(the hermaphrodite Apollo, whose attribute is the lyre, and the bearded
Diana of the bow and arrow), Deus Lunus, and especially Osiris-Lunus and
Thot-Lunus,(639) were the Occult potencies of the Moon. But whether male
or female, whether Thot or Minerva, Soma or Astoreth, the Moon is the
Occult Mystery of Mysteries, and more a symbol of evil than of good. Her
seven phases, in the original Esoteric division, are divided into three
astronomical phenomena and four purely psychic phases. That the Moon was
not always reverenced is shown in the Mysteries, in which the death of the
Moon-God--the three phases of gradual waning and final disappearance--was
allegorized by the Moon standing for the Genius of Evil that, for the
time, triumphs over the Light and Life-giving God, the Sun; and all the
skill and learning of the ancient Hierophants in Magic were required to
turn this triumph into a defeat.

It was the most ancient worship of all, that of the Third Race of our
Round, the Hermaphrodites, in which the _male_ Moon became sacred, when,
after the so-called Fall, the sexes had become separated. Deus Lunus then
became an androgyne, male and female in turn; to finally serve, _for
purposes of sorcery_, as a dual power for the Fourth Root Race, the
Atlanteans. With the Fifth, our own Race, the Lunar-solar worship divided
the nations into two distinct, antagonistic camps. It led to events
described śons later in the Mah‚bh‚ratan War, which to the Europeans is
the fabulous, to the HindŻs and Occultists the historical, strife between
the SŻryavanshas and the Indovanshas. Originating in the dual aspect of
the Moon, the worship of the female and the male principles respectively,
it ended in distinct Solar and Lunar cults. Among the Semitic races, the
Sun was for a very long time feminine and the Moon masculine; the latter
notion being adopted by them from the Atlantean traditions. The Moon was
called the "Lord of the Sun," Bel-Shemesh, before the Shemesh worship. The
ignorance of the incipient reasons for such a distinction, and of Occult
principles, led the nations into anthropomorphic idol-worship. During that
period which is absent from the Mosaic books, viz., from the exile from
Eden to the allegorical Flood, the Jews, with the rest of the Semites,
worshipped Dayanisi, {~HEBREW LETTER DALET~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER NUN~}{~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER SHIN~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}, the "Ruler of Men," the "Judge," or the Sun.
Though the Jewish canon and Christianism have made the Sun to become the
"Lord God" and "Jehovah" in the _Bible_, yet the same _Bible_ is full of
indiscreet traces of the androgyne Deity, which was Jehovah, the Sun, and
Astoreth, the Moon in its female aspect, and quite free from the present
metaphorical element given to it. God is a "consuming fire," appears _in_,
and "is encompassed _by_ fire." It was not only in vision that Ezekiel saw
the Jews "worshipping the Sun."(640) The Baal of the Israelites--the
Shemesh of the Moabites and the Moloch of the Ammonites--was the identical
"Sun-Jehovah," and he is till now the "King of the Host of Heaven," the
Sun, as much as Astoreth was the "Queen of Heaven," or the Moon. The "Sun
of Righteousness" has _only now_ become a _metaphorical_ expression. But
the religion of every ancient nation had been primarily based upon the
Occult manifestations of a purely abstract Force or Principle now called
"God." The very establishment of such worship shows, in its details and
rites, that the philosophers who evolved such systems of Nature,
subjective and objective, possessed profound knowledge, and were
acquainted with many facts of a scientific nature. For besides being
purely Occult, the rites of Lunar worship were based, as just shown, upon
a knowledge of Physiology--quite a modern science with us--Psychology,
sacred Mathematics, Geometry and Metrology, in their right applications to
symbols and figures, which are but glyphs recording observed natural and
scientific _facts_; in short upon a most minute and profound knowledge of
Nature. As we have just said, lunar magnetism generates life, preserves
and destroys it; and Soma embodies the triple power of the TrimŻrti,
though it remains unrecognized by the profane to this day. The allegory
that makes Soma, the Moon, produced by the Churning of the Ocean of Life
(Space) by the Gods in another Manvantara, that is, in the pre-genetic day
of our Planetary System, and the myth, which represents "the Rishis
milking the Earth, whose calf was Soma, the Moon," have a deep
cosmographical meaning; for it is neither _our_ Earth which is milked, nor
was the Moon which we know the calf.(641) Had our wise men of Science
known as much of the mysteries of Nature as the ancient ¬ryans did, they
would surely never have imagined that the Moon was projected from the
Earth. Once more, the oldest of permutations in Theogony, the Son becoming
his own Father and the Mother generated by the Son, has to be remembered
and taken into consideration if the symbolical language of the Ancients is
to be understood by us. Otherwise mythology will be ever haunting the
Orientalists as simply "the disease which springs up at a peculiar stage
of human culture!"--as Renouf gravely observes.

The Ancients taught the auto-generation, so to speak, of the Gods: the One
Divine Essence, _unmanifested_, perpetually begetting a Second-Self,
_manifested_, which Second-Self, androgynous in its nature, _gives birth,
in an immaculate way_, to everything macrocosmical and microcosmical in
this Universe. This was shown in the Circle and the Diameter, or the
Sacred Ten (10), a few pages back.

But our Orientalists, notwithstanding their extreme desire to discover one
homogeneous Element in Nature, _will not_ see it. Cramped in their
researches by such ignorance, the ¬ryanists and Egyptologists are
constantly led astray from truth in their speculations. Thus, de Rougť is
unable to understand, in the text which he translates, the meaning of
Ammon-Ra saying to King Amenophes, who is supposed to be Memnon: "Thou art
my Son, I have begotten thee." And, finding the same idea in many a text
and under various forms, this very Christian Orientalist is finally
compelled to exclaim:

    For this idea to have entered the mind of a hierogrammatist, there
    must have been in their religion a more or less defined doctrine,
    _indicating as a possible fact that might come to pass, a divine
    and immaculate incarnation under a human form._

Precisely. But why throw the explanation on to an impossible prophecy,
when the whole secret is explained by the later religion copying the
earlier?

This doctrine was universal, nor was it the mind of any one
hierogrammatist that evolved it; for the Indian Avat‚ras are a proof to
the contrary. After which, having come "to realize more clearly"(642) what
the "Divine Father and Son" were with the Egyptians, de Rougť still fails
to account for, and to perceive what were the functions attributed to, the
_feminine_ Principle in that primordial generation. He does not find it in
the Goddess NeÔth, of SaÔs. Yet he quotes the sentence of the Commander to
Cambyses, when introducing that king into the SaÔtic temple: "I made known
to his Majesty the dignity of SaÔs, which is the abode of NeÔth, the great
[female] producer, _genitrix of the Sun_, who is the _first-born, and who
is not begotten, but only brought forth_"--and hence is the fruit of an
Immaculate Mother.

How much more grandiose, philosophical and poetical--for whoever is able to
understand and appreciate it--is the real distinction made between the
Immaculate Virgin of the ancient Pagans and the modern Papal conception.
With the former, the ever-youthful Mother Nature, the antitype of her
prototypes, the Sun and Moon, _generates_ and _brings forth_ her "mind-
born" Son, the Universe. The Sun and Moon, as male-female deities,
fructify the Earth, the microcosmical Mother, and the latter conceives and
brings forth, in her turn. With the Christians, the "First-born"
(_primogenitus_) is indeed generated, _i.e._, begotten (_genitus, non
factus_), and positively _conceived and brought forth_: "_Virgo pariet_,"
explains the Latin Church. Thus does that Church drag down the noble
spiritual ideal of the Virgin Mary to the earth, and, making her "of the
earth earthy," degrades the ideal she portrays to the lowest of the
anthropomorphic Goddesses of the rabble.

Truly, NeÔth, Isis, Diana, etc., by whatever name she was called, was "a
demiurgical Goddess, at once visible and invisible, having her place in
Heaven, and _helping on the generation of species_"--the Moon, in short.
Her occult aspects and powers are numberless, and, in one of them, the
Moon becomes with the Egyptians Hathor, another aspect of Isis,(643) and
both of these Goddesses are shown suckling Horus. Behold in the Egyptian
Hall of the British Museum, Hathor worshipped by Pharaoh Thotmes, who
stands between her and the Lord of Heavens. The monolith was taken from
Karnac. The same Goddess has the following legend inscribed on her throne:
"_The Divine Mother and Lady, or Queen of Heaven_"; also the "_Morning
Star_," and the "_Light of the Sea_"--_Stella Matutina_ and _Lux Maris_.
All the Lunar Goddesses had a dual aspect; one _divine_, the other
_infernal_. All were the Virgin Mothers of an _immaculately_ born Son--the
Sun. Raoul Rochette shows the Moon-Goddess of the Athenians, Pallas, or
Cybele, Minerva, or again Diana, holding her child-son on her lap, invoked
in her festivals as {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH VARIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH PERISPOMENI~}, the "One Mother of God," sitting on a
lion, and surrounded by twelve personages; in whom the Occultist
recognizes the twelve great Gods, and the pious Christian Orientalist the
Apostles, or rather the Grecian Pagan prophecy thereof.

They are both right, for the Immaculate Goddess of the Latin Church is a
faithful copy of the older Pagan Goddesses; the number of the Apostles is
that of the twelve Tribes, and the latter are a personification of the
twelve great Gods, and of the twelve Signs of the Zodiac. Almost every
detail in the Christian dogma is borrowed from the Heathens. Semele, the
Wife of Jupiter and Mother of Bacchus, the Sun, is, according to Nonnus,
also "carried," or made to ascend to Heaven after her death, where she
presides between Mars and Venus, under the name of the "Queen of the
World," or the Universe, {~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}; "at the name of which," as at the
names of Hathor, Hecate, and other infernal Goddesses, "all the demons
tremble."(644)

"{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}." This Greek inscription on a small temple,
reproduced on a stone that was found by Beger, and copied by Montfaucon,
as De Mirville tells us, informs us of the stupendous fact, that the Magna
Mater of the old world was an impudent "plagiarism" of the Immaculate
Virgin Mother of his Church, perpetrated by the Demon. Whether so, or
_vice vers‚_, is of no importance. That which is interesting to note is
the perfect identity between the _archaic copy_ and the _modern original_.

Did space permit we might show the inconceivable coolness and unconcern
exhibited by certain followers of the Roman Catholic Church, when they are
made to face the revelations of the Past. To Maury's remark that "the
Virgin took possession of all the Sanctuaries of Ceres and Venus, and that
the Pagan rites, proclaimed and practised in honour of those Goddesses,
were in a great measure transferred to the Mother of Christ,"(645) the
advocate of Rome answers, that such _is_ the fact, and that it is just as
it should be, and quite natural.

    As the dogma, the liturgy, and the rites professed by the Roman
    Apostolical Church in 1862 are found engraved on monuments,
    inscribed on papyri, and cylinders _hardly posterior to the
    Deluge_, it does seem impossible to deny the existence of a _first
    ante-historical_ [Roman] _Catholicism of which our own is but the
    faithful continuation_.... [But while the former was the
    culmination, the "_summum_ of the impudence of demons and goŽtic
    necromancy" ... the latter is _divine_.] If in _our_ [Christian]
    _Revelation_ [_l'Apocalypse_], Mary, clothed with the Sun and
    having the Moon under her feet, has no longer anything in common
    _with the humble servant_ [servante] _of Nazareth_ [_sic_], it is
    because she has now become the greatest of theological and
    cosmological powers in _our_ universe.(646)

Verily so, since Pindar thus sings of her "assumption": "She sits _at the
right hand_ of her Father [Jupiter], ... and is more powerful than all the
other (Angels or) Gods"(647)--a hymn likewise applied to the Virgin. St.
Bernard also, quoted by Cornelius ŗ Lapide, is made to address the Virgin
Mary in this wise: "The Sun-Christ lives in thee and thou livest in
him."(648)

Again the Virgin is admitted to be the Moon by the same unsophisticated
holy man. Being the Lucina of the Church, in childbirth the verse of
Virgil, "_Casta fove Lucina, tuus jam regnat Apollo_," is applied to her.
"Like the Moon, the Virgin is the Queen of Heaven," adds the innocent
saint.(649)

This settles the question. According to such writers as De Mirville, the
more similarity there exists between the Pagan conceptions and the
Christian dogmas, the more divine appears the Christian religion, and the
more is it seen to be the only truly inspired one, especially in its Roman
Catholic form. The unbelieving Scientists and Academicians who think they
see in the Latin Church quite the opposite of divine inspiration, and who
will not believe in the Satanic tricks of plagiarism by anticipation, are
severely taken to task. But then "they believe in nothing and reject even
the _Nabathean Agriculture_ as a romance and a pack of superstitious
nonsense," complains the memorialist. "In their perverted opinion
QŻ-t‚my's 'idol of the Moon' and the statue of the Madonna are one!" A
noble Marquis, twenty-five years ago, wrote six huge volumes, or, as he
calls them "Mťmoires to the French Academy," with the sole object of
proving Roman Catholicism to be an inspired and revealed faith. As a proof
thereof, he furnishes numberless facts, all tending to show that the
entire Ancient World, ever since the Deluge, had, with the help of the
Devil, been systematically plagiarizing the rites, ceremonies, and dogmas
of the future Holy Church, which was to be born ages later. What would
that faithful son of Rome have said had he heard his co-religionist, M.
Renouf, the distinguished Egyptologist of the British Museum, declaring in
one of his learned lectures, that neither "Hebrews nor Greeks borrowed any
of their ideas from Egypt"?

But perhaps M. Renouf intended to say that it was the Egyptians, the
Greeks, and the ¬ryans, who borrowed their ideas from the Latin Church?
And if so, why, in the name of logic, do the Papists reject the additional
information which the Occultists may give them on Moon-worship, since it
all tends to show that the worship of the Roman Catholic Church is as old
as the world--_of Sabśanism and Astrolatry_?

