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THE SECRET DOCTRINE -- THE SYNTHESIS OF SCIENCE, RELIGION, AND PHILOSOPHY |
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Footnotes: 1. As far as divine revelation is concerned, we agree. Not so with regard to “human history.”. . . For there is “history” in most of the allegories and “myths” of India, and events, real actual events, are concealed under them. 2. When the “false theologies” disappear, then true prehistoric realities will be found, contained especially in the mythology of the Aryans — ancient Hindoos, and even the pre-Homeric Hellenes. 3. Thus, a Japanese who does not understand one word of Chinese, meeting with a Chinaman who has never heard the language of the former, will communicate in writing with him, and they will understand each other perfectly — because the writing is symbolical. 4. As we said in Isis (Vol. II. p. 438-9), “To the present moment, in spite of all controversies and researches, History and Science remain as much as ever in the dark as to the origin of the Jews. They may be as well the exiled Tchandalas of old India, the ‘bricklayers’ mentioned by Vina-Svata, Veda-Vyasa and Manu, as the Phoenicians of Herodotus, or the Hyk-Sos of Josephus, or descendants of Pali shepherds, or a mixture of all these. The Bible names the Tyrians as a kindred people, and claims dominion over them. . . . Yet whatever they may have been, they became a hybrid people, not long after Moses, as the Bible shows them freely intermarrying not alone with the Canaanites, but with every other nation or race they came in contact with.” 5. One by one the claims become admitted, as one Scientist after another is compelled to recognize the facts given out from the Secret Doctrine — though he rarely, if ever, recognizes that he has been anticipated in his statements. Thus, in the palmy days of Mr. Piazzi Smyth’s authority on the Pyramid of Gizeh, his theory was, that the porphyry sarcophagus of the King’s Chamber “is the unit of measure for the two most enlightened nations of the earth, England and America,” and was no better than a “corn bin.” This was vehemently denied by us in Isis Unveiled just published at that time. Then the New York press arose in arms (the “Sun” and the “World” chiefly) against our presuming to correct or find fault with such a star of learning. On p. 519, vol. I., we had said, that Herodotus when treating of that Pyramid “might have added that, externally it symbolized the creative principle of Nature, and illustrated also the principles of geometry, mathematics, astrology, and astronomy. Internally, it was a majestic fane, in whose sombre recesses were performed the mysteries, and whose walls had often witnessed the initiation-scenes of members of the royal family. The porphyry sarcophagus, which Professor Piazzi Smyth, Astronomer Royal of Scotland, degrades into a corn-bin, was the baptismal font, upon emerging from which the neophyte was “born again” and became an adept.” Our statement was laughed at in those days. We were accused of having got our ideas from the “craze” of Shaw, an English writer who had maintained that the Sarcophagus had been used for the celebration of the Mysteries of Osiris; (we had never heard of that writer!). And now, six or seven years later, this is what Mr. Staniland Wake writes on p. 93 of his paper, on “The Origin and Significance of the Great Pyramid.” “The so-called King’s Chamber, of which an enthusiastic pyramidist says, ‘The polished walls, fine materials, grand proportions, and exalted place, eloquently tell of glories yet to come — if not, the chamber of perfections of Cheops’ tomb, was probably the place to which the initiant was admitted after he had passed through the narrow upward passage and the grand gallery, with its lowly termination, which gradually prepared him for the final stage of the sacred mysteries.” Had Mr. Staniland Wake been a Theosophist, he might have added that the narrow upward passage leading to the King’s chamber had a “narrow gate” indeed; the same “strait gate” which “leadeth unto life,” or the new spiritual re-birth alluded to by Jesus in Matthew vii. 13 et seq; and that it is this gate in the Initiation temple, that the writer who recorded the words alleged to have been spoken by an Initiate, was thinking of. 6. All we have said in Isis is now found corroborated in the “Egyptian Mystery; or The Source of Measures,” by those readings of the Bible with the numerical and geometrical keys thereto. 7. On page 224 of Assyrian Antiquities Mr. George Smith says: “In the palace of Sennacherib at Kouyunjik I found another fragment of the curious history of Sargon. . . . published in my translation in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, vol. I. part I. p. 46.” The capital of Sargon, the Babylonian Moses, “was the great city of Agadi, called by the Semitics Akkad — mentioned in Genesis as the capital of Nimrod.” (Gen. x. 10.) . . . “Akkad lay near the City of Sippara on the Euphrates and North of Babylon.” (See Isis, vol. II. p. 442-3,) Another strange coincidence is found in the fact that the name of the neighbouring above-mentioned City of Sippara is the same as the name of the wife of Moses — Zipporah (Exodus ii.). Of course the story is a clever addition by Ezra, who could not be ignorant of it. This curious story is found on fragments of tablets from Kouyunjik, and reads as follows: — 1. Sargona, the
powerful king, the king of Akkad am I. And now Exodus (ii): “And when she (Moses’ mother) could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein, and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink.” “The story,” says Mr. G. Smith, “is supposed to have happened about 1600 B.C. rather earlier than the supposed age of Moses. As we know that the fame of Sargon reached Egypt, it is quite likely that this account had a connection with the event related in Exodus ii., for every action, when once performed, has a tendency to be repeated.” But now, when Professor Sayce has had the courage to push back the dates of the Chaldean and Assyrian Kings by two thousand years more, Sargon must have preceded Moses by 2,000 years at the least. (See Professor Sayce’s Lectures on the subject.) The confession is suggestive, but the figures lack a cypher or two. 8. As a reminder how the Esoteric religion of Moses was crushed several times, and the worship of Jehovah, as re-established by David, put in its place, by Hezekiah for one, read pp. 436-42, vol. II., in Isis Unveiled. Surely there must have been some very good reasons why the Sadducees, who furnished almost all the high Priests of Judea, held to the Laws of Moses and spurned the alleged “Books of Moses,” the Pentateuch of the Synagogue and the Talmud. 