumference everywhere a rather
heretical idea for a Cardinal though perfectly
orthodox from a Kabalistic standpoint.
The Seven Rays -(Page 369)The theory of rebirth must be set forth by Occultists,and
then applied to
special cases.The right comprehension of this
psychic fact is based upon a correct view of that group of
celestial Beings who are universally called
the seven Primeval Gods or Angels our Dhyān Chohans
the Seven Primeval Rays or Powers adopted
later on by the Christian Religion as the Seven Angels of
the Presence.Arūpa formless,at the upper rung
of the ladder of Being materializing more and more as
they descend in the scale of objectivity and
form ending in the grossest and most imperfect of the
Hierachy man it is the former purely
spiritual group that is pointed out to us,in our Occult teaching as
the nursery and fountain-head of human
beings.Therein germinates that consciousness which is the
earliest manifestation from causal
Consciousness the Alpha and Omega of divine being and life for
ever.And as it proceeds downward through every
phase of existence descending through man through
animal and plant it ends its descent only in
the mineral.It is represented by the double triangle the
most mysterious and the most suggestive of all
mystic signs,for it is a double glyph embracing spiritual
and physical consciousness and life the former
triangle running upwards,and the lower downwards,
both interlaced and showing the various planes
of the twice-seven modes of consciousness,the
fourteen spheres of existence the Lokas of the
Brāhmans.
The reader may now be able to obtain a clearer
comprehension of the whole thing.He will also see what
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is meant by the Watchers,there being one
placed as the Guardian or Regent over each of the seven
divisions or regions of the earth according to
old traditions,as there is one to watch over and guide
every one of the fourteen worlds or Lokas.[This is the secret meaning of the
statements about the
Hierarchy of Prajāpatis or Rishis.First seven
are mentioned then ten then twenty-one and so on.They
are Gods and creators of men many of them
the Lords of Beings :they are the Mind-born Sons of
Brahmā and then they become mortal heroes,and
are often shown as of a very sinful character.The
Occult meaning of the Biblical
Patriarchs,their genealogy and their descendants dividing among
themselves the earth is the same.Again Jacob
s dream has the same significance.] But
it is not with
any of these that we are at present concerned
but with the Seven Breaths, so-called that furnish man
with his immortal Monad in his cyclic
pilgrimage.
The Commentary on the Book of Dzyan says:
Descending on his region first as Lord of
Glory,the Flame (or Breath),having called into
conscio s being the highest of the
Emanations of that special region,ascends from it again to
Its primeval seat,whence It watches (Page 370)over and g ides Its co ntless Beams
(Monads).It chooses as Its Avatāras only
those who had the Seven Virt es in them [He of the
Seven Virtues is one who without the benefit
of Initiation becomes as pure as any Adept by
the simple exertion of his own merit.Being so
holy his body at his next incarnation becomes
the Avatāra of his Watcher or Guardian Angel
as the Christian would put it.] in
their previo s
incarnation.As for the rest,It overshadows
each with one of Its co ntless beams....Yet even
the beam is a part of the Lord of Lords.[The
title of the highest Dhyān Chohans.]
The septenary principle in man who can be
regarded as dual only as concerns psychic manifestation
on this gross earthly plane was known to all
antiquity and may be found in every ancient Scripture.The
Egyptians knew and taught it and their
division of principles is in every point a counterpart of the Āryan
Secret Teaching.It is thus given in Isis
Unveiled :
In the Egyptian notions,as in those of all
other faiths founded on philosophy man was not
merely ...a union of soul and body:he was a
trinity when Spirit was added to it.Besides,that
doctrine made him consist of Kha (body)Khaba
(astral form or shadow),Ka (animal soul or
life-principle )Ba (the higher soul),and Akh
(terrestrial intelligence).They had also a sixth
principle named Sah (or mummy)but the
functions of this one commenced after the death of
the body.[Op.cit.,ii.367 ]
The seventh principle being of course the
highest uncreated Spirit was generically called Osiris,
therefore every deceased person became
Osirified or an Osiris after death.
But in addition to reiterating the old
ever-present fact of reincarnation and Karma not as taught by the
Spiritists,but as by the most Ancient Science
in the world Occultists must teach cyclic and evolutionary
reincarnation:that kind of re-birth mysterious
and still incomprehensible to many who are ignorant of the
world s history which was cautiously
mentioned in Isis Unveiled .A general re-birth for every individual
with interlude of Kāma Loka and Devachan and a
cyclic concious reincarnation with a grand and divine
object for the few.Those great characters who
tower like giants in the history of mankind like Siddārtha
BUDDHA and Jesus in the realm of the spiritual
and Alexander the Macedonian and Napolean the Great
in the realm of physical conquests are but the
reflected images of human types which had existed not
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ten thousand years before as cautiously put
forward in Isis Unveiled,but for millions of consecutive
years from the beginning of the Manvantara.
Special Cases -(Page 371)For with the exception of real Avatāras,as above explained
they are the
same unbroken Rays (Monads),each respectively
of its own special Parent-Flame called Devas,
Dhyān Chohans,or Dhyāni-Buddhas,or again
Planetary Angels,etc.shining in ęonic eternity as their
prototypes.It is in their image that some men
are born and when some specific humanitarian object is in
view the latter are hypostatically animated by
their divine prototypes reproduced again and again by the
mysterious Powers that control and guide the
destinies of our world.
No more could be said at the time when Isis
Unveiled was written;hence the statement was limited to the
single remark that
There is no prominent character in all the
annals of sacred or profane history whose prototype
we cannot find in the half fictitious and half
real traditions of bygone religions and mythologies.
As the star glimmering at an immeasurable
distance above our heads,in the boundless
immensity of the sky reflects itself in the
smooth waters of a lake so does the imagery of men
of the antediluvian ages reflect itself in the
periods we can embrace in a historical retrospect.
But now that so many publications have been
brought out stating much of the doctrine and several of
them giving many an erroneous view this vague
allusion may be amplified and explained.Not only does
this statement apply to prominent characters
in history in general but also to men of genius,to every
remarkable man of the age who soars beyond the
common herd with some abnormally developed
special capacity in him leading to the
progress and good of mankind.Each is a reincarnation of an
individuality that has gone before him with
capacities in the same line bringing thus as a dowry to his
new form that strong and easily re-awakened
capacity or quality which had been fully developed in him in
his preceding birth.Very often they are
ordinary mortals,the Egos of natural men in the course of their
cyclic development.
But it is with special cases that we are now
concerned.Let us suppose that a person during his cycle of
incarnations is thus selected for special
purposes the vessel being sufficiently clean by his personal
God the Fountain-head (on the plane of the
manifested)of his Monad who thus becomes his in-dweller.
That God his own prototype or Father in
Heaven is,in one sense not only the image in which he the
spiritual man is made but in the case we are
considering it is that spiritual individual Ego himself.This
is a case of permanent life-long Theophania.Let
us bear in mind that this is neither Avatārism as it is
understood in Brāhmanical Philosophy nor is
the (Page 372)man thus selected
a Jīvanmukta or Nirvānī
but that it is a wholly exceptional case in
the realm of Mysticism.The man may or may not have been an
Adept in his previous lives;he is so far and
simply an extremely pure and spiritual individual or one
who was all that in his preceding birth if the
vessel thus selected is that of a newly-born infant.In this
case after the physical translation of such a
saint or Bodhisattva his astral principles cannot be
subjected to a natural dissolution like those
of any common mortal.They remain in our sphere and within
human attraction and reach;and thus it is that
not only a Buddha a Shankarāchārya or a Jesus can be
said to animate several persons at one and the
same time but even the principles of a high Adept may
be animating the outward tabernacles of common
mortals.
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A certain Ray (principle)from Sanat Kumāra
spiritualized (animated)Pradvumna the son of Krishna
during the great Mahābhārata period while at
the same time he Sanat Kumāra gave spiritual
instruction to King Dhritarāshtra.Moreover it
is to be remembered that Sanat Kumāra is an eternal
youth of sixteen dwelling in Jana Loka his
own sphere or spiritual state.
Even in ordinary medi mistic life
so-called it is pretty well ascertained that while the body is acting
even though only mechanically or resting in
one place its astral double may be appearing and acting
independently in another and very often
distant place.This is quite a common occurrence in mystic life
and history and if this be so with
ecstatics,Seers and Mystics of every description why cannot the same
thing happen on a higher and more spiritually
developed plane of existence?Admit the possibility on the
lower psychic plane then why not on a higher
plane?In the cases of Higher Adeptship when the body is
entirely at the command of the Inner Man when
the Spiritual Ego is completely reünited with its seventh
principle even during the life-time of the
personality and the Astral Man or personal Ego has become so
purified that he has gradually assimilated all
the qualities and attributes of the middle nature (Buddhi and
Manas in their terrestrial aspect)that
personal Ego substitutes itself so to say for the spiritual Higher
Self and is thenceforth capable of living an
independent life on earth;when corporeal death takes place
the following mysterious event often
happens.As a Dharmakāya a Nirvāni without remains entirely free
from terrestrial admixture the Spiritual Ego
cannot return to reincarnate on earth.But in such cases,it is
affirmed the personal Ego of even a Dharmakāya
can remain in our sphere as a whole and return to
incarnation on earth if need be.
The Higher Astral -(Page 373)For now it can no longer be subject like the astral remains
of any ordinary
man to gradual dissolution in the Kāma Loka
(the limb s or purgatory of the Roman Catholic,and the
Summer-land of the Spiritualist);it cannot
die a second death as such disintegration is called by
Proclus.[After death the soul continueth in the aerial (astral)body till
it is entirely purified from all angry
sensual passion:then doth it put off by a second
death [when arising to Devachan ] the
aerial body as it
did the earthly one.Wherefore the ancients say
that there is a celestial body always joined with the soul
which is immortal luminous and star-like. It
becomes natural then that the aerial body of an Adept
should have no such second dying since it has
been cleansed of all its natural impurity before its
separation from the physical body.The high
Initiate is a Son of the Resurrection being equal unto the
angels, and cannot die any more (see L ke xx.36).It
has become too holy and pure no longer by
reflected but its own natural light and
spirituality either to sleep in the unconscious slumber of a lower
Nirvānic state or to be dissolved like any
ordinary astral shell and disappear in its entirety.
But in that condition known as the Nirmānakāya
[the Nirvānī with remains,] he can still help humanity.
Let me suffer and bear the sins of all [be reincarnated unto new misery ] but let the world be saved! was
said by Gautama BUDDHA:an exclamation the real
meaning of which is little understood now by his
followers.If I will that he tarry till I come
what is that to thee?[St.John,xxi.21.] asks the astral Jesus
of Peter.Till I come means till I am
reincarnated again in a physical body.Yet the Christ of the old
crucified body could truly say: I am with my
Father and one with Him which did not prevent the astral
from taking a form again nor John from
tarrying indeed till his Master had come;nor hinder John from
failing to recognize him when he did come or
from then opposing him.But in the Church that remark
generated the absurd idea of the millennium or
chiliasm in its physical sense.
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Since then the Man of Sorrows has returned
perchance more than once unknown to and undiscovered
by his blind followers.Since then also this
grand Son of God has been incessantly and most cruelly
crucified daily and hourly by the Churches
founded in his name.But the Apostles,only half-initiated
failed to tarry for their Master and not
recognizing him spurned him every time he returned.[See the
extract made in the Theosophist from a
glorious novel by Dostoievsky a fragment entitled The Great
Inquisitor. It is a fiction naturally still a
sublime fiction of Christ returning in Spain during the palmy days
of the Inquisition and being imprisoned and
put to death by the Inquisitor who fears lest Christ should
ruin the work of Jesuit hands.]
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SECTION XLII
The Seven Principles
(Page 374)THE Mystery of Buddha is that of several
other Adepts perhaps of many.The whole trouble
is to understand correctly that other
mystery:that of the real fact so abstruse and transcendental at first
sight about the Seven Principles in man the
reflections in man of the seven powers in Nature
physically and of the seven Hierarchies of
Being intellectually and spiritually.Whether a man material
ethereal and spiritual is for the clearer comprehension
of his (broadly speaking)triple nature divided
into groups according to one or another system
the foundation and the apex of that division will be
always the same.There being only three Upādhis
(basics)in man any number of Koshas (sheaths)and
their aspects may be built on these without
destroying the harmony of the whole.Thus,while the Esoteric
System accepts the septenary division the
Vedāntic classification gives five Koshas,and the Tāraka
Rāja Yoga simplifies them into four the three
Upādhis synthesized by the highest principle.Ätmā.
THE SEPTENARY DIVISION IN DIFFERENT INDIAN SYSTEMS
Esoteric Buddhism Vedānta Tāraka Rāja Yoga
1 Sthūla Sharira
Annamayakosha
(Kosha is "sheath"literally
the sheath of every principle)
2 Prāna (Life)
3 The Vehicle of Prāna
(The Astral Body or Linga Sharira)
Prānamayakosha
Sthūlopādhi (Sthūla-
upādhi or basis of the
principle)
4 Kāma Rūpa
5 Mind (a)Volitions and feelings
etc.
Mānomayakosha
(b)Vijnāgam Vijnāmayakosha
Sūkshmopādhi
6 Spiritual Soul (Buddhi)Anandamayakosha Kāranopādhi
7 Atmā Atmā Atmā
That which has just been stated will of course
suggest the question:How can a spiritual (or semi-spiritual)
personality lead a triple or even a dual life
shifting respective Higher Selves ad libit m and be
still the one eternal Monad in the infinity of
a Manvantara?The answer to this is easy for the true
Occultist while for the uninitiated profane it
must appear absurd.The Seven Principles are of course
the manifestation of one indivisible Spirit
but only at the end of the Manvantara and when they come to
be re-united on the plane of the One Reality
does the unity appear;during the Pilgrim s journey the
reflections of that indivisible One Flame the
aspects of the one eternal Spirit have each the power of
action on one of the manifested planes of
existence the gradual differentiations from the one
unmanifested plane on that plane namely to
which it properly belongs.
The Purified Self -(Page 375)Our earth affording every Māyāvic condition it follows that
the purified
Egotistical Principle the astral and personal
Self of an Adept though forming in reality one integral whole
with its Highest Self (Ātmā and Buddhi)may
nevertheless,for purposes of universal mercy and
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benevolence so separate itself from its divine
Monad as to lead on this plane of illusion and temporary
being a distinct independent conscious life of
its own under a borrowed illusive shape thus serving at
once and the same time a double purpose:the
exhaustion of its own individual Karma and the saving of
millions of human beings less favoured than
itself from the effects of mental blindness.If asked:When
the change described as the passage of a
Buddha or a Jīvanmukta into Nirvāna takes place where does
the original consciousness which animated the
body continue to reside in the Nirvānī or in the
subsequent reincarnations of the latter s
remains (the Nirmānakāya)?the answer is that imprisoned
consciousness may be a certain knowledge from
observation and experience as Gibbon puts it but
disembodied consciousness is not an effect but a cause.It is a part of
the whole or rather a Ray on the
graduated scale of its manifested activity of
the one all-pervading limitless Flame the reflections of
which alone can differentiate;and as such
consciousness is ubiquitous,and can be neither localized
nor centered on or in any particular subject
nor can it be limited.Its effects alone pertain to the region of
matter for thought is an energy that affects
matter in various ways,but consciousness per se,as
understood and explained by Occult philosophy
is the highest quality of the sentient spiritual principle in
us,the Divide Soul (or Buddhi)and our Higher
Ego and does not belong to the plane of materiality.After
the death of the physical man if he be an
Initiate it becomes transformed from a human quality into the
independent principle itself;the conscious Ego
becoming Consciousness per se without any Ego in the
sense that the latter can no longer be limited
or conditioned by the senses,or even by space or time.
Therefore it is capable without separating itself
from or abandoning its possessor Buddhi of reflecting
itself at the same time in its astral man that
was without being under any necessity for localizing itself.
This is shown at a far lower stage in our
dreams.For if consciousness can display activity during our
visions,and while the body and its material
brain are fast asleep and if even during those visions it is all
but ubiquitous how much greater must be its
power when entirely free from and having no more
connection with our physical brain.
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SECTION XLIII
The Mystery of Buddha
(Page 376)NOW the mystery of Buddha lies in this:Gautama
an incarnation of pure Wisdom had yet to
learn in His human body and to be initiated
into the world s secrets like any other mortal until the day
when He emerged from His secret recess in the
Himālayas and preached for the first time in the grove of
Benares.The same with Jesus:from the age of
twelve to thirty years,when He was found preaching the
sermon on the Mount nothing is positively said
or known of Him.Gautama had sworn inviolable secrecy
as to the Esoteric Doctrines imparted to
Him.In His immense pity for the ignorance and as its
consequence the sufferings of mankind
desirous though He was to keep inviolate His sacred vows,He
failed to keep within the prescribed
limits.While constructing His Esoteric Philosophy (the Eye-Doctrine )
on the foundations of eternal Truth He failed
to conceal certain dogmas,and trespassing beyond the
lawful lines,caused those dogmas to be
misunderstood.In His anxiety to make away with the false
Gods,He revealed in the Seven Paths to
Nirvāna some of the mysteries of the Seven Lights of the
Arūpa (formless)World.A little of the truth is
often worse than no truth at all.
Truth and fiction are like oil and water:they
will never mix.
His new doctrine which represented the outward
dead body of the Esoteric Teaching without its vivifying
Soul had disastrous effects:it was never
correctly understood and the doctrine itself was rejected by the
Southern Buddhists.Immense philanthropy a
boundless love and charity for all creatures,were at the
bottom of His unintentional mistake;but Karma
little heeds intentions,whether good or bad if they
remain fruitless.If the Good Law as preached
resulted in the most sublime code of ethics and the
unparalleled philosophy of things external in
the visible Kosmos,it biassed and misguided immature
minds into believing there was nothing more
under the outward mantle of the system and its dead-letter
only was accepted.Moreover the new teaching
unsettled many great minds which had previously
followed the orthodox Brāhmanical lead.
Shankarāchārya -(Page 377)Thus,fifty odd years after his death the great Teacher [ When we say the
great Teacher we do not mean His Buddhic Ego
but that principle in Him which was the vehicle of His
personal or terrestrial Ego.]having refused full Dharmakāya and
Nirvāna was pleased for purposes of
Karma and philanthropy to be reborn.For Him
death has been no death but as expressed in the Elixir
of Life .[ Five Years of Theosophy,New
Edition p.3 .] He changed
A sudden plunge into darkness to a transition
into a brighter light.
The shock of death was broken and like many
other Adepts,He threw off the mortal coil and left it to be
burnt and its ashes to serve as relics,and
began interplanetary life clothed in His subtle body.He was
reborn as Shankara the greatest Vedāntic
teacher of India whose philosophy based as it is entirely on
the fundamental axioms of the eternal
Revelation the Shruti or the primitive Wisdom-Religion as
Buddha from a different point of view had
before based His finds itself in the middle ground between
the too exuberantly veiled metaphysics of the
orthodox Brāhmans and those of Gautama which stripped
in their exoteric garb of every soul-vivifying
hope transcendental aspiration and symbol appear in their
cold wisdom like crystalline icicles,the
skeletons of the primeval truths of Esoteric Philosophy.
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Was Shankarāchārya Gautama The Buddha then
under a new personal form?It may perhaps only
puzzle the reader the more if he be told that
there was the astral Gautama inside the outward
Shankara whose higher principle or Ätman
was,nevertheless,his own divine prototype the Son of
Light indeed the heavenly mind-born son of
Aditi.
This fact is again based on that mysterious
transference of the divine ex-personality merged in the
impersonal Individuality now in its full
trinitarian form of the Monad as Ātma-Buddhi-Manas to a new
body whether visible or subjective.In the
first case it is a Manushya-Buddha;in the second it is a
Nirmānakāya.The Buddha is in Nirvāna it is
said though this once mortal vehicle the subtle body of
Gautama is still present among the
Initiates:nor will it leave the realm of conscious Being so long as
suffering mankind needs its divine help not
to the end of this Root Race at any rate.From time to time
He the astral Gautama associates Himself in
some most mysterious to (Page 378)us quite
incomprehensible manner with Avatāras and
great saints,and works through them.And several such
are named.
Thus it is averred that Gautama Buddha was
reincarnated in Shankarāchāya that as is said in Esoteric
B ddhism :
Shankarāchārya simply was Buddha in all
respects in a new body.[Op.cit
.p.175 Fifth
Edition.] While the expression in its mystic sense is true the way of
putting it may be
misleading until explained.Shankara was a
Buddha most assuredly but he never was a
reincarnation of the Buddha though Gautama s
Astral Ego or rather his Bodhisattva may
have been associated in some mysterious way
with Shankarāchārya.Yes it was perhaps the
Ego Gautama under a new and better adapted
casket that of a Brāhman of Southern India.
But the Ātman the Higher Self that
overshadowed both was distinct from the Higher Self of
the translated Buddha which was now in Its own
sphere in Kosmos.
Shankara was an Avatāra in the full sense of
the term.According to Sayanāchārya the great
commentator on the Vedas he is to be
held as an Avatāra or direct incarnation of Shiva the Logos,the
Seventh Principle in Nature Himself.In the
Secret Doctrine Shri Shankarāchārya is regarded as the
abode for the thirty-two years of his mortal
life of a Flame the highest of the manifested Spiritual
Beings,one of the Primordial Seven Rays.
And now what is meant by a Bodhisattva
?Buddhists of the Mahāyana mystic system teach that each
BUDDHA manifests Himself (hypostatically or
otherwise)simultaneously in three worlds of Being
namely in the world of Kāma (concupiscence or
desire the sensuous universe or our earth)in the
shape of a man;in the world of Rūpa (form yet
supersensuous)as a Bodhisattva;and in the highest
Spiritual World (that of purely incorporeal
existences)as a Dhyāni Buddha.The latter prevails eternally in
space and time i.e.from one Mahā-Kalpa
to the other the synthetic culmination of the three being Ädi-
Buddha [
It would be useless to raise objections from exoteric works to
statements in this,which aims to
expound however superficially the Esoteric
Teachings alone.It is because they are misled by the
exoteric doctrine that Bishop Bigandet and
others aver that the notion of a supreme eternal Ädi-Buddha
is to be found only in the writings of
comparatively recent date.What is given here is taken from the
secret portions of Dus Kyi Khorlo (Kāla Chakra
in Sanskrit or the Wheel of Time or duration).] the
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Wisdom-Principle which is Absolute and
therefore out of space and time.Their inter-relation is the
following:
The Buddha Cannot Reincarnate -(Page 379)The Dhyāni-Buddha when the world needs a human
Buddha creates through the power of Dhyāna
(meditation omnipotent devotion),a mind-born son a
Bodhisattva whose mission it is after the
physical death of his human or Manushya-Buddha to
continue his work on earth till the appearance
of the subsequent Buddha.The Esoteric meaning of this
teaching is clear.In the case of a simple
mortal the principles in him are only the more or less bright
reflections of the seven cosmic,and the seven
celestial Principles,the Hierarchy of supersensual Beings.
In the case of a Buddha they are almost the
principles in esse themselves.The Bodhisattva replaces in
him the Kārana Sharira the Ego principle and
the rest correspondingly;and it is in this way that Esoteric
Philosophy explains the meaning of the
sentence that by virtue of Dhyāna [or
abstract meditation ]the
Dhyāni-Buddha [the Buddha s Spirit or Monad ] creates a Bodhisattva or the astrally clothed Ego within
the Manushya-Buddha.Thus,while the Buddha
merges back into Nirvāna whence it proceeded the
Bodhisattva remains behind to continue the
Buddha s work upon earth.It is then this Bodhisattva that
may have afforded the lower principles in the
apparitional body of Shankarāchārya the Avatāra.
Now to say that Buddha after having reached
Nirvāna returned thence to reļncarnate in a new body
would be uttering a heresy from the
Brāhmanical as well as from the Buddhisic standpoint.Even in the
Mahāyāna exoteric School in the teaching as to
the three Buddhic bodies,[ The
three bodies are (1)
the Nirmānakāya (Pru-lpai-Ku in Tibetan),in
which the Bodhisattva after entering the six Pāramitās the
Path to Nirvāna appears to men in order to
teach them:(2)Sambhogakāya (Dzog-pai-Ku),the body of
bliss impervious to all physical
sensations,received by one who has fulfilled the three conditions of moral
perfection:and (3)Dharmakāya (in Tibetan
Chos-Ku),the Nirvānic body.] it
is said of the Dharmakāya
the formless Being that once it is taken the
Buddha in it abandons the world of sensuous perceptions
for ever and has not nor can he have any more
connection with it.To say as the Esoteric or Mystic
School teaches,that though Buddha is in
Nirvāna he has left behind him the Nirmānakāya (the
Bodhisattva)to work after him is quite
orthodox and in accordance with both the Esoteric Mahāyāna and
the Prasanga Mādhyāmika Schools,the latter an
anti-esoteric and most rationalistic system.For in the
Kāla Chakra Commentary it is shown that there is:(1)Ädi-Buddha eternal
and conditionless;then (2)
come Sambhogakāya-Buddhas,or
Dhyāni-Buddhas,existing from (ęonic)eternity and never
disappearing the Ca sal Buddhas so to
say;and (3)the Manushya (Page
380)Bodhisattvas.The
relation between them is determined by the
definition given.Ädi-Buddha is Vajradhara and the Dhyāni-
Buddhas are Vajrasattva;yet though these two
are different Beings on their respective planes.They are
identical in fact one acting through the other
as a Dhyāni through a human Buddha.One is Endless
Intelligence;the other only Supreme
Intelligence.It is said of Phra Bodhisattva who was
subsequently on earth Buddha Gautama:
Having fulfilled all the conditions for the
immediate attainment of perfect Buddhaship the Holy
One preferred from unlimited charity towards
living beings,once more to reincarnate for the
benefit of man.
The Nirvāna of the Buddhists is only the
threshold of Paranirvāna according to the Esoteric Teaching:
while with the Brāhmans,it is the summ m
bon m that final state from which there is no more return
not till the next Mahā-Kalpa at all events.And
even this last view will be opposed by some too orthodox
and dogmatic Philosophers who will not accept
the Esoteric Doctrine.With them Nirvāna is absolute
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nothingness,in which there is nothing and no
one:only an unconditioned All.To understand the full
characteristics of that Abstract Principle one
must sense it intuitionally and comprehend fully the one
permanent condition in the Universe which
the Hindūs define so truly as
The state of perfect unconsciousness bare
Chidākāsham (field of consciousness)in fact.
however paradoxical it may seem to the profane
reader.[ Five Years of
Theosophy,art.Personal and
Impersonal God p.129 .]
Shankarāchārya was reputed to be an Avatāra an
assertion the writer implicitly believes in but which
other people are of course at liberty to
reject.And as such he took the body of a southern Indian newly-
born Brāhman baby;that body for reasons as
important as they are mysterious to us,is said to have
been animated by Gautama s astral personal
remains.This divine Non-Ego chose as its own Upādhi
(physical basis),the ethereal human Ego of a
great Sage in this world of forms,as the fittest vehicle for
Spirit to descend into.
Said Shankarāchārya:
Parabrahman is Kartā [Purusha ] as there
is no other Adhishtāthā [ Adhishtāthā
the active or
working agent in Prakriti (or matter).] and Parabrahman is Prakriti there
being no other
substance.[Vedānta-Sūtras.Ad.I.Pāda iv.ShI.23 Commentary.The passage
is given as
follows in Thibaut's translation (Sacred Books
of the East xxxiv.)p.286:The Self is thus the
operative cause because there is no other
ruling principle and the material cause because
there is no other substance from which the
world could originate.]
A Fuller Explanation -(Page 381)Now what is true of the Macrocosmical is also true of the
Microcosmical plane.It is therefore nearer the
truth to say when once we accept such a possibility
that the astral Gautama or the Nirmānakāya
was the Upādhi of Shankarāchāya s spirit rather than the
latter was a reincarnation of the former.
When a Shankarāchārya has to be born naturally
every one of the principles in the manifested mortal
man must be the purest and finest that exist
on earth.Consequently those principles that were once
attached to Gautama who was the direct great
predecessor of Shankara were naturally attracted to him
the economy of Nature forbidding the
re-evolution of similar principles from the crude state.But it must
be remembered that the higher ethereal
principles are not like the lower more natural ones,visible
sometimes to man (as astral bodies),and they
have to be regarded in the light of separate or
independent Powers or Gods,rather than at
material objects.Hence the right way of representing the
truth would be to say that the various
principles,the Bodhisattva of Gautama Buddha which did not go
to Nirvāna reunited to form the middle
principles of Shankarāchārya the earthly Entity.[In Five Years of
Theosophy (art.Shākya Muni s Place in History p.234 note)it is
stated that one day when our Lord
sat in the Sattapanni Cave (Saptaparna)he
compared man to a Saptaparna (seven leaved)plant.
Mendicants, he said there are seven Buddhas
in every Buddha and there are six Bhikshus and but
one Buddha in each mendicant.What are the seven
?The seven branches of complete knowledge.What
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are the six ?The six organs of
sense.What are the five?The five elements of illusive being.And the One
which is also ten?He is a true Buddha who
develops in him the ten forms of holiness and subjects them
all to the One.Which means that every
principle in the Buddha was the highest that could be evolved on
this earth;whereas in the case of other men
who attain to Nirvāna this is not necessarily the case.Even
as a mere human (Manushya)Buddha Gautama was a
pattern for all men.But his Arhats were not
necessarily so.
It is absolutely necessary to study the
doctrine of the Buddhas esoterically and understand the subtle
differences between the various planes of
existence to be able to comprehend correctly the above.Put
more clearly Gautama the human Buddha who had
exoterically Amitābha for his Bodhisattva and
Avolokiteshvara for his Dhyāni-Buddha the triad
emanating directly from Ädi-Buddha assimilated
these by his Dhyāna (meditation)and thus
become a Buddha (enlightened ).In another manner this is
the case with all men;every one of us has his
Bodhisattva the middle principle if we hold for a moment
to the trinitarian division of the septenary
group and his Dhyāni-Buddha or Chohan the Father of the
Son. Our connecting link with the higher
Hierarchy of Celestial Beings lies here in a nutshell only we are
too sinful to assimilate them.
(Page 382)Six centuries after the translation of the
human Buddha (Gautama)another Reformer as noble
and as loving though less favoured by
opportunity arose in another part of the world among another and
a less spiritual race.There is a great
similarity between the subsequent opinions of the world about the
two Saviours,the Eastern and the Western.While
millions became converted to the doctrines of the two
Masters,the enemies of both sectarian
opponents,the most dangerous of all tore both to shreds by
insinuating maliciously-distorted statements
based on Occult truths,and therefore doubly dangerous.
While of Buddha it is said by the Brāhmans
that He was truly an Avatāra of Vishnu but that He had come
to tempt the Brāhmans from their faith and was
therefore the evil aspect of the God:of Jesus the
Bardesanian Gnostics and others asserted that
He was Nebu the false Messiah the destroyer and the
old orthodox religion.He is the founder of a
new sect of Nazars,said other sectarians.In Hebrew the
word Naba means to speak by inspiration.
()is Nebo the God of wisdom).But Nebo is also
Mercury who is Buddha in the Hindu monogram of
planets.And this is shown by the fact that the
Talmudists hold that Jesus was inspired by the
Genius (or Regent)of Mercury confounded by Sir William
Jones with Gautama Buddha.There are many other
strange points of similarity between Gautama and
Jesus,which cannot be noticed here.[ See Isis Unveiled ii.132.]
If both the Initiates,aware of the danger of
furnishing the uncultured masses with the powers acquired by
ultimate knowledge left the innermost corner
of the sanctuary in profound darkness,who acquainted
with human nature can blame either of them for
this?Yet although Gautama actuated by prudence left
the Esoteric and most dangerous portions of
the Secret Knowledge untold and lived to the ripe old age
of eighty the Esoteric Doctrine says one
hundred years,dying with the certainty of having taught its
essential truths,and of having sown the seeds
for the conversion of one-third of the world He yet
perhaps revealed more than was strictly good
for posterity.But Jesus,who had promised His disciples
the knowledge which confers upon man the power
of producing miracles far greater than He had ever
produced Himself died leaving but a few
faithful disciples men only half-way to knowledge.They had
therefore to struggle with a world to which
they could impart only what they but half-knew themselves,
and no more.In later ages the exoteric
followers of both mangled the truths given out often out of
recognition.
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Sacrifice -(Page 383)With regard to the adherents of the Western Master the proof
of this lies in the very
fact that none of them can now produce the
promised miracles.They have to choose:either it is they
who have blundered or it is their Master who
must stand arraigned for an empty promise an uncalled-for
boast.[Before
one becomes a Buddha he must be a Bodhisattva:before evolving into a
Bodhisattva he
must be a Dhyāni-Buddha....A bodhisattva is
the way and Path to his Father and thence to the One
Supreme Essence (Descent of B ddhas .p.17.from
Äryāsanga). I am the Way the Truth and the Life:
no man cometh unto the Father but by me (St.John,xiv.6).The
way is not the goal.Nowhere
throughout the New Testament is Jesus
found calling himself God or anything higher than a son of
God the son of a Father common to all
synthetically.Paul never said (I.Tim .iii.10).God was
manifest in the flesh but He who was
manifested in the flesh (Revised Edition).While the common
herd among the Buddhists the Burmese
especially regard Jesus as an incarnation of Devadatta a
relative who opposed the teachings of the
Buddha the students of Esoteric Philosophy see in the
Nazarene Sage a Bodhisattva with the spirit of
Buddha Himself in Him.] Why such
a difference in the
destiny of the two?For the Occultist this
enigma of the unequal favour of Karma or Providence is
unriddled by the Secret Doctrine.
It is not lawful to speak of such things
publicly as St.Paul tells us.One more explanation only may be
given in reference to this subject.It was said
a few pages back that an Adept who thus sacrifices himself
to live giving up full Nirvāna though he can
never lose the knowledge acquired by him in previous
existences,yet can never rise higher in such
borrowed bodies.Why?Because he becomes simply the
vehicle of a Son of Light from a still
higher sphere Who being Arūpa has no personal astral body of His
own fit for this world.Such Sons of Light or
Dhyāni-Buddhas,are the Dharmakāyas of preceding
Manvantaras,who have closed their cycles of
incarnations in the ordinary sense and who being thus
Karmaless,have long ago dropped their
individual Rūpas,and have become identified with the first
Principle.Hence the necessity of a sacrificial
Nirmānakāya ready to suffer for the misdeeds or mistakes
of the new body in its earth-pilgrimage
without any future reward on the plane of progression and rebirth
since there are no rebirths for him in the
ordinary sense.The higher Self or Divine Monad is not in such
a case attached to the lower Ego;its
connection is only temporary and in most cases it acts through
decrees of Karma.This is a real genuine
sacrifice the explanation of which pertains to the highest
Initiation of Gńāna (Occult Knowledge).It is
closely linked by a direct evolution of Spirit and involution of
Matter with the primeval and great Sacrifice
at the foundation of the manifested Worlds,the gradual
smothering and (Page 384)death of the spiritual in the material.The
seed is not quickened except it die.[
I.Corinth .xv.36 ]Hence in the Purusha Sūkta of the Rig
Veda,[ Op.cit.,Mandala
x.hymn 90.] the
mother-fount and source of all subsequent
religions,it is stated allegorically that the thousand-headed
Purusha was slaughtered at the foundation of
the World that from his remains the Universe might arise.
This is nothing more or less than the
foundation the seed truly of the later many-formed symbol in
various religions,including Christianity of
the sacrificial lamb.For it is a play upon the words Aja
(Purusha),the unborn or eternal Spirit
means also lamb in Sanskrit.Spirit disappears dies,
metaphorically the more it gets involved in
matter and hence the sacrifice of the unborn or the
lamb.
Why the BUDDHA chose to make this sacrifice
will be plain only to those who to the minute knowledge
of His earthly life add that of a thorough
comprehension of the laws of Karma.Such occurrences,
however belong to the most exceptional cases.
As tradition goes,the Brāhmans had committed a
heavy sin by persecuting Gautama BUDDHA and His
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teachings instead of blending and reconciling
them with the tenets of pure Vaidic Brāhmanism as was
done later by Shankarāchārya.Gautama had never
gone against the Vedas only against the exoteric
growth of preconceived interpretations.The
Shruti divine oral revelation the outcome of which was the
Veda is
eternal.It reached the ear of Gautama Siddartha as it had those of the Rishis
who had written it
down.He accepted the revelation while
rejecting the later overgrowth of Brāhmanical thought and fancy
and built His doctrines on one and the same
basis of imperishable truth.As in the case of His Western
successor Gautama the Merciful the Pure
and the Just was the first found in the Eastern
Hierarchy of historical Adepts,if not in the
world-annals of divine mortals,who was moved by that
generous feeling which locks the whole of
mankind within one embrace with no petty differences of race
birth or caste.It was He who first enunciated
that grand and noble principle and He again who first put it
into practice.For the sake of the poor and the
reviled the outcast and the hapless,invited by Him to the
king s festival table He had excluded those
who had hitherto sat along in haughty seclusion and
selfishness,believing that they would be
defiled by the very shadow of the disinherited ones of the land
and these non-spiritual Brāhmans turned
against Him for that preference.
Shankarāchārya Still Living -(Page 385)Since then such as these have never forgiven
the prince-
beggar the son of a king who forgetting His
rank and station had flung widely open the doors of the
forbidden sanctuary to the pariah and the man
of low estate thus giving precedence to personal merit
over hereditary rank or fortune.The sin was
theirs the cause nevertheless Himself:hence the Merciful
and the Blessed One could not go out entirely
from this world of illusion and created causes without
atoning for the sin of all therefore of these
Brāhmans also.If man afflicted by man found safe refuge
with the Tathāgata man afflicting man had
also his share in His self-sacrificing all embracing and
forgiving love.It is stated that He desired to
atone for the sin of His enemies.Then only was he willing to
become a full Dharmakāya a Jīvanmukta without
remains.
The close of Shankarāchārya s life brings us
face to face with a fresh mystery Shankarāchārya retires to
a cave in the Himālayas permitting none of his
disciples to follow him,and disappears therein forever
from the sight of the profane.Is he
dead?Tradition and popular belief answer in the negative and some
of the local Gurus,if they do not emphatically
corroborate do not deny the rumour.The truth with its
mysterious details as given in the Secret
Doctrine is known but to them;it can be given out fully only to
the direct followers of the great Dravidian
Guru and it is for them alone to reveal of it as much as they
think fit.Still it is maintained that this
Adept of Adepts lives to this day in his spiritual entity as a
mysterious,unseen yet overpowering presence
among the Brotherhood of Shamballa beyond far
beyond the snowy-capped Himālayas.
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SECTION XLIV
Reincarnations of Buddha
(Page 386)EVERY section in the chapter on Dezhin Shegpa
[ Literally he who walks [or follows ] in the
way [or
path ] of his predecessors.] (Tathāgata)in the Commentaries
represents one year of that great
Philosopher s life in its dual aspect of
public and private teacher the two being contrasted and
commented upon.It shows the Sage reaching
Buddhahood through a long course of study meditation
and Initiations,as any other Adept would have
to do not one rung of the ladder up to the arduous Path
of Perfection being missed.The Bodhisattva
became a Buddha and a Nirvānī through personal effort
and merit after having had to undergo all the
hardships of every other neophyte not by virtue of a divine
birth as thought by some.It was only the
reaching of Nirvāna while still living in the body and on this
earth that was due to His having been in
previous births high on the Path of Dzyan (knowledge
wisdom).Mental or intellectual gifts and
abstract knowledge follow an Initiate in his new birth but he has
to acquire phenomenal powers anew passing
through all the successive stages.He has to acquire
Rinchen-na-dun (the seven precious gifts )[ Schmidt in Slanong Seetsen .p.471
and Schlagintweit in
B ddhism in Tibet p.53 accept these precious things literally enumurating
them as the wheel the
precious stone the royal consort the best
treasurer the best horse the elephant the best leader.After
this one can little wonder if besides a
Dhyāni-Buddhi and a Dhyāni-Bodhisattva each human Buddha is
furnished with a female companion a Shakti
when in truth Shakti is simply the Soul-power the
psychic energy of the God as of the Adept.The
royal consort the third of the seven precious gifts,
very likely led the learned Orientalist into
this ludicrous error.] one after
the other.During the period of
meditation no worldly phenomena on the
physical plane must be allowed to enter into his mind or cross
his thoughts.Zhine-lhagthong
(Sanskrit:Vipashya religious abstract meditation)will develop in him most
wonderful faculties independently of himself.
Vajradhara -(Page 387)The four degrees of contemplation or Sam-tan
(Sanskrit:Dhyāna),once
acquired everything becomes easy.For once that
man has entirely got rid of the idea of individuality
merging his Self in the Universal Self
becoming so to say the bar of steel to which the properties
inherent in the loadstone (Ädi Buddha or Anima
Mundi)are imparted powers hitherto dormant in him are
awakened mysteries in invisible Nature are
unveiled and becoming a Thonglam-pa (a Seer)he
becomes a Dhyāni-Buddha.Every Zung (Dhāranī a
mystic word or mantra)of the Lokottaradharma (the
highest world of causes)will be known to him.
Thus,after His outward death twenty years
later Tathāgata in His immense love and pitiful mercy for
erring and ignorant humanity refused
Paranirvāna [A Bodhisattva can
reach Nirvāna and live as Buddha
did and after death he can either refuse
objective incarnation or accept and use it at his convenience for
the benefit of mankind whom he can instruct in
various ways while he remains in the Devachanic regions
within the attraction of our earth.But having
once reached Paranirvāna or Nirvāna without remains the
highest Dharmakāya condition in which state he
remains entirely outside of every earthly condition he
will return no more until the commencement of
a new Manvantara since he has crossed beyond the
cycle of birth.] in order that He might continue to help men.
Says a Commentary:
Having reached the Path of Deliverance [Thar-lam ] from transmigration,one cannot perform T lpa [Tulpa
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is the voluntary incarnation of an Adept into
a living body whether of an adult child or new-born babe.]
any longer,for to become a Paranirvānī is
to close the circle of the Septenary K -S m.[Ku-sum is the
triple form of the Nirvanā state and its
respective duration in the cycle of Non Being.The number seven
here refers to the seven Rounds of our
septenary System.] He has
merged his borrowed Dorjesempa
[Vagrasattva ] into the Universal and become one
with it.
Vajradhara also Vajrasattva
(Tibetan:Dorjechang and Dorjedzin or Dorjosampa),is the regent or
President of all the Dhyān Chohans or Dhyāni
Buddhas,the highest the Supreme Buddha;personal yet
never manifested objectively;the Supreme
Conqueror the Lord of all Mysteries,the One without
Beginning or End in short the Logos of
Buddhism.For as Vajrasattva He is simply the Tsovo (Chief)
of the Dhyāni Buddhas or Dhyān Chohans,and the
Supreme Intelligence in the Second World;while as
Vajradhara (Dorjechang),He is all that which
was enumerated above.These two are one and yet two
and over them is Chang the Supreme
Unmanifested and (Page
388)Universal
Wisdom that has no
name.As two in one He (They)is the Power that
subdued and conquered Evil from the beginning
allowing it to reign only over willing
subjects on earth and having no power over those who despise and
hate it.Esoterically the allegory is easily understood;exoterically
Vajradhara (Vajrasattva)is the God to
whom all the evil spirits swore that they
would not impede the propagation of the Good Law (Buddhism),
and before whom all the demons
tremble.Therefore we say this dual personage has the same rōle
assigned to it in canonical and dogmatic
Tibetan Buddhism as have Jehovah and the Archangel Mikael
the Metatron of the Jewish Kabalists.This is
easily shown.Mikael is the angel of the face of God or he
who represents his Master.My face shall go
with thee (in English presence ),before the Israelites,
says God to Moses (Exod s,xxxiii.141).The
angel of my presence (Hebrew:of my face )(Isaiah
Ixiii.9).etc.The Roman Catholics identify
Christ with Mikael who is also his ferouer or face mystically.
This is precisely the position of Vajradhara
or Vajrasattva in Northern Buddhism.For the latter in His
Higher Self as Vajradhara (Dorjechang),is never
manifested except to the seven Dhyān Chohans,the
primeval Builders.Esoterically it is the
Spirit of the Seven collectively their seventh principle or Ćtman.
Exoterically any amount of fables may be found
in Kāla Chakra the most important work in the Gyut [or
(D)guy ]
division of the Kanjur the division of mystic knowledge [(D)gyu ] .Dorjechang (wisdom)
Vajradhara is said to live in the second Arūpa
World which connects him with Metatron in the first world
of pure Spirits,the Briatic world of the
Kabalists,who call this angel El-Shaddai the Omnipotent and
Might One.Metatron is in Greek į
åėļņ(Messenger),or the Great Teacher.Mikael fights Satan the ..
Dragon and conquers him and his
Angels.Vajrasattva who is one with Vajrapāni the Subduer of the Evil
Spirits,conquers Rāhu the Great Dragon who is
always trying to devour the sun and moon (eclipses).
War in Heaven in the Christian legend is
based upon the bad angels having discovered the secrets
(magical wisdom)of the good ones (Enoch),and
the mystery of the Tree of Life.Let anyone read
simply the exoteric accounts in the Hindu and
Buddhist Pantheons the latter version being taken from
the former and he will find both resting on
the same primeval archaic allegory from the Secret Doctrine.
In the exoteric texts (Hindu and Buddhist),the
Gods churn the ocean to extract from it the Water of Life
Amrita or the Elixir of Knowledge.
Living Buddhas -(Page 389)In both the Dragon steals some of this,and is exiled from
heaven by
Vishnu or Vajradhara or the chief God whatever
may be his name.We find the same in the Book of
Enoch and
it is poetized in St.John s Revelation .And now the allegory with all
its fanciful
ornamentations,has become a dogma!
As will be found mentioned later the Tibetan
Lamaseries contain many secrets and semi-secret volumes,
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detailing the lives of great Sages.Many of the
statements in them are purposely confused and in others
the reader becomes bewildered unless a clue be
given him by the use of one name to cover many
individuals who follow the same line of
teaching.Thus there is a succession of living Buddhas,and the
name Buddha is given to teacher after
teacher.Schlagintweit writes:
To each human being Buddha belongs a Dhyāni-Buddha
and a Dhyāni-Bodhisattva and the
unlimited number of the former also involves
equally unlimited number of the latter.[B
ddhism
in Tibet.p.52.This same generic use of a name is found among Hindus with that of
Shankarāchārya to take but one instance.All
His successors bear his name but are not
reincarnations of Him.So with the Buddhas.]
[But if this be so and the exoteric and
semi-exoteric use of the name justify the statement the reader
must depend on his own intuition to
distinguish between the Dhyāni Buddhas and the human Buddhas,
and must not apply to the great BUDDHA of the
Fifth Race all that is ascribed to the Buddha in books
where as said blinds are constantly
introduced.
In one of these books some strange and obscure
statements are made which the writer gives,as before
entirely on her own responsibility since a few
may sense a meaning hidden under words misleading in
their surface meaning.][The words within brackets are supplied to introduce the
statements following
that are confused and contradictory as they
stand and which H.P.B had probably intended to elucidate to
some slight extent as they are written two or
three times with different sentences following them.The
MS.is exceedingly confused and everything
H.P.B said is here pieced together the addition above
made being marked in brackets to distinguish
it from hers.] It is stated that
at the age of thirty-three
Shankarāchārya tired of his mortal body put
it off in the cave he had entered and that the Bodhisattva
that served as his lower personality was
freed.
With the burden of a sin upon him which he had
not committed.
At the same time it is added:
At whatever age one puts off his outward body
by free will at that age will he be made to die a
violent death against his will in his next
rebirth.
(Page 390)Now Karma could have no hold on Mahā Shankara
(as Shankara is called in the secret
work),as he had as Avatāra no Ego of his own
but a Bodhisattva a willing sacrificial victim.Neither
had the latter any responsibility for the deed
whether sinful or otherwise.Therefore we do not see the
point since Karma cannot act unjustly.There is
some terrible mystery involved in all this story one that
no uninitiated intellect can ever
unravel.Still there it is,suggesting the natural query Who then was
punished by Karma?and leaving it to be
answered.
A few centuries later Buddha tried one more
incarnation it is said in ****and again fifty years
subsequent to the death of this Adept in one
whose name is given as Tiani-Tsang.[King
Suddhodana.]
No details,no further information or
explanation is given.It is simply stated that the last Buddha had to
work out the remains of his Karma which none
of the Gods themselves can escape forced as he was to
bury still deeper certain mysteries have
revealed by him hence misinterpreted.The words used would
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stand when translated:[There are several names marked simply by asterisks.]
Born fifty-two years too early as Shramana
Gautama the son of King Zastang;then retiring
fifty-seven years too soon as Mahā Shankara
who got tired of his outward form.This wilful act
aroused and attracted King Karma who killed
the new form of ***at thirty-three
[Shankarāchārya died also at thirty-two years of age or
rather disappeared from the sight of
his disciples,as the legend goes.] the age of the body was put off.[ At whatever age one puts
off his outward body by free will at that age
will he be made to die in his next incarnation
against his will Commentary.] He
died in his next (body)at thirty-two and a little over and
again in his next at eighty a Māyā and at one
hundred in reality.The Bodhisatva chose
Tiani-Tsang [Does Tiani-Tsang stand for Apollonius of Tyana?This is a simple
surmise.
Some things in the life of that Adept would
seem to tally with the hypothesis others to go
against it.] then again the Sugata became Tsong-Kha-pa who became thus
Dezhin-Shegpa
[Tathāgata one who follows in the way and manner of his
predecessors.].The Blessed One
could do good to his generation as ***but none
to posterity and so as Tiani-Tsang he
became incarnated only for the remains [of his precedent Karma as we
understand it ].The
Seven Ways and the Four Truths were once more
hidden out of sight.The Merciful One
confined since then his attention and fatherly
care to the heart of Bodyul the nursery grounds
of the seeds of truth.The blessed remains
since then have overshadowed and rested in
many a holy body of human Bodhisattvas.
No further information is given least of all
are there any details or explanations to be found in the secret
volume.
An Obscure Passage -(Page 391)All is darkness and mystery in it for it is evidently
written but for those
who are already instructed.Several flaming red
asterisks are placed instead of names,and the few facts
given are abruptly broken off.The key of the
riddle is left to the intuition of the disciple unless the direct
followers of Gautama the Buddha those who
are to be denied by His Church for the next cycle and
of Shankarāchārya are pleased to add more.
The final section gives a kind of summary of
the seventy sections covering seventy-three years of
Buddha s life [According to Esoteric teaching Buddha lived one hundred years in
reality though having
reached Nirvana in his eightieth year he was
regarded as one dead to the world of the living.See article
Shākyamuni s Place in History in Five
Years of Theosophy.]from
which the last paragraph is
summarized as follows:
Emerging from ,the most excellent seat of the
three secrets [Sang-Sum ] the Master of
incomparable mercy after having performed on
all the anchorites the rite of .and each of
these having been cut off [It is a secret rite pertaining
to high Initiation and has the same
significance as the one to which Clement of
Alexandria alludes when he speaks of the token
of recognition being in common with us,as by
cutting off Christ (Strom.13).Schlagintweit
wonders what it may be.The typical
representation of a hermit.he says is always that of a
man with long uncut hair and beard ...A rite
very often selected though I am unable to state
for what reason is that of Chod (to cut or
to destroy )the meaning of which is anxiously kept
a profound secret by the Lamas. (B ddhism
in Tibet.p.163).] perceived
through [the power
of ] Hlun-Chub
[ Hlun-Chub is the divining
spirit in man the highest degree of seership.] what
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was his next duty.The Most-Illustrious meditated
and asked himself whether this would help
[the future ]generations.What
they needed was the sight of Māyā in a body of illusion.Which?
...The great conqueror of pains and sorrows
arose and proceeded back to his birthplace.
There Sugata was welcomed by the few for they
did now know Shramana Gautama.Shākva
[the Mighty ] is
in Nirvāna ...He has given the Science to the Shuddhas [Shūdra ]said they
of Damze Yul [the country of Brāhmans:India ]....It was for that born of pity that the All-
Glorious One had to retire to ,and then
appear [karmically ] as Mahā Shankara;and out of
pity as ,and again as ,and again as
Tsong-Kha-pa....For he who chooses in humiliation
must go down and he who loves not allows
Karma to raise him.[ The secret
meaning of this
sentence is that Karma exercises its way over
the Adept as much as over any other man:
Gods can escape it as little as simple
mortals.The Adept who having reached the Path and
won His Dharmakāya the Nirvāna from which
there is no return until the new grand Kalpa
prefers to use His right of choosing a
condition inferior to that which belongs to Him but that
will leave him free to return whenever he
thinks it advisable and under whatever personality
He may select must be prepared to take all the
chances of failure possibly and a lower
condition than was His lot for a certainty
as it is an occult law.Karma alone is absolute
justice and infallible in its selections.He
who uses his right with it (Karma)must bear the
consequences if any.Thus Buddha's first
reincarnation was produced by Karma and it led
Him higher than ever:the two following were
out of pity and ***]
This passage is confessedly obscure and
written for the few.It is not lawful to say any more for the time
has not yet come when nations are (Page 392)prepared to hear the whole truth.The old
religions are full
of mysteries,and to demonstrate some of them
would surely lead to an explosion of hatred followed
perhaps,by bloodshed and worse.It will be
sufficient to know that while Gautama Buddha is merged in
Nirvāna ever since his death Gautama
Shākyamuni may have had to reincarnate this dual inner
personality being one of the greatest
mysteries of Esoteric psychism.
The seat of the three secrets refers to a
place inhabited by high Initiates and their disciples.The
secrets are the three mystic powers known
as Gopa Yasodhara and Uptala Varna that Csomo de
Köros mistook for Buddha s three wives,as
other Orientalists have mistaken Shakti (Yoga power)
personified by a female deity for His wife;or
the Draupadī also a spiritual power for the wife in
common of the five brothers Pāndava.
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SECTION XLV
An Unpublished Discourse of Buddha
(Page 393)(IT is found in the second Book of
Commentaries and is addressed to the Arhats.)
Said the All-Merciful:Blessed are ye O
Bhikshus,happy are ye who have understood the mystery of
Being and Non-Being explained in Bas-pa
[Dharma Doctrine ] and have given preference to the
latter
for ye are verily my Arhats....The elephant
who sees his form mirrored in the lake looks at it and then
goes away taking it for the real body of
another elephant is wiser than the man who beholds his face in
the stream and looking at it says,Here I am
...I am I :for the I his Self is not in the world of the
twelve Nidānas and mutability but in that of
Non-Being the only world beyond the snares of Māyā.....
That alone which has neither cause nor author
which is self-existing eternal far beyond the reach of
mutability is the true I [Ego ] the Self of the Universe.The Universe of Nam-Kha says: I am the
world
of Sien-Chan ;[The Universe of Brahmā (Sien-Chan;Nam-Kha)is Universal illusion
or our phenomenal
world.]
the four illusions laugh and reply Verily so.But the truly wise man
knows that neither man nor
the Universe that he passes through like a
flitting shadow is any more a real Universe than the dewdrop
that reflects a spark of the morning sun is
that sun....There are three things,Bhikshus,that are
everlastingly the same upon which no
vicissitude no modification can ever act:these are the Law
Nirvāna and Space [ Ākasha.It is next to impossible to render the mystic word
Tho-og by any other
term than Space and yet unless coined on
purpose no new appellation can render it so well to the
mind of the Occultist.The term Aditi is also
translated Space and there is a world of meaning in it.]
and those three are One since the first two
are within the last and that last one a Māyā so long as man
keeps within the whirlpool of sensuous
existences.One need not have his mortal body die to avoid the
(Page 394)clutches of concupiscence and other passions.The
Arhat who observes the seven hidden
precepts of Bas-pa may become Dang-ma and Lha.[Dang-ma a purified soul and Lha a
freed spirit
within a living body:an Adept or Arhat.In the
popular opinion in Tibet a Lha is a disembodied spirit
something similar to the Burmese Nat only
higher.] He may hear the holy
voice of ...[Kwan-yin ] ,
[Kwan-yin is a synonym for in the original another term is
used but the meaning is identical.It is the
divine voice of Self or the Spirit-voice in
man and the same as Vāchishvara (the Voice-deity )of the
Brāhmans.In China the Buddhist ritualists have
degraded its meaning by anthropomorphizing it into a
Goddess of the same name with one thousand
hands and eyes and they call it Kwan-shai-yin-Bodhisat.