The reason of early Christian and later Roman Catholic Astrolatry, or the
symbolical worship of Sun and Moon, a worship identical with that of the
Gnostics, though less philosophical and pure than the "Sun-worship" of the
Zoroastrians, is a natural consequence of its birth and origin. The
adoption by the Latin Church of such symbols as Water, Fire, Sun, Moon and
Stars, and many others, is simply a continuation by the early Christians
of the old worship of Pagan nations. Thus, Odin got his wisdom, power, and
knowledge, by sitting at the feet of Mimir, the thrice-wise Jotun, who
passed his life by the fountain of primeval Wisdom, the crystalline Waters
of which increased his knowledge daily. "Mimir drew the highest knowledge
from the fountain, because the World was born of Water; hence primeval
Wisdom was to be found in that mysterious element." The eye which Odin had
to pledge to acquire that knowledge may be "the Sun, which enlightens and
penetrates all things; his other eye being the Moon, whose reflection
gazes out of the deep, and which at last, when setting, sinks into the
Ocean."(650) But it is something more than this. Loki, the Fire-God, is
said to have hidden in the Water, as well as in the Moon, the light-giver,
whose reflection he found therein. This belief that the Fire finds refuge
in the Water was not limited to the old Scandinavians. It was shared by
all nations and was finally adopted by the early Christians, who
symbolized the Holy Ghost under the shape of Fire, "cloven tongues like as
of fire"--the breath of the Father-Sun. This Fire descends also into the
Water, or the Sea--Mare, Mary. The Dove was the symbol of the Soul with
several nations; it was sacred to Venus, the Goddess born from the sea-
foam, and it became later the symbol of the Christian Anima Mundi, or Holy
Spirit.

One of the most occult chapters in the _Book of the Dead_ is that
entitled, "The transformation into the God giving Light to the Path of
Darkness," wherein "Woman-Light of the Shadow" serves Thot in his retreat
in the Moon. Thot-Hermes is said to hide therein, because he is the
representative of the Secret Wisdom. He is the manifested Logos of its
light side; the concealed Deity or "Dark Wisdom" when he is supposed to
retire to the opposite hemisphere. Speaking of her power, the Moon calls
herself repeatedly: "The Light which shineth in Darkness," the "Woman-
Light." Hence it became the accepted symbol of all the Virgin-Mother
Goddesses. As the wicked "evil" Spirits warred against the Moon in days of
yore, so they are supposed to war now, without, however, being able to
prevail against the actual Queen of Heaven, Mary, the Moon. Hence, also,
the Moon was intimately connected in all the Pagan Theogonies with the
Dragon, her eternal enemy. The Virgin, or Madonna, stands on the mythical
Satan thus symbolized, who lies crushed and powerless, under her feet.
This, because the head and tail of the Dragon, which, to this day in
Eastern Astronomy, represent the ascending and descending nodes of the
Moon, were also symbolized in ancient Greece by the two serpents. Hercules
kills them on the day of his birth, and so does the Babe in his Virgin-
Mother's arms. As Mr. Gerald Massey aptly observes in this connection:

    All such symbols figured their own facts from the first, and did
    not pre-figure others of a totally different order. The
    iconography [and dogmas, too] had survived in Rome from a period
    remotely pre-Christian. _There was neither forgery nor
    interpolation of types; nothing but a continuity of imagery with a
    perversion of its meaning._

Section X. Tree, Serpent, and Crocodile Worship.

    Object of horror or of adoration, men have for the serpent an
    implacable hatred, or prostrate themselves before its genius. Lie
    calls it, Prudence claims it, Envy carries it in its heart, and
    Eloquence on its caduceus. In Hell it arms the whip of the Furies;
    in Heaven Eternity makes of it its symbol.

    DE CH¬TEAUBRIAND.

The Ophites asserted that there were several kinds of Genii, from God to
man; that the relative superiority of these was decided by the degree of
Light that was accorded to each; and they maintained that the Serpent had
to be constantly called upon and to be thanked for the signal service it
had rendered humanity. For it taught Adam that if he ate of the fruit of
the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil, he would raise his Being immensely
by the learning and wisdom he would thus acquire. Such was the exoteric
reason given.

It is easy to see whence is the primal idea of the dual, Janus-like
character of the Serpent--the good and the bad. This symbol is one of the
most ancient, because the reptile preceded the bird, and the bird the
mammal. Hence the belief, or rather the superstition, of the savage tribes
who think that the souls of their ancestors live under this form, and the
general association of the Serpent with the Tree. The legends about the
various meanings it represents are numberless; but, as most of them are
allegorical, they have now passed into the class of fables based on
ignorance and dark superstition. For instance, when Philostratus narrates
that the natives of India and Arabia fed on the heart and liver of
Serpents in order to learn the language of all the animals, the Serpent
being credited with that faculty, he certainly never meant his words to be
accepted literally.(651) As will be found more than once as we proceed,
Serpent and Dragon were names given to the Wise Ones, the Initiated Adepts
of olden times. It was their wisdom and their learning that were devoured
or assimilated by their followers, whence the allegory. When the
Scandinavian Sigurd is fabled to have roasted the heart of Fafnir, the
Dragon, whom he had slain, and thence to have become the wisest of men,
the meaning is the same. Sigurd had become learned in the runes and
magical charms; he had received the "Word" from an Initiate of the name of
Fafnir, or from a sorcerer, after which the latter died, as do many, after
"passing the word." Epiphanius lets out a secret of the Gnostics in trying
to expose their "heresies." The Gnostic Ophites, he says, had a reason for
honouring the Serpent: _it was because he taught the primeval men the
Mysteries_.(652) Verily so; but they did not have Adam and Eve in the
Garden in their minds when teaching this dogma, but simply that which is
stated above. The N‚gas of the HindŻ and Tibetan Adepts were human N‚gas
(Serpents), not reptiles. Moreover, the Serpent has ever been the type of
consecutive or serial rejuvenation, of Immortality and Time.

The numerous and extremely interesting readings, the interpretations and
facts about Serpent worship, given in Mr. Gerald Massey's _Natural
Genesis_, are very ingenious and scientifically correct. But they are far
from covering the _whole_ of the meanings implied. They divulge only the
astronomical and physiological mysteries, with the addition of some cosmic
phenomena. On the lowest plane of materiality, the Serpent was, no doubt,
the "great emblem of Mystery in the Mysteries," and was, very likely,
"adopted as a type of feminine pubescence, on account of its sloughing and
self-renewal." It was so, however, only with regard to mysteries
concerning terrestrial _animal_ life, for as the symbol of "_re-clothing_
and re-birth in the [universal] mysteries," its "final phase,"(653) or
shall we rather say its incipient and culminating phases, was not of this
plane. These phases were generated in the pure realm of Ideal Light, and
having accomplished the round of the whole cycle of adaptations and
symbolism, the Mysteries returned from whence they had come, into the
essence of _immaterial_ causality. They belonged to the highest GnŰsis.
And surely this could have never obtained its name and fame solely on
account of its penetration into physiological and especially feminine
functions!

As a symbol, the Serpent had as many aspects and occult meanings as the
Tree itself; the "Tree of Life," with which it was emblematically and
almost indissolubly connected. Whether viewed as a metaphysical or a
physical symbol, the Tree and Serpent, jointly, or separately, have never
been so degraded by antiquity as they are now, in this our age of the
breaking of idols, not for truth's sake, but to glorify the most gross
matter. The revelations and interpretations in General Forlong's _Rivers
of Life_ would have astounded the worshippers of the Tree and Serpent in
the days of archaic Chaldean and Egyptian wisdom; and even the early
Shaivas would have recoiled in horror at the theories and suggestions of
the author of the said work. "The notion of Payne Knight and Inman that
the Cross or Tau is simply a copy of the male organs in a triadic form is
radically false," writes Mr. G. Massey, who proves what he says. But this
is a statement that could be as justly applied to almost all the modern
interpretations of ancient symbols. _The Natural Genesis_, a monumental
work of research and thought, the most complete on that subject that has
ever been published, covering as it does a wider field, and explaining
much more than all the Symbologists who have hitherto written, does not
yet go beyond the "psycho-theistic" stage of ancient thought. Nor were
Payne Knight and Inman altogether wrong; except in entirely failing to see
that their interpretations of the Tree of Life, as the Cross and Phallus,
fitted the symbol only in the lowest and latest stage of the evolutionary
development of the idea of the Giver of Life. It was the last and the
grossest physical transformation of Nature, in animal, insect, bird and
even plant; for bi-une, creative magnetism, in the form of the attraction
of contraries, or sexual polarization, acts in the constitution of reptile
and bird as it does in that of man. Moreover, the modern Symbologists and
Orientalists, from first to last, being ignorant of the real Mysteries
revealed by Occultism, can necessarily see but this last stage. If told
that this mode of procreation, which the whole world of being has now in
common on this Earth, is but a passing phase, a physical means of
furnishing the conditions to and producing the phenomena of life, and that
it will alter with this and disappear with the next Root-Race, they would
laugh at such a superstitious and unscientific idea. But the most learned
Occultists assert this because _they know it_. The universe of living
beings, of all those which procreate their species, is the living witness
to the various modes of procreation in the evolution of animal and human
species and races; and the Naturalist ought to sense this truth
intuitionally, even though he is yet unable to demonstrate it. How could
he, indeed, with the present modes of thought! The landmarks of the
archaic history of the Past are few and scarce, and those that men of
Science come across are mistaken for finger-posts of our little era. Even
so-called "universal (?) history" embraces but a tiny field in the almost
boundless space of the unexplored regions of our latest, Fifth Root-Race.
Hence, every fresh sign-post, every new glyph of the hoary Past that is
discovered, is added to the old stock of information, to be interpreted on
the same lines of preŽxisting conceptions, and without any reference to
the special cycle of thought which that particular glyph may belong to.
How can Truth ever come to light if this method is never changed!

Thus, in the beginning of their joint existence as a glyph of Immortal
Being, the Tree and Serpent were divine imagery, truly. The Tree was
_reversed_, and its roots were generated in Heaven and grew out of the
Rootless Root of All-Being. Its trunk grew and developed; crossing the
planes of the PlerŰma, it shot out crossways its luxuriant branches, first
on the plane of hardly differentiated matter, and then downward till they
touched the terrestrial plane. Thus, the Ashvattha Tree of Life and Being,
whose destruction alone leads to immortality, is said in the
_BhagavadgÓt‚_ to grow with its roots above and its branches below.(654)
The roots represent the Supreme Being, or First Cause, the Logos; but one
has to go beyond those roots to _unite oneself with Krishna_, who, says
Arjuna, is "greater than Brahman, and First Cause ... the indestructible,
that which is, that which is not, and what is beyond them."(655) Its
boughs are Hiranyagarbha (Brahm‚ or Brahman in its highest manifestations,
say ShrÓdhara Sv‚min and MadhusŻdana), the highest Dhy‚n Chohans or Devas.
The _Vedas_ are its leaves. He only who goes _beyond_ the roots shall
never return; that is to say, shall reÔncarnate no more during this Age of
Brahm‚.

It is only when its pure boughs had touched the terrestrial mud of the
Garden of Eden, of our Adamic Race, that this Tree became soiled by the
contact and lost its pristine purity; and that the Serpent of Eternity,
the Heaven-Born Logos, was finally degraded. In days of old, of the Divine
Dynasties on Earth, the now dreaded reptile was regarded as the first beam
of light that radiated from the abyss of Divine Mystery. Various were the
forms which it was made to assume, and numerous the natural symbols
adapted to it, as it crossed the śons of Time; as from Infinite Time
(K‚la) itself it fell into the space and time evolved out of human
speculation. These forms were cosmic and astronomical, theistic and
pantheistic, abstract and concrete. They became in turn the Polar Dragon
and the Southern Cross, the Alpha Draconis of the Pyramid, and the
HindŻ-Buddhist Dragon, which ever threatens, yet never swallows the Sun
during its eclipses. Till then, the Tree remained ever green, for it was
sprinkled by the Waters of Life; the Great Dragon remained ever divine, so
long as it was kept within the precincts of the sidereal fields. But the
Tree grew and its lower boughs at last touched the Infernal Regions--our
Earth. Then the Great Serpent NidhŲgg--he who devours the corpses of the
evil-doers in the "Hall of Misery" (human life), so soon as they are
plunged into Hwergelmir, the roaring cauldron (of human passions)--gnawed
the reversed World-Tree. The worms of materiality covered the once healthy
and mighty roots, and are now ascending higher and higher along the trunk;
while the Midgard Snake coiled at the bottom of the Seas, encircles the
Earth, and, through its venomous breath, makes her powerless to defend
herself.

The Dragons and Serpents of Antiquity are all seven-headed--one head for
each Race, and "every head with seven hairs on it," as the allegory has
it. Aye, from Ananta, the Serpent of Eternity, which carries Vishnu
through the Manvantara; from the original primordial Shesha, whose seven
heads become "one thousand heads" in the Pur‚nic fancy, down to the seven-
headed Akkadian Serpent. This typifies the Seven Principles throughout
Nature and in man; the highest or middle head being the seventh. It is not
of the Mosaic, Jewish Sabbath that Philo speaks, in his _Creation of the
World_, when saying that the world was completed "according to the perfect
nature of number 6." For:

    _When that Reason_ [_Nous_] _which is holy in accordance with the
    number 7, has entered the soul_ [the living body rather], the
    number 6 is thus arrested and all the mortal things which that
    number makes.

And again:

    Number 7 is the festival day of all the earth, the _birthday of
    the world_. I know not whether any one would be able to celebrate
    the number 7 in adequate terms.(656)

The author of _The Natural Genesis_ thinks that:

    The septenary of stars seen in the Great Bear [the Saptarshis] and
    seven-headed Dragon furnished a visible origin for the symbolic
    seven of time above. The goddess of the seven stars was the mother
    of time, as Kep; whence Kepti and Sebti for the two times and
    number 7. So this is the star of the Seven by name. Sevekh
    (Kronus), the son of the goddess, has the name of the seven or
    seventh. So has Sefekh Abu who builds the house on high, as Wisdom
    (Sophia) built hers with seven pillars.... The primary kronotypes
    were seven, and thus the beginning of time in heaven is based on
    the number and the name of seven, on account of the starry
    demonstrators. The seven stars as they turned round annually kept
    pointing, as it were, with the forefinger of the right hand, and
    describing a circle in the upper and lower heaven.(657) The number
    7 naturally suggested a measure by seven, that led to what may be
    termed _Sevening_, and to the marking and mapping out of the
    circle in seven corresponding divisions which were assigned to the
    seven great constellations; and thus was formed the celestial
    heptanomis of Egypt in the heavens.