9. Once more, remember the Hindu Wittoba crucified in space; the significance of the “sacred sign,” the Swastica; Plato’s Decussated man in Space, etc., etc. 10. “Source of Measures.” 11. See farther on the description given of the early Aryan initiation: of Visvakarma crucifying the Sun, “Vikkartana,” shorn of his beams — on a cruciform lath. 12. Some of its defenders must have lost their reason, one would rather say. For what can one think when, in the face of the dead-letter absurdities of the Bible, these are still supported, publicly and as fiercely as ever, and one finds its theologians maintaining that though “the Scriptures carefully refrain (?) from making any direct contribution to scientific knowledge, they have never stumbled upon any statement which will not abide the light of Advancing Science”!!! — (“Primeval Man,” p. 14). 13. “Primeval Man Unveiled, or the Anthropology of the Bible”; author (unknown) of the “Stars and the Angels” 1870, p. 195. 14. Especially in the face of the evidence furnished by the authorized Bible itself in ch. iv. of Genesis, v. 16 and 17, which shows Cain going to the land of Nod and there marrying a wife. 15. For instance, when he terms the “First Cause” — the Unknowable — a “power manifesting through phenomena,” and “an infinite eternal Energy” (?) it is clear that he has grasped solely the physical aspect of the mystery of Being — the Energies of Cosmic Substance only. The co-eternal aspect of the One Reality — Cosmic Ideation — (as to its noumenon, it seems non-existent in the mind of the great thinker) is absolutely omitted from consideration. Without doubt, this one-sided mode of dealing with the problem is due largely to the pernicious Western practice of subordinating consciousness, or regarding it as a “by-product” of molecular motion. 16. The term Protyle is due to Mr. Crookes, the eminent chemist, who has given that name to pre-Matter, if one may so call primordial and purely homogeneous substances, suspected, if not actually yet found, by Science in the ultimate composition of the atom. But the incipient segregation of primordial matter into atoms and molecules takes its rise subsequent to the evolution of the Seven Protyles. It is the last of these — having recently detected the possibility of its existence on our plane — that Mr. Crookes is in search of. 17. Cosmic Ideation focussed in a principle or upadhi (basis) results as the consciousness of the individual Ego. Its manifestation varies with the degree of upadhi, e.g., through that known as Manas it wells up as Mind-Consciousness; through the more finely differentiated fabric (sixth state of matter) of the Buddhi resting on the experience of Manas as its basis — as a stream of spiritual intuition. 18. For it is thus that the Church has interpreted verse 12 in the VI. Chapter to the Ephesians. “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world.” Further on St. Paul mentions the spiritual malices (“wickedness” in English texts) spread in the air — “Spiritualia nequitiae coelestibus,” the Latin texts giving various names to these “malices,” the innocent “Elementals.” But the Church is right this time, though wrong in calling them all devils. The astral light or lower Ether is full of conscious and semi-conscious and unconscious entities; only the church has less power over them than over invisible microbes or mosquitoes. 19. Effatum XVI. “Oracles of Zoroaster.” 20. Georgica. Book II. 21. The ideal apex of the Pythagorean triangle: vide Sections in Vol. II., “Cross and Circle,” and the “Earliest Symbolics of the Cross.” 22. Vide A. Coke Burnell’s translation, edited by Ed. W. Hopkins, Ph.D. 23. Ahamkara, as universal Self-Consciousness, has a triple aspect, as also Manas. For this conception of “I,” or one’s Ego, is either sattwa, “pure quietude,” or appears as rajas, “active,” or remains tamas, “stagnant,” in darkness. It belongs to Heaven and Earth, and assumes the properties of either. 24. See “The Holy of Holies.” 25. The word “eternity,” by which Christian theologians interpret the term “for ever and ever,” does not exist in the Hebrew tongue — either as a word or meaning. Oulam, says Le Clerc, only imports a time when beginning or end is not known. It does not mean “infinite duration,” and the word for ever in the Old Testament, only signifies a “long time.” Nor is the term “eternity” used in the Christian sense in the Puranas. For in Vishnu Purana, it is clearly stated that by Eternity and Immortality only “existence to the end of the Kalpa” is meant (Book II. chap. viii.). 26. Orphic theogony is purely Oriental and Indian in its Spirit. The successive transformations it has undergone, have now separated it widely from the spirit of ancient Cosmogony, as may be seen by comparing it even with Hesiod’s theogony. Yet the truly Aryan Hindu spirit breaks forth everywhere in both Hesiod’s and the Orphic theogony. (See the remarkable work of James Darmesteter, Cosmogonies Aryennes, in his Essais Orientaux.) Thus the original Greek conception of Chaos is that of the Secret Wisdom Religion. In Hesiod, therefore, Chaos is infinite, boundless, endless and beginningless in duration, an abstraction at the same time as a visible presence. Space filled with darkness, which is primordial matter in its pre-cosmic state. For in its etymological sense, Chaos is Space, according to Aristotle, and Space is the ever Unseen and Unknowable Deity in our philosophy. 27. The manifested Spirit; Absolute, Divine Spirit is one with absolute Divine Substance: Parabrahm and Mulaprakriti are one in essence. Therefore, Cosmic Ideation and Cosmic Substance in their primal character are one also. 28. “Sepher Jezireh,” chap. 1, Mishna ix. 29. Ibid. It is from Arba that Abram is made to come. 30. “Sohar,” I., 2a. 31. “Sepher Jezireh,” Mishna ix., 10. Everywhere throughout the Acts, Paul calls the invisible Kosmic Beings the “Elements.” (See Greek Texts.) But now the Elements are degraded into and limited to atoms of which nothing is known, so far, and which are only “children of necessity” as Ether is too — as we said in “Isis.” “The poor primordial elements have long been exiled, and our ambitious physicists run races to determine who shall add one more to the fledgling brood of the sixty and odd elementary substances.” Meanwhile there rages a war in modern chemistry about terms. We are denied the right to call these substances “chemical elements,” for they are not “primordial principles of self-existing essences out of which the universe was fashioned,” according to Plato. Such ideas associated with the word element were good enough for the “old Greek philosophy,” but modern science rejects them; for, as Professor Crookes says, “they are unfortunate terms,” and experimental