Chapter XIV: Part I: Cosmic Evolution (9)

(_g_) The _Sixth_ and _Seventh Orders_ partake of the lower qualities of the Quaternary. They are conscious ethereal Entities, as invisible as Ether, which are shot out, like the boughs of a tree, from the first central Group of the Four, and shoot out in their turn numberless side Groups, the lower of which are the Nature‐Spirits, or Elementals, of countless kinds and varieties; from the formless and unsubstantial—the ideal Thoughts of their creators—down to atomic, though, to human perception, invisible organisms. The latter are considered as the “spirits of atoms,” for they are the first remove (backwards) from the physical atom—sentient, if not intelligent creatures. They are all subject to Karma, and have to work it out through every cycle. For, as the Doctrine teaches, there are no such privileged Beings in the Universe, whether in our own or in other Systems, in the outer or the inner Worlds,(351) as the Angels of the Western Religion and the Judean. A Dhyân Chohan has to become one; he cannot be born or appear suddenly on the plane of life as a full‐blown Angel. The Celestial Hierarchy of the present Manvantara will find itself transferred, in the next Circle of Life, into higher superior Worlds, and will make room for a new Hierarchy, composed of the elect ones of our mankind. Being is an endless cycle within the One Absolute Eternity, wherein move numberless inner cycles finite and conditioned. Gods, created as such, would evince no personal merit in being Gods. Such a class of Beings—perfect only by virtue of the special immaculate nature inherent in them—in the face of suffering and struggling humanity, and even of the lower creation, would be the symbol of an eternal injustice quite Satanic in character, an ever present crime. It is an anomaly and an impossibility in Nature. Therefore the “Four” and the “Three” have to incarnate as all other beings have. This Sixth Group, moreover, remains almost inseparable from man, who draws from it all but his highest and lowest principles, or his spirit and body; the five middle human principles being the very essence of those Dhyânis. Paracelsus calls them the Flagæ; the Christians, the Guardian Angels; the Occultists, the Ancestors, the Pitris. They are the Six‐fold Dhyân Chohans, having the six spiritual Elements in the composition of their bodies—in fact, men, minus the physical body.

Alone, the Divine Ray, the Âtman, proceeds directly from the One. When asked how this can be? How is it possible to conceive that these “Gods,” or Angels, can be at the same time their own emanations and their personal selves? Is it in the same sense as in the material world, where the son is, in one way, his father, being his blood, the bone of his bone and the flesh of his flesh? To this the Teachers answer: Verily it is so. But one has to go deep into the mystery of Being, before one can fully comprehend this truth.

2. THE ONE RAY MULTIPLIES THE SMALLER RAYS. LIFE PRECEDES FORM, AND LIFE SURVIVES THE LAST ATOM.(352) THROUGH THE COUNTLESS RAYS THE LIFE‐RAY, THE ONE, LIKE A THREAD THROUGH MANY BEADS.(353)

This shloka expresses the conception—a purely Vedântic one, as already explained elsewhere—of a Life‐Thread, Sûtrâtmâ, running through successive generations. How, then, can this be explained? By resorting to a simile, to a familiar illustration, though necessarily imperfect, as all our available analogies must be. Before resorting to it, however, I would ask, whether it seems unnatural, least of all “supernatural,” to any one of us, when we consider the process of the growth and development of a fœtus into a healthy baby weighing several pounds? Evolving from what? From the segmentation of an infinitesimally small ovum and a spermatozoön! And afterwards we see the baby develop into a six‐foot man! This refers to the atomic and physical expansion, from the microscopically small into something exceedingly large; from the unseen, to the naked eye, into the visible and objective. Science has provided for all this; and, I dare say, her theories, embryological, biological and physiological, are correct enough, so far as exact observation of the material goes. Nevertheless, the two chief difficulties of the science of Embryology—namely, what are the forces at work in the formation of the fœtus, and the _cause_ of “hereditary transmission” of likeness, physical, moral or mental—have never been properly answered; nor will they ever be solved, till the day when Scientists condescend to accept the Occult theories. But if this physical phenomenon astonishes no one, except in so far as it puzzles the Embryologists, why should our intellectual and inner growth, the evolution of the Human‐Spiritual to the Divine‐Spiritual, be regarded as, or seem, more impossible than the other?