    When the stellar heptanomis was broken up and divided into four
    quarters, it was multiplied by four, and the twenty-eight signs
    took the place of the primary seven constellations; the lunar
    zodiac of twenty-eight signs being the registered result of
    reckoning twenty-eight days to the moon, or a lunar month.(658) In
    the Chinese arrangement, the four sevens are given to four Genii
    that preside over the four cardinal points,(659) or rather the
    seven northern constellations make up the Black Warrior; the seven
    eastern (Chinese autumn) constitute the White Tiger; the seven
    southern are the Vermilion Bird; and the seven western (called
    vernal) are the Azure Dragon. Each of these four spirits presides
    over its heptanomis during one lunar week. The genitrix of the
    first heptanomis (Typhon of the seven stars) now took a lunar
    character.... In this phase we find the goddess Sefekh, whose name
    signifies number 7, is the feminine word, or logos in place of the
    mother of time, who was the earlier _Word_, as goddess of the
    Seven Stars.(660)

The author shows that it was the Goddess of the Great Bear and Mother of
Time who was in Egypt from the earliest times the "Living Word," and that
Sevekh-Kronus, whose type was the Crocodile-Dragon, the pre-planetary form
of Saturn, was called her son and consort; he was her Word-Logos.(661)

The above is quite plain, but it was not the knowledge of astronomy only
that led the Ancients to the process of _Sevening_. The primal cause goes
far deeper and will be explained in its place.

The above quotations are no digressions. They are brought forward as
showing (_a_) the reason why a full Initiate was called a Dragon, a Snake,
a N‚ga; and (_b_) that our septenary division was used by the priests of
the earliest dynasties in Egypt, for the same reason, and on the same
basis, as by us. This needs further elucidation, however. As already
stated, what Mr. Gerald Massey calls the Four Genii of the four cardinal
points; and the Chinese, the Black Warrior, White Tiger, Vermilion Bird,
and Azure Dragon, are called in the Secret Books, the "Four Hidden Dragons
of Wisdom" and the "Celestial N‚gas." Now, the seven-headed or septenary
Dragon-Logos is shown to have, in course of time, been split up, so to
speak, into _four_ heptanomic parts or twenty-eight portions. Each week
has a distinct Occult character in the lunar month; each day of the
twenty-eight has its special characteristics; for each of the twelve
constellations, whether separately or in combination with other signs, has
an Occult influence either for good or for evil. This represents the sum
of knowledge that men can acquire on this earth; yet few are those who
acquire it, and still fewer are the wise men who get to the root of
knowledge symbolized by the great Root-Dragon, the Spiritual Logos of
these visible signs. But those who do, receive the name of Dragons, and
they are the "Arhats of the Four Truths of the Twenty-eight Faculties," or
attributes, and have always been so called.

The Alexandrian Neo-Platonists asserted that to become real Chaldees or
Magi, one had to master the science or knowledge of the periods of the
Seven Rectors of the World, in whom is all wisdom. And Jamblichus is
credited with another version, which does not, however, alter the meaning,
for he says:

    The Assyrians have not only preserved the records of seven and
    twenty myriads of years, as Hipparchus says they have, but
    likewise of the whole apocatastases and periods of the Seven
    Rulers of the World.(662)

The legends of every nation and tribe, whether civilized or savage, point
to the once universal belief in the great wisdom and cunning of the
Serpents. They are "charmers." They hypnotize the bird with their eye, and
man himself very often does not overcome their fascinating influence;
therefore the symbol is a most fitting one.

The Crocodile is the Egyptian Dragon. It was the dual symbol of Heaven and
Earth, of Sun and Moon, and was made sacred, in consequence of its
amphibious nature, to Osiris and Isis. According to Eusebius, the
Egyptians represented the Sun in a Ship as its pilot, this ship being
carried along by a Crocodile, "to show the motion of the Sun in the Moist
(Space)."(663) The Crocodile was, moreover, the symbol of Lower Egypt
herself, the Lower being the more swampy of the two countries. The
Alchemists claim another interpretation. They say that the symbol of the
Sun in the Ship on the Ether of Space meant that the Hermetic Matter is
the principle, or basis, of Gold, or again the _philosophical_ Sun; the
Water, within which the Crocodile is swimming, is that Water, or Matter,
made liquid; the Ship herself, finally, representing the Vessel of Nature,
in which the Sun, or the sulphuric, igneous principle, acts as a pilot,
because it is the Sun which conducts the work by his action upon the Moist
or Mercury. The above is only for the Alchemists.

The Serpent became the type and symbol of evil, and of the Devil, only
during the Middle Ages. The early Christians as well as the Ophite
Gnostics, had their dual Logos: the Good and the Bad Serpent, the
Agathodśmon and the Kakodśmon. This is demonstrated by the writings of
Marcus, Valentinus, and many others, and especially in _Pistis-
Sophia_--certainly a document of the earliest centuries of Christianity. On
the marble sarcophagus of a tomb, discovered in 1852 near the Porta Pia,
one sees the scene of the adoration of the Magi, "or else," remarks the
late C. W. King, in _The Gnostics and their Remains_, "the prototype of
that scene, the 'Birth of the New Sun'." The mosaic floor exhibited a
curious design which might have represented either Isis suckling the babe
Harpocrates, or the Madonna nursing the infant Jesus. In the smaller
sarcophagi that surrounded the larger one, many leaden plates rolled like
scrolls were found, eleven of which can still be deciphered. The contents
of these ought to be regarded as final proof of a much-vexed question, for
they show that either the early Christians, up to the VIth Century, were
_bon‚ fide_ Pagans, or that dogmatic Christianity was borrowed wholesale,
and passed in full into the Christian Church--Sun, Tree, Serpent, Crocodile
and all.

    On the first is seen Anubis ... holding out a scroll; at his feet
    are two female busts: below all are two serpents entwined about
    ... a corpse swathed up like a mummy. In the second scroll ... is
    Anubis, holding out a cross, the "Sign of Life." Under his feet
    lies the corpse encircled in the numerous folds of a huge serpent,
    the Agathodśmon, guardian of the deceased.... In the third scroll
    ... the same Anubis bears on his arm an oblong object, ... held so
    as to convert the outline of the figure into a complete Latin
    cross. ... At the god's foot is a rhomboid, the Egyptian "Egg of
    the World," towards which crawls a serpent coiled into a
    circle.... Under the ... busts ... is the letter {~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}, repeated
    _seven_ times in a line, reminding one of the "Names." ... Very
    remarkable also is the line of characters, apparently Palmyrene,
    upon the legs of the first Anubis. As for the figure of the
    _serpent_, supposing these talismans to emanate not from the Isiac
    but the newer Ophite creed, it may well stand for that "True and
    perfect Serpent," who "leads forth the souls of all that put their
    trust in him out of the Egypt of the body, and through the Red Sea
    of Death into the Land of Promise, saving them on their way from
    the Serpents of the Wilderness, that is, from the Rulers of the
    Stars."(664)

And this "true and perfect Serpent" is the seven-lettered God who is now
credited with being Jehovah, and Jesus _one with him_. To this seven-
vowelled God the candidate for Initiation is sent by the "First Mystery,"
in the _Pistis-Sophia_, a work earlier than St. John's _Revelation_, and
evidently of the same school. "The (Serpent of the) Seven Thunders uttered
these seven vowels," but "seal up those things which the Seven Thunders
uttered, and write them not," says _Revelation_. "Do ye seek after these
mysteries?"--inquires Jesus in _Pistis-Sophia_. "No mystery is more
excellent than they [the seven vowels]; for they shall bring your souls
unto the Light of Lights"--_i.e._, true Wisdom. "Nothing, therefore, is
more excellent than the mysteries which ye seek after, saving only the
mystery of the _Seven Vowels_ and their _forty and nine_ Powers, and the
numbers thereof."

In India, it was the mystery of the _Seven Fires_ and their Forty-nine
Fires or aspects, or "the numbers thereof."

These Seven Vowels are represented by the Svastika signs on the crowns of
the seven heads of the Serpent of Eternity, in India, among Esoteric
"Buddhists," in Egypt, in Chaldśa, etc., and among the Initiates of every
other country. They are the Seven Zones of _post mortem_ ascent, in the
Hermetic writings, in each of which the "Mortal" leaves one of his Souls,
or Principles; until arrived on the plane above all Zones, he remains as
the great Formless Serpent of Absolute Wisdom, or the Deity Itself. The
seven-headed Serpent has more than one signification in the arcane
teachings. It is the seven-headed Draco, each of whose heads is a star of
the Lesser Bear; but it was also, and preŽminently, the Serpent of
Darkness, inconceivable and incomprehensible, whose seven heads were the
seven Logoi, the reflections of the one and first-manifested Light--the
Universal Logos.

Section XI. Demon est Deus Inversus.

This symbolical sentence, in its many-sided forms, is certainly most
dangerous and iconoclastic in the face of all the dualistic later
religions, or rather theologies, and especially so in the light of
Christianity. Yet it is neither just nor correct to say that it is
Christianity which has conceived and brought forth Satan. As an
"Adversary," the opposing Power required by the equilibrium and harmony of
things in Nature, as Shadow is required to make still brighter the Eight,
as Night to bring into greater relief the Day, and as Cold to make one
appreciate the more the comfort of Heat, so has Satan ever existed.
Homogeneity is one and indivisible. But if the homogeneous One and
Absolute is no mere figure of speech, and if Heterogeneity, in its
dualistic aspect, is its offspring, its bifurcous shadow or reflection,
then even that divine Homogeneity must contain in itself the essence of
both good and evil. If "God" is Absolute, Infinite, and the Universal Root
of all and everything in Nature and its Universe, whence comes Evil or
D'Evil if not from the same Golden Womb of the Absolute? Thus we are
forced either to accept the emanation of good and evil, of Agathodśmon and
Kakodśmon, as offshoots from the same trunk of the Tree of Being, or to
resign ourselves to the absurdity of believing in two eternal Absolutes!

Having to trace the origin of the idea to the very beginnings of the human
mind, it is but just, meanwhile, to give his due even to the proverbial
Devil. Antiquity knew of no isolated, thoroughly and absolutely bad "God
of evil." Pagan thought represented good and evil as twin brothers, born
from the same mother--Nature; so soon as that thought ceased to be archaic,
Wisdom passed into Philosophy. In the beginning the symbols of good and
evil were mere abstractions, Light and Darkness; later their types were
chosen among the most natural and ever-recurrent periodical cosmic
phenomena--the Day and Night, or the Sun and Moon. Then the Hosts of the
Solar and Lunar Deities were made to represent them, and the Dragon of
Darkness was contrasted with the Dragon of Light. The Host of Satan is a
Son of God, no less than the Host of the B'ne Alhim, the Children of God
who came to "present themselves before the Lord," their Father.(665) "The
Sons of God" become the "Fallen Angels" only after perceiving that the
daughters of men _were fair_.(666) In the Indian philosophy, the Suras are
among the earliest and the brightest Gods, and become Asuras only when
dethroned by Br‚hmanical fancy, Satan never assumed an anthropomorphic,
individualized shape, until the creation by man, of a "one _living_
personal God," had been accomplished; and then merely as a matter of prime
necessity. A screen was needed; a scape-goat to explain the cruelty,
blunders, and but too-evident injustice, perpetrated by him for whom
absolute perfection, mercy and goodness were claimed. This was the first
Karmic effect of abandoning a philosophical and logical Pantheism, to
build, as a prop for lazy man, "a merciful Father in Heaven," whose daily
and hourly actions, as Natura Naturans, the "comely Mother but stone
cold," belie the assumption. This led to the primal twins, Osiris-Typhon,
Ormazd-Ahriman, and finally Cain-Abel and the _tutti quanti_ of
contraries.

Having commenced by being synonymous with Nature, "God," the Creator,
ended by being made its author. Pascal settles the difficulty very
cunningly by saying:

    Nature has perfections, in order to show that she is the image of
    God; and defects, in order to show that she is _only_ his image.

The further back one recedes into the darkness of the prehistoric ages,
the more philosophical does the prototypic figure of the later Satan
appear. The first "Adversary," in individual human form, that one meets
with in old Pur‚nic literature, is one of her greatest Rishis and
Yogis--N‚rada, surnamed the "Strife-maker."

And he is a Brahmaputra, a son of Brahm‚, the male. But of him later on.
Who the great "Deceiver" really is, one can ascertain by searching for
him, _with open eyes_ and an unprejudiced mind, in every old Cosmogony and
Scripture.

It is the anthropomorphized Demiurge, the Creator of Heaven and Earth,
when separated from the collective Hosts of his Fellow-Creators, whom, so
to speak, he represents and synthesizes. It is _now_ the God of
Theologies. "The wish is father to the thought." Once upon a time, a
philosophical symbol left to perverse human fancy; afterwards, fashioned
into a fiendish, deceiving, cunning, and jealous God.