science will have “nothing to do with any kind of essences except those which it can see, smell, or taste. It leaves others to the metaphysicians. . . .” We must feel grateful even for so much. 32. Writing upon this subject in Isis Unveiled we said of it that it was: “The Chaos of the ancients, the Zoroastrian sacred fire, or the Atash-Behram of the Parsees; the Hermes-fire, the Elmes-fire of the ancient Germans; the lightning of Cybele; the burning torch of Apollo; the flame on the altar of Pan; the inextinguishable fire in the temple on the Acropolis, and in that of Vesta; the fire-flame of Pluto’s helm; the brilliant sparks on the hats of the Dioscuri, on the Gorgon head, the helm of Pallas, and the staff of Mercury; the Egyptian Phtha-Ra; the Grecian Zeus Cataibates (the descending) of Pausanias; the pentacostal fire-tongues; the burning bush of Moses; the pillar of fire of the Exodus, and the “burning lamp” of Abram, the eternal fire of the “bottomless pit”; the Delphic oracular vapours; the Sidereal light of the Rosicrucians; the Akasa of the Hindu adepts; the Astral Light of Eliphas Levi; the nerve-aura and the fluid of the magnetists; the od of the Reichenbach; the Psychod and ectenic force of Thury; the psychic force of Sergeant Cox, and the atmospheric magnetism of some naturalists; galvanism; and finally, electricity — all these are but various names for many different manifestations or effects of the same mysterious, all-pervading cause, the Greek Archeus.” We now add — it is all this and much more. 33. Plato: “Timaeus.” 34. “Suidas” v. Tyrrhenia.” 35. The reader will understand that by “years” is meant “ages,” not mere periods of thirteen lunar months each. 36. See the Greek translation by Philo Byblus. 37. Cory: “Ancient Fragment.” 38. Mithras was regarded among the Persians as the Theos ekpetros — god of the rock. 39. Bordj is called a fire-mountain — a volcano ; therefore it contains fire, rock, earth and water: the male, or active and the female, or passive, elements. The myth is suggestive. 40. “New Aspects of Life,” by Henry Pratt, M.D. 41. Damascius, in the “Theogony,” calls it Dis, “the disposer of all things.” Cory, “Ancient Fragments,” p. 314. 42. With the Greeks, the “River-gods,” all of them the Sons of the primeval ocean (Chaos in its masculine aspect), were the respective ancestors of the Hellenic races. For them the Ocean was the father of the Gods; and thus they had anticipated in this connection the theories of Thales, as rightly observed by Aristotle (Metaph. I., 3, 5). 43. The “Spirit,” or hidden voice of the Mantras, the active manifestation of the latent Force, or occult potency. 44. Orthography of the “Archaic Dictionary.” 45. We do not mean the current or accepted Bible, but the real Jewish one, now explained kabalistically. 46. It is “unutterable” for the simple reason that it is non-existent. It never was a name, nor any word at all, but an Idea that could not be expressed. A substitute was created for it in the century preceding our era. 47. The Cosmic Tabernacle of Moses, erected by him in the Desert, was square, representing the four cardinal points and the four Elements, as Josephus tells his readers (Antiq. 1, viii ch., xxii.) It is the idea taken from the pyramids in Egypt and in Tyre, where the pyramids became pillars, the Genii, or Angels have their abodes in the four respective points (See § xiv.; “The Four Elements.”) 48. Plutarch, “Isis and Osiris,” 1., vi. 49. “Spirit History of Man,” p. 88. 50. Mover’s “Phoinizer,” 268. 51. Cory, “Fragments,” 240. 52. As Mulaprakriti is known only to Iswar, the Logos, as he is called now by Mr. T. Subba Row, of Madras. (See his Bhagavadgita Lectures.) 53. Iswara, or the Logos, cannot see Parabrahmam, but only Mulaprakriti, says the lecturer, in the Four Lectures on Bhagavatgita. (See Theosophist, Feb., 1887.) 54. The “Seven Angels of the Face,” with the Christians. 55. We use the term as one accepted and sanctioned by use, and therefore more comprehensible to the reader. 56. With the ancient Jews, as shown by Le Clerc, the word Oulom meant only a time whose beginning or end is not known. The term “eternity,” properly speaking, did not exist in the Hebrew tongue with the meaning, for instance, applied by the Vedantins to Parabrahm. 57. In the Indian Pantheon the double-sexed Logos is Brahma, the Creator, whose seven “mind born” sons are the primeval Rishis — the “Builders.” 58. Says Rabbi Simeon: “Ah, companions, companions, man as an emanation was both man and woman, as well on the side of the ‘Father’ as on the side of the ‘Mother.’ And this is the sense of the words: ‘And Elohim spoke; Let there be Light, and it was Light’ . . . and this is the two-fold man.” (“Auszuge aus dem Sohar,” p. 13, 15.) Light, then, in Genesis stood for the Androgyne Ray or “Heavenly Man.” 59. The Seven Swans that are believed to land from Heaven into Lake Mansarovara, are in the popular fancy the Seven Rishis of the Great Bear, who assume that form to visit the locality where the Vedas were written. 60. See Max Muller’s “Our Figures.” 61.
A Kabalist would be rather inclined to believe that as the Arabic
cifron was taken from the Indian Synya, nought, so
the Jewish Kabalistic Sephiroth (Sephrim) were taken from
the word cipher, not in the sense of emptiness but the reverse —
that of creation by number and degrees in their evolution. And the
Sephiroth are 10 or
62. See Max Muller’s “Our Figures.” 63. See King’s “Gnostics and their Remains,” plate xiii. 64. “Vita Pythag.” 65. 608 B.C. 66. This city was built 332 B.C. 67. “Metaph.” vii., F. 68. And this only because the brazen serpent was lifted on a pole! It had rather a reference to Mico the Egyptian egg standing upright supported by the sacred Tau; since the Egg and the Serpent are inseparable in the old worship and symbology of Egypt, and since both the Brazen and “fiery” serpents were Saraphs, the “burning fiery” messengers, or the serpent Gods, the nagas of India. It was a purely phallic symbol without the egg, while when associated with it — it related to cosmic creation. 69.
“Brass was a metal symbolizing the nether world . . . .
that of the womb where life should be given . . . The word for
serpent was in Hebrew Nakash, but this is the same term for
brass.” It is said in Numbers (xxi.) that the Jews
complained of the Wilderness where there was no water (v.
5); after which “the Lord sent fiery serpents” to bite them, when,
to oblige Moses, he gives him as a remedy the brazen serpent
on a pole to look at; after which “any man when he beheld the
serpent of brass . . . . lived” (?). After that the “Lord,”
gathering the people together at the well of Beer, gives them water,
(14-16), and grateful Israel sang this song, “Spring up, O Well,” (v.