It is the Buddhist daimon -voice of
Socrates.] and find himself
within the quiet precincts of his
Sangharama [Sanharama is the sanct m sanctorum of an ascetic,a cave or
any place he chooses for
his meditation.] transferred into Amitābha Buddha.[ Amitābha Buddha is in this connection the
boundless light by which things of the
subjective world are perceived.] Becoming
one with Anuttara
Samyak Sambodhi [ Esoterically the unsurpassingly merciful and enlightened heart
said of the
Perfect Ones,the Jīvan-muktas,collectively.] he may pass through all the six
worlds of Being (Rūpa-
loka)and get into the first three worlds of
Arūpa.[These six worlds seven
with us are the worlds of
Nats or Spirits,with the Burmese Buddhists,and
the seven higher worlds of the Vedāntins.]...He who
listens to my secret law preached to my select
Arhats,will arrive with its help at the knowledge of Self
and thence at perfection.
It is due to entirely erroneous conceptions of
Eastern thought and to ignorance of the existence of an
Esoteric key to the outward Buddhist phrases
that Burnouf and other great scholars have inferred from
such propositions held also by the Vedāntins
as my body is not body and myself is no self of mine
that Eastern psychology was based upon
non-permanency.Cousin for instance lecturing upon the
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subject brings the two following propositions
to prove on Burnouf s authority that unlike Brāhmanism
Buddhism rejects the perpetuity of the
thinking principle.These are:
1.Thought or Spirit [Two things entirely distinct from each other.The faculty is not
distinguished from the subject only on this
material plane while thought generated by our
physical brain one that has never impressed
itself at the same time on the spiritual
counterpart whether through the atrophy of the
latter or the intrinsic weakness of that thought
can never survive our body:this much is sure.]for the faculty is not distinguished
from the
subject appears only with sensation and does
not survive it.
2.The Spirit cannot itself lay hold of itself
and in directing attention to itself it draws from it
only the conviction of its powerlessness to
see itself otherwise than as successive and
transitory.
This all refers to Spirit embodied not to the
freed Spiritual Self on whom Māya has no more hold.
A Mistaken View -(Page 395)Spirit is no body;therefore have the Orientalists made of it
nobody and
nothing.Hence they proclaim Buddhists to be
Nihilists,and Vedāntins to be the followers of a creed in
which the Impersonal [God ]turns out on
examination to be a myth;their goal is described as
The complete extinction of all spiritual
mental and bodily powers by absorption into the
Impersonal.[Vedānta Sāra,translated by Major Jacob.p.123.]
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SECTION XLVI
Nirvana-Moksha
(Page 396)THE few sentences given in the text from one
of Gautama Buddha s secret teachings show
how uncalled for is the epithet of
Materialist when applied to One Whom two-thirds of those who are
looked upon as great Adepts and Occultists in
Asia recognize as their Master whether under the name of
Buddha or that of Shankarāchārya.The reader
will remember the just-quoted words are what Buddha
Sanggyas (or Pho)is alleged by the Tibetan
Occultists to have taught:there are three eternal things in
the Universe the Law Nirvāna and Space.The
Buddhists of the Southern Church claim on the other
hand that Buddha held only two things as
eternal Åkāsha and Nirvāna.But Ākāsha being the same as
Aditi [Aditi
is,according to the Rig Veda,the Father and Mother of all the Gods:and
Ćkāsha is held by
Southern Buddhism as the Root of all whence
everything in the Universe came out in obedience to a
law of motion inherent in it :and this is the
Tibetan Space (Tho-og).]and
both being translated Space
there is no discrepancy so far since Nirvāna
as well as Moksha is a state.Then in both cases the great
Kapilavastu Sage unifies the two as well as
the three into one eternal Element and ends by saying that
even that One is a Māyā to one who is not a
Damg-ma a perfectly purified Soul.
The whole question hangs upon materialistic
misconceptions and ignorance of Occult Metaphysics.To
the man of Science who regards Space as simply
a mental representation a conception of something
existing pro formā and having no real
being outside our mind Space per se is verily an illusion.He may
fill the boundless interstellar space with an
imaginary ether nevertheless Space for him is an
abstraction.Most of the Metaphysicians of
Europe are so wide of the mark,from the purely Occult
standpoint of a correct comprehension of
Space as are the Materialists,though the erroneous
conceptions of both of course differ widely.
The Ćkāsha -(Page 397)If bearing in mind the philosophical views of the Ancients
upon this question we
compare them with what is now termed exact
physical Science it will be found that the two disagree only
in inferences and names,and that their
postulates are the same when reduced to their most simple
expression.From the beginning of the human
Ęons,from the very dawn of Occult Wisdom the regions
that the men of Science fill with ether have
been explored by the Seers of every age.That which the
world regards simply as cosmic Space an
abstract representation the Hindu Rishi the Chaldęan
Magus,the Egyptian Hierophant held each and
all as the one eternal Root of all the playground of all
the Forces in Nature.It is the fountain-head
of all terrestrial life and the abode of those (to us)invisible
swarms of existences of real beings,as of the
shadows only thereof conscious and unconscious,
intelligent and senseless that surround us on
all sides,that interpenetrate the atoms of our Kosmos,
and see us not as we do not either see or
sense them through our physical organisms.For the Occultist
Space and Universe are synonyms.In Space
there is not Matter Force nor Spirit but all that and
much more.It is the One Element and that one
the Anima Mundi Space Ćkāsha Astral Light the
Root of Life which in its eternal ceaseless
motion like the out-and in-breathing of one boundless ocean
evolves but to reabsorb all that lives and
feels and thinks and has its being in it.As said of the Universe
in Isis Unveiled it is.
The combination of a thousand elements and yet
the expression of a single Spirit a chaos to
the sense a Kosmos to the reason.
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Such were the views upon the subject of all
the great ancient Philosophers,from Manu down to
Pythagoras,from Plato to Paul.
When the dissolution [Pralaya ] had
arrived as its term the great Being [Para-Ćtmā
or Para-
Purusha ] the Lord existing through himself out of whom and through whom
all things were
and are and will be ...resolved to emanate
from his own substance the various creatures.
[Mānava-Dharma-Shāstra.i.6
7.]
The mystic Decad [of Pythagoras ](1
+2 +3 +4 =10)is a way of expressing this idea.The
One is God;[The God of Pythagoras,the disciple of the Ćryan Sages,is no
personal God.
Let it be remembered that he taught as a
cardinal tenet that there exists a permanent Principle
of Unity beneath all forms,changes,and other
phenomena of the Universe.]the
Two Matter;
the Three combining Monad and Duad and
partaking of the nature of both is the phenomenal
world;the Tetrad or form of perfection
expresses the emptiness of all;and the Decad or sum
of all involves the entire cosmos.[Isis Unveiled.i.xvi.]
(Page 398)Plato's God is the Universal Ideation and
Paul saying Out of him and through him and in
him all things are had surely a Principle
never a Jehovah in his profound mind.The key to the
Pythagorean dogmas is the key to every great
Philosophy.It is the general formula of unity in multiplicity
the One evolving the many and pervading the
All.It is the archaic doctrine of Emanation in a few words.
Speusippus and Xenocrates held like their
Master Plato that;
The Amima Mundi (or world-soul )was not the
Deity but a manifestation.Those philosophers
never conceived of the One as an animate
nat re .The original One did not exist as we
understand the term.Not till he (it)had united
with the many emanated existences (the Monad
and Duad),was a being produced.The
ōéģéļķ(honoured ),the something manifested dwells
in the centre as in the circumference but it
is only the reflection of the Deity the World-Soul.
In this doctrine we find the spirit of
Esoteric Buddhism.[ Isis
Unveiled,i xviii.]
And it is that of Esoteric Brāhminism and of
the Vedāntin Adwaitis.The two modern philosophers,
Schopenhauer and von Hartmann teach the same
ideas.The Occultists say that:
The psychic and ectenic forces,the ideo-motor
and electro-biological powers, latent
thought and even unconscious cerebration
theories can be condensed in two words:the
Kabalistic Astral Light.[Isis Unveiled,i 58 .]
Schopenhauer only synthesized all this by
calling it Will and contradicted the men of Science in their
materialistic views as von Hartmann did later
on.The author of the Philosophy of the Unconscio s calls
their views an instinctual prejudice.
Furthermore he demonstrates that no
experimenter can have anything to do with matter
properly so termed but only with the forces
into which he divides it.The visible effects of
matter are but the effects of force.He
concludes thereby that that which is now called matter is
nothing but the aggregation of atomic
forces,to express which the word matter is used;
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outside of that for science matter is but a
word void of sense.[Isis
Unveiled,i.59.]
As much it is to be feared as those other
terms with which we are now concerned Space Nirvāna
and so on.
The bold theories and opinions expressed in
Schopenhauer s works differ widely from those of
the majority of our orthodox scientists.[While they are to a great extent
identical with those of
Esoteric B ddhism the Secret Doctrine of the East.] In reality remarks this daring
speculator there is neither Matter nor
Spirit.
Matter is Ever Giving -(Page 399)The tendency to gravitation in a stone is as unexplainable
as thought in the human brain ...If matter can
no one knows why fall to the ground then it
can also no one knows why think....As soon
even in mechanics,as we trespass beyond
the purely mathematical as soon as we reach
the inscrutable adhesion gravitation and so
on we are faced by phenomena which are to our
senses as mysterious as the will and
tho ght in
man :we find ourselves facing the incomprehensible for such is every force in
nature.Where is,then that matter which
you all pretend to know so well and from which
being so familiar with it you draw all your
conclusions and explanations,and attribute to it all
things?...That which can be fully realized by
our reason and senses is but the superficial:
they can never reach the true inner substance
of things.Such was the opinion of Kant.If you
consider that there is in a human head some
sort of a spirit then you are obliged to concede
the same to a stone.If your dead and
utterly-passive matter can manifest a tendency toward
gravitation or like electricity attract and
repel and send out sparks,then as well as the brain it
can also think.In short every particle of the
so-called spirit we can replace with an equivalent
of matter and every particle of matter replace
with spirit ...Thus,it is not the Christian
division of all things into matter and spirit
that can ever be found philosophically exact;but only
if we divide them into will and manifestation,which
form of division has naught to do with the
former for it spiritualizes everything;all
that which is in the first instance real and objective
body and matter it transforms into a
representation and every manifestation into will.
[Parerga,II.iii
112:quoted in Isis Unveiled.i.58 .]
The matter of science may be for all
objective purposes a dead and utterly passive matter;to the
Occultist not an atom of it can be dead Life
is ever present in it.We send the reader who would know
more about it to our article Transmigration
of Life-Atoms. [ Five Years
of Theosophy.p.338.et seq.]
What we are now concerned with is the doctrine
of Nirvāna.
A system of atheism it may be justly called
since it recognizes neither God nor Gods least of all a
Creator as it entirely rejects creation.The Fecit
ex nihilo is as incomprehensible to the Occult
metaphysical Scientist as it is to the
scientific Materialist.It is at this point that all agreement stops
between the two.But if such be the sin of the
Buddhist and Brāhman Occultist then Pantheists and
Atheists,and also theistical Jews the
Kabalists must also plead guilty to it;yet no one would ever
think of calling the Hebrews of the Kabalah
Atheists.Except the Talmudistic and Christian exoteric
systems there never was a religious Philosophy
whether in the ancient or modern world but rejected a
priori the
ex nihilo hypothesis,simply because Matter was always co-eternalized
with Spirit.
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(Page 400)Nirvāna as well as the Moksha of the
Vedāntins,is regarded by most of the Orientalists as a
synonym of annihilation;yet no more glaring
injustice could be done and this capital error must be
pointed out and disproved.On this most
important tenet of the Brāhmo-Buddhistic system the Alpha
and Omega of Being or Non-Being rests the
whole edifice of Occult Metaphysics.Now the
rectification of the great error concerning
Nirvāna may be very easily accomplished with relation to the
philosophically inclined to those who
In the glass of things temporal see the image
of things spiritual.
On the other hand to that reader who could
never soar beyond the details of tangible material form our
explanation will appear meaningless.He may
comprehend and even accept the logical inferences from
the reasons given the true spirit will ever
escape his intuitions.The word nihil having been
misconceived from the first it is continually
used as a sledge-hammer in the matter of Esoteric
Philosophy.Nevertheless it is the duty of the
Occultist to try and explain it.
Nirvāna and Moksha then as said before have
their being in non-being if such a paradox be permitted
to illustrate the meaning the better.Nirvāna
as some illustrious Orientalists have attempted to prove
does mean the blowing-out [Prof.Max Mūller in a letter to The
Times (April.1857),maintained most
vehemently that Nirvāna meant annihilation in
the fullest sense of the word.(Chips from a German
Workshop i.287)But in 1869 in a lecture before the General Meeting of the
Association of German
Philologists at Kiel.he distinctly declares
his belief that the Nihilism attributed to Buddha s teaching
forms no part of his doctrine and that it is
wholly wrong to suppose that Nirvāna means annihiliation.
(Trubner s Amer-and Oriental Lit.Rec .Oct.16
th 1869.)] of all sentient
existence.It is like the flame of a
candle burnt out to its last atom and then
suddenly extinguished.Quite so.Nevertheless,as the old
Arhat Nāgasena affirmed before the king who
taunted him:Nirvāna is and Nirvāna is eternal.But the
Orientalists deny this,and say it is not so.In
their opinion Nirvāna is not a re-absorption in the Universal
Force not eternal bliss and rest but it means
literally the blowing-out the extinction complete
annihilation and not absorption.The Lankāvatāra
quoted in support of their arguments by some
Sanskritists,and which gives the different
interpretations of Nirvāna by the Tīrthika Brāhmans,is no
authority to one who goes to primeval sources
for information namely to the Buddha who taught the
doctrine.As well quote the Chārvāka
Materialists in their support.
Blind Faith Not Expected -(Page 401)If we bring as an argument the sacred Jaina
books,wherein the
dying Gautama Buddha is thus addressed:Arise
into Nirvi [Nirvāna ] from this decrepit body into which
thou hast been sent....Ascend into thy former
abode O blessed Avatāra;and if we add that this
seems to us the very opposite of nihilism we
may be told that so far it may only prove a contradiction
one more discrepancy in the Buddhist faith.If
again we remind the reader that since Gautama is believed
to appear occasionally re-descending from his
former abode for the good of humanity and His faithful
congregation thus making it incontestable that
Buddhism does not teach final annihilation we shall be
referred to authorities to whom such teaching
is ascribed.And let us say at once:Men are no authority
for us in questions of conscience nor ought
they to be for anyone else.If anyone holds to Buddha s
Philosophy let him do and say as Buddha did
and said;if a man calls himself a Christian let him follow
the commandments of Christ not the
interpretations of His many dissenting priests and sects.
In A B ddhist Catechism the question is
asked:
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Are there any dogmas in Buddhism which we are
required to accept on faith?
A.No.We are earnestly enjoined to accept
nothing whatsoever on faith whether it be written
in books,handed down from our ancestors,or
taught by sages.Our Lord Buddha has said
that we must not believe in a thing said
merely because it is said;nor traditions because they
have been handed down from antiquity;nor
rumours,as such;nor writings by sages,because
sages wrote them;nor fancies that we may
suspect to have been inspired in us by a Deva
(that is,in presumed spiritual
inspiration);nor from inferences drawn from some haphazard
assumption we may have made;nor because of
what seems an analogical necessity;nor on
the mere authority of our teachers of
masters.But we are to believe when the writing doctrine
or saying is corroborated by our own reason
and consciousness.For this,says he in
concluding I taught you not to believe merely
because you have heard but when you
believed of your consciousness,then to act
accordingly and abundantly.[See
the Kalama
S tta of
the Ang ttaranikayo,as quoted in A B ddhist Catechism by
H.S.Olcott President of
the Theosophical Society.pp.55.56 .]
That Nirvāna or rather that state in which we
are in Nirvāna is quite the reverse of annihilation is
suggested to us by our reason and
consciousness, and that is sufficient for us personally.At the same
time this fact being inadequate and very
ill-adapted for the general reader something more efficient may
be added.
(Page 402)Without resorting to sources unsympathetic to
Occultism the Kabalah furnishes us with the
most luminous and clear proofs that the term
nihil in the minds of the Ancient Philosophers had a
meaning quite different from that it has now
received at the hands of Materialists.It means certainly
nothing or no-thing. F.Kircher in his
work on the Kabalah and the Egyptian Mysteries [dip s
Ęgypt.,II.I
291.] explains the term
admirably.He tells his readers that in the Zohar the first of the
Sephiroth [Sephir or Aditi (mystic Space).The Sephiroth be it understood are
identical with the Hindu
Prajāpatis,the Dhyān Chohans of Esoteric
Buddhism the Zoroastrian Amshaspends,and finally with the
Elohim the Seven Angels of the Presence of
the Roman Catholic Church.] has
a name the
significance of which is the Infinite,but
which was translated indifferently by the Kabalists as Ens and
Non-Ens (Being and Non-Being );a Being
inasmuch as it is the root and source of all other beings;
Non-Being because Ain Soph the Boundless and the Causeless,the
Unconscious and the Passive
Principle resembles nought else in the
Universe.
The author adds:
This is the reason why St.Denys did not
hesitate to call it Nihil.
Nihil therefore stands even with some
Christian theologians and thinkers,especially with the earlier
ones who lived but a few removes from the
profound Philosophy of the initiated Pagans as a synonym
for the impersonal divine Principle the
Infinite All which is no Being or thing the En or Ain Soph the
Parabrahman of the Vedānta.Now St.Denys was a
pupil of St.Paul an Initiate and this fact makes
everything clear.
The Nihil is in esse the Absolute
Deity itself the hidden Power or Omnipresence degraded by
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Monotheism into an anthropomorphic Being with
all the passions of a mortal on a grand scale.Union
with That is not annihilation in the sense
understood in Europe.[According
to the Eastern idea the All
comes out from the One and returns to it
again.Absolute annihilation is simply unthinkable.Nor can
eternal Matter be annihilated.Form may be
annihilated:co-relations may change.That is all.There can
be no such thing as annihilation in the
European sense in the Universe.]In
the East annihilation in
Nirvāna refers but to matter:that of the
visible as well as the invisible body for the astral body the
personal double is still matter however
sublimated.Buddha taught that the primitive Substance is
eternal and unchangeable.Its vehicle is the
pure liminous ether the boundless,infinite Space.
Not a void resulting from the absence of
forms,but on the contrary the foundations of all
forms ....
What Annihilation Means -(Page 403)[This ]denotes it to be the creation of Māyā
all the
works of which are as nothing before the
uncreated Form [Spirit ] ,in whose profound and
sacred depths all motion must cease for ever.[Isis Unveiled .i 289.]
Motion here refers only to illusive objects to
their change as opposed to perpetuity rest perpetual
motion being the Eternal Law the ceaseless
Breath of the Absolute.
The mastery of Buddhistic dogmas can be
attained only according to the Platonic method :from
universals to particulars.The key to it lies
in the refined and mystical tenets of spiritual influx and divine
life.
Saith Buddha:
Whosoever is nacq ainted with my Law,[The
Secret Law the Doctrine of the Heart so called in
contrast to the Doctrine of the Eye. or
exoteric Buddhism.] and dies
in that state must ret rn to earth
ntil he becomes a perfect Samano [ascetic ].To achieve this object he must destroy within himself the
trinity of Māyā.[Illusive
matter in its triple manifestation in the earthly and the astral or fontal Soul
(the
body)and the Platonian dual Soul the rational
and the irrational one.] He
m st exting ish his passions,
nite and identify himself with the Law [the teaching of the Secret Doctrine ],and comprehend the
philosophy of annihilation.[Isis Unveiled .i.289.]
No it is not in the dead-letter of
Buddhistical literature that scholars may ever hope to find the true
solution of its metaphysical subtleties.Alone
in all antiquity the Pythagoreans understood them perfectly
and it is on the (to the average Orientalist
and the Materialist)incomprehensible abstractions of
Buddhism that Pythagoras grounded the
principal tenets of his Philosophy.
Annihilation means with the Buddhistical
Philosophy only a dispersion of matter in whatever form or
semblance of form it may be for everything that bears a shape was
created and thus must sooner or
later perish i.e.,change that
shape;therefore as something temporal though seeming to be permanent
it is but an illusion Māyā;for as eternity has
neither beginning nor end the more or less prolonged
duration of some particular form passes,as it
were like an instantaneous flash of lightning.Before we
have the time to realize that we have seen it
it is gone and passed for ever;hence even our astral
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bodies,pure ether are but illusions of matter
so long as they retain their terrestrial outline.The latter
changes,says the Buddhist according to the
merits or demerits of the person during his lifetime and this
is (Page 404)metempsychosis.When the spiritual Entity breaks loose for
ever from every particle of
matter then only it enters upon the eternal
and unchangeable Nirvāna.He exists in Spirit in nothing;as
a form a shape a semblance he is completely
annihilated and thus will die no more for Spirit alone is
no Māyā but the only Reality in an illusionary
universe of ever-passing forms.
It is upon this Buddhist doctrine that the
Pythagoreans grounded the principal tenets of their
philosophy.Can that Spirit which gives life
and motion and partakes of the nature of light be
reduced to nonentity? they ask.Can that
sensitive Spirit in brutes which exercises memory
one of the rational faculties,die and become
nothing?And Whitelock Bulstrode in his able
defence of Pythagoras expounds this doctrine
by adding:
If you say they [the brutes ] breathe
their Spirits into the air and there vanish that is all that I
contend for.The air indeed is the proper place
to receive them being according to Laertius full
of souls;and according to Epicurus full of
atoms,the principles of all things;for even this place
wherein we walk and birds fly has so much of a
spiritual nature that it is invisible and therefore
may well be the receiver of forms,since the
forms of all bodies are so;we can only see and
hear its effects;the air itself is too fine
and above the capacity of the age.What then is the
ether to the region above and what are the
influences of forms that descend from thence?
The Spirits of creatures,the
Pythagoreans hold who are emanations of the most sublimated
portions of ether emanations,breaths,b t
not forms.Ether is corruptible all philosophers
agree in that:and what is incorruptible is
so far from being annihilated when it gets rid of the
form that
it lays a good claim to immortality.
But what is that which has no body no form;which
is imponderable invisible and indivisible
that which exists,and yet is not ?ask
the Buddhists.It is Nirvāna is the answer.It is
nothing not
a region but rather a state.[Isis
Unveiled.i.290.]
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SECTION XLVII
The Secret Books of Lam-Rin and Dzyan
(Page 405)THE Book of Dzyan from the Sanskrit
word Dhyān (mystic meditation)is the first volume
of the Commentaries upon the seven secret
folios of Kiu-te and a Glossary of the public works of the
same name.Thirty-five volumes of Kiu-te for
exoteric purposes and the use of the laymen may be found
in the possession of the Tibetan Gelugpa
Lamas,in the library of any monastery;and also fourteen
books of Commentaries and Annotations on the
same by the initiated Teachers.
Strictly speaking those thirty-five books
ought to be termed The Popularized Version of the Secret
Doctrine full of myths,blinds,and errors;the
fourteen volumes of Commentaries,on the other hand
with their translations,annotations,and an
ample glossary of occult terms,worked out from one small
archaic folio the Book of the Secret Wisdom
of the World [It is from the
texts of all these works that the
Secret Doctrine has been given.The original
matter would not make a small pamphlet but the
explanations and notes from the Commentaries
and Glossaries might be worked into ten volumes as
large as Isis Unveiled.]contain a digest of all the Occult
Sciences.These it appears,are kept secret
and apart in the charge of the Teshu Lama of
Tji-gad-je.The Books of Kiu-te are comparatively modern
having been edited within the last millennium
whereas the earliest volumes of the Commentaries are of
untold antiquity some fragments of the
original cylinders having been preserved.With the exception that
they explain and correct some of the too
fabulous,and to every appearance grossly exaggerated
accounts in the Books of Kiu-tet [The monk Della Penna makes
considerable fun in his Memoirs (see
Markham s Tibet )of certain statements
in the books of Kiu-te.He brings to the notice of the Christian
public the great mountain 160.000 leagues
high (a Tibetan league consisting of five miles)in the
Himālayan Range.According to their law he
says,in the west of this world is an eternal world ...a
paradise and in it a Saint called Hopahma
which means Saint of Splendour and Infinite Light. This Saint
has many disciples who are all Chang-chub
which means,he adds in a footnote.the Spirits of those
who on account of their perfection do not care
to become saints and train and instruct the bodies of the
reborn Lamas ...so that they may help the
living. Which means that the presumably dead Yang-
Chhub (not Chang-chub )are simply living
Bodhisattvas,some of those known as Bhante (the
Brothers ).As to the mountain 160.000
leagues high the Commentary which gives the key to such
statements explains that according to the code
used by the writers,to the west of the Snowy Mountain
160 leagues [the cyphers being a blind ]
from a certain spot and by a direct road is the Bhante Yul [the
country of Seat of the Brothers ] the residence of Mahā-Chohan ..
etc.This is the real meaning.The
Hopahma of Della Penna is the Mahā-Chohan
the Chief.]properly so called
the Commentaries
have little to do with these.They stand in
relation to them (Page
406)as
the Chaldęo-Jewish Kabalah
stands to the Mosaic Books.In the work known
as the Avat msaka Sūtra,in section:The Supreme
Ćtman [
Soul ] as manifested in
the character of the Arhats and Pratyeka Buddhas,it is stated that:
Because from the beginning all sentient
creatures have confused the truth and embraced the
false therefore there came into existence a
hidden knowledge called Alaya Vijńāna.
Who is in possession of the true
knowledge?is asked.The great Teachers of the Snowy Mountain is
the response.
These great Teachers have been known to
live in the Snowy Range of the Himālayas for countless
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ages.To deny in the face of millions of Hindus
the existence of their great Gurus,living in the Ćshrams
scattered all over the Trans-or the
Cis-Himālayan slopes is to make oneself ridiculous in their eyes.
When the Buddhist Saviour appeared in India
their Ćshrams for it is rarely that these great Men are
found in Lamaseries,unless on a short visit
were on the spots they now occupy and that even before
the Brāhmans themselves came from Central Asia
to settle on the Indus.And before that more than one
Ćryan Dvija of fame and historical renown had
sat at their feet learning that which culminated later on in
one or another of the great philosophical
schools.Most of these Himālayan Bhante were Aryan
Brāhmans and ascetics.
No student unless very advanced would be
benefited by the perusal of those exoteric volumes.[ In
some MSS notes before us,written by Gelung
(priest)Thango-pa Chhe-go-mo it is said:The few
Roman Catholic missionaries who have visited
our land (under protest)in the last century and have
repaid our hospitality by turning our sacred
literature into ridicule have shown little discretion and still
less knowledge.It is true that the Sacred
Canon of the Tibetans,the Kahgyur and Bstanhgyur,comprises
1707 distinct works 1083 public and 624
secret volumes,the former being composed of 350 and the
latter of 77 volumes folio.May we humbly
invite the good missionaries,however to tell us when they
ever succeeded in getting a glimpse of the
last-named secret folios?Had they even by chance seen
them I can assure the Western Pandits that
these manuscripts and folios could never be understood
even by a born Tibetan without a key (a )to
their peculiar characters,and (b )to their hidden meaning.In
our system every description of locality is
figurative every name and word purposely veiled:and one has
first to study the mode of deciphering and
then to learn the equivalent secret terms and symbols for
nearly every word of the religious
heritage.The Egyptian enchorial or hieractic system is child s play to
our sacerdotal puzzles.] They must be read with a key to
their meaning and that key can only be found
in the Commentaries .Moreover there are
some comparatively modern works that are positively injurious
so far as fair comprehension of even exoteric
Buddhism is concerned.Such are the B ddhist Cosmos,
by Bonze Jin-ch on of Pekin;the Shing-Ta
-ki (or The Records of the Enlightenment of Tathāgata ),by
Wang Puk seventh century;Hisai Sūtra (or
Book of Creation ),and some others.
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SECTION XLVIII
Amita Buddha Kwan-Shai-Yin and Kwan-Yin
What the Book of Dzyan and the
Lamaseries of Tsong-Kha-Pa Say
(Page 407)AS a supplement to the Commentaries there
are many secret folios on the lives of the
Bhuddhas and Bodhisattvas,and among these
there is one on Prince Gautama and another on His
reincarnation in Tsong-Kha-pa.This great
Tibetan Reformer of the fourteenth century said to be a direct
incarnation of Amita Buddha is the founder of
the secret School near Tji-gad-je attached to the private
retreat of the Teshu Lama.It is with Him that
began the regular system of Lamaic incarnations of
Buddhas (Sang-gyas),or of Shākya-Thub-pa
(Shakyamuni).Amida or Amita Buddha is called by the
author of Chinese B ddhism,a mythical
being.He speaks of
Amida Buddha (Ami-to Fo )a fabulous
personage worshipped assiduously like Kwan-yin
by the Northern Buddhists,but unknown in Siam
Burmah and Ceylon.[Chinese B
ddhism .
p.171.]
Very likely.Yet Amida Buddha is not a
fabulous personage since (a )Amida is the Senzar form of Ćdi
;Ćdi-Buddhi and Ćdi-Buddha [Buddhi is a Sanskrit term for
discrimination or intellect (the sixth
principle),and Buddha is wise wisdom and
also the planet Mercury.] as
already shown existed
ages ago as a Sanskrit term for Primeval Soul
and Wisdom ;and (b )the name was applied to
Gautama Shākyamuni the last Buddha in India
from the seventh century when Buddhism was
introduced into Tibet.Amitābha (in Chinese
Wu-lian-sheu )means literally Boundless Age a (Page
408)synonym of En or Ain-Suph the Ancient of
Days and is an epithet that connects Him directly
with the Boundless Ādi-Buddhi (primeval and
Universal Soul)of the Hindus,as well as with the Anima
Mundi of all the ancient nations of Europe and
the Boundless and Infinite of the Kabalists.If Amitābha be
a fiction of the Tibetans,or a new form of
Wu-liang-sheu a fabulous personage as the author-compiler
of Chinese B ddhism tells his
readers,then the fable must be a very ancient one.For on another page
he says himself that the addition to the canon
of the books containing the Legends of Kwan-yin and of
the Western heaven with its Buddha Amitābha
was also previous to the Council of Kashmere a little
before the beginning of our era [This curious contradiction may be
found in Chinese B ddhism .pp.171.
273.The reverend author assures his readers
that to the philosophic Buddhists ...Amitābha Yoshi Fo
and the others are nothing but the signs of
ideas (p 236).Very true.But so should be all other deific
names,such as Jehovah Allah etc.and if they
are not simply signs of ideas this would only show that
minds that receive them otherwise are not
philosophic :it would not at all afford serious proof that there
are personal living Gods of these names in
reality .]
and he places
the origin of the primitive Buddhist books
which are common to the Northern and Southern Buddhists
before 246.B.C.
Since Tibetans accepted Buddhism only in the
seventh century A.D.how comes it that they are charged
with inventing Amita-Buddha?Besides which in
Tibet Amitābha is called Odpag-med which shows that it
is not the name but the abstract idea that was
first accepted of an unknown invisible and Impersonal
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Power taken moreover from the Hindu
Adi-Buddhi and not from the Chinese Amitābha. [The
Chinese Amitābha (Wu-liang-sheu)and the Tibetan
Amitābha (Odpag-med)have now become personal
Gods,ruling over and living in the celestial
region of Sukhāvati or Tushita (Tibetan:Devachan):while Ądi-
Buddhi of the philosophic Hindu and Amita
Buddha of the philosophic Chinaman and Tibetan are
names for universal primeval ideas.] There is a great difference between
the popular Odpag-med
(Amitābha)who sits enthroned in Devachan
(Sukhāvati),according to the Mani Kamb m Scriptures the
oldest historical work in Tibet and the
philosophical abstraction called Amita Buddha the name being
passed now to the earthly Buddha Gautama.
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SECTION XLIX
Tsong-Kha-Pa Lohans in China
(Page 409)IN an article Reincarnation in Tibet
everything that could be said about Tsong-Kha-pa was
published.[See The Theosophist for March 1882.] It was stated that this reformer was not as is alleged
by Pārsi scholars,an incarnation of one of the
celestial Dhyānis,or the five heavenly Buddhas,said to
have been created by Shākyamuni after he has
risen to Nirvāna but that he was an incarnation of Amita
Buddha Himself.The records preserved in the
Gon-pa the chief Lamasery of Tda-shi-Hlumpo show that
Sang-gyas left the regions of the Western
Paradise to incarnate Himself in Tsong-Kha-pa in
consequence of the great degradation into
which His secret doctrines had fallen.
Whenever made too public,the Good Law of Cheu [magical powers ] fell invariably into
sorcery or black magic.The Dwijas,the
Hoshang [Chinese monks ] and the Lamas could
alone be entrusted safely with the formulę.
Until the Tsong-Kha-pa period there had been
no Sang-gyas (Buddha)incarnations in Tibet.
Tsong-Kha-pa gave the signs whereby the
presence of one of the twenty-five Bodhisattvas [The intimate
relation of the twenty-five Buddhas
(Bodhisattvas)with the twenty-five Tattvas (the Conditioned or
Limited)of the Hindus is interesting.] or of the Celestial Buddhas (Dhyān
Chohans)in a human body
might be recognized and He strictly forbade
necromancy.This led to a split amongst the Lamas,and the
malcontents allied themselves with the
aboriginal Bhons against the reformed Lamaism.Even now they
form a powerful sect practising the most
disgusting rites all over Sikkhim Bhutan Nepaul and even on
the borderlands of Tibet.It was worse
then.With the permission of the Tda-shu or Teshu Lama [ It is
curious to note the great importance given by
European Orientalists to the Dalai Lamas of Lhasa and
their utter ignorance as to the Tda-shu (or
Teshu)Lamas,while it is the latter who began the hierarchical
series of Buddhi-incarnations,and are de
facto the popes in Tibet:the Dalai Lamas are the creations of
Nabang-lob-Sang the Tda-shu Lama who was
Himself the sixth incarnation of Amita through Tsong-
Kha-pa though very few seem to be aware of
that fact.] some hundred Lohans
(Arhats)to avert strife
(Page 410)went to settle in China in the famous
monastery near Tien-t -ai where they soon became
subjects for legendary lore and continue to be
so to this day.They had been already preceded by other
Lohans.
The world-famous disciples of Tathāgata called
the sweet-voiced on account of their ability
to chant the Mantras with magical effect.[The chanting of a Mantra is not a
prayer but rather
a magical sentence in which the law of Occult
causation connects itself with and depends on
the will and acts of its singer.It is a
succession of Sanskrit sounds and when its string of words
and sentences is pronounced according to the
magical formulae in the Atharva Veda,but
understood by the few some Mantras produce an
instantaneous and very wonderful effect.In
its esoteric sense it contains the Vāch (the
mystic speech )which resides in the Mantra or
rather in its sounds,since it is according to
the vibrations,one way or the other of ether that
the effect is produced.The sweet singers
were called by that name because they were
experts in Mantras.Hence the legend in China
that the singing and melody of the Lohans are
heard at dawn by the priests from their cells
in the monastery of Fang-Kwang.(See Biography
of Chi-Kai in Tien-tai-nan-tchi.)]
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The first ones came from Kashmir in the year 3
000 lf Kali Yuga (about a century before the Christian
era).[The
celebrated Lohan Mādhyantika who converted the king and whole country of
Kashmir to
Buddhism sent a body of Lohans to preach the
Good Law.He was the sculptor who raised to Buddha
the famous statue one hundred feet high which
Hiuen-Tsang saw at Dardu to the north of the Punjab.
As the same Chinese traveller mentions a
temple ten Li from Peshawur 350 feet round and 850 feet
high which was at his time (A.D.550)already
850 years old.Koeppen thinks that so far back as 292
B.C.Buddhism was the prevalent religion in the
Punjab.] while the last ones
arrived at the end of the
fourteenth century 1 500 years later;and
finding no room for themselves at the lamasery of Yihigching
they built for their own use the largest
monastery of all on the sacred island of Pu-to (Buddha or Put in
Chinese),in the province of Chusan.There the
Good Law the Doctrine of the Heart flourished for
several centuries.But when the island was
desecrated by a mass of Western foreigners,the chief
Lohans left for the mountains of
----------------.In the Pagoda of Pi-yun-ti near Pekin one can still see the
Hall of the Five-hundred Lohans.There the
statues of the first-comers are arranged below while one
solitary Lohan is placed quite under the roof
of the building which seems to have been built in
commemoration of their visit.
The works of the Orientalists are full of the
direct landmarks of Arhats (Adepts),possessed of
thaumaturgic powers but these are spoken of
whenever the subject cannot be avoided with
unconcealed scorn.Whether innocently ignorant
of or purposely ignoring the importance of the Occult
element and symbology in the various Religions
they undertake to explain short work is generally made
of such passages,and they are left
untranslated.In simple justice however it should be allowed that
much as all such miracles may have been
exaggerated by popular reverence and fancy they are neither
less credible nor less attested in heathen
annals than are those of the numerous Christian Saints in the
church chronicles.Both have an equal right to
a place in their respective histories.
The Lost Word -(Page 411)If after the beginning of persecution against Buddhism the
Arhats were no
more heard of in India it was because their
vows prohibiting retaliation they had to leave the country
and seek solitude and security in China Tibet
Japan and elsewhere.The sacerdotal powers of the
Brāhmans being at that time unlimited the
Simons and Apolloniuses of Buddhism had as much chance
of recognition and appreciation by the
Brāhmanical Irenęuses and Tertullians as had their successors in
the Judęan and Roman worlds.It was a
historical rehearsal of the dramas that were enacted centuries
later in Christendom.As in the case of the
so-called Heresiarchs of Christianity it was not for rejecting
the Vedas or the sacred Syllable that
the Buddhist Arhats were persecuted but for understanding too
well the secret meaning of both.It was simply
because their knowledge was regarded as dangerous and
their presence in India unwelcome that they
had to emigrate.
Nor were there a smaller number of Initiates
among the Brāhmans themselves.Even today one meets
most wonderfully-gifted Sāddhus and
Yogīs,obliged to keep themselves unnoticed and in the shadow
not only owing to the absolute secresy imposed
upon them at their Initiation but also for fear of the Anglo-
Indian tribunals and courts of law wherein
judges are determined to regard as charlatanry imposition
and fraud the exhibition of or claim to any
abnormal powers and one may judge of the past by the
present.Centuries after our era the Initiates
of the inner temples and the Mathams (monastic
communities)chose a superior council presided
over by an all-powerful Brahm-Ćtmā the Supreme Chief
of all those Mahātmās.This pontificate could
be exercised only by a Brāhman who had reached a certain
age and he it was who was the sole guardian of
the mystic formula and he was the Hierophant who
created great Adepts.He alone could explain
the meaning of the sacred word AUM,and of all the
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religious symbols and rites.And whosoever
among those Initiates of the Supreme Degree revealed to a
profane a single one of the truths,even the
smallest of the secrets entrusted to him had to die;and he
who received the confidence was put to death.
But there existed and still exists to this day
a Word far surpassing the mysterious monosyllable and
which renders him who comes into possession of
its key nearly the equal of Brahman.The Brahmātmās
alone possess this key and we know that to this
day there are two (Page
412)great
Initiates in Southern
India who possess it.It can be passed only at
death for it is the Lost Word.No torture no human
power could force its disclosure by a Brāhman
who knows it;and it is well guarded in Tibet.
Yet this secresy and this profound mystery are
indeed disheartening since they alone the Initiates of
India and Tibet could thoroughly dissipate
the thick mists hanging over the history of Occultism and
force its claims to be recognized.The Delphic
injunction Know thyself, seems for the few in this age.
But the fault ought not to be laid at the door
of the Adepts,who have done all that could be done and
have gone as far as Their rules permitted to
open the eyes of the world.Only while the European
shrinks from public obloquy and the ridicule
unsparingly thrown on Occultists,the Asiatic is being
discouraged by his own Pandits.These profess
to labour under the gloomy impression that no Bīga
Vidyā no Arhatship (Adeptship),is possible
during the Kali Yuga (the Black Age )we are now passing
through.Even the Buddhists are taught that the
Lord Buddha is alleged to have prophesied that the
power would die out in one millennium after
His death. But this is an entire mistake.In the Dīgha
Nikāya the
Buddha says:
Hear Subhadra!The world will never be without
Rahats,if the ascetics in my congregations
well and truly keep my precepts.
A similar contradiction of the view brought
forward by the Brāhmans is made by Krishna in the Bhagavad
Gītā,and
there is further the actual appearance of many Sāddhus and miracle-workers in
the past and
even in the present age.The same holds good
for China and Tibet.Among the commandments of Tsong-
Kha-pa there is one that enjoins the Rahats
(Arhats)to make an attempt to enlighten the world including
the white barbarians,every century at a
certain specified period of the cycle.Up to the present day
none of these attempts has been very
successful.Failure has followed failure.Have we to explain the
fact by the light of a certain prophecy?It is
said that up to the time when Phan-chhen-rin-po-chhe (the
Great Jewel of Wisdom)[A title of the Tda-shu-Illum-po Lama.] condescends to be reborn in the land of
the P helings (Westerners),and appearing as
the Spiritual Conqueror (Chom-den-da),destroys the
errors and ignorance of the ages,it will be of
little use to try to uproot the misconceptions of P heling-pa
(Europe):her sons will listen to no one.
Tibetan Prophecies -(Page 413)Another prophecy declares that the Secret Doctrine shall
remain in all its
purity in Bhod-yul (Tibet)only to the day that
it is kept free from foreign invasion.The very visits of
Western natives,however friendly would be
baneful to the Tibetan populations.This is the true key to
Tibetan exclusiveness.
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SECTION L
A Few More Misconceptions Corrected
(Page 414)NOTWITHSTANDING widespread misconceptions and
errors often most amusing to one who
has certain knowledge of the true doctrines
about Buddhism generally and especially about Buddhism
in Tibet all the Orientalists agree that the
Buddha s foremost aim was to lead human beings to salvation
by teaching them to practise the greatest
purity and virtue and by detaching them from the service of this
illusionary world and the love of one s still
more illusionary because so evanescent and unreal body
and physical self.And what is the good of a
virtuous life full of privations and suffering if the only result
of it is to be annihilation at the end?If even
the attainment of that supreme perfection which leads the
Initiate to remember the whole series of his past
lives,and to foresee that of the future ones,by the full
development of that inner divine eye in him
and to acquire the knowledge that unfolds the causes [The
twelve Nidānas,called in Tibetan Tin-bred
Chug-nyi which are based upon the Four Truths.] of the
ever-recurring cycles of existence brings him
finally to non-being and nothing more then the whole
system is idiotic,and Epicureanism is far more
philosophical than such Buddhism.He who is unable to
comprehend the subtle and yet so potent
difference between existence in a material or physical state
and a purely spiritual existence Spirit or
Soul-life will never appreciate at their full value the grand
teachings of the Buddha even in their exoteric
form.Individual or personal existence is the cause of
pains and sorrows;collective and impersonal
life-eternal is full of divine bliss and joy for ever with neither
causes nor effects to darken its light.And the
hope for such a life-eternal is the keynote of the whole of
Buddhism.If we are told that impersonal
existence is no existence at all but amounts to annihilation as
was maintained by some French
reincarnationists,then we would ask:
Misrepresentations of Buddhism -(Page 415)What difference can it make in the spiritual
perceptions of
an Ego whether he enter Nirvāna loaded with
recollections only of his own personal lives tens of
thousands according to the modern
reincarnationists or whether merged entirely in the Parabrāhmic
state it becomes one with the All with the
absolute knowledge and the absolute feeling of representing
collective humanities?Once that an Ego lives
only ten distinct individual lives he must necessarily lose
his one self and become mixed up merged so to
say with these ten selves.It really seems that so
long as this great mystery remains a dead
letter to the world of Western thinkers,and especially to the
Orientalists,the less the latter undertake to
explain it the better for Truth.
Of all the existing religious
Philosophies,Buddhism is the least understood.The Lassens,Webers,
Wassiljows the Burnoufs and Juliens,and even
such eye-witnesses of Tibetan Buddhism as Csoma de
Köros and the Schlagintweits,have hitherto
only added perplexity to confusion.None of these has ever
received his information from a genuine
Gelugpa source:all have judged Buddhism from the bits of
knowledge picked up at Tibetan frontier
lamaseries,in countries thickly populated by Bhutanese and
Leptchas,Bhons,and red-capped Dugpas,along the
line of the Himālayas.Hundreds of volumes
purchased from Burats,Shamans,and Chinese
Buddhists,have been read and translated glossed and
misinterpreted according to invariable
custom.Esoteric Schools would cease to be worthy of their name
were their literature and doctrines to become
the property of even their profane co-religionists still less
of the Western public.This is simple
common-sense and logic.Nevertheless this is a fact which our
Orientalists have ever refused to
recognize:hence they have gone on gravely discussing the relative
merits and absurdities of idols,soothsaying
tables, and magical figures of Phurbu on the square
tortoise. None of these have anything to do
with the real philosophical Buddhism of the Gelugpa or
even of the most educated among the Sakyapa
and Kadampa sects.All such plates and sacrificial
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tables,Chinsreg magical circles,etc.were
avowedly got from Sikkhim Bhutan and Eastern Tibet from
Bhons and Dugpas.Nevertheless,these are given
as characteristics of Tibetan Buddhism!It would be as
fair to judge the unread Philosophy of Bishop
Berkeley after studying Christianity in the clown-worship of
Neapolitan lazzaroni dancing a mystic jig
before the idol of St.Pip or carrying the ex-voto in wax of the
phallus of SS Cosmo and Domiano at Tsernie.
(Page 416)It is quite true that the primitive Shrāvakas
(listeners or hearers)and the Shramanas (the
thought-restrainers and the pure )have
degenerated and that many Buddhist sects have fallen into
mere dogmatism and ritualism.Like every other
Esoteric,half-suppressed teaching the words of the
Buddha convey a double meaning and every sect
has gradually come to claim to be the only one
knowing the correct meaning and thus to assume
supremacy over the rest.Schism has crept in and has
fastened like a hideous cancer on the fair
body of early Buddhism.Nāgārjuna s Mahāyāna (Great
Vehicle )School was opposed by the Hīnayāna
(or Little Vehicle )System and even the Yogāchārya of
Ćryāsanga became disfigured by the yearly
pilgrimage from India to the shores of Mansarovara of hosts
of vagabonds with matted locks who play at
being Yogis and Fakirs,preferring this to work.An affected
detestation of the world and the tedious and
useless practice of the counting of inhalations and
exhalations as a means to produce absolute
tranquillity of mind or meditation have brought this school
within the region of Hatha Yoga and have made
it heir to the Brāhmanical Tīrthikas.And though its
Srotāpatti its Sakridāgāmin Anāgāmin and
Arhats,[The Scrotāpatti is one
who has attained the first
Path of comprehension in the real and the
unreal:the Sakridāgāmin is the candidate for one of the higher
Initiations:one who is to receive birth once
more the Anāgāmin is he who has attained the third path
or literally he who will not be reborn again
nless he so wishes it,having the options of being reborn in
any of the worlds of the Gods,or of
remaining in Devachan or of choosing an earthly body with a
philanthropic object.An Arhat is one who has
reached the higher Path:he may merge into Nirvāna at will
while here on earth.] bear the same names in almost every school yet the doctrines of
each differ
greatly and none of these is likely to gain
real Abhijńās (the supernatural abnormal five powers).
One of the chief mistakes of the Orientalists
when judging on internal (?)evidence as they express it
was that they assumed that the Pratyeka
Buddhas,the Bodhisattvas and the Perfect Buddhas were a
later development of Buddhism.For on these
three chief degrees are based the seven and twelve
degrees of the Hierarchy of Adeptship.The
first are those who have attained the Bodhi (wisdom)of the
Buddhas,but do not become Teachers.[The Pratyeka Buddha stands on the
level of the Buddha but His
work for the world has nothing to do with its
teaching and His office has always been surrounded with
mystery.The preposterous view that He at such
superhuman height of power wisdom and love could be
selfish is found in the exoteric books,though
it is hard to see how it can have arisen.H.P.B charged me
to correct the mistake as she had in a
careless moment copied such a statement elsewhere.A.B.]
The human Bodhisattvas are candidates,so to
say for perfect Buddhaship (in Kalpas to come),and with
the option of using their powers now if need
be.
A Mysterious Land -(Page 417)Perfect Buddhas are simply perfect Initiates.All these
are men and
not disembodied Beings,as is given out in the
Hinayāna exoteric books.Their correct character may be
found only in the secret volumes of Lugrub or
Nāgārjuna the founder of the Mahāyāna system who is
said to have been initiated by the Nāgas
(fabulous Serpents, the veiled name for an Initiate or
Mahātmā).The fabled report found in Chinese
records that Nāgārjuna considered his doctrine to be in
opposition to that of Gautama Buddha until he
discovered from the Nāgas that it was precisely the
doctrine that had been secretly taught by
Shākyamuni Himself is an allegory and is based upon the
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reconciliation between the old Brāhmanical
secret Schools in the Himālayas and Gautama s Esoteric
teachings,both parties having at first
objected to the rival schools of the other.The former the parent of
all others,had been established beyond the
Himālayas for ages before the appearance of Shākyamuni.
Gautama was a pupil of this;and it was with
them those Indian Sages,that He has learned the truths of
the Sungata the emptiness and impermanence of
every terrestrial evanescent thing and the mysteries
of Prajńā Pāramitā or knowledge across the
River which finally lands the Perfect One in the regions
of the One Reality.But His Arhats were not
Himself.Some of them were ambitious,and they modified
certain teachings after the great councils,and
it is on account of these heretics that the Mother-School
at first refused to allow them to blend their
schools,when persecution began driving away the Esoteric
Brotherhood from India.But when finally most
of them submitted to the guidance and control of the chief
Ćshrams,then the Yogāchārya of Ćryāsanga was
merged into the oldest Lodge.For it is there from time
immemorial that has lain concealed the final
hope and light of the world the salvation of mankind.Many
are the names of that School and land the name
of the latter being now regarded by the Orientalists as
the mythic name of a fabulous country.It is
from this mysterious land nevertheless,that the Hindu
expects his Kalki Avatāra the Buddhist his
Maitreya the Pārsī his Sosiosh and the Jew his Messiah
and so would the Christian expect thence his
Christ if he only knew of it.
There and there alone reigns Paranishpanna
(Gunggrub),the absolutely perfect comprehension of
Being and Non-Being the changeless true Existence
in Spirit even while the latter is seemingly still in
the body every inhabitant thereof being a
Non-Ego because he has become the Perfect Ego.Their
voidness is self-existent and perfect (Page 418)if there were profane eyes to sense and
perceive it
because it has become absolute;the unreal
being transformed into conditionless Reality and the realities
of this,our world having vanished in their own
nature into thin (non-existing)air.The Absolute Truth
(Dondam-pay-den-pa;Sanskrit:Parmārthasatya)having
conquered relative truth (Kunza-bchi-den-pa;
Sanskrit:Samvritisatya),the inhabitants of the
mysterious region are thus supposed to have reached the
state called in mystic phraseology
Svasamvedanā (self-analyzing reflection )and Paramārtha or that
absolute consciousness of the personal merged
into the impersonal Ego which is above all hence
above illusion in every sense.Its Perfect
Buddhas and Bodhisattvas may be on every nimble Buddhist
tongue as celestial therefore unreachable
Beings,while these names may suggest and say nothing to
the dull perceptions of the European
profane.What matters it to Those who being in this world yet live
outside and far beyond our illusive
earth!Above Them there is but one class of Nirvānīs,namely the
Chos-ku (Dharmakāya),or the Nirvānīs without
remains the pure Arūpa the formless Breaths.[ It is
an erroneous idea which makes the Orientalists
take literally the teaching of the Mahāyāna School about
the three different kinds of bodies,namely the
Prulpa-ku the Longehod-dzocpaig-ku and the Chos-ku
as all pertaining to the Nirvānic
condition.There are two kinds of Nirvāna:the earthly and that of the
purely disembodied Spirits.These three bodies
are the three envelopes all more or less physical
which are at the disposal of the Adept who has
entered and crossed the six Pāramitās,or Paths of
Buddha.Once He enters upon the seventh He can
return no more to earth.See Cosma Jo r.As.Soc.
Beng.,vii.142:and
Schott B ddhism s,p.9 who give it otherwise.]
Thence emerge occasionally the Bodhisattvas in
their Prul-pai-ka (or Nirmānakāya)body and assuming
an ordinary appearance they teach men.There
are conscious,as well as unconscious,incarnations.
Most of the doctrines contained in the
Yogāchārya or Mahāyāna systems are Esoteric,like the rest.One
day the profane Hindu and Buddhist may begin
to pick the Bible to pieces,taking it literally.Education is
fast spreading in Asia and already there have
been made some attempts in this direction so that the
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tables may then be cruelly turned on the
Christians.Whatever conclusions the two may arrive at they will
never be half as absurd and unjust as some of
the theories launched by Christians against their
respective Philosophies.Thus,according to
Spence Hardy at death the Arhat enters Nirvāna:
That is,he ceases to exist.
And agreeably to Major Jacob the Jīvanmukta
Absorbed into Brahma enters upon an
unconscious and stonelike existence.[Vedānta
Sāra,
translated by Major Jacob p.119.]
Absurd Conclusions -(Page 419)Shankarāchārya is shown as saying in his prolegomena to the
Shvetāshvatara :
Gnosis,once arisen requires nothing farther
for the realization of its result:it needs subsidia
only that it may arise.
The Theosophist it has been argued as long as
he lives,may do good and evil as he chooses and incur
no stain such is the efficacy of gnosis.And it
is further alleged that the doctrine of Nirvāna lends itself to
immoral inferences,and that the Quietists of
all ages have been taxed with immortality.[Ibid.p.122.]
According to Wassilyew [Der B ddhism s,pp.327 357 et seq.,quoted by
Schlagintweit.] and Csoma
de Köros,[B ddhism in Tibet,p.41.] the Prasanga School adopted a peculiar mode of
Deducing the absurdity and erroneousness of
every esoteric opinion.[Jo r
of As.Soc.
Bengal,vii
144 quoted as above.]
Correct interpretations of Buddhist Philosophy
are crowned by that gloss on a thesis from the Prasanga
School that
Even an Arhat goes to hell in case he doubt
anything [B ddhism in Tibet,p.44.]
thus making of the most free-thinking religion
in the world a blind-faith system.The threat refers simply
to the well-known law that even an Initiate
may fail and thus have his object utterly ruined if he doubt for
one moment the efficacy of his psychic powers
the alphabet of Occultism as every Kabalist well knows.