As the Dragons and other Fallen Angels are described in other parts of
this work, a few words upon the much-slandered Satan will be sufficient.
The student will do well to remember that, with every people, except the
Christian nations, the Devil is to this day no worse an entity than the
opposite aspect, in the dual nature of the so-called Creator. This is only
natural. One cannot claim God as the synthesis of the whole Universe, as
Omnipresent and Omniscient and Infinite, and then divorce him from Evil.
As there is far more Evil than Good in the world, it follows on logical
grounds that either God must include Evil, or stand as the direct cause of
it, or else surrender his claims to Absoluteness. The Ancients understood
this so well that their philosophers, now followed by the Kabalists,
defined Evil as the "lining" of God or Good; _Demon est Deus inversus_,
being a very old adage. Indeed, Evil is but an antagonizing blind force in
Nature; it is rešction, opposition, and contrast--evil for some, good for
others. There is no _malum in se_; only the Shadow of Light, without which
Light could have no existence, even in our perceptions. If Evil
disappeared, Good would disappear along with it from Earth. The "Old
Dragon" was pure Spirit before he became Matter, _passive_ before he
became _active_. In the Syro-Chaldean Magic both Ophis and Ophiomorphos
are joined in the Zodiac in the sign of the Androgyne Virgo-Scorpio.
Before its fall on earth the Serpent was Ophis-Christos, and after its
fall it became Ophiomorphos-Chrestos. Everywhere the speculations of the
Kabalists treat of Evil as a _Force_, which is antagonistic, but at the
same time essential, to Good, as giving it vitality and existence, which
it could never have otherwise. There would be no _Life_ possible (in the
m‚y‚vic sense) without _Death_; no regeneration and reconstruction without
destruction. Plants would perish in eternal sunlight, and so would man,
who would become an automaton without the exercise of his free will, and
his aspiring towards that sunlight, which would lose its being and value
for him had he nothing but light. Good is infinite and eternal only in the
eternally concealed from us, and this is why we imagine it eternal. On the
manifested planes, one equilibrates the other. Few are those Theists,
believers in a Personal God, who do not make of Satan the shadow of God;
or who, confounding both, do not believe they have a right to pray to
their idol, asking its help and protection for the exercise of and
immunity for their evil and cruel deeds. "Lead us not into temptation" is
addressed daily to "our Father, in Heaven," and not to the Devil, by
millions of Christian hearts. This they do, repeating the very words put
into the mouth of their Saviour, and yet do not give one thought to the
fact that their meaning is contradicted point blank by James, "the brother
of the Lord":

    Let do man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God
    cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man.(667)

Why, then, say that it is the Devil who tempts us, when the Church teaches
us, _on the authority of Christ_, that it is God who does so? Open any
pious volume in which the word "temptation" is defined in its theological
sense, and forthwith you find two definitions:

    (1) Those afflictions and troubles _whereby God tries his people_;
    (2) Those means and enticements which the Devil makes use of to
    _ensnare_ and allure mankind.(668)

Accepted literally, the teachings of Christ and James contradict each
other, and what dogma can reconcile the two if the Occult meaning is
rejected?

Between the alternative allurements, wise will be that philosopher who
will be able to decide where God disappears to make room for the Devil!
Therefore, when we read that "the Devil is a liar and the father of it,"
that is an _incarnate lie_, and are also told in the same breath that
Satan, the Devil, was a Son of God and the most beautiful of his
Archangels, rather than believe that Father and Son are a gigantic,
personified and eternal Lie, we prefer to turn to Pantheism and to Pagan
philosophy for information.

Once that the key to _Genesis_ is in our hands, the scientific and
symbolical Kabalah unveils the secret. The Great Serpent of the Garden of
Eden and the "Lord God" are identical, and so are Jehovah and Cain--that
Cain who is referred to in Theology as the "murderer" and the Liar to God!
Jehovah tempts the King of Israel to number the people, and Satan tempts
him to do the same in another place. Jehovah turns into the Fiery Serpents
to bite those he is displeased with; and Jehovah informs the Brazen
Serpent that heals them.

These short, and seemingly contradictory, statements in the _Old
Testament_--contradictory because the two Powers are separated instead of
being regarded as the two faces of one and the same thing--are the echoes,
distorted out of recognition by exotericism and theology, of the universal
and philosophical dogmas in Nature, so well understood by the primitive
Sages. We find the same groundwork in several personifications in the
_Pur‚nas_, only far more ample and philosophically suggestive.

Thus Pulastya, a "Son of God," one of the first progeny, is made the
progenitor of Demons, the R‚kshasas, the tempters and the devourers of
men. Pish‚ch‚, a female Demon, is a daughter of Daksha, a "Son of God"
too, and a God, and the mother of all the Pish‚chas.(669) The Demons, so-
called in the _Pur‚nas_, are very extraordinary Devils when judged from
the standpoint of European and orthodox views, since all of them, D‚navas,
Daityas, Pish‚chas, and R‚kshasas, are represented as extremely pious,
following the precepts of the _Vedas_, some of them even being great
Yogins. But they oppose the clergy and ritualism, sacrifices and forms,
just as the head Yogins do to this day in India, and are no less respected
for it, though they are permitted to follow neither caste nor ritual;
hence all those Pur‚nic Giants and Titans are called Devils. The
missionaries, ever on the watch to show, if they can, that the HindŻ
traditions are nothing better than a reflection of the Jewish _Bible_,
have evolved a whole romance on the alleged identity of Pulastya with
Cain, and of the R‚kshasas with the Cainites, the "Accursed," the cause of
the "Noachian" Deluge. (See the work of Abbť Gorresio, who "etymologizes"
Pulastya's name as meaning the "rejected," hence Cain, if you please).
Pulastya dwells in Kedara, he says, which means a "dug-up place," a
"mine," and Cain is shown, in tradition and the _Bible_, as the first
worker in metals and a miner thereof!

While it is very probable that the Gibborim, or Giants, of the _Bible_ are
the R‚kshasas of the HindŻs, it is still more certain that both are
Atlanteans, and belong to the submerged races. However it may be, no Satan
could be more persistent in slandering his enemy, or more spiteful in his
hatred, than the Christian Theologians are in cursing him as the father of
every evil. Compare their vituperation and their opinions about the Devil
with the philosophical views of the Pur‚nic Sages and their Christ-like
mansuetude. When Par‚shara, whose father was devoured by a R‚kshasa, was
preparing himself to destroy, by magic arts, the whole race, his
grandsire, Vasishtha, after showing the irate Sage, on his own confession,
that there is Evil and Karma, but no "evil Spirits" speaks the following
suggestive words:

    Let thy wrath be appeased: the R‚kshasas are not culpable; thy
    father's death _was the work of Destiny_ [_Karma_]. Anger is the
    passion of fools; it becometh not a wise man. _By whom, it may be
    asked, is any one killed?_ Every man _reaps the consequences of
    his own acts_. Anger, my son, is the destruction of all that man
    obtains ... and prevents the attainment ... of emancipation. The
    ... sages shun wrath: be not thou, my child, subject to its
    influence. Let no more of those _unoffending_ spirits of darkness
    be consumed; let this thy sacrifice cease. Mercy is the might of
    the righteous.(670)

Thus, every such "sacrifice" or prayer to God for help is no better than
_an act of Black Magic_. That which Par‚shara prayed for, was the
destruction of the Spirits of Darkness, for his personal revenge. He is
called a Pagan, and the Christians have doomed him, as such, to Eternal
Hell. Yet, in what respect is the prayer of sovereigns and generals, who
pray before every battle for the destruction of their enemy, any better?
Such a prayer is in every case Black Magic of the worst kind, concealed
like a demon "Mr. Hyde" under a sanctimonious "Dr. Jekyll."

In human nature, evil denotes only the polarity of Matter and Spirit, a
"struggle for life" between the two manifested Principles in Space and
Time, which Principles are one _per se_, inasmuch as they are rooted in
the Absolute. In Cosmos, the equilibrium must be preserved. The operations
of the two contraries produce harmony, like the centripetal and
centrifugal forces, which, being mutually inter-dependent, are necessary
to each other, "in order that both should live." If one should be
arrested, the action of the other would become immediately self-
destructive.

Since the personification called Satan has been amply analyzed from its
triple aspect, in the _Old Testament_, Christian Theology and the ancient
Gentile attitude of thought, those who would learn more of the subject are
referred to _Isis Unveiled_(671) and the Second Part of Volume II of the
present work. The subject is here touched upon, and fresh explanations are
attempted, for a very good reason. Before we can approach the evolution of
Physical and Divine Man, we have first to master the idea of Cyclic
Evolution, to acquaint ourselves with the philosophies and beliefs of the
four Races which preceded our present Race, and to learn what were the
ideas of those Titans and Giants--Giants, verily, mentally, as well as
physically. The whole of antiquity was imbued with that philosophy which
teaches the involution of Spirit into Matter, the progressive, downward
cyclic descent, or active, self-conscious evolution. The Alexandrian
Gnostics have sufficiently divulged the secrets of Initiations, and their
records are full of the "falling down of the ∆ons," in their double
qualification of Angelic Beings and Periods; the one the natural evolution
of the other. On the other hand, Oriental traditions on both sides of the
"Black Water," the Oceans that separate the two "Easts," are equally full
of allegories about the downfall of the PlerŰma, or that of the Gods and
Devas. One and all, they allegorized and explained the Fall as _the desire
to learn and acquire knowledge--the desire to know_. This is the natural
sequence of mental evolution, the Spiritual becoming transmuted into the
Material or Physical. The same law of descent into Materiality and of
rešscent into Spirituality asserted itself during the Christian era, the
rešction having only stopped just now, in our own special Sub-race.

That which was allegorized in _Pymander_, perhaps ten millenniums ago, for
a triune mode of interpretation, and intended for a record of an
astronomical, anthropological, and even alchemical fact, namely, the
allegory of the Seven Rectors breaking through the Seven Circles of Fire,
was dwarfed into one material and anthropomorphic interpretation--the
Rebellion and Fall of the Angels. The multivocal, profoundly philosophical
narrative, under its poetical form of the "Marriage of Heaven with Earth,"
the love of Nature for Divine Form, and the Heavenly Man enraptured with
his own beauty mirrored in Nature, that is to say, Spirit attracted into
Matter, has now become, under theological handling, the Seven Rectors
disobeying Jehovah, self-admiration generating Satanic pride, followed by
their Fall, Jehovah permitting no worship to be lost save upon himself. In
short, the beautiful Planet-Angels, the glorious Cyclic ∆ons of the
Ancients, have become synthesized in their most orthodox shape in Samael,
the Chief of the Demons in the _Talmud_, "that Great Serpent with Twelve
Wings that draws down after himself, in his Fall, the Solar System, or the
Titans." But Schemal--the _alter ego_ and the Sabean type of Samael--in his
philosophical and esoteric aspect, meant the "Year," in its astrological
evil aspect, with its twelve months or "Wings" of unavoidable evils, in
Nature. In Esoteric Theogony both Schemal and Samael represented a
particular divinity.(672) With the Kabalists they are the "Spirit of the
Earth," the Personal God that governs it, and therefore _de facto_
identical with Jehovah. For the Talmudists themselves admit that Samael is
a god-name of one of the seven Elohim. The Kabalists, moreover, show the
two, Schemal and Samael, as a symbolical form of Saturn, Cronus; the
"Twelve Wings" standing for the twelve months, and the symbol in its
collectivity representing _a racial cycle_. Jehovah and Saturn are also
glyphically identical.

This leads, in its turn, to a very curious deduction from a Roman Catholic
dogma. Many renowned writers belonging to the Latin Church admit that a
difference exists, and should be made, between the Uranian Titans, the
antediluvian Giants, who were also Titans, and those post-diluvian Giants,
in whom the Roman Catholics persist in seeing the descendants of the
mythical Ham. In clearer words, there is a difference to be made between
the cosmic, _primordial_ opposing Forces, guided by Cyclic Law, the
Atlantean human Giants, and the post-diluvian great Adepts, whether of the
Right or the Left-hand. At the same time they show that Michael, "the
_generalissimo_ of the fighting Celestial Host, the _bodyguard of
Jehovah_," as it would seem, according to de Mirville, is also a Titan,
only with the adjective of "divine" before the cognomen. Thus those
"Uranides" who are called everywhere "Divine Titans"--and who, having
rebelled against Cronus, or Saturn, are therefore also shown to be the
enemies of Samael, also one of the Elohim, and synonymous with Jehovah in
his collectivity--are identical with Michael and his Host. In short, the
_rŰles_ are reversed, all the combatants are confused, and no student is
able to distinguish clearly which is which. Esoteric explanation may,
however, bring some order into this confusion, in which Jehovah becomes
Saturn, and Michael and his Army, Satan and the Rebellious Angels, owing
to the indiscreet endeavours of the too faithful zealots to see a Devil in
every Pagan God. The true meaning is far more philosophical, and the
legend of the first "Fall" of the Angels assumes a scientific colouring
when correctly understood.

Cronus stands for endless, and hence immovable Duration, without
beginning, without end, beyond divided Time and beyond Space. Those
Angels, Genii, or Devas, who were born _to act in space and time_, that
is, to break through the _Seven Circles_ of the super-spiritual planes
into the phenomenal, or circumscribed, super-terrestrial regions, are said
allegorically to have _rebelled_ against Cronus, and fought the Lion who
was then the one living and highest God. When Cronus, in his turn, is
represented as mutilating Uranus, his father, the meaning of the allegory
is very simple. Absolute Time is made to become the finite and
conditioned; a portion is robbed from the whole, thus showing that Saturn,
the Father of the Gods, has been transformed from Eternal Duration into a
limited period. Cronus with his scythe cuts down even the longest and, to
us, seemingly endless cycles, which, for all that, are limited in
Eternity, and with the same scythe destroys the mightiest rebels. Aye, not
one will escape the scythe of Time! Praise the God or Gods, or flout one
or both, that scythe will not tremble one millionth of a second in its
ascending or descending course.

The Titans of Hesiod's _Theogony_ were copied in Greece from the Suras and
Asuras of India. These Hesiodic Titans, the Uranides, which were once upon
a time numbered as only six, have been recently discovered, in an old
fragment relating to the Greek myth, to be _seven_, the seventh being
called Phoreg. Thus their identity with the Seven Rectors is fully
demonstrated. The origin of the War in Heaven and the Fall has, in our
mind, to be traced unavoidably to India, and perhaps far earlier than the
Pur‚nic accounts thereof. For the T‚rak‚maya was in a later age, and there
are accounts of three distinct Wars to be traced in almost every
Cosmogony.