17). When, after studying symbology, the Christian reader comes to
understand the innermost meaning of these three symbols — water,
brazen, the serpent, and a few more — in the
sense given to them in the Holy Bible, he will hardly like to
connect the sacred name of his Saviour with the “Brazen Serpent”
incident. The Seraphim
70. The latter appellations are all identical with Anima Mundi, or the “Universal Soul,” the astral light of the Kabalist and the Occultist, or the “Egg of Darkness.” 71. Weber, “Akad Vorles,” pp. 213, 214 et seq. 72. Isis is almost always represented holding a lotus in one hand and in the other a circle and the Cross (crux ansata), the Egg being sacred to her. 73. The Chinese seem to have thus anticipated Sir William Thomson’s theory that the first living germ had dropped to the Earth from some passing comet. Query! why should this be called scientific and the Chinese idea a superstitious, foolish theory? 74. Horus — the “older,” or Haroiri, is an ancient aspect of the solar god, contemporary with Ra and Shoo; Haroiri is often mistaken for Hor (Horsusi), Son of Osiris and Isis. The Egyptians very often represented the rising Sun under the form of Hor the older, rising from a full-blown lotus, the Universe, when the solar disc is always found on the hawk-head of that god. Haroiri is Khnoum. 75. Ammon or Mon, the “hidden,” the Supreme Spirit. 76. His triadic goddesses are Sati and Anouki. 77. Phtah was originally the god of death, of destruction, like Siva. He is a solar god only by virtue of the sun’s fire killing as well as vivifying. He was the national god of Memphis, the radiant and “fair-faced God.” (See Saqquarah Bronzes, Saitic Epoch.) 778 The Brahmanda Purana contains the mystery about Brahma’s golden egg fully; and this is why, perhaps, it is inaccessible to the Orientalists, who say that this Purana, like the Skanda, is “no longer procurable in a collective body,” but “is represented by a variety of Khandas and Mahatmyas professing to be derived from it.” The “Brahmanda Purana” is described as “that which is declared in 12,200 verses, the magnificence of the egg of Brahma, and in which an account of the future Kalpas is contained as revealed by Brahma.” Quite so, and much more, perchance. 79. There is a curious piece of information in the Buddhist esoteric traditions. The exoteric or allegorical biography of Gautama Buddha shows this great Sage dying of an indigestion of pork and rice, a very prosaic end, indeed, having little of the solemn element in it. This is explained as an allegorical reference to his having been born in the “Boar,” or Varaha-Kalpa when Brahma assumed the form of that animal to raise the Earth out of the “Waters of Space.” And as the Brahmins descend direct from Brahma and are, so to speak, identified with him; and as they are at the same time the mortal enemies of Buddha and Buddhism, we have the curious allegorical hint and combination. Brahminism (of the Boar, or Varaha Kalpa) has slaughtered the religion of Buddha in India, swept it away from its face; therefore Buddha, identified with his philosophy, is said to have died from the effects of eating of the flesh of a wild hog. The idea alone of one who established the most rigorous vegetarianism and respect for animal life — even to refusing to eat eggs as vehicles of a latent future life — dying of a meat indigestion, is absurdly contradictory and has puzzled more than one Orientalist. But this explanation, unveiling the allegory, explains all the rest. The Varaha, however, is no simple boar, and seems to have meant at first some antediluvian lacustrine animal “delighting to sport in water.” (Vayu Purana.) 80. According to Colonel Wilford, the conclusion of the “Great War” was B.C. 1370. (See A. R., Vol.9, p. 116); according to Bentley, 575 B.C.!! We may hope, perhaps, that before the end of this century, the Mahabharatean epics will be found and proclaimed identical with the wars of the great Napoleon. 81. In the Vedanta and Nyaya “nimitta” (from which “Naimittika”) is rendered as the efficient cause, when antithesized with upadana the physical or material cause. In the Sankhya pradhana is a cause inferior to Brahma, or rather Brahma being himself a cause, is superior to Pradhana. Hence “incidental” is wrongly translated, and ought to be translated, as shown by some scholars, “Ideal” cause, and even real cause would have been better. 82. The chief Kumara or Virgin-god (a Dhyan Chohan) who refuses to create. A prototype of St. Michael, who refuses to do the same. 83. See concluding lines in Section, “Chaos, Theos, Kosmos.” 84. This prospect would hardly suit Christian theology, which prefers an eternal, everlasting hell for its followers. 85. The term “Elements” must be understood here to mean not only the visible and physical Elements, but also that which St. Paul calls Elements — the spiritual, intelligent Potencies — Angels and Demons in their Manvantaric form. 86. When this description is correctly understood by Orientalists in its esoteric significance then it will be found that this Cosmic correlation of World-Elements may explain the correlation of physical forces better than those now known. At any rate, theosophists will perceive that Prakriti has seven forms, or principles, “reckoned from Mahat to Earth.” The “Waters” mean here the Mystic “mother”; the Womb of abstract nature, in which the manifested Universe is conceived. The Seven “zones” have reference to the Seven Divisions of that Universe, or the Noumena of the Forces that bring it into being. It is all allegorical. 87. As it is the Maha, the Great, or so-called final Pralaya which is here described, every thing is re-absorbed into its original one Element — the “Gods themselves, Brahma and the rest” being said to die and disappear during that long night. 88. The “Builders” of the Stanzas. 89. See Jacquolliot’s “Les Fils de Dieu”; l’Inde des Brahmes, p. 230. 90. If this is not prophetic, what is? 91. Matsya Purana gives Katapa. 92. Max Muller translates the name as Morya, of the Morya dynasty, to which Chandragupta belonged (see Sanscrit Literature). In Matsya Purana, chapter cclxxii, the dynasty of ten Moryas (or Maureyas) is spoken of. In the same chapter, cclxxii, it is stated that the Moryas will one day reign over India, after restoring the Kshattriya race many thousand years hence. Only that reign will be purely Spiritual and “not of this world.” It will be the kingdom of the next Avatar. Colonel Tod believes the name Morya (or Maureyas) a corruption of Mori, a Rajpoot tribe, and the commentary on Mahavansa thinks that some princes have taken their name Maurya from their town called Mori, or, as Professor Max Muller gives it, Morya-Nagara, which is more correct, after the original Mahavansa. Vachaspattya, we are informed by our Brother, Devan Badhadur R. Ragoonath Rao, of Madras, a Sanscrit Encyclopedia, places Katapa (Kalapa) on the northern side of the Himalayas, hence in Tibet. The same is stated in chapter xii. (Skanda) of Bhagavat, Vol. III, p. 325. 93. The Vayu Purana declares that Moru will re-establish the Kshattriya in the Nineteenth coming Yuga. (See “Five years of Theosophy,” p. 483. “The Moryas and Koothoomi.”) 94. In the Christian religion Gabriel, the Archangel, holding in his hand a spray of water lilies, appears to the Virgin Mary in every picture of the Annunciation. This spray typifying fire and water, or the idea of creation and generation, symbolizes precisely the same idea as the lotus in the hand of the Bodhisat who announces to Maha-Maya, Gautama’s mother, the birth of the world’s Saviour, Buddha. Thus also, Osiris and Horus were represented by the Egyptians constantly in association with the lotus-flower, the two being Sun-gods or Fire (the Holy Ghost being still typified by “tongues of fire”), (Acts). 