The Tibetan sect of the Ngo-vo-nyid-med par
Mraba (they who deny existence or regard nature as
Māyā )[They
maintain also the existence of One Absolute pure Nature Parabrahman:the
illusion of
everything outside of it;the leading of the
individual Soul a Ray of the Universal into the true nature
of existence and things by Yoga alone.] can never be contrasted for one
moment with some of the
nihilistic or materialistic schools of India
such as the Chārvāka.They are pure Vedāntins if anything in
their views.And if the Yogāchāryas may be
compared with or called the Tibetan Vishishtadwaitīs,the
Prasanga School is surely the Adwaita
Philosophy of the land.It was divided into two:one was originally
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founded by Bhavya the Svantatra Madhyamika
School and the other by Buddhapālita;both have their
exoteric and esoteric divisions.It is
necessary to belong to the latter to know anything of the (Page 420)
esoteric doctrines of that sect the most
metaphysical and philosophical of all.Chandrakirti (Dava Dagpa)
wrote his commentaries on the Prasanga
doctrines and taught publicly;and he expressly states that
there are two ways of entering the Path to
Nirvāna.Any virtuous man can reach by Naljorngonsum
(meditation by self-perception ),the
intuitive comprehension of the four Truths,without either belonging
to a monastic order or having been
initiated.In this case it was considered as a heresy to maintain that
the visions which may arise in consequence of
such meditation or Vishnā (internal knowledge),are not
susceptible of errors (Namtog or false
visions),for they are.Alaya alone having an absolute and eternal
existence can alone have absolute
knowledge;and even the Initiate in his Nirmānakāya [Nirmānakāya
(also Nirvānakāya vulg.)is the body or Self
with remains, or the influence of terrestrial attributes,
however spiritualized clinging yet to that
Self.An initiate in Dharmakāya or in Nirvāna without remains,
is the Jīvanmukta the Perfect Initiate who
separates his Higher Self entirely from his body during
Samādhi.[It will be noticed that these two words are here used in a sense
other than that previously
given.A.B.] body may commit an occasional mistake in accepting the false for
the true in his
explorations of the Causeless World.The
Dharmakāya Bodhisattva is alone infallible when in real
Samādhi.Ćlaya or Nying-po being the root and
basis of all invisible and incomprehensible to human
eye and intellect it can reflect only its
reflection not Itself.Thus that reflection will be mirrored like the
moon in tranquil and clear water only in the
passionless Dharmakāya intellect and will be distorted by
the flitting image of everything perceived in
a mind that is itself liable to be disturbed.
In short this doctrine is that of the Rāj-Yoga
in its practice of the two kinds of the Samādhi state;one of
the Paths leading to the sphere of bliss
(Sukhāvatī or Devachan),where man enjoys perfect unalloyed
happiness,but is yet still connected with
personal existence;and the other Path that leads to entire
emancipation from the worlds of illusion self
and unreality.The first one is open to all and is reached by
merit simply;the second a hundredfold more
rapid is reached through knowledge (Initiation).Thus the
followers of the Prasanga School are nearer to
Esoteric Buddhism than are the Yogāchāryas;for their
views are those of the most secret Schools,and
only the echo of these doctrines is heard in the
Yamyangshapda and other works in public circulation and use.For instance
the unreality of two out of
the three divisions of time is given in public
works,namely (a )that there is neither past nor future both of
these divisions being correlative to the
present;and (b )that the reality of things can never be sensed or
perceived except by him who has obtained the
Dharmakāya body;here again is a difficulty since this
body without remains carries the Initiate to
full Paranirvāna if we accept the exoteric explanation
verbally and can therefore neither sense nor
perceive.
Materialistic Orientalists -(Page 421)But evidently our Orientalists do not feel the
caveat in such
incongruities,and they proceed to speculate
without pausing to reflect over it.Literature on Mysticism
being enormous,and Russia owing to the free
intercourse with the Burats Shamans,and Mongolians,
having alone purchased whole libraries on
Tibet scholars ought to know better by this time.It suffices to
read however what Csoma wrote on the origin of
the Kāla Chakra System [The
Secret Books of Dus-
Kyi Khorio (Time Circle ).See Jo r.As.Soc
.ii.57.These works were abandoned to the Sikkhim
Dugpas,from the time of Tsong-Kha-pa s
reform.] or Wassilyew on Buddhism
to make one give up every
hope of seeing them go below the rind of the
forbidden fruit. When Schlagintweit is found saying that
Tibetan Mysticism is not Yoga
That abstract devotion by which supernatural
powers are acquired [ Glossary
of J dicial and
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Reven e Terms,art.Yoga quoted in B ddhism in Tibet.p.47.]
as Yoga is defined by Wilson but that it is
closely related to Siberian Shamanism and is almost identical
with the Tāntrika ritual ;and that the
Tibetan Z ng is the Dhāranīs,and the Gynt only the Tantras
pre-
Christian Tantra being judged by the ritual of
the modern Tāntrikas one seems almost justified in
suspecting our materialistic Orientalists of
acting as the best friends and allies of the missionaries.
Whatever is not known to our geographers seems
to be a non-existent locality.Thus:
Mysticism is reported to have originated in
the fabulous country Sambhala.....Csoma from
caref l investigations,places
this [ fabulous?] country beyond the Sir Daria [Yaxartes ]
between 45 . and 50 . north latitude.It was
first known in India in the year 965 A.D and was
introduced ...into Tibet from India via Kashmir
in the year 1025 A.D.[B
ddhism in Tibet.pp.
47 48.]
It meaning the Dus-kyi Khorlo or Tibetan
Mysteries.A system as old as man known in India and
practised before Europe had become a continent
was first known we are told only nine or ten
centuries ago!The text of its books in its
present form may have originated even later for there are
numerous such texts that have been tampered
with by sects to suit the fancies of each.But who has
read (Page 422)the original book on Dus-Kyi Khorlo re-written by
Tsong-Kha-pa with his Commentaries?
Considering that this grand Reformer burnt
every book on Sorcery on which he could lay his hands in
1387 and that he has left a whole library of
his own works not a tenth part of which has ever been
made known such statements as those above
quoted are to say the least premature.The idea is also
cherished from a happy hypothesis offered by
Abbé Huc that Tsong-Kha-pa derived his wisdom and
acquired his extraordinary powers from his
intercourse with a stranger from the West remarkable for a
long nose. This stranger is believed by the
good Abbé to have been a European missionary; hence the
remarkable resemblance of the religious ritual
in Tibet to the Roman Catholic service.The sanguine
Lama of Jehovah does not say however who
were the five foreigners who appeared in Tibet in the
year 371 of our era to disappear as suddenly
and mysteriously as they came after leaving with King
Thothori-Nyang-tsan instructions how to use
certain things in a casket that had fallen from heaven in his
presence precisely fifty years before or in
the year A.D.331.[B ddhism in
Tibet,pp.63 64.The objects
found in the casket as enumerated in the
exoteric legend are of course symbolical.They may be found
mentioned in the Kanj r .They were said
to be:(1)two hands joined (2)a miniature Choten (Stūpa or
reliquary);(3)a talisman with Om mani padme
hum inscribed on it:(4)a religious book,Zamatog ( a
constructed vehicle ).]
There is generally a hopeless confusion about
Eastern dates among European scholars,but nowhere is
this so great as in the case of Tibetan
Buddhism.Thus,while some correctly enough accept the seventh
century as the date of the introduction of
Buddhism there are others such as Lassen and Koeppung
for instance who show on good authority the
one the construction of a Buddhist monastery on the
slopes of the Kailas Range so far back as the
year 137 B.C.[Alterth mskunde
ii 1072.] and the other
Buddhism established in and north of the
Punjab as early as the year 292 B.C.The difference though
trifling only just one thousand years is
nevertheless puzzling.But even this is easily explained on
Esoteric grounds.Buddhism the veiled
Esotericism of Buddha was established and took root in the
seventh century of the Christian era;while
true Esoteric Buddhism or the kernel the very spirit of
Tathāgata s doctrines,was brought to the
place of its birth the cradle of humanity by the chosen Arhats
of Buddha who were sent to find for it a
secure refuge as
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Introduction of Buddhism into Tibet -(Page 423)The Sage had perceived the dangers ever since
he
had entered upon Thonglam (the Path of seeing
or clairvoyance).
Amidst populations deeply steeped in Sorcery
the attempt proved a failure;and it was not until the
School of the Doctrine of the Heart had
merged with its predecessor established ages earlier on the
slope facing Western Tibet that Buddhism was
finally engrafted with its two distinct Schools the
Esoteric and the exoteric divisions in the
land of the Bhon-pa.
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SECTION LI
The 'Doctrine of the Eye'and The 'Doctrine
of the Heart'or the 'Heart's Seal'.
(Page 424)PROF.ALBRECHT WEBER was right when he declared
that the Northern Buddhists
Alone possess these [Buddhist ] Scriptures
complete.
For while the Southern Buddhists have no idea
of the existence of an esoteric doctrine enshrined like a
pearl within the shell of every religion the
Chinese and the Tibetans have preserved numerous records
of the fact.Degenerate fallen as is now the
Doctrine publicly preached by Gautama it is yet preserved in
those monasteries in China that are placed
beyond the reach of visitors.And though for over two
millennia every new reformer taking
something out of the original has replaced it by some speculation
of his own still truth lingers even now among
the masses.But it is only in the Trans-Himālayan
fastnesses loosely called Tibet in the most
inaccessible spots of desert and mountain that the
Esoteric Good Law the Heart s Seal
lives to the present day in all its pristine purity.
Was Emanual Swedenborg wrong when he remarked
of the forgotten long-lost Word:
Seek for it in China;peradventure you may find
it in Great Tartary.
He had obtained this information he tells his
readers,from certain Spirits,who told him that they
performed their worship according to this
(lost)ancient Word.On this it was remarked in Isis Unveiled
that
Other students of Occult Sciences had more
than the world of spirits to rely upon in this
special case:they have seen the books
that contain the Word.[Op.cit.,ii.470.]
Swedenborg Claims -(Page 425)Perchance the names of those Spirits who visited the great
Swedish
Theosophist were Eastern.The word of a man of
such undeniable and recognised integrity of one whose
learning in Mathematics,Astronomy the natural
Sciences and Philosophy was far in advance of his age
cannot be trifled with or rejected as
unceremoniously as if it were the statement of a modern
Theosophist:further he claimed to pass at will
into that state when the Inner Self frees itself entirely from
every physical sense and lives and breathes in
a world where every secret of Nature is an open book to
the Soul-eye.[Unless one obtains exact information and the right method one s
visions,however correct
and true in Soul-life will ever fail to get
photographed in our human memory and certain cells of the
brain are sure to play havoc with our
remembrances.]Unfortunately
two-thirds of his public writings are
also allegorical in one sense:and as they have
been accepted literally criticism has not spared the great
Swedish Seer any more than other Seers.
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Having taken a panoramic view of the hidden
Sciences and Magic with their Adepts in Europe Eastern
Initiates must now be mentioned.If the
presence of Esotericism in the Sacred Scriptures of the West only
now begins to be suspected after nearly two
thousand years of blind faith in their verbatim wisdom the
same may well be granted as to the Sacred
Books of the East.Therefore neither the Indian nor the
Buddhist system can be understood without a
key nor can the study of comparative religion become a
Science until the symbols of every Religion
yield their final secrets.At the best such a study will remain
a loss of time a playing at hide-and-seek.
On the authority of a Japanese Encyclopędia,Remusat
shows the Buddha before His death
committing the secrets of His system to His
disciple Kāsyapa to whom alone was entrusted the sacred
keeping of the Esoteric interpretation.It is
called in China Ching-fa-yin-Tsang (the Mystery of the Eye of
the Good Doctrine ).To any student of
Buddhist Esotericism the term the Mystery of the Eye would
show the absence of any Esotericism.Had the
word Heart stood in its place then it would have meant
what it now only professes to convey.The Eye
Doctrine means dogma and dead-letter form church
ritualism intended for those who are content
with exoteric formulę.The Heart Doctrine or the Heart s
Seal (the Sin Yin)is the only real one.This
may be found corroborated by Hiuen Tsang.(Page 426)In his
translation of Mahā-Prajnā-Pāramitā (Ta-poh-je-King
),in one hundred and twenty volumes,it is stated
that it was Buddha s favourite disciple
Ćnanda who after his great Master had gone into Nirvāna was
commissioned by Kāsyapa to promulgate the Eye
of the Doctrine the Heart of the Law having been
left with the Arhats alone.
The essential difference that exists between
the two the Eye and the Heart or the outward form and
the hidden meaning the cold metaphysics and
the Divine Wisdom is clearly demonstrated in several
volumes on Chinese Buddhism written by
sundry missionaries.Having lived for years in China they
still know no more than they have learned from
pretentious schools calling themselves esoteric,yet freely
supplying the open enemies of their faith with
professedly ancient manuscripts and esoteric works!This
ludicrous contradiction between profession and
practice has never as it seems,struck any of the western
and reverend historians of other people s
secret tenets.Thus many esoteric schools are mentioned in
Chinese B ddhism by the Rev.Joseph Edkins,who believes quite sincerely that
he has made a minute
examination of the secret tenets of Buddhists
whose works were until lately inaccessible in their original
form.It really will not be saying too much to
state at once that the genuine Esoteric literature is
inaccessible to this day and that the
respectable gentleman who was inspired to state that
It does not appear that there was any secret
doctrine which those who knew it would not
divulge
made a great mistake if he ever believed in
what he says on page 161 of his work.Let him know at once
that all those Yū-luh (Records of the Sayings
)of celebrated teachers are simply blinds,as complete if
not more so than those in the Purānas of the
Brāhmans.It is useless to enumerate an endless string of
the finest Oriental scholars or to bring
forward the researches of Remusat Burnouf Koeppen St.Hilaire
and St.Julian who are credited with having
exposed to view the ancient Hindu world by revealing the
sacred and secret books of Buddhism:the world
that they reveal has never been veiled.The mistakes of
all the Orientalists may be judged by the
mistake of one of the most popular if not the greatest among
them all Prof.Max Müller.It is made with
reference to what he laughingly translates as the god Who
(Ka).
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The God 'Who'-(Page 427)The authors of the
Brāhmanas had so completely broken with the
past that forgetful of the poetical character
of the hymns and the yearning of the poets after
the Unknown God they exalted the interrogative
pronoun itself into a deity and acknowledged
a god Ka (or Who?)...Wherever interrogative
verses occur the author states that Ka is
Prajāpati or the Lord of Creatures.Nor did
they stop here.Some of the hymns in which the
interrogative pronoun occurred were called
Kadvat i.e.,having Kad or Quid.But soon a new
adjective was formed and not only the hymns
but the sacrifice also offered to the god were
called Kaya or Who -ish ....At the time of
Pānini this word acquired such legitimacy as to
call for a separate rule explaining its
formation.The Commentator here explains Ka by
Brahman.
Had the commentator explained It even by
Parabrahman he would have been still more in the right than
he was by rendering It as Brahman.One fails
to see why the secret and sacred Mystery-Name of the
highest sexless,formless Spirit the Absolute
Whom no one would have dared to classify with the rest
of the manifested Deities,or even to name
during the primitive nomenclature of the symbolical
Panthenon should not be expressed by an
interrogative pronoun.Is it those who belong to the most
anthropomorphic Religion in the world who have
a right to take ancient Philosophers to task for even an
exaggerated religious awe and veneration?
But we are now concerned with Buddhism.Its
Esotericism and oral instruction which is written down and
preserved in single copies by the highest
chiefs in genuine Esoteric Schools,is shown by the author San-
Kian-yi-su.Contrasting Bodhidharma with Buddha
he exclaims:
Julai (Tathāgata)taught great truths and the
causes of things.He became the instructor of
men and Devas.He saved multitudes,and spoke
the contents of more than five hundred
works.Hence arose the Kiau-men or exoteric
branch of the system and it was believed to be
the tradition of the words of
Buddha.Bodhidharma brought from the Western Heaven
[Shamballa ] the
Seal of Truth (true seal)and opened the fountain of contemplation in the
East.He pointed directly to Buddha s heart
and nature swept away the parasitic and alien
growth of book-instruction and thus
established the Tsung-men or Esoteric branch of the
system containing the tradition of the heart
of Buddha.[ Chinese B ddhism,p.158.The
Rev.
Joseph Edkins either ignores or which is more
probable is utterly ignorant of the real
existence of such Schools,and judges by the
Chinese travesties of these calling such
Esotericism heterodox Buddhism.And so it
is,in one sense.]
A few remarks made by the author of Chinese
B ddhism throw a flood of light on the universal
misconceptions of Orientalists in general and (Page 428)of the missionaries in the lands of the
Gentiles
in particular.They appeal very forcibly to the
intuition of Theosophists more particularly those in India.
The sentences to be noticed are italicized.
The common [Chinese ]word for
the Esoteric Schools is dan the Sanskrit Dhyāna ....Orthodox
Buddhism has in China slowly but steadily become
heterodox.The Buddhism of books and ancient
traditions has become the B ddhism of
mystic contemplation ....The history of ancient schools
springing up long ago in the Buddhist
communities of India can now be only very partially recovered.
Possibly some light may be thrown back by
China upon the religious history of the country from which
Buddhism came.[That country India has lost the records of such Schools and
their teaching only so
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far as the general public,and especially the
inappreciative Western Orientalists are concerned.It has
preserved them in full in some
Mathams,(refuges for mystic contemplation).But it may perhaps be better
to seek them with and from their rightful
owners,the so-called mythical Adepts or Mahātmās.] In no
part of the story is aid to the recovery of
the lost knowledge more likely to be found than in the accounts
of the patriarchs,the line of whom was completed
by Bodhidharma.In seeking the best explanation of
the Chinese and Japanese narrative of the
patriarchs,and the seven B ddhas terminating in Gautama
or Shākyamuni it is important to know the Jain
traditions as they were early in the sixth century of our
era when the Patriarch Bodhidharma removed to
China ....
In tracing the rise of the various schools of
esoteric Buddhism it must be kept in mind that a principle
somewhat similar to the dogma of apostolical
succession belongs to them all.They all profess to derive
their doctrines thro gh a succession of
teachers,each instructed personally by his predecessor,till the
time of Bodhidharma,and so f rther p in the
series to Shākyam ni himself and the earlier B ddhas.
[Chinese B ddhism.pp.155-159.]
It is complained further on and is mentioned
as a falling away from strict orthodox Buddhism that the
Lamas of Tibet are received in Pekin with
the tmost respect by the Emperor.
The following passages,taken from different
parts of the book,summarise Mr.Edkin s views:
Hermits are not uncommonly met with in the
vicinity of large Buddhist temples ...their hair
being allowed to grow unshorn....The doctrine
of metempsychosis is rejected.Buddhism is
one form of Pantheism on the ground that the
doctrine of metempsychosis makes all nature
instinct with life and that that life is the
Deity assuming different forms of personality that Deity
not being a self-conscious,free-acting
Self-Cause but an all-pervading Spirit.The esoteric
Buddhists of China keeping rigidly to their
one doctrine [They certainly
reject most
emphatically the popular theory of the
transmigration of human entities or Souls into animals,
but not the evolution of men from animals
so far at least as their lower principles are
concerned.] say nothing of the metempsychosis,....or any other of the more
material parts
of the Buddhist system ......The Western
paradise promised to the worshippers of Amida
Buddha is ...inconsistent with the doctrine of
Nirvana [?].[It is quite consistent on the
contrary when explained in the light of the
Esoteric Doctrine.The Western paradise or
Western heaven is no fiction located in
transcendental space.It is a bona-fide locality in the
mountain or to be more correct one encircled
in a desert within mountains.Hence it is
assigned for the residence of those students
of Esoteric Wisdom disciples of Buddha who
have attained the rank of Lohans and Anāgāmins
(Adepts).It is called Western simply from
geographical considerations:and the great
iron mountain girdle that surrounds the Avitchi
and the seven Lokas that encircle the Western
paradise are a very exact representation of
well-known localities and things to the
Eastern student of Occultism.]
More Misrepresentations -(Page 429)....It promises immortality instead of annihilation.
The great antiquity of this School is evident
from the early date of the translation of the Amida
Sū tra
which came from the hands of Kumārajīva and Ku-lian-theu-King dating from the
Han
dynasty its extent of influence is seen in the
attachment of the Tibetans and Moguls to the
worship of this Buddha and in the fact that
the name of this fictitious personage [?]is more
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commonly heard in China than that of the
historical Shākyamuni.
We fear the learned writer is on a false track
as to Nirvāna and Amita Buddha.However here we have
the evidence of a missionary to show that there
are several schools of Esoteric Buddhism in the Celestial
Empire.When the misuse of dogmatical orthodox
Buddhist Scriptures had reached its climax and the
true spirit of the Buddha s Philosophy was
nearly lost several reformers appeared from India who
established an oral teaching.Such were
Bodhidharma and Nāgārjuna the authors of the most important
works of the contemplative School in China
during the first centuries of our era.It is known moreover as
is said in Chinese B ddhism that
Bodhidharma became the chief founder of the Esoteric Schools,which
were divided into five principal branches.The
data given are correct enough but every conclusion
without one single exception is wrong.It was
said in Isis Unveiled that
Budda teaches the doctrine of a new birth as
plainly as Jesus does.Desiring to break with the
ancient Mysteries,to which it was impossible
to admit the ignorant masses,the Hindu
reformer though generally silent upon more
than one secret dogma clearly states his thought
in several passages.Thus,he says:Some
people are born again;evil-doers go to hell
[Avitchi ];righteous
people go to heaven [Devachan ] ;those who are free from all worldly
desires enter Nirvāna (Precepts of the
Dhammapada,v.126).Elsewhere Buddha states that
it is better to believe in a future life in
which happiness or misery can be felt:for if the heart
believes therein it will abandon sin and act
virtuously;and even if there is no resurrection
[rebirth ] such
a life will bring a good name and the reward of men.But those who believe in
extinction at death will not fail to commit
any sin that they may choose because of their
disbelief in a future.(See Wheel of the
Law.)
How is immortality then inconsistent with the
doctrine of (Page 430)Nirvāna?The above
are only a few
of Buddha s openly-expressed thoughts to his
chosen Arhats;the great Saint said much more.As a
comment upon the mistaken views held in our
century by the Orientalists,who vainly try to fathom
Tathāgata s thoughts,and those of
Brāhmans,who repudiate the great Teacher to this day here are
some original thoughts expressed in relation
to the Buddha and the study of the Secret Sciences.They
are from a work written in Chinese by a
Tibetan and published in the monastery of Tientaļ for circulation
among the Buddhists
Who live in foreign lands,and are in danger of
being spoiled by missionaries,
as the author truly says,every convert being
not only spoiled for his own creed but being also a sorry
acquisition for Christianity.A translation of
a few passages,kindly made from that work for the present
volumes is now given.
No profane ears having heard the mighty
Chau-yan [secret and
enlightening precepts ] of
Vu-
vei-Tchen-jen [Buddha within Buddha ] [The word is translated by the Orientalists as true man
without a position (?)which is very
misleading.It simply means the true inner man or Ego.
Buddha within Buddha meaning that
there was a Gautama inwardly as well as o twardly.] of
our beloved Lord and Bodhisattva how can one
tell what his thoughts really were?The holy
Sang-gyas-Panchhen [One of the titles of Gautama Buddha in Tibet.] never offered an insight
into the One Reality to the unreformed [uninitiated ] Bhikkus.Few are those even among the
Tu-fon [Tibetans
] who knew it;as for the
Tsung-men [The Esoteric
Schools,or sects,of
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which there are many in China.] Schools,they are going with every
day more down hill ....
Not even the Fa-siong-Tsung [ A school of contemplation founded by
Hiuen-Tsang the
traveller nearly extinct.Fa-siong-Tsung means
the School that unveils the inner nature of
things.] can give one the wisdom taught in real Naljor-chod-pa [Sanskrit:[ Esoteric,or hidden
teaching of Yoga (Chinese:Yogi-mi-Kean).]Yogāchārya ]:....it is all Eye Doctrine and no
more.The loss of a restraining guidance is
felt;since the Tch -an-si [teachers
] of inward
meditation [self-contemplation or Tchung-kwan ] have become rare and the Good Law is
replaced by idol-worship [Siang-kyan ] .It is of this [idol-or
image-worship ] that the
Barbarians
[Western people ] have
heard and know nothing of Bas-pa-Dharma [the
secret Dharma or
doctrine ] .Why has truth to hide like a tortoise within its shell?Because
it is now found to have
become like the Lama s tonsure knife [The tonsure knife is made of meteoric
iron and is
used for the purpose of cutting off the
vow-lock, or hair from the novice s head during his first
ordination.It has a double-edged blade is
sharp as a razor and lies concealed within a hollow
handle of horn.By touching a spring the blade
jerks out like a flash of lightening and recedes
back with the same rapidity.A great dexterity
is required in using it without wounding the head
of the young Gelung and Gelung-ma (candidates
to become priests and nuns)during the
preliminary rites,which are public.] a weapon too dangerous to use even
for the Lanoo.
Therefore no one can be entrusted with the
knowledge [Secret Science ] before his time.
Āryāsanga -(Page 431)The Chagpa-Thog-mad have become rare and the best have
retired
to Tushita the Blessed.[Chapa-Thog-mad is the Tibetan name of Ćryāsanga the founder of
the Yogāchārya or Naljorchodpa School.This
Sage and Initiate is said to have been taught
Wisdom by Maitreya Buddha Himself the Buddha
of the Sixth Race at Tushita (a celestial
region presided over by Him),and as having
received from Him the five books of
Champaitehos-nga .The Secret Doctrine teaches,however that he came from
Dejung or
Shambballa called the source of happiness
(wisdom-acquired )and declared by some
Orientaliss to be a fabulous place.]
Further on a man seeking to master the
mysteries of Esotericism before he had been declared by the
initiated Tch -an-si (teachers)to be ready to
receive them is likened to
One who would;without a lantern and on a dark
night proceed to a place full of scorpions,
determined to feel on the ground for a needle
his neighbour has dropped.
Again:
He who would acquire the Sacred Knowledge
should before he goes any farther trim his
lamp of
inner understanding and then with the help of such good light use his
meritorious
actions as a dust-cloth to remove every impurity
from his mystic mirror [ It may
not be
perhaps,amiss to remind the reader of the fact
that the mirror was a part of the symbolism of
the Thesmophoria a portion of the Eleusinian
Mysteries;and that it was used in the search for
Atma the Hidden One or Self. In his
excellent paper on the above-named mysteries,Dr.
Alexander Wilder of New York says:Despite the
assertion of Herodotus and others that the
Bacchic Mysteries were Egyptian there exists
strong probability that they came originally from
India and were Shaivitic or
Buddhistical.Kore-Persep-honeia was but the goddess Parasu-
pani or Bhavani and Zagreus is from Chakra a
country extending from ocean to ocean.If this
is a Turanian story we can easily recognise
the horns as the crescent worn by Lama-priests
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and assume the whole legend [the fable of Dionysus-Zagreus ] to be based on Lama-
succession and transmigration ....The whole
story of Orpheus ...has a Hindu ring all
through. The tale of Lama-succession and
transmigration did not originate with the Lamas,
who date themselves only so far back as the
seventh century but with the Chaldęans and the
Brāhmans still earlier.] so that he should be enabled to see in its lustre the faithful
reflection of
Self ....First this;then Tong pa-nya [The state of absolute freedom from
any sin or desire.]
lastly;Samma Sambuddha.[The state during which an Adept sees the long series of his past
births,and lives through all his previous
incarnations in this and the other worlds.(See the
admirable description in the Light of Asia .p.166
1884 ed.)]
In Chinese B ddhism a corroboration of
these statements is to be found in the aphorisms of Lin-tsi:
Within the body which admits
sensations,acquires knowledge thinks,and acts,there is the
true man without a position
Wu-wei-chen-jen.He makes himself clearly visible;not the
thinnest separating film hides him.Why do you
not recognise him?...If the mind does not
come to conscious existence there is
deliverance everywhere .....What is Buddha?Ans.A
mind clear and at rest.What is the Law?Ans.A
mind clear and enlightened.What is Ta ?
Ans.In
every place absence of impediments and pure enlightenment.These three are one.
(Page 432)The reverend author of Chinese B ddhism makes
merry over the symbolism of Buddhist
discipline.Yet the self-inflicted slaps on
the cheek and blows under the ribs find their pendants in the
mortifications of the body and
self-flagellation the discipline of the scourge of the Christian monks,
from the first centuries of Christianity down
to our own day..But then the said author is a Protestant who
substitutes for mortification and discipline
good living and comfort.The sentence in the Lin-tsi
The true man without a position
Wu-wei-chen-jen is wrapped in a prickly shell like the
chestnut.He cannot be approached.This is
Buddha the Buddha within you
is laughed at.Truly
An infant cannot understand the seven enigmas!
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SOME PAPERS ON THE BEARING OF OCCULT PHILOSOPHY ON LIFE
(Page 433-434)
Note
Papers I.II.III.of the following were written
by H.P.B and were circulated privately during her lifetime but
they were written with the idea that they
would be published after a time.They are papers intended for
students rather than for the ordinary reader
and will repay careful study and thought.The Notes of some
Oral Teaching were written down by some of
her pupils and were partially corrected by her but no
attempt has been made to relieve them of their
fragmentary character.She had intended to make them
the basis for written papers similar to the
first three but her failing health rendered this impossible and
they are published with her consent the time
for restricting them to a limited circle having expired.
Annie Besant
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PAPER 1
A Warning
(Page 435)THERE is a strange law in Occultism which has
been ascertained and proven by thousands of
years of experience;nor has it failed to
demonstrate itself almost in every case during the years that the
Theosophical Society has been in existence.As
soon as anyone pledges himself as a Probationer
certain Occult effects ensue.Of these the
first is the throwing o tward of everything latent in the nature of
the man;his faults habits qualities or subdued
desires,whether good bad or indifferent.
For instance if a man be vain or a sensualist
or ambitious,whether by atavism or by karmic heirloom
those vices are sure to break out even if he
has hitherto successfully concealed and repressed them.
They will come to the front irrepressibly and
he will have to fight a hundred times harder than before
until he kills all such tendencies in himself.
On the other hand if he be good
generous,chaste and abstemious,or has any virtue hitherto latent and
concealed in him it will work its way out as
irrepressibly as the rest.Thus a civilized man who hates to be
considered a saint and therefore assumes a
mask,will not be able to conceal his true nature whether
base or noble.
THIS IS AN IMMUTABLE LAW IN THE DOMAIN OF THE OCCULT .
Its action is the more marked the more earnest
and sincere the desire of the candidate and the more
deeply he has felt the reality and importance
of his pledge.
The ancient occult axiom Know Thyself must
be familiar to every student;but few if any have
apprehended the real meaning of this wise
exhortation of the Delphic Oracle.You all know your earthly
pedigree but who of you has ever traced all
the links of heredity (Page
436)astral
psychic and spiritual
which go to make you what you are?Many have
written and expressed their desire to unite themselves
with their Higher Ego yet none seem to know
the indissoluble link connecting their Higher Egos with
the One Universal SELF.
For all purposes of Occultism whether
practical or purely metaphysical such knowledge is absolutely
requisite.It is proposed therefore to begin
these papers by showing this connection in all directions with
the worlds:Absolute Archetypal Spiritual
Mānasic,Psychic,Astral and Elemental.Before however we
can touch upon the higher worlds Archetypal
Spiritual and Mānasic we must master the relations of
the seventh the terrestrial world the lower
Prakriti or Malkuth as in the Kabalah to the worlds or planes
which immediately follow it.
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Om
OM,says the Ćryan Adept the son of the Fifth
Race who with this syllable begins and ends his
salutation to the human being his conjuration
of or appeal to non-human PRESENCES.
OM-MANI murmurs the Turanian Adept the
descendant of the Fourth Race;and after pausing he
adds,PADME-HUM.
This famous invocation is very erroneously
translated by the Orientalists as meaning Oh the Jewel in
the Lotus. For although literally OM is a
syllable sacred to the Deity PADME means in the Lotus,and
MANI is any precious stone still neither the
words themselves,nor their symbolical meaning are thus
really correctly rendered.
In this,the most sacred of all Eastern
formulas,not only has every syllable a secret potency producing a
definite result but the whole invocation has
seven different meanings and can produce seven distinct
results,each of which may differ from the
others.
The seven meanings and the seven results
depend upon the intonation which is given to the whole
formula and to each of its syllables;and even
the numerical value of the letters is added to or diminished
according as such or another rhythm is made
use of.Let the student remember that number underlies
form and number guides sound.Number lies at
the root of the manifested Universe:numbers and
harmonious proportions guide the first
differentiations of homogeneous substance into heterogeneous
elements;and number and numbers set limits to
the formative hand of Nature.
The Jewel of the Lotus -(Page 437)Know the corresponding numbers of the
fundamental principle of
every element and its sub-elements,learn their
interaction and behaviour on the occult side of
manifesting Nature and the law of
correspondences will lead you to the discovery of the greatest
mysteries of macrocosmical life.
But to arrive at the macrocosmical you must
begin by the microcosmical i.e.,you must study MAN the
microcosm in this case as physical science
does inductively proceeding from particulars to
universals.At the same time however since a
key-note is required to analyze and comprehend any
combination of differentiations of sound we
must never lose sight of the Platonic method which starts
with one general view of all and descends from
the universal to the individual.This is the method
adopted in Mathematics the only exact science
that exists in our day.
Let us study Man therefore;but if we separate
him for one moment from the Universal Whole or view
him in isolation from a single aspect apart
from the Heavenly Man the Universe symbolized by Adam
Kadmon or his equivalents in every Philosophy
we shall either land in Black Magic or fail most
ingloriously in our attempt.
Thus the mystic sentence Om Mani Padme H
m,when rightly understood instead of being composed
of the almost meaningless words,Oh the Jewel
of the Lotus,contains a reference to this indissoluble
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union between Man and the Universe rendered in
seven different ways,and having the capability of
seven different applications to as many planes
of thought and action.
From whatever aspect we examine it it means:
I am that I am; I am in thee and thou art in me.In this
conjunction and close union with the good and
pure man becomes a God.Whether consciously or
unconsciously he will bring about or
innocently cause to happen unavoidable results.In the first case if
an Initiate (of course an Adept of the
Right-hand Path alone is meant),he can guide a beneficent or a
protecting current and thus benefit and
protect individuals and even whole nations.In the second case
although quite unaware of what he is doing the
good man becomes a shield to whomsoever he is with.
Such is the fact;but its how and why have to
be explained and this can be done only when the actual
presence and potency of numbers in sounds,and
hence in words and letters,have been rendered clear.
The formula Om Mani Padme H m, has
been chosen as an illustration on account of its almost infinite
potency in the mouth of an Adept and (Page 438)of its potentiality when pronounced by any
man.Be
careful all you who read this:do not use these
words in vain or when in anger lest you become yourself
the first sacrificial victim or what is worse
endanger those whom you love.
The profane Orientalist who all his life skims
mere externals,will tell you flippantly and laughing at the
superstition that in Tibet this sentence is
the most powerful six-syllabled incantation and is said to have
been delivered to the nations of Central Asia
by Padmapāni the Tibetan Chenresi.[See
supra.ii.188.
189.]
But who is Padmapāni in reality?Each of us
must recognize him for himself whenever he is ready.Each
of us has within himself the Jewel in the
Lotus, call it Padmapāni Krishna Buddha Christ or whatever
name we may give to our Divine Self.The
exoteric story runs thus:
The supreme Buddha or Amitābha they say at the
hour of the creation of man caused a rosy ray of
light to issue from his right eye.The ray
emitted a sound and became Padmapāni Bodhisattva.Then the
Deity allowed to stream forth from his left
eye a blue ray of light which becoming incarnate in the two
virgins Dolma acquired the power to enlighten
the minds of living beings.Amhitābha then called the
combination which forthwith took up its abode
in man.Om Mani Padme H m, I am the Jewel in the
Lotus and in it I will remain.Then Padmapāni
the One in the Lotus,vowed never to cease working
until he had made Humanity feel his presence
in itself and had thus saved it from the misery of rebirth.
He vowed to perform the feat before the end of
the Kalpa adding that in case of failure he wished that
his head should split into numberless
fragments.The Kalpa closed;but Humanity felt him not within its
cold evil heart.Then Padmapāni s head split
and was shattered into a thousand fragments.Moved with
compassion the Deity re-formed the pieces into
ten heads,three white and seven of various colours.
And since that day man has become a perfect
number or TEN.
In this allegory the potency of SOUND COLOUR
and NUMBER is so ingeniously introduced as to veil
the real Esoteric meaning.To the outsider it
reads like one of the many meaningless fairy-tales of
creation;but it is pregnant with spiritual and
divine physical and magical meaning.From Amitābha no
colo r or
the white glory are born the seven differentiated colours of the
prism.
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The Pythagorean Tetrad -(Page 439)These each emit a corresponding sound forming
the seven of the
m sical scale.As Geometry among the Mathematical Sciences,is specially
related to Architecture and
also (proceeding to Universals)to Cosmogony so
the ten Jods of the Pythagorean
Tetrad or Tetraktys being made to symbolize
the Macrocosm the Microcosm or
man its image had also to be divided into ten
points.For this Nature herself has
provided as will be seen.
But before this statement can be proved and
the perfect correspondences between
the Macrocosm and Microcosm demonstrated a few
words of explanation are
necessary.
To the learner who would study the Esoteric
Sciences with their double object:(a )of proving Man to be
identical in spiritual and physical essence
with both the Absolute Principle and with God in Nature;and
(b )of demonstrating the presence in
him of the same potential powers as exist in the creative forces in
Nature to such a one a perfect knowledge of
the correspondences between Colours,Sounds,and
Numbers is the first requisite.As already said
the sacred formula of the far East Om Mani Padme
H m.is
the one best calculated to make these correspondential qualities and functions
clear to the
learner.
In the allegory of Padmapāni the Jewel (or
Spiritual Ego)in the Lotus,or the symbol of androgynous
man the numbers 3 4 7 10 as synthesizing the Unit
Man are prominent as I have already said.It is
on the thorough knowledge and comprehension of
the meaning and potency of these numbers,in their
various and multiform combinations,and in
their mutual correspondence with sounds or words,and
colours or rates of motion (represented in
physical science by vibrations),that the progress of a student
in Occultism depends.Therefore we must begin
with the first initial word OM,or AUM.OM is a blind.
The sentence Om Mani Padme H m,is not
a six-but a seven-syllabled phrase as the first syllable is
double in its right pronunciation and triple
in its essence A-UM.It represents the for ever concealed
primeval triune differentiation not from but
in the ONE Absolute and is therefore symbolized by the 4 or
the Tetraktys,in the metaphysical world.It is
the Unit-ray or Ćtman.
It is the Ćtman this highest Spirit in man
which in conjunction with Buddhi and Manas,is called the
upper Triad or Trinity.This (Page 440)Triad with its four lower human
principles,is,moreover enveloped
with an auric atmosphere like the yolk of an
egg (the future embryo)by the albumen and shell.This,to
the perceptions of higher Beings from other
planes,makes of each individuality an oval sphere of more
or less radiancy.
To show the student the perfect correspondence
between the birth of Kosmos,a World a Planetary
Being or a Child of Sin and Earth a more
definite and clear description must be given.Those acquainted
with Physiology will understand it better than
others.
Who having read say the Vishn or other P
rāna,is not familiar with the exoteric allegory of the birth of
Brahmā (male-female)in the Egg of the World
Hiranyagarbha surrounded by its seven zones,or rather
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planes,which in the world of form and matter
become seven and fourteen Lokas;the numbers seven and
fourteen reäppearing as occasion requires.
Without giving out the secret analysis,the
Hindus have from time immemorial compared the matrix of the
Universe and also the solar matrix to the
female uterus.It is written of the former:Its womb is vast as
the Meru and
The future mighty oceans lay asleep in the
waters that filled its cavities,the continents,seas
and mountains,the stars,planets,the
gods,demons and mankind.
The whole resembled in its inner and outer
coverings,the cocoanut filled interiorly with pulp and
covered externally with husk and rind.Vast as
Meru say the texts.
Meru was its Amnion and the other mountains
were its Chorion
adds a verse in Vishn P rāna.[ Wilson s translation as amended by
Fitzedward Hall i.40.]
In the same way is man born in his mother s
womb.As Brahmā is surrounded in exoteric traditions,by
seven layers within and seven without the
Mundane Egg so is the embryo (the first or the seventh layer
according to the end from which we begin to
count).Thus,just as Esotericism in its Cosmogony
enumerates seven inner and seven outer
layers,so Physiology notes the contents of the uterus as seven
also although it is completely ignorant of
this being a copy of what takes place in the Universal Matrix.
These contents are:
1.Embryo.2.Amniotic Fl id,immediately
surrounding the Embryo.3.Amnion,a membrane derived from
the Ftus,which contains the fluid.4.Umbilical
l esicle,which serves to convey nourishment originally to
the Embryo and to nourish it.
Seven Correspondential Contents -(Page 441)5.Allantois a protrusion from the
Embryo in the form of
a closed bag which spreads itself between 3
and 7 in the midst of 6 and which after being specialized
into the Placenta serves to conduct
nourishment to the Embryo.6.Interspace between 3 and 7 (the
Amnion and Chorion),filled with an albuminous
fluid.7.Chorion,or outer layer.
Now each of these seven contents severally
corresponds with and is formed after an antetype one on
each of the seven planes of being with which
in their turn correspond the seven states of Matter and all
other forces,sensational or functional in
Nature.
(Page 442)
The following is a bird s-eye view of the
seven correspondential contents of the wombs of Nature and of
Woman.We may contrast them thus:
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Cosmic Process (Upper Pole)Human Process (Lower Pole)
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1
The mathematical Point called the "Cosmic
See"the Monad of Leibnix;which contians
the whole Universe as the acorn the oak.
This is the first bubble on the surface of
boundless homogeneous Substance or
Space the buble of differentiation in its
incipient stage.It is the beginning of the
Orphic or Brahmā's Egg.It corresponds in
Astrology and Astronomy to the Sun
The terrestrial Embryo which contains in it
the
future man with all his potentialities.In the
series of principles of the human system it is
the
Atman or the super-spiritual principle just as
in
the physical Solar System it is the Sun
2
The vis vitae of our solar system exudes from
the Sun.
(a)It is called when referred to the higher
planes,Akāsha
(b)It proceeds from the ten
"divinities"the ten
numbers of the Sun which is itself the
"Perfect Number".These are called
Dis -in
reality Space -the forces spread in Space
three of which are contained in the Sun's
Atman or seventh principle and seven are
the rays shot out by the Sun.
The Amniotic Fluid exudes from the Embryo.
(a)It is called on the plane of matter Prāna
[ Prāna is in reality the universal Life Principle.]
(b)It proceeds,taking its source in the
universal
One Life from the heart of man and Buddhi
over which the Seven Solar Rays (Gods)
preside.
3
The Ether of Space which in its external
aspect is the plastic crust which is supposed
to envelope the Sun.On the higher plane it is
the whole Universe as the third
differentiation
of evolving Substance Mulaprakriti becoming
Prakriti.
(a)It corresponds mystically to the
manifested Mahat or the Intellect or Soul of
the World
The Amnion the membrane containing the
Amniotic Frluid and enveloping the Embryo.
After the birth of man it becomes the third
layer
so to say of his magneto-vital aura.
(a)Manas,the third principle (counting from
above),or the Human Soul in Man.
4 The sidereal contents of Ether the
substantial
parts of it unknown to Modern Science
represented:
(a)In Occult and Kabalistic Mysteries,by
Elementals.
(b)In physical Astronomy by
meteors,comets,and all kinds of casual and
phenomenal cosmic bodies
Umbilical Vesicle serving as Science teaches,
to nourish the Embryo originally but as Occult
Science avers,to carry to the Foetus by
osmosis the cosmic influences extraneous to
the mother.
(a)In the grown man these become the feeders
of Kāma over which they preside.
(b)In the physical man his passions and
emotions,the moral meteors and comets of
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human nature.
5
Life currents in Ether having their origin in
the Sun:the canals through which the vital
principle of that Ether (the blood of the
Cosmic Body)passes to nourish everything
on the Earth and on the other Planets:from
the minerals,which are thus made to grow
and become specialized from the plants,
which are thus fed to animal and man to
whom life is thus imparted.
The Allantois,a protrusion from the Embryo
which spreads itself between the Amnion and
Chorion;it is supposed to conduct the
nourishment from the mother to the Embryo.It
corresponds to the life-principle Prāna or
Jīva.
6
The double radiation psychic and physical
which radiates from the Cosmic Seed and
expands around the whole Kosmos,as well
as around the Solar System and every
Planet.In Occultism it is called the upper
divine and the lower material Astral Light.
The Allantois is divided into two layers.The
inter space between the Amnion and the
Chorion contains the Allantois and also an
albuminous fluid.[All the uterine contents,
having a direct spiritual connnection with
their
cosmic antetypes,are on the physical plane
potent objects in Black Magic,and are
therefore
considered unclean.]
7
The outer crust of every sidereal body the
Shell of the Mundane Egg or the sphere of
our Solar System of our Earth and of every
man and animal.In sidereal space Ether
proper;on the terrestrial plane Air which
again is built in seven layers.
(a)The primordial potential world-stuff
becomes (for the Manvantaric period)the
permanent globe or globes.
The Chorion or the Zona Pellucida the globular
object called Blastodermic Vesicle the outer
and the inner layers of the membrane of which
go to form the physical man.The outer or
ectoderm forms his epidermis;the inner or
endoderm his muscles,bones,etc..Man's skin
again is composed of seven layers.
(a)The "primitive"becomes the
"permanent"
Chorion.
Correspondence Between Races and Man -(Page 443)Even in the
evolution of the Races we see the
same order as in Nature and Man.[See supra,ii.Part I.] Placental animal-man became such
only after
the separation of sexes in the Third
Root-Race.In the physiological evolution the placenta is fully formed
and functional only after the third month of
uterine life.
(Page 444)Let us put aside such human conceptions as a
personal God and hold to the purely divine to
that which underlies all and everything in
boundless Nature.It is called by its Sanskrit Esoteric name in
the Vedas TAT (or THAT),a term for the
unknowable Rootless Root.If we do so we may answer these
seven questions of the Esoteric Catechism thus:
(1)Q.What is the Eternal Absolute?
A.THAT.
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(2)Q.How came Kosmos into being?
A.Through THAT.
(3)Q.How or what will it be when it falls
back into Pralaya?
A.In THAT.
(4)Q.Whence all the animate and
suppositionally the inanimate nature?
A.From THAT.
(5)Q.What is the Substance and Essence of
which the Universe is formed?
A.THAT.
(6)Q.Into what has it been and will be again
and again resolved?
A.Into THAT.
(7)Q.Is THAT then both the instrumental and
material cause of the Universe?
A.What else is it or can it be than THAT?
As the Universe the Macrocosm and the
Microcosm [The Solar System or
the Earth as the case may
be.] are
ten why should we divide Man into seven principles ?This is
the reason why the perfect
number ten is divided into two:in their
completeness,i.e.,super-spiritually and physically the forces are
TEN:to-wit three on the subjective and
inconceivable and seven on the objective plane.Bear in mind
that I am now giving you the description of
the two opposite poles:(a )the primordial Triangle which as
soon as it has reflected itself in the
Heavenly Man the highest of the lower seven disappears,
returning into Silence and Darkness ;and (b
)the astral paradigmatic man whose Monad (Ćtmā)is also
represented by a triangle as it has to become
a ternary in conscious Devachanic interludes.The purely
terrestrial man being reflected in the
universe of Matter so to say upside down the upper Triangle
wherein the creative ideation and the
subjective potentiality of the formative faculty resides,is shifted in
the man of clay below the seven.
DIAGRAM I (Page 444a)
Man and The Logos -(Page 445)Thus three of the ten containing in the archetypal world
only ideative
and paradigmatical potentiality i.e.,existing
in possibility not in action are in fact one.The potency of
formative creation resides in the Logos,the
synthesis of the seven Forces or Rays,which becomes
forthwith the Quaternary the sacred
Tetraktys.This process is repeated in man in whom the lower
physical triangle becomes,in conjunction with
the female One the male-female creator or generator.
The same on a still lower plane in the animal
world.A mystery above a mystery below truly.
This is how the upper and highest and the
lower and most animal stand in mutual relation.
In this diagram No.-1-,we see that physical
man (or his body)does not share in the direct pure waves of
the divine Essence which flows from the One
in Three,the Unmanifested through the Manifested Logos
(the upper face in the diagram).Purusha the
primeval Spirit touches the human head and stops there.
But the Spiritual Man (the synthesis of the
seven principles)is directly connected with it.And here a few
words ought to be said about the usual
exoteric enumeration of the principles.At first an approximate
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division only was made and given out.Esoteric
B ddhism begins with Ćtmā the seventh and ends with
the Physical Body the first.Now neither Ćtmā
which is no individual principle but a radiation from and
one with the Unmanifested Logos,nor the Body which is the material rind or shell
of the Spiritual Man
can be in strict truth referred to as
principles. Moreover the chief principle of all one not even
mentioned heretofore is the Luminous Egg
(Hiranyagarbha),or the invisible magnetic sphere in which
every man is enveloped.[ So are the animals,the plants,and even the minerals.Reichenbach
never
understood what he learned through his
sensitives and clairvoyants.It is the odic,or rather the auric or
magnetic fluid which emanates from man but it
is also something more.] It is
the direct emanation:(a )
from the Ćtmic Ray in its triple aspect of
Creator Preserver and Destroyer (Regenerator);and (b )from
Buddhi-Manas.The seventh aspect of this
individual Aura is the faculty of assuming the form of its body
and becoming the Radiant the Luminous
Augoeides.It is this,strictly speaking which at times
becomes the form called Māyāvi Rūpa.Therefore
as explained in the second face of the diagram (the
astral man),the Spiritual Man consists of only
five (Page 446)principles,as taught
by the Vedāntins,[See
supra .i.181.for
the Vedāntic exoteric enumeration.] who
substitute tacitly for the physical this sixth or
Auric,Body and merge the dual Manas (dual mind
or consciousness)into one.Thus they speak of the
five Koshas (sheaths or principles),and call
Ćtmā the sixth yet no principle.This is the secret of the late
Subba Row s criticism of the division in Esoteric
B ddhism .But let the student now learn the true
Esoteric enumeration.
The reason why public mention of the Auric
body was not permitted was on account of its being so
sacred.It is this Body which at death
assimilates the essence of Buddhi and Manas and becomes the
vehicle of these spiritual principles,which
are not objective and then with the full radiation of Ćtmā upon
it ascends as Manas-Taijasi into the
Devachanic state.Therefore it is called by many names.It is the
Sūtrātmā the silver thread which incarnates
from the beginning of Manvantara to the end stringing
upon itself the pearls of human existence in
other words,the spiritual aroma of every personality it
follows through
the pilgrimage of life.[See L
cifer January 1889 Dialogue upon the Mysteries of After-
Life.]
It is also the material from which the Adept forms his Astral
Bodies,from the Augoeides and the
Māyāvi Rūpa downwards.After the death of man
when its most ethereal particles have drawn into
themselves the spiritual principles of Buddhi
and the Upper Manas,and are illuminated with the radiance
of Ćtmā the Auric Body remains either in the
Devachanic state of consciousness,or in the case of a full
Adept prefers the state of a Nirmānakāya that
is,one who has so purified his whole system that he is
above even the divine illusion of a
Devachanī.Such an Adept remains in the astral (invisible)plane
connected with our earth and henceforth moves
and lives in the possession of all his principles except
the Kāma Rūpa and Physical Body.In the case of
the Devachanī the Linga-Sharira the alter ego of the
body which during life is within the physical
envelope while the radiant aura is without strengthened by
the material particles which this aura leaves
behind remains close to the dead body and outside it and
soon fades away.In the case of the full Adept
the body alone becomes subject to dissolution while the
centre of that force which was the seat of
desires and passions,disappears with its cause the animal
body.But during the life of the latter all
these centres are more or less active and in constant
correspondence with their prototypes the
cosmic centres,and their microcosms,the principles.
Cosmic Spiritual and Physical Centres -(Page 447)It is only through these cosmic and spiritual
centres that the physical centres (the upper
seven orifices,and the lower triad)can benefit by their Occult
interaction for these orifices,or openings,are
channels conducting into the body the influences that the
will of man attracts and uses,viz.,the cosmic forces.
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This will has,of course to act primarily
through the spiritual principles.To make this clearer let us take
an example.In order to stop pain let us say in
the right eye you have to attract to it the potent
magnetism from that cosmic principle which
corresponds to this eye and also to Buddhi.Create by a
powerful will effort an imaginary line of
communication between the right eye and Buddhi locating the
latter as a centre in the same part of
the head.This line though you may call it imaginary is,once you
succeed in seeing it with your mental eye and
give it a shape and colour in truth as good as real.A rope
in a dream is not and yet is .Moreover
according to the prismatic colour with which you endow your line
so will the influence act.Now Buddhi and
Mercury correspond with each other and both are yellow or
radiant and golden coloured.In the human
system the right eye corresponds with Buddhi and Mercury;
and the left with Manas and Venus or
Lucifer.Thus,if your line is golden or silvery it will stop the pain;if
red it will increase it for red is the colour
of Kāma and corresponds with Mars.Mental or Christian
Scientists have stumbled upon the effects without
understanding the ca ses .Having found by chance
the secret of producing such results owing to
mental abstraction they attribute them to their union with
God (whether a personal or impersonal God they
know best),whereas it is simply the effect of one or
another principle.However it may be they are
on the path of discovery although they must remain
wandering for a long time to come.
Let not Esoteric students commit the same
mistake.It has often been explained that neither the cosmic
planes of substance nor even the human
principles with the exception of the lowest material plane or
world and the physical body which as has been
said are no principles,can be located or thought of
as being in Space and Time.As the former are
seven in ONE so are we seven in ONE that same
absolute Soul of the World which is both
Matter and non-Matter Spirit and non-Spirit Being and non-
Being.Impress yourselves well with this idea
all those of you who would study the mysteries of SELF.
Remember that with our physical senses alone
at our command none (Page
448)of
us can hope to reach
beyond gross Matter.We can do so only through
one or another of our seven spirit al senses,either by
training or if one is a born Seer.Yet even a
clairvoyant possessed of such faculties,if not an Adept no
matter how honest and sincere he may be will
through his ignorance of the truths of Occult Science be
led by the visions he sees in the Astral Light
only to mistake for God or Angels the denizens of those
spheres of which he may occasionally catch a
glimpse as witness Swedenborg and others.
These seven senses of ours correspond with
every other septenate in nature and in ourselves.
Physically though invisibly the human Auric
Envelope (the amnion of the physical man in every age of
life)has seven layers,just as Cosmic Space and
our physical epidermis have.It is this Aura which
according to our mental and physical state of
purity or impurity either opens for us vistas into other
worlds,or shuts us out altogether from
anything but this three-dimensional world of Matter.
Each of our seven physical senses (two of
which are still unknown to profane Science),and also of our
seven states of consciousness viz.:(1)waking;(2)waking-dreaming;(3)natural
sleeping;(4)induced
or
trance-sleep;(5)psychic;(6)super-psychic;and (7)purely spiritual corresponds
with one of the
seven Cosmic Planes,develops and uses one of
the seven super-senses,and is connected directly in
its use on the terestro-spiritual plane with
the cosmic and divine centre of force that gave it birth and
which is its direct creator.Each is also
connected with and under the direct influence of one of the
seven sacred Planets.[See supra i.626-629 ] These belonged to the Lesser Mysteries,whose followers
were called Mystai (the veiled),seeing that
they were allowed to perceive things only through a mist as it
were with the eyes closed ;while the
Initiates or Seers of the Greater Mysteries were called Epoptai
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(those who see things unveiled).It was the
latter only who were taught the true mysteries of the Zodiac
and the relations and correspondences between
its twelve signs (two secret)and the ten human orfices.
The latter are now of course ten in the female
and only nine in the male;but this is merely an external
difference.In the second volume of this work
it is stated that till the end of the Third Root-Race (when
androgynous man separated into male and
female)the ten orifices existed in the hermaphrodite first
potentially then functionally.