The Materialists and the Evolutionists of the Darwinian school would be ill‐advised to accept the newly worked‐out theories of Professor Weissmann, the author of _Beiträge zur Descendenzlehre_, with regard to one of the two mysteries of Embryology, as above specified, which he seems to think he has solved; for, when it is fully solved, Science will have stepped into the domain of the truly Occult, and passed for ever out of the realm of transformation, as taught by Darwin. The two theories are irreconcilable, from the standpoint of Materialism. Regarded from that of the Occultists, however, the new theory solves all these mysteries. Those who are not acquainted with the discovery of Professor Weissmann—at one time a fervent Darwinist—ought to hasten to repair the deficiency. The German embryologist‐philosopher—stepping over the heads of the Greek Hippocrates and Aristotle, right back into the teachings of the old Âryans—shows one infinitesimal cell, out of millions of others at work in the formation of an organism, alone and unaided determining, by means of constant segmentation and multiplication, the correct image of the future man, or animal, in its physical, mental and psychic characteristics. It is this cell which impresses on the face and form of the new individual the features of the parents, or of some distant ancestor; it is this cell, again, which transmits to him the intellectual and mental idiosyncracies of his sires, and so on. This Plasm is the immortal portion of our bodies, developing by means of a process of successive assimilations. Darwin’s theory, viewing the embryological cell as the essence or extract from all other cells, is set aside; it is incapable of accounting for hereditary transmission. There are but two ways of explaining the mystery of heredity: either the substance of the germinal cell is endowed with the faculty of crossing the whole cycle of transformations that lead to the construction of a separate organism, and then to the reproduction of identical germinal cells; or, _these germinal cells do not have their genesis at all in the body of the individual, but proceed directly from the ancestral germinal cell passed from father to son through long generations_. It is the latter hypothesis that Weissmann has adopted and worked upon, and it is to this cell that he traces the immortal portion of man. So far, so good; and when this almost correct theory is accepted, how will Biologists explain the first appearance of this everlasting cell? Unless man “grew” like the immortal “Topsy,” and was not born at all, but fell from the clouds, how was that embryological cell generated in him?

Complete the Physical Plasm, mentioned above, the “Germinal Cell” of man with all its material potentialities, with the “Spiritual Plasm,” so to say, or the fluid that contains the five lower principles of the Six‐ principled Dhyâni—and you have the secret, if you are spiritual enough to understand it.

Now to the promised simile.

_When the seed of the animal man is cast into the soil of the animal woman, that seed cannot germinate unless it has been fructified by the five virtues [the fluid of, or the emanation from, the principles] of the Six‐fold Heavenly Man. Wherefore the Microcosm is represented as a Pentagon, within the Hexagon Star, the Macrocosm._(_354_)

_The functions of Jiva on this Earth are of a five‐fold character. In the mineral atom, it is connected with the lowest principles of the Spirits of the Earth (the Six‐fold Dhyânis); in the vegetable particle, with their __ second—the Prâna (Life); in the animal, with all these plus the third and the fourth; in man, the germ must receive the fruitage of all the five. Otherwise he will be born no higher than an animal_.(355)

Thus in man alone the Jîva is complete. As to his seventh principle, it is but one of the Beams of the Universal Sun, for each rational creature receives the temporary loan only of that which has to return to its source. As to his physical body, it is shaped by the lowest terrestrial Lives, through physical, chemical and physiological evolution; “the Blessed Ones have nought to do with the purgations of matter,” says the Kabalah in the Chaldean _Book of Numbers_.