95. See Sir William Jones’ “Dissertations Relating to Asia.” 96. Lakshmi is Venus — Aphrodite, and, like the latter, she sprang from the froth of the ocean with a lotus in her hand. In the Ramayana she is called Padma. 97. In Esoteric philosophy the Demiurge or Logos, regarded as the Creator, is simply an abstract term, an idea, like “army.” As the latter is the all-embracing term for a body of active forces or working units — soldiers — so is the Demiurge the qualitative compound of a multitude of Creators or Builders. Burnouf, the great Orientalist, has seized the idea perfectly when saying that Brahma does not create the earth, any more than the rest of the universe. “Having evolved himself from the soul of the world, once separated from the first cause, he evaporates with, and emanates all nature out of himself. He does not stand above it, but is mixed up with it; Brahma and the universe form one Being, each particle of which is in its essence Brahma himself, who proceeded out of himself.” 98. In Indian Puranas it is Vishnu, the first, and Brahma, the second logos, or the ideal and practical creators, who are respectively represented, one as manifesting the lotus, the other as issuing from it. 99. Not the “efforts” of the trained psychic faculties of an Initiate into Eastern metaphysics, and the mysteries of creative Nature. It is the profane of the past ages who have degraded the pure ideal of cosmic creation into an emblem of mere human reproduction and sexual functions: it is the esoteric teachings, and the initiates of the Future, whose mission it is, and will be, to redeem and ennoble once more the primitive conception so sadly profaned by its crude and gross application to exoteric dogmas and personations by theological and ecclesiastical religionists. The silent worship of abstract or noumenal Nature, the only divine manifestation, is the one ennobling religion of Humanity. 100. Surely the words of the old Initiate into the primitive mysteries of Christianity, “Know ye not ye are the Temple of God” (I Corinth. iii. 16) could not be applied in this sense to men? The meaning may have been, and was so, undeniably, in the minds of the Hebrew compilers of the Old Testament. And here is the abyss that lies between the symbolism of the New Testament and the Jewish canon. This gulf would have remained and ever widened, had not Christianity — especially and most glaringly the Latin Church — thrown a bridge over it? Modern Popery has now spanned it entirely, by its dogma of the two immaculate conceptions, and the anthropomorphic and at the same time idolatrous character it has conferred upon the Mother of its God. 101. It was so carried only in the Hebrew Bible, and its servile copyist, Christian theology. 102. The same idea is carried out exoterically in the incidents of Egypt. The Lord God tempts sorely Pharaoh and “plagues him with great plagues,” lest the king should escape punishment, and thus afford no pretext for one more triumph to his “Chosen people.” 103. Even to the seven daughters of the Midian priest, who, coming to draw the water, had Moses water their flock, for which service the Midian gives to Moses Zipporah (sippara = the shining wave) as wife (Exod. ii.) All this has the same secret meaning. 104. With the Egyptians it was the resurrection in rebirth after 3,000 years of purification, either in Devachan or “the fields of bliss.” 105. Such “frog-goddesses” may be seen at Bulaq, in the Cairo Museum. For the statement about the Church lamps and inscriptions it is the learned ex-director of the Bulaq Museum, Mr. Gaston Maspero, who must be held responsible. (See his “Guide du Visiteur au Musee de Bulaq,” p. 146.) 106. The goddess [[Trimorphos]] in the statuary of Alcamenes. 107. Ancient Mythology includes ancient Astronomy as well as Astrology. The planets were the hands pointing out, on the dial of our solar system, the hours of certain periodical events. Thus, Mercury was the messenger appointed to keep time during the daily solar and lunar phenomena, and was otherwise connected with the God and Goddess of Light. 108. A caricatured and dwarfed Vedantin notion of Parabrahmam containing within itself the whole Universe as being that boundless Universe itself, and there existing nothing outside of itself. 109. Just as they are to this day in India, the bull of Siva and the cow representing several Sakti — goddesses. 110. Hence the worship of the moon by the Hebrews. 111. “Male and female, created he them.” 112. Because it was too sacred. It is referred to as That in the Vedas: it is the “Eternal Cause,” and cannot, therefore, be spoken of as a “First Cause,” a term implying the absence of any cause, at one time. 113. The Roman Catholics are indebted for the idea of consecrating the month of May to the Virgin, to the pagan Plutarch, who shows that “May is sacred to Maia ([[Maia]]) or Vesta” (Aulus-Gellius, word Maia) — our mother-earth, our nurse and nourisher personified. 114. Thot-Lunus is “Budha-Soma” of India, or “Mercury and the Moon.” 115.
During that period which is absent from the Mosaic books — from the
exile of Eden to the allegorical Flood — the Jews worshipped with
the rest of the Semites Dayanisi
116. The earth flees for her life in the allegory, before Prithu, who pursues her. She assumes the shape of a cow, and, trembling with terror, runs away and hides even in the regions of Brahma. Therefore, it is not our Earth. Again, in every Purana, the calf changes name. In one it is Manu Swayambhuva, in another Indra, in a third the Himavat (Himalayas) itself, while Meru was the milker. This is a deeper allegory than one thinks. 117. His clear realization of it is, that the Egyptians prophesied Jehovah (!) and his incarnated Redeemer (the good serpent), etc., etc.; even to identifying Typhon with the wicked dragon of the garden of Eden, and this passes as serious and sober science. 118. Hathor is the infernal Isis, the goddess pre-eminently of the West or the nether world. 119. This is De Mirville, who proudly confesses the similarity, and he ought to know. 120. Quoted in Mr. G. Massey’s Lecture. 121. The Natural Genesis, by Gerald Massey, Vol. 1, p. 340. 122. For the same reason the division of the principles in man into seven are thus reckoned, as they describe the same circle in the human higher and lower nature. 123. Thus the septenary division is the oldest and preceded the four-fold division. It is the root of archaic classification. 124. One “Day of Brahma” lasting 4,320,000,000 years — multiply this by 365! The Asuras here (no-gods, but demons) are still Suras, gods higher in hierarchy than such secondary gods as are not even mentioned in the Vedas. The duration of the war shows its significance, and that they are only the personified Cosmic powers. It is evidently for sectarian purposes and out of odium theologicum that the illusive form assumed by Vishnu Mayamoha, was attributed in later rearrangements of old texts to Buddha and the Daityas, in the Vishnu Purana, unless it was a fancy of Wilson himself. He also fancied he found an allusion to Buddhism in Bhagavatgita, whereas, as proved by K. T. Telang, he had only confused the Buddhists and the older Charvaka materialists. The version exists nowhere in other Puranas if the inference does, as Professor Wilson claims, in the “Vishnu Purana”; the translation of which, especially of Book iii., ch. xviii., where the reverend Orientalist arbitrarily introduces Buddha, and shows him teaching Buddhism to Daityas — led to another “great war” between himself and Col. Vans Kennedy. The latter charged him publicly with wilfully distorting Puranic texts. “I affirm,” wrote the Colonel at Bombay, in 1840, “that the Puranas do not contain what Professor Wilson has stated is contained in them . . . until such passages are produced I may be allowed to repeat my former conclusions, that Professor Wilson’s opinion, that the Puranas as now extant are compilations made between the eighth and seventeenth centuries (A.D.!) rests solely on gratuitous assumptions and unfounded assertions, and that his reasoning in support of it is either futile, fallacious, contradictory, or improbable.” (See Vishnu Purana, trans. by Wilson, edit. by Fitzedward Hall, Vol. V., Appendix.) 