Woman and Alchemy (Page 449)The evolution of the human embryo shows this.For instance
the only
opening formed at first is the buccal cavity
a cloaca communicating with the anterior extremity of the
intestine.These become later the mouth and
the posterior orifice:the Logos differentiating and
emanating gross matter on the lower plane in
Occult parlance.The difficulty which some students will
experience in reconciling the correspondences
between the Zodiac and the orifice can be easily
explained.Magic is coėval with the Third
Root-Race which began by creating through Kriyāshakti and
ended by generating its species in the present
way.[See supra i.228 et
seq.,ii.passim.] Woman
being
left with the full or perfect number 10 (the
divine number of Jehovah),was deemed higher and more
spiritual than man.In Egypt in days of old the
marriage service contained an article that the woman
should be the lady of the lord and real lord
over him the husband pledging himself to be obedient to
his wife for the production of alchemical
results such as the Elixir of Life and the Philosopher s Stone for
the spirit al help of the woman was
needed by the male Alchemist.But woe to the Alchemist who should
take this in the dead-letter sense of physical
union.Such sacrilege would become Black Magic and be
followed by certain failure.The true Alchemist
of old took aged women to help him carefully avoiding the
young ones;and if any of them happened to be
married they treated their wives for months both before
and during their operations as sisters.
The error of crediting the Ancients with
knowing only ten of the zodiacal signs is explained in Isis
Unveiled .[Op.cit.,456 461 et
seq.] The Ancients did know
of twelve but viewed these signs differently
from ourselves.They took neither Virgo nor
Scorpio singly into consideration but regarded them as two
in one since they were made to refer directly
and symbolically to the primeval dual man and his
separation into sexes.During the reformation
of the Zodiac,Libra was added as the twelfth sign though
it is simply an equilibrating sign at the
turning point the mystery of separated man.
Let the student learn all this well.Meanwhile
we have to recapitulate what has been said.
(1)Each human being is an incarnation of his
God in other words,one with his Father in
Heaven just as Jesus,an Initiate is made to
say.As many men on earth so many Gods in
Heaven;and yet these (Page 450)Gods are in reality ONE for at the end of
every period of
activity they are withdrawn like the rays of
the setting sun into the Parent Luminary the Non-
Manifested Logos,which in its turn is merged
into the One Absolute.Shall we call these
Fathers of ours,whether individually or
collectively and under any circumstances,our
personal God?Occultism answers,Never .All that an average man can
know of his Father is
what he knows of himself through and within
himself.The Soul of his Heavenly Father is
incarnated in him.This Soul is himself if he
be successful in assimilating the Divine
Individuality while in his physical animal
shell.As to the Spirit thereof as well expect to be
heard by the Absolute.Our prayers and
supplications are vain unless to potential words we
add potent acts,and make the Aura which
surrounds each one of us so pure and divine that
the God within us may act outwardly or in
other words,become as it were an extraneous
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Potency.Thus have Initiates,Saints,and very
holy and pure men have been enabled to help
others as well as themselves in the hour of
need and produce what are foolishly called
miracles, each by the help and with the aid
of the God within himself which he alone has
enabled to act on the outward plane.
(2)The word AUM or OM which corresponds to the
upper Triangle if pronounced by a very
holy and pure man will draw out or awaken not
only the less exalted Potencies residing in the
planetary spaces and elements,but even his
Higher Self or the Father within him.
Pronounced by an averagely good man in the
correct way it will help to strengthen him
morally especially if between two AUMS he
meditates intently upon the AUM within him
concentrating all his attention upon the
ineffable glory.But woe to the man who pronounces it
after the commission of some far-reaching
sin:he will only thereby attract to his own impure
photosphere invisible Presences and Forces
which could not otherwise break through the
Divine Envelope.
AUM is the original of Amen.Now.Amen is not a
Hebrew term but like the word Halleluiah
was borrowed by the Jews and Greeks from the
Chaldees.The latter word is often found
repeated in certain magical inscriptions upon
cups and urns among the Babylonian and
Ninevean relics.Amen does not mean so be it
or verily but signified in hoary antiquity
almost the same as AUM.The Jewish Tanaļm
(Initiates)used it for the same reason as the
Ćryan Adepts use AUM and with a like
success,the numerical value of AMeN in Hebrew
letters being 91 the same as the full value of
YHVH,[Jod-Hevah,or
male-female on the
terrestrial plane as invented by the Jews and
now made out to mean Jehovah:but signifying
in reality and literally giving being and
receiving life.]26 and A
DoNa Y,65 or 91.Both
words mean the affirmation of the being or
existence of the sexless Lord within us.
Sound and Colour -(Page 451)(3)Esoteric Science teaches that every sound in the visible
world
awakens its corresponding sound in the
invisible realms,and arouses to action some force or other on
the Occult side of Nature.Moreover every sound
corresponds to a colour and a number (a potency
spiritual psychic or physical)and to a
sensation on some plane.All these find an echo in every one of
the so-far developed elements,and even on the
terrestrial plane in the Lives that swarm in the terrene
atmosphere thus prompting them to action.
Thus a prayer unless pronounced mentally and
addressed to one s Father in the silence and solitude of
one s closet must have more frequently
disastrous than beneficial results,seeing that the masses are
entirely ignorant of the potent effects which
they thus produce.To produce good effects the prayer must
be uttered by one who knows how to make
himself heard in silence when it is no longer a prayer but
becomes a command.Why is Jesus shown to have
forbidden his hearers to go to the public
synagogues?Surely every praying man was not a
hypocrite and a liar nor a Pharisee who loved to be
seen praying by people!He had a motive we must
suppose:the same motive which prompts the
experienced Occultist to prevent his pupils
from going into crowded places now as then from entering
churches,séance rooms,etc.unless they are in
sympathy with the crowd.
There is one piece of advice to be given to beginners,who
cannot help going into crowds one which
may appear superstitious,but which in the
absence of Occult knowledge will be found efficacious.As well
known to good Astrologers,the days of the week
are not in the order of those planets whose names they
bear.The fact is that the ancient Hindus and
Egyptians divided the day into four parts,each day being
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under the protection (as ascertained by
practical magic)of a planet;and every day as correctly asserted
by Dion Cassius,received the name of the
planet which rules and protected its first portion.Let the
student protect himself from the Powers of
the Air (Elementals)which throng public places,by wearing
either a ring containing some jewel of the
colour of the presiding planet or else of the metal sacred to it.
But the best protection is a clear conscience
and a firm desire to benefit Humanity.
The Planets The Days of the Week and Their Corresponding
Colours and Metals -(Page
452)In
the
accompanying diagram the days of the week do
not stand in their usual order though they are placed in
their correct sequence as determined by the
order of the colours in the solar spectrum and the
corresponding colours of their ruling
planets.The fault of the confusion in the order of the days revealed
by this comparison lies at the door of the
early Christians.Adopting from the Jews their lunar months,
they tried to blend them with the solar
planets and so made a mess of it;for the order of the days of the
week as it now stands does not follow the
order of the planets.
Now the Ancients arranged the planets in the
following order:Moon Mercury Venus,Sun Mars Jupiter
Saturn counting the Sun as a planet for
exoteric purposes.Again the Egyptians and Indians,the two
oldest nations,divided their day into four
parts,each of which was under the protection and rule of a
planet.In course of time each day came to be
called by the name of that planet which rules its first
portion the morning.Now when they arranged
their week,the Christians proceeded as follows:they
wanted to make the day of the Sun or Sunday
the seventh so they named the days of the week by
taking every fourth planet in turn;e.g.,beginning
with the Moon (Monday)they counted thus:Moon
Mercury Venus,Sun Mars;thus Tuesday the
day whose first portion was ruled by Mars,became the
second day of the week;and so on.It should be
remembered also that the Moon like the Sun is a
substitute for a secret planet.
The present division of the solar year was
made several centuries later than the beginning of our era;
and our week is not that of the Ancients and
the Occultists.The septenary division of the four parts of the
lunar phases is as old as the world and
originated with the people who reckoned time by the lunar
months.The Hebrews never used it for they
counted only the seventh day the Sabbath though the
second chapter of Genesis seems to speak
of it.Till the days of the Cęsars there is no trace of a week
of seven days among any nation save the
Hindus.From India it passed to the Arabs,and reached
Europe with Christianity.The Roman week
consisted of eight days,and the Athenian of ten.[See Notice
sur le Calendrier.J.H.Ragon.]
The Days of the Week -(Page 453)Thus one of the numberless contradictions and fallacies of
Christendom is the adoption of the Indian
septenary week of the lunar reckoning and the preservation at
the same time of the mythological names of the
planets.
Nor do modern Astrologers give the
correspondences of the days and planets and their colours correctly;
and while Occultists can give good reason for
every detail of their own tables of colours,etc.it is
doubtful whether the Astrologers can do the
same.
To close this first Paper let me say that the
readers must in all necessity be separated into two broad
divisions:those who have not quite rid
themselves of the usual sceptical doubts,but who long to
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ascertain how much truth there may be in the
claims of the Occultists;and those others who having
freed themselves from the trammels of
Materialism and Relativity feel that true and real bliss must be
sought only in the knowledge and personal
experience of that which the Hindu Philosopher calls the
Brahmavidyā and the Buddhist Arhat the
realization of Ćdibuddha the primeval Wisdom.Let the former
pick out and study from these Papers only
those explanations of the phenomena of life which profane
Science is unable to give them.Even with such
limitations,they will find by the end of a year or two that
they will have learned more than all their
Universities and Colleges can teach them.As to the sincere
believers,they will be rewarded by seeing
their faith transformed into knowledge.True knowledge is of
Spirit and in Spirit alone and cannot be
acquired in any other way except through the region of the
higher mind the only plane from which we can
penetrate the depths of the all-pervading Absoluteness.
He who carries out only those laws established
by human minds,who lives that life which is prescribed
by the code of mortals and their fallible
legislation chooses as his guiding star a beacon which shines on
the ocean of Māya or of temporary
delusions,and lasts for but one incarnation.These laws are
necessary for the life and welfare of physical
man alone.He has chosen a pilot who directs him through
the shoals of one existence a master who parts
with him however on the threshold of death.How much
happier that man who while strictly performing
on the temporary objective plane the duties of daily life
carrying out each and every law of his country
and rendering in short to Cęsar s what is Cęsar s,leads
in reality a spiritual and permanent existence
a life with no breaks of continuity no gaps,no interludes,
(Page 454)not even during those periods which are the
halting places of the long pilgrimage of purely
spiritual life.All the phenomena of the lower
human mind disappear like the curtain of a proscenium
allowing him to live in the region beyond it
the plane of the noumenal the one reality.If man by
suppressing if not destroying his selfishness
and personality only succeeds in knowing himself as he is
behind the veil of physical Māyā he will soon
stand beyond all pain all misery and beyond all the wear
and tear of change which is the chief
originator of pain.Such a man will be physically of Matter he will
move surrounded by Matter and yet he will live
beyond and outside it.His body will be subject to change
but he himself will be entirely without it and
will experience everlasting life even while in temporary
bodies of short duration.All this may be
achieved by the development of unselfish universal love of
Humanity and the suppression of personality or
selfishness which is the cause of all sin and
consequently of all human sorrow.
DIAGRAM II
These Correspondences
are from the Objective
Terrestrial Plane
ATMAN is no
Number and
ccorresponds to
no visible Planet
for it proceeds
from the Spiritual
Sun;nor does it
bear any relation
either to Sound
Colour or the
rest for it
includes them
ATMA As the Human Principles have no numbers
per se,but
only correspond to Numbers,
Sounds,Colours,etc.they are not
enumerated here in the order used for
esoteric purposes.
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all.
NUMBER
S
METALS PLANETS THE HUMAN
PRINCIPLES
DAYS OF
THE WEEK
COLOUR
S
SOUND
MUSIC SCALE
1 and 10
Physical
Man's Key-
note
Iron Mars
The Planet of
Generation
Kāma Rūpa
The Vehicle or
seat of the
Animal
Instincts and
Passions
Tuesday
Dies Martis,
or Tiu
1-Red Sanskrit
Gamut
Italian
Gamut
Sa Do
2
The
Spiritual
and Life
Physical
Gold The Sun
The Giver of Life
physically
Spiritually and
Esoterically the
substitute for the
inter-Mercurial
Planet a sacred
and secret planet
with the ancients
Prāna or Jiva
Life
Sunday
Dies Sola or
Sun
2-
Orange
Ri Re
3
Because
BUDDHI is
(so to
speak)
between
Atma and
Manas,
and forms
with the
seventh or
AURIC
ENVELOP
E the
Devachani
c Triad
Mercury
Mixes with
Sulphur as
Buddhi is
mixed with
the Flame of
Spirit (See
Alchemical
Definitions)
Mercury Buddhi
Spiritual Soul
or Atmic Ray
vehicle or Atmā
Wednesday
Dies
Mercuri or
Woden Day
of Buddha in
the South
and of
Woden in
the North -
Gods of
Wisdom
3 Yellow
Ga Mi
4
The middle
principle -
between
the purely
material
and purely
spiritual
trias.The
Lead Saturn Kama Manas
The Lower
Mind or
Animal Soul
Saturday
Dies Saturni
or Saturn
4
Green
Ma Fa
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conscious
part of
animal
man.
5 Tin Jupiter Auric
Envelope
Thursday
Dies...
or Thor
5
Black
Pa Sol
6 Copper
When
alloyed
becomes
Bronze (the
d al
principle)
Venus
The Morning and
the Evening Star
Manas
The Higher
Mind or
Human Soul
Friday
Dies...
6
Indigo or
Dark Blue
Da La
7
Contains in
itself the
reflection
of
Septenary
Man
Silver The Moon
The Parent of
the Earth
Linga Sharira
The Astral
Double of Man;
the Parent of
the Physical
Man
Monday
Dies Lunae
or Moon
7
Violet
Ni Si
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PAPER II
An Explanation -(Page 455)IN view of the abstruse nature of the subjects dealt with
the present Paper
will begin with an explanation of some points
which remained obscure in the preceding one as well as of
some statements in which there was an
appearance of contradiction.
Astrologers,of whom there are many among the
Esotericists,are likely to be puzzled by some
statements distinctly contradicting their
teachings;whilst those who know nothing of the subject may
perhaps find themselves opposed at the outset
by those who have studied the exoteric systems of the
Kabalah and Astrology.For let it be distinctly
known nothing of that which is printed broadcast and
available to every student in public libraries
or museums,is really Esoteric,but is either mixed with
deliberate blinds,or cannot be understood
and studied with profit without a complete glossary of Occult
terms.
The following teachings and
explanations,therefore may be useful to the student in assisting him to
formulate the teaching given in the preceding
Paper.
In Diagram I it will be observed that the 3 7
and 10 centres are respectively as follows:
(a )The 3 pertain to the spiritual
world of the Absolute and therefore to the three higher principles in Man.
(b )The 7 belong to the spiritual
psychic,and physical worlds and to the body of man.Physics
metaphysics and hyper-physics are the triad
that symbolizes man on this plane.
(c )The 10 or the sum total of these is
the Universe as a whole in all its aspects,and also its Microcosm
Man with his ten orifices.
Laying aside for the moment the Higher Decad
(Kosmos)and the (Page
456)Lower
Decad (Man),the
first three numbers of the separate sevens
have a direct reference to the Spirit Soul and Auric Envelope
of the human being as well as to the higher
supersensual world.The lower four or the four aspects,
belong to Man also as well as to the Universal
Kosmos,the whole being synthesized by the Absolute.
If these three discrete or distributive
degrees of Being be conceived according to the Symbology of the
Eastern Religions,as contained in one Ovum or
EGG the name of that EGG will be Svabhāvat or the
ALL-BEING on the manifested plane.This
Universe has,in truth neither centre nor periphery;but in the
individual and finite mind of man it has such
a definition the natural consequence of the limitations of
human thought.
In Diagram II as already stated therein no
notice need be taken of the numbers used in the left-hand
column as these refer only to the Hierarchies
of the Colours and Sounds on the metaphysical plane and
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are not the characteristic numbers of the
human principles or of the planets.The human principles elude
enumeration because each man differs from
every other just as no two blades of grass on the whole
earth are absolutely alike.Numbering is here a
question of spiritual progress and the natural
predominance of one principle over
another.With one man it may be Buddhi that stands as number one;
with another if he be a bestial sensualist the
Lower Manas.With one the physical body or perhaps
Prāna the life principle will be on the first
and highest plane as would be the case in an extremely
healthy man full of vitality;with another it
may come as the sixth or even seventh downward.Again the
colours and metals corresponding to the
planets and human principles,as will be observed are not those
known exoterically to modern Astrologers and
Western Occultists.
Let us see whence the modern Astrologer got
his notions about the correspondence of planets metals
and colours.And here we are reminded of the
modern Orientalist who judging by appearances credits
the ancient Akkadians (and also the
Chaldęans,Hindus and Egyptians)with the crude notion that the
Universe and in like manner the earth was like
an inverted bell-shaped bowl!This he demonstrates by
pointing to the symbolical representations of
some Akkadian inscriptions and to the Assyrian carvings.It
is,however no place here to explain how
mistaken is the Assyriologist for all such representations are
simply symbolical of the Khargakkurra,the
World-Mountain or Meru and relate only to the North Pole
the Land of the Gods.
Astrology and Lunar Weeks -(Page 457)Now the Assyrians arranged their exoteric teaching
about the
planets and their correspondences as follows;
Numbers Planets Metals Colours Solar Days of Week
1 Saturn Lead Black Saturday (Whence Sabbath
in honour of Jehovah)
2 Jupiter Tin White but as often Purple or
Orange
Thursday
3 Mars Iron Red Tuesday
4 Sun Gold Yellow-golden Sunday
5 Venus Copper Green or Yellow Friday
6 Mercury Quick Silver Blue Wednesday
7 Moon Silver Silver-white Monday
This is the arrangement now adopted by
Christian Astrologers,with the exception of the order of the days
of the week,of which by associating the solar
planetary names with the lunar weeks,they have made a
sore mess,as he has been already shown in
Paper I.This is the Ptolemaic geocentric system which
represents the Universe as in the following
diagram showing our Earth in the centre of the Universe and
the Sun a Planet the fourth in number:
Page 361.
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And if the Christian chronology and order of
the days of the week are being daily denounced as being
based on an entirely wrong astronomical
foundation it is high time to begin a reform also in Astrology
built on such lines,and coming to us entirely
from the Chaldęan and Assyrian exoteric mob.
But the correspondences given in these Papers
are purely Esoteric.
(Page 458)For this reason it follows that when the
Planets of the Solar System are named or symbolized
(as in Diagram II.)it must not be supposed
that the planetary bodies themselves are referred to except
as types on a purely physical plane of the
septenary nature of the psychic and spiritual worlds.A material
planet can correspond only to a material
something.Thus when Mercury is said to correspond to the right
eye it does not mean that the objective planet
has any influence on the right optic organ but that both
stand rather as corresponding mystically
through Buddhi.Man derives his Spiritual Soul (Buddhi)from
the essence of the Mānasa Putra the Sons of
Wisdom who are the Divine Beings (or Angels)ruling and
presiding over the planet Mercury.
In the same way Venus,Manas and the left eye
are set down as correspondences.Exoterically there is,
in reality no such association of physical
eyes and physical planets;but Esoterically there is:for the right
eye is the Eye of Wisdom i.e.,it
corresponds magnetically with that Occult centre in the brain which we
call the Third Eye ;[See supra,ii.302.et seq.] while the left corresponds with the intellectual brain or
those cells which are the organ on the
physical plane of the thinking faculty.The kabalistic triangle of
Kether Chokmah and Binah shows this.Chokmah
and Binah or Wisdom and Intelligence the Father
and Mother or again the Father and Son are on
the same plane and reäct mutually on one another.
When the individual consciousness is turned
inward a conjunction of Manas and Buddhi takes place.In
the spiritually regenerated man this
conjunction is permanent the Higher Manas clinging to Buddhi
beyond the threshold of Devachan and the Soul
or rather the Spirit which should not be confounded
with Ćtmā the Super-Spirit is then said to
have the Single Eye.Esoterically in other words,the Third
Eye is active.Now Mercury is called
Hermes,and Venus,Aphrodite and thus their conjunction in man
on the psycho-physical plane gives him the
name of the Hermaphrodite or Androgyne.The absolutely
Spiritual Man is,however entirely disconnected
from sex.The Spiritual Man corresponds directly with the
higher coloured circles,the Divine Prism
which emanates from the One Infinite White Circle;while
physical man emanates from the Sephiroth which
are the Voices or Sounds of Eastern Philosophy.
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Seeing Sounds and Hearing Colours -(Page 459)And these Voices are lower than the Colours,for
they are the seven lower Sephiroth or the
objective Sounds,seen not heard as the Zohar shows [Op.
cit.,ii.81.6.] and even the Old Testament also.For
when properly translated verse 18 of chapter xx.
Exod s would
read:And the people saw the Voices (or Sounds,not the thunderings as now
translated);and these Voices,or Sounds,are the
Sephiroth.[See Frank s Die
Kabbala,p.314 et seq.]
In the same way the right and left
nostrils,into which is breathed the Breath of Lives, [Genesis,ii 7.]
are here said to correspond with Sun and Moon
as Brahmā-Prajāpati and Vāch or Osiris and Isis,are
the parents of the natural life.This
Quaternary viz.:the two eyes and two nostrils,Mercury and Venus,
Sun and Moon constitutes the Kabalistic
Guardian-Angels of the Four Corners of the Earth.It is the
same in the Eastern Esoteric Philosophy which
however adds that the Sun is not a planet but the
central star of our system and the Moon a dead
planet from which all the principles are gone both being
substitutes,the one for an invisible
inter-Mercurial planet and the other for a planet which seems to have
now altogether disappeared from view.These are
the Four Mahārājahs,[S pra,i.147.] the Four Holy
Ones connected with Karma and Humanity Kosmos
and Man in all their aspects.They are:the Sun or
its substitute Michael;Moon or substitute
Gabriel;Mercury Raphael;and Venus,Uriel.It need hardly be
said here again that the planetary bodies
themselves being only physical symbols,are not often referred
to in the Esoteric System but as a rule their
cosmic,psychic,physical and spiritual forces are
symbolized under these names.In short it is
the seven physical planets which are the lower Sephiroth of
the Kabalah,and our triple physical Sun
whose reflection only we see which is symbolized or rather
personified by the Upper Triad or Sephirothal
Crown.[We may refer for
confirmation to Origen s works
who says that the seven ruling daimons
(genii or planetary rulers)are Michael the Sun (the lion-like):
the second in order the Bull Jupiter or Suriel
etc.:and all these the Seven of the Presence are the
Sephiroth.The Sephirothal Tree is the Tree of
the Divine Planets as given by Porphyry or Porphyry s
Tree as it is usually called.]
Then again it will be well to point out that
the numbers attached to the psychic principles in Diagram I.
appear the reverse of those in exoteric
writings.This is because numbers in this connection are purely
arbitrary changing with every school.Some
schools count (Page
460)three
some four some six and
others seven as do all the Buddhist
Esotericists.As said before [S
pra,i 147.] the Esoteric
School has
been divided into two departments since the
fourteenth century one for the inner Lanoos,or higher
Chelās,the other for the outer circle or lay
Chelās.Mr.Sinnett was distinctly told in the letters he
received from one of the Gurus that he could
not be taught the real Esoteric Doctrine given out only to
the pledged disciples of the Inner Circle.The
numbers and principles do not go in regular sequence like
the skins of an onion but the student must
work out for himself the number appropriate to each of his
principles,when the time comes for him to
enter upon practical study.The above will suggest to the
student the necessity of knowing the
principles by their names and their appropriate faculties apart from
any system of enumeration or by association
with their corresponding centres of actions,colours,
sounds,etc.until these become inseparable.
The old and familiar mode of reckoning the
principles,given in the Theosophist and Esoteric B ddhism
leads to another apparently perplexing
contradiction though it is really none at all.The principles
numbered 3 and 2 viz :Linga Sharīra and
Prāna or Jīva stand in the reverse order to that given in
Diagram I .A moment's consideration will
suffice to explain the apparent discrepancy between the
exoteric enumeration and the Esoteric order
given in Diagram I.For in Diagram I.the Linga Sharīra is
defined as the vehicle of Prāna or Jīva the
life principle and as such must of necessity be inferior to
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Prāna not superior as the exoteric enumeration
would suggest.The principles do not stand one above
the other and thus cannot be taken in
numerical sequence;their order depends upon the superiority and
predominance of one or another principle and
therefore differs in every man.
The Linga Sharīra is the double or
protoplasmic antetype of the body which is its image.It is in this
sense that it is called in Diagram II.the
parent of the physical body i.e.,the mother by conception of
Prāna the father.This idea is conveyed in the
Egyptian mythology by the birth of Horus,the child of
Osiris and Isis,although like all sacred
Mythoi this has both a threefold spiritual and a sevenfold
psycho-physical application.To close the
subject Prāna the life principle can in sober truth have no
number as it pervades every other principle or
the human total.
Planetary and Human Bodies -(Page 461)Each number of the seven would thus be
naturally applicable
to Prāna-Jīva exoterically as it is to the
Auric Body Esoterically.As Pythagoras showed Kosmos was
produced not thro gh or by number
but geometrically i.e.,following the proportions of numbers.
To those who are unacquainted with the
exoteric astrological natures ascribed in practice to the planetary
bodies,it may be useful if we set them down
here after the manner of Diagram II.in relation to their
dominion over the human body
colours,metals,etc.and explain at the same time why genuine Exoteric
Philosophy differs from the astrological
claims.
Planets Days Metals Parts of the Body Colours
Saturn Saturday Lead Right Ear Knees and Bony
Sytem Black *
Jupiter Thursday Tin Left Ear Thighs,Feet and
Arterial
System
Purple
Mars Tuesday Iron Forehead and Nose the
Skull.Sex-
function and Muscular Sytem
Red.
Sun Sunday Gold Right Eye Heart and Vital
Centres Orange
Venus Friday Copper Chin and Cheeks,Neck and
Reins and
the Venous Sytem
Yellow §
Mercury Wednesday Quicksilver Mouth
Hands,Abdominal Viscera and
Nervous System
Dove or
Cream ¶
Moon Monday Silver Breasts,Left Eye the
Fluidic Sytem
Saliva Lymph etc.
White**
*[Esoterically
green there being no black in the prismatic ray.]
[Esoterically
light blue.As a pigment purple is a compound of red and blue and in Eastern
Occultism
blue is the spiritual essence of the colour
purple while red is its material basis.In reality Occultism
makes Jupiter blue because he is the son of
Saturn which is green and light blue as a prismatic colour
contains a great deal of green.Again the Auric
Body will contain much of the colour of the Lower Manas
if the man is a material sensualist just as it
will contain much of the darker hue if the Higher Manas has
preponderance over the Lower.]
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[Esoterically
the Sun cannot correspond with the eye nose or any other organ since as
explained it
is no planet but a central star.It was adopted
as a planet by the post-Christian Astrologers,who had
never been initiated.Moreover the true colour of
the Sun is blue and it appears yellow only owing to the
effect of the absorbtion of vapours (chiefly
metallic)by its atmosphere.All is Mayā on our earth.]
§ [Esoterically
indigo or dark blue which is the complement of yellow in the prism.Yellow is a
simple or
primitive colour.Manas being dual in its
nature as is its sidereal symbol the planet Venus,which is both
the morning and evening star the difference
between the higher and the lower principles of Manas,
whose essence is derived from the Hierarchy ruling
Venus,is denoted by the dark blue and green.
Green the Lower Manas,resembles the colour of
the solar spectrum which appears between the yellow
and the dark blue the Higher Spiritual
Manas.Indigo is the intensified colour of the heaven or sky to
denote the upward tendency of Manas toward
Buddhi or the heavenly Spiritual Soul.This colour is
obtained from the indigofera tinctoria a
plant of the highest occult properties in India much used in White
Magic,and occultly connected with copper.This
is shown by the indigo assuming a copper lustre
especially when rubbed on any hard
substance.Another property of the dye is that it is insoluble in water
and even in ether being lighter in weight than
any known liquid.No symbol has ever been adopted in the
East without being based upon a logical and
demonstrable reasons.Therefore Eastern Symbologists,
from the earliest ages,have connected the
spiritual and the animal minds of man the one with dark blue
(Newton s indigo),or true blue free from
green;and the other with pure green.]
¶ [Esoterically
yellow because the colour of the Sun is orange and Mercury now stands next to
the Sun
in distance as it does in colour.The planet
for which the Sun is a substitute was still nearer the Sun than
Mercury now is,and was one of the most secret
and highest planets.It is said to have become invisible
at the close of the Third Race.]
**[Esoterically
violet because perhaps,violet is the colour assumed by a ray of sunlight when
transmitted through a very thin plate of
silver and also because the Moon shines upon the Earth with
light borrowed from the Sun as the human body
shines with qualifications borrowed from its double the
aerial man.As the astral shadow starts the
series of principles in man on the terrestrial plane up to the
lower animal Manas,so the violet ray starts
the series of prismatic colours from its end up to green both
being the one as a principle and the other as
a colour the most refrangible of all the principles and
colours.Besides which there is the same great
Occult mystery attached to all these correspondences,
both celestial and terrestrial bodies,colours
and sounds.In clearer words,there exists the same law of
relation between the Moon and the Earth the
astral and the living body of man as between the violet
end of the prismatic spectrum and the indigo
and the blue.But of this more anon .]
(Page 462)Thus it will be seen that the influence of the
solar system in the exoteric kabalistic Astrology is
by this method distributed over the entire
human body the primary metals,and the gradations of colour
from black to white;but that Esotericism
recognizes neither black nor white as colours,because it holds
religiously to the seven solar or natural
colours of the prism.Black and white are artificial tints.They
belong to the Earth and are only perceived by
virtue of the special construction of our physical organs.
White is the absence of all colours,and
therefore no colour;black is simply the absence of light and
therefore the negative aspect of white.The
seven prismatic colours are direct emanations from the
Seven Hierarchies of Being each of which has a
direct bearing upon and relation to one of the human
principles,since each of these Hierarchies
is,in fact the creator and source of the corresponding human
principle.Each prismatic colour is called in
Occultism the Father of Sound which corresponds to it;
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Sound being the Word or the Logos,of its
Father-Thought.This is the reason why sensitives connect
every colour with a definite sound a fact well
recognized in Modern Science (e.g.,Francis Galton s
H man Faculty ).But black and white are entirely negative colours,and have
no representatives in the
world of subjective being.
Planets and Faculties -(Page 463)Kabalistic Astrology says that the dominion of the planetary
bodies in
the human brain also is defined thus:there are
seven primary groups of faculties,six of which function
through the cerebrum and the seventh through
the cerebellum.This is perfectly correct Esoterically.But
when it is further said that:Saturn governs
the devotional faculties;Mercury the intellectual;Jupiter the
sympathetic;the Sun the governing
faculties;Mars,the selfish;Venus,the tenacious;and the Moon the
instincts;we say that the explanation is
incomplete and even misleading.For in the first place the
physical planets can rule only the physical
body and the purely physical functions.All the mental
emotional psychic and spiritual faculties,are
influenced by the Occult properties of the scale of causes
which emanate from the Hierarchies of the
Spiritual Rulers of the planets,and not by the planets
themselves.This scale as given in Diagram II
leads the student to perceive in the following order:(1)
colour;(2)sound;(3)the sound materializes into
the spirit of the metals,i.e.,the metallic Elementals;(4)
these materialize again into the physical
metals;(5)then the harmonial and vibratory radiant essence
passes into the plants,giving them colour and
smell both of which properties depend upon the rate of
vibration of this energy per unit of
time;(6)from plants it passes into the animals;(7)and finally
culminates in the principles of man.
Thus we see the Divine Essence of our
Progenitors in Heaven circling through seven stages;Spirit
becoming Matter and Matter returning to
Spirit.As there is sound in Nature which is inaudible so there is
colour which is invisible but which can be
heard.The creative force at work in its incessant task of
transformation produces colour sound and
numbers,in the shape of rates of vibration which compound
and dissociate the atoms and molecules.Though
invisible and inaudible to us in detail yet the synthesis
of the whole becomes audible to us on the
material plane.It is that which the Chinese call the Great
Tone or K ng.It is,even by scientific
confession the actual tonic of Nature held by musicians to be the
middle Fa on the keyboard of a piano.We hear
it distinctly in the voice of Nature in the roaring of the
ocean in the sound of the foliage of a great
forest in the distant roar of a great city in the wind the
tempest and the storm;in short in everything
in Nature which has a voice or produces sound.To the
(Page 464)hearing of all who hearken it culminates in a
single definite tone of an unappreciable pitch
which as said is the F or Fa of the diatonic
scale.From these particulars,that wherein lies the
difference between the exoteric and the
Esoteric nomenclature and symbolism will be evident to the
student of Occultism.In short kabalistic
Astrology as practised in Europe is the semi-esoteric Secret
Science adapted for the outer and not for the
inner circle.It is,furthermore often left incomplete and not
infrequently distorted to conceal the real
truth.While it symbolizes and adapts its correspondences on
the mere appearances of things,Esoteric
Philosophy which concerns itself pre-eminently with the
essence of things,accepts only such symbols as
cover the whole ground i.e.,such symbols as yield a
spiritual as well as a psychic and physical
meaning.Yet even Western Astrology has done excellent
work,for it has helped to carry the knowledge
of the existence of a Secret Wisdom throughout the
dangers of the Medięval Ages and their dark
bigotry up to the present day when all danger has
disappeared.
The order of the planets in exoteric practice
is that defined by their geocentric radii or the distance of
their several orbits from the Earth as a
centre viz .Saturn Jupiter Mars,Sun Venus,Mercury and
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Moon.In the first three of these we find
symbolized the celestial Triad of supreme power in the physical
manifested universe or Brahmā Vishnu and
Shiva;while in the last four we recognize the symbols of the
terrestrial quaternary ruling over all natural
and physical revolutions of the seasons,quarters of the day
points of the compass,and elements.Thus:
Spring Summer Autumn Winter
Morning Noon Evening Night
Youth Adolescence Manhood Age
Fire Air Water Earth
East South West North
But Esoteric Science is not content with
analogies on the purely objective plane of the physical senses,
and therefore it is absolutely necessary to
preface further teachings in this direction with a clear
explanation of the real meaning of the word
Magic.
Simon Magnus the Magician (Page 465)
What Magic is,in Reality
Esoteric Science is,above all the knowledge of
our relations with and in Divine Magic,[Magic.Magia,
means,in its spiritual secret sense the Great
Life or divine life in spirit .The root is magh,as seen in
the Sanskrit mahat Zend maz,Greek
megas,and Latin magn s,all signifying great .] inseparableness
from our divine Selves the latter
meaning something else besides our own higher Spirit.Thus,before
proceeding to exemplify and explain these
relations,it may perhaps be useful to give the student a
correct idea of the full meaning of this most
misunderstood world Magic. Many are those willing and
eager to study Occultism but very few have
even an approximate idea of the Science itself.Now very
few of our American and European students can
derive benefit from Sanskrit works or even their
translations,as these translations are for the
most part merely blinds to the uninitiated.I therefore
propose to offer to their attention
demonstrations of the aforesaid drawn from Neo-Platonic works.These
are accessible in translation;and in order to
throw light on that which has hitherto been full of darkness,it
will suffice to point to a certain key in
them.Thus the Gnosis,both pre-Christian and post-Christian will
serve our purpose admirably.
There are millions of Christians who know the
name of Simon Magus,and the little that is told about him
in the Acts;but very few who have even
heard of the many motley fantastic and contradictory details
which tradition records about his life.The
story of his claims and his death is to be found only in the
prejudiced half-fantastic records about him in
the works of the Church Fathers,such as Irenęus,
Ephiphanius and St.Justin and especially in
the anonymous Philosoph mena .Yet he is a historical
character and the appellation of Magus was
given to him and was accepted by all his contemporaries,
including the heads of the Christian Church as
a qualification indicating the miraculous powers he
possessed and irrespective of whether he was
regarded as a white (divine)or a black (infernal)
Magician.In this respect opinion has always
been made subservient to the Gentile or Christian
proclivities of his chronicler.
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It is in his system and in that of Menander
his pupil and successor that we find what the term Magic
meant for Initiates in those days.
Simon as all the other Gnostics,taught that
our world was created by the lower angels,whom he called
Ęons.He mentions only three (Page 466)degrees as such because it was and is
useless,as we have
before explained to teach anything about the
four higher ones,and he therefore begins at the plane of
globes A and G.His system is as near to Occult
Truth as any so that we may examine it as well as his
own and Meander s claims about Magic,to
find out what they meant by the term.Now for Simon the
summit of all manifested creation was Fire.It
was,with him as with us,the Universal Principle the
Infinite Potency born from the concealed
Potentiality.This Fire was the primeval cause of the manifested
world of being and was dual having a
manifested and a concealed or secret side.
The secret side of the Fire is concealed in
its evident [or objective ]side and the objective is
produced from the secret side [Philosoph mena,vi.9.]
he writes,which amounts to saying that the
visible is ever present in the invisible and the invisible in the
visible.This was but a new form of stating
Plato s idea of the Intelligibe (Noźton )and the Sensible
(Aisthźton ),and Aristotle s teaching
on the Potency (D namis )and the Act (Energeia ).For Simon all
that
can be thought of all that can be acted upon
was perfect intelligence.Fire contained all .And thus all the
parts of that Fire being endowed with
intelligence and reason was susceptible of development by
extension and emanation.This is our teaching
of the Manifested Logos,and these parts in their
primordial emanations are our Dhyān
Chohans,the Sons of Flame and Fire or higher Ęons.This
Fire is the symbol of the active and living
side of Divine Nature.Behind it lay infinite Potentiality in
Potentiality which Simon named that which
has stood stands and will stand or permanent stability
and personified immutability.
From the Potency of Thought Divine Ideation
thus passed to Action.Hence the series of primordial
emanations through Thought begetting the Act
the objective side of Fire being the Mother the sacred
side of it being the Father.Simon called these
emanations Syzygies (a united pair or couple),for they
emanated two-by-two one as an active and the
other as a passive Ęon.Three couples thus emanated
(or six in all the Fire being the seventh),to
which Simon gave the following names:Mind and Thought;
Voice and Name;Reason and Reflection [No s,Epinoia:Phōni :Onoma
:Logismos,Enth mesis.]
the first in each pair being male the last
female.From these primordial six emanated the six Ęons of the
Middle World.Let us see what Simon himself
says:
Series of Ęons -(Page 467)Each of these six primitive beings contained the entire
infinite
Potency [of its parent ];but
it was there only in Potency and not in Act.That Potency had to be
called forth [or conformed ]through
an image in order that it should manifest in all its essence
virtue grandeur and effects;for only then
could the emanated Potency become similar to its
parent the eternal and infinite Potency.If on
the contrary it remained simply potentially in the
six Potencies and failed to be conformed
through an image then the Potency would not pass
into action but would get lost.[Philosoph mena,vi.12.]
in clearer terms,it would become atrophied as
the modern expression goes.
Page 368.
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Now what do these words mean if not that to be
equal in all things to the Infinite Potency the Ęons had
to imitate it in its action and become
themselves,in their turn emanative Principles,as was their Parent
giving life to new beings,and becoming
Potencies in act themselves?To produce emanations,or to
have acquired the gift of Kryiāshakti [See supra,s b voce.] is the direct result of that power
an effect
which depends on our own action.That power
then is inherent in man as it is in the primordial Ęons
and even in the secondary Emanations,by the
very fact of their and our descent from the One Primordial
Principle the Infinite Power or Potency.Thus
we find in the system of Simon Magus that the first six
Ęons,synthesized by the seventh the Parent
Potency passed into Act and emanated in their turn six
secondary Ęons,which were each synthesized by
their respective Parents.In the Philosoph mena we
read that Simon compared the Ęons to the Tree
of Life.Said Simon in the Revelation :[The Great
Revelation (Hź Megalź Apophasis),of which Simon himself is supposed to have been the author.]
It is written that there are two ramifications
of the universal Ęons,having neither beginning
nor end issued both from the same Root the
invisible and incomprehensible Potentiality Sigź
[Silence ].One
of these [series of Ęons ]appears from above.This is the Great
Potency
Universal Mind [or Divine Ideation the Mahat of the Hindus ];it orders all things and is male.
The other is from below for it is the Great [manifested ]Thought the female Ęon generating
all things.These [two kinds of Ęons ] corresponding
[Literally standing opposite
each other in
rows or pairs.] with each other have conjunction and manifest the middle
distance [the
intermediate sphere or plane ] the incomprehensible Air which has
neither beginning nor end.
[Philosoph mena,vi.18.]
This female Air is our Ether or the
kabalistic Astral Light.It (Page 468)is,then the Second World of
Simon born of Fire the principle of
everything.We call it the ONE LIFE the Intelligent Divine Flame
omnipresent and infinite.In Simon s system
this Second World was ruled by a Being or Potency both
male and female or active and passive good or
bad.This Parent-Being like the primordial infinite
Potency is also called that which has stood
stands and will stand so long as the manifested Kosmos
shall last.When it emanated in act and
became like unto its own Parent it was not dual or androgyne.It
is the Thought (Sigź)that emanated from it
which became as itself (the Parent),having become like unto
its image (or antetype):the second had now
become in its turn the first (on its own plane or sphere).As
Simon has it:
It [the
Parent or Father ] was one.For
having it [the thought ] in itself it was alone.It was not
however first though it was preėxisting:but
manifesting itself to itself from itself it became the
second (or dual).Nor was it called Father
before it [the Thought ] gave it that name.As,
therefore itself developing itself by itself
manifested to itself its own Thought so also the
Thought being manifested did not act but
seeing the Father hid it in itself that is,(hid)that
Potency (in itself)And the Potency [D namis,viz.:No s ] and Thought [Epinoia ] are
male-
female.Whence they correspond with one another
For Potency in no way differs from
Thought being one.So from the things above
is found Potency and from those below
Thought.It comes to pass,therefore that that
which is manifested from them although being
one yet is found to be twofold the androgyne
having the female in itself.So is Mind in
Thought things inseparable from each other
which though being one are yet found dual.
[Op.cit.,vi.18.]
He [Simon
] calls the first Syzygy of the
six Potencies and of the seventh which is with it Nous
and Epinoia Heaven and Earth:the male looks
down from on high and takes thought for his
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Syzygy [or
spouse ] for the Earth below
receives those intellectual fruits which are brought
down from Heaven and are cognate to the
Earth. [Op.cit.,i.13.]
Simon s Third World with its third series of
six Ęons and the seventh the Parent is emanated in the
same way.It is this same note which runs
through every Gnostic system gradual development
downward into Matter by similitude;and it is a
law which is to be traced down to primordial Occultism or
Magic.With the Gnostics,as with us,this
seventh Potency synthesizing all is the Spirt brooding over
the dark waters of undifferentiated Space
Nārāyana or Vishnu in India;the Holy Ghost in Christianity.
But while in the latter the conception is
conditioned and dwarfed by limitations necessitating faith and
grace Eastern Philosophy shows it pervading
every atom conscious or unconscious.
The Triple Ęon -(Page 469)Irenęus supplements the information on the further
development of these
six Ęons.We learn from him that Thought having
separated from its Parent and knowing through its
identity of Essence with the latter what it
had to know proceeded on the second or intermediate plane or
rather World (each of such Worlds consisting
of two planes,the superior and inferior male and female
the latter assuming finally both Potencies and
becoming androgyne),to create inferior Hierarchies,
Angels and Powers Dominions and Hosts,of every
description which in their turn created or rather
emanated out of their own Essence our world
with its men and beings,over which they watch.
It thus follows that every rational being
called Man on Earth is of the same essence and possesses
potentially all the attributes of the higher
Ęons,the primordial Seven.It is for him to develope with the
image before him of the highest by imitation
in act the Potency with which the highest of his Parents,
or Fathers,is endowed.Here we may again quote
with advantage from the Philosoph mena:
So then according to Simon this blissful and
imperishable [principle ] is concealed in
everything in potency not in act.This is that
which has stood stands and will stand viz.,that
which has stood above in ingenerable
Potency;that which stands below in the stream of the
waters generated in an image;that which will
stand above beside the blissful infinite Potency
if it makes itself like unto this image.For
three he says are they that stand and without these
three Ęons of stability there is no adornment
of the generable which according to them [the
Simonians ] is borne on the water and being moulded according to the
similitude is a perfect
and celestial (Ęon),in no manner of thinking
inferior to the ingenerable Potency.Thus they
say: I and thou [are ] one;before
me [wast ] thou:that which is after thee [is ] I. This,he
says,
is the one Potency divided into above and
below generating itself nourishing itself seeking
itself finding itself;its own mother father
brother spouse daughter and son one for it is the
Root of all.[Op cit.,vi.17.]
Thus of this triple Ęon we learn the first
exists as that which has stood stands and will stand or the
uncreate Power Ātman;the second is generated
in the dark waters of Space (Chaos,or undifferentiated
Substance our Buddhi),from or through the
image of the former reflected in those waters the image of
Him or It which moves on them;the third World
(or in man Manas)will be endowed with every power
of that eternal and omnipresent Image if it
but assimilates it to itself.For (Page 470)
All that is eternal pure and incorruptible is
concealed in everything that is
Page 370.
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if only potentially not actually.And
Everything is that image provided the lower
image (man)ascends to that highest Source and
Root in Spirit and Thought.
Matter as Substance is eternal and has never
been created.Therefore Simon Magus,with all the great
Gnostic Teachers and Eastern
Philosophers,never speaks of its beginning.Eternal Matter receives its
various forms in the lower Ęon from the
Creative Angels,or Builders,as we call them.Why then should
not Man the direct heir of the highest Ęon do
the same by the potency of his thought which is born
from Spirit?This is Kriyāshakti the power of
producing forms on the objective plane through the potency
of Ideation and Will from invisible
indestructible Matter.
Truly says Jeremiah [Op.cit.,i.5.] quoting
the Word of the Lord :
Before I formed thee in the belly I knew
thee;and before thou camest forth out of the womb I
sanctified thee
for Jeremiah stands here for Man when he was
yet an Ęon or Divine Man both with Simon Magus and
Eastern Philosophy.The first three chapters of
Genesis are as Occult as that which is given in Paper I.
For the terrestrial Paradise is the Womb says
Simon [Philosoph mena,vi.14.] Eden the region
surrounding it.The river which went out of
Eden to water the garden is the Umbilical Cord;this cord is
divided into four Heads,the streams that
flowed out of it the four canals which serve to carry nutrition to
the Ftus,i.e.,the two arteries and the
two veins which are the channels for the blood and convey the
breathing air the unborn child according to
Simon being entirely enveloped by the Amnion fed through
the Umbilical Cord and given vital air through
the Aorta.[At first there are
the omphalo-mesenteric
vessels,two arteries and two veins,but these
afterwards totally disappear as does the vascular area
on the Umbilical Vesicle from which they
proceed.As regards the Umbilical Vessels proper the
Umbilical Cord ultimately has entwined around
it from right to left the one Umbilical Vein which takes the
oxygenated blood from the mother to the
Ftus,and two Hypogastic or Umbilical Arteries which take the
used-up blood from the Ftus to the Placenta
the contents of the vessels being the reverse of that
which prevails after birth.Thus Science
corroborates the wisdom and knowledge of ancient Occultism
for in the days of Simon Magus no man unless
an Initiate knew anything about the circulation of the
blood or about Physiology.While this Paper was
being printed I received two small pamphlets from Dr.
Jerome A.Anderson which were printed in 1884
and 1888 and in which is to be found the scientific
demonstration of the ftal nutrition as
advanced in Paper I.Briefly the Ftus is nourished by osmosis
from the Amniotic Fluid and respires by means
of the Placenta.Science knows little or nothing about the
Amniotic Fluid and its uses.If any one cares
to follow up this question I would recommend Dr.
Anderson s Remarks on the N trition of the
Ft s.(Wood &Co.New York)]
Magic and Miracles -(Page 471)The above is given for the elucidation of that which is to
follow.The
disciples of Simon Magus were numerous,and
were instructed by him in Magic.They made use of so-
called exorcisms (as in the New Testament
),incantations,philtres;believed in dreams and visions,and
produced them at will;and finally forced the
lower orders of spirits to obey them.Simon Magus was
called the Great Power of God literally the
Potency of the Deity which is called Great.That which was
then termed Magic we now call Theosophia or
Divine Wisdom Power and Knowledge.
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His direct disciple Menader was also a great
Magician.Says Irenęus,among other writers:
The successor of Simon was Menander a
Samaritan by birth who reached the highest
summits in the Science of Magic.
Thus both master and pupil are shown as having
attained the highest powers in the art of enchantments,
powers which can be obtained only through the
help of the Devil as Christians claim;and yet their
works were identical with those spoken of in
the New Testament wherein such phenomenal results are
called divine miracles,and are therefore
believed in and accepted as coming from and through God.But
the question is,have these so-called miracles
of the Christ and the Apostles ever been explained any
more than the magical achievements of
so-called Sorcerers and Magicians?I say never.We Occultists
do not believe in supernatural phenomena and
the Masters laugh at the word miracle. Let us see
then what is really the sense of the word
Magic.
The source and basis of it lie in Spirit and
Thought whether on the purely divine or the terrestrial plane.
Those who know the history of Simon have the
two versions before them that of White and of Black
Magic,at their option in the much talked of
union of Simon with Helena whom he called his Epinoia
(Thought).Those who like the Christians,had to
discredit a dangerous rival talk of Helena as being a
beautiful and actual woman whom Simon had met
in a house of ill fame at Tyre and who was,
according to those who wrote his life the
incarnation of Helen of Troy.How then was she Divine
Thought ?The lower angels,Simon is made to
say in Philosoph mena or the third Ęons,being so
material had more badness in them than all the
others.Poor man created or emanated from them had
the vice of his origin.What was it?Only
this:when the third Ęons possessed themselves,in their turn of
the Divine Thought through (Page 472)the transmission into them of Fire instead of
making of a man a
complete being according to the universal plan
they at first detained from him that Divine Spark
(Thought on Earth Manas);and that was the
cause and origin of senseless man s committing the
original sin as the angels had committed it
ęons before refusing to create.[S
pra.vol.ii.] Finally after
detaining Epinoia prisoner amongst them and
having subjected the Divine Thought to every kind of insult
and desecration they ended by shutting it into
the already defiled body of man.After this,as interpreted
by the enemies of Simon she passed from one
female body into another through ages and races,until
Simon found and recognized her in the form of
Helena the prostitute the lost sheep of the parable.
Simon is made to represent himself as the
Saviour descended on Earth to rescue this lamb and those
men in whom Epinoia is still under the
dominion of the lower angels.The greatest magical feats are thus
attributed to Simon through his sexual union
with Helena hence Black Magic.Indeed the chief rites of
this kind of Magic are based on such
disgusting literal interpretation of noble myths,one of the noblest of
which was thus invented by Simon as a
symbolical mark of his own teaching.Those who understood it
correctly knew what was meant by Helena.It
was the marriage of Nous (Ćtmā-Buddhi)with Manas,the
union through which Will and Thought become
one and are endowed with divine powers.For Ćtman in
man being of an unalloyed essence the
primordial Divine Fire (or the eternal and universal that which
has stood stands and will stand ),is of all
the planes;and Buddhi is its vehicle or Thought generated by
and generating the Father in her turn and
also Will.She is that which has stood stands and will
stand thus becoming in conjunction with
Manas,male-female in this sphere only.Hence when Simon
spoke of himself as the Father and the Son and
the Holy Ghost and of Helena and his Epinoia Divine
Thought he meant the marriage of his Buddhi
with Manas.Helena was the Shakti of the inner man the
female potency.
Page 372.
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Now what says Menander?The lower angels,he
taught were the emanations of Ennoia (Designing
Thought).It was Ennoia who taught the Science
of Magic and imparted it to him together with the art of
conquering the creative angels of the lower
world.The latter stand for the passions of our lower nature.
Magic a Divine Science -(Page 473)His pupils,after receiving baptism from him (i.e.,after
Initiation),
were said to resurrect from the dead and
growing no older became immortal.[See
Eusebius,Hist.
Eccles.,Lib.III,iii.cap.26.]This
resurrection promised by Menander meant of course simply the
passage from the darkness of ignorance into
the light of truth the awakening of man s immortal Spirit to
inner and eternal life.This is the Science of
the Rāja Yogīs Magic.
Every person who had read Neo-Platonic
Philosophy knows how its chief Adepts,such as Plotinus,and
especially Porphyry fought against phenomenal
Theurgy.But beyond all of them Jamblichus,the
author of the De Mysteriis,lifts high
the veil from the real term Theurgy and shows us therein the true
Divine Science of Rāja Yoga.
Magic,he says is a lofty and sublime Science
Divine and exalted above all others.
It is the great remedy for all ....It neither
takes its source in nor is it limited to the body of
its passions,to the human compound or its
constitution;but all is derived by it from our upper
Gods,
our divine Egos,which run like a silver thread
from the Spark in us up to the primeval divine Fire. [De
Mysteriis,p.100 lines 10 to 19:p.109 fol.I.]
Jamblichus execrates physical phenomena
produced as he says,by the bad demons who deceive men
(the spooks of the sźance room),as vehemently
as he exalts Divine Theurgy.But to exercise the latter
he teaches,the Theurgist must imperatively be
a man of high morality and a chaste Soul. The other
kind of Magic is used only by impure selfish
men and has nothing of the Divine in it.No real Vates
would ever consent to find in its
communications anything coming from our higher Gods.Thus one
(Theurgy)is the knowledge of our Father (the
Higher Self);the other subjection to our lower nature.One
requires holiness of the Soul a holiness which
rejects and excludes everything corporeal;the other the
desecration of it (the Soul).One is the union
with the Gods (with one s God),the source of all Good;the
other intercourse with demons
(Elementals),which unless we subject them,will subject us,and lead us
step by step to moral ruin (mediumship).In
short:
Theurgy unites us most strongly to divine
nature.This nature begets itself through itself
moves through its own powers,supports all and
is intelligent.Being the ornament of the
Universe it invites us to intelligible truth
to perfection (Page
474)and
imparting perfection to
others.It unites us so intimately to all the
creative actions of the Gods,according to the
capacity of each of us,that the soul having
accomplished the sacred rites is consolidated in
their [the
Gods ] actions and
intelligences,until it launches itself into and is absorbed by the
primordial divine essence.This is the object
of the sacred Initiations of the Egyptians.[De
Mysteriis.p.290.lines 15 to 18.et seq.,caps.v and vii.]
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Now Jamblichus shows us how this union of our
Higher Soul with the Universal Soul with the Gods,is
to be effected.He speaks of Manteia which
Samādhi the highest trance.[Ibid.,p.100
sec.iii.cap ] He
speaks also of dream which is divine vision
when man re-becomes again a God.By Theurgy or Rāja
Yoga a man arrives at:(1)Prophetic Discernment
through our God (the respective Higher Ego of each
of us)revealing to us the truths of the plane
on which we happen to be acting;(2)Ecstacy and
Illumination;(3)Action in Spirit (in Astral
Body or through Will);(4)and Domination over the minor
senseless demons (Elementals)by the very
nature of our purified Egos.But this demands the complete
purification of the latter.And this is called
by him Magic,through initiation into Theurgy.