The first War happened in the night of time, between the Gods and
(A)-suras, and lasted for the period of one Divine Year.(673) On this
occasion the Deities were defeated by the Daityas, under the leadership of
Hr‚da. But afterwards, owing to a device of Vishnu, to whom the conquered
Gods applied for help, the latter defeated the Asuras. In the _Vishnu
Pur‚na_ no interval is found between the two Wars. In the Esoteric
Doctrine, however, one War takes place before the building of the Solar
System; another, on Earth, at the "creation" of man; and a third War is
mentioned as taking place at the close of the Fourth Race, between its
Adepts and those of the Fifth Race; that is, between the Initiates of the
"Sacred Island" and the Sorcerers of Atlantis. We shall notice the first
contest, as recounted by Par‚shara, and endeavour to separate the two
accounts, which are purposely blended together.

It is there stated that as the Daityas and Asuras were engaged in the
duties of their respective Orders (Varnas) and followed the paths
prescribed by holy writ, practising also religious penance--a queer
employment for _Demons_ if they are identical with our _Devils_, as it is
claimed--it was impossible for the Gods to destroy them. The prayers
addressed by the Gods to Vishnu are curious, as showing the ideas involved
in an anthropomorphic Deity. Having, after their defeat, "fled to the
northern shore of the Milky Ocean [Atlantic Ocean],"(674) the discomfited
Gods address many supplications "to the first of Beings, the divine
Vishnu," and among others the following:

    Glory to thee, who art one with the Saints, whose perfect nature
    is ever blessed, and traverses, unobstructed, all permeable
    elements. Glory to thee, _who art one with the Serpent-Race,
    double-tongued, impetuous, cruel, insatiate of enjoyment_ and
    abounding with wealth.... Glory to thee, ... O Lord, _who hast
    neither colour nor extension_, nor bulk (_ghana_), _nor any
    predicable qualities_, and whose essence (_rŻpa_), purest of the
    pure, is appreciable only by holy Paramarshis [the greatest of
    Sages or Rishis]. We bow to thee, in the nature of Brahma,
    uncreated, undecaying (_avyaya_); who _art in our bodies_, and _in
    all other bodies, and in all living creatures_; and beside whom
    nothing exists. We glorify that V‚sudeva, the lord (of all), who
    is without soil, the seed of all things, exempt from dissolution,
    unborn, eternal; being, in essence, Paramapad‚tmavat [beyond the
    condition of Spirit], and, in substance (_rŻpa_), the whole of
    this (Universe).(675)

The above is quoted as an illustration of the vast field offered by the
_Pur‚nas_ to adverse and erroneous criticism, by every European bigot who
forms an estimate of an alien religion on mere external evidence. Any man
accustomed to subject what he reads to thoughtful analysis, will see at a
glance the incongruity of addressing the accepted "Unknowable," the
formless, and attributeless Absolute, such as the Ved‚ntins define
Brahman, as being "one with the Serpent-Race, double-tongued, cruel and
insatiable," thus associating the abstract with the concrete, and
bestowing adjectives on that which is free from any limitations, and
conditionless. Even Professor Wilson, who, after living surrounded by
Br‚hmans and Pandits in India for so many years, ought to have known
better--even that scholar lost no opportunity of criticizing the HindŻ
Scriptures on this account. Thus, he exclaims:

    The _Pur‚nas_ constantly teach incompatible doctrines! According
    to this passage,(676) the Supreme Being is not the inert cause of
    creation only, but exercises the functions of an active
    providence. The Commentator quotes a text of the _Veda_ in support
    of this view: "Universal Soul entering into men, governs their
    conduct." Incongruities, however, are as frequent in the _Vedas_
    as in the _Pur‚nas_.

Less frequent, in sober truth, than in the Mosaic _Bible_. But prejudice
is great in the hearts of our Orientalists, especially in those of
"reverend" scholars. Universal Soul is _not_ the inert Cause of Creation
or (Para) Brahman, but simply that which we call the Sixth Principle of
_Intellectual_ Kosmos, on the manifested plane of being. It is Mahat, or
Mah‚buddhi, the Great Soul, the Vehicle of Spirit, the first primeval
reflection of the formless CAUSE, and that which is even _beyond_ Spirit.
So much for Professor Wilson's uncalled-for fling at the _Pur‚nas_. As for
the apparently incongruous appeal to Vishnu by the defeated Gods, the
explanation is there, in the text of _Vishnu Pur‚na_, if Orientalists
would only notice it. There is Vishnu as Brahm‚, and Vishnu _in his two
aspects_, philosophy teaches. There is but one Brahman, "essentially
Prakriti and Spirit."

This ignorance is truly and beautifully expressed in the praise of the
Yogins to Brahm‚, "the upholder of the earth," when they say:

    Those who have not practised devotion conceive erroneously of the
    nature of the world. The ignorant, who do not perceive that this
    Universe is of the nature of Wisdom, and judge of it as an object
    of perception only, are lost in the ocean of spiritual ignorance.
    But they who know true Wisdom, and whose minds are pure, behold
    this whole world _as one with Divine Knowledge_, as one with thee,
    O God! Be favourable, O universal Spirit!(677)

Therefore, it is not Vishnu, "the inert cause of creation," which
exercised the functions of an _Active_ Providence, but the Universal Soul,
that which, in its material aspect, …liphas Lťvi calls Astral Light. And
this Soul is, in its dual aspect of Spirit and Matter, the true
anthropomorphic God of the Theists; for this God is a _personification_ of
that Universal Creative Agent, both pure and impure, owing to its
manifested condition and differentiation in this M‚y‚vic World--_God_ and
_Devil_, truly. But Professor Wilson failed to see how Vishnu, in this
character, closely resembles the Lord God of Israel, "especially in his
policy of deception, temptation, and cunning."

In the _Vishnu Pur‚na_ this is made as plain as can be. For it is said
there, that:

    At the conclusion of their prayers (_stotra_) the Gods beheld the
    Sovereign Deity Hari (Vishnu) armed with the shell, the discus,
    and the mace, _riding on Garuda._

Now Garuda is the Manvantaric Cycle, as will be shown in its place.
Vishnu, therefore, is the Deity _in Space and Time_, the peculiar God of
the Vaishnavas. Such Gods are called in Esoteric Philosophy _tribal_ or
_racial_; that is to say, one of the many Dhy‚nis or Gods, or Elohim, one
of whom was generally chosen for some special reason by a nation or a
tribe, and thus became gradually a "God _above all_ Gods,"(678) the
"highest God," as Jehovah, Osiris, Bel, or any other of the Seven Regents.

"The tree is known by its fruit"; the nature of a God by his actions. We
must either judge these actions by the dead-letter narratives, or must
accept them allegorically. If we compare the two--Vishnu, as the defender
and champion of the defeated Gods; and Jehovah, the defender and champion
of the "chosen" people, so called by antiphrasis, no doubt, as it is the
Jews who had chosen that "jealous" God--we shall find that both use deceit
and cunning. They do so on the principle of "the end justifying the
means," in order to have the best of their respective opponents and
foes--the Demons. Thus while, according to the Kabalists, Jehovah assumes
the shape of the tempting Serpent in the Garden of Eden, sends Satan with
a special mission to tempt Job, harasses and wearies Pharaoh with SaraÔ,
Abraham's wife, and "hardens" another Pharaoh's heart against Moses, lest
there should be no opportunity for plaguing his victims "with great
plagues," Vishnu is made in his _Pur‚na_ to resort to a trick no less
unworthy of any respectable God.

The defeated Gods addressed Vishnu as follows:

    Have compassion upon us, O Lord, and protect us, who have come to
    thee for succour from the Daityas (Demons)! They have seized upon
    the three worlds, and appropriated the offerings which are our
    portion, _taking care not to transgress the precepts of the Veda_.
    Although _we, as well as they, are parts of thee_(679) ... engaged
    [as they are] ... in the paths prescribed by the holy writ ... it
    is impossible for us to destroy them. Do thou, whose wisdom is
    immeasurable (Amey‚tman) instruct us _in some device_ by which we
    may be able to exterminate the enemies of the Gods!

    When the mighty Vishnu heard their request, he emitted from his
    body an _illusory_ form (M‚y‚moha, the "deluder by illusion")
    which he gave to the Gods and thus spake: "This M‚y‚moha shall
    _wholly beguile_ the Daityas, so that, being led astray from the
    path of the _Vedas_, they may be put to death.... Go then and fear
    not. Let this delusive vision precede you. It shall this day be of
    great service unto you, O Gods!"

    After this, the great Delusion (M‚y‚moha) having proceeded (to
    earth), beheld the Daityas, engaged in ascetic penances, and
    approaching them, in the semblance of a Digambara (naked
    mendicant) with his head shaven ... he thus addressed them, in
    gentle accents: "Ho, lords of the Daitya race, wherefore is it
    that you practise these acts of penances?" etc.(680)

Finally the Daityas were seduced by the wily talk of M‚y‚moha, as Eve was
seduced by the advice of the Serpent. They became apostates to the
_Vedas_. As Dr. Muir translates the passage:

    The great Deceiver, practising illusion, next beguiled other
    Daityas, by means of many other sorts of heresy. In a very short
    time, these Asuras (Daityas), deluded by the Deceiver [_who was
    Vishnu_] abandoned the entire system founded on the ordinances of
    the triple _Veda_. Some reviled the _Vedas_; others, the
    ceremonial of sacrifice; and others, the Br‚hmans. This (they
    exclaimed), is a doctrine which will not bear discussion: the
    slaughter (of animals, in sacrifice), is not conducive to
    religious merit. (To say, that) oblations of butter consumed in
    the fire produce any future reward, is the assertion of a
    child.... If it be a fact that a beast slain in sacrifice is
    exalted to heaven, why does not the worshipper slaughter his own
    father?... Infallible utterances do not, great Asuras, fall from
    the skies; it is only assertions founded on reasoning that are
    accepted by me and by other [intelligent] persons like yourselves!
    Thus by numerous methods the Daityas were unsettled by the great
    Deceiver [_Reason_].... When the Daityas had entered on the path
    of error, the Deities mustered all their energies and approached
    to battle. Then followed a combat between the Gods and the Asuras;
    and the latter, who had abandoned the right road, were smitten by
    the former. In previous times they had been defended by the armour
    of righteousness which they bore; but, when that had been
    destroyed, they, also, perished.(681)

Whatever may be thought of the HindŻs, no enemy of theirs can regard them
as fools. A people, whose holy men and sages have left to the world the
greatest and most sublime philosophies that ever emanated from the minds
of men, must have known the difference between right and wrong. Even a
savage can discern white from black, good from bad, and deceit from
sincerity and truthfulness. Those who had narrated this event in the
biography of their God, must have seen that in this case it was that God
who was the Arch-Deceiver, and the Daityas, who "never transgressed the
precepts of the _Vedas_," who had the sunny side in the transaction, and
who were the true "Gods." Thence there must have been, and _there is_ a
secret meaning hidden under this allegory. In no class of society, in no
nation, are deceit and craft considered as _divine_ virtues--except perhaps
in the clerical classes of Theologians and modern Jesuitism.

The _Vishnu Pur‚na_,(682) like all other works of this kind, passed at a
later period into the hands of the Temple-Br‚hmans, and the old MSS. have,
no doubt, been further tampered with by sectarians. But there was a time
when the _Pur‚nas_ were esoteric works, and so they are still for the
Initiates who can read them with the key that is in their possession.

Whether the Br‚hman Initiates will ever give out the full meaning of these
allegories, is a question with which the writer is not concerned. The
present object is to show that, while honouring the _Creative Powers_ in
their multiple forms, no philosopher could have, or ever has, accepted the
allegory for its true spirit, except, perhaps, some philosophers belonging
to the present "superior and civilized" Christian races. For, as shown,
Jehovah is not one whit the superior of Vishnu on the plane of ethics.
This is why the Occultists, and even some Kabalists, whether or not they
regard those creative Forces _as living and conscious Entities_--and one
does not see why they should not be so accepted--will never confuse the
Cause with the Effect, and accept the Spirit of the Earth for Parabrahman,
or Ain Suph. At all events they know well the true nature of what was
called by the Greeks Father-∆ther, Jupiter-Titan, etc. They know that the
Soul of the Astral Light is divine, and its Body--the Light-waves on the
lower planes--infernal. This Light is symbolized by the "Magic Head" in the
_Zohar_, the Double Face on the Double Pyramid; the black Pyramid rising
against a pure white ground, with _a white Head and Face within its black
Triangle_; the White Pyramid, inverted--the reflection of the first in the
dark Waters--showing the _black reflection of the white Face_.

This is the Astral Light, or _Demon est Deus Inversus_.

Section XII. The Theogony of the Creative Gods.

To thoroughly comprehend the idea underlying every ancient Cosmology
necessitates the study and comparative analysis of all the great religions
of antiquity; for it is only by this method that the root-idea can be made
plain. Exact Science, could it soar so high, in tracing the operations of
Nature to their ultimate and original sources, would call this idea the
Hierarchy of Forces. The original, transcendental and philosophical
conception was one. But as systems began to reflect more and more with
every age the idiosyncrasies of nations, and as the latter, after
separating, settled into distinct groups, each evolving along its own
national or tribal groove, the main idea gradually became veiled by the
overgrowth of human fancy. While in some countries the Forces, or rather
the intelligent Powers of Nature, received divine honours to which they
were hardly entitled, in others--as now in Europe and the other _civilized_
lands--the very thought of such Forces being endowed with intelligence
seems absurd, and is proclaimed _unscientific_. Therefore one finds relief
in such statements as are found in the Introduction to _Asgard and the
Gods_; "Tales and Traditions of our Northern Ancestors," edited by W. S.
W. Anson, who says:

    Although in Central Asia, or on the banks of the Indus, in the
    Land of the Pyramids, and in the Greek and Italian peninsulas, and
    even in the North, whither Kelts, Teutons and Slavs wandered, the
    religious conceptions of the people have taken different forms,
    _yet their common origin_ is still perceptible. We point out this
    connection between the stories of the Gods, and the deep thought
    contained in them, and their importance, in order that the reader
    may see that _it is not a magic world of erratic fancy_ which
    opens out before him, but that ... _Life and Nature_ formed the
    basis of the existence and action of these divinities.(683)

And though it is impossible for any Occultist or student of Eastern
Esotericism to concur in the strange idea that, "the religious conceptions
of the most famous nations of antiquity are connected with the beginnings
of civilization amongst the Germanic races,"(684) he is yet glad to find
such truths expressed as that: "These fairy tales are not senseless
stories written for the amusement of the idle; they embody the profound
religion of our forefathers."(685)

Precisely so. Not only their Religion, but likewise their History. For a
myth, in Greek {~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}, means oral tradition, passed from mouth to mouth
from one generation to the other; and even in the modern etymology the
term stands for a _fabulous_ statement conveying some important truth; a
tale of some extraordinary personage whose biography has become overgrown,
owing to the veneration of successive generations, with rich popular
fancy, but which is no _wholesale_ fable. Like our ancestors, the
primitive ¬ryans, we believe firmly in the personality and intelligence of
more than one phenomenon-producing Force in Nature.