It comes to this: Mankind, in its first prototypal, shadowy form, is the offspring of the Elohim of Life, or Pitris; in its qualitative and physical aspect, it is the direct progeny of the “Ancestors,” the lowest Dhyânis, or Spirits of the Earth; for its moral, psychic and spiritual nature, it is indebted to a Group of divine Beings, the name and characteristics of which will be given in Volume II. Collectively, men are the handiwork of Hosts of various Spirits; distributively, the tabernacles of those Hosts; and occasionally and individually, the vehicles of some of them. In our present all‐material Fifth Race, the earthly Spirit of the Fourth is still strong in us; but we are approaching the time when the pendulum of evolution will direct its swing decidedly upwards, bringing Humanity back on a parallel line with the primitive Third Root‐Race in spirituality. During its childhood, mankind was wholly composed of that Angelic Host, who were the indwelling Spirits that animated the monstrous and gigantic tabernacles of clay of the Fourth Race, built by and composed of countless myriads of Lives, as our bodies are also now. This sentence will be explained later on in the present Commentary. Science, dimly perceiving the truth, may find bacteria and other infinitesimals in the human body, and see in them only occasional and abnormal visitors, to which diseases are attributed. Occultism—which discerns a Life in every atom and molecule, whether in a mineral or human body, in air, fire or water—affirms that our whole body is built of such Lives; the smallest bacterium under the microscope being to them in comparative size like an elephant to the tiniest infusoria.

The “tabernacles” mentioned above have improved in texture and symmetry of form, growing and developing with the Globe that bears them; but the physical improvement has taken place at the expense of the spiritual Inner Man and of Nature. The three middle principles, in earth and man, became with every Race more material; the Soul stepping back to make room for the Physical Intellect; the essence of the Elements becoming the material and composite elements now known.

Man is not, nor could he ever be, the complete product of the “Lord God”; but he _is_ the child of the Elohim, so arbitrarily changed into the singular number and masculine gender. The first Dhyânis, commissioned to “create” man in their image, could only throw off their Shadows, as a delicate model for the Nature Spirits of matter to work upon. Man is, beyond any doubt, formed physically out of the dust of the Earth, but his creators and fashioners were many. Nor can it be said that the “Lord God breathed into his nostrils the Breath of Life,” unless that God is identified with the “One Life,” omnipresent though invisible, and unless the same operation is attributed to “God” on behalf of every “Living Soul,” which is the _Vital_ Soul (Nephesh), and not the Divine Spirit (Ruach) which ensures to man alone a divine degree of immortality, that no animal, as such, could ever attain in this cycle of incarnation. It is owing to the inadequate distinctions made by the Jews, and now by our Western metaphysicians, who are unable to understand, and hence to accept, more than a triune man—Spirit, Soul, Body—that the “Breath of Life” has been confused with the immortal “Spirit.” This applies also directly to the Protestant theologians, who in translating a certain verse in the Fourth Gospel(356) have entirely perverted its meaning. This mistranslation runs, “the _wind_ bloweth where it listeth,” instead of “the _spirit_ goeth where it willeth,” as in the original, and also in the translation of the Greek Eastern Church.

The learned and very philosophical author of _New Aspects of Life_ would impress upon his reader that the Nephesh Chiah (Living Soul), according to the Hebrews:

Proceeded from, or was produced by, the infusion of the Spirit or
Breath of Life into the quickening body of man, and was to
supersede and take the place of that Spirit in the thus
constituted Self, so that the Spirit passed into, was lost sight
of, and disappeared in the Living Soul.

The human body, he thinks, ought to be viewed as a matrix in which, and from which, the Soul, which he seems to place higher than the Spirit, is developed. Considered _functionally_ and from the standpoint of activity, the Soul stands undeniably higher, in this finite and conditioned world of Mâyâ. The Soul, he says, “is ultimately produced from the animated body of man.” Thus the author identifies “Spirit” (Âtmâ) with the “Breath of Life” simply. The Eastern Occultists will demur to this statement, for it is based on the erroneous conception that Prâna and Âtmâ, or Jîvâtmâ, are one and the same thing. The author supports the argument, by showing that with the ancient Hebrews, Greeks, and even Latins, Ruach, Pneuma and Spiritus meant Wind—with the Jews undeniably, and with the Greeks and Romans very probably; the Greek word Anemos (Wind) and the Latin Animus (Soul) having a suspicious relation.

This is very far fetched. But a legitimate battle‐field for deciding this question is hardly to be found, since Dr. Pratt seems to be a practical, matter‐of‐fact metaphysician, a kind of Kabalist‐Positivist, whereas the Eastern metaphysicians, especially the Vedântins, are all Idealists. The Occultists also are of the extreme Esoteric Vedântin school, and though they call the One Life (Parabrahman) the Great Breath and the Whirlwind, they disconnect the seventh principle entirely from matter, and deny that it has any relation to, or connection with it.