But Theurgy has to be preceded by a training
of our senses and the knowledge of the human Self in
relation to the Divine SELF.So long as man has
not thoroughly mastered this preliminary study it is idle
to anthropomorphize the formless.By formless
I mean the higher and the lower Gods,the
supermundane as well as mundane Spirits,or
Beings,which to beginners can be revealed only in
Colours and Sounds.For none but a high Adept
can perceive a God in its true transcendental form
which to the untrained intellect to the Chelā
will be visible only by its Aura.The visions of full figures
casually perceived by sensitives and mediums
belong to one or another of the only three categories they
can see:(a )Astrals of living men;(b
)Nirmānakāyas (Adepts good or bad whose bodies are dead but
who have learned to live in the invisible
space in their ethereal personalities);and (c )Spooks,
Elementaries and Elementals masquerading in
shapes borrowed from the Astral Light in general or from
figures in the mind s eye of the audience
or of the medium which are immediately reflected in their
respective Auras.
Having read the foregoing students will now
better comprehend the necessity of first studying the
correspondences between our principles
which are but the various aspects of the triune (spiritual and
physical)man and our Paradigm;the direct
roots of these in the Universe.
The Seven Hierarchies (Page 475)In view of this,we must resume our teaching about the
Hierarchies
directly connected and for ever linked with
man.
Enough has been said to show that while for
the Orientalists and profane masses the sentence Om
Mani Padma H m,means simply Oh the Jewel of the Lotus,Esoterically it
signifies Oh my God within
me.Yes;there is a God in each human being for
man was,and will re-become God.The sentence
points to the indissoluble union between Man
and the Universe.For the Lotus is the universal symbol of
Kosmos as the absolute totality and the Jewel
is Spiritual Man or God.
In the preceding Paper the correspondences
between Colours,Sounds,and Principles were given;and
those who have read our second volume will
remember that these seven principles are derived from the
seven great Hierarchies of Angels,or Dhyān
Chohans,which are in their turn associated with Colours
and Sounds,and form collectively the
Manifested Logos.
In the eternal music of the spheres we find
the perfect scale corresponding to the colours,and in the
number determined by the vibrations of colour
and sound which underlies every form and guides every
sound we find the summing-up of the
Manifested Universe.
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We may illustrate these correspondences by
showing the relation of colour and sound to the geometrical
figures which [See supra i.34:i 4 et seq .and 625 et seq .] express the progressive stages in the
manifestation of Kosmos.
But the student will certainly be liable to
confusion if in studying the Diagrams,he does not remember
two things:(1)That our plane being a plane of
reflection and therefore illusionary the vario s notations
are reversed and m st be co nted from below
pwards.The musical scale begins from below
upwards,
commencing with the deep Do and ending with
the far more acute Si.(2)That Kāma Rūpa
(corresponding to Do in the musical
scale),containing as it does all potentialities of Matter is necessarily
the starting-point on our plane.Further it
commences the notation on every plane as corresponding to
the matter of that plane.Again the student
must also remember that these notes have to be arranged
in a circle thus showing how Fa is the middle
note of Nature.In short musical notes,or Sounds,Colours
(Page 476)and Numbers proceed from one to seven and not
from seven to one as erroneously shown in
the spectrum of the prismatic colours,in which
Red is counted first;a fact which necessitated my putting
the principles and the days of the week at
random in Diagram II.The musical scale and colours,
according to the number of vibrations,proceed
from the world of gross Matter to that of Spirit thus:
Principles Colours Notes Numbers States of Matter
Chhāyā Shadow or Double Violet Si 7 Ether
Higher Manas Spiritual
Intelligence Indigo La 6 Critical State called
Air in Occultism
Auric Envelope Blue Sol 5 Steam or Vapour
Lower Manas or Animal Soul Green Fa 4 Critical State
Buddhi or Spiritual Soul Yellow Mi 3 Water
Prāna or Life Principle Orange Re 2 Critical State
Kāmā Rūpa the Seat of Animal
Life Red Do 1 Ice
Here again the student is asked to dismiss
from his mind any correspondences between principles and
numbers,for reasons already given.The Esoteric
enumeration cannot be made to correspond with the
conventional exoteric.The one is the reality
the other is classified according to illusive appearances.The
human principles,as given in Esoteric B
ddhism were tabulated for beginners,so as not to confuse
their minds.It was half a blind.
Origins (Page 477)
Colours Sounds and Forms
To proceed:
The point in the Circle is the Unmanifested
Logos,corresponding to Absolute Life and absolute Sound.
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The first geometrical figure after the Circle
or the Spheroid is the Triangle.
It corresonds to Motion Colour and Sound.Thus
he Point in the Triangle
represents the Second Logos,Father-Mother or
the White Ray which is
no colour since it contains potentially all
colours.It is shown radiating from
the Unmanifested Logos,or the Un-spoken
Word.Around the first Triangle
is formed on the plane of Primordial Substance
in this order (reversed as
to our plane):
(a )The Astral Double of Nature or the
Paradigm of all Forms.
(b )Divine Ideation or Universal Mind.
(c )The
synthesis of Occult Nature the Egg of Brahmā containing all and radiating all.
(d )Animal of Material Soul of Nature
source of animal and vegetable intelligence and instinct.
[The Master-Key or Tonic of Manifested
Nature.]
(Page 478)
(e )The aggregate of Dhyān Chohanic
Intelligence Fohat.
(f )Life Principle in Nature.
(g )The Life Procreating Principle in
Nature.That which on the spiritual plane corresponds to sexual
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affinity on the lower.
Mirrored on the plane of Gross Nature the
World of Reality is reversed and becomes on Earth and our
plane:
(a )Red is the colour of manifested
dual or male and female.In man it is shown in its lowest animal form.
(b )Orange is the colour of the robes
of the Yogīs and Buddhist Priests the colour of the Sun and Spiritual
Vitality also of the Vital Principle.
(c )Yellow or radiant Golden is the
colour of the Spiritual Divine Ray in every atom;in man of Buddhi.
(d )Green and Red are so to
speak,interchangeable colours,for Green absorbs the Red as being
stronger in its vibrations than the latter;and
Green is the complementary colour of extreme Red.This is
why the Lower Manas and Kāma Rūpa are
respectively shown as Green and Red.
(c )The Astral Plane or Auric Envelope
in Nature and Man.
(f )The Mind or rational element in Man
and Nature.
(g )The most ethereal counterpart of
the Body of man the opposite pole standing in point of vibration
and sensitiveness as the Violet stands to the
Red.
The above is on the manifested plane;after
which we get the seven and the Manifested Prism,or Man
on Earth.With the latter the Black Magician
alone is concerned.
In Kosmos,the gradations and correlations of
Colours and Sounds,and therefore of Numbers are
infinite.This is suspected even in Physics,for
it is ascertained that there exist slow vibrations than those
of the Red the slowest perceptible to us,and
far more rapid vibrations than those of the Violet the most
rapid that our senses can perceive.But on
Earth in our physical world the range of perceptible
vibrations is limited.Our physical senses
cannot take cognizance of vibrations above and below the
septenary and limited gradations of the
prismatic colours,for such vibrations are incapable of causing in
us the sensation of colour and sound.
Colours and Principles (Page 479)It will always be the graduated septenary and no more unless
we
learn to paralyze our Quaternary and discern
both the superior and inferior vibrations with our spiritual
senses seated in the upper Triangle.
Now on this plane of illusion there are three
fundamental colours,as demonstrated by Physical
Science Red Blue and Yellow (or rather
Orange-Yellow).Expressed in terms of the human principles
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they are;(1)Kāma Rūpa the seat of the animal
sensations,welded to and serving as a vehicle for the
Animal Soul or Lower Manas (Red and Green as
said being interchangeable);(2)Auric envelope or
the essence of man;and (3)Prāna or Life
Principle.But if from the realm of illusion or the living man as
he is on our Earth subject to his sensuous
perceptions only we pass to that of semi-illusion and
observe the natural colours themselves,or
those of the principles,that is,if we try to find which are those
in the perfect man absorb all others,we shall
find that the colours correspond and become
complementary in the following way:
A faint violet mist-like form represents the
Astral Man
within an oviform bluish circle over which
radiate in
ceaseless vibrations the prismatic
colours.That colour is
predominant of which the corresponding
principle is the
most activPae generally or at the particular
moment when
the clairvoyant perceives it.Such man appears
during his
waking states;and it is by the predominance of
this or that
colour and by the intensity of its
vibrations,that a clairvoyant if he be acquainted with
correspondences,can judge of the inner state
or character of a person for the latter is an open book to
every practical Occultist.
In the trance state the Aura changes entirely
the seven prismatic colours being no longer discernible.In
sleep also they are not all at home.For
those which belong to the spiritual elements in the man viz.,
Yellow Buddhi;Indigo Higher Manas;and the Blue
of the Auric Envelope will be either hardly
discernible or altogether missing.The
Spiritual Man is free during sleep and though his physical
memory may not become aware of it lives,robed
in his highest essence in realms on other planes,in
realms which are the land of reality called
dreams on our plane of illusion.
(Page 480)A good clairvoyant moreover if he had an
opportunity of seeing a Yogī in the trance state and
a mesmerized subject side by side would learn
an important lesson in Occultism.He would learn to
know the difference between self-induced
trance and a hypnotic state resulting from extraneous
influence.In the Yogī the principles of the
lower Quaternary disappear entirely.Neither Red Green
Red-Violet nor the Auric Blue of the Body are
to be seen;nothing but hardly perceptible vibrations of the
golden-hued Prāna principle and a violet flame
streaked with gold rushing upwards from the head in the
region where the Third Eye rests,and
culminating in a point.If the student remembers that the true
Violet or the extreme end of the spectrum is
no compound colour of Red and Blue but a homogeneous
colour with vibrations seven times more rapid
than those of the Red [ and that the golden hue is the
essence of the three yellow hues from
Orange-Red to Yellow-Orange and Yellow he will understand the
reason why:he lives in his own Auric Body now
become the vehicle of Buddhi-Manas.On the other
hand in a subject in an artificially produced
hypnotic or mesmeric trance an effect of unconscious when
not of conscious Black Magic,unless produced
by a high Adept the whole set of the principles will be
present with the Higher Manas paralyzed Buddhi
severed from it through that paralysis and the red-
violet Astral Body entirely subjected to the
Lower Manas and Kāma Rūpa (the green and red animal
monsters in us).
Page 378
Violet
1 Red Green
2 Orange Blue
3 Yellow Indigo
Violet.
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Colours Wave-Lengths in
Millimetres
Number of Vibrations in
Trillions
Violet extreme 406 759
Violet 423 709
Violet-Indigo 439 683
Indigo 449 668
Indigo-Blue 459 654
Blue 479 631
Blue-Green 492 610
Green 512 586
Green-Yellow 532 564
Yellow 551 544
Yellow-Orange 571 525
Orange 583 514
Orange-Red 596 503
Red 620 484
Red-extreme 645 465
One who comprehends well the above
explanations will readily see how important it is for every student
whether he is striving for practical Occult
powers or only for the purely psychic and spiritual gifts of
clairvoyance and metaphysical knowledge to
master thoroughly the right correspondences between the
human or nature principles,and those of
Kosmos.
The Primordial Seven (Page 481)It is ignorance which leads materialistic Science to deny
the inner man
and his Divine powers;knowledge and personal
experience that allow the Occultist to affirm that such
powers are as natural to man as swimming to
fishes.It is like a Laplander in all sincerity denying the
possibility of the catgut strung loosely on
the sounding board of a violin producing comprehensive
sounds or melody.Our principles are the
Seven-Stringed Lyre of Apollo truly.In this our age when
oblivion has shrouded ancient knowledge men s
faculties are no better than the loose strings of the
violin to the Laplander.But the Occultist who
knows how to tighten them and tune his violin in harmony
with the vibrations of colour and sound will
extract divine harmony from them.The combination of these
powers and the attuning of the Microcosm and
the Macrocosm will give the geometrical equivalent of the
invocation Om Mani Padme H m.
This was why the previous knowledge of music
and geometry was obligatory in the School of
Pythagoras.
The Roots of Colour and Sound
Further each of the Primordial Seven the first
Seven Rays forming the Manifested Logos,is again
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sevenfold.Thus,as the seven colours of the
solar spectrum correspond to the seven Rays or
Hierarchies,so each of these latter has again
its seven divisions corresponding to the same series of
colours.But in this case one colour viz.,that
which characterizes the particular Hierarchy as a whole is
predominant and more intense than the others.
These Hierarchies can only be symbolized as
concentric circles of prismatic colours;each Hierarchy
being represented by a series of seven
concentric circles,each circle representing one of the prismatic
colours in their negative order.But in each of
these wheels one circle will be brighter and more vivid in
colour than the rest and the wheel will have a
surrounding Aura (a fringe as the physicists call it)of that
colour.This colour will be the characteristic
colour of that Hierarchy as a whole.Each of these
Hierarchies furnishes the essence (the
Soul)and is the Builder of one of the seven kingdoms of Nature
which are the three elemental kingdoms,the
mineral the vegetable the (Page 482)animal and the
kingdom of spiritual man.[See Five Years of
Theosophy.pp.273 to 278.] Moreover each Hierarchy
furnishes the Aura of one of the seven
principles in man with its specific colour.Further as each of these
Hierarchies is the Ruler of one of the Sacred
Planets,it will easily be understood how Astrology came
into existence and that real Astrology has a
strictly scientific basis.
The symbol adopted in the Eastern School to
represent the Seven Hierarchies of creative Powers is a
wheel of seven concentric circles,each circle
being coloured with one of the seven colours;call them
Angels,if you will or Planetary Spirits,or
again the Seven Rulers of the Seven Sacred Planets of our
system as in our present case.At all
events,the concentric circles stand as symbols for Ezekiel s
Wheels with some Western Occultists and
Kabalists,and for the Builders or Prajāpati with us.
The student should carefully examine the
following Diagram.
DIAGRAM III
The Human
Principles
The Seven Hierarchies and their
Subdivisions
VIOLET
Linga Sharira
VIOLET
Indigo
Blue
Green
Yellow
Orange
Red
INDIGO
Higher Manas
Violet
INDIGO
Blue
Green
Yellow
Orange
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Red
BLUE
Auric Egg
Violet
Indigo
BLUE
Green
Yellow
Orange
Red
GREEN
Lower Manas
Violet
Indigo
Blue
GREEN
Yellow
Orange
Red
YELLOW
Buddhi
Violet
Indigo
Blue
Green
YELLOW
Orange
Red
ORANGE
Prāna
Violet
Indigo
Blue
Green
Yellow
ORANGE
Red
RED
Kāma Rupa
Violet
Indigo
Blue
Green
Yellow
Orange
RED
Thus the Linga Sharīra is derived from the
Violet sub-ray of the Violet Hierarchy;the Higher Manas is
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similarly derived from the Indigo sub-ray of
the Indigo Hierarchy and so on.Every man being born under
a certain planet there will always be a
predominance of that planet s colour in him because that
principle will rule in him which has its
origin in the Hierarchy in question.There will also be a certain
amount of the colour derived from the other
planets present in his Aura but that of the ruling planet will
be strongest.Now a person in whom say the
Mercury principle is predominant will by acting upon the
Mercury principle in another person born under
a different planet be able to get him entirely under his
control.For the stronger Mercury principle in
him will overpower the weaker Mercurial element in the
other.But he will have little power over
persons born under the same planet as himself.This is the Key to
the Occult Sciences of Magnetism and
Hypnotism.
The student will understand that the Orders
and Hierarchies are here named after their corresponding
colours,so as to avoid using numerals,which
would be confusing in connection with the human
principles,as the latter have no proper
numbers of their own.The real Occult names of these Hierarchies
cannot now be given.
The Hierarchies and Man (Page 483)
The student must however remember that the
colours which we see with our physical eyes are not the
true colours of Occult Nature but are merely
the effects produced on the mechanism of our physical
organs by certain rates of vibration.For
instance Clerk Maxwell has demonstrated that the retinal effects
of any colour may be initiated by properly
combining three other colours.It follows,therefore that our
retina has only three distinct colour
sensations and we therefore do not perceive the seven colours which
really exist but only their imitations so to
speak,in our physical organism.
Thus,for instance the Orange-Red of the first
Triangle is not a combination of Orange and Red but
the true spiritual Red if the term may be
allowed while the Red (blood-red)of the spectrum is the
colour of Kāma animal desire and is
inseparable from the material plane.
The Unity of Deity
Esotericism pure and simple speaks of no personal
God;therefore are we considered as Atheists.But
in reality Occult Philosophy as a whole is
based absolutely on the ubiquitous presence of God the
(Page 484)Absolute Deity;and if IT Itself is not
speculated upon as being too sacred and yet
incomprehensible as a Unit to the finite
intellect yet the entire Philosophy is based upon Its Divine
Powers as being the Source of all that
breathes and lives and has existence.In every ancient Religion
the ONE was demonstrated by the many.In Egypt and India in Chaldę
and Phnicia and finally in
Greece the ideas about Deity were expressed by
multiples of three five and seven;and also by eight
nine and twelve great Gods,which symbolized
the powers and properties of the One and Only Deity.
This was related to that infinite subdivision
by irregular and odd numbers to which the metaphysics of
these nations subjected their ONE
DIVINITY.Thus constituted the cycle of the Gods
has all the qualities
and attributes of the ONE
SUPREME AND UNKNOWABLE;for in this collection
of divine Personalities,or
rather of Symbols personified dwells the ONE
GOD the GOD ONE that God which in India is said to have
no Second.
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O God Ani [the Spiritual Sun ] thou residest
in the agglomeration of thy divine personages.
[Ap d Grebaat Papyrus Orbiney.p.101.]
These words show the belief of the ancients
that all manifestation proceeds from one and the same
Source all emanating from the one identical
Principle which can never be completely developed except
in and through the collective and entire
aggregate of Its emanations.
The Pleroma of Valentinus is absolutely the
Space of Occult Philosophy;for Pleroma means the
Fullness,the superior regions.It is the sum
total of all the Divine manifestations and emanations
expressing the plen m or totality of
the rays proceeding from the ONE differentiating on all the planes,
and transforming themselves into Divine
Powers,called Angels and Planetary Spirits in the Philosophy of
every nation.The Gnostic Ęons and Powers of
the Pleroma are made to speak as the Devas and
Siddhas of the P rānas.The Epinoia the
first female manifestation of God the Principle of Simon
Magus and Saturninus,holds the same language
as the Logos of Basilides;and each of these is traced
to the purely esoteric Alźtheia the TRUTH of
the Mysteries.All of them we are taught repeat at different
times and in different languages the magnificent
hymn of the Egyptian papyrus,thousands of years old:
The Gods adore thee they greet thee O the One
Dark Truth.
Wisdom and Truth (Page 485)And addressing Ra they add:
The Gods bow before thy Majesty by exalting
the Souls of that which produces them ...and say to
thee Peace to all emanations from the
Unconscious Father of the Conscious Fathers of the Gods ...
Thou producer of beings,we adore the souls
which emanate from thee.Thou begettest us,O thou
Unknown and we greet thee in worshipping each
God-Soul which descendeth from thee and liveth in us.
This is the source of the assertion:
Know ye not that ye are Gods and the temple of
God.
This is shown in the Roots of Ritualism in
Church and Masonry in L cifer for March 1889.Truly then
as said seventeen centuries ago Man cannot
possess Truth (Alźtheia)except he participate in the
Gnosis. So we may say now:No man can know the
Truth unless he studies the secrets of the Pleroma
of Occultism;and these secrets are all in the
Theogony of the ancient Wisdom-Religion which is the
Alźtheia of Occult Science.
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PAPER III
A Word Concerning the Earlier Papers
(Page 486)AS many have written and almost complained to
me that they could find no practical clear
application of certain diagrams appended to
the first two Papers,and others have spoken of their
abstruseness,a short explanation is necessary.
The reason of this difficulty in most cases
has been that the point of view taken was erroneous;the
purely abstract and metaphysical was mistaken
for and confused with the concrete and the physical.
Let us take for example the diagrams on page
477 (Paper II ),and say that these are entirely
macrocosmic and ideal.It must be remembered
that the study of Occultism proceeds from Universals to
Particulars and not the reverse way as
accepted by Science.As Plato was an Initiate he very naturally
used the former method while Aristotle never
having been initiated scoffed at his master and
elaborating a system of his own left it as an
heirloom to be adopted and improved by Bacon.Of a truth
the aphorism of Hermetic Wisdom As above so below
applies to all Esoteric instruction;but we must
begin with the above;we must learn the formula
before we can sum the series.
The two figures,therefore are not meant to
represent any two particular planes,but are the abstraction
of a pair of planes,explanatory of the law of
reflection just as the Lower Manas is a reflection of the
Higher.They must therefore be taken in the
highest metaphysical sense.
The diagrams are only intended to familiarize
students with the leading ideas of Occult correspondences,
the very genius of metaphysical or macrocosmic
and spiritual Occultism forbidding the use of figures or
even symbols further than as temporary
aids.Once define an idea in words,and it loses its reality;once
figure a metaphysical idea and you materialize
its spirit.
Occult Secrecy (Page 487)Figures must be used as ladders to scale the
battlements,ladders to be
disregarded when once the foot is set upon the
rampart.
Let students,therefore be very careful to
spiritualize the Papers and avoid materializing them;let them
always try to find the highest meaning
possible confident that in proportion as they approach the
material and visible in their speculations on
the Papers,so far as they from the right understanding of
them.This is especially the case with these
first Papers and Diagrams,for as in all true arts,so in
Occultism we must first learn the theory
before we are taught the practice.
Concerning Secrecy
Students ask:Why such secrecy about the
details of a doctrine the body of which has been publicly
revealed as in Esoteric B ddhism and
the Secret Doctrine ?
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To this Occultism would reply:for two
reasons:
(a )The whole truth is too sacred to be
given out promiscuously.
(b )The knowledge of all the details
and missing links in the exoteric teachings is too dangerous in
profane hands.
The truths revealed to man by the Planetary
Spirits the highest Kumāras,those who incarnate no
longer in the Universe during this
Mahāmanvantara who will appear on earth as Avatāras only at the
beginning of every new human Race and at the
junctions or close of the two ends of the small and great
cycles in time as man became more animalized
were made to fade away from his memory.Yet
though these Teachers remain with man no
longer than the time required to impress upon the plastic
minds of child-humanity the eternal verities
they teach Their Spirit remains vivid though latent in
mankind.And the full knowledge of the
primitive revelation has remained always with a few elect and
has been transmitted from that time up to the
present from one generation of Adepts to another.As the
Teachers say in the Occult Primer:
This is done so as to ensure them [the eternal truths ] from being tterly lost or forgotten
in ages
hereafter by the forthcoming generations.
The mission of the Planetary Spirit is but to
strike the key-note of Truth.When once He has directed the
vibration of the latter to run its course
uninterruptedly along the concatenation of the race to the end of
the cycle He disappears from our earth until
the following Planetary Manvantara.The mission of any
teacher of Esoteric truths,(Page 488)whether he stands at the top or the foot of
the ladder of knowledge
is precisely the same;as above so below.I have
only orders to strike the key-note of the various
Esoteric truths among the learners as a
body.Those units among you who will have raised themselves
on the Path over their fellow-students,in
their Esoteric sphere will as the Elect spoken of did and do
in the Parent Brotherhoods,receive the last
explanatory details and the ultimate key to what they learn.
No one however can hope to gain this privilege
before the MASTERS not
my humble self find him or
her worthy.
If you wish to know the real raison d źtre
for this policy I now give it to you.No use my repeating and
explaining what all of you know as well as
myself;at the very beginning events have shown that no
caution can be dispensed with.Of our body of
several hundred men and women many did not seem to
realize either the awful sacredness of the
pledge (which some took at the end of their pen),or the fact
that their personality has to be
entirely disregarded when brought face to face with their HIGHER
SELF;or
that all their words and professions went for
naught unless corroborated by actions.This was human
nature and no more;therefore it was passed
leniently by and a new lease accorded by the MASTER.But
apart from this there is a danger lurking in
the nature of the present cycle itself.Civilized humanity
however carefully guarded by its invisible
Watchers,the Nirmānakāyas who watch over our respective
races and nations,is yet owing to its
collective Karma terribly under the sway of the traditional opposers
of the Nirmānakāyas the Brothers of the
Shadow embodied and disembodied;and this,as has
already been told you will last to the end of
the first Kali Yuga cycle (1897),and a few years beyond as
the smaller dark cycle happens to overlap the
great one.Thus,notwithstanding all precautions,terrible
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secrets are often revealed to entirely
unworthy persons by the efforts of the Dark Brothers and their
working on human brains.This is entirely
owning to the simple fact that in certain privileged organisms,
vibrations of the primitive truth put in
motion by the Planetary Beings are set up in what Western
philosophy would term innate ideas,and
Occultism flashes of genius,*[See Genius,L cifer.Nov.
1889.p.227 ] Some such idea based on eternal
truth is awakened and all that the watchful Powers can
do is to prevent its entire revelation.
Everything in this Universe of differentiated
matter has its two aspects the light and the dark side and
these two attributes applied practically lead
the one to use the other to abuse.
The Light and Dark Sides of Nature (Page 489)Every man may become a Botanist without
apparent
danger to his fellow-creatures;and many a
Chemist who has mastered the science of essences knows
that every one of them can both heal and
kill.Not an ingredient not a poison but can be used for both
purposes aye from harmless wax to deadly
prussic acid from the saliva of an infant to that of the
cobra di capella.This every tyro in medicine
knows theoretically at any rate.But where is the learned
chemist in our day who has been permitted to
discover the night side of an attribute of any substance in
the three kingdoms of Science let alone in the
seven of the Occultists?Who of them has penetrated into
its Arcana into the innermost Essence of
things and its primary correlations?Yet it is this knowledge
alone which makes of an Occultist a genuine
practical Initiate whether he turn out a Brother of Light or a
Brother of Darkness.The essence of that subtle
traceless poison the most potent in nature which
entered into the composition of the so-called
Medici and Borgia poisons,if used with discrimination by
one well versed in the septenary degrees of
its potentiality on each of the planes accessible to man on
earth could heal or kill every man in the
world;the result depending of course on whether the operator
was a Brother of the Light or a Brother of the
Shadow.The former is prevented from doing the good he
might by racial national and individual
Karma;the second is impeded in his fiendish work by the joint
efforts of the human Stones of the Guardian
Wall.[See Voice of the Silence.pp.68 and 94.art 28.
Glossary.]
It is incorrect to think that there exists any
special powder of projection or philosopher s stone or
elixir of life.The latter lurks in every
flower in every stone and mineral throughout the globe.It is the
ultimate essence of everything on its way
to higher and higher evol tion.As there is no good or evil per
se,so
there is neither elixir of life nor elixir of death nor poison per se,but
all this is contained in one
and the same universal Essence this or the
other effect or result depending on the degree of its
differentiation and its various
correlations.The light side of it produces life health bliss,divine
peace
etc;the dark side brings death disease
sorrow and strife.This is proven by the knowledge of the nature
of the most violent poisons;of some of them
even a large quantity will produce no evil effect on the
organism whereas a grain of the same poison
kills with (Page 490)the rapidity of lightning;while
the
same grain again altered by a certain
combination though its quantity remains almost identical will
heal.The number of the degrees of its
differentiation is septenary as are the planes of its action each
degree being either beneficent or maleficent
in its effects,according to the system into which it is
introduced.He who is skilled in these degrees
is on the high road to practical Adeptship;he who acts at
haphazard as do the enormous majority of the
Mind Curers,whether Mental or Christian
Scientists is likely to rue the effects on
himself as well as on others.Put on the track by the example of
the Indian Yogis,and of their broadly but
incorrectly outlined practices,which they have only read about
but have have no opportunity to study these
new sects have rushed headlong and guideless into the
practice of denying and affirming .Thus
they have done more harm than good.Those who are successful
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owe it to their innate magnetic and healing
powers which very often counteract that which would
otherwise be conductive to much evil.Beware I
say:Satan and the Archangel are more than twins;they
are one body and one mind De s est Demon
inversus.
Is the Practice of Concentration
Beneficent?
Such is another question often asked.I
answer:Genuine concentration and meditation conscio s and
ca tio s upon one s lower self in the light of the inner divine man and the
Pāramitās,is an excellent
thing.But to sit for Yoga with only a
superficial and often distorted knowledge of the real practice is
almost invariably fatal:for ten to one the
student will either develop mediumistic powers in himself or lose
time and get disgusted both with practice and
theory.Before one rushes into such a dangerous
experiment and seeks to go beyond a minute
examination of one s lower self and its walk in life or that
which is called in our phraseology The Chelā
s Daily Life Ledger he would do well to learn at least the
difference between the two aspects of
Magic,the White or Divine and the Black or Devilish and
assure himself that by sitting for Yoga with
no experience as well as with no guide to show him the
dangers,he does not daily and hourly cross the
boundaries of the Divine to fall into the Satanic.
Nevertheless,the way to learn the difference
is very easy;one has only to remember that no Esoteric
truths entirely nveiled will ever be given
in p blic print,in book or magazine.
Nature's Finer Forces (Page 491)I ask students to turn to the Theosophist of November
1887.On page
98 they will find the beginning of an
excellent article by Mr.Rāma Prasād on Nature s Finer Forces. *
[The references to Nature s Finer Forces
which follow have respect to the eight articles which
appeared in the pages of the Theosophist and
not to the fifteen essays and the translation of a chapter
of the Shivāgama which are contained in
the book called Nat re s Finer Forces.The Shivāgama in its
details is purely Tāntric,and nothing but harm
can result from any practical following of its precepts.I
would most strongly dissuade any student from
attempting any of these Hatha Yoga practices,for he will
either ruin himself entirely or throw himself
so far back that it will be almost impossible to regain the lost
ground in this incarnation.The translation
referred to has been considerably expurgated and even now
is hardly fit for publication.It recommends
Black Magic of the worst kind and is the very antipodes of
spiritual Rāja Yoga.Beware I say.] The value
of this work is not so much in its literary merit though it
gained its author the gold medal of the Theosophist
as in its exposition of tenets hitherto concealed in a
rare and ancient Sanskrit work on
Occultism.But Mr.Rāma Prasād is not an Occultist only an excellent
Sanskrit scholar a university graduate and a
man of remarkable intelligence.His essays are almost
entirely based on Tāntra works,which if read indiscriminately
by a tyro in Occultism will lead to the
practice of most unmitigated Black Magic.Now
since the difference of primary importance between
Black and White Magic is the object with which
it is practised and that of secondary importance the
nature of the agents used for the production
of phenomenal results the line of demarcation between the
two is very very thin.The danger is
lessened only by the fact that every Occult book,so-called is
Occult only in a certain sense:that is,the
text is Occult merely by reason of its blinds.The symbolism
has to be thoroughly understood before the
reader can get at the correct sense of the teaching.
Moreover it is never complete its several
portions each being under a different title and each containing
a portion of some other work;so that without a
key to these no such work divulges the whole truth.Even
the famous Shivāgama,on which Nat re
s Finer Forces is based is nowhere to be found in complete
form as the author tells us.Thus,like all
others,it treats of only five Tattvas instead of seven as in
Esoteric teachings.
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Now the Tattvas being simple the substratum of
the seven forces of Nature how can this be?There are
seven forms of Prakriti as Kapila s Sānkhya
the Vishn P rāna,and other works teach.Prakriti is
Nature Matter (primordial and
elemental);therefore logic demands that the Tattvas also should be
seven.For whether Tattvas mean as Occultism
teaches,forces of Nature or as the learned Rāma
Prāsad explains,the substance out of which
the universe is formed and the power by which it is
sustained it is all one;they (Page 492)are Force,Purusha and Matter Prakriti.And
if the forms or
rather planes,of the latter are seven then its
forces must be seven also.In other words,the degrees of
the solidity of matter and the degrees of the
power that ensouls it must go hand in hand.
The Universe is made out of the Tattva it is
sustained by the Tattva and it disappears into the
Tattva
says Shiva as quoted from the Shivāgama in
Nat re s Finer Forces.This settles the question;if Prakriti
is septenary then the Tattvas must be seven
for as said they are both Substance and Force or atomic
Matter and the Spirit that ensouls it.
This is explained here to enable the student
to read between the lines of the so-called Occult articles on
Sanskrit Philosophy by which they must not be
misled.The doctrine of the seven Tattvas (the principles
of the Universe and also of man )was held in
great sacredness and therefore secrecy in the days of old
by the Brāhmans,who have now almost forgotten
the teaching.Yet it is taught to this day in the Schools
beyond the Himālayan Range though now hardly
remembered or heard of in India except through rare
Initiates.The policy has,however been changed
gradually;Chelās began to be taught the broad
outlines of it and at the advent of the T.S.in
India in 1879 I was ordered to teach it in is exoteric form to
one or two.I now give it out Esoterically.
Knowing that some students try to follow a
system of Yoga in their own fashion guided only by the rare
hints they find in Theosophical books and
magazines,which must naturally be incomplete I chose one of
the best expositions upon ancient Occult
works,Nat re s Finer Forces,in order to point out how very
easily one can be misled by their blinds.
The author seems to have been himself
deceived.The Tantras read Esoterically are as full of wisdom as
the noblest Occult works.Studied without a
guide and applied to practice they may lead to the
production of various phenomenal results,on
the moral and physiological planes.But let anyone accept
their dead-letter rules and practices,let him
try with some selfish motive in view to carry out the rites
prescribed therein and he is lost.Followed
with pure heart and unselfish devotion merely for the sake
of experiment either no results will follow or
such as can only throw back the performer.
The Seven Principles (Page 493)But woe to the selfish man who seeks to
develop Occult powers only
to attain earthly benefits or revenge or to
satisfy his ambition;the separation of the Higher from the
Lower Principles and the severing of
Buddhi-Manas from the Tantrist s personality will speedily follow
the terrible Karmic results to the dabbler in
Magic.
In the East in India and China So lless men
and women are as frequently met with as in the West
though vice is,in truth far less developed
there than it is here.
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It is Black Magic and oblivion of their
ancestral wisdom that lead them thereunto.But of this I will speak
later now merely adding:you have to be warned
and know the danger.
Meanwhile in view of what follows,the real
Occult division of the Principles in their correspondences
with the Tattvas and other minor forces has to
be well studied.
About "Principles"and "Aspects"
Speaking metaphysically and philosophically on
strict Esoteric lines,man as a complete unit is
composed of Four basic Principles and their
Three Aspects on this earth.In the semi-esoteric teachings,
these Four and Three have been called Seven
Principles,to facilitate the comprehension of the masses.
THE ETERNAL BASIC PRINCIPLES TRANSITORY ASPECTS
PRODUCED BY THE PRINCIPLES
1-Atmā,or Jiva "the One
Life"which
permeates the Monadic Trio.(One in
three
and three in One)
1-Prāna,the Breath of Life the same as
Nephesh.At
the death of a livinb being Prāna
re-becomes Jiva *
2-A ric envelope;because the substratum
of
the Aura around man is the universally
diffused primordial and pure Akāsha the first
film on the boundless and shoreless expanse
of Jiva the immutable Root of all
2-Linga Sharira,the Astral Form the
transitory
emanation of the Auric Egg.This form precedes
the formation of the living Body and after
death
clings to it dissipating only with the
disappearance of its last atom (the skeleton
excepted).
3-B ddhi;for Buddhi is a ray of the
Universal
Spiritual Soul (ALAYA)
4-Manas (the Higher Ego);for it
proceeds
from Mahat the first product or emanation of
Pradhāna which contains potentially all
the
Gunas (attributes).Mahat is Cosmic
Intelligence called the "Great
Principle".
[Remember that our reincanating Egos are
called the Mānasaputras,"Sons of
Manas"
(or Mahat),Intelligence Wisdom ]
3-Lower Manas,the Animal Soul the
reflection
or shadow of the Buddhi-Manas,having the
potentialities of both but conquered generally
by its association with the Kāma elements.
*-Prāna on earth at any rate is thus but a
mode of life a constant cyclic motion from within
outwardly and back again an out-breathing and
in-breathing of the One Life or Jiva the
synonym of the Absolute and Unknowable
Deity.Prāna is not absolute life or Jiva but its
aspect in a world of delusion.In the Theosophist,May
1888,page 478,Prāna is said to be
"one stage finer than the gross matter of
the earth."
As the lower man is the combined product of
two aspects physically of his Astral Form and psycho-
physiologically of Kāma-Manas he is not
looked upon even as an aspect but as an illusion.
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The Auric Egg on account of its nature and
manifold functions,has to be well studied.As
Hiranyagarbha the Golden Womb or Egg contains
Brahmā the collective symbol of the Seven
Universal Forces,so the Auric Egg contains,and
is directly related to both the divine and the physical
man.In its essence as said it is eternal;in
its constant correlations and transformations,during the
reincarnating progress of the Ego on this
earth it is a kind of perpetual motion machine.
As given out in our second volume the Egos or
Kumāras,incarnating in man at the end of the Third
Root-Race are not human Egos of this earth or
plane but become such only from the moment they
ensoul the Animal Man thus endowing him with
his Higher Mind.Each is a Breath or Principle called
the Human Soul or Manas,the Mind.As the
teachings say:
Each is a pillar of light.Having chosen
its vehicle,it expanded,surro nding with an Ćkāshic A ra the
h man animal,while the Divine
(Mānasic)Principle settled within that h man form.
Ancient Wisdom teaches us,moreover that from
this first incarnation the Lunar Pitris,who had made
men out of their Chhāyās or Shadows are
absorbed by this Auric Essence and a distinct Astral Form is
now produced for each forthcoming personality
of the reincarnating series of each Ego.
The Auric Egg (Page 495)Thus the Auric Egg reflecting all the thoughts,words and
deeds of man is:
(a )The preserver of every Karmic
record.
(b )The storehouse of all the good and
evil powers in man receiving and giving out at his will nay at his
very thought every potentiality which
becomes,then and there an acting potency:this Aura is the
mirror in which sensitives and clairvoyants
sense and perceive the real man and see him as he is,not
as he appears.
(c )As it furnished man with his Astral
Form around which the physical entity models itself first as a
ftus,then as a child and man the astral
growing apace with the human being so it furnishes him
during life if an Adept with his Māyāvic Rūpa
or Illusion Body which is not his Vital-Astral Body;and
after death with his Devachanic Entity and
Kāma Rūpa or Body of Desire (the Spook).[It is erroneous
to call the fourth human principle Kāma
Rūpa.It is no Rūpa or form at all until after death but stands
for the Kāmic elements in man his animal
desires and passions,such as anger lust envy revenge etc.
the progeny of selfishness and matter.]
In the case of the Devachanic Entity the Ego
in order to be able to go into a state of bliss,as the I of
its immediately preceding incarnation has to
be clothed (metaphorically speaking)with the spiritual
elements of the ideas,aspirations and thoughts
of the now disembodied personality;otherwise what is it
that enjoys bliss and reward?Surely not the
impersonal Ego the Divine Individuality.Therefore it must
be the good Karmic records of the deceased
impressed upon the Auric Substance which furnish the
Human Soul with just enough of the spiritual
elements of the ex-personality to enable it to still believe
itself that body from which it has just been
severed and to receive its fruition during a more or less
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prolonged period of spiritual gestation. For
Devachan is a spiritual gestation within an ideal matrix
state a birth of the Ego into the world of
effects which ideal subjective birth precedes its next terrestrial
birth the latter being determined by its bad
Karma into the world of causes.[Here the world of effects is
the Devachanic state and the world of
causes,earth life.]
In the case of the Spook,the Kāma Rūpa is
furnished from the animal dregs of the Auric Envelope with
its daily Karmic record of animal life so full
of animal desires and selfish aspirations.[It is this Kāma
Rūpa alone that can materialize in
mediumistic séances,which occasionally happens when it is not the
Astral Double or Linga Sharīra of the medium
himself which appears.How then can this vile bundle of
passions and terrestrial lusts resurrected by
and gaining consciousness only through the organism of
the medium be accepted as a departed angel
or the Spirit of a once human body?As well say of the
microbic pest which fastens on a person that
it is a sweet departed angel.]
(Page 496)Now the Linga Sharira remains with the
Physical Body and fades out along with it.An astral
entity then has to be created a new Linga
Sharīra provided to become the bearer of all the past Tanhas
and future Karma.How is this accomplished?The
mediumistic Spook,the departed angel fades out
and vanishes also in its turn [This is
accomplished in more or less time according to the degree in which
the personality (whose dregs it now is)was
spiritual or material.If spirituality prevailed then the Larva or
Spook,will fade out very soon;but if the
personality was very materialistic,the Kāma Rūpa may last for
centuries and in some though very exceptional
cases even survive with the help of some of its
scattered Skandhas,which are all transformed
in time into Elementals.See the Key to Theosophy pp.
141 et seq .in which it was impossible
to go into details,but where the Skandhas are spoken.] as an
entity or full image of the personality that
was,and leaves in the Kāmalokic world of effects only the
record of its misdeeds and sinful thoughts and
acts known in the phraseology of Occultists as Tānhic or
human Elementals.Entering into the composition
of the Astral Form of the new body into which the Ego
upon its quitting the Devachanic state is to
enter according to Karmic decree the Elementals form that
new astral entity which is born within the
Auric Envelope and of which it is often said:
Bad Karma waits at the threshold of Devachan
with its army of Skandhas.[Key to Theosophy.
p.141.]
For no sooner is the Devachanic state of
reward ended than the Ego is indissolubly united with (or
rather follows in the track of)the new Astral
Form.Both are Karmically propelled towards the family or
woman from whom is to be born the animal
chila chosen by Karma to become the vehicle of the Ego
which has just awakened from the Devachanic
state.Then the new Astral Form composed partly of the
pure Akāshic Essence of the Auric Egg and
partly of the terrestrial elements of the punishable sins and
misdeeds of the last personality is drawn into
the woman.Once there Nature models the ftus of flesh
around the Astral out of the growing materials
of the male seed in the female soil.Thus grows out of the
essence of a decayed seed the fruit or eidolon
of the dead seed the physical fruit producing in its turn
within itself another and other seeds for
future plants.
And now we may return to the Tattvas,and see
what they mean in nature and man showing thereby the
great danger of indulging in fancy amateur
Yoga without knowing what we are about.
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Five or Seven Tattvas (Page 497)
The T ć ttvic Correlations and Meaning
In Nature then we find seven Forces,or seven
Centres of Force and everything seems to respond to
that number as for instance the septenary
scale in music,or Sounds,and the septenary spectrum in
Colours.I have not exhausted its nomenclature
and proofs in the earlier volumes,yet enough is given to
show every thinker that the facts adduced are
no coincidences,but very weighty testimony.
There are several reasons why only five
Tattvas are given in the Hindu systems.One of these I have
already mentioned;another is that owing to our
having reached only the Fifth Race and being (so far as
Science is able to ascertain)endowed with only
five senses,the two remaining senses that are still latent
in man can have their existence proven only on
phenomenal evidence which to the Materialist is no
evidence at all.The five physical senses are
made to correspond with the five lower Tattvas the two yet
undeveloped senses in man;and the two
forces,or Tattvas,forgotten by Brāhmans and still
unrecognized by Science being so subjective
and the highest of them so sacred that they can only be
recognized by and known through the highest
Occult Sciences.It is easy to see that these two Tattvas
and the two senses (the sixth and the
seventh)correspond to the two highest human principles,Buddhi
and the Auric Envelope impregnated with the
light of Atmā.Unless we open in ourselves,by Occult
training the sixth and seventh senses,we can
never comprehend correctly their corresponding types.
Thus the statement in Nat re s Finer
Forces that in the Tāttvic scale the highest Tattva of all is Ćkāsha *
[Following Shivāgama,the said author
enumerates the correspondences in this wise:Ćkāsha Ether is
followed by Vāyu
Gas:Tejas,Heat:Ćpas,Liquid:and Prithivī Solid.] (followed by [only ] four each
of
which becomes grosser than its predecessor),if
made from the Esoteric standpoint is erroneous.For
once Ćkāsha an almost homogeneous and
certainly universal Principle is translated Ether then Ćkāsha
is dwarfed and limited to our visible Universe
for assuredly it is not the Ether of Space.Ether whatever
Modern Science makes of it is differentiated
Substance;Ćkāsha having no attributes save one
SOUND of which it is the substrat m is no substance even exoterically and in the minds of some
Orientalists,[See Fitz-Edward Hall s notes on
the Vishn P rānas.] but rather Chaos,or the Great
Spatial Void. [The pair which we refer to as
the One Life the Root of All and Ćkāsha in its pre-
differentiating period answers to the Brahma
(neuter)and Aditi of some Hindus,and stands in the same
relation as the Parabrahman and Mūlaprakriti
of the Vedāntins.]
(Page 498)Esoterically Ćkāsha alone is Divine Space
and becomes Ether only on the lowest and last
plane or our visible Universe and Earth.In
this case the blind is in the word attribute which is said to
be Sound.But Sound is no attribute of Ćkasha
but its primary correlation its primordial manifestation
the LOGOS or Divine Ideation made WORD
and that WORD made Flesh.Sound may be considered
an attribute of Ćkāsha only on the condition
of anthropomorphizing the latter.It is not a characteristic of
it though it is certainly as innate in it as
the idea I am I is innate in our thoughts.
Occultism teaches that Ćkāsha contains and
includes the seven Centres of Force therefore the six
Tattvas of which it is the seventh or rather
their synthesis.But if Ćkāsha be taken as we believe it is in
this case to represent only the exoteric idea
then the author is right;because seeing that Ćkāsha is
universally omnipresent following the Paurānic
limitation for the better comprehension of o r infinite
intellects,he places its commencement only beyond the four planes of
our Earth Chain [See above.i.
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diagram.p.221.] the two higher Tattvas being as concealed to the average mortal
as the sixth and
seventh senses are to the materialistic mind.
Therefore while Sanskrit and Hindu Philosophy
generally speak of five Tattvas only Occultists name
seven thus making them correspond with every
septenary in Nature.The Tattvas stand in the same
order as the seven macro-and micro-cosmic
Forces:and as taught in Esotericism are as follows:
(1)ĆDI TATTVA the primordial universal Force issuing at the beginning of
manifestation or of the
creative period from the eternal immutable
SAT the substratum of ALL.It corresponds with the Auric
Envelope or Brahmā s Egg which surrounds
every globe as well as every man animal and thing.It is
the vehicle containing potentially everything
Spirit and Substance Force and Matter.Ćdi Tattva in
Esoteric Cosmogony is the Force which we refer
to as proceeding from the First or Unmanifested
LOGOS.
(2)ANUPĆDAKA TATTVA [Anupādaka Opapatika in Pāli means the parentless, born
without father or
mother from itself as a transformation e.g.,the
God Brahmā sprung from the Lotus (the symbol of the
Universe)that grows from Vishnu s navel
Vishnu typifying eternal and limitless Space and Brahmā the
Universe and LOGOS:the mythical Buddha is also
born from a Lotus.] the first differentiation on the
plane of being the first being an ideal one
or that which is born by transformation from something
higher than itself.With the Occultists this
Force proceeds from the SECOND LOGOS.
The Tattvas (Page 499)(3)ĆKĆSHA TATTVA this is the point from which all exoteric Philosophies
and
Religions start.Ćkāsha Tattva is explained in
them as Etheric Force Ether.Hence Jupiter the highest
God was named after Pater Ęther;Indra once the
highest God in India is the etheric or heavenly
expanse and so with Uranus,etc.The Christian
biblical God also is spoken of as the Holy Ghost
Pneuma rarefied wind or air.This the
Occultists call the Force of the Third LOGOS the Creative Force in
the already Manifested Universe.
(4)VĆYU TATTVA the aėrial plane where substance is gaseous.
(5)TAIJAS TATTVA the plane of our atmosphere from tejas luminous.
(6)ĆPAS TATTVA watery or liquid substance or force.
(7)PRITHIVĪ TATTVA solid earthly substance the terrestrial spirit or force the
lowest of all.
All these correspond to our Principles,and to
the seven senses and forces in man.According to the
Tattva or Force generated or induced in us,so
will our bodies act.
Now what I have to say here is addressed
especially to those members who are anxious to develop
powers by sitting for Yoga. You have seen
from what has been already said that in the development of
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Rāja Yoga no extant works made public are of
the least good;they can at best give inklings of Hatha
Yoga something that may develop mediumship at
best and in the worst case consumption.If those
who practice meditation and try to learn
the Science of Breath will read attentively Nat re s Finer
Forces,they
will find that it is by utilizing the five Tattvas only that this dangerous
science is acquired.For
in the exoteric Yoga Philosophy and the Hatha
Yoga practice Ćkāsha Tattva is placed in the head (or
physical brain)of man;Tejas Tattva in the
shoulders;Vāyu Tattva in the navel (the seat of all the phallic
Gods,creators of the universe and man);Ćpas
Tattva in the knees and Prithivī Tattva in the feet.
Hence the two higher Tattvas and their
correspondences are ignored and excluded;and as these are
the chief factors in Rāja Yoga no spiritual or
intellectual phenomena of a high nature can take place.The
best results obtainable will be physical
phenomena and no more.As the Five Breaths, or rather the five
states of the human breath in Hatha Yoga
correspond to the above terrestrial planes and colours,what
spiritual results can be obtained?On the
contrary they are the very reverse of the plane of Spirit or the
higher macrocosmic plane reflected (Page 500)as they are upside down in the Astral
Light.This is
proven in the Tāntra work,Shivāgama,itself.Let
us compare.
First of all remember that the Septenary of
visible and also invisible Nature is said in Occultism to
consist of the three (and
four)Fires,which grow into the forty-nine Fires.This shows that as the
Macrocosm is divided into seven great planes
of various differentiations of Substance from the spiritual
or subjective to the fully objective or
material from Akāsha down to the sin-laden atmosphere of our
earth so in its turn each of these great
planes has three aspects,based on four Principles,as already
shown above.This seems to be quite natural as
even modern Science has her three states of matter
and what are generally called the critical
or intermediate states between the solid the fluidic,and the
gaseous.
Now the Astral Light is not a universally
diffused stuff but pertains only to our earth and all other bodies
of the system on the same plane of matter with
it.Our Astral Light is,so to speak,the Linga Sharīra of
our earth;only instead of being its primordial
prototype as in the case of our Chhāyā or Double it is the
reverse.Human and animal bodies grow and
develop on the model of their antetypal Doubles;whereas
the Astral Light is born from the terrene
emanations,grows and develops after its prototypal parent and
in its treacherous waves everything from the
upper planes and from the lower solid plane the earth both
ways is reflected reversed .Hence the
confusion of its colours and sounds in the clairvoyance and
clairaudience of the sensitive who trusts to
its records,be that sensitive a Hatha Yogī or a medium.The
following parallel between the Esoteric and
the Tāntra Tables of the Tattvas in relation to Sounds and
Colours shows this very clearly:
(Page 501)
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Esoteric and Tāntra Tables of the Tattvas
Esoteric Principles Tattvas or Forces and
their
Correspondences with the Human Body States
of Matter and
Colour
Tāntra Tattvas and their
Correspondences with the Human Body
States of matter and Colour
Tattvas Principles States of
Matter Parts of Body Colour
Tattvas States of
Matter
Parts of
Body Colour
(a)Adi Auric Egg
Priomardial
Spiritual
Substance;
Akāsha;
Substratum of
the Spirit of
Ether
Envelopes the
whole body
and
penetrates it.
Reciprocal
emanation
endosmotic
and
exosmotic
Synthesis
of all
Colours.
Blue (a)
Ignored Ignored Ignored
Ignored
(b)
Anupādaka Buddhi
Spiritual
Essence or
Spirit;
"Primordial
Waters of the
Deep"
Third Eye or
Pineal Gland Yellow (b)
Ignored Ignored Ignored
Ignored
(c)Alaya or
Akāsha
Manas Ego
Ether of
Space or
Akāsha in its
third
differentiation.
Critical state
of Vapour
Head Indigo (c)
Akāsha Ether Head Black or
Colourless
(d)Vāyu Kāma
Manas
Critical state
of Matter
Throat or
Navel Green (d)Vāyu Gas Navel
Blue
(e)Tejas Kāma
(Rūpa)
Essence of
gross Matter;
corresponds
to Ice
Shoulders
and Arms to
Thighs
Red (e)Tejas Head (?)Shoulder
s Red
(f)Apas Linga
Sharira
Gross Ether or
Liquid -Air
Thighs to
Knees Violet (f)Apas Liquid
Knees White
(g)Prithivi
Living Body
in Prāna or
animal life
Solid and
Critical State Knees to feet
Orange-
Red *
(g)
Prithivi Solid Feet Yellow **
*One may see at a glance how
reversed are the colours of the Tattvas,reflected in the Astral Light when we
find the Indigo called
black;the green blue;the violet white;and the orange yellow.
**The colours I repeat do not
here follow the prismatic scale -red orange yellow green blue indigo nd
violet -because this scale is
a false reflection a true Māyā;whereas our esoteric scale is that of the
spiritual
spheres,the seven planes of
the Macrocosm.
(Page 502)Such then is the Occult Science on which the
modern Ascetics and Yogīs of India base their
Soul development and powers.They are known as
the Hatha Yogīs.Now the science of Hatha Yoga
rests upon the suppression of breath or
Prānāyāma?Literally translated it means the death of (vital)
breath.Prāna as said is not Jīva the eternal
fount of life immortal;nor is it connected in any way with
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Pranava as some think,for Pranava is a synonym
of AUM in a mystic sense.As much as has ever been
taught publicly and clearly about it is to be
found in Nat re s Finer Forces .If such directions,however
are followed they can only lead to Black Magic
and mediumship.Several impatient Chelās,whom we
know personally in India went in for the
practice of Hatha Yoga notwithstanding our warnings.Of these
two developed consumption of which one
died;others became almost idiotic;another committed
suicide;and one developed into a regular
Tāntrika a Black Magician but his career fortunately for
himself was cut short by death.
The science of the Five Breaths,the moist the
fiery the airy etc.has a twofold significance and two
applications.The Tāntrikas take it literally
as relating to the regulation of the vital lung breath whereas
the ancient Rāja Yogīs understood it as
referring to the mental or will breath which alone leads to the
highest clairvoyant powers to the function of
the Third Eye and the acquisition of the true Rāja Yoga
Occult powers.The difference between the two
is enormous.The former as shown use the five lower
Tattvas;the latter begin by using the three
higher alone for mental and will development and the rest
only when they have completely mastered the
three;hence they use only one (Ćkāsha Tattva)out of the
Tāntric five.As well said in the above stated
work,Tattvas are the modifications of Svara. Now the
Svara is the root of all sound the substratum
of the Pythagorean music of the spheres,Svara being that
which is beyond Spirit in the modern
acceptation of the word the Spirit within Spirit or as very properly
translated the current of the life-wave the
emanation of the One Life.The Great Breath spoken of in
our first volume in ĆTMĆ the etymology of
which is eternal motion. Now while the ascetic Chelā of our
school for his mental development follows
carefully the process of the evolution of the Universe that is,
proceeds from universals to particulars,the
Hatha Yogī reverses the conditions and begins by sitting for
the suppression of his (vital)breath.
Hatha and Rāja Yoga (Page 503)And if as Hindu philosophy teaches,at the beginning of
kosmic
evolution Svara threw itself into the form of
Ćkāsha and thence successively into the forms of Vāyu
(air)Agni (fire),Apas (water),and Prithivī
(solid matter),[See Theosophist
February 1888 p.276 ]then it
stands to reason that we have to begin by the
higher supersens o s Tattvas.The Rāja Yogī does not
descend on the planes of substance beyond
Sūkshma (subtle matter),while the Hatha Yogī develops
and uses his powers only on the material
plane.Some Tāntrikas locate the three Nadīs,Sushumnā Īdā
and Pingalā in the medulla oblongata the
central line of which they call Sushumnā and the right and
left divisions,Pingalā and Īdā and also in the
heart to the divisions of which they apply the same
names.The Trans-Himālayan school of the
ancient Indian Rāja Yogīs,with which the modern Yogīs of
India have little to do locates Sushumnā the
chief seat of these three Nadīs,in the central tube of the
spinal cord and Īdā and Pingalā on its left and
right sides.Sushumnā is the Brahmadanda.It is that
canal (of the spinal cord),of the use of which
Physiology knows no more than it does of the spleen and
the pineal gland.Īdā and Pingalā are simply
the sharps and flats of that Fa of human nature the keynote
and the middle key in the scale of the
septenary harmony of the Principles,which when struck in a
proper way awakens the sentries on either side
the spiritual Manas and the physical Kāma and
subdues the lower through the higher.But this
effect had to be produced by the exercise of will-power
not through the scientific or trained
suppression of the breath.Take a transverse section of the spinal
region and you will find sections across three
columns,one of which columns transmits the volitional
orders,and a second a life current of Jīva
not of Prāna which animates the body of man during what
is called Samādhi and like states.