125. This statement belongs to the third War, since the terrestrial continents, seas and rivers are mentioned in connection with it. 126. In Book I., chap. xvii., narrating the story of Prahlada — the Son of Hiranyakasipu, the Puranic Satan, the great enemy of Vishnu, and the King of the three worlds — into whose heart Vishnu entered. 127. This ignorance is truly and beautifully expressed in the praise of the Yogins to Brahma, “the upholder of the earth” (in Book I., chap. iv. of V. P.), 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!” 128. “There was a day when the Sons of God came before the Lord, and Satan came with his brothers, also before the Lord” (Job ii., Abyss., Ethiopic text). 129. Wilson’s opinion that the “Vishnu Purana” is a production of our era, and that in its present form it is not earlier than between the VIIIth and the XVIIth (!!) century, is absurd beyond noticing. 130. See “Magazine” for April, 1797. 131. [[Etoi men protista chaos genet; geneto]] being considered in antiquity as meaning “was generated” and not simply was. (See “Taylor’s Introd. to the Parmenides of Plato,” p. 260.) 132. It is the “bound” confused with the “Infinite,” that Kapila overwhelms with sarcasms in his disputations with the Brahman Yogis, who claim in their mystical visions to see the “Highest One.” 133. See T. Taylor’s article in his Monthly Magazine quoted in the Platonist, edited by T. M. Johnson, F.T.S., Osceola, Missouri. (Feb. Number of 1887.) 134. Vach — the “melodious cow, who milks sustenance and water,” and yields us “nourishment and sustenance” as described in Rig-Veda. 135. From the Masonic Review for June, 1886. 136. Called, in the Bhagavat-Gita, Daiviprakriti. 137. Objective — in the world of Maya, of course; still as real as we are. 138. “In the course of cosmic manifestation, this Daiviprakriti, instead of being the mother of the Logos, should, strictly speaking, be called his daughter.” (“Notes on the Bhagavat-Gita,” p. 305, Theosophist.) 139. The wise men, like Stanley Jevons amongst the moderns, who invented the scheme which makes the incomprehensible assume a tangible form, could only do so by resorting to numbers and geometrical figures. 140. This connects Vach 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 Buddhism. 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. 141. Pranava, like Om, is a mystic term pronounced by the Yogis during meditation; of the terms called, according to exoteric Commentators, Vyahritis, or “Om, Bhur, Bhuva, Swar” (Om, earth, sky, heaven) — Pranava is the most sacred, perhaps. They are pronounced with breath suppressed. See Manu II. 76-81, and Mitakshara commenting on the Yajnavahkya-Suriti, i. 23. But the esoteric explanation goes a great deal further. 142. It is this trinity that is meant by the “three steps of Vishnu”; which means: (Vishnu being considered as the Infinite in exotericism) — that from the Parabrahm issued Mulaprakriti, Purusha (the Logos), and Prakriti: the four forms (with itself, the synthesis) of Vach. And in the Kabala — Ain-Soph, Shekinah, Adam Kadmon and Sephirah, the four — or the three emanations being distinct — yet one. 143. Chaldean Book of Numbers. In the current Kabala the name Jehovah replaces Adam Kadmon. 144. Justin Martyr tells us that, owing to his ignorance of these four sciences, he was rejected by the Pythagoreans as a candidate for admission into their school. 145.
31415, or [[pi]]. The synthesis, or the Host unified in the
Logos and the Point called in Roman Catholicism the “Angel of the
Face,” and in Hebrew
146. Appearing at the beginning of Cycles, as also of every sidereal year (of 25,868 years) therefore the Kabeiri or Kabarim received their name in Chaldea, as it means the measures of Heaven from Kob — measure of, and Urim — heavens. 147. This Egyptian word Naja reminds one a good deal of the Indian Naga, the Serpent-God. Brahma and Siva and Vishnu are all crowned with, and connected with Nagas — a sign of their cyclic and cosmic character. 148.
Says the translator of Avicebron’s “Qabbalah” (Mr. Isaac
Myer, LL.B., of Philadelphia) of this “Sum Total”: “The letter of
Kether is
149. The statement will, of course, be found preposterous and absurd, and simply laughed at. But if one believes in the final submersion of Atlantis 850,000 years ago, as taught in “Esoteric Buddhism” (the gradual first sinking having begun during the Eocene age), one has to accept the statement for the so-called Lemuria, the continent of the Third Root Race, first nearly destroyed by combustion, and then submerged. This is what the Commentary says: “The first earth having been purified by the forty-nine fires, her people, born of Fire and Water, could not die . . . etc.; the Second Earth (with its race) disappeared as vapour vanishes in the air . . . the Third Earth had everything consumed on it after the separation, and went down into the lower Deep (the Ocean). This was twice eighty-two cyclic years ago.” Now a cyclic year is what we call a sidereal year, and is founded on the precession of the equinoxes, or 25,868 years each, and this is equal, therefore, in all to 4,242,352 years. More details will be found in the text of Book II. Meanwhile, this doctrine is embodied in the “Kings of Edom.” 150. The same reserve is found in the Talmud and in every national system of religion whether monotheistic or exoterically polytheistical. From the superb religious poem by the Kabalist Rabbi Solomon Ben Gabirol in “the Kether Malchuth,” we select a few definitions given in the prayers of Kippur. . . . “Thou art one, the beginning of all numbers, and the foundation of all edifices; Thou art One, and in the secret of Thy unity the wisest of men are lost, because they know it not. Thou art one, and Thy Unity is never diminished, never extended, and cannot be changed. Thou art one, but not as an element of numeration; for Thy Unity admits not of multiplication, change or form. Thou art existent; but the understanding and vision of mortals cannot attain to thy existence, nor determine for thee the Where, the How, and the Why. Thou art Existent, but in thyself alone, there being none other that can exist with thee. Thou art Existent, before all time and without Place. Thou art Existent, and thy existence is so profound and secret that none can penetrate and discover thy secrecy. Thou art Living, but within no time that can be fixed or known; Thou art Living, but not by a spirit or a soul, for Thou art thyself, the soul of all souls,” etc., etc. There is a distance between this Kabalistical Deity and the Biblical Jehovah, the spiteful and revengeful God of Abram, Isaac, and Jacob, who tempted the former and wrestled with the last. No Vedantin but would repudiate such a Parabrahm. 151. Rev. Joseph Edkins “On Cosmogony,” p. 320. And very wisely they have acted. 152. If he rejected it, it was on the ground of what he calls the changes — in other words, rebirths — of man, and constant transformations. He denied immortality to the personality of man — as we do — not to man. 153. He may be laughed at by the Protestants; but the Roman Catholics have no right to mock him, without becoming guilty of blasphemy and sacrilege. For it is over 200 years since Confucius was canonized as a Saint in China by the Roman Catholics, who have thereby obtained many converts among the ignorant Confucianists. 154. The animals regarded as sacred in the Bible are not few: the goat for one, the Azaz-el, or God of Victory. As Aben Ezra says: “If thou art capable of comprehending the mystery of Azazel, thou wilt learn the mystery of His (God’s) name, for it has similar associates in Scriptures. I will tell thee by allusion one portion of the mystery; when thou shalt have thirty three years of age thou wilt comprehend me.” So with the mystery of the tortoise. Rejoicing over the poetry of Biblical metaphors, associating with the name of Jehovah, “incandescent stones,” “sacred animals,” etc., and quoting from the Bible de Vence (Vol. XIX. p. 318) a French pious writer says: “Indeed all of them are Elohim like their God; for, these Angels assume, through a holy usurpation, the very divine name of Jehovah each time they represent him.” (Pneumatologie, Vol. II., p. 294). No one ever doubted that the name must have been assumed, when under the guise of the Infinite, One Incognizable, the Malachim (messengers) descended to eat and drink with men. But if the Elohim (and even lower Beings), assuming the god-name, were and are still worshipped, why should the same Elohim be called devils, when appearing under the names of other Gods? 155. 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? (Matt. xxiv. 28); and in the Old Testament it is called unclean; that 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 as an exemplar of wisdom to follow, 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. 156. Bryant is right in saying “Druid Bardesin says of Noah that when he came out of the ark (the birth of a new cycle), after a stay therein of a year and a day, that 364 + 1 = 365 days, he was congratulated by Neptune upon his birth from the waters of the Flood, who wished him a happy New Year.” The “Year,” or cycle, esoterically, was the new race of men born from woman after the separation of the sexes, which is the secondary meaning of the allegory: its primary meaning being the beginning of the Fourth Round, or the new Creation. 157. Unpubl. MSS. (But see “Source of Measures.”) 158. Origen contra Celsum, b. vi., chap. xxii. 159. The text says: “And the fourth creation is here the primary, for things immovable are emphatically known as primary.” (See Fitzedward Hall’s Corrections.) 160. How can “divinities” have been created after the animals? The esoteric meaning of the expression “animals” is the germs of all animal life including man. Man is called a sacrificial animal, and an animal that is the only one among animal creation who sacrifices to the gods. Moreover, by the “sacred animals,” the 12 signs of the zodiac are often meant in the sacred texts, as already stated. 161. Qabbalah, p. 415-16, by T. Myer, Philadelphia. 162. Superior to the Spirits or “Heavens” of the Earth only. 163. See “Isis Unveiled,” Vol. II., p. 183. 164. See also King’s Gnostics. Other sects regarded Jehovah as Ildabaoth himself King identifies him with Saturn. 165. Elsewhere, however, the identity is revealed. See supra, the quotation from Ibn-Gabirol and his 7 heavens, 7 earths, etc. 166. This must not be confused with precosmic “Darkness,” the Divine all. 167. The nous of the Greeks, which is (spiritual or divine) mind, or mens, “Mahat,” operates upon matter in the same way; it “enters into” and agitates it: “Spiritus intus alit,
totamque infusa per artus, In the Phoenician Cosmogony, “Spirit mixing with its own principles gives rise to creation” also; (Brucker, I., 240); the Orphic triad shows an identical doctrine: for there Phanes (or Eros), Chaos, containing crude undifferentiated Cosmic matter, and Chronos (time), are the three co-operating principles, emanating from the Unknowable and concealed point, which produce the work of “Creation.” And they are the Hindu Purusha (phanes), Pradhana (chaos), and Kala (Chronos) or time. The good Professor Wilson does not like the idea, as no Christian clergyman, however liberal, would. He remarks that “as presently explained,. the mixture (of the Supreme Spirit or Soul) is not mechanical; it is an influence or effect exerted upon intermediate agents which produce effects.” The sentence in Vishnu Purana: “As fragrance affects the mind from its proximity merely, and not from any immediate operation upon mind itself, so the Supreme influenced the elements of creation,” the reverend and erudite Sanscritist correctly explains . . . : “As perfumes do not delight the mind by actual contact, but by the impression they make upon the sense of smelling, which communicates it to the mind,” adding: “The entrance of the Supreme into spirit, as well as matter, is less intelligible than the view elsewhere taken of it, as the infusion of spirit, identified with the supreme, into Prakriti or matter alone.” He prefers the verse in Padma Purana: “He who is called the male (spirit) of Prakriti . . . that same divine Vishnu entered into Prakriti.” This “view” is certainly more akin to the plastic character of certain verses in the Bible concerning the Patriarchs, such as Lot (Gen. xix., 34-38) and even Adam (iv., v. 1), and others of a still more anthropomorphic nature. But it is just that which led Humanity to Phallicism, Christian religion being honeycombed with it, from the first chapter of Genesis down to the Revelation. 168. All these sentences are quoted from “Vishnu Purana,” Book I., ch. ii. 169. Vishnu is both Bhutesa, “Lord of the Elements, and all things,” and Viswarupa, “Universal Substance or Soul.” 170. See concerning their post-types, the Treatise written by Trithemius (Agrippa’s master, 16th cent.). “Concerning the seven secondaries, or Spiritual Intelligences, who, after God, actuate the Universe;” giving out, besides secret cycles and several prophecies, certain facts and beliefs about the Genii, or the Elohim, which preside over and guide the septenary stages of the World’s Course. 171. From the first, the Orientalists have found themselves beset by great difficulties with regard to any possible order in the Puranic Creations. Brahma is very often confused with Brahma, by Wilson, for which he is criticised by his successors. The “Original Sanscrit Texts” are preferred by Mr. Fitzedward Hall for the translation of Vishnu Purana and texts, to those used by Wilson. “Had Professor Wilson enjoyed the advantages which are now at the command of the student of Indian philosophy, unquestionably he would have expressed himself differently,” as said by the editor of his works. This reminds one of the answer given by one of Thomas Taylor’s admirers to those scholars who criticised his translations of Plato. “Thomas Taylor may have had less knowledge of the Greek than his critics have, but he understood Plato far better than they do,” he said. Our present Orientalists disfigure the mystic sense of the Sanskrit texts far more than Wilson ever did, though the latter is undeniably guilty of very gross errors. 172. “The three Creations beginning with Intelligence are elemental, but the six creations which proceed from the series of which Intellect is the first are the work of Brahma” (Vayu-Purana). Here “creations” mean everywhere stages of Evolution. Mahat, “Intellect” or mind (which corresponds with Manas, the former being on the Cosmic, and the latter on the human plane) stands here, too, lower than Buddhi or Supra-divine Intelligence. Therefore, when we read in Linga Purana that “the first Creation was that of Mahat, Intellect being the first in manifestation,” we must refer that (specified) creation to the first evolution of our system or even our Earth, none of the preceding ones being discussed in the Puranas, but only occasionally hinted at. 173. Professor Wilson translates it, as though animals were higher on the scale of “creation” than divinities, or angels, although the truth about the devas is very plainly stated further on. This “creation,” says the text, is both primary (Prakrita) and secondary (Vaikrita). It is the latter, as regards the origin of the gods from Brahma (the personal anthropomorphic creator of our material universe); it is the former (primary) as affecting Rudra, who is the immediate production of the first principle. Rudra is not alone a title of Siva, but embraces agents of creation, angels and men, as will be shown further on. 174. Neither plant nor animal, but an existence between the two. 175. “Created beings” — explains Vishnu Purana — “although they are destroyed (in their individual forms) at the periods of dissolution, yet being affected by the good or evil acts of former existences, are never exempted from their consequences. And when Brahma produces the world anew, they are the progeny of his will . . .” “Collecting his mind into itself (Yoga willing), Brahma creates the four orders of beings, termed gods, demons, progenitors, and MEN” . . . “progenitors” meaning the prototypes and Evolvers of the first Root Race of men. The progenitors are the Pitris, and are of seven classes. They are said in exoteric mythology to be born of Brahma’s side, like Eve from the rib of Adam. 176. “These notions,” remarks Dr. Wilson, “the birth of Rudra and the saints, seem to have been borrowed from the Saivas, and to have been awkwardly engrafted upon the Vaishnava system.” The esoteric meaning ought to have been consulted before venturing such a hypothesis. 