Thus the philosophy of man’s psychic, spiritual and mental relations with his physical functions is in almost inextricable confusion. Neither the old Âryan nor the Egyptian psychology is now properly understood; nor can they be assimilated, without accepting the Esoteric septenary, or, at any rate, the Vedântic quinquepartite division of the human inner principles. Failing which, it will be for ever impossible to understand the metaphysical and purely psychic, and even physiological, relations between the Dhyân Chohans, or Angels, on the one plane, and Humanity on the other. No Eastern (Âryan) Esoteric works are so far published, but we possess the Egyptian papyri, which speak clearly of the seven principles, or the “Seven Souls of Man.” The _Book of the Dead_ gives a complete list of the “transformations” that every Defunct undergoes, while divesting himself, one by one, of all these principles—materialized for the sake of clearness into ethereal entities or bodies. We must, moreover, remind those who try to show that the Ancient Egyptians did not teach Reïncarnation, that the “Soul” (the Ego or Self) of the Defunct is said to be living in Eternity: it is immortal, “coëval with, and disappearing with, the Solar Boat,” that is, for the Cycle of Necessity. This “Soul” _emerges_ from the Tiaou, the Realm of the _Cause of Life_, and joins the living on Earth by _day_, to return to Tiaou every _night_. This expresses the periodical existences of the Ego.(357)

The Shadow, the Astral Form, is annihilated, “devoured by the Uræus,”(358) the Manes will be annihilated; the two Twins (the Fourth and Fifth Principles) will be scattered; but the Soul‐Bird, “the Divine Swallow, and the Uræus of Flame” (Manas and Âtmâ‐Buddhi) will live in the eternity, for they are their mother’s husbands.

Another suggestive analogy between the Âryan, or Brâhmanical, and the Egyptian Esotericism. The former call the Pitris the “Lunar Ancestors” of men, and the Egyptians make of the Moon‐God, Taht‐Esmun, the first human ancestor.

This Moon‐God “expressed the Seven nature‐powers that were prior
to himself, and were summed up in him as his seven souls, of which
he was the manifestor as the Eighth One. [Hence the eighth
sphere.]... The seven rays of the Chaldean ... Heptakis or Iao, on
the Gnostic stones, indicate the same septenary of souls.... The
first form of the mystical Seven was seen to be figured in heaven,
by the seven large stars of the Great Bear, the constellation
assigned by the Egyptians to the Mother of Time, and of the seven
Elemental Powers.”(359)

As well known to every Hindû, this same constellation represents in India the Seven Rishis, and is called Riksha, and Chitrashikandinas.

Like alone produces like. The Earth gives Man his body, the Gods (Dhyânis) give him his five inner principles, the psychic Shadow, of which these Gods are often the animating principle. Spirit (Âtman) is one, and indiscrete. It is not in the Tiaou.

For what is the Tiaou? The frequent allusion to it in the _Book of the Dead_ contains a mystery. Tiaou is the path of the Night‐Sun, the inferior hemisphere, or the infernal region of the Egyptians, placed by them on the _concealed side of the Moon_. The human being, in their Esotericism, came out from the Moon—a triple mystery, astronomical, physiological and psychical, at once; he crossed the whole cycle of existence, and then returned to his birth‐place, before issuing from it again. Thus the Defunct is shown arriving in the West, receiving his judgment before Osiris, resurrecting as the God Horus, and circling round the sidereal heavens, which is an allegorical assimilation to Ra, the Sun; then having crossed the Noot, the Celestial Abyss, returning once more to Tiaou; an assimilation to Osiris, who, as the God of life and reproduction, inhabits the Moon. Plutarch(360) shows the Egyptians celebrating a festival called “The Ingress of Osiris into the Moon.” In the _Ritual_,(361) life is promised after death; and the renovation of life is placed under the patronage of Osiris‐Lunus, because the Moon was the symbol of life‐ renewals or reïncarnations, owing to its growth, waning, dying, and reäppearance every month. In the _Dankmoe_,(362) it is said: “O Osiris‐ Lunus, that renews to thee thy renewal.” And Sabekh says to Seti I:(363) “Thou renewest thyself as the God Lunus, when a babe.” It is still better explained in a Louvre papyrus:(364) “Couplings and conceptions abound when he [Osiris‐Lunus] is seen in heaven on that day.” Says Osiris: “O sole radiant beam of the Moon! I issue from the circulating multitudes [of stars].... Open me the Tiaou, for Osiris N. I will issue by day to do what I have to do amongst the living”(365)—_i.e._, to produce conceptions.