He who has studied both systems,the Hatha and
Rāja Yoga finds an enormous difference between the
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two:one is purely psycho-physiological the
other purely psycho-spiritual.The Tāntrists do not seem to
go higher than the six visible and known
plexuses,with each of which they connect the Tattvas;and the
great stress they lay on the chief of these
the Mūladhāra Chakra (the sacral plexus),shows the material
and selfish bent of their efforts towards the
acquisition of powers.Their five Breaths and five Tattvas are
chiefly concerned (Page 504)with the prostatic,epigastric,cardiac,and
laryngeal plexuses.Almost
ignoring the Ćjńā they are positively ignorant
of the synthesizing laryngeal plexus.But with the followers
of the old school it is different.We begin
with the mastery of that organ which is situated at the base of
the brain in the pharynx,and called by Western
Anatomists the Pituitary Body.In the series of the
objective cranial organs,corresponding to the
subjective Tāttvic principles,it stands to the Third Eye
(Pineal Gland)as Manas stands to Buddhi;the
arousing and awakening of the Third Eye must be
performed by that vascular organ that
insignificant little body of which once again Physiology knows
nothing at all.The one is the Energizer of
Will the other that of Clairvoyant Perception.
Those who are
Physicians,Physiologists,Anatomists,etc.will understand me better than the rest
in the
following explanation.
Now as to the functions of the Pineal Gland or
Conarium and of the Pituitary Body we find no
explanations vouchsafed by the standard
authorities.Indeed on looking through the works of the
greatest specialists,it is curious to observe
how much confused ignorance on the human vital economy
physiological as well as psychological is
openly confessed.The following is all that can be gleaned from
the authorities upon these two important
organs.
(1)The Pineal Gland or Conarium,is a rounded
oblong body from three to four lines long of a deep
reddish grey connected with the posterior part
of the third ventricle of the brain.It is attached at its base
by two thin medullary cords,which diverge
forward to the Optic Thalami.Remember that the latter are
found by the best Physiologists to be the
organs of reception and condensation of the most sensitive and
sensorial incitations from the periphery of
the body (according to Occultism from the periphery of the
Auric Egg which is our point of communication
with the higher universal planes).We are further told that
the two bands of the Optic Thalami which are
inflected to meet each other unite on the median line
where they become the two peduncles of the
Pineal Gland.
(2)The Pituitary Body or Hypophysis Cerebri is
a small and hard organ about six lines broad three
long and three high.It is formed of an
anterior bean-shaped and of a posterior and more rounded lobe
which are uniformly united.Its component parts
we are told are almost identical with those of the Pineal
Gland;yet not the slightest connection can be
traced between the two centres.To this,however
Occultists take exception;they know that
there is a connection and this even anatomically and
physically.
The Awakening of the Seventh Sense (Page 505)Dissectors,on the other hand have to deal with
corpses;and as they themselves admit brain
matter of all tissues and organs,collapses and changes
form the soonest in fact a few minutes after
death.When then the pulsating life which expanded the
mass of the brain filled all its cavities and
energized all its organs,vanishes,the cerebral mass shrinks
into a sort of pasty condition and once open
passages become closed.But the contraction and even
interblending of parts in this process of
shrinking and the subsequent pasty state of the brain do not
imply that there is no connection between
these two organs before death.In point of fact as Professor
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Owen has shown a connection as objective as a
groove and tube exists in the crania of the human
ftus and of certain fishes.When a man is in
his normal condition an Adept can see the golden Aura
pulsating in both the centres,like the
pulsation of the heart which never ceases throughout life.This
motion however under the abnormal condition of
effort to develop clairvoyant faculties,becomes
intensified and the Aura takes on a stronger
vibratory or swinging action.The arc of the pulsation of the
Pituitary Body mounts upward more and more
until just as when the electric current strikes some solid
object the current finally strikes the Pineal
Gland and the dormant organ is awakened and set all
glowing with the pure Ćkāshic Fire.This is the
psycho-physiological illustration of two organs on the
physical plane which are respectively the
concrete symbols of the metaphysical concepts called Manas
and Buddhi.The latter in order to become
conscious on this plane needs the more differentiated fire of
Manas:b t once the sixth sense has awakened
the seventh the light which radiates from this seventh
sense illumines the fields of infinitude.For a
brief space of time man becomes omniscient;the Past and
the Future Space and Time disappear and become
for him the Present.If an Adept he will store the
knowledge he thus gains in his physical memory
and nothing save the crime of indulging in Black
Magic,can obliterate the remembrance of it.If
only a Chelā portions alone of the whole truth will impress
themselves on his memory and he will have to
repeat the process for years never allowing one speck of
impurity to stain him mentally or physically
before he becomes a fully initiated Adept.
It may seem strange almost incomprehensible
that the chief success of Gupta Vidyā or Occult
Knowledge should depend upon flashes (Page 506)of clairvoyance and that the latter should
depend in
man on two such insignificant excrescences in
his cranial cavity two horny warts covered with grey
sand (acervulus cerebri), as expressed by
Bichat in his Anatomic Descriptive ;yet so it is.But this sand
is not to be despised;nay in truth it is only
this landmark of the internal independent activity of the
Conarium that prevents Physiologists from
classifying it with absolutely useless atrophied organs,the
relics of a previous and now utterly changed
anatomy of man during some period of his unknown
evolution.This sand is very mysterious and
baffles the inquiry of every Materialist.In the cavity on the
anterior surface of this gland in young
persons,and in its substance in people of advanced years,is
found
A yellowish substance semi-transparent
brilliant and hard the diameter of which does not
exceed half a line.[Smmerring De Acervulo Cerebri,vol.ii.p.322.]
Such is the acervulus cerebri.
This brilliant sand is the concretion of the
gland itself so say the Physiologists.Perhaps not we
answer.The Pineal Gland is that which the
Eastern Occultist calls Devāksha the Divine Eye.To this
day it is the chief organ of spirituality in
the human brain the seat of genius,the magical Sesame uttered
by the purified will of the Mystic,which opens
all the avenues of truth for him who knows how to use it.
The Esoteric Science teaches that Manas,the
Mind Ego does not accomplish its full union with the child
before he is six or seven years of age before
which period even according to the canon of the Church
and Law no child is deemed responsible.[In the
Greek Eastern Church no child is allowed to go to
confession before the age of seven after which
he is considered to have reached the age of reason.]
Manas becomes a prisoner one with the body
only at that age.Now a strange thing was observed in
several thousand cases by the famous German
anatomist Wengel.With a few extremely rare
exceptions,this sand or golden-coloured
concretion is found only in subjects after the completion of
their seventh year.In the case of fools these
calculi are very few indeed;in congenital idiots they are
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completely absent.Morgagni [De Ca s.Ep .vol.xii.]
Grading [Advers.Med.,ii.322.] and Gum [De
Lapillis Gland lę Pinealis in Q inq
e.Ment.Alien.1753.] were wise men in their
generation and are
wise men today since the are the only
Physiologists,so far who connect the calculi with mind.
The Master Chakras (Page 507)For sum up the facts,that they are absent in young children
in very old
people and in idiots,and the unavoidable
conclusion will be that they are connected with mind.
Now since every mineral vegetable and other
atom is only a concretion of crystallized Spirit or Ćkāsha
the Universal Soul why asks Occultism should
the fact that these concretions of the Pineal Gland are
upon analysis found to be composed of animal
matter phosphate of lime and carbonate serve as an
objection to the statement that they are the
result of the work of mental electricity upon surrounding
matter?
Our seven Chakras are all situated in the head
and it is these Master Chakras which govern and rule the
seven (for there are seven)principal plexuses
in the body besides the forty-two minor ones to which
Physiology refuses that name.The fact that no
microscope can detect such centres on the objective
plane goes for nothing;no microscope has ever
yet detected nor ever will the difference between the
motor and sensory nerve-tubes,the conductors
of all our bodily and psychic sensations;and yet logic
alone would show that such difference
exists.And if the term plexus,in this application does not
represent to the Western mind the idea
conveyed by the term of the Anatomist then call them Chakras
or Padmas,or the Wheels,the Lotus Heart and
Petals.Remember that Physiology imperfect as it is,
shows septenary groups all over the exterior and
interior of the body;the seven head orifices,the seven
organs at the base of the brain the seven
plexuses,the pharyngeal laryngeal cavernous,cardiac,
epigastric,prostatic,and sacral etc.
When the time comes,advanced students will be
given the minute details about the Master Chakras and
taught the use of them;till then less
difficult subjects have to be learned.If asked whether the seven
plexuses,or Tāttvic centres of action are the
centres where the seven Rays of the Logos vibrate I
answer in the affirmative simply remarking
that the rays of the Logos vibrate in every atom for the
matter of that.
In these volumes it is almost revealed that
the Sons of Fohat are the personified Forces known in a
general way as Motion Sound Heat Light
Cohesion Electricity or Electric Fluid and Nerve-Force or
Magnetism.This truth however cannot teach the
student to attune and moderate the Kundalini of the
cosmic plane with the vital Kundalini (Page 508)the Electric Fluid with the Nerve-Force and
unless he
does so he is sure to kill himself;for the one
travels at the rate of about 90 feet and the other at the rate
of 115 000 leagues a second.The seven Shaktis
respectively called Para Shakti Jńāna Shakti etc.are
synonymous with the Sons of Fohat for they
are their female aspects.At the present stage however
as their names would only be confusing to the
Western student it is better to remember the English
equivalents as translated above.As each Force
is septenary their sum is,of course forty-nine.
The question now mooted in Science whether a
sound is capable of calling forth impressions of light
and colour in addition to its natural sound
impressions,has been answered by Occult Science ages ago.
Every impulse or vibration of a physical
object producing a certain vibration of the air that is,causing the
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collision of physical particles,the sound of
which is capable of affecting the ear produces at the same
time a corresponding flash of light which will
assume some particular colour.For in the realm of hidden
Forces,an a dible sound is but a
subjective colour;and a perceptible colour but an ina dible sound;
both proceed from the same potential substance
which Physicists used to call ether and now refer to
under various other names;but which we call
plastic,through invisible SPACE.This may appear a
paradoxical hypothesis,but facts are there to
prove it.Complete deafness,for instance does not
preclude the possibility of discerning
sounds;medical science has several cases on record which prove
that these sounds are received by and conveyed
to the patient s organ of sight through the mind under
the form of chromatic impressions.The very
fact that the intermediate tones of the chromatic musical
scale were formerly written in colours shows
an unconscious reminiscence of the ancient Occult teaching
that colour and sound are two out of the seven
correlative aspects,on o r plane of one and the same
thing viz.,Nature s first
differentiated Substance.
Here is an example of the relation of colour
to vibration well worthy of the attention of Occultists.Not only
adepts and advanced Chelās,but also the lower
order of Psychics,such as clairvoyants and
psychometrists,can perceive a psychic Aura of
various colours around every individual corresponding to
the temperament of the person within it.In
other words,the mysterious records within the Auric Egg are
not the heirloom of trained Adepts alone but
sometimes also of natural Psychics.
The Human Harp (Page 509)Every human passion every thought and quality is indicated
in this Aura by
corresponding colours and shades of colour and
certain of these are sensed and felt rather than
perceived.The best of such Psychics,as shown
by Galton can also perceive colours produced by the
vibrations of musical instruments,every note
suggesting a different colour.As a string vibrates and gives
forth an audible note so the nerves of the
human body vibrate and thrill in correspondence with various
emotions under the general impulse of the
circulating vitality of Pranā thus producing undulations in the
psychic Aura of the person which result in
chromatic effects.
The human nervous system as a whole then may
be regarded as an Ęolian Harp responding to the
impact of the vital force which is no
abstraction but a dynamic reality and manifests the subtlest shades
of the individual character in colour
phenomena.If these nerve vibrations are made intense enough and
brought into vibratory relation with an astral
element the result is sound.How then can anyone doubt
the relation between the microcosmic and
macrocosmic forces?
And now that I have shown that the Tāntric
works as explained by Rāma Prāsad and other Yoga
treatises of the same character which have
appeared from time to time in Theosophical journals for
note well that those of true Rāja Yoga are
never published tend to Black Magic and are most
dangerous to take for guides in self-training
I hope that students will be on their guard.
For considering that no two authorities up to
the present day agree as to the real location of the Chakras
and Padmas in the body and seeing that the
colours of the Tattvas as given are reversed e.g.:
(a )Ćkāsha is made black or
colourless,whereas,corresponding to Manas,it is indigo;
(b )Vāyu is made blue
whereas,corresponding to the lower Manas,it is green.
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(c )Ćpas is made white
whereas,corresponding to the Astral Body it is violet with a silver moonlike
white substratum;
Tejas,red is the only colour given correctly from
such considerations,I say it is easy to see that these
disagreements are dangerous blinds.
Further the practice of the Five Breaths
results in deadly injury both physiologically and psychically as
already shown.It is indeed that which it is
called Prānāyāma or the death of the breath for it results,for
the practiser in death in moral death always
and in physical death very frequently.
On Exoteric "Blinds"and "The
Death of the Soul"
(Page 510)As a corollary to this,and before going into
still more abstruse teachings,I must redeem the
promise already given.I have to illustrate by
tenets you already know the awful doctrine of personal
annihilation.Banish from your minds all that
you have hitherto read in such works as Esoteric B ddhism
and thought you understood of such hypotheses
as the eighth sphere and the moon and that man
shares a common ancestor with the ape.Even the
details occasionally given out by myself in the
Theosophist and L cifer were nothing like the whole truth but
only broad general ideas,hardly touched
upon in their details.Certain passages,however
give out hints especially my foot-notes on articles
translated from liphas Lévi s Letters on
Magic.[See Stray Thoughts on Death and Satan in the
Theosophist,vol.iii No.1:also Fragments of Occult Truth vols.iii and
iv.]
Nevertheless,personal immortality is
conditional for there are such things as soulless men a teaching
barely mentioned although it is spoken of even
in Isis Unveiled ; [Op.cit.ii.368.et seq.] and there is
an
Avīchi rightly called Hell though it has no
connection with or similitude to the good Christian s Hell
either geographically or psychically.The truth
known to Occultists and Adepts in every age could not be
given out to a promiscuous public:hence though
almost every mystery of Occult Philosophy lies half
concealed in Isis and the two earlier
volumes of the present work,I had no right to amplify or correct the
details of others.Readers may now compare
those four volumes and such books as Esoteric B ddhism
with the diagrams and explanations in these
Papers,and see for themselves.
Paramātmā the Spiritual Sun may be thought of
as outside the human Auric Egg as it is also outside
the Macrocosmic or Brahmā s Egg.Why?Because
though every particle and atom are so to speak,
cemented with and soaked through by this
Paramātmic essence yet it is wrong to call it a human or
even a universal Principle for the term is
very likely to give rise to naught but an erroneous idea of the
philosophical and purely metaphysical
concept;it is not a Principle but the cause of every Principle the
latter term being applied by Occultists only
to its shadow the Universal Spirit that ensouls the
boundless Kosmos whether within or beyond Space
and Time.
The Duality in Manas (Page 511)Buddhi serves as a vehicle for that Paramātmic shadow.This
Buddhi is
universal and so also is the human Ćtmā.Within
the Auric Egg is the macrocosmic pentacle of LIFE
Prāna containing within itself the pentagram
which represents man.The universal pentacle must be
pictured with its point soaring upwards,the
sign of White Magic in the human pentacle it is the lower
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limbs which are upward forming the Horns of
Satan as the Christian Kabbalists call them.This is the
symbol of Matter that of the personal man and
the recognized pentacle of the Black Magician.For this
reversed pentacle does not stand only for Kāma
the fourth Principle exoterically but it also represents
physical man the animal of flesh with its
desires and passions.
Now mark well in order to understand that
which follows,that Manas may be pictured as an upper
triangle connected with the lower Manas by a
thin line which binds the two together.This is the
Antahkarana that path or bridge of
communication which serves as a link between the personal being
whose physical brain is under the sway of the
lower animal mind and the reincarnating Individuality the
spiritual Ego Manas,Manu the Divine Man.
This thinking Manu alone is that which reincarnates.In
truth and in nature the two Minds,the
spiritual and the physical or animal are one but separates into
two at reincarnation.For while that portion of
the Divine which goes to animate the personality
consciously separating itself like a dense but
pure shadow from the Divine Ego [The essence of the
Divine Ego is pure flame an entity to which
nothing can be added and from which nothing can be
taken:it cannot therefore be diminished even
by countless numbers of lower minds,detached from it
like flames from a flame.This is in answer to
an objection by an Esotericist who asked whence was that
inexhaustible essence of one and the same
Individuality which was called upon to furnish a human
intellect for every new personality in which
it is incarnated.] wedges itself into the brain and the senses
[The brain or thinking machinery is not only
in the head but as every physiologist who is not quote a
materialist will tell you every organ in man
heart liver lungs,etc.down to every nerve and muscle
has,so to speak,its own distinct brain or
thinking apparatus.As our brain has naught to do in the
guidance of the collective and individual work
of every organ in us,what is that which guides each so
unerringly in its incessant functions:that
makes these struggle and that too with disease throws it off
and acts,each of them even to the smallest not
in a clock-work manner as alleged by some materialists
(for at the slightest disturbance or breakage
the clock stops),but as an entity endowed with instinct?To
say it is Nature is to say nothing if it is
not the enunciation of a fallacy;for Nature after all is but a name
for these very same functions,the sum of the
qualities and attributes,physical mental etc.in the
universe and man the total of agencies and
forces guided by intelligent laws.] of the ftus,at the
completion of it seventh month the Higher
Manas does not unite itself with the child before the
completion of the first seven years of its
life.This detached essence or rather the reflection or shadow of
the Higher Manas,becomes,as the (Page 512)child grows,a distinct thinking Principle in
man its chief
agent being the physical brain.No wonder the
Materialists,who perceive only this rational soul or
mind will not disconnect it with the brain and
matter.But Occult Philosophy has ages ago solved the
problem of mind and discovered the duality of
Manas.The Divine Ego tends with its point upwards
towards Buddhi and the human Ego gravitates
downwards,immersed in Matter connected with its
higher subjective half only by the
Antahkarana.As its derivation suggests,this is the only connecting link
during life between the two minds the higher
consciousness of the Ego and the human intelligence of
the lower mind.
To understand this abstruse metaphysical
doctrine fully and correctly one has to be thoroughly
impressed with an idea which I have in vain
endeavoured to impart to Theosophists at large namely the
great axiomatic truth that the only eternal
and living Reality is that which the Hindus call Paramātmā and
Parabrahman.This is the one ever-existing Root
Essence immutable and unknowable to our physical
senses,but manifest and clearly perceptible to
our spiritual natures.Once imbued with that basic idea
and the further conception that if It is
omnipresent universal and eternal like abstract Space itself we
must have emanated from It and we must some
day return into It and all the rest becomes easy.
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If so then it stands to reason that life and
death good and evil past and future are all empty words,or
at best figures of speech.If the objective
Universe itself is but a passing illusion on account of its
beginning and finitude then both life and
death must also be aspects and illusions.They are changes of
state in fact and no more.Real life is in the
spiritual consciousness of that life in a conscio s existence
in Spirit,not Matter ;and real death is the limited perception of life the
impossibility of sensing conscious
or even individual existence outside of form
or at least of some form of Matter.Those who sincerely
reject the possibility of conscious life
divorced from Matter and brain-substance are dead nits .The
words of Paul an Initiate become
comprehensive.Ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God;
which is to say:Ye are personally dead matter
unconscious of its own spiritual essence and your real
life is hid with your Divine Ego (Christos)in
or merged with God (Ćtmā);now it has departed from you
ye soulless people.[See Coloss .]
The Living and the Dead (Page 513)Speaking on Esoteric lines,every irrevocably
materialistic person is
a dead man a living automaton in spite
of his being endowed with great brain power.Listen to what
Aryasangha says stating the same fact:
That which is neither Spirit nor Matter
neither Light nor Darkness,but is verily the container
and root of these that thou art.The Root
projects at every Dawn its shadow on ITSELF and
that shadow thou callest Light and Life O poor
dead Form.(This)Life-Light streameth
downward through the stairway of the seven
worlds,the stairs of which each step become
denser and darker.It is of this
seven-times-seven scale that thou art the faithful climber and
mirror O little man!Thou art this,but thou
knowest it not.
This is the first lesson to learn.The second
is to study well the Principles of both the Kosmos and
ourselves,dividing the group into the
permanent and the impermanent the higher and immortal and the
lower and mortal for thus only can we master
and guide first the lower cosmic and personal then the
higher cosmic and impersonal.
Once we can do that we have secured our
immorality.But some may say:How few are those who can
do so.All such are great Adepts and none can
reach such Adeptship in one short life.Agreed;but there
is an alternative.If the Sun thou canst not
be then be the humble Planet says the Book of the Golden
Precepts.And if even that is beyond our reach then let us at least endeavour to
keep within the ray of
some lesser star so that is silvery light may
penetrate the murky darkness,through which the stone path
of life treads onwards:for without this divine
radiance we risk losing more than we imagine.
With regard then to soulless men and the
second death of the Soul mentioned in the second
volume of Isis Unveiled you will there
find that I have spoken of such soulless people and even of
Avītchi though I leave the latter unnamed.Read
from the last paragraph on page 367 to the end of the
first paragraph on page 370 and then collate
what is there said with what I have now to say.
The higher triad Ćtmā-Buddhi-Manas,may be
recognized from the first line of the quotation from the
Egyptian papyrus.In the Rit al,now the Book
of the Dead,the purified Soul the dual Manas,appears as
the victim of the dark influence of the
Dragon Apophis,the physical personality of Kāmarūpic man with
his passions.If it has attained the final
knowledge of the heavenly and infernal Mysteries,the Gnosis
the divine and the terrestrial Mysteries,of
White and Black Magic then the defunct personality will
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triumph over its enemy death.This alludes to
the case of a complete re-union at the end of (Page 514)
earth life of the lower Manas,full of the
harvest of life with its Ego.But if Apophis conquers the Soul
then it cannot escape a second death.
These few lines from a papyrus,many thousands
of years old contain a whole revelation known in
those days only to the Hierophants and the
Initiates.The harvest of life consists of the finest spiritual
thoughts,of the memory or the noblest and most
unselfish deeds of the personality and the constant
presence during its bliss after death of all
those it loved with divine spiritual devotion.[See Key to
Theosophy.pp.147 148 et seq.] Remember the teaching:The Human
Soul lower Manas,is the only
and direct mediator between the personality
and the Divine Ego.That which goes to make up on this
earth the personality miscalled individ
ality by the majority is the sum of all its mental physical and
spiritual characteristics,which being
impressed on the Human Soul produces the man.Now of all
these characteristics it is the purified
thoughts alone which can be impressed on the higher immortal
Ego.This is done by the Human Soul merging again
in its essence into its parent source commingling
with its Divine Ego during life and re-uniting
itself entirely with it after the death of the physical man.
Therefore unless Kāma-Manas transmits to
Buddhi-Manas such personal ideations,and such
consciousness of its I as can be assimilated
by the Divine Ego nothing of that I or personality can
survive in the Eternal.Only that which is
worthy of the immortal God within us,and identical in its nature
with the divine quintessence can survive;for
in this case it is its own the Divine Ego s shadows or
emanations which ascend to it and are indrawn
by it into itself again to become once more part of its
own Essence.No noble thought no grand
aspiration desire or divine immortal love can come into the
brain of the man of clay and settle there
except as a direct emanation from the Higher to and through
the lower Ego:all the rest intellectual as it
may seem,proceeds from the shadow the lower mind in its
association and commingling with Kāma and
passes away and disappears for ever.But the mental and
spiritual ideations of the personal I return
to it as parts of the Ego s Essence and can never fade out.
Thus of the personality that was,only its
spiritual experiences,the memory of all that is good and noble
with the consciousness of its I blended with
that of all the other personal I s that preceded it survive
and become immortal.
Gaining Immortality (Page 515)There is no distinct or separate immortality for the men of
earth outside
of the Ego which informed them.That Higher Ego
is the sole bearer of all its alter egos on earth and their
sole representative in the mental state called
Devachan.As the last embodied personality however has
a right to its own special state of
bliss,unalloyed and free from the memories of all others,it is the last
life only which is f lly and realistically
vivid.Devachan is often compared to the
happiest day in a series
of many thousands of other days in the life
of a person.The intensity of its happiness makes the man
entirely forget all others,his past becomes
obliterated.
This is what we call the Devachanic state the
reward of the personality and it is on this old teaching that
the hazy Christian notion of Paradise was
built borrowed with many other things from the Egyptian
Mysteries,wherein the doctrine was enacted.And
this is the meaning of the passage quoted in Isis .The
Soul has triumphed over Apophis,the Dragon of
Flesh.Henceforth the personality will live in eternity in
its highest and noblest elements,the memory of
its past deeds,while the characteristics of the
Dragon will be fading out in Kāma Loka.If
the question be asked How live in eternity when Devachan
lasts but from 1 000 to 2 000 years the
answer is:In the same way as the recollection of each day
which is worth remembering lives in the memory
of each one of us. For the sake of an example the
days passed in one personal life may be taken
as an illustration of each personal life and this or that
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person may stand for the Divine Ego.
To obtain the key which will open the door of
many a psychological mystery it is sufficient to understand
and remember that which precedes and that
which follows.Many a Spiritualist has felt terribly indignant
on being told that personal immortality was conditional
;and yet such is the philosophical and logical fact.
Much has been said already on the subject but
no one to this day seems to have fully understood the
doctrine.Moreover it is not enough to know
that such a fact is said to exist.An Occultist or he who
would become one must know why it is
so;for having learned and comprehended the raison d źtre,it
becomes easier to set others right in their
erroneous speculations,and most important of all it affords
one an opportunity without saying too much to
teach other people to avoid a calamity which sad to say
occurs in our age almost daily.This calamity will
now be explained at length.
(Page 516)One must know little indeed of the Eastern
modes of expression to fail to see in this passage
quoted from the Book of the Dead,and
the pages of Isis (a )an allegory for the uninitiated containing
our Esoteric teaching;and (b )that the
two terms second death and Soul are in one sense blinds.
Soul refers indifferently to Buddhi-Manas
and Kāma-Manas.As to the term second death the
qualification second applies to several
deaths which have to be undergone by the Principles during
their incarnation Occultists alone
understanding fully the sense in which such a statement is made.For
we have (1)the death of the Body;(2)the death
of the Animal Soul in Kāma Loka;(3)the death of the
Astral Linga Sharīra following that of the
Body;(4)the metaphysical death of the Higher Ego the
immortal,every time it falls into matter or incarnates in a new personality.The
Animal Soul or lower
Manas,that shadow of the Divine Ego which
separates from it to inform the personality cannot by any
possible means escape death in Kāma
Loka at any rate that portion of this reflection which remains as a
terrestrial residue and cannot be impressed on
the Ego.Thus the chief and most important secret with
regard to that second death in the Esoteric
teaching was and is to this day the terrible possibility of the
death of
the Soul that is,its severance from the Ego on earth during a person s
lifetime.This is a real
death (though with chances of
resurrection),which shows no traces in a person and yet leaves him
morally a living corpse.It is difficult to see
why this teaching should have been preserved until now with
such secrecy when by spreading it among people
at any rate among those who believe in
reincarnation so much good might be done.But
so it was,and I had no right to question the wisdom of
the prohibition but have given it hitherto as
it was given to myself nder pledge not to reveal it to the
world at large.But now I have permission to
give it to all revealing its tenets first to the Esotericists,and
then when they have assimilated them
thoroughly it will be their duty to teach others this special tenet of
the second death and warn all the
Theosophists of its dangers.
To make the teaching clearer I shall seemingly
have to go over old ground;in reality however it is given
out with new light and new details.I have
tried to hint at it in the Theosophist as I have done in Isis but
have failed to make myself understood.I will
now explain it point by point.
The Philosophical Rationale of the Tenet
Light and Life (Page 517)(1)Imagine for illustration s sake the one
homogeneous,absolute and
omnipresent Essence above the upper step of
the stair of the seven planes of worlds,ready to start on
its evolutionary journey.As its correlating
reflection gradually descends,it differentiates and transforms
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into subjective and finally into objective
matter.Let us call it at its north pole Absolute Light;at its south
pole which to us would be the fourth or middle
step or plane counting either way we know it
Esoterically as the One and Universal Life.Now
mark the difference.Above LIGHT;below
Life .The
former is ever immutable the latter manifests
under the aspects of countless differentiations.According
to the Occult law all potentialities included
in the higher become differentiated reflections in the lower;
and according to the same law nothing which is
differentiated can be blended with the homogeneous.
Again nothing can endure of that which lives
and breathes and has its being in the seething waves of
the world or plane of differentiation.Thus
Buddhi and Manas being both primordial rays of the One
Flame the former the vehicle the upādhi or
vāhana of the one eternal Essence the latter the vehicle of
Mahat or Divine Ideation (Mahā-Buddhi in the P
rānas ),the Universal Intelligent Soul neither of them
as such can become extinct or be annihilated
either in essence or consciousness.But the physical
personality with its Linga Sharīra and the
animal soul with its Kāma [Kāma Rūpa the vehicle of the
Lower Manas,is said to dwell in the physical
brain in the five physical senses and in all the sense-
organs of the physical body.] can and do
become so.They are born in the realm of illusion and must
vanish like a fleecy cloud from the blue and
eternal sky.
He who has read these volumes with any degree
of attention must know the origin of the human Egos,
called Monads,generically and what they were
before they were forced to incarnate in the human
animal.The divine beings whom Karma led to act
in the drama of Manvantaric life are entities from
higher and earlier worlds and planets,whose
Karma had not been exhausted when their world went into
Pralaya.Such is the teaching;but whether it is
so or not the Higher Egos are as compared to such
forms of transitory terrestrial mud as
ourselves Divine Beings,Gods,immortal throughout the
Mahāmanvantara or the 311 040 000 000 000
years during which the Age of Brahmā lasts.And as the
Divine Egos,in (Page 518)order to re-become the One Essence or be
indrawn again into the AUM have
to purify themselves in the fire of suffering
and individual experience so also have the terrestrial Egos,
the personalities,to do likewise if they would
partake of the immortality of the Higher Egos.This they
can achieve by crushing in themselves all that
benefits only the lower personal nature of their selves
and by aspiring to transfuse their thinking
Kāmic Principle into that of the Higher Ego.We (i.e.,our
personalities)become immortal by the mere fact
of our thinking moral nature being grafted on our Divine
Triune Monad Ćtmā-Buddhi-Manas,the three in
one and one in three (aspects).For the Monad
manifested on earth by the incarnating Ego is
that which is called the Tree of Life Eternal that can only
be approached by eating the fruit of knowledge
the Knowledge of Good and Evil or of GNOSIS Divine
Wisdom.
In the Esoteric teachings,this Ego is the
fifth Principle in man.But the student who had read and
understood the first two Papers,knows
something more.He is aware that the seventh is not a human
but a universal Principle in which man
participates;but so does equally every physical and subjective
atom and also every blade of grass and
everything that lives or is in Space whether it be sensible of it
or not.He knows,moreover that if man is more
closely connected with it and assimilates it with a
hundredfold more power it is simply because he
is endowed with the highest consciousness on this
earth;that man in short may become a Spirit a
Deva or a God in his next transformation whereas
neither a stone nor a vegetable nor an animal
can do so before they become men in their proper turn.
(2)Now what are the functions of Buddhi?On
this plane it has none unless it is united with Manas,the
conscious Ego.Buddhi stands to the divine Root
Essence in the same relation as Mūlaprakriti to
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Parabrahman in the Vedānta School;or as Alaya
the Universal Soul to the One Eternal Spirit or that
which is beyond Spirit.It is its human vehicle
one remove from that Absolute which can have no relation
whatever to the finite and the conditioned.
(3)What again is Manas and its functions?In
its purely metaphysical aspect Manas,though one
remove on the downward plane from Buddhi is
still so immeasurably higher than the physical man that
it cannot enter into direct relation with the
personality except through its reflection the lower mind.
Manas is Spirit al Self-Conscio sness in
itself and Divine Consciousness when united with Buddhi
which is the true producer of that
production (vikāra),or Self-Consciousness,through Mahat.
The Two Egos (Page 519)Buddhi-Manas,therefore is entirely unfit to manifest during
its periodical
incarnations,except through the human mind or
lower Manas.Both are linked together and are
inseparable and can have as little to do with
the lower Tanmātras,[Tanmātra
means subtle and
rudimentary form the gross type of the finer
elements.The five Tanmātras are really the characteristic
properties or qualities of matter and of all
the elements;the real spirit of the word is something or
merely transcendental in the sense of
properties or qualities.] or
rudimentary atoms as the
homogeneous with the heterogeneous.It
is,therefore the task of the lower Manas,or thinking
personality if it would blend itself with its
God the Divine Ego to dissipate and paralyse the Tanmātras,
or properties of the material form.Therefore
Manas is shown double as the Ego and Mind of Man.It is
Kāma-Manas,or the lower Ego which deluded into
a notion of independent existence as the producer
in its turn and the sovereign of the five
Tanmātras,becomes Ego-ism,the selfish Self in which case it
has to be considered as Mahābhūtic and finite
in the sense of its being connected with Ahankāra the
personal I-creating faculty.Hence
Manas has to be regarded as eternal and
non-eternal in its atomic nature (paramanu rūpa),as eternal
substance (dravya),finite (kārya-rūpa)when
linked as a duad with Kāma (animal desire or human
egoistic volition),a lower production in short.[See Theosophist,August.1883.The
Real and the
Unreal.]
While therefore the INDIVIDUAL EGO owing to
its essence and nature is immortal throughout eternity
with a form (rūpa),which prevails during the
whole life cycles of the Fourth Round its Sosie,or
resemblance the personal Ego has to win its
immortality.
(4)Antahkarana is the name of that imaginary
bridge the path which lies between the Divine and the
human Egos,for they are Egos,during
human life to rebecome one Ego in Devachan or Nirvāna.This
may seem difficult to understand but in
reality with the help of a familiar though fanciful illustration it
becomes quite simple.Let us figure to
ourselves a bright lamp in the middle of the room casting its light
upon the wall.Let the lamp represent the
Divine Ego and the light thrown on the wall the lower Manas,
and let the wall stand for the body.That
portion of the atmosphere which transmits the ray from the lamp
to the wall will then present the
Antahkarana.We must further suppose that the light thus cast is
endowed with reason and intelligence and (Page 520)possesses,moreover the faculty of dissipating
all
the evil shadows which pass across the wall
and of attracting all brightness to itself receiving their
indelible impressions.Now it is in the power
of the human Ego to chase away the shadows,or sins,and
multiply the brightnesses,or good deeds,which
make these impressions,and thus through Antahkarana
ensure its own permanent connection and its
final re-union with the Divine Ego.Remember that the
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latter cannot take place while there remains a
single taint of the terrestrial of matter in the purity of that
light.On the other hand the connection cannot
be entirely ruptured and final re-union prevented so long
as there remains one spiritual deed or
potentiality to serve as a thread of union;but the moment this last
spark is extinguished and the last
potentiality exhausted then comes the severance.In an Eastern
parable the Divine Ego is likened to the
Master who sends out his labourers to till the ground and to
gather in the harvest and who is content to
keep the field so long as it can yield even the smallest
return.But when the ground becomes absolutely
sterile not only is it abandoned but the labourer also
(the lower Manas)perishes.
On the other hand however still using our
simile when the light thrown on the wall or the rational
human Ego reaches the point of actual
spiritual exhaustion the Antahkarana disappears,no more light
is transmitted and the lamp becomes
non-existent to the ray.The light which has been absorbed
gradually disappears and Soul eclipse
occurs;the being lives on earth and then passes into Kāma
Loka as a mere surviving congeries of material
qualities;it can never pass onwards towards Devachan
but is reborn immediately a human animal and
scourge.
This simile however fantasic will help us to
seize the correct idea.Save through the blending of the
moral nature with the Divine Ego there is no
immortality for the personal Ego.It is only the most spiritual
emanations of the personal Human Soul which
survive.Having during a lifetime been imbued with the
notion and feeling of the I am I of its
personality the Human Soul the bearer of the very essence of the
Karmic deeds of the physical man becomes,after
the death of the latter part and parcel of the Divine
Flame the Ego.It becomes immortal through the
mere fact that it is now strongly grafted on the Monad
which is the Tree of Life Eternal.
And now we must speak of the tenet of the
second death.What happens to the Kāmic Human Soul
which is always that of a debased and wicked
man or of a soulless person?This mystery will now be
explained.
Death of the Soul (Page 521)The personal Soul in this case viz.,in that of one
who has never had a
thought not concerned with the animal self
having nothing to transmit to the Higher or to add to the sum
of the experiences gleaned from past
incarnations which its memory is to preserve throughout eternity
this personal Soul becomes separated from the
Ego.It can graft nothing of self on that eternal trunk
whose sap throws out millions of
personalities,like leaves from its branches,leaves which wither die
and fall at the end of their season.These
personalities bud blossom forth and expire some without
leaving a trace behind others after
commingling their own life with that of the parent stem.It is the Souls
of the former class that are doomed to
annihilation or Avītchi a state so badly understood and still
worse described by some Theosophical
writers,but which is not only located on our earth but is in fact
this very earth itself.
Thus we see that Antahkarana has been
destroyed before the lower man has had an opportunity of
assimilating the Higher and becoming at one
with it;and therefore the Kāmic Soul becomes a separate
entity to live henceforth for a short or long
period according to its Karma as a soulless creature.
But before I elaborate this question I must
explain more clearly the meaning and functions of the
Antahkarana.As already said it may be
represented as a narrow bridge connecting the Higher and the
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lower Manas.If you look at the Glossary of the
Voice of the Silence,pp.88 and 89 you will find it is a
projection of the lower Manas,or rather the
link between the latter and the Higher Ego or between the
Human and the Divine or Spiritual Soul.[As the
author of Esoteric B ddhism and the Occult World called
Manas the Human Soul and Buddhi the Spiritual
Soul I have left these terms unchanged in the Voice
seeing that it was a book intended for the
public.
At death it is destroyed as a path or medium
of communication and its remains survive as
Kāma Rūpa.
the shell.It is this which the Spiritualists
see sometimes appearing in the séance rooms as materialized
forms,which they foolishly mistake for the
Spirits of the Departed. [In the exoteric teachings of Rāja
Yoga Antahkarana is called the inner organ of
perception and is divided into four parts:the (lower)
Manas,Buddhi (reason),Ahankāra
(personality)and Chitta (thinking faculty).It also together with
several other organs,forms a part of Jīva Sou
called also Lingadeh.Esotericists,however must not be
misled by this popular version.] So far is
this from being (Page
522)the
case that in dreams,though
Antahkarana is there the personality is only
half awake;therefore Antahkarana is said to be dr nk or
insane during
our normal sleeping state.If such is the case during the periodical death or
sleep of the
living body one may judge what the
consciousness of Antahkarana is like when it has been transformed
after the eternal sleep into Kāma Rūpa.
But to return.In order not to confuse the mind
of the Western student with the abstruse difficulties of
Indian metaphysics,let him view the lower
Manas,or Mind as the personal Ego during the waking state
and as Antahkarana only during those moments
when it aspires towards its Higher Ego and thus
becomes the medium of communication between
the two.It is for this reason that it is called the Path.
Now when a limb or organ belonging to the
physical organism is left in disuse it becomes weak and
finally atrophies.So also it is with mental
faculties;and hence the atrophy of the lower mind-function
called Antahkarana becomes comprehensible in
both completely materialistic and depraved natures.
According to Esoteric Philosophy however the
teaching is as follows:Seeing that the faculty and
function of Antahkarana is as necessary as the
medium of the ear for hearing or that of the eye for
seeing;then so long as the feeling of Ahankāra
that is,of the personal I or selfishness,is not entirely
crushed out in a man and the lower mind not
entirely merged into and become one with the Higher
Buddhi-Manas,it stands to reason that to
destroy Antahkarana is like destroying a bridge over an
impassable chasm;the traveller can never
reach the goal on the other shore.And here lies the difference
between the exoteric and Esoteric teaching.The
former makes the Vedānta state that so long as Mind
(the lower)clings through Antahkarana to
Spirit (Buddhi-Manas)it is impossible for it to acquire true
Spiritual Wisdom Gnyāna and that this can only
be attained by seeking to come en rapport with the
Universal Soul (Ćtmā);that in fact it is by
ignoring the Higher Mind altogether that one reaches Rāja
Yoga.We say it is not so.No single rung of the
ladder leading to knowledge can be skipped.No
personality can ever reach or bring itself
into communications with Ćtmā except through Buddhi-Manas;
to try and become a Jīvanmukta or a Mahātma
before one has become an Adept or even a Narjol (a
sinless man)is like trying to reach Ceylon
from India without crossing the sea.Therefore we are told that
if we destroy Antahkarana before the personal
is absolutely under the control of the impersonal Ego we
risk to lose the latter and be severed for
ever from it unless indeed we hasten to re-establish the
communication by a supreme and final effort.
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Reincarnation of Lower Soul (Page 523)It is only when we are indissolubly linked with
the essence of
the Divine Mind that we have to destroy
Antahkarana.
Like as a solitary warrior pursued by an army
seeks refuge in a stronghold;to cut himself off
from the enemy he first destroys the
drawbridge and then only commences to destroy the
pursuer;so must the Srotāpatti act before he
slays Antahkarana.
Or as an Occult axiom has it:
The Unit becomes Three,and Three generate
Fo r.It is for the latter [the Q arternary ] to
rebecome Three,and for the Divine Three to
expand into the Absol te One.
Monads,which become Duads on the
differentiated plane to develop into Triads during the cycle of
incarnations,even when incarnated know neither
space nor time but are diffused through the lower
Principles of the Quarternary being
omnipresent and omniscient in their nature.But this omniscience is
innate and can manifest its reflected light
only through that which is at least semi-terrestrial or material;
even as the physical brain which in its turn
is the vehicle of the lower Manas enthroned in Kāma Rūpa.
And it is this which is gradually annihilated
in cases of second death.
But such annihilation which is in reality the
absence of the slightest trace of the doomed Soul from the
eternal MEMORY and therefore signifies annihilation in eternity does not
mean simply discontinuation of
human life on earth for earth is Avītchi and
the worst Avītchi possible.Expelled forever from the
consciousness of the Individuality the
reincarnating Ego the physical atoms and psychic vibrations of
the now separate personality are immediately
reincarnated on the same earth only in a lower and still
more abject creature a human being only in
form doomed to Karmic torments during the whole of its
new life.Moreover if it persists in its
criminal or debauched course it will suffer a long series of
immediate reincarnations.
Here two questions present themselves:(1)What
becomes of the Higher Ego in such cases?(2)What
kind of an animal is a human creature born
soulless?
Before answering these two very natural queries,I
have to draw the attention of all of you who are born
in Christian countries to the fact that the
romance of the vicarious atonement and the mission of Jesus
(Page 524)as it now stands,was drawn or borrowed by some
too liberal Initiates from the mysterious and
weird tenet of the earthly experience of the
reincarnating Ego.The latter is indeed the sacrificial victim of
and through its own Karma in previous
Manvantaras,which takes upon itself voluntarily the duty of
saving what would be otherwise soulless men or
personalities.Eastern truth is thus more philosophical
and logical than Western fiction.The Christos
or Buddhi-Manas of each man is not quite an innocent
and sinless God though in one sense it is the
Father being of the same essence with the Universal
Spirit and at the same time the Son for
Manas is the second remove from the Father. By incarnation
the Divine Son makes itself responsible for
the sins of all the personalities which it will inform.This it can
do only through its proxy or reflection the
lower Manas.The only case in which the Divine Ego can
escape individual penalty and responsibility
as a guiding Principle is when it has to break off from the
personality because matter with its psychic
and astral vibrations,is then by the very intensity of its
combinations,placed beyond the control of the
Ego.Apophis,the Dragon having become the conqueror
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the reincarnating Manas,separating itself
gradually from its tabernacle breaks finally asunder from the
psycho-animal Soul.
Thus,in answer to the first question I say:
(1)The Divine Ego does one of two
things:either (a )it recommences immediately under its own Karmic
impulses a fresh series of incarnations;or (b
)it seeks and finds refuge in the bosom of the Mother
Alaya the Universal Soul of which the
Manvantaric aspect is Mahat.Freed from the life-impressions of
the personality it merges into a kind of
Nirvānic interlude wherein there can be nothing but the eternal
Present which absorbs the Past and
Future.Bereft of the labourer both field and harvest now being
lost the Master in the infinitude of his
thought naturally preserves no recollection of the finite and
evanescent illusion which had been his last
personality.And then indeed is the latter annihilated.
(2)The future of the lower Manas is more
terrible and still more terrible to humanity than to the now
animal man.It sometimes happens that after the
separation the exhausted Soul now become supremely
animal fades out in Kāma Loka as do all other
animal souls.But seeing that the more material is the
human mind the longer it lasts,even in the
intermediate stage it frequently happens that after the
present life of the soulless man is ended he
is again and again reincarnated into new personalities,each
one more abject than the other.
The Dweller on the Threshold (Page 525)The impulse of animal life is too
strong;it cannot wear itself
out in one or two lives only.In rarer
cases,however when the lower Manas is doomed to exhaust itself
by starvation ;when there is no longer
hope that even a remnant of a lower light will owing to favourable
conditions say even a short period of
spiritual aspiration and repentance attract back to itself its
Parent Ego and Karma leads the Higher Ego back
to new incarnations,then something far more
dreadful may happen.The Kāma-Mānasic spook may
become that which is called in Occultism the
Dweller on the Threshold.This Dweller is not
like that which is described so graphically in Zanoni,but
an actual fact in Nature and not a fiction in
romance however beautiful the latter may be.Bulwer
however must have got the idea from some
Eastern Initiate.This Dweller led by affinity and attraction
forces itself into the astral current and
through the Auric Envelope of the new tabernacle inhabited by
the Parent Ego and declares war to the lower
light which has replaced it.This,of course can only
happen in the case of the moral weakness of
the personality so obsessed.
No one strong in virtue and righteous in his
walk of life can risk or dread any such thing;but only those
depraved in heart.Robert Louis Stevenson had a
glimpse of a true vision indeed when he wrote his
Strange Case of Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde .His story is a true allegory.Every Chelā will recognize in
it a
substratum of truth and in Mr.Hyde a Dweller
an obsessor of the personality the tabernacle of the
Parent Spirit.
This is a nightmare tale!I was often told by
one now no more in our ranks,who had a most
pronounced Dweller a Mr.Hyde as an
almost constant companion.How can such a process take
place without one s knowledge?It can and
does so happen and I have almost described it once before
in the Theosophist.
Page 411.
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The Soul the lower Mind becomes as a half
animal principle almost paralyzed with daily vice
and grows gradually unconscious of its
subjective half the Lord and of the mighty Host;[and ]
in proportion to the rapid sensuous
development of the brain and nerves,sooner or later it
(the personal Soul)finally loses sight of its
divine mission on earth.
Truly
Like the vampire the brain feeds and lives and
grows in strength at the expense of its spiritual
parent ...and the personal half-unconscious
Soul becomes senseless,beyond hope of
redemption.It is powerless to discern the
voice of its (Page 526)God.It aims but at
the
development and fuller comprehension of
natural earthly life;and thus can discover but the
mysteries of physical nature ....It begins by
becoming virtually dead during the life of the
body;and ends by dying completely that is,by
being annihilated as a complete immortal
So l .Such
a catastrophe may often happen long years before one s physical death;We
elbow soulless men and women at every step in
life. And when death arrives ...there is no
more a Soul (the reincarnating Spiritual
Ego)to liberate ...for it has fled years before.
Result:Bereft
of its guiding Principles,but strengthened by the material
elements,Kāma-Manas,from
being a derived light now becomes an
independent Entity.After thus suffering itself to sink lower and
lower on the animal plane when the hour
strikes for its earthly body to die one of two things happen:
either Kāma-Manas is immediately reborn in
Myalba the state of Avītchi on earth [The
Earth or earth-
life rather is the only Avītchi (Hell)that
exists for the men of our humanity on this globe.Avītchi is a state
not a locality a counterpart of Devachan.Such
a state follows the Soul wherever it goes,whether into
Kāma Loka as a semi-conscious Spook,or into a
human body when reborn to suffer Avītchi.Our
Philosophy recognizes no other Hell.] or if it become too strong in evil
immortal in Satan is the Occult
expression it is sometimes allowed for Karmic
purposes,to remain in an active state of Avītchi in the
terrestrial Aura.Then through despair and loss
of all hope it becomes like the mythical devil in its
endless wickedness;it continues in its
elements,which are imbued through and through with the
essence of Matter;for evil is coeval with
Matter rent asunder from Spirit.And when its Higher Ego has
once more reincarnated evolving a new
reflection or Kāma-Manas,the doomed lower Ego like a
Frankenstein s monster will ever feel
attracted to its Father who repudiates his son and will become a
regular Dweller on the Threshold of
terrestrial life.I gave the outlines of the Occult doctrine in the
Theosophist of October 1881 and November 1882 but could not go into
details,and therefore got very
much embarrassed when called upon to explain.Yet
I have written there plainly enough about useless
drones,those who refuse to become co-workers
with Nature and who perish by millions during the
Manvantaric life-cycle;those as in the case in
hand who prefer to be ever suffering in Avītchi under
Karmic law rather than give up their lives in
evil and finally those who are co-workers with Nature for
destruction.These are thoroughly wicked and
depraved men but yet as highly intellectual and acutely
spirit al for evil as those who are spiritual for good.
The (lower)Egos of these may escape the law of
final destruction or annihilation for ages to
come.
The Word (Page 527)Thus we find two kinds of soulless beings on earth:those who
have lost their Higher
Ego in the present incarnation and those who
are born soulless,having been severed from their
Spiritual Soul in the preceding birth.The
former are candidates for Avītchi;the latter are Mr.Hydes,
whether in or o t of human
bodies,whether incarnated or hanging about as invisible though potent
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ghouls.In such men cunning develops to an
enormous degree and no one except those who are
familiar with the doctrine would suspect them
of being soulless,for neither Religion nor Science has the
least suspicion that such facts actually exist
in Nature.
There is,however still hope for a person who
has lost his Higher Soul through his vices,while he is yet
in the body.He may be still redeemed and made
to turn on his material nature.For either an intense
feeling of repentance or one single earnest
appeal to the Ego that has fled or best of all an active effort
to amend one s ways may bring the Higher Ego
back again.The thread of connection is not altogether
broken though the Ego is now beyond forcible
reach for Antahkarana is destroyed and the personal
Entity has one foot already in Myalba;[See Voice
of the Silence,p.97.] yet it
is not entirely beyond
hearing a strong spiritual appeal.There is
another statement made in Isis Unveiled [Loc.cit.] on this
subject.It is said that this terrible death
may be sometimes avoided by the knowledge of the mysterious
NAME the WORD. [Read the last footnote on p.368
vol.ii.of Isis Unveiled,and you will see that even
profane Egyptologists and men who like Bunsen
were ignorant of Initiation were struck by their own
discoverers when they found the Word
mentioned in old papyri.] What
this WORD which is not a
Word but a So nd is,you all know.Its
potency lies in the rhythm or the accent.This means simply that
even a bad person may by the study of the
Sacred Science be redeemed and stopped on the path of
destruction.But unless he is in thorough union
with his Higher Ego he may repeat it parrot-like ten
thousand times a day and the Word will not
help him.On the contrary if not entirely at one with his
Higher Triad it may produce quite the reverse
of a beneficent effect the Brothers of the Shadow using it
very often for malicious objects;in which case
it awakens and stirs up naught but the evil material
elements of Nature.But if one s nature is
good and sincerely strives towards the HIGHER SELF which is
that Aum through one s Higher Ego which is
its third (Page 528)letter and Buddhi
the second there is no
attack of the Dragon Apophis which it will not
repel.From those to whom much is given much is
expected.He who knocks at the door of the
Sanctuary in full knowledge of its sacredness,and after
obtaining admission departs from the threshold
or turns round and says Oh there s nothing in it! and
thus loses his chance of learning the whole
truth can but await his Karma.
Such are then the Esoteric explanations of
that which has perplexed so many who have found what they
thought contradictions in various Theosophical
writings,including Fragments of Occult Truth in vols.iii
and iv of The Theosophist,etc.Before
finally dismissing the subject I must add a caution which pray
keep well in mind.It will be very natural for
those of you who are Esotericists to hope that none of you
belong so far to the soulless portion of
mankind and that you can feel quite easy about Avītchi even as
the good citizen is about the penal
laws.Though not perhaps,exactly on the Path as yet you are
skirting its border and many of you in the
right direction.Between such venal faults as are inevitable
under our social environment and the blasting
wickedness described in the Editor s note on liphas Lźvi s
Satan [See Theosophist,vol.iii.October
1882 p.13.] there is an abyss.If not become immortal in
good by identification with (our)God or
AUM,Ćtma-Buddhi-Manas,we have surely not made ourselves
immortal in evil by coalescing with Satan
the lower Self.You forget however that everything must
have a beginning;that the first step on a
slippery mountain slope is the necessary antecedent to one s
falling precipitately to the bottom and into
the arms of death.Be it far from me the suspicion that any of
the Esoteric students have reached to any
considerable point down the plane of spiritual descent.All the
same I warn you to avoid taking the first
step.You may not reach the bottom in this life or the next but
you may now generate causes which will insure
your spiritual destruction in your third fourth fifth or
even some subsequent birth.In the great Indian
epic you may read how a mother whose whole family of
warrior sons were slaughtered in battle
complained to Krishna that though she had the spiritual vision to
enable her to look back fifty incarnations,yet
she could see no sin of hers that could have begotten so
Page 413.
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dreadful a Karma;and Krishna answered her:If
thou could st look back to thy fifty-first anterior birth as I
can thou would st see thyself killing in
wanton cruelty the same number of ants as that of the sons thou
hast now lost.This,of course is only a
poetical exaggeration;yet it is a striking image to show how
great results come from apparently trifling
causes.
The Divine Witness (Page 529)Good and evil are relative and are intensified or lessened
according to
the conditions by which man is surrounded.One
who belongs to that which we call the useless portion
of mankind that is to say the lay majority is
in many cases irresponsible.Crimes committed in Avidyā
or ignorance involve physical but not moral
responsibilities or Karma.Take for example the case of
idiots,children savages,and people who know no
better.But the case of each who is pledged to the
HIGHER SELF is quite another matter.Yo
cannot invoke this Divine Witness with Imp nity,and once
that you have put yourselves under its
tutelage you have asked the Radiant Light to shine and search
through all the dark corners of your
being;consciously you have invoked the Divine Justice of Karma to
take note of your motive to scrutinize your
actions,and to enter up all in your account.The step is
irrevocable as that of the infant taking
birth.Never again can you force yourselves back into the matrix of
Avidyā and irresponsibility.Though you flee to
the uttermost parts of the earth and hide yourselves from
the sight of men or seek oblivion in the
tumult of the social whirl that Light will find you out and lighten
your every thought word and deed.All H.P.B can
do is to send to each earnest one among you a most
sincerely fraternal sympathy and hope for a
good outcome to your endeavours.Nevertheless,be not
discouraged but try ever keep trying;[Read
pp.40 and 63 in the Voice of the Silence.] twenty failures
are not irremediable if followed by as many
undaunted struggles upward.Is it not so that mountains are
climbed?And know further that if Karma
relentlessly records in the Esotericist s account bad deeds that
in the ignorant would be overlooked yet
equally true is it that each of his good deeds is,by reason of his
association with the Higher Self a hundredfold
intensified as a potentiality for good.