177. Parasara, the Vedic Rishi, who received the Vishnu Purana from Pulastya and taught it to Maitreya, is placed by the Orientalists at various epochs. As correctly observed, in the Hindu Class. Dict: — “Speculations as to his era differ widely from 575 B.C. to 1391 B.C., and cannot be trusted.” Quite so; but no less, however, than any other date as assigned by the Sanskritists, so famous in this department of arbitrary fancy. 178. They may indeed mark a “special” or extra creation, since it is they who, by incarnating themselves within the senseless human shells of the two first Root-races, and a great portion of the Third Root-race — create, so to speak, a new race: that of thinking, self-conscious and divine men. 179. “The four Kumaras (are) the mind-born Sons of Brahma. Some specify seven” (H. Class. Dict.). All these seven Vaidhatra, the patronymic of the Kumaras, “the Maker’s Sons,” are mentioned and described in Iswara Krishna’s “Sankhya Karika” with the Commentary of Gaudapadacharya (Sankaracharya’s Paraguru) attached to it. It discusses the nature of the Kumaras, though it refrains from mentioning by name all the seven Kumaras, but calls them instead “the seven sons of Brahma,” which they are, as they are created by Brahma in Rudra. The list of names it gives us is: Sanaka, Sanandana, Sanatana, Kapila, Ribhu, and Panchasikha. But these are again all aliases. 180. So untrustworthy are some translations of the Orientalists that in the French Translation of Hari-Vamsa, it is said “The seven Prajapati, Rudra, Skanda (his son) and Sanat-Kumara proceeded to create beings.” Whereas, as Wilson shows, the original is: “These seven . . . created progeny; and so did Rudra, but Skanda and Sanat Kumara, restraining their power, abstained from creation.” The “four orders of beings” are referred to sometimes as “Ambhamsi,” which Wilson renders: “literally Waters,” and believes it “a mystic term.” It is one, no doubt; but he evidently failed to catch the real esoteric meaning. “Waters” and “water” stand as the symbol for Akasa, the “primordial Ocean of Space,” on which Narayana, the self-born Spirit, moves: reclining on that which is its progeny (See Manu). “Water is the body of Nara; thus we have heard the name of water explained. Since Brahma rests on the water, therefore he is termed Narayana” (Linga, Vayu, and Markandeya Puranas) “. . . Pure, Purusha created the waters pure . . .” at the same time Water is the third principle in material Kosmos, and the third in the realm of the Spiritual: Spirit of Fire, Flame, Akasa, Ether, Water, Air, Earth, are the cosmic, sidereal, psychic, spiritual and mystic principles, pre-eminently occult, in every plane of being. “Gods, Demons, Pitris and men,” are the four orders of beings to whom the term Ambhamsi is applied (in the Vedas it is a synonym of gods): because they are all the product of waters (mystically), of the Akasic Ocean, and of the Third Principle in nature. Pitris and men on earth are the transformations (rebirths) of gods and demons (Spirits) on a higher plane. Water is, in another sense, the feminine principle. Venus Aphrodite is the personified Sea, and the mother of the god of love, the generator of all the gods as much as the Christian Virgin Mary is Mare (the sea), the mother of the Western God of Love, Mercy and Charity. If the student of Esoteric philosophy thinks deeply over the subject he is sure to find out all the suggestiveness of the term Ambhamsi, in its manifold relations to the Virgin in Heaven, to the Celestial Virgin of the Alchemists, and even to the “Waters of Grace” of the modern Baptist. 181. Siva-Rudra is the Destroyer, as Vishnu is the preserver; and both are the regenerators of spiritual as well as of physical nature. To live as a plant, the seed must die. To live as a conscious entity in the Eternity, the passions and senses of man must first die before his body does. “To live is to die and to die is to live,” has been too little understood in the West. Siva, the destroyer, is the creator and the Saviour of Spiritual man, as he is the good gardener of nature. He weeds out the plants, human and cosmic, and kills the passions of the physical, to call to life the perceptions of the spiritual, man. 182. Movers: “Phoinizer,” 282. 183. Weber: “Akad. Vorles,” 213, 214, etc. 184. The Gehenna of the Bible was a valley near Jerusalem, where the monotheistic Jews immolated their children to Moloch, if the prophet Jeremiah is to be believed on his word. The Scandinavian Hel or Hela was a frigid region — again Kamaloka — and the Egyptian Amenti a place of purification. (See Isis Unveiled, Vol. II., p. 11.) 185. We cannot be taken to task by the Protestants for interpreting the verse from the Corinthians as we do; for, if the translation in the English Bible is made ambiguous, it is not so in the original texts, and the Roman Catholic Church accepts the words of the Apostle in their true sense. For a proof see the Commentaries on St. Paul’s Epistles, by St. John Chrysostom “directly inspired by the Apostle,” and “who wrote under his dictation,” as we are assured by the Marquis de Mirville, whose works are approved by Rome. And St. Chrysostom says, commenting on that special verse, “And, though there are (in fact) they who are called gods . . . . — for it seems, there are really several gods — withal, and for all that, the God-principle and the Superior God ceasing to remain essentially one and indivisible.” . . . Thus spoke the old Initiates also, knowing that the worship of minor gods could never affect the “God Principle” (See de Mirville, “Des Esprits,” vol. ii., 322). 186. Cosmolatry, p. 415.
|
.
(fiery winged serpents) are no doubt
connected with, and inseparable from, the idea “of the serpent of
eternity — God,” as explained in Kenealy’s Apocalypse. But the word
cherub also meant serpent, in one sense, though its direct meaning
is different; because the Cherubim and the Persian winged
[[gruphes]] “griffins” — the guardians of the golden
mountain — are the same, and their compound name shows their
character, as it is formed of
(kr) circle, and
“aub,” or ob — serpent — therefore, a
“serpent in a circle.” And this settles the phallic character of the
Brazen Serpent, and justifies Hezekiah for breaking it. (See II.
Kings, 18, 4). Verbum sat. sapienti.
“the Ruler of Men,” the “Judge,” or the
“who is (like unto, or the same) as God” —
the manifested representation.
(Yod), of Binah
(Heh), together YaH, the feminine Name;
the third letter, that of Hokhmah, is
(Vau), making together,
YHV of
YHVH, the Tetragrammaton, and really the
complete symbols of its efficaciousness. The last
(Heh) of this Ineffable Name being
always applied to the Six Lower and the last, together the
Seven remaining Sephiroth.” . . . Thus the Tetragrammaton is
holy only in its abstract synthesis. As a quaternary containing the
lower Seven Sephiroth, it is phallic.