Osiris was “God manifest in generation,” because the ancients knew, far better than the moderns, the real occult influences of the lunar body upon the mysteries of conception. In the oldest systems we find the Moon always male. Thus Soma, with the Hindûs, is a kind of sidereal Don Juan, a “King,” and the father, albeit illegitimate, of Budha—Wisdom. This relates to Occult Knowledge, a wisdom gathered through a thorough acquaintance with lunar mysteries, including those of sexual generation. And later, when the Moon became connected with the female Goddesses, with Diana, Isis, Artemis, Juno, etc., this connection was also due to a thorough knowledge of physiology and female nature, physical as much as psychic.

If, instead of being taught in Sunday Schools useless lessons from the _Bible_, the armies of the ragged and poor were taught Astrology—so far, at any rate, as the occult properties of the Moon and its hidden influences on generation are concerned—then, there would be little need to fear increase of the population, or to resort to the questionable literature of the Malthusians for its arrest. For it is the Moon and her conjunctions that regulate conceptions, and every Astrologer in India knows it. During the previous Races, and at least at the beginning of the present one, those who indulged in marital relations during certain lunar phases that made those relations sterile, were regarded as sorcerers and sinners. But now even these sins of old, which arose from the abuse of Occult knowledge, would appear preferable to the crimes of to‐day, which are perpetrated because of the complete ignorance of such Occult influences.

But, primarily, the Sun and Moon were the only visible and, by their effects, so to say, _tangible_, psychic and physiological deities—the Father and the Son—while Space or Air in general, or that expanse of heaven called Noot by the Egyptians, was the concealed Spirit or Breath of the two. The Father and Son were interchangeable in their functions, and worked together harmoniously in their effects upon terrestrial nature and humanity; hence they were regarded as _one_, though _two_ as personified Entities. They were both males, and both had their distinct though collaborative work in the causative generation of humanity. So much from the astronomical and cosmic standpoints, viewed and expressed in symbolical language, which became in our last races theological and dogmatic. But behind this veil of cosmic and astrological symbols, there were the occult mysteries of anthropography and the primeval genesis of man. And in this, no knowledge of symbols, or even the key to the post‐ diluvian symbolical language of the Jews, will or can help, save only with reference to that which has been laid down in national scriptures for exoteric uses; the sum of which, however cleverly veiled, was but the smallest portion of the real primitive history of each people, and often, moreover, as in the Hebrew Scriptures, related merely to the terrestrial human, and not to the divine life of that nation. That psychic and spiritual element belonged to the MYSTERIES and INITIATION. There were things never recorded in scrolls, but which, as in Central Asia, were engraved on rocks and in subterranean crypts.

Nevertheless, there was a time when the whole world was “of one lip and of one knowledge,” and man knew more of his origin than he does now; and thus knew that the Sun and Moon, however large a part they may play in the constitution, growth and development of the human body, were not the direct causative agents of his appearance on Earth; for these agents, in truth, are the living and intelligent Powers which the Occultists call Dhyân Chohans.

As to this, a very learned admirer of the Jewish Esotericism tells us that:

The _Kabalah_ says expressly that Elohim is a “general
abstraction”; what we call in mathematics “a constant
coëfficient,” or a “general function,” entering into all
construction, not particular; that is, by the general ratio 1 to
31415, the [Astro‐Dhyânic and] Elohistic figures.

To this the Eastern Occultist replies: Quite so; they are an abstraction to our physical senses. To our spiritual perceptions, however, and to our inner spiritual eye, the Elohim, or Dhyânis, are no more an abstraction than our soul and spirit are to us. Reject the one and you reject the other, since that which is the _surviving_ Entity _in us_, is partly the direct emanation from, and partly those celestial Entities _themselves_. One thing is certain; the Jews were perfectly acquainted with sorcery and various maleficent forces: but, with the exception of some of their great prophets and seers like Daniel and Ezekiel—Enoch belonging to a far distant race, as a generic character, and not to any nation but to all—they knew little of, nor would they deal with, the real divine Occultism; their national character being averse to anything which had no direct bearing upon their own ethnical, tribal and individual benefits—witness their own prophets, and the curses thundered by them against the “stiff‐necked race.” But even the _Kabalah_ plainly shows the direct relation between the Sephiroth, or Elohim, and men.

Therefore, when it is proved to us that the Kabalistic identification of Jehovah with Binah, a female Sephira, has still another, a sub‐occult, meaning in it, then and then only will Occultists be ready to pass the palm of perfection to the Kabalist. Until then, it is asserted that, as Jehovah, in the abstract sense of a “one living God,” is a single number, a metaphysical figment, and a reality only when put in his proper place as an emanation and a Sephira—we have a right to maintain that the _Zohar_, as witnessed by the _Book of Numbers_, at any rate, gave out originally, before the Christian Kabalists had disfigured it, and still gives out, the same doctrine that we do; that is, it makes Man emanate, not from one Celestial Man, but from a Septenary Group of Celestial Men, or Angels, just as in _Pymander, the Thought Divine_.

3. WHEN THE ONE BECOMES TWO, THE THREE‐FOLD APPEARS (_a_). THE THREE ARE(366) ONE; AND IT IS OUR THREAD, O LANOO, THE HEART OF THE MAN‐PLANT, CALLED SAPTAPARNA (_b_).

(_a_) “When the One becomes Two, the Three‐fold appears”: to wit, when the One Eternal drops its reflection into the region of Manifestation, that reflection, the Ray, differentiates the Water of Space; or, in the words of the _Book of the Dead_: “Chaos ceases, through the effulgence of the Ray of Primordial Light dissipating total darkness, by the help of the great magic power of the Word of the [Central] Sun.” Chaos becomes male‐ female, and Water, incubated by Light, and the Three‐fold Being issues as its “First‐born.” “Ra [or Osiris‐Ptah] creates his own Limbs [like Brahmâ], by creating the Gods destined to personify his phases,” during the Cycle.(367) The Egyptian Ra, issuing from the Deep, is the Divine Universal Soul in its manifested aspect, and so is Nârâyana, the Purusha, “concealed in Âkâsha, and present in Ether.”

This is the metaphysical explanation, and refers to the very beginning of Evolution, or, as we would rather say, of Theogony. The meaning of the Stanza, when explained from another standpoint in its reference to the mystery of man and his origin, is still more difficult to comprehend. In order to form a clear conception of what is meant by the One becoming Two, and then being transformed into the Three‐fold, the student has to make himself thoroughly acquainted with what we call Rounds. If he refers to _Esoteric Buddhism_—the first attempt to sketch out an approximate outline of archaic cosmogony—he will find that by a Round is meant the serial evolution of nascent material Nature, of the seven Globes of our Chain,(368) with their mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms; man being included in the latter and standing at the head of it, during the whole period of a Life‐Cycle, which latter would be called by the Brâhmans a “Day of Brahmâ.” It is, in short, one revolution of the “Wheel” (our Planetary Chain), which is composed of seven Globes, or seven separate “Wheels,” in another sense this time. When evolution has run downward into matter from Globe A to Globe G, it is one Round. In the middle of the fourth revolution, which is our present Round, “Evolution has reached its acme of physical development, crowned its work with the perfect physical man, and, from this point, begins its work spirit‐ward.” All this needs little repetition, as it is well explained in _Esoteric Buddhism_. That which was hardly touched upon, however, and of which the little that was said has misled many, is the origin of man, and it is upon this that a little more light may now be thrown, just enough to make the Stanza more comprehensible, as the process will be fully explained only in its legitimate place, in Volume II.

Now every Round, on the descending scale, is but a repetition in a more concrete form of the Round which preceded it, just as every Globe, down to our Fourth Sphere the actual Earth, is a grosser and more material copy of the more shadowy Sphere which precedes it, each in order, on the three higher planes.(369) On its way upwards, on the ascending arc, Evolution spiritualizes and etherealizes, so to speak, the general nature of all, bringing it on to a level with the plane on which the twin Globe on the opposite