Finally keep ever in mind the consciousness
that though you see no Master at your bedside nor hear
one audible whisper in the silence of the
still night yet the Holy Power is about you the Holy Light is
shining into your hour of spiritual need and
aspirations,and it will be no fault of the MASTERS or of their
humble mouthpiece and servant if through
perversity or moral feebleness some of you cut yourselves off
from these higher potencies,and step upon the
delivery that leads to Avītchi.
Page 414.
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Appendix
Notes on Papers I II III
Page 436
(Page 530)Students in the west have little or no idea of
the forces that lie latent in Sound the Ćkashic
vibrations that may be set up by those who
understand how to pronounce certain words.The Om or the
Om mani padme h m are in spiritual
affinity with cosmic forces,but without a knowledge of the natural
arrangement or of the order in which the
syllables stand very little can be achieved.Om is,of course
Aum that may be pronounced as two three or
seven syllables,setting up different vibrations.
Now letters as vocal sounds,cannot fail to
correspond with musical notes,and therefore with numbers
and colours;hence also with forces and
Tattvas.He who remembers the Universe is built up from the
Tattvas will readily understand something of
the power that may be exercised by vocal sounds.Every
letter in the alphabet whether divided into
three four or seven septenaries,or forty-nine letters,has its
own colour or shade of colour.He who has
learnt the colours of the alphabetical letters,and the
corresponding numbers of the seven and the
forty-nine colours and shades on the scale of planes and
forces,and knows their respective order in the
seven planes,will easily master the art of bringing them
into affinity or interplay.But here a
difficulty arises.The Senzar and Sanskrit alphabets,and other Occult
tongues,besides other potencies,have a number
colour and distinct syllable for every letter and so had
also the old Mosaic Hebrew.But how many
students know any of these tongues?When the time comes,
therefore it must suffice to teach the
students the numbers and colours attached to the Latin letters only
(N.B.as pronounced in Latin not in Anglo-Saxon
Scotch or Irish).This,however would be at present
premature.
A Mantra Operative (Page 531)The colour and number of not only the planets but also the
zodiacal
constellations corresponding to every letter
of the alphabet are necessary to make any special syllable
and even letter operative .[See The
Voice of the Silence.p.viii.] therefore if a student would make
Buddhi operative for instance he would have to
intone the first words of the Mantra on the note mi .But
he would have still further to accentuate the mi
and produce mentally the yellow colour corresponding to
this sound and note on every letter M in Om
mani padme h m ;this,not because the note bears the
same name in the vernacular Sanskrit or even
the Senzar for it does not but because the letter M
follows the first letter and is in this sacred
formula also the seventh and the fourth.As Buddhi it is
second;as Buddhi-Manas it is the second and
third combined.
H.P.B.
PAGE 439
[The following notes were contributed by
students and approved by H.P.B ]
The Pythagorean Four or Tetraktys,was the
symbol of the Kosmos,as containing within itself the point
the line the superficies,the solid;in other
words,the essentials of all forms.Its mystical representation is
the point within the triangle.The Decad or
perfect number is contained in the Four;thus,1+2+3+4=10.
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PAGE 453
O
PAGE 477
The difficult passage:Bear in mind ....a
mystery below truly [See Page 444 ] may become a little
more clear to the student if slightly
amplified.(Page 532)The primordial
Triangle is the Second Logos,
which reflects itself as a Triangle in the
Third Logos,or Heavenly Man and then disappears.The Third
Logos,containing the potency of formative
creation develops the Tetraktys from the Triangle and so
becomes the Seven the Creative Force making a
Decad with the primordial Triangle which originated it.
When this heavenly Triangle and Tetraktys are
reflected in the Universe of Matter as the astral
paradigmatic man they are reversed and the
Triangle or formative potency is thrown below the
Quaternary with its apex pointing
downwards:the Monad of this astral paradigmatic man is itself a
Triangle bearing to the Quaternary and
Triangle the relation born by the primordial Triangle to the
Heavenly Man.Hence the phrase the upper
Triangle ...is shifted in the man of clay below the seven .
Here again the point tracing the Triangle the
Monad becoming the Ternary with the Quaternary and the
lower creative triangle make up the Decad the
perfect number.As above so below.
The student will do well to relate the
knowledge here acquired to that given on p.477.Here the upper
Triangle is given as Violet Indigo Blue
associating Violet as the paradigm of all forms with Indigo as
Mahat and blue as the Ćtmic Aura.In the
Quaternary Yellow as substance is associated with Yellow-
Orange Life and Red-Orange the creative
potency.Green is the plane between.
The next stage is now explained.Green passes
upward to Violet Indigo Blue the Triangle opening out
to receive it and so forming the square Violet
Indigo Blue Green.This leaves the Red-Orange Yellow-
Orange and Yellow and these having thus lost
their fourth member can only form a triangle.This
triangle revolves to point downwards for the
descent into matter and mirrored on the plane of gross
Page 416.
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nature it is reversed and appears as in the
diagram following these words.
[See supra,i.89 90 and 95.]
Colour and Spiritual Sound (Page 533)In the perfect man the Red will be absorbed by
the Green;Yellow
will become one with Indigo;Yellow-Orange will
be absorbed in Blue;Violet will remain outside the True
Man though connected with him.Or to translate
the colours:Kāma will be absorbed in the Lower
Manas;Buddhi will become one with Manas;Prāna
will be absorbed in the Auric Egg;the physical body
remains,connected but outside the real life.
A.Besant
Page 481
To the five senses at present the property of
mankind two more on this globe are to be added.The sixth
sense is the psychic sense of colour.The
seventh is that of spiritual sound.In the second instruction the
corrected rates of vibration for the seven
primary colours and their modulations are given.Inspecting
these it appears that each colour differs from
the preceding one by a step of 42 or 6x7.
Carrying the process backward and subtracting
42 we find that the first or ground colour is green for
this globe.
Page 417
462 Red +42 =504
504 Orange +42 =546
546 Yellow +42 =588
588 Green +42 =630
630 Blue +42 =672
672 Indigo +42 =714
714 Violet +42 =756
756 Red +
Third Octave
of psychic
colour perceptions
Green
42 Blue
84 Indigo
126 Violet
First semi-octave
168 Red
210 Orange
252 Yellow
294 Green
336 Blue
378 Indigo
420 Violet
462 Red
Second octave.
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The third and fourth octaves would be heat and
actinic rays,and are invisible to our present perception.
The seventh sense is that of spiritual
sound;and since the vibrations of the sixth progress by steps of
6x7 those of the seventh progress by steps of
7x7.This is their table:
The fifth sense is in our possession:it is
possibly that of geometrical form and its steps of progression
would be 5x7 or 35.
The fourth sense is that of physical hearing
music,and its progressions are 28 or 4x7.The truth of this
is demonstrated by the fact that it is in
accord with the theories of Science as to the vibrations of musical
notes.Our scale is as follows.
28 56 84 112 140 168 196 224 252 280 308 336
364 392 420 448 476 504 532 560 588
616 644 672 700.
According to musical science the notes C E G
are as 4 5 6 in their ratios of vibrations.The same
ratio obtains between the notes of the triplet
G B D and F A C.This gives the scale and reducing the
vibrations to C as I the ratios of the seven
notes to C are
Reducing these to whole numbers,we get for one
octave:
Page 418
Fa Green Sound
49 Sol Blue Sound
98 La Indigo Sound
147 Si Violet Sound
First semi-octave
196 Do Red Sound
245 Re Orange Sound
294 Mi Yellow Sound
343 Fa Green Sound
392 Sol Blue Sound
441 La Indigo Sound
490 Si Violet Sound
539 Do Red Sound
etc etc
Second Octave
1 9/8 5/4 4/3 3/2 5/3 15/8 2
C D E F G A B C
24 27 30 32 36 40 45 48
C D E F G A B C.
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(Page 535)By a similar calculation we can put an octave
below C and above C.Writing these three
octaves in line and multiplying by seven we
obtain a nearly exact correspondence with our table of
vibration for the fourth sense.
Musical Table
Fourth Sense Scale Ratio Product
28 4 x 7 =28 E
56 8 x 7 =56 F
84 12 x 7 =84 G
112 16 x 7 =112 A
140 20 x 7 =140 B
168 24 x 7 =168 C
196 27 x 7 =189 D
...30 x 7 =210 E
224 32 x 7 =224 F
252 36 x 7 =252 G
280 40 x 7 =280 A
308 45 x 7 =315 B
336 48 x 7 =336 C
364 54 x 7 =378 D
392
420 60 x 7 =420 E
448 64 x 7 =448 F
476
504 72 x 7 =504 G
532
560 80 x 7 =560 A
588
616 90 x 7 =630 B
644
672 96 x 7 =672 C
H.C.
Notes on Some Oral Teachings
The Three Vital Airs
(Page 537)IT is the pure Ćkāsha that passes up
Sushumnā:its two aspects flow in Idā and Pingalā.These
Page 419.
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are the three vital airs,and are symbolized by
the Brāhmanical thread.They are ruled by the Will.Will
and Desire are the higher and lower aspects of
one and the same thing.Hence the importance of the
purity of the canals;for if they soil the
vital airs energized by the Will Black Magic results.This is why all
sexual intercourse is forbidden in practical
Occultism.
From Sushumnā Idā and Pingalā a circulation is
set up and from the central canal passes into the whole
body.(Man is a tree;he has in him the macrocosm
and the microcosm.Hence the trees used as
symbols;the Dhyān-Chohanic body is thus
figured.)
The Auric Egg
The Auric Egg is formed in curves,which may be
conceived from the curves formed by sand on a
vibrating metal disk.Each atom as each body
has its Auric Egg each centre forming its own.This Auric
Egg with the appropriate materials thrown into
it is a defence;no wild animal however ferocious,will
approach te Yogī thus guarded:it flings back
from its surface all malign influences.No Will power is
manifested through the Auric Egg.
Q.What is the connection between the
circulation of the vital airs and the power of the Yogī to make his
A ric Egg a defence against aggression?
A.It is impossible to answer this question.The
knowledge is the last word of Magic.It is connected with
Kundalini that can as easily destroy as
preserve.The ignorant tyro might kill himself.
Q.Is the A ric Egg of a child a
differentiation of Ćkāsha,into which may be thrown by the Adept the
materials he needs for special p rposes
e.g.,the Māyāvi Rūpa?
[The question was somewhat obscurely
worded.Evidently what the questioner wanted to know was if the
Auric Egg was a differentiation (Page 538)of
Akāsha into which as the child became a man he might if
an Adept weave the materials needed for special
purposes,etc.]
A .Taking
the question in the sense of an Adept putting something into or acting on the
Auric Egg of a
child then this could not be done as the Auric
Egg is Karmic,and not even an Adept must interfere with
such Karmic record.If the Adept were to put
anything into the Auric Egg of another for which the person
is not responsible or which does not come from
the Higher Self of that personality how could Karmic
justice be maintained?
The Adept can draw into his own Auric Egg from
his planet or even from that of the globe or of the
universe according to his degree.This envelope
is the receptacle of all Karmic causes,and photographs
all things like a sensitive plate.
The child has a very small Auric Egg which is
in colour almost pure white.At birth the Auric Egg consists
of almost pure Ćkāsha plus the Tanhās,which
until the seventh year remain potential or in latency.
The Auric Egg of an idiot cannot be said to be
human that is,it is not tinged with Manas.It is Ćkāshic
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vibrations rather than an Auric Egg the
material envelope such as that of the plant the mineral or other
object.
The Auric Egg is the transmitter from the
periodical lives to the Life eternal i.e.,from Prāna to Jīva.It
disappears,but remains.
The reason why the confession of the Roman
Catholic and Greek Churches is so great a sin is because
the confessor interferes with the Auric Egg of
the penitent by means of his will power engrafting
artificially emanations from his own Auric Egg
and casting seeds for germination into the Auric Egg of his
subject.It is on the same lines as hypnotic
suggestion.
The above remarks apply equally to Hypnotism
although the latter is a psycho-physical force and it is
this which constitutes one of its many serious
dangers.At the same time a good thing may pass through
dirty channels, as in the case of the
breaking by suggestion of the alcohol or opium habit.Mesmerism
may be used by the Occultist to remove evil
habits if the intention be perfectly pure;as on the higher
plane intention is everything and good
intention must work for good.
Q.Is the A ric Egg the expansion of the
Pillar of Light, the Mānasic Principle,and so not surro nding
the child till its seventh year?
The Dweller on the Threshold (Page 539)A.It is
the Auric Egg.The Auric Egg is quite pure at birth but it
is a question whether the higher or lower
Manas will colour it at the seventh year.The Mānasic
expansion is pure Ćkāsha.The ray of Manas is
let down into the vortex of the lower Principles,and being
discoloured and so limited by the Kamic Tanhās
and by the defects of the bodily organism forms the
personality.Hereditary Karma can reach the
child before the seventh year but no individual Karma can
come into play till the descent of the Manas.
The Auric Egg is to the Man
As the Astral Light is to the Earth
As the Ether is to the Astral Light
As the Akāsha is to the Ether
The critical states are left out in the
enumeration.They are the Laya Centres,or missing links in our
consciousness,and separate these four planes
from one another.
The Dweller
The Dweller on the Threshold is found in two
cases:(a )In the case of the separation of the Triangle
from the Quaternary;(b )When Kāmic
desires and passions are so intense that the Kāma Rūpa persists
in Kāma Loka beyond the Devachanic period of
the Ego and thus survives the reincarnation of the
Devachanic Entity (e.g.,when
reincarnation occurs within two hundred or three hundred years).The
Dweller being drawn by affinity towards the
Reincarnating Ego to whom it had belonged and being
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unable to reach it fastens on the Kāma of the
new personality and becomes the Dweller on the
Threshold strengthening the Kāmic element and
thus lending it a dangerous potency.Some become
mad from this cause.
Intellect
The white Adept is not always at first of
powerful intellect.In fact H.P.B had known Adepts whose
intellectual powers were originally below the
average.It is the Adept s purity his equal love to all his
working with Nature with Karma with his Inner
God that give him his power.Intellect by itself alone will
make the Black Magician.For intellect alone is
accompanied with pride and selfishness:it is the
intellectual pl s the spiritual that
raises man.For spirituality prevents pride and vanity.
Metaphysics are the domain of the Higher
Manas;whereas (Page
540)Physics
are that of Kāma-Manas,
which does the thinking in Physical Science
and on material things.Kāma-Manas,like every other
Principle is of seven degrees.The
Mathematician without spirituality however great he may be will not
reach Metaphysics;but the Metaphysician will
master the highest conceptions of Mathematics and will
apply them without learning the latter.To be
born Metaphysician the Psychic Plane will not be of much
account:he will see its errors immediately he
enters it inasmuch as it is not the thing he seeks.With
respect to Music and other Arts,they are the
children of either the Mānasic or Kāma-Mānasic Principle
proportionately as Soul or technicality
predominates.
Karma
After each incarnation when the Mānasic Ray
returns to its Father the Ego some of its atoms remain
behind and scatter.These Mānasic atoms,Tānhic
and other causes,being of the same nature as the
Manas,are attracted to it by strong bonds of
affinity and on the reincarnation of the Ego are unerringly
attracted to it and constitute its Karma.Until
these are all gathered up the individuality is not free from
rebirth.The Higher Manas is responsible for
the Ray it sends forth.If the Ray be not soiled no bad
Karma is generated.
The Turīya State
You should bear in mind that in becoming
Karma-less,good Karma as well as bad has to be gotten rid
of and that Nidānas,started towards the
acquisition of good Karma are binding as those induced in the
other direction.For both are Karma.
Yogis cannot attain the Turīya state unless
the Triangle is separated from the Quaternary.
Mahat
Mahat is the manifested universal Parabrāhmic
Mind (for one Manvantara)on the Third Plane [of
Kosmos ].It is the Law whereby the Light falls
from plane to plane and differentiates.The Mānasaputras
are its emanations.
Man alone is capable of conceiving the
Universe on this plane of existence.
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Existence is ;but when the entity does
not feel it for that eternity it is not.The pain of an operation exists,
though the patient does not feel it and for
the patient it is not.
Fear and Hatred (Page 541)
How to Advance
Q.What is the correct pron nciation of AUM?
A.It
should first be practised physically;always at the same pitch which must be
discovered in the same
way as the particular colour of the student is
found for each has its own tone.
AUM consists of two vowels and one semi-vowel
which latter must be prolonged.Just as Nature has its
Fa so each man has his:man being
differentiated from Nature.The body may be compared to an
instrument and the Ego to the player.You begin
by producing effect on yourself;then little by little you
learn to play on the Tattvas and
Principles;learn first the notes,then the chords,then the melodies.Once
the student is master of every chord he may
begin to be a co-worker with Nature and for others.He may
then by the experience he has gained of his
own nature and by the knowledge of the chords,strike such
as will be beneficial in another and so will
serve as a keynote for beneficial results.
Try to have a clear representation of the
geometrical triangle on every plane the conception gradually
growing more metaphysical and ending with the
subjective Triangle Ćtmā-Buddhi-Manas.It is only by
the knowledge of this Triangle under all forms
that you can succeed e.g.,in enclosing the past and the
future in the present.Remember that you have
to merge the Quaternary in the Triangle.The Lower
Manas is drawn upwards,with the Kāma Prāna and
Linga leaving only the physical body behind the
lower reinforcing the higher.
Advance may be made in Occultism even in
Devachan if the Mind and Soul be set thereon during life;
but it is only as in a dream and the knowledge
will fade away as memory of a dream fades,unless it be
kept alive by conscious study.
Fear and Hatred
Fear and hatred are essentially one and the
same.He who fears nothing will never hate and he who
hates nothing will never fear.
The Triangle
Q.What is the meaning of the phrase:Form a
clear image of the Triangle on every plane; e.g.,on the
Astral Plane,what sho ld one think of as
the Triangle?
A.[H.P.B
asked whether the question signified the meaning of (Page 542)the Triangle or the way to
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represent the Triangle on the screen of
light.The questioner explaining that the latter was the meaning
H.P.B said that ] it was only in the Turīa
state the fourth of the seven steps of Rāja Yoga that the Yogī can
represent to himself that which is
abstract.Below this state the perceptive power being conditioned
must have some form to contemplate;it cannot
represent to itself the Arūpa.In the Turīya state the
Triangle is in yourself and is felt.Below the
Turīya state there must be a symbol to represent Atmā-
Buddhi-Manas.It is not a mere geometrical
Triangle but the Triad imaged to make thought possible.Of
this Triad we can make some kind of
representation of Manas,however indistinct;while of Atmā no
image can be formed.We must try to represent
the Triangle to ourselves on higher and higher planes.
We must figure Manas as overshadowed by Buddhi
and immersed in Ćtmā.Only Manas,the Higher
Ego can be represented;we may think it as the
Augoeides,the radiant figure in Zanoni.A very good
Psychic might see this.
Psychic Vision
Psychic vision however is not to be desired
since Psyche is earthly and evil.More and more as Science
advances,the psychic will be reached and
understood;Psychism has in it nothing that is spiritual.
Science is right on its own plane from its own
standpoint.The law of the Conservation of Energy implies
that psychic motion is generated by
motion.Psychic motion being only motion on the Psychic Plane a
material plane the Psychologist is right who
sees in it nothing beyond matter.Animals have no Spirit but
they have psychic vision and are sensitive to
psychic conditions;observe how these react on their
health their bodily state.
Motion is the abstract Deity;on the highest
plane it is Arūpa absoolute;but on the lowest it is merely
mechanical.Psychic action is within the sphere
of physical motion.Ere psychic action can be developed
in the brain and nerves,there must be adequate
action which generates it on the Physical Plane.The
paralysed animal that cannot generate action
in the physical body cannot think.Psychics merely see on
a plane of different material density;the
spiritual glimpses sometimes obtained by them come from a
plane beyond.A Psychic s vision is that of
one coming as it were into the lighted room and seeing
everything there by an artificial light;when
the light is extinguished vision is lost.Spiritual vision sees by
the light within the light hidden beneath the bushel
of the body by which we can see clearly and
independently of all outiside.
Triangle and Quaternary (Page 543)The Psychic seeing by an external light the
vision is coloured by the
nature of that light.
X.saying that she felt as though she saw on
three planes,H.P.B answered that each plane was
sevenfold the Astral as every other.She gave
as an example on the Physical Plane the vision of a table
with the sense of sight;seeing it still with
the eyes closed by retinal impression;the image of it
conserved in the brain;it can be recalled by
memory;it can be seen in dream;or as an aggregate of
atoms;or as disintegrated.All these are on the
Physical Plane.Then we can begin again on the Astral
Plane and obtain another septenary.This hint
should be followed and worked out.
Triangle and Quaternary
Q.Why is the violet,the colo r of the Linga
Sharīra,placed at the apex of the when the
Macrocosm is ¢
figured as thus throwing the yellow Buddhi
into the lower Quaternary? ¢
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A .It
is wrong to speak of the lower Quaternary in the Macrocosm.It is the
Tetraktys the highest the
most sacred of all symbols.There comes a
moment when in the highest meditation the Lower Manas is
withdrawn into the Triad which thus becomes
the Quaternary the Tetraktys of Pythagoras,leaving what
was the Quaternay as the lower Triad which is
then reversed.The Triad is reflected in the Lower Manas.
The Higher Manas cannot reflect itself but
when the Green passes upwards it becomes a mirror for the
Higher;it is then no more Green having passed
from its associations.The Psyche then becomes
spiritual the Ternary is reflected in the
Fourth and the Tetraktys is formed.So long as you are not dead
there must be something to reflect the Higher
Triad;for there must be something to bring back to the
waking consciousness the experiences passed
through on the higher planes.The Lower Manas is as a
tablet which retains the impressions made on
it during trance.
The Turīya state is entered on the Fourth
Path;it is figured in the diagram on p.478 in the Second Paper.
Q.What is the meaning of a triangle formed
of lines of light appearing in the midst of intense vibrating
bl e?
A.Seeing
the Triangle outside is nothing;it is merely a reflection of the Triad on the
Auric Envelope and
proves that the seer is outside the
Triangle.It should be seen in quite another way.You must (Page 544)
endeavour to merge yourself in it to
assimilate yourself with it.You are merely seeing things in the Astral.
When the Third Eye is opened in any one of
you you will have something very different to tell me.
Q.With reference to the Pillar of Light
in a previo s q estion,is the A ric Envelope the Higher Ego,and
does it correspond to the Ring-Pass-Not?
[This question was not answered as going too
far.The Ring-Pass-Not is at the circumference of the
manifested Universe.]
Nidānas
Q.The root of the Nidānas is Avidyā.How
does this differ from Māyā?How many Nidānas are there
Esoterically?
A.Again
too much is asked.The Nidānas,the concatenations of causes and effects (not in
the sense of
the Orientalists),are not caused by
ignorance.They are produced by Dhyān Chohans and Devas,who
certainly cannot be said to act in
ignorance.We produce Nidānas in ignorance.Each cause started on
the Physical Plane sets up action on every
plane to all eternity.They are eternal effects reflected from
plane to plane on the screen of eternity.
Manas
Q.What is the septenary classification of
Manas?There are seven degrees of the Lower Manas,and
presumably there are seven degrees of the
Higher.Are there then fo rteen degrees of Manas,or is
Manas,taken as a whole,divided into
forty-nine Mānasic fires?
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A.Certainly
there are fourteen but you want to run before you can walk.First learn the
three and then
go on to the forty-nine.There are three Sons
of Agni;they become seven and then evolve to the forty-
nine.But you are still ignorant how to produce
the three.Learn first how to produce the Sacred Fire
spoken of in the P ranas.The forty-nine
fires are all states of Kundalinī to be produced in ourselves by
the friction of the triad.First learn the
septenary body and then that of each Principle.But first of all learn
the first Triad (the three vital airs).
The Spinal Cord
Q.What is the sympathetic nerve and its f
nction in Occultism?Is it fo nd only after a certain stage of
animal evol tion,and wo ld seem to be
evolving in complexity towards a second spinal cord.
Prāna and Antahkarana (Page 545)A.At the end of the next
Round Humanity will again become male-
female and then there will be two spinal
cords.In the Seventh Race the two will merge into one.The
evolution corresponds to the Races,and with
the evolution of the Races the sympathetic develops into a
true spinal cord.We are returning up the arc
only with self-consciousness added.The Sixth Race will
correspond to the pudding bags,but will have
the perfection of form with the highest intelligence and
spirituality.
Anatomists are beginning to find new ramifications
and new modifications in the human body.They are in
error on many points,e.g.,as to the
spleen which they call the manufactory of white blood corpuscles,
but which is really the vehicle of the Linga
Sharīra.Occultists know each minute portion of the heart and
have a name for each.They call them by the
names of the Gods,as Brahmā s Hall Vishnu s Hall etc.
They correspond with parts of the brain.The
very atoms of the body are the thirty-three crores of Gods.
The sympathetic nerve is played on by the Tāntrikas,who
call it Shiva s Vīnā.
Prāna
Q.What is the relation of man to Prāna the
periodical life?
A.Jīva
becomes Prāna only when the child is born and begins to breathe.It is the
breath of life
Nephesh.There is no Prāna on the Astral Plane.
Antahkarana
Q.The Antahkarana is the link between the
Higher and the Lower Egos;does it correspond to the
mbilical cord in projection?
A.No;the
umbilical cord joining the astral to the physical body is a real
thing.Antahkarana is imaginary
a figure of speech and is only the bridging
over from the Higher to the Lower Manas.Antahkarana only
exists when you commence to throw your
thought upwards and downwards. The Māyāvi Rūpa or
Mānasic body has no material connection with
the physical body no umbilical cord.It is spiritual and
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ethereal and passes everywhere without let or
hindrance.It entirely differs from the astral body which if
injured acts by repercussion on the physical
body.The Devachanic entity even previous to birth can be
affected by the Skandhas,but these have
nothing to do with the Antahkarana.It is affected e.g.,by the
desire for reincarnation.
Q.We are told in The Voice of the Silence
that we have to become (Page 546)the path itself,and in
another passage that Antahkarana is that
path.Does this mean anything more than that we have to
bridge over the gap between the conscio
sness of the Lower and the Higher Egos?
A.That
is all.
Q.We are told that there are seven portals
on the Path:is there then a sevenfold division of
Antahkarana?Also,is Antahkarana the
battlefield?
A.It is
the battlefield.There are seven divisions in the Antahkarana.As you pass from
each to the next
you approach the Higher Manas.When you have
bridged the fourth you may consider yourself fortunate.
Miscellaneous
Q.We are told that AUM sho ld be practised physically. Does this mean
that,colo r being more
differentiated than so nd,it is only thro
gh the colo rs that we shall get at the real so nd of each of s?
and that AUM can only have its Spirit al and Occult signification when attained
to the Ćtmā-B ddhi-
Manas of each person?
A.AUM
means good action not merely lip-sound.You must say it in deeds.
Q.With reference to the ¢is not the Ćtmā-B ddhi-Manas different for each
entity,according to the plane
on which he is?
A.Each
Principle is on a different plane.The Chelā must rise to one after the other
assimilating each
until the three are one.This is the root of
the Trinity.
Q.In The
Secret Doctrine we are told that Ćkāsha is the same as Pradhāna.Akasha is
the A ric Egg of
the earth,and yet Ćkāsha is the same as
Pradhāna.Ćkāsha is the A ric Egg of the earth,and yet
Ćkāsha is Mahat.What then is the relation
of Manas to the A ric Egg?
A.Mūlaprakriti
is the same as Ćkāsha (seven degrees).Mahat is the positive aspect of Akasha
and is
the Manas of the Kosmic Body.Mahat is to
Ćkāsha as Manas is to Buddhi and Pradhāna is but another
name for Mūlaprakriti.
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The Auric Egg is Ćkāsha and has seven
degrees.Being pure abstract substance it reflects abstract
ideas,but also reflects lower concrete things.
The Third Logos and Mahat are one and are the
same as the Universal Mind Alaya.
The Tetraktys is the Chatur Vidyā or the
fourfold knowledge in one the four-faced Brahmā.
Sacred Centres of Body (Page 547)
Nādīs
Q.Have the Nādīs any fixed relationship to
the vertebrę?can they be located opposite to or between
any vertebrae?Can they be regarded as
occupying each a given and fixed extent in the cord?Do they
correspond to the divisions of the cord
known to Anatomists?
A.H.P.B
believed that the Nādīs corresponded to regions of the spinal cord known to
Anatomists.There
are thus six or seven Nādīs or plexuses along
the spinal cord.The term however is not technical but
general and applies to any knot centre
ganglion etc.The sacred Nādīs are those which run along or
above Sushumnā.Six are known to Science and
one (near the atlas)unknown.Even the Tāraka Rāja
Yogīs speak only of six and will not mention
the sacred seventh.
Idā and Pingalā play along the curved wall of
the cord in which is Sushumnā.They are semi-material
positive and negative sun and moon and start
into action the free and spiritual current of Sushumnā.
They have distinct paths of their own
otherwise they would radiate all over the body.By concentration on
Idā and Pingalā is generated the sacred
fire.
Another name for Shiva s Vīnā (sympathetic
system)is Kālī s Vīnā.
The sympathetic cords and Idā and Pingalā
start from a sacred spot above the medulla oblongata called
Triveni.This is one of the sacred
centres,another of which is Brahmarandra which is,if you like the grey
matter of the brain.It is also the anterior
fontanelle in the new-born child.
The spinal column is called Brahmadanda the
stick of Brahmā.This is again symbolized by the bamboo
rod carried by Ascetics.The Yogis on the other
sides of the Himālayas,who assemble regularly at Lake
Mānsarovara carry a triple knotted bamboo
stick,and are called Tridandins.This has the same
signification as the Brāhmanical cord which
has many meanings besides the three vital airs;e.g.,it
symbolizes the three initiations of a Brāhman
taking place:(a )at birth when he receives his mystery
name from the family Astrologer who is
supposed to have received it from the Devas (he is also thus
said to be initiated by the Devas);a Hindu
will sooner die than reveal this name;(b )at seven when he
receives the cord;and (c )at eleven or
twelve when he is initiated into his caste.
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(Page 548)Q.If it is right to st dy the body and its
organs,with their correspondences,will yo give the
main o tline of these in connection with
the Nādīs and with the diagram of the orifices?
The Corresponds to the
Spleen Linga Sharira
Liver Kāma
Heart Prāna
Corpora-quadrigemina Kāma-Manas
Pictuitary body Manas-Antahkarana
Pineal gland Manas
until it is touched by the vibrating light of
Kundalinī which proceeds from Buddhi when it becomes
Buddhi-Manas.
The pineal gland corresponds with Divine
Thought.The pituitary body is the organ of the Psychic Plane.
Psychic vision is caused by the molecular
motion of this body which is directly connected with the optic
nerve and thus affects the sight and gives
rise to hallucinations.Its motion may readily cause flashes of
light such as may be obtained by pressing the
eyeballs.Drunkenness and fever produce illusions of
sight and hearing by the action of the
pituitary body.This body is sometimes so affected by drunkenness
that it is paralysed.If an influence on the
optic nerve is thus produced and the current thus reversed the
colour will probably be compementary.
Sevens
Q.If the physical body is no part of the
real h man septenary,is the physical material world one of the
seven planes of the Kosmic septenary?
A.It
is.The body is not a Principle in Esoteric parlance because the body and the
Linga are both on the
same plane;then the Auric Egg makes the
seventh.The body is an Upādhi rather than a Principle.The
earth and its astral light are as closely
related to each other as the body and its Linga the earth being the
Upādhi.Our plane in its lowest division is the
earth in its highest the astral.The terrestrial astral light
should of course not be confounded with the
universal Astral Light.
Q.A physical object was spoken of as a
septenary on the physical plane,inasm ch as we co ld (1)
directly contact it;(2)retinally reprod ce it;(3)remember it;(4)dream
of it;(5)view it atomically;(6)view
it disintegrated;(7)What is the seventh?
These are seven ways in which we view
it:the septenary is o r way of seeing one thing.Is it objectively
septenary?
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Ćkāsha Nature's Sounding-Board (Page 549)A .The
seventh bridges across from one plane to another.
The last is the idea the privation of matter
and carries you to the next plane.The highest of one plane
touches the lowest of the next.Seven is a
factor in nature as in colours and sounds.There are seven
degrees in the same piece of wood each
perceived by one of the seven senses.In wood the smell is the
most material degree while in other substances
it may be the sixth.Substances are septenary apart from
the consciousness of the viewer.
The psychometer seeing a morsel say of a table
a thousand years hence would see the whole;for
every atom reflects the whole body to which it
belongs,just as with the Monads of Leibnitz.
After the seven material subdivisions are the
seven divisions of the Astral which is its second Principle.
The disintegrated matter the highest of the
material subdivisions is the privation of the idea of it the
fourth.
The number fourteen is the first step between
seven and forty-nine.Each septenary is really a fourteen
because each of the seven has its two
aspects.Thus fourteen signifies the inter-relation of two planes in
its turn.The septenary is to be clearly traced
in the lunar months,fevers,gestations,etc.On it is based
the week of the Jews and the septenary
Hierarchies of the Lord of Hosts.
Sounds
Q.So nd is an attrib te of Ćkāsha;b t we
cannot cognize anything on the Ćkāshic plane;on what plane
then do we recognize so nd?On what plane is
so nd prod ced by the physical contact of bodies?Is
there so nd on seven planes,and is the
physical plane one of them?
A.The
physical plane is one of them.You cannot see Ćkāsha but you can sense it from
the Fourth Path.
You may not be fully conscious of it and yet
you may sense it.Ćkāsha is at the root of the manifestation
of all sounds.Sound is the expression and
manifestation of that which is behind it and which is the
parent of many correlations.All Nature is a
sounding-board;or rather Ćkāsha is the sounding-board of
Nature.It is the Deity the one Life the one
Existence.(Hearing is the vibration of molecular particles;the
order is seen in the sentence The disciple
feels,hears,sees.)
Sound can have no end.H.P.B remarked with
regard to a tap made by a pencil on the table:By this time
it has affected the whole universe.The
particle which has had its wear and tear destroys some (Page
550)thing which passes into something else.It
is eternal in the Nidānas it produces. A sound if not
previously produced on the Astral Plane and
before that on the Ćkāshic,could not be produced at all.
Ćkāsha is the bridge between nerve cells and
mental powers.
Q.Colo rs are psychic,and so nds are
spirit al. What,ass ming that these are vibrations,is the
successive order (these corresponding to
sight and hearing)of the other senses?
A.This
phrase was not to be taken out of its context otherwise confusion would
arise.All are on all
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planes.The First Race had touch all over like
a sounding board;this touch differentiated into the other
senses,which developed with the Races.The sense
of the First Race was that of touch meaning the
power of their atoms to vibrate in unison with
external atoms.The touch would be almost the same as
sympathy.
The senses were on a different plane with each
Race;e.g.,the Fourth Race had very much more
developed senses than ourselves,but on another
plane.It was also a very material Race.The sixth and
seventh senses will merge into the Ćkāshic
Sound.It depends to what degree of matter the sense of
touch relates itself as to what we call it.
Prāna
Q.Is Prāna the prod ction of the co ntless
lives of the h man body,and therefore,to some extent,of
the congeries of the cells or atoms of the
body?
A.No;Prāna
is the parent of the lives. As an example a sponge may be immersed in an
ocean.The
water in the sponge s interior may be
compared to Prāna;outside is Jīva.Prāna is the motor-principle in
life.The lives leave Prāna;Prāna does not
leave them.Take out the sponge from the water and it
becomes dry thus symbolizing death.Every
principle is a differentiation of Jīva but the life-motion in
each is Prāna the breath of life.Kāma
depends on Prāna without which there would be no Kāma.
Prāna wakes the Kāmic germs to life;it makes
all desires vital and living.
The Second Spinal Cord
Q.With reference to the answer to the q
estion on the second cord,what is it that will become a second
spinal cord in the Sixth Race?Will Idā and
Pingalā have separate physical d cts?
A.It is
the sympathetic cords which will grow together and form another spinal cord.Idā
and Pingalā will
be joined with Sushumnā and they will become
one.Idā is on the left side of the cord and Pingalā on
the right.
Kosmic Consciousness (Page 551)
Initiates
Pythagoras was an Initiate one of the grandest
of Scientists.His disciple Archytas was marvellously apt
in applied Science.Plato and Euclid were
Initiates,but not Socrates.No real Initiates were married.
Euclid learned his Geometry in the
Mysteries.Modern men of Science only rediscover the old truths.
Kosmic Consciousness
H.P.B proceeded to explain Kosmic
Consciousness,which is,like all else on seven planes,of which
three are inconceivable and four are
cognizable by the highest Adept.She sketched the planes as in the
following diagram.
Page 431.
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Taking the lowest only the Terrestrial (it was
afterwards decided to call this
plane Prākritic),it is divisible into seven
planes,and these again into seven
making the forty-nine.
Terrestrial
(Page 552)She then took the lowest plane of Prakriti or
the true Terrestrial
and divided it as follows:
Its objective or sensuous plane is that which
is sensed by the five physical senses.
On its second plane things are reversed.
Its third plane is psychic:here is the
instinct which prevents a kitten going into the water and getting
drowned.
The following table of the terrestrial
objective consciousness was given:
Divisions of the Astral Plane (Page 553)
Astral
The three lower Prākritic are related to the
three lower of the Astral Plane immediately succeeding.
Page 432
Manas-Ego
Kāma-Manas
or Higher
Psychic
Prānic-Kāma
or Lower
Psychic
Astral
Prakritic
or Terrestrial
True terrestrial
planes
or 7th Prākritic
7 Para-Ego or Atmic
6 Inner-Ego or Buddhic
5 Ego-Manas
4 Kāma-Manas or Lower Manas
3 Prānic Kāma or Psychic
2 Astral
1 Objective.
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With regard to the first division of the
second plane H.P.B reminded her pupils that all seen on it
must be reversed in translating it e.g.,with
numbers which appeared backwards.The Astral
Objective corresponds in everything to the
Terrestrial Objective.
The second division corresponds to the second
of the lower plane but the objects are of extreme
tenuity an astralized Astral.This plane is the
limit of the ordinary medium beyond which he cannot
go.A non-mediumistic person to reach it must
be asleep or in a trance or under the influence of
laughing-gas;or in ordinary delirium people
pass on to this plane.
The third the Prānic,is of an intensely vivid
nature.Extreme delirium carried the patient to this plane.In
delirium tremens the sufferer passes to this
and to the one above it.Lunatics are often conscious on this
plane where they see terrible visions.It runs
into the
Fourth division the worst of the astral
planes,Kāmic and terrible.Hence come the images that tempt;
images of drunkards in Kāma Loka impelling
others to drink;images of all vices inoculating men with the
desire to commit crimes.The weak imitate these
images in a kind of monkeyish fashion so falling
beneath their influence.This is also the cause
of epidemics of vices,and cycles of disaster of accidents
of all kinds coming in groups.Extreme delirium
tremens is on this plane.
(Page 554)The fifth division is that of premonitions in
dreams,of reflections from the lower mentality
glimpses into the past and future the plane of
things mental and not spiritual.The mesmerized
clairvoyant can reach this plane and even if
good may go higher.
The sixth is the plane from which come all
beautiful inspirations of art poetry and music,high types of
dreams,flashes of genius.Here we have glimpses
of past incarnations,without being able to locate or
analyse them.
We are on the seventh plane at the moment of
death or in exceptional visions.The drowning man is here
when he remembers his past life.The memory of
events of this plane must be centred in the heart the
seat of Buddha.There it will remain but
impressions from this plane are not made on the physical brain.
4th Kosmic Plane Fohat Kosmic Kāma-Mans
3rd Kosmic Plane Jiva-Fohat Prānic-Kāma Kosmic Life
2nd Kosmic Plane Kosmic Astral
1st Kosmic Prakiristic Kosmic Body
(next graphic part of this one)
Page 433.
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[In this diagram all the Kosmic Planes should
be figured as of one size the size given to the lowest
plane Prakriti.Further within the circle all
the Prākritic Planes should be of one size that given to the
first or lowest.To do this would make so large
a diagram that the planes are compressed.Ed.]
Kosmic Planes (Page 555)
General Notes
The two planes a/bove dealt with are the only
two used in the Hatha Yoga.
Prāna and the Auric Envelope are essentially
the same and again as Jīva it is the same as the
Universal Deity.This,in its Fifth Principle is
Mahat in its Sixth Alaya.(The Universal Life is also seven-
principled.)Mahat is the highest Entity in
Kosmos;beyond this is no diviner Entity;it is of subtlest matter
Sūkshma.In us this is Manas,and the very Logoi
are less high not having gained experience.The
Mānasic Entity will not be destroyed even at
the end of the Mahāmanvantara when all the Gods are
absorbed but will re-emerge from Parabrāhmic
latency.
Consciousness is the Kosmic seed of
superkosmic omniscience.It has the potentiality of budding into the
Divine Consciousness.
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Rude physical health is a drawback to
seership.This was the case with Swedenborg.
Fohat is everywhere:it runs like a thread
through all and has its own seven divisions.
In the Kosmic Auric Envelope is all the Karma
of the manifesting Universe.This is the Hiranyagarbha.
Jīva is everywhere and so with the other
Principles.
(Page 556)
Page 435.
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The above diagram represents the type of all
the Solar Systems.
Mahat single before informing the Universe
differentiates when informing it as does Manas in man
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Taking this figure to represent the human
Principles and planes of consciousness,then
Differentiation (Page 557)
7 6 5 represent respectively Shiva Vishnu
Brahmā being the lowest.
Shiva is the four-faced Brahmā;the Creator
Preserver Destroyer and Regenerator.
Between 5 and 4 comes the Antahkarana.The
represents the Christos,the Sacrificial Victim crucified ¢
between the thieves:this is the double-faced
entity.The Vedāntins make this a quarternary for a blind:
Antahkarana Chit Buddhi and Manas.
Page 437.
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Manvantaric Aspect of Parabrahman and
Mūlaprakriti
N.B.The number of rays is arbitrary and
without significance.
Perceptive life begins with the Astral:it is
not our physical atoms which see etc.
Consciousness proper begins between Kāma and
Manas.Ćtmā-buddhi acts more in the atoms of the
body in the bacilli microbes,etc.than in Man
himself.
Objective Consciousness
Sensuous objective consciousness includes all
that pertains to the five physical senses in man and rules
in animals,birds,fishes and some insects.Here
are the Lives;their consciousness is in Ćtma-Buddhi;
these are entirely without Manas.
Astral Consciousness
(Page 558)That of some plants (e.g.,sensitive)of
ants,spiders,and some night-flies (Indian),but not of
bees.
The vertebrate animals in general are without
this consciousness,but the placental Mammals have all
the potentialities of human
consciousness,though at present of course dormant.
Idiots are on this plane.The common expression
he has lost his mind is an Occult truth.For when
through fright or other cause the lower mind
becomes paralysed then the consciousness is on the Astral
Plane.The study of lunacy will throw much
light on these points.This may be called the nerve plane.It
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is cognized by our nervous centres of which
Physiology knows nothing e.g.,the clairvoyant reading
with the eyes bandaged reading with the tips
of the fingers,the pit of the stomach etc.This sense is
greatly developed in the deaf and dumb.
Kāma-Prānic Consciousness
The general life-consciousness which belongs
to all the objective world even to the stones;for if stones
were not living they could not decay emit a
spark,etc.Affinity between chemical elements is a
manifestation of this Kāmic consciousness.
Kāma-Mānasic Consciousness
The instinctual consciousness of animals and
idiots in its lowest degrees,the planes of sensation;in man
these are rationalized e.g.,a dog shut
in a room has the instinct to get out but cannot because its
instinct is not sufficiently rationalized to
take the necessary means;whereas a man at once takes in the
situation and extricates himself.The highest
degree of this Kāma-Mānasic consciousness is the psychic.
Thus there are seven degrees from the
instinctual animal to the rationalized instinctual and psychic.
Mānasic Consciousness
From this plane Manas stretches upwards to
Mahat.
Buddhic Consciousness
The plane of Buddhi and the Auric Envelope.From
here it goes to the Father in heaven Ćtmā and
reflects all that is in the Auric
Envelope.Five and six therefore cover the planes from the psychic to the
divine.
Men and Pitris (Page 559)
Miscellaneous
Reason is a thing that oscillates between right
and wrong.But Intelligence Intuition is higher it is the
clear vision.
To get rid of Kāma we must crush out all out
material instincts crush out matter. The flesh is a thing of
habit;it will repeat mechanically a good
impulse as well as a bad one.It is not the flesh which is always
the tempter;in nine cases out of ten it is the
Lower Manas,which by its images,leads the flesh into
temptation.
The highest Adept begins his Samādhi on the
Fourth Solar Plane but cannot go outside the Solar
System.When he begins Samādhi he is on a par
with some of the Dhyān Chohans,but he transcends
them as he rises to the seventh plane
(Nirvāna).
Page 439.
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The Silent Watcher is on the Fourth Kosmic
Plane.
The higher Mind directs the Will:the lower
turns it into selfish Desire.
The head should not be covered in
meditation.It is covered in Samādhi.
The Dhyān Chohans are passionless,pure and
mindless.They have no struggle no passion to crush.
The Dhyān Chohans are made to pass through the
School of Life.God goes to School.
The best of us in the future will be
Mānasaputras;the lowest will be Pitris.We are seven intellectual
Hierarchies here.This earth becomes the moon
of the next earth.
The Pitris are the Astral overshadowed by
Ćtma-Buddhi falling into matter.T he Pudding-bags has
Life and Ćtmā-Buddhi but no Manas.They were
therefore senseless.The reason for all evolution is the
gaining of experience.
In the Fifth Round all of us will pay the part
of the Pitris.We shall have to go and shoot out our Chhāyās
into another humanity and remain until that
humanity is perfected.The Pitris have finished their office in
this Round and have gone into Nirvāna;but they
will return to do the same office up to the middle point of
the Fifth Round.The Fourth or Kāmic Hierarchy
of the Pitris becomes the man of flesh.
The astral body is first in the womb;then
comes the germ that fructifies it.It is then clothed with matter
as were the Pitris.
The Chhāyā is really the lower Manas,the
shadow of the higher Mind.This Chhāyā makes the Māyāvi
Rūpa.The Ray clothes itself (Page 560)in the highest degree of the Astral Plane.The
Māyāvi Rūpa is
composed of the astral body as Upādhi the
guiding intelligence from the heart the attributes and
qualities from the Auric Envelopes.
The Auric Envelope takes up the light of Ćtmā
and overshadows the coronal circling round the head.
The Auric Fluid is a combination of the Life
and Will principles,the life and the will being one and the
same in Kosmos.It emanates from the eyes and
hands,when directed by the will of the operator.
The Auric Light surrounds all bodies:it is the
aura emanating from them whether they be animal
vegetable or mineral.It is the light e.g.,seen
round magnets.
Ćtmā-Buddhi-Manas in man corresponds to the
three Logoi in Kosmos.They not only correspond but
Page 440.
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each is the radiation from Kosmos to
Microcosmos.The third Logos,Mahat becomes Manas in man
Manas being only Mahat individualized as the
sun-rays are individualized in bodies that absorb them.
The sun-rays give life they fertilize what is
already there and the individual is formed.Mahat so to say
fertilizes,and Manas is the result.
Buddhi-Manas is the Kshetrajńa.
There are seven planes of Mahat as of all
else.
The Human Principles
Here H.P.B drew two diagrams,illustrating
different ways of representing the human principles.In the
first:
the two lower are disregarded;they go out
disintegrate are of not account.Remain five under the
radiation of Ćtmā.
Power of Imagination (Page 561)
In the second:
Page 441.
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the lower Quaternary is regarded as mere
matter objective illusion and there remain Manas and the
Auric Egg the higher Principles being
reflected in the Auric Egg.In all these systems remember the main
principle the descent and re-ascent of the
Spirit in man as in Kosmos.The Spirit is drawn downwards as
by spiritual gravitation.
Seeking further for the cause of this,the
students were checked H.P.B giving only a suggestion on the
three Logoi:
1.Potentiality of Mind (Absolute Thought).
2.Thought in Germ.
3.Ideation in Activity.
Notes
Protective variation e.g.,identity of
colouring of insects and of that on which they feed was explained to
be the work of Nature Elementals.
Form is on different planes,and the forms of
one plane may be formless to dwellers on another.The
Kosmocratores build on planes in the Divine
Mind visible to them though not to us.The principle of
limitation principi m individ ationis is
Form:this principle is Divine Law manifested in Kosmic Matter
which in its essence is limitless.The Auric
Egg is the limit of man as Hiranyagarbha of the Kosmos.
Page 442.
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The first step towards the accomplishment of
Kriyāshakti is the use of the Imagination.To imagine a thing
is to firmly create a model of what you desire
perfect in all its details.The Will is then brought into action
and the form is thereby transferred to the
objective world.This is creation by Kriyāshakti.
Suns and Planets
(Page 562)A comet partially cools and settles down as a
sun.It then gradually attracts round it planets that
are as yet unattached to any centre and
thus,in millions of years,a Solar System is formed.The worn-
out planet becomes a moon to the planet of
another system.
The sun we see is a reflection of the true
Sun:this reflection as an outward concrete thing is a Kāma-
Rūpa all the suns forming the Kāma-Rūpa of
Kosmos.To its own system the sun is Buddhi as being the
reflection and vehicle of the true Sun which
is Ćtmā invisible on this plane.All the Fohatic forces
electricity etc are in this reflection.
The Moon
At the beginning of the evolution of our globe
the moon was much nearer to the earth and larger than it
is now.It has retreated from us,and shrunk
much in size.(The moon gave all her Principles to the earth
while the Pitris gave only their Chhāyās to
man.)
The influences of the moon are wholly
psycho-physiological.It is dead sending out injurious emanations
like a corpse.It vampirizes the earth and its
inhabitants so that any one sleeping in its rays suffers,
losing some of his life-force.A white cloth is
a protection the rays not passing through it and the head
especially should be thus guarded.It has most
power when it is full.It throws off particles which we
absorb and is gradually disintegrating.Where
there is snow the moon looks like a corpse being unable
through the white snow to vampirize
effectually.Hence snow-covered mountains are free from its bad
influences.The moon is phosphorescent.
The Rākshakas of Lanka and the Atlanteans are
said to have subjected the moon.The Thessalians
learned from them their Magic.
Esoterically the moon is the symbol of the
Lower Manas;it is also the symbol of the Astral.
Plants which under the sun s rays are
beneficent are maleficent under those of the moon.Herbs
containing poisons are most active when
gathered under the moon s rays.
A new moon will appear during the Seventh
Round and our moon will finally disintegrate and disappear.
There is now a planet the Mystery Planet
behind the moon and it is gradually dying.Finally the time
will come for it to send its Principles to a
new Laya Centre and there a new planet will form to belong to
another Solar System the present Mystery
Planet then functioning as moon to that new globe.This
moon will have nothing to do with our earth
though it will come within our range of vision.
Page 443.
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Why Cycles Return (Page 563
The Solar System
All the visible planets placed in our Solar
System by Astronomers belong to it except Neptune.There are
also some others not known to Science
belonging to it and all moons which are not yet visible for next
things.
The planets only move in our consciousness.The
Rulers of the seven Secret Planets have no influence
on this earth as this earth has on other
planets.It is the sun and moon which really have not only a
mental but also a physical effect.The effect
of the sun on humanity is connected with Kāma-Prāna with
the most physical Kāmic elements in us;it is
the vital principle which helps growth.The effect of the
moon is chiefly Kāma-Mānasic or
psycho-physiological;it acts on the psychological brain on the brain
mind.
Precious Stones
In answer to a question H.P.B said that the
diamond and the ruby were under the sun the saphire under
the moon but what does it matter to you?
Time
When once out of the body and not subject to
the habit of consciousness formed by others,time does
not exist.
Cycles and epochs depend on consciousness:we
are not here for the first time;the cycles return
because we come back into conscious
existence.Cycles are measured by the consciousness of
humanity and not by Nature.It is because we
are the same people as in past epochs that these events
occur to us.
Death
The Hindus look upon death as impure owing to
the disintegration of the body and the passing from one
plane to another. I believe in transformation
not in death.
Atoms
The Atom is the Soul of the molecule.It is the
six Principles,and the molecule is the body thereof.The
Atom is the Ćtman of the objective Kosmos,i.e.,it
is on the seventh plane of the lowest Prakriti.
Terms
(Page 564)H.P.B began by saying that students ought to
know the correct meaning of the Sanskrit terms
used in Occultism and should learn the Occult
Symbology.To begin with one had better learn the correct
Page 444.
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Esoteric classification and names of the
fourteen (7 X 2 )and seven (Sapta)Lokas found in the exoteric
texts.These are given there in a very confused
manner and are full of blinds. To illustrate this three
classifications are given below.
Lokas
Each and all correspond Esoterically to the
Kosmic or Dhyān Chohanic Hierarchies,and to the human
States of Consciousness and their subdivisions
(forty-nine).To appreciate this the meanings of the terms
used in the Vedāntic classification must be
first understood.
Page 445
LOKAS
1
The general exoteric orthodox and tāntric category:
Bhūr-loka
Bhuvar-loka
Swar-loka
Mahar-loka The second seven are reflected.
Janar-loka
Tapar-loka
Satya-loka
2
The Sānkhya category and that of some Vedāntins
Brahmā-loka
Pitri-loka
Soma-loka
Indra-loka
Gandharva-loka
Rākshasa-loka
Yaksha-loka
And an eighth.
3
The Vedāntic the nearest approach to the Esoteric:
Atala
Vitala
Sutala
Talātala (or Karatala).
Rasātala
Mahātala
Pātāla.
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Talas and Lokas (Page 565)
Each of the
Lokas,places,worlds,states,etc.corresponds with and is transformed into five
(exoterically)and seven (Esoterically)states
or Tattvas,for which there are no definite names.These in
the main divisions cited below make up the
forty-nine Fires:
5 and 7 Tanmātras,outer and inner senses.
5 and 7 Bhūtas,or elements.
5 and 7 Gnyānendryas,or organs of sensation.
5 and 7 Karmendryas,or organs of action.
These correspond in general to States of
Consciousness,to the Hierarchies of Dhyān Chohans,to the
Tattvas etc.These Tattvas transform themselves
into the whole Universe.The fourteen Lokas are made
of seven with seven reflections:above
below;within without;subjective objective;pure impure;
positive negative;etc.
Explanation of the States of Consciousness
Corresponding to the Vedāntic
Classification of Lokas
7.Atala
The Ćtmic or Auric state or locality:it emanates directly from ABSOLUTENESS
and is the first
Page 446
Word means
Tala place
Atala no place
Vitala
some change for the better:i.e.better for matter in that
more
matter enters into it or in other words it becomes more
differentiated.This is an ancient Occult term.
Sutala good excellent,place.
Karatala something that can be grasped or touched (from kara
a
hand):i.e.the state in which matter becomes tangible.
Rasātala place of taste;a place you can sense with one of
the organs
of sense.
Mahātala exoterically great place ;but Esoterically a
place including
all others subjectively and potentially including all that
precedes it.
Pātāla something under the feet (from pada foot)the upādhi
or
basis of anything the antipodes America etc..