As time rolled on, the archaic teaching grew dimmer; and the nations more
or less lost sight of the Highest and One Principle of all things, and
began to transfer the abstract attributes of the Causeless Cause to the
caused effects, which became in their turn causative, the Creative Powers
of the Universe; the great nations thus acted from fear of profaning the
Idea; the smaller, because they either failed to grasp it, or lacked the
power of philosophic conception needed to preserve it in all its
immaculate purity. But one and all, with the exception of the latest
¬ryans, now become Europeans and Christians, show this veneration in their
Cosmogonies. As Thomas Taylor,(686) the most intuitional of all the
translators of the Greek Fragments, shows, no nation has ever conceived
the One Principle as the immediate creator of the visible Universe, for no
sane man would credit a planner and architect with having built with his
own hands the edifice he admires. On the testimony of Damascius in his
work, _On First Principles_ ({~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH VARIA~} {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}), they referred to it as
the "Unknown Darkness." The Babylonians passed over this principle in
silence. "To that God," says Porphyry, in his _On Abstinence_ ({~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}
{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PSI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}), "who is above all things, neither external speech ought to
be addressed, nor yet that which is inward." Hesiod begins his _Theogony_
with the words, "Chaos of all things was the first produced,"(687) thus
allowing the inference that its Cause or Producer must be passed over in
reverential silence. Homer in his poems ascends no higher than Night,
which he represents Zeus as reverencing. According to all the ancient
theologists, and the doctrines of Pythagoras and Plato, Zeus, or the
immediate Artificer of the Universe, _is not the highest God_; any more
than Sir Christopher Wren in his physical, human aspect is the Mind in him
which produced his great works of art. Homer, therefore, is not only
silent with respect to the First Principle, but likewise with respect to
those two Principles immediately posterior to the First, the ∆ther and
Chaos of Orpheus and Hesiod, and the Bound and Infinity of Pythagoras and
Plato.(688) Proclus says of this Highest Principle that it is "the Unity
of Unities, and beyond the first Adyta ... more ineffable than all
Silence, and more occult than all Essence ... concealed amidst the
intelligible Gods."(689)

To what was written by Thomas Taylor in 1797--namely, that the "Jews appear
to have ascended no higher ... than the _immediate_ Artificer of the
Universe," as "Moses introduces a darkness on the face of the deep,
without even insinuating that there was any cause of its existence,"(690)
one might add something more. Never have the Jews in their _Bible_--a
purely esoteric, symbolical work--so profoundly degraded their metaphorical
deity as have the Christians, by accepting Jehovah as their one living yet
_personal_ God.

This First, or rather One, Principle was called the "Circle of Heaven,"
symbolized by the hierogram of a Point within a Circle or Equilateral
Triangle, the Point being the Logos. Thus, in the _Rig Veda_, wherein
Brahm‚ is not even named. Cosmogony is preluded with the Hiranyagarbha,
the "Golden Egg," and Praj‚pati (later on Brahm‚), from whom emanate all
the Hierarchies of "Creators." The Monad, or Point, is the original and is
the Unit from which follows the entire numeral system. This Point is the
First Cause, but THAT from which it emanates, or of which, rather, it is
the expression, the Logos, is passed over in silence. In its turn, the
universal symbol, the _Point __ within the Circle_, was not yet the
Architect, but the Cause of that Architect; and the latter stood to it in
precisely the same relation as the Point itself stood to the Circumference
of the Circle, which cannot be defined, according to Hermes Trismegistus.
Porphyry shows that the Monad and the Duad of Pythagoras are identical
with Plato's Infinite and Finite, in _Philebus_, or what Plato calls the
{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI AND OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} and {~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}. It is the latter only, the Mother, which is
substantial, the former being the "Cause of all Unity and measure of all
things";(691) the Duad, MŻlaprakriti, the Veil of Parabrahman, being thus
shown to be the Mother of the Logos and, at the same time, his
Daughter--that is to say, the object of his perception--the produced
producer and the secondary cause of it. With Pythagoras, the Monad returns
into Silence and Darkness, as soon as it has evolved the Triad, from which
emanate the remaining 7 numbers of the 10 numbers which are at the base of
the Manifested Universe.

In the Norse Cosmogony it is again the same.

    In the beginning was a great Abyss (Chaos), neither Day nor Night
    existed; the Abyss was Ginnungagap, the yawning gulf, without
    beginning, without end. All-Father, the Uncreated, the Unseen,
    dwelt in the Depth of the Abyss (Space) and _willed_, and what was
    willed came into being.(692)

As in the HindŻ Cosmogony, the evolution of the Universe is divided into
two acts, which are called in India the Pr‚krita and P‚dma Creations.
Before the warm rays pouring from the Home of Brightness awaken life in
the Great Waters of Space, the Elements of the First Creation come into
view, and from them is formed the Giant Ymir, or ÷rgelmir (literally,
Seething Clay), Primordial Matter differentiated from Chaos. Then comes
the Cow Audumla, the Nourisher,(693) from whom is born Buri, the Producer,
whose son BŲr (Born), by Bestla, the daughter of the Frost-Giants, the
sons of Ymir, had three sons, Odin, Willi and We, or Spirit, Will, and
Holiness. This was when Darkness still reigned throughout Space, when the
Ases, the Creative Powers, or Dhy‚n Chohans, were not yet evolved, and the
Yggdrasil, the Tree of the Universe of Time and of Life, had not yet
grown, and there was, as yet, no Walhalla, or Hall of Heroes. The
Scandinavian legends of Creation, of our Earth and World, begin with Time
and human Life. All that precedes it is for them Darkness, wherein All-
Father, the Cause of all, dwells. As observed by the editor of _Asgard and
the Gods_, though these legends have in them the idea of that All-Father,
the original cause of all, "he is scarcely more than mentioned in the
poems," not, as he thinks, because before the preaching of the Gospel, the
idea "could not rise to distinct conceptions of the Eternal," but on
account of its deep esoteric character. Therefore, all the Creative Gods,
or _Personal_ Deities, begin at the secondary stage of Cosmic Evolution.
Zeus is born _in_, and _out_ of Cronus--Time. So is Brahm‚ the production
and emanation of K‚la, "Eternity and Time," K‚la being one of the names of
Vishnu. Hence we find Odin, the Father of _the Gods and of the Ases_, as
Brahm‚ is the Father of _the Gods and of the Asuras_; and hence also the
androgyne character of all the chief Creative Gods, from the second Monad
of the Greeks down to the Sephira Adam Kadmon, the Brahm‚ or Praj‚pati-
V‚ch of the _Vedas_, and the androgyne of Plato, which is but another
version of the Indian symbol.

The best metaphysical definition of primeval Theogony, in the spirit of
the Ved‚ntins, may be found in the "Notes on the _Bhagavad GÓt‚_", by T.
Subba Row. Parabrahman, the Unknown and the Incognizable, as the lecturer
tells his audience:

    Is not Ego, it is not Non-Ego, nor is it consciousness ... it is
    not even ¬tm‚ ... but though not itself an object of knowledge, it
    is yet capable of supporting and giving rise to every kind of
    object and every kind of existence which becomes an object of
    knowledge.... [It is] the one essence from which starts into
    existence a centre of energy ... [which he calls the Logos].(694)

This Logos is the Shabda Brahman of the HindŻs, which he will not even
call őshvara (the "Lord" God), lest the term should create confusion in
the people's minds. It is the Avalokiteshvara of the Buddhists, the Verbum
of the Christians in its real _esoteric_ meaning, not in its theological
disfigurement.

    It is, the first JŮ‚ta, or the Ego in the Kosmos, and every other
    Ego ... is but its reflection and manifestation.... It exists in a
    latent condition in the bosom of Parabrahman, at the time of
    Pralaya.... [During Manvantara] it has a consciousness and an
    individuality of its own.... [It is a centre of energy, but] such
    centres of energy are almost innumerable in the bosom of
    Parabrahman. It must not be supposed, that [even] this Logos is
    [_the_ Creator, or that it is] but a single centre of energy....
    Their number is almost infinite.... [This] is the first Ego that
    appears in Kosmos, and is the end of all evolution. [It is the
    abstract Ego].... This is the _first_ manifestation [or aspect] of
    Parabrahman.... When once it starts into existence as a conscious
    being, ... from its objective standpoint, Parabrahman appears to
    it as MŻlaprakriti. Please bear this in mind ... for here is the
    root of the whole difficulty about Purusha and Prakriti felt by
    the various writers on Ved‚ntic philosophy.... This MŻlaprakriti
    is material to it [the Logos], as any material object is material
    to us. This MŻlaprakriti is no more Parabrahman than the bundle of
    attributes of a pillar is the pillar itself; Parabrahman is an
    unconditioned and absolute reality, and MŻlaprakriti is a sort of
    veil thrown over it. Parabrahman by itself cannot be seen as it
    is. It is seen by the Logos with a veil thrown over it, and that
    veil is the mighty expanse of Cosmic Matter.... Parabrahman, after
    having appeared on the one hand as the Ego, and on the other as
    MŻlaprakriti, acts as the one energy through the Logos.(695)

And the lecturer explains what he means by this acting of Something which
is _Nothing_, though it is the ALL, by a fine simile. He compares the
Logos to the Sun through which light and heat radiate, but whose energy,
light and heat, exist in some unknown condition in Space and are diffused
in Space only as _visible_ light and heat, the Sun being only the agent
thereof. This is the first triadic hypostasis. The quaternary is made up
by the _energizing light_ shed by the Logos.

The Hebrew Kabalists stated it in a manner which is esoterically identical
with the Ved‚ntic. Ain Suph, they taught, could not be comprehended, could
not be located, nor named, though the Causeless Cause of all. Hence its
name, Ain Suph, is a term of negation, "the Inscrutable, the Incognizable,
and the Unnameable." They made of it, therefore, a Boundless Circle, a
Sphere, of which human intellect, with the utmost stretch, could only
perceive the vault. In the words of one who has unriddled much in the
Kabalistical system most thoroughly, in one of its meanings, in its
numerical and geometrical esotericism:

    Close your eyes, and from your own consciousness of perception try
    and think outward to the extremest limits in every direction. You
    will find that equal lines or rays of perception extend out evenly
    in all directions, so that the utmost effort of perception will
    terminate in the _vault of a sphere_. The limitation of this
    sphere will, of necessity, be a great Circle, and the direct rays
    of thought in any and every direction must be right line radii of
    the circle. This, then, _must_ be, humanly speaking, the extremest
    all-embracing conception of the Ain Suph _manifest_, which
    formulates itself as a geometrical figure, viz., of a circle, with
    its elements of curved circumference and right line diameter
    divided into radii. Hence, a geometrical shape is the first
    recognizable means of connection between the Ain Suph and the
    intelligence of man.(696)

This Great Circle, which Eastern Esotericism reduces to the Point within
the Boundless Circle, is the Avalokiteshvara, the Logos, or Verbum, of
which T. Subba Row speaks. But this Circle or manifested God is as unknown
to us, except through its _manifested_ Universe, as is the ONE, though
easier, or rather more possible to our highest conceptions. This Logos
which sleeps in the bosom of Parabrahman, during Pralaya, as our "Ego is
latent [in us] at the time of Sushupti," or sleep, which cannot cognize
Parabrahman otherwise than as MŻlaprakriti--the latter being a Cosmic Veil
which is "the mighty expanse of Cosmic Matter"--is thus only an organ in
Cosmic Creation, through which radiate the Energy and Wisdom of
Parabrahman, _unknown to the Logos, as it is to ourselves_. Moreover, as
the Logos is as unknown to us as Parabrahman is unknown in reality to the
Logos, both Eastern Esotericism and the Kabalah, in order to bring the
Logos within the range of our conceptions, have resolved the abstract
synthesis into concrete images; viz., into the reflections or multiplied
aspects of that Logos, or Avalokiteshvara, Brahm‚ Ormazd, Osiris, Adam
Kadmon, call it by any of such names you will; which aspects, or
manvantaric emanations, are the Dhy‚n Chohans, the Elohim, the Devas, the
Amshaspends, etc. Metaphysicians explain the root and germ of the latter,
according to T. Subba Row, as the first manifestation of Parabrahman, "the
highest trinity that we are capable of understanding," which is
MŻlaprakriti, the Veil, the Logos, and the Conscious Energy of the latter,
or its Power and Light, called in the _Bhagavad GÓt‚_, Daiviprakriti; or
"Matter, Force and the Ego, or the one root of Self, of which every other
kind of self is but a manifestation or a reflection." It is then only in
this Light of consciousness, of mental and physical perception, that
_practical_ Occultism can throw the Logos into visibility by geometrical
figures, which, when closely studied, will yield not only a scientific
explanation of the real, objective, existence(697) of the "Seven Sons of
the Divine Sophia," which is this Light of the Logos, but will show, by
means of other yet undiscovered keys, that, with regard to Humanity, these
"Seven Sons" and their numberless emanations, centres of energy
personified, are an absolute necessity. Make away with them, and the
Mystery of Being and Mankind _will never be unriddled, nor even closely
approached_.

It is through this Light that everything is created. This Root of mental
SELF is also the root of physical _Self_, for this Light is the
permutation, in our manifested world, of MŻlaprakriti, called Aditi in the
_Vedas_. In its third aspect it becomes V‚ch,(698) the Daughter and the
Mother of the Logos, as Isis is the Daughter and the Mother of Osiris, who
is Horns, and Moot, the Daughter, Wife, and Mother, of Ammon, in the
Egyptian Moon-glyph. In the _Kabalah_, Sephira is the same as Shekinah,
and is, in another synthesis, the Wife, Daughter, and Mother of the
Heavenly Man, Adam Kadmon, and is even identical with him, just as V‚ch is
identical with Brahm‚, and is called the female Logos. In the _Rig Veda_,
V‚ch is "Mystic Speech," by whom Occult Knowledge and Wisdom are
communicated to man, and thus V‚ch is said to have "entered the Rishis."
She is "generated by the Gods"; she is the Divine V‚ch, the "Queen of
Gods"; and she is associated, like Sephira with the Sephiroth, with the
Praj‚patis in their work of creation. Moreover, she is called the "Mother
of the _Vedas_," "since it is through her powers, [as Mystic _Speech_]
that Brahm‚ revealed them, and also owing to her power that he produced
the Universe"; that is to say, through Speech, and words, synthesized by
the "Word" and numbers.(699)

But when V‚ch is also spoken of as the daughter of Daksha, "the God who
lives in all the Kalpas," her m‚y‚vic character is shown; during the
Pralaya she disappears, absorbed in the One, all-devouring Ray.

But there are two distinct aspects in universal Esotericism, Eastern and
Western, in all these personations of the female Power in Nature, or
Nature the _noumenal_ and the _phenomenal_. One is its purely metaphysical
aspect, as described by the learned lecturer in his "Notes on the
_Bhagavad GÓt‚_"; the other terrestrial and physical, and at the same time
_divine_ from the stand-point of practical human conception and Occultism.
They are all the symbols and personifications of Chaos, the Great Deep, or
the Primordial Waters of Space, the impenetrable Veil between the
INCOGNIZABLE and the Logos of Creation. "Connecting himself through his
mind with V‚ch, Brahm‚ [the Logos] created the Primordial Waters." In the
_Katha Upanishad_ it is stated still more clearly:

    Praj‚pati was this Universe. _V‚ch was a second to him._ He
    associated with her ... she produced these creatures and again
    reŽntered Praj‚pati.

This connects V‚ch and Sephira with the Goddess Kwan-Yin, the "Merciful
Mother," the Divine Voice of the Soul, even in exoteric Buddhism, and with
the female aspect of Kwan-Shai-Yin, the Logos, the Verbum of Creation, and
at the same time with the Voice that speaks audibly to the Initiate,
according to Esoteric Budhism. Bath Kol, the Filia Vocis, the Daughter of
the Divine Voice of the Hebrews, responding from the Mercy Seat within the
Veil of the Temple is--a result.

And here we may incidentally point out one of the many unjust slurs thrown
by the "good and pious" missionaries in India on the religion of the land.
The allegory, in the _Shatapatha Br‚hmana_, that Brahm‚, as the Father of
men, performed the work of procreation by incestuous intercourse with his
own daughter V‚ch, also called Sandhy‚, Twilight, and ShatarŻp‚, of a
hundred forms, is incessantly thrown in the teeth of the Br‚hmans, as
condemning their "detestable, false religion." Besides the fact,
conveniently forgotten by the Europeans, that the Patriarch Lot is shown
guilty of the same crime under the _human form_, whereas it was under the
form of a buck that Brahm‚, or rather Praj‚pati, accomplished the incest
with his daughter, who had that of a hind (_rohit_), the esoteric reading
of the third chapter of _Genesis_ shows the same. Moreover, there is
certainly a _cosmic_, and not a physiological, meaning attached to the
Indian allegory, since V‚ch is a permutation of Aditi and MŻlaprakriti, or
Chaos, and Brahm‚ a permutation of N‚r‚yana, the Spirit of God entering
into, and fructifying Nature; and, therefore, there is nothing phallic in
the conception at all.

As already stated, Aditi-V‚ch is the female Logos, or Verbum, the Word;
and Sephira in the _Kabalah_ is the same. These feminine Logoi are all
correlations, in their _noumenal_ aspect, of Light, and Sound, and ∆ther,
showing how well-informed were the Ancients both in Physical Science, as
now known to the moderns, and also as to the birth of that Science in the
Spiritual and Astral spheres.

    Our old writers said that V‚ch is of four kinds. These are called
    Par‚, PashyantÓ, Madhyam‚, VaikharÓ. This statement you will find
    in the _Rig Veda_ itself and in several of the _Upanishads_.
    VaikharÓ V‚ch is what we utter.

It is Sound, _Speech_, that again which becomes comprehensive and
objective to one of our physical senses and may be brought under the laws
of perception. Hence:

    Every kind of VaikharÓ V‚ch exists in its Madhyam‚ ... PashyantÓ
    and ultimately in its Par‚ form.... The reason why this
    Pranava(700) is called V‚ch is this, that these four principles of
    the great Kosmos correspond to these four forms of V‚ch.... The
    whole Kosmos in its objective form is VaikharÓ V‚ch; the Light of
    the Logos is the Madhyam‚ form; and the Logos itself the PasyantÓ
    form; while Parabrahman is the Par‚ [beyond the Noumenon of all
    Noumena] aspect of that V‚ch.(701)

Thus V‚ch, Shekinah, or the "Music of the Spheres" of Pythagoras, are one,
if we take for our example instances in the three most (apparently)
dissimilar religious philosophies in the world, the HindŻ, the Greek and
the Chaldean Hebrew. These personations and allegories may be viewed under
_four_ chief and _three_ lesser aspects, or _seven_ in all, as in
Esotericism. The Par‚ form is the ever subjective and latent Light and
Sound, which exist eternally in the bosom of the INCOGNIZABLE; when
transferred into the ideation of the Logos, or its latent Light, it is
called PasyantÓ, and when it becomes that Light _expressed_, it is
Madhyam‚.

Now the _Kabalah_ gives the definition thus:

    There are three kinds of Light, and that [the fourth] which
    interpenetrates the others; (1) the clear and the penetrating, the
    _objective_ Light, (2) the _reflected_ Light, and (3) the
    _abstract_ Light.

The ten Sephiroth, the Three and the Seven, are called in the _Kabalah_
the Ten Words, DBRIM (Dabarim), the Numbers and the Emanations of the
Heavenly Light, which is both Adam Kadmon and Sephira, Praj‚pati-V‚ch, or
Brahm‚. Light, Sound, Number, are the three factors of creation in the
_Kabalah_. Parabrahman cannot be known except through the luminous Point,
the Logos, which knows not Parabrahman but only MŻlaprakriti. Similarly
Adam Kadmon knew only Shekinah, though he was the Vehicle of Ain Suph.
And, as Adam Kadmon, he is, in the Esoteric interpretation, the total of
the Number Ten, the Sephiroth, himself being a Trinity, or the three
attributes of the Incognizable Deity in One.(702) "When the Heavenly Man
(or Logos) first assumed the form of the Crown(703) [Kether] and
identified himself with Sephira, he caused Seven splendid Lights to
emanate from it [the Crown]," which made in their totality Ten; so
Brahm‚-Praj‚pati, once he became separated from, yet identical with V‚ch,
caused the seven Rishis, the seven Manus or Praj‚patis, to issue from that
Crown. In _exotericism_ one will always find 10 and 7, of either Sephira
or Praj‚pati; in _esoteric_ rendering always 3 and 7, which yield also 10.
Only when divided, in the manifested sphere, into 3 and 7, they form
[circle with vertical line], the androgyne, and [circle containing an X],
or the figure X manifested and differentiated.

This will help the student to understand why Pythagoras esteemed the
Deity, the Logos, to be the Centre of Unity and Source of Harmony. We say
this Deity was the Logos, not the Monad that dwelleth in Solitude and
Silence, because Pythagoras taught that Unity being indivisible is _no
number_. And this is also why it was required of the candidate, who
applied for admittance into his school, that he should have already
studied as a preliminary step, the sciences of Arithmetic, Astronomy,
Geometry and _Music_, which were held to be the four divisions of
Mathematics.(704) Again, this explains why the Pythagoreans asserted that
the doctrine of Numbers, the chief of all in Esotericism, had been
revealed to man by the Celestial Deities; that the World had been called
forth out of Chaos by Sound, or Harmony, and constructed according to the
principles of musical proportion; that the seven planets which rule the
destiny of mortals have a harmonious motion and, as Censorinus says:

    Intervals corresponding to musical diastemes, rendering various
    sounds, so perfectly consonant, that they produce the sweetest
    melody, which is inaudible to us, only by reason of the greatness
    of the sound, which our ears are incapable of receiving.

In the Pythagorean Theogony, the Hierarchies of the Heavenly Host and Gods
were numbered, and also expressed numerically. Pythagoras had studied
Esoteric Science in India; therefore we find his pupils saying:

    The Monad [the manifested One] is the principle of all things.
    From the Monad and the indeterminate Duad (Chaos), Numbers; from
    Numbers, Points; from Points, Lines; from Lines, Superficies; from
    Superficies, Solids; from these, Solid Bodies, whose elements are
    four, Fire, Water, Air, Earth; of all which transmuted
    [correlated], and totally changed, the World consists.(705)

And this, if it does not unriddle the mystery altogether, may at any rate
lift a corner of the veil off those wondrous allegories that have been
thrown over V‚ch, the most mysterious of all the Br‚hmanical Goddesses;
she who is termed "the _melodious_ Cow who milked forth sustenance and
Water"--the Earth with all her mystic powers; and again she "who yields us
nourishment and sustenance"--the physical Earth. Isis is also mystic Nature
and also Earth; and her cow's horns identify her with V‚ch, who, after
being recognized in her highest form as Par‚, becomes, at the lower or
material end of creation, VaikharÓ. Hence she is mystic, though physical,
Nature, with all her magic ways and properties.

Again, as Goddess of Speech and of Sound, and a permutation of Aditi, she
is Chaos, in one sense. At any rate, she is the "Mother of the Gods," and
it is from Brahm‚, őshvara or the Logos, and V‚ch, as from Adam Kadmon and
Sephira, that the real _manifested_ Theogony has to start. Beyond, all is
Darkness and abstract speculation. With the Dhy‚n Chohans or the Gods, the
Seers, the Prophets and the Adepts in general are on firm ground. Whether
as Aditi, or the Divine Sophia of the Greek Gnostics, she is the mother of
the Seven Sons, the Angels of the Face, of the Deep, or the Great Green
One of the _Book of the Dead_. Says the _Book of Dzyan_, or Real
Knowledge, obtained through meditation:

    _The Great Mother lay with the [triangle], and the |, and the
    [square], the second | and the [five-pointed star],_(_706_)_ in
    her Bosom, ready to bring them forth, the valiant Sons of the
    [square] [triangle] || [or 4,320,000, the Cycle], whose two Elders
    are the [circle] [Circle] and the ∑ [Point]._

At the beginning of every Cycle of 4,320,000, the Seven, or as some
nations had it Eight, Great Gods, descend to establish the new order of
things and to give the impetus to the new cycle. That _eighth_ God was the
unifying Circle, or Logos, separated and made distinct from its Host, in
exoteric dogma, just as the three divine _hypostases_ of the ancient
Greeks are now considered in the Churches as three distinct _personś_. As
a Commentary says:

    _The Mighty Ones perform their great works, and leave behind them
    __ everlasting monuments to commemorate their visit, every time
    they penetrate within our m‚y‚vic veil [atmosphere]._(707)

Thus we are taught that the great Pyramids were built under their direct
supervision, "when Dhruva [the then Pole-star], was at his lowest
culmination, and the Krittik‚s [Pleiades] looked over his head [were on
the same meridian but above] to watch the work of the Giants." Thus, as
the first Pyramids were built at the beginning of a Sidereal Year, under
Dhruva (Alpha Polaris), it must have been over 31,000 years (31,105) ago.
Bunsen was right in admitting for Egypt an antiquity of over 21,000 years,
but this concession hardly exhausts truth and fact in this question. As
Mr. Gerald Massey says:

    The stories told by Egyptian priests and others of time-keeping in
    Egypt are now beginning to look less like lies in the sight of all
    who have escaped from biblical bondage. Inscriptions have lately
    been found at Sakkarah, making mention of two Sothiac cycles ...
    registered at that time, now some 6,000 years ago. Thus when
    Herodotus was in Egypt, the Egyptians had--as now known--observed at
    least five different Sothiac cycles of 1,461 years....

    The priests informed the Greek enquirer that time had been
    reckoned by them for so long that the sun had twice risen where it
    then set, and twice set where it then arose. This ... can only be
    realized as a fact in nature by means of two cycles of Precession,
    or a period of 51,736 years.(708)

Mor Isaac(709) shows the ancient Syrians defining their World of the
"Rulers" and "Active Gods" in the same way as the Chaldeans. The lowest
World was the Sublunary--our own--watched by the _Angels_ of the first or
lower order; the one that came next in rank, was Mercury, ruled by the
_Archangels_: then came Venus, whose Gods were the _Principalities_; the
fourth was that of the Sun, the domain and region of the highest and
mightiest Gods of our system, the solar Gods of all nations; the fifth was
Mars, ruled by the _Virtues_; the sixth, that of Bel or Jupiter, was
governed by the _Dominions_; the seventh, the World of Saturn, by the
_Thrones_. These are the Worlds of Form. Above come the Four higher ones,
making Seven again, since the Three _highest_ are "unmentionable and
unpronounceable." The eighth, composed of 1,122 stars, is the domain of
the _Cherubs_; the ninth, belonging to the _walking_ and numberless stars
on account of their distance, has the _Seraphs_; as to the tenth, Kircher,
quoting Mor Isaac, says that it is composed "of invisible stars that could
be taken, they said, for clouds, so massed are they in the zone that we
call Via Straminis, the Milky Way"; and he hastens to explain that "these
are the stars of Lucifer, engulfed with him in his terrible shipwreck."
That which comes after and beyond the ten Worlds (our Quaternary), or the
ArŻpa World, the Syrians could not tell. "All they knew was that it is
there that begins the vast and incomprehensible Ocean of the Infinite, the
abode of the True Divinity, without boundary or end."

Champollion shows the same belief among the Egyptians. Hermes having
spoken of the Father-Mother and Son, whose Spirit--collectively the Divine
Fiat--shapes the Universe, says: "Seven Agents [Media] were also formed, to
contain the Material [or manifested] Worlds within their respective
Circles, and the action of these Agents was named Destiny." He further
enumerates seven and ten and twelve orders, but it would take too long to
detail them here.

As the _Rig Vidh‚na_ together with the _Brahm‚nda Pur‚na_ and all such
works, whether describing the magic efficacy of the Rig Vedic _Mantras_,
or the future Kalpas, are declared by Dr. Weber and others to be modern
compilations "belonging probably only to the time of the _Pur‚nas_," it is
useless to refer the reader to their mystic explanations; and one may as
well simply quote from the archaic books utterly unknown to the
Orientalists. These works explain that which so puzzles the scholars,
namely that the Saptarshis, the "Mind-born Sons" of Brahm‚, are referred
to in the _Shatapatha Br‚hmana_ under one set of names; in the
_Mah‚bh‚rata_ under another set; and that the _V‚yu Pur‚na_ makes even
_nine_ instead of _seven_ Rishis, by adding the names of Bhrigu and Daksha
to the list. But the same occurs in every exoteric Scripture. The Secret
Doctrine gives a long genealogy of Rishis, but separates them into many
classes. Like the Gods of the Egyptians, who were divided into seven, and
even twelve, Classes, so are the Indian Rishis in their Hierarchies. The
first three Groups are the Divine, the Cosmical and the Sublunary. Then
come the Solar Gods of our System, the Planetary, the Submundane, and the
purely Human--the Heroes and the M‚nushi.

At present, however, we are only concerned with the Pre-cosmic, Divine
Gods, the Praj‚patis, or the Seven Builders. This Group is found
unmistakably in every Cosmogony. Owing to the loss of Egyptian archaic
documents, since, according to M. Maspero, "the materials and historical
data on hand to study the history of the religious evolution in Egypt are
neither complete nor very often intelligible," the ancient Hymns and
inscriptions on the tombs must be appealed to, in order to have the
statements brought forward from the Secret Doctrine partially and
indirectly corroborated. One such shows that Osiris, like
Brahm‚-Praj‚pati, Adam Kadmon, Ormazd, and so many other Logoi, was the
chief and synthesis of the Group of "Creators" or Builders. Before Osiris
became the "One" and the _Highest_ God of Egypt, he was worshipped at
Abydos as the Head, or Leader, of the Heavenly Host of the Builders
belonging to the higher of the three Orders. The Hymn engraved on the
votive stele of a tomb from Abydos (3rd register) addresses Osiris thus:

    Salutations to thee, O Osiris, elder son of Seb; thou the greatest
    over the six Gods issued from the Goddess Noo [Primordial Water],
    thou the great favourite of thy father Ra; Father of Fathers, King
    of Duration, Master in the Eternity ... who, as soon as these
    issued from thy Mother's Bosom, gathered all the Crowns and
    attached the Urśus [serpent or _naja_](710) on thy head; multiform
    God, _whose name is unknown_ and who has many names in towns and
    provinces.

Coming out from the Primordial Water crowned with the Urśus, which is the
serpent-emblem of Cosmic Fire, and himself the _seventh_ over the six
Primary Gods, issued from Father-Mother, Noo and Noot, the Sky, who can
Osiris be, but the chief Praj‚pati, the chief Sephira, the chief
Amshaspend, Ormazd! That this latter Solar and Cosmic God stood, in the
beginning of religious evolution, in the same position as the Archangel,
"whose name was secret," is certain. This Archangel was Michael, the
representative on earth of the _Hidden_ Jewish God; in short, it is his
"Face" that is said to have gone before the Jews like a "Pillar of Fire."
Burnouf says: "The seven Amshaspends, who are most assuredly our
Archangels, designate also the personifications of the Divine
Virtues."(711) And these Archangels, therefore, are as certainly the
Saptarshis of the Hindus, though it is next to impossible to class each
with its Pagan prototype and parallel, since, as in the case of Osiris,
they have all so "many names in towns and provinces." Some of the most
important, however, will be shown in their order.

One thing is thus undeniably proven. The more we study their Hierarchies
and find out their identity, the more proofs we acquire that there is not
one of the past or present _personal_ Gods, known to us from the earliest
days of history, that does not belong to the third stage of cosmic
manifestation. In every religion we find the Concealed Deity forming the
ground work; then the Ray therefrom, that falls into primordial Cosmic
Matter, the _first_ manifestation; then the Androgyne result, the dual
Male and Female abstract Force personified, the _second_ stage; this
finally separates itself, in the _third_, into Seven Forces, called the
Creative Powers by all the ancient religions, and the Virtues of God by
the Christians. The later explanations and abstract metaphysical
qualifications have not prevented the Roman and Greek Churches from
worshipping these "Virtues" under the personifications and distinct names
of the Seven Archangels. In the _Book of Druschim_,(712) in the _Talmud_,
a distinction between these groups is given which is the correct
Kabalistical explanation. It says:

    There are three Groups (or Orders) of Sephiroth. 1st. The
    Sephiroth called the "Divine Attributes" [abstract]. 2nd. The
    Physical or Sidereal Sephiroth [personal]--one group of _seven_,
    the other of _ten_. 3rd. The metaphysical Sephiroth, or
    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].

The same division has to be applied to the primary, secondary and tertiary
evolution of Gods in every Theogony, if one wishes to translate the
meaning esoterically. We must not confuse the purely metaphysical
personifications of the _abstract_ attributes of Deity, with their
reflection--the Sidereal Gods. This reflection, however, is in reality the
objective expression of the abstraction; _living_ Entities and the models
formed on that divine Prototype. Moreover, the three metaphysical
Sephiroth, or the "periphrasis of Jehovah," are _not_ Jehovah. It is the
latter himself, with the additional titles of Adonai, Elohim, Sabbaoth,
and the numerous names lavished on him, who is the periphrasis of the
Shaddai ({~HEBREW LETTER SHIN~}{~HEBREW LETTER DALET~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}), the Omnipotent. The name is a circumlocution, indeed, a too
abundant figure of Jewish rhetoric, and has always been denounced by the
Occultists. To the Jewish Kabalists, and even the Christian Alchemists and
Rosicrucians, Jehovah was a convenient _screen_, unified by the folding of
its many panels, and adopted as a substitute; one name of an individual
Sephira being as good as another name, for those who had the secret. The
Tetragrammaton, the Ineffable, the Sidereal "Sum Total," was invented for
no other purpose than to mislead the profane and to symbolize life and
generation.(713) The real secret and _unpronounceable_ Name, the "Word
that is no word," has to be sought in the seven names of the first Seven
Emanations, or the "Sons of the Fire," in the secret Scriptures of all the
great nations, and even in the _Zohar_, the Kabalistic lore of the
smallest of all of them, viz., the Jewish. This word, composed of seven
letters in every tongue, is found embodied in the architectural remains of
every great sacred building in the world; from the Cyclopean remains on
Easter Island--part of a Continent buried under the seas nearer 4,000,000
years ago(714) than 20,000--down to the earliest Egyptian pyramids.

We shall have to enter more fully into this subject later on, and to bring
practical illustrations to prove the statements made in the text.

For the present it is sufficient to show, by a few instances, the truth of
what has been asserted at the beginning of this work, namely, that no
Cosmogony, the world over, with the sole exception of the Christian, has
ever attributed to the One Highest Cause, the Universal Deific Principle,
the immediate creation of our earth, or man, or anything connected with
these. This statement holds as well for the Hebrew or Chaldean _Kabalah_
as it does for _Genesis_, had the latter been ever thoroughly understood
and, what is still more important, correctly translated.(715) Everywhere
there is either a Logos--a "Light shining in Darkness," truly--or the
Architect of the Worlds is esoterically in the plural number. The Latin
Church, paradoxical as ever, while applying the epithet of Creator to
Jehovah alone, adopts a whole Kyriel of names for the _working_ Forces of
the latter, names which betray the secret. For if the said Forces had
nought to do with "Creation" so-called, why call them Elohim (Alhim), a
plural word; Divine Workmen and Energies ({~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER EPSILON WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}), incandescent
celestial stones (_lapides igniti coelorum_); and especially Supporters of
the World ({~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}), Governors or Rulers of the World (Rectores
Mundi), Wheels of the World (Rotś), Auphanim, Flames and Powers, Sons of
God (B'ne Alhim), Vigilant Counsellors, etc.?

It is often asserted, and unjustly, as usual, that China, nearly as old a
country as India, had no Cosmogony. It was unknown to Confucius, and the
Buddhists extended their Cosmogony without introducing a Personal
God,(716) it is complained. The _Yi-King_, "the very essence of ancient
thought and the combined work of the most venerated sages," fails to show
a distinct Cosmogony. Nevertheless, one existed, and a very distinct one.
Only as Confucius did not admit of a future life(717) and the Chinese
Buddhists reject the idea of _One_ Creator, accepting one Cause and its
numberless effects, they are misunderstood by the believers in a Personal
God. The "Great Extreme," as the commencement of "changes"
(transmigrations), is the shortest and, perhaps, the most suggestive of
all Cosmogonies for those who, like the Confucianists, love virtue for its
own sake and try to do good unselfishly without perpetually looking to
reward and profit. The "Great Extreme" of Confucius produces "Two
Figures." These Two produce in their turn the "Four Images"; these again
the "Eight Symbols." It is complained that though the Confucianists see in
them "heaven, earth and man in miniature," we can see in them anything we
like. No doubt, and so it is with regard to many symbols, especially those
of the latest religions. But they who know something of Occult numerals,
see in these "Figures" the symbol, however rude, of a harmonious
progressive Evolution of Kosmos and its Beings, both Heavenly and
Terrestrial. And any one who has studied the numerical evolution in the
primeval Cosmogony of Pythagoras--a contemporary of Confucius--can never
fail to find in his Triad, Tetraktys and Decad, emerging from the One and
solitary Monad, the same idea. Confucius is laughed at by his Christian
biographer for "talking of divination," before and after this passage, and
is represented as saying:

    The eight symbols determine good and ill fortune, and these lead
    to great deeds. There are no imitable images greater than heaven
    and earth. There are no changes greater than the four seasons
    [meaning North, South, East and West, etc.]. There are no
    suspended images brighter than the sun and moon. In preparing
    things for use, there is none greater than the sage. In
    determining good and ill-luck there is nothing greater than the
    _divining straws_ and the _tortoise_.(718)

Therefore, the "divining straws" and the "tortoise," the "symbolic sets of
lines," and the great sage who looks at them as they become one and two,
and two become four, and four become eight, and the other sets "three and
six," are laughed to scorn, only because his wise symbols are
misunderstood.

So the author of the volume cited and his colleagues will no doubt scoff
at the Stanzas given in our text, for they represent _precisely the same
idea_. The old archaic map of Cosmogony is full of lines in the Confucian
style, of concentric circles and dots. Yet all these represent the most
abstract and philosophical conceptions of the Cosmogony of our Universe.
At all events it may, perhaps, answer better to the requirements and the
scientific purposes of our age, than the cosmogonical essays of St.
Augustine and the Venerable Bede, though these were published over a
millennium later than the Confucian.

Confucius, one of the greatest sages of the ancient world, believed in
ancient magic, and practised it himself, "if we take for granted the
statements of _Kiŗ-yŁ_" and "he praised it to the skies in the _Yi-king_,"
we are told by his reverend critic. Nevertheless, even in his age, 600
B.C., Confucius and his school taught the sphericity of the earth and even
the heliocentric system; while, at about thrice 600 years after the
Chinese philosopher, the Popes of Rome threatened and even burnt
"heretics" for asserting the same. He is laughed at for speaking of the
"Sacred Tortoise." No unprejudiced person can see any great difference
between a Tortoise and a Lamb as candidates for sacredness, as both are
symbols and no more. The Ox, the Eagle,(719) and the Lion, and
occasionally the Dove are the "sacred animals" of the Western _Bible_; the
first three are found grouped round the Evangelists; the fourth,
associated with these, a human face, is a Seraph, _i.e._, a "fiery
serpent," the Gnostic Agathodśmon probably.

The choice is curious, and shows how paradoxical were the first Christians
in their selections. For why should they have chosen these symbols of
Egyptian Paganism, when the Eagle is never mentioned in the _New
Testament_ save once, when Jesus refers to it as a _carrion_ eater,(720)
and in the _Old Testament_ it is called _unclean_; when the Lion is made a
point of comparison with Satan, both roaring for men to devour; and the
Oxen are driven out of the Temple? On the other hand the Serpent, brought
in as an exemplar of wisdom, is now regarded as the symbol of the Devil.
The esoteric pearl of Christ's religion, degraded into Christian theology,
may indeed be said to have chosen a strange and unfitting _shell_ to be
born in and evolved from.

As explained, the Sacred Animals and the Flames or Sparks, within the Holy
Four, refer to the Prototypes of all that is found in the Universe in the
Divine Thought, in the Root, which is the Perfect Cube, or the Foundation
of the Kosmos, collectively and individually. They have all an occult
reference to primordial Cosmic Forms, and the first concretions, work, and
evolution of Kosmos.

In the earliest HindŻ exoteric Cosmogonies, it is not even the Demiurge
who creates. For it is said in one of the _Pur‚nas_:

    The great Architect of the World gives the first impulse to the
    rotatory motion of our planetary system by stepping in turn over
    each planet and body.

It is this action "that causes each sphere to turn around itself, and all
around the Sun." After which action, "it is the Brahm‚ndika," the Solar
and Lunar Pitris, the Dhy‚n Chohans, "who take charge of their respective
spheres [earths and planets], to the end of the Kalpa." The Creators are
the Rishis, most of whom are credited with the authorship of the Mantras,
or Hymns, of the _Rig Veda_. They are sometimes _seven_, sometimes _ten_,
when they become Praj‚pati, the Lord of Beings; then they rebecome the
_seven_ and the _fourteen_ Manus, as the representatives of the seven and