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something in the Universe.Its correspondence
is the Hierarchy of non-substantial primordial Beings,in a
place which is no place (for us),a state which
is no state.This Hierarchy contains the primordial plane
all that was,and will be from the beginning to
the end of the Mahāmanvantara;all is there.This
statement should not however be taken to imply
Kismet:the latter is contrary to all the teachings of
Occultism.
Here are the Hierarchies of the Dhyāni
Buddhas.Their state is that of Parasamādhi of the Dharmakāya;
a state where no progress is possible.The
entities there may be said to be crystallized in purity in
homogeneity.
6.Vitala
.Here are the Hierarchies of the celestial Buddhas,or Bodhisattvas
who are said to emanate
from the seven Dhyāni Buddhas.It is related on
earth to Samādhi to the Buddhic consciousness in man.
No adept save one can be higher than this and
live;if he passes into the Ćtmic or Dharmakāya state
(Alaya)he can return to earth no more.These
two states are purely hyper-metaphysical.
5.utala
.A differential state corresponding on earth with the Higher
Manas,and therefore with Shabda
(Sound),the Logos,our Higher Ego;and also to
the Manushi Buddha state like that of Gautama on
earth.This is the third stage of Samādhi (which
is septenary).Here belong the Hierachies of the
Kumāras the Agnishvattas,etc.
4.Karatala
corresponds with Sparsha (touch)and to the Hierarchies of ethereal
semi-objective Dhyān
Chohans of the astral matter of the
Mānasa-Manas,or the pure ray of Manas,that is the Lower Manas
before it is mixed with Kāma (as in the young
child).They are called Sparsha Devas,the Devas endowed
with touch.These Hierarchies of Devas are
progressive:the first have one sense;the second two;and
so on to seven:each containing all the senses
potentially but not yet developed.Sparsha would be
rendered better by affinity contact.
3.Rasātala
or Rūpatala :corresponds
to the Hierachies of Rūpa or Sight Devas,possessed of three
senses,sight hearing and touch.These are the
Kāma-Mānasic entities,and the higher Elementals.With
the Rosicrucians they were the Sylphs and
Undines.It corresponds on earth with an artificial state of
consciousness,such as that produced by
hypnotism and drugs (morphia etc.).
2.Mahātala.Corresponds
to the Hierachies of Rasa or Taste Devas and includes a state of
consciousness embracing the lower five senses
and emanations of life and being.It corresponds to
Kāma and Prāna in man and to Salamanders and Gnomes
in nature.
1.Pātala.Corresponds
to the Hierarchies of Gandha or Smell Devas,the underworld or antipodes:
Myalba.The sphere of irrational animals,having
no feeling save that of self-preservation and gratification
of the senses:also of intensely selfish human
beings,walking or sleeping.This is why Nārada is said to
have visited Pātāla when he was cursed to be
reborn.He reported that life there was very pleasant for
those who had never left their birth-place
;they were happy.It is the earthly state and corresponds with
the sense of smell.Here are also animal
Dugpas,Elementals of animals,and Nature Spirits.
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States of Consciousness (Page 567)
Further Explanations of the Same
Classifications
7.Auric,Ćtmic,Alayic sense or state.One of
full potentiality but not of activity.
6.Buddhic;the sense of being one with the
universe;the impossibility of imagining oneself apart from it.
(It was asked why the term Alayic was here
given to the Ćtmic and not to the Buddhic state.Ans.These
classifications are not hard and fast
divisions.A term may change places according as the classification
is exoteric,Esoteric or practical.For students
the effort should be to bring all things down to states of
consciousness.Buddhi is really one and
indivisible.It is a feeling within absolutely inexpressible in
words.All cataloguing is useless to explain
it.)
5.Shābdic,sense of hearing.
4.Spārshic,sense of touch.
3.Rūpīc the state of feeling oneself a body
and perceiving it (rūpa =form).
2.Rāsic,sense of taste.
1.Gāndhic,sense of smell.
All the Kosmic and anthropic states and senses
correspond with our organs of sensation Gnyānendryas
rudimentary organs for receiving knowledge
through direct contact sight etc.These are the faculties of
Sharīra through Netra (eyes)nose speech etc.and
also with the organs of action Karmendryas,
hands,feet etc.
Exoterically there are five sets of five
giving twenty-five.Of these twenty are facultative and five
Buddhic.Exoterically Buddhi is said to
perceive;Esoterically it reaches perception only through the
Higher Manas.Each of these twenty is both
positive and negative thus making forty in all.There are two
subjective states answering to each of the
four sets of five hence eight in all.These being subjective can
(Page 568)not be doubled.Thus we have 40 +8
=48 cognitions of Buddhi. These with Māya which
includes them all make 49.(Once that you have
reached the cognition of Māya you are an Adept.)
Page 448
5 +5 Tanmātras 2
5 +5 Bhūta 2
5 +5 Gnyānendry
as 2
5 +5 Karmendrya
s 2
TOTAL
S 20 +20 +8 +Māy
ā =49.
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The Lokas
In their exoteric blinds the Brāhmans count
fourteen Lokas earth included),of which seven are objective
though not apparent and seven subjective yet
fully demonstrable to the Inner Man.There are seven
Divine Lokas and seven infernal
(terrestrial)Lokas.
SEVEN DIVINE LOKAS SEVEN INFERNAL
(TERRESTRIAL)LOKAS
1 Bhūrloka (the earth).1 Pātāla (our earth).
2 Bhuvarloka (between the earth and the sun [Munīs ]).2
Mahātala
3 Svarloka (between the sun and the Pole Star [Yogīs ]).3
Rasātala
4 Maharloka (between the earth and the and the utmost
limit of the Solar System *4 Talātala (or Karatala).
5 Janarloka (beyond the Solar System the abode of
the Kumāras who do not belong to this plane).5 Sutala
6 Taparloka (still beyond the Mahātmic region the
dwelling of the Vairāja deities).6 Vitala
7 Satyaloka (the abode of the Nirvanīs).7 Atala
*[All these spaces denote the special
magnetic currents the planes of substance and the
degrees of approach that the consciousness of
the Yogi or Chela performs towards assimilation
with the inhabitants of the Lokas.]
[GRAPHIC PAGE 568A missing)
Man and Lokas (Page 569)
These the Brāhmans read from the bottom.
Now all these fourteen are planes from without
within and (the seven Divine)States of Consciousness
through which man can pass and must pass,once
he is determined to go through the seven paths and
portals of Dhyāni;one need not be disembodied
for this,and all this is reached on earth and in one or
many of the incarnations.
See the order:the four lower ones (1 2 3 4)are
rūpa ;i.e.,they are performed by the Inner Man with the
full concurrence of the diviner portions,or
elements of the Lower Manas,and consciously by the
personal man.The three higher states cannot be
reached and remembered by the latter unless he is a
fully initiated Adept.A Hatha Yogī will never
pass beyond the Maharloka psychically and the Talātala
(double or dual place),physico-mentally.To
become a Rāja Yogī one has to ascend up to the seventh
portal the Satyaloka.For such the Master Yogīs
tells us,is the fruition of Yajna or sacrifice.When the
Bhūr Bhuvar and Svarga (states)are once passed
and the Yogi s consciousness centered in Maharloka
it is in the last plane and state between
entire identification of the Personal and the Higher Manas.
Page 449.
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One thing to remember:while the infernal (or
terrestrial)states are also the seven divisions of the earth
for planes and states,as much as they are
Kosmic divisions,the divine Saptaloka are purely subjective
and begin with the psychic Astral Light plane
ending with the Satya or Jīvanmukta state.These fourteen
Lokas,or spheres,form the extent of the whole
Brahmānda (world).The four lower are transitory with all
their dwellers,and the three higher eternal;i.e.,the
former states,planes and subjects to these last only
a Day of Brahmā changing with every Kalpa:the
latter endure for an Age of Brahmā.
In Diagram V.only Body Astral Kāma Lower
Manas,Higher Manas,Buddhi and Auric Ćtmā are given.
Life is a Universal Kosmic Principle and no
more than Ćtman does it belong to individuals.
In answer to questions on the diagram H.P.B
said that Touch and Taste have no order.Elements have a
regular order but Fire pervades them all.Every
sense pervades every other.There is no universal order
that being first in each which is most
developed.
Students must learn the correspondences:then
concentrate on the organs and so reach their
corresponding states of consciousness.Take
them in order beginning with the lowest and working
steadily (Page 570)upwards.A medium might irregularly catch glimpses of higher
but would not thus gain
orderly development.
The greatest phenomena are produced by
touching and centering the attention upon the little finger.
The Lokas and Talas are reflections the one of
the other.So also are the Hierarchies in each in pairs of
opposites,at the two poles of the
sphere.Everywhere are such opposites:good and evil light and
darkness,male and female.
H.P.B could not say why blue was the colour of
the earth.Blue is a colour by itself a primary.Indigo is a
colour not a shade of blue so is violet.
The Vairājas belong to are the fiery Egos of
other Manvantaras.They have already been purified in the
fire of passions.It is they who refused to
create.They have reached the Seventh Portal and have
refused Nirvāna remaining for succeeding
Manvantaras.
The seven steps of Antahkarana correspond with
the Lokas.
Samādhi is the highest state on earth that can
be reached in the body.
Beyond that the Initiate must have become a
Nirmānakāya.
Purity of mind is of greater importance than
purity of body.If the Upādhi be not perfectly pure it cannot
Page 450.
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preserve recollections coming from a higher
state.An act may be performed to which little or no attention
is paid and it is of comparatively small
importance.But if thought of dwelt on in the mind the effect is a
thousand times greater.
The thoughts must be kept pure.
Remember that Kāma while having bad passions
and emotions,helps you to evolve by giving also the
desire and impulse necessary for rising.
The flesh the body the human being in his
material part is,on this plane the most difficult thing to
subject.The highest Adept put into a new body
has to struggle against it and subdue it and finds its
subjugation difficult.
The Liver is the General the Spleen is the
Aide-de-Camp.All that the Liver does not accomplish is taken
up and completed by the Spleen.
H.P.B was asked whether each person must pass
through the fourteen states,and answered that the
Lokas and Talas represented planes on this
earth through some of which all must pass,and through all
of which the disciple must pass,on his way to
Adeptship.Everyone passes through the lower Lokas,but
not necessarily through the corresponding
Talas.There are two poles in everything;seven states in every
state.
Yogīs in Svarloka (Page 571)Vitala represents a sublime as well as an infernal
state.That state which for
the mortal is a complete separation of the Ego
from the personality is for a Buddha a mere temporary
separation.For the Buddha it is a Kosmic
state.
The Brāhmans and Buddhists regard the Talas as
hells,but in reality the term is figurative.We are in hell
whenever we are in misery suffer misfortune
and so on.
Forms in the Astral Light
The Elementals in the Astral light are
reflections.Everything on earth is reflected there.It is from these
that photographs are sometimes obtained
through mediums.The mediums unconsciously produce them
as forms.The Adepts produce them consciously
through Kriyāshakti bringing them down by a process
that may be compared to the focussing of rays
of light by a burning glass.
States of Consciousness
Bhūrloka is the waking state in which we
normally live;it is the state in which animals also are when they
sense food a danger etc.To be in Svarloka is
to be completely abstracted on this plane leaving only
instinct to work,so that on the material plane
you would behave as an animal.Yogīs are known who have
become crystallized in this state and then
they must be nourished by others.A Yogī near Allahabad had
Page 451.
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been for fifty-three years sitting on a
stone;his Chelās plunge him into the river every night and then
replace him.During the day his consciousness
returns to Bhūrloka and he talks and teaches.A Yogī was
found on an island near Calcutta round whose
limbs the roots of trees had grown.He was cut out and in
the endeavour to awaken him so many outrages
were inflicted on him that he died.
Q.Is it possible to be in more than one
state of conscio sness at once?
A.The
consciousness cannot be entirely on two planes at once.The higher and lower
states are not
wholly incompatible but if you are on the
higher you will wool-gather on the lower.In order to remember
the higher state on returning to the lower the
memory must be carried upwards to the higher.An Adept
may apparently enjoy a dual consciousness;when
he desires not to see he can abstract himself;he may
be in a higher state and yet return answers to
questions (Page 572)addressed to
him.But in this case he
will momentarily return to the material plane
shooting up again to the higher plane.This is his only
salvation in adverse conditions.
The lower you go in the Talas the more
intellectual you become and the less spiritual.You may be a
morally good man but not spiritual.Intellect
may remain very closely related to Kāma.A man may be in a
Loka to which he belongs.Thus a man in
Bhūrloka only may pass into the Talas and go to the devil.If he
dwells in Bhuvarloka he cannot become as
bad.If he has reached the Satya state he can go into any
Tala without danger;buoyed up by his own
purity he can never be engulfed.The Talas are brain intellect
states,while the Lokas or more accurately the
three higher are spiritual.
Manas absorbs the light of Buddhi.Buddhi is
Arūpa and can absorb nothing.When the Ego takes all the
light of Buddhi it takes that of Ćtmā Buddhi
being the vehicle and thus the three become one.This
done the f ll Adept is one spiritually
but has a body.The fourfold Path is finished and he is one.The
Masters bodies are as far as they are
concerned illusionary and hence do not grow old become
wrinkled etc.
The student who is not naturally
psychic,should fix the fourfold consciousness in a higher plane and nail
it there.Let him make a bundle of the four
lower and pin them to a higher state.He should centre on this
higher trying not to permit the body and
intellect to draw him down and carry him away.Play ducks and
drakes with the body eating drinking and
sleeping but living always on the ideal.
Mother-Love
Mother-love is an instinct the same in the
human being and in the animal and often stronger in the latter.
The continuance of this love in human beings
is due to association to blood magnetism and to psychic
affinity.Families are sometimes formed of
those who have lived together before but often not.The
causes at work are very complex and have to be
balanced.Sometimes when a child with very bad karma
is to be born parents of a callous type are
chosen or they may die before the Karmic results appear.Or
the suffering through the child may be their
own Karma.Mother-love as an instinct is between Rasātala
and Talātala.
Page 452.
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Consciousness and Self-Consciousness (Page 573)The Lipikas keep man s Karmic record and
impress it on the Astral Light.
Vacillating people pass from one state of
consciousness to another.
Thought arises before desire.The thought acts
on the brain the brain on the organ and then desire
awakes.It is not the outer stimulus that
arouses the organ.Thought therefore must be slain ere desire
can be extinguished.The student must guard his
thoughts.Five minutes thought may undo the work of
five years;and though the five years work
will be run through more rapidly the second time yet time is
lost.
Consciousness
H.P.B began by challenging the views of
consciousness in the West commenting on the lack of definition
in the leading Philosphies.No distinction was
made between consciousness and self-consciousness,and
yet in this lay the difference between man and
the animal.The animal was conscious only not self-
conscious;the animal does not know the Ego as
Subject as does man.There is therefore an enormous
difference between the consciousness of the
bird the insect the beast and that of man.
But the full consciousness of man is
self-consciousness that which makes us say I do that. If there is
pleasure is must be traced to some one
experiencing it.Now the difference between the consciousness
of man and animals is that while there is a
Self in the animal the animal is not conscious of the Self.
Spencer reasons on consciousness,but when he
comes to a gap he merely jumps over it.So again
Hume when he says that on introspection he
sees merely feelings and can never find any I forgets
that without an I no seeing of feelings
would be possible.What is it that studies the feelings?The
animal is not conscious of the feeling I am
I It has instinct but instinct is not self-consciousness.Self-
consciousness is an attribute of the mind not
of the soul the anima whence the very name animal is
taken.Humanity had no self-consciousness until
the coming of the Mānasaputras in the Third Race.
Consciousness,brain-consciousness,is the field
of the light of the Ego of the Auric Egg of the Higher
Manas.The cells of the leg are conscious,but
they are the slaves of the idea;they are not self-
conscious,they cannot originate an idea
although when they are tired they can convey to the brain an
uneasy sensation and so give rise to the idea
of fatigue.Instinct is the lower state of consciousness.
Man has consciousness running through the (Page 574)four lower keys of his septenary
consciousness;
there are seven scales of consciousness in his
consciousness,which is none the less essentially and
pre-eminently one a unit.There are millions
and millions of states of consciousness,as there are
millions and millions of leaves;but as you
cannot find two leaves alike so you cannot find two states of
consciousness alike;a state is never exactly
repeated.
Is memory a thing born in us that it can give
birth to the Ego?Knowledge feeling volition are colleagues
of the mind not faculties of it.Memory is an
artificial thing an adjunct of relativeness;it can be
sharpened or left dull and it depends on the
condition of the brain-cells which store all impressions;
knowledge feeling volition cannot be
correlated do what you will.They are not produced from each
other nor produced from mind but are
principles,colleagues.You cannot have knowledge without
memory for memory stores all things,garnishing
and furnishing.If you teach a child nothing it will know
nothing.Brain-consciousness depends on the
intensity of the light shed by the Higher Manas on the
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Lower and the extent of affinity between the
brain to this light.Brain-mind is conditioned by the
responsiveneness of the brain to this light;it
is the field of consciousness of the Manas.The animal has
the Monad and the Manas latent but its brain cannot
respond.All potentialities are there but are
dormant.There are certain accepted errors in
the West which vitiate all their theories.
How many impressions can a man receive
simultaneously into his consciousness and record?The
Western say one:Occultists say normally seven
and abnormally fourteen seventeen nineteen twenty-
one up to forty-nine impressions can be
simultaneously received.Occultism teaches that the
consciousness always receives a sevenfold
impression and stores it in the memory.You can prove it by
striking at once the seven notes of the
musical scale:the seven sounds reach the consciousness
simultaneously but the untrained ear can only
recognize them one after another and if you choose you
can measure the intervals.The trained ear will
hear the seven notes at once simultaneously.And
experiment has shown that in two or three
weeks a man may be trained to receive seventeen or eighteen
impressions of colour the intervals decreasing
with patience.
Memory is acquired for this life and can be
expanded.Genius is the greatest responsiveness of the brain
and brain-memory to the Higher
Manas.Impressions on any sense are stored in the memory.
Scales of Consciousness (Page 575)Before a physical sense is developed there is
a mental feeling
which proceeds to become a physical
sense.Fishes who are blind living in the deep sea or
subterranean waters if they are put into a
pond will in a few generations develop eyes.But in their
previous state there is a sense of seeing
though no physical sight;how else should they in the darkness
find their way avoid dangers,etc.?The mind
will take in and store all kinds of things mechanically and
unconsciously and will throw them into the
memory as unconscious perceptions.If the attention is
greatly engrossed in any way the sense
perception of any injury is not felt at the time but later the
suffering enters into consciousness.So
returning to our example of the seven notes struck
simultaneously we have one impression but the
ear is affected in succession by the notes one after
another so that they are stored in the
brain-mind in order for the untrained consciousness cannot
register them simultaneously.All depends on
training and on attention.Thus the transference of a
sensation passing from any organ to the consciousness
is almost simultaneous if your attention is fixed
on it but if any noise distracts your
attention then it will take a fraction more of a second before it
reaches your consciousness.The Occultist
should train himself to receive and transmit along the line of
the seven scales of his consciousness every
impression or impressions,simultaneously.He who
reduces the intervals of physical time the
most has made the most progress.
Consciousness Its Seven Scales
There are seven scales or shades of consciousness,of
the Unit;e.g.,in a moment of pleasure or pain;
four lower and three higher.
Page 454.
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Consciousness Its Seven Scales
1 Physical sense-perception:Perception of the
cell (if paralyzed the sense is
there though yo do not feel it).
2 Self-perception or apperception:I.e.,self-perception
of cell.
3 Psychic apperception:
4 Vital perception
Of astral double döppelganger carrying it
higher to
the Physical feeling sensations of pleasure
and
pain of quality.
These are the four lower scales,and belong to
the psycho-physiological man.
5
Manasic discernment of the
Mānasic self-perception.Lower
Manas.
6 Will perception:Volitional perception the
voluntary taking in of an
idea;you can regard or disregard physical
pain.
7 Spiritual entirely conscious
apperception:**
Because it reaches the Higher self-conscious
conscious Manas.
**Apperception means self-perception conscious
action not as with Leibnitz but when
attention is fixed on the perception
(Page 576)You can take these on any planes:e.g.,bad
news passes through the four lower stages before
coming to the heart.
Or take Sound:
1.It strikes the ear.
2.Self-perception of the ear.
3.On the psychic or mental which carries it to
4.Vital (harsh soft;strong weak;etc.).
The Ego
One of the best proofs that there is an Ego a
true Field of Consciousness is the fact already mentionned
that a state of consciousness,is never exactly
reproduced though you should live a hundred years,and
pass through milliards and milliards.In an
active day how many states and substates there are;it would
be impossible to have cells enough for
all.This will help you to understand why some mental states and
abstract things follow the Ego into Devachan
and why others merely scatter in space.That which
touches the Entity has an affinity for it as a
noble action is immortal and goes with it into Devachan
forming part and parcel of the biography of
the personality which is disintegrating.A lofty emotion runs
through the seven stages,and touches the Ego
the mind that plays its tunes in the mind-cells.We can
analyze the work of consciousness and describe
it;but we cannot define consciousness unless we
postulate a Subject.
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Bhūrloka
The Bhūrloka begins with the Lower
Manas.Animals do not feel as do men.The dog thinks more of his
master being angry than of the actual pain of
the lash.The animal does not suffer in memory and in
imagination feeling past and future as well as
actual present pain.
Vibrations and Impressions (Page 577)
Pineal Gland
The special physical organ of perception is
the brain and perception is located in the aura of the pineal
gland.This aura answers in vibrations to any
impressions,but it can only be sensed not perceived in
the living man.During the process of thought
manifesting in consciousness,a constant vibration occurs
in the light of this aura and a clairvoyant
looking at the brain of a living man may almost count see with
the spiritual eye the seven scales,the seven
shades of light passing from the dullest to the brightest.
You touch your hand;before you touch it the
vibration is already in the aura of the pineal gland and has
its own shade of colour.It is this aura which
causes the wear and tear of the organ by the vibrations its
sets up.The brain set vibrating conveys the
vibrations to the spinal cord and so to the rest of the body.
Happiness as well as sorrow sets up these
strong vibrations,and so wears out the body.Powerful
vibrations of joy or sorrow may thus kill.
The Heart
The septenary disturbance and play of light
around the pineal gland are reflected in the heart or rather
the aura of the heart which vibrates and
illumines the seven brains of the heart just as does the aura
round the pineal gland.This is the exoterically
four-but Esoterically seven-leaved lotus,the Saptaparna
the cave of Buddha with its seven
compartments.
Astral and Ego
There is a difference between the nature and
the essence of the Astral Body and the Ego.The Astral
Body is molecular however etherealized it may
be:the Ego is atomic,spiritual.The Atoms are spiritual
and are for ever invisible on this
plane;molecules form around them they remaining as the higher
invisible principles of the molecules.The eyes
are the most Occult of our senses;close them and you
pass to the mental plane.Stop all the senses
and you are entirely on another plane.
Individuality
If twelve people are smoking together the
smoke of their cigarettes may mingle but the molecules of the
smoke from each have an affinity with each
other and they remain distinct for ever and ever no matter
(Page 578)how the whole mass may interblend.So a drop of
water though it fall into the ocean retains its
individuality.It has become a drop with a life
of its own like a man and cannot be annihilated.Any group
of people would appear as a group in the
Astral Light but would not be permanent;but a group meeting
to study Occultism would cohere and the
impression would be more permanent.The higher and the more
spiritual the affinity the more permanent the
cohesion.
Page 456.
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Lower Manas
The Lower Manas is an emanation from the
Higher Manas,and is of the same nature as the Higher.This
nature can make no impression on this plane
nor receive any:an Archangel having no experience
would be senseless on this plane and could
neither give nor receive impressions.So the Lower Manas
clothes itself with the essence of the Astral
Light;this astral envelope shuts it out from its Parent except
through the Antahkarana which is its only
salvation.Break this and you become an animal.
Kāma
Kāma is life it is the essence of the
blood.When this leaves the blood the latter congeals.Prāna is
universal on this plane;it is in us the vital
principle Prānic,rather than Pranā.
Self-Hood
Qualities determine the properties of
Self-hood.As,for instance two wolves placed in the same
environment would probably not act
differently.
The field of the consciousness of the Higher
Ego is never reflected in the Astral Light.The Auric
Envelope receives the impressions of both the
Higher and the Lower Manas,and it is the latter
impressions that are also reflected in the
Astral Light.Whereas the essence of all things spiritual all that
which reaches,or is not rejected by the Higher
Ego is not reflected in the Astral Light because it is on too
low a plane.But during the life of a man this
essence with a view to Karmīc ends,is impressed on the
Auric Envelope and after death and the
separation of the Principles is united with the Universal Mind
(that is to say those impressions which are
superior to even the Devachanic Plane),to await there
Karmically until the day when the Ego is to be
reincarnated.[There are thus three sets of impressions,
which we may call the Kāmic,Devachanic and
Mānasic.] For the entities no matter how high must have
their Karmic rewards and punishments on earth.
The Crucifixion of the Christos (Page 579)These spiritual impressions are made more or
less on the
brain otherwise the Lower Ego would not be
responsible.There are some impressions,however
received through the brain which are not of
our previous experience.In the case of the Adept the brain is
trained to retain these impressions.
The reincarnating Ray may for convenience be
separated into two aspects:the lower Kāmic Ego is
scattered in Kāma Loka;the Mānasic part
accomplishes its cycle and returns to the Higher Ego.It is,in
reality this Higher Ego which is,so to
speak,punished which suffers.This is the true crucifixion of the
Christos the most abstruse but yet the most
important mystery of Occultism;all the cycle of our lives
hangs on it.It is indeed the Higher Ego that
is the sufferer;for remember that the abstract consciousness
of the higher personal consciousness will
remained impressed on the Ego since it must be part and
parcel of its eternity.All our grandest
impressions are impressed on the Higher Ego because they are of
the same nature as itself.
Patriotism and great actions in national
service are not altogether good from the point of view of the
highest.To benefit a portion of humanity is
good;but to do so at the expense of the rest is bad.
Page 457.
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Therefore in patriotism etc.the venom is
present with the good.For though the inner essence of the
Higher Ego is unsoilable the outer garment may
be soiled.Thus both the bad and the good of such
thoughts and actions are impressed on the
Auric Envelope and the Karma of the bad is taken up by the
Higher Ego though it is perfectly guiltless of
it.Thus both sets of impressions after death scatter in the
Universal Mind and at reincarnation the Ego
sends out a Ray which is itself into a new personality and
there suffers.It suffers in the
Self-consciousness that it has created by its own accumulated experiences.
Every one of our Egos has the Karma of past
Manvantaras behind.There are seven Hierarchies of Egos,
some of which e.g.,in inferior
tribes,may be said to be only just beginning the present cycle.The Ego
starts with Divine Consciousness;no past no
future no separation.It is long before realizing that it is
itself.Only after many births does it begin to
discern by this collectivity of experience that it is individual.
At the end of its cycle of reincarnation it is
still the same Divine Consciousness,but it has now become
individualized Self-consciousness.
(Page 580)The feeling of responsibility is inspired by
the presence of the Light of the Higher Ego.As the
Ego in its cycle of re-birth becomes more and
more individualized it learns more and more by suffering
to recognize its own responsibility by which
it finally gains Self-consciousness,the consciousness of all
the Egos of the whole Universe.Absolute Being
to have the idea of sensation of all this,must pass
through all experience individually not
universally so that when it returns it should be of the same
omniscience as the Universal Mind pl s the
memory of all that it has passed through.
At the Day Be with us every Ego has to
remember all the cycles of its past reincarnations for
Manvantaras.The Ego comes in contact with this
earth all seven Principles become one it sees all that
it has done therein.It sees the stream of its
past reincarnations by a certain divine light.It sees all
humanity at once but still there is ever as it
were a stream which is always the I.
We should therefore always endeavour to
accentuate our responsibility.
The Higher Ego is,as it were a globe of pure
divine light a Unit from a higher plane on which is no
differentiation.Descending to a plane of
differentiation it emanates a Ray which it can only manifest
through the personality which is already
differentiated.A portion of this Ray the Lower Manas,during life
may so crystallize itself and become one with
Kāma that it will remain assimilated with Matter.That
portion which retains its purity forms
Antahkarana.The whole fate of an incarnation depends on whether
Antahkarana will be able to restrain the
Kāma-Manas or not.After death the higher light (Antahkarana)
which bears the impressions and memory of all
good and noble aspirations,assimilates itself with the
Higher Ego the bad is dissociated in space and
comes back as bad Karma awaiting the personality.
The feeling of responsibility is the beginning
of Wisdom a proof that Ahankāra is beginning to fade out
the beginning of losing the sense of
separateness.
Kāma Rūpa
The Kāma Rūpa eventually breaks up and goes
into animals.All red-blooded animals come from man.
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The cold-blooded are from the matter of the
past.The blood is the Kāma Rūpa.
The white corpuscles are the
scavengers,devourers ;they are oozed out of the Astral through the
spleen and are of the same essence as the
Astral.They are the seat-born of the Chhāyā.Kāma is
everywhere in the body.The red cells are drops
of electrical fluid the perspiration of all the organs oozed
out from every cell.They are the progeny of
the Fohatic Principle.
Rising Above the Brain (Page 581)
Heart
There are seven brains in the heart the
Upādhis and symbols of the seven Hierarchies.
The Fires
The fires are always playing round the pineal
gland but when Kundalini illuminates them for a brief
instant the whole universe is seen.Even in
deep sleep the Third Eye opens.This is good for Manas,who
profits by it though we ourselves do not
remember.
Perception
In answer to a question on the seven stages of
perception H.P.B said that thought should be centred on
the highest the seventh and then an attempt to
transcend this will prove that it is impossible to go
beyond it on this plane.There is nothing in
the brain to carry the thinker on and if thought is to rise yet
further it might be thought without a
brain.Let the eyes be closed the will set not to let the brain work,
and then the point may be transcended and the
student will pass to the next plane.All the seen stages of
perception come before Antahkarana;if you can
pass beyond them you are on the Mānasic Plane.
Try to imagine something which transcends your
power of thought say the nature of the Dhyān
Chohans.Then make the brain passive and pass
beyond;you will see a white radiant light like silver
but opalescent as mother of pearl;then waves
of colour will pass over it beginning in the tenderest
violet and through bronze shades of green to
indigo with metallic lustre and that colour will remain.If
you see this you are on another plane.You
should pass through seven stages.
When a colour comes,glance at it and if it is
not good reject it.Let your attention be arrested only on the
green indigo and yellow.These are good
colours.The eyes being connected with the brain the colour
you see most easily will be the colour of the
personality.If you see red it is merely physiological and is
to be disregarded.Green-bronze is the Lower
Manas:yellow-bronze the Antahkarana (Page 582)indigo-
bronze is Manas.These are to be observed and
when the yellow-bronze merges into the indigo you are
on the Mānasic Plane.
On the Mānasic Plane you see the Noumena the
essence of phenomena.You do not see people or
other consciousnesses,but have enough to do to
keep your own.The trained Seer can see Noumena
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always.The Adept sees the Noumena on this
plane the reality of things,so cannot be deceived.
In meditation the beginner may waver backwards
and forwards between two planes.You hear the ticking
of a clock on this plane then on the astral
the soul of the ticking.When clocks are stopped here the
ticking goes on on higher planes,in the astral
and then in the ether until the last bit of the clock is gone.
It is the same as with a dead body which sends
out emanations until the last molecule is disintegrated.
There is no time in meditation because there
is no succession of states of consciousness on this plane.
Violet is the colour of the Astral.You begin
with it but should not stay in it;try to pass on.When you see
a sheet of violet you are beginning
unconsciously to form a Māyāvi Rūpa.Fix your attention and if you
go away keep your consciousness firmly to the
Māyāvic Body;do not lose sight of it hold on like grim
death.
Consciousness
The consciousness which is merely the animal
consciousness is made up of the consciousness of all the
cells in the body except those of the
heart.The heart is the king the most important organ in the body of
man.Even if the head be severed from the body
the heart will continue to beat for thirty minutes.It will
beat for some hours if wrapped in cotton wool
and put in a warm place.The spot in the heart which is the
last of all to die is the seat of life the
centre of all Brahmā the first spot that lives in the ftus and the
last that dies.When a Yogi is buried in a
trance it is this spot that lives,though the rest of the body be
dead and as long as this is alive the Yogī can
be resurrected.This spot contains potentially mind life
energy and will.During life it radiates
prismatic colours,fiery and opalescent.The heart is the centre of
spiritual consciousness,as the brain is the
centre of intellectual.But this consciousness cannot be
guided by a person nor its energy directed by
him until he is at one with Buddhi-Manas;until then it
guides him if it can.Hence the pangs of
remorse the prickings of conscience they come from the
heart not the head.In the heart is the only
manifested God the other two are invisible and it is this
which represents the Triad.Ćtmā-Buddhi-Manas.
Christ and Apollonius (Page 583)
In reply to a question whether the
consciousness might not be concentrated in the heart and so the
promptings of the Spirit caught.H.P.B said
that any one who could thus concentrate would be at one with
Manas,would have united Kāma-Manas to the
Higher Manas.The Higher Manas could not directly guide
man it could only act through the Lower Manas.
There are three principal centres in man Heart
Head and Navel:any two of which may be +or to
each other according to the relative
predominance of the centres.
The heart represents the Higher Triad;the
liver and spleen represent the Quaternary.The solar plexus is
the brain of the stomach.
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H.P.B was asked if the three centres
above-named would represent the Christos,crucified between two
thieves;she said it might serve as an analogy
but these figures must not be over-driven.It must never
be forgotten that the Lower Manas is the same
in its essence as the Higher and may become one with it
by rejecting Kāmic impulses.The crucifixion of
the Christos represents the self-sacrifice of the Higher
Manas,the Father that sends his only begotten
Son into the world to take upon him our sins:the Christ-
myth came from the Mysteries.So also did the
life of Apollonius of Tyana;this was suppressed by the
Fathers of the Church because of its striking
similarity to the life of Christ.
The psycho-intellectual man is all in the head
with its seven gateways;the spiritual man is in the heart.
The convolutions are formed by thought.
The third ventricle in life is filled with
light and not with a liquid as after death.
There are seven cavities in the brain which
are quite empty during life and it is in these that visions must
be reflected if they are to remain in the
memory.These centres are in Occultism called the seven
harmonies,the scale of the divine
harmonies.They are filled with Ćkāsha each with its own colour
according to the state of consciousness in
which you are.The sixth is the pineal gland which is hollow
and empty during life;the seventh is the
whole;the fifth is the third ventricle;the fourth the pituitary body.
When Manas is united (Page 584)to Ćtmā-Buddhi or when Ćtmā-Buddhi is centred
in Manas,it acts in the
three higher cavities,radiating sending forth
a halo of light and this is visible in the case of a very holy
person.
The cerebellum is the centre the storehouse of
all the forces;it is the Kāma of the head.The pineal
gland corresponds to the uterus;its peduncles
to the Fallopian tubes.The pituitary body is only its
servant its torch-bearer like the servants
bearing lights that used to run before the carriage of a
princess.Man is thus androgyne so far as his
head is concerned.
Man contains in himself every element that is
found in the Universe.There is nothing in the Macrocosm
that is not in the Microcosm.The pineal gland
as was said is quite empty during life;the pituitary
contains various essences.The granules in the
pineal gland are precipitated after death within the cavity.
The cerebellum furnishes the materials for
ideation;the frontal lobes of the cerebrum are the finishers
and polishers of the materials,but they cannot
create of themselves.
Clairvoyant perception is the consciousness of
touch:thus reading letters,psychometrizing substances,
etc.may be done at the pit of the
stomach.Every sense has its consciousness,and you can have
consciousness through every sense.There may be
consciousness on the plane of sight though the brain
be paralyzed;the eyes of a paralyzed person
will show terror.So with the sense of hearing.Those who
are physically blind deaf or dumb are still
possessed of the psychic counterparts of these senses.
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Will and Desire
Eros in man is the will of the genius to
create great pictures,great music,things that will live and serve
the race.It has nothing in common with the
animal desire to create.Will is the Higher Manas.It is the
universal harmonious tendency acting by the
Higher Manas.Desire is the outcome of separateness,
aiming at the satisfaction of Self in
Matter.The path opened between the Higher Ego and the Lower
enables the Ego to act on the personal self.
Conversion
It is not true that a man powerful in evil can
suddenly be converted and become as powerfully for good.
His vehicle is too defiled and he can at best
but neutralize the evil balancing up the bad Karmic causes
he has set in motion at any rate for this
incarnation.You cannot take a herring barrel and use it for attar
of roses;the wood is too soaked through with
the drippings.When evil impulses and tendencies have
become impressed on the physical nature they
cannot at once be reversed.The molecules of the body
have been set in a Kāmic direction and though
they have sufficient intelligence to discern between
things on their own plane i.e.,to avoid
things harmful to themselves,they cannot understand a change
of direction the impulse to which is from
another plane.If they are forced too violently disease madness
or death will result.
The Beginnings (Page 585)
Origines
Absolute eternal motion Parabrahman which is
nothing and everything motion inconceivably rapid in
this motion throws off a film which is Energy
Eros.It thus transforms itself to Mūlaprakrity primordial
Substance which is still Energy.This Energy
still transforming itself in its ceaseless and inconceivable
motion becomes the Atom or rather the germ of
the Atom and then it is on the Third Plane.
Our Manas is a Ray from the World-Soul and is
withdrawn at Pralaya;it is perhaps the Lower Manas of
Parabrahman that is,of the Parabrahman of the
manifested Universe.The first film is Energy or motion
on the manifested plane;Alaya is the Third
Logos,Mahā-Buddhi Mahat.We always begin on the Third
Plane;beyond that all is inconceivable.Ćtmā is
focussed in Buddhi but is embodied only in Manas,
these being the Spirit Soul and Body of the
Universe.
Dreams
We may have evil experiences in dreams as well
as good.We should therefore train ourselves so as to
awaken directly we tend to do wrong.
The Lower Manas is asleep in sense-dreams,the
animal consciousness being then guided towards the
Astral Light by Kāma;the tendency of such
sense-dreams is always towards the animal.
If we could remember our dreams in deep sleep
then we should be able to remember all our past
incarnations.
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Nidānas
There are twelve Nidānas,exoteric and
Esoteric,the fundamental doctrine of Buddhism.(Page 586)So
also there are twelve exoteric Buddhist Sūttas
called Nidānas,each giving one Nidāna.
The Nidānas have a dual meaning.They are:
(1)The twelve causes of sentient existence
through the twelve links of subjective with objective Nature
or between the subjective and objective
Natures.
(2)A concatenation of causes and effects.
Every cause produces an effect and this effect
becomes in its turn a cause.Each of these has an
Upādhi (basis),one of the sub-divisions of one
of the Nidānas,and also an effect or consequence.
Both bases and effects belong to one or
another Nidāna each having from three to seventeen eighteen
and twenty-one sub-divisions.
The names of the twelve Nidānas are:
Page 463
THE TWELVE NIDANAS
1 Jarāmarana
2 Jāti
3 Bhava
4 Upādāna
5 Trishnā
6 Vedanā
7 Sparsha
8 Chadayātana
9 Nāmarūpa
10 Vigńāna
11 Samskāra
12 Avidyā *
*If the Nidānas are read the reverse way i.e.from
12 to 1 they give the evolutionary order.Ed.J ].
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(1)JARĀMARANA lit death in consequence of
decrepitude.Notice that death and not life comes as the
first of the Nidānas.This is the first
fundamental in Buddhist Philosophy;every Atom at every moment
as soon as it is born begins dying.
The five Skandhahas are founded on it;they are
its effects or product.Moreover in its turn it is based on
the five Skandhas.They are mutual things,one
gives to the other.
(2)JĀTI lit.Birth.
That is to say Birth according to one of the
four modes of Chaturyoni (the four wombs),viz.,:
(i)Through the womb like Mammalia.
(ii)Through Eggs.
(iii)Ethereal or liquid Germs fish spawn
pollen insects,etc.
(iv)Anupādaka Nirmānakāyas,Gods,etc.
That is to say that birth takes place by one
of these modes.You must be born in one of the six objective
modes of existence or in the seventh which is
subjective.These four are within six modes of existence
vis.:
Karmic Effects (Page 587)
Exoterically:
(i)Devas;(ii)Men;(iii)Asuras;(iv)Men in
Hell;(v)Pretas,devouring demons on earth;(vi)animals.
Esoterically:---
(i)Higher Gods;(ii)Devas or Pitris (all classes);(iii)Nirmānakāyas;(iv)Bodhisattvas;(v)Men
in Myalba;
(vi)Kāma Rūpic existences,whether of men or
animals,in Kāma Loka or the Astral Light;(vii)
Elementals (Subjective Existences).
(3)BHAVA =Karmic existence not life existence
but as a moral agent which determines where you will
be born i.e.,in which of the Triloka
Bhūr Bhuvar or Svar (seven Lokas in reality).
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The cause or Nidāna of Bhava is Upādāna that
is,the clinging to existence that which makes us desire
life in whatever form.
Its effect is Jatī in one or another of the
Triloka and under whatever conditions.
Nidānas are the detailed expression of the law
of Karma under twelve aspects;or we might say the law
of Karma under twelve Nidānic aspects.
Skandhas
Skandhas are the germs of life on all the
seven planes of Being and make up the totality of the
subjective and objective man.Every vibration
we have made is a Skandha.The Skandhas are closely
united to the pictures in the Astral Light
which is the medium of impressions,and the Skandhas,or
vibrations,connected with subjective or
objective man are the links which attract the Reincarnating Ego
the germs left behind when it went into
Devachan which have to be picked up again and exhausted by a
new personality.The exoteric Skandhas have to
do with the physical atoms and vibrations,or objective
man;the Esoteric with the internal and
subjective man.
A mental change or a glimpse of spiritual
truth may make a man suddenly change to the truth even at
his death thus creating good Skandhas for the
next life.The last acts or thoughts of a man have an
enormous effect upon his future life but he
would still have to suffer for his misdeeds,and this is the
basis of the idea of a death-bed
repentance.But the Karmic effects of the past life must follow for the
man in his next birth must pick up the
Skandhas or vibratory impressions that he left in the Astral Light
since nothing comes from nothing in Occultism
and there must be a link between the lives.New
Skandhas are born from their old parents.
(Page 588)It is wrong to speak of Tanhās in the
plural;there is only one Tanhā the desire to live.This
develops into a multitude or one might say a
congeries of ideas.The Skandhas are Karmic and non-
Karmic.Skandhas may produce Elementals by
unconscious Kriyāshakti.Every Elemental that is thrown
out by man must return to him sooner or later
since it is his own vibration.They thus become his
Frankenstein.Elementals are simply effects
producing effects.They are disembodied thoughts,good and
bad.They remain crystallized in the Astral
Light and are attracted by affinity and galvanized back into life
again when their originator returns to
earth-life.You can paralyze them by reverse effects.Elementals
are caught like a disease and hence are
dangerous to ourselves and to others.This is why it is
dangerous to influence others.The Elementals
which live after your death are those which you implant in
others:the rest remain latent till you are
reincarnated when they come to life in you.Thus, H.P.B said
if you are badly taught by me or incited
thereby to do something wrong you would go on after my death
and sin through me but I should have to bear
the Karma.Calvin for instance will have to suffer for all
the wrong teaching he has given though he gave
it with good intentions.The worst ****does is to arrest
the progress of truth.Even Buddha made
mistakes.He applied his teaching to people who were not
ready;and this has produced Nidānas.
Subtle Bodies
When a man visits another in his Astral Body
it is the Linga Sharira which goes,but this cannot happen
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at any great distance.When a man thinks of
another at a distance very intently he sometimes appears to
that person.
In this case it is the Māyāvī Rūpa which is
created by unconscious Kriyāshakti and the man himself is
not conscious of appearing.If he were and
projected his Māyāvi Rūpa consciously he would be an
Adept .[
I.e.an Initiate the word Adept being used by H.P.B.to cover all grades
of Initiation.As above
seen she used the words Māyāvi Rūpa in more
than one sense.-Editor ] No two
persons can be
simultaneously conscious of one another s
presence unless one be an Adept.Dugpas use the Māyāvi
Rūpa and sorcerers also.Dugpas work on the
Linga Sharīra of other people.
The Linga Sharīra in the spleen is the perfect
picture of the man and is good or bad according to his
own nature.The Astral Body is the subjective
image of the man which is to be the first germ in the
matrix the model of the physical body in which
the child is formed and developed.The Linga Sharīra
may be hurt by a sharp instrument and would
not face a sword or a bayonet although it would easily
pass through a table or other piece of
furniture.
Fire is Kriyāshakti (Page 589)
Nothing however can hurt the Māyāvi Rūpa or
thought-body since it is purely subjective.When swords
are struck at shades,it is the sword itself
not its Linga Sharīra or Astral that cuts.Sharp instruments
alone can penetrate Astrals,e.g.,under
water a blow will not affect you but a cut will.
The projection of the Astral Body should not
be attempted but the power of Kriyāshakti should be
exercised in the projection of the Māyāvi
Rūpa.
Fire
Fire is not an Element but a divine thing.The
physical flame is the objective vehicle of the highest Spirit.
The Fire Elementals are the highest.Everything
in this world has its Aura and its Spirit.The flame you
apply to the candle has nothing to do with the
candle itself.The Aura of the object comes into conjunction
with the lowest part of the other.Granite
cannot burn because its Aura is Fire.Fire Elementals have no
consciousness on this plane they are too high
reflecting the divinity of their own source.Other
Elementals have consciousness on this plane as
they reflect man and his nature.There is a very great
difference between the mineral and vegetable
kingdoms.The wick of the lamp for instance is negative.
It is made positive by fire the oil being the
medium.Ęther is Fire.The lowest part of Ęther is the flame
which you see.Fire is Divinity in its
subjective presence throughout the universe.Under other conditions,
this Universal Fire manifests as water air and
earth.It is the one Element in our visible Universe which is
the Kriyāshakti of all forms of life.It is
that which gives light heat death life etc.It is even the blood.In
all its various manifestations it is
essentially one.
It is the seven Cosmocratores.
Evidence of the esteem in which Fire was held
are to be found in the Old Testament .The Pillar of Fire
the Burning Bush the Shining Face of Moses
all Fire.Fire is like a looking-glass in its nature and
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reflects the beams of the first order of
subjective manifestations which are supposed to be thrown on to
the screen of the first outlines of the
created universe;in their lower aspect these are the creations of
Fire.
(Page 590)Fire in the grossest aspect of its essence is
the first form and reflects the lower forms of the
first subjective beings which are in the
universe.The first divine chaotic thoughts are the Fire Elementals.
When on earth they take form and come flitting
in the flame in the form of the Salamanders or lower Fire
Elementals.In the air you have millions of
living and conscious beings,besides our thoughts which they
catch up.The Fire Elementals are related to
the sense of sight and absorb the Elements of all the other
senses.Thus through sight you can have the
consciousness of feeling hearing tasting etc.since all are
included in the sense of sight.
Hints on the Future
As time passes on there will be more and more
ether in the air.When ether fills the air then will be born
children without fathers.In Virginia there is
an apple tree of a special kind.It does not blossom but bears
fruit from a kind of berry without any
seeds.This will gradually extend to animals and then to men.
Women will bear children without impregnation
and in the Seventh Round there will appear men who
can reproduce themselves.In the Seventh Race
of the Fourth Round men will change their skins every
year and will have new toe and finger
nails.People will become more psychic,then spiritual.Last of all in
the Seventh Round Buddhas will be born without
sin.The Fourth Round is the longest in the Kali Yuga
then the Fifth then the Sixth and the Seventh
Round will be very short.
The Egos
In explaining the relations of the Higher and
Lower Ego Devachan and the Death of the Soul the
following figure was drawn:
On the separation of the Principles at death
the Higher Ego may be said to go to Devachan by reason
of the experiences of the Lower.The Higher Ego
in its own plane is the
Kumāra.
The Lower Quaternary dissolves;the body
rots,the Linga Sharīra fades out.
At reincarnation the Higher Ego shoots out a
Ray the Lower Ego.Its energies
are upward and downward.The upward tendencies
become its Devachanic
experiences;the lower are Kāmic.The Higher
Manas stands to Buddhi as the
Lower Manas to the Higher.
Responsibility and the Ego (Page 591)
As to the question of responsibility it may be
understood by an example.If you take the form of Jack the
Ripper you must suffer for its misdeeds,for
the law will punish the murderer and hold him responsible.
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You are the sacrificial victim.In the same way
the Higher Ego takes the responsibility of every body it
informs.
You borrow some money to lend it to
another;the other runs away but it is you who are responsible.The
mission of the Higher Ego is to shoot out a
Ray to be a Soul in a child.
Thus the Ego incarnates in a thousand
bodies,taking upon itself the sins and responsibilities of each
body.At every incarnation a new Ray is emitted
and yet it is the same Ray in essence the same in you
and me and every one.The dross of the
incarnation disintegrates,the good goes to Devachan.
The Flame is eternal.From the Flame of the
Higher Ego the Lower is lighted and from this a lower
vehicle and so on.
And yet the Lower Manas is such as it makes
itself.It is possible for it to act differently in like conditions,
for it has reason and self-conscious knowledge
of right and wrong and good and evil given to it.It is in
fact endowed with all the attributes of the
Divine Soul.In this the Ray is the Higher Manas,the speck of
responsibility on earth.
The part of the essence is the essence but
while it is out of itself so to say it can get soiled and
polluted.The Ray can be manifested on this
earth because it can send forth its Māyāvi Rūpa.But the
Higher cannot so it has to send forth a Ray.We
may look upon the Higher Ego as the Sun and the
personal Manases as its Rays.If we take away
the surrounding air and light the Ray may be said to
return to the Sun so with the Lower Manas and
Lower Quaternary.
The Higher Ego can only manifest through its
attributes.
In cases of sudden death the Lower Manas no
more disappears than does the Kāma Rūpa after death.
After the severance the Ray may be said to
snap or be dropped.After death such a man cannot go to
Devachan nor yet remain in Kāma Loka;his fate
is to reincarnate immediately.Such an entity is then an
animal Soul pl s the intelligence of
the severed Ray.The manifestation of this intelligence in (Page 592)
the next birth will depend entirely on the
physical formation of the brain and on education.
Such a Soul may be re-united with its Higher
Ego in the next birth if the environment is such as to give it
a chance of aspiration (this is the grace of
the Christians);or it may go on for two or three incarnations,
the Ray becoming weaker and weaker and
gradually dissipating until it is born a congenital idiot and
then finally dissipated in lower forms.
There are enormous mysteries connected with
the Lower Manas.
With regard to some intellectual giants,they
are in somewhat the same condition as smaller men for
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their Higher Ego is paralyzed that is to say
their spiritual nature is atrophied.
The Manas can pass its essence to several
vehicles,e.g.,the Māyāvi Rūpa etc.and even to Elementals
which it can ensoul as the Rosicrucians
taught.
The Māyāvi Rūpa may be sometimes so vitalized
that it goes on to another plane and unites with the
beings of that plane and so ensouls them.
People who bestow great affection upon animal
pets are ensouling them to a certain extent and such
animal souls progress rapidly;in return such
persons get back the animal vitality and magnetism.It is,
however against Nature to thus accentuate
animal evolution and on the whole is bad.
Monadic Evolution
The Kumāras do not direct the evolution of the
Lunar Pitris.To understand the latter we might take the
analogy of the blood.
The blood maybe compared to the universal Life
Principle the corpuscles to the Monads.The different
kinds of corpuscles are the same as the
various classes of Monads and various kingdoms,not however
because of their essence being different but
because of the environment in which they are.The Chhāyā
the permanent seed and Weissmann in his
hereditary germ theory is very near truth.
H.P.B was asked whether there was one Ego to
one permanent Chhāyā seed oversouling it in a series
of incarnations;her answer was:No it is
Heaven and Earth kissing each other.
The animal Souls are in temporary forms and
shells in which they gain experience and in which they
prepare materials for higher evolution.
Functions of the Astral Body (Page 593)
Until the age of seven the astral atavic germ
forms and moulds the body;after that the body forms the
Astral.
The Astral and the Mind Mutually react on each
other.
The meaning of the passage in the Upanishads
where it says that the Gods feed on men is that the
Higher Ego obtains its earth experience
through the Lower.
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Astral Body
The Astral can get out unconsciously to the
person and wander about.
The Chhāyā is the same as the Astral Body.
The germ or life essence of it is in the
spleen.
The Chhāyā is coiled up in the spleen.It is
from this that the Astral is formed;it evolves in a shadowy
curling or gyrating essence like smoke
gradually taking form as it grows.But it is not projected from the
physical atom for atom.This latter
intermolecular form is the Kāmā Rūpa.At death every cell and
molecule gives out its essence and from it is
formed the Astral of the Kāma Rūpa;but this can never
come out during life.
The Chhāyā in order to become visible draws
upon the surrounding atmosphere attracting the atoms to
itself;the Linga Sharīra could not form in vacuo
.The fact of the Astral Body accounts for the Arabian and
Eastern tales of Djins and bottle imps,etc.
In spiritualistic phenomena the resemblance to
deceased persons is mostly caused by the imagination.
The clothing of such phantoms is formed from
the living atoms of the medium and is no real clothing
and has nothing to do with the clothing of the
medium.All the clothing of a materialization has been paid
for.
The Astral supports life;it is the reservoir
or sponge of life gathering it up from all the natural kingdoms
around and is the intermediary between the
kingdoms of Prānic and physical life.
Life cannot come immediately from the
subjective to the objective for Nature goes gradually through
each sphere.Therefore the Linga Sharīra is the
intermediary between Prāna and our physical body and
pumps in the life.
The spleen is consequently a very delicate
organ but the physical spleen is only a cover for the real
spleen.
Now Life is in reality
Divinity;Parabrahman.But in order to manifest on the physical Plane it must be
assimilated;and as the purely physical is too
gross,it must have a medium viz.,the Astral.
(Page 594)Astral matter is not homogeneous,and the
Astral Light is nothing but the shadow of the real
Divine Light;it is however not molecular.
Those (Kāmarūpic)entities which are below the
Devachanic Plane are in Kama Loka and only possess
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intelligence like monkeys.There are no
entities in the four lower kingdoms possessing intelligence which
can communicate with men but the Elementals
have instincts like animals.It is,however possible for the
Sylphs (the Air Elementals,the wickedest
things in the world)to commuicate but they require to be
propitiated.
Spooks (Kāmarūpic entities)can only give the
information they see immediately before them.They see
things in the Aura of people although the
people may not be aware of them themselves.
Earth-bound spirits are Kāmalokic entities
that have been so materialistic that they cannot be dissolved
for a long time.They have only a glimmering of
consciousness and do not know why they are held some
sleep some preserve a glimmering of
consciousness and suffer torture.
In the case of people who have very little
Devachan the greater part of the consciousness remains in
Kāma Loka and may last far beyond the normal
period of one hundred and fifty years and remain over
until the next reincarnation of the
Spirit.This then becomes the Dweller on the Threshold and fights with
the new Astral.
The acme of Kāma is the sexual instinct e.g.,idiots
have such desires and also food appetites,etc.and
nothing else.
Devachan is a state on a plane of spiritual
consciousness;Kāma Loka is a place of physical
consciousness.It is the shadow of the animal
world and that of instinctual feeling.When the
consciousness thinks of spiritual things,it is
on a spiritual plane.
If one s thoughts are of nature flowers
etc.then the consciousness is on the material plane.
But if thoughts are about eating drinking
etc.and the passions,then the consciousness is in the
Kāmalokic plane which is the plane of animal
instincts pure and simple.
PEACE TO ALL BEINGS
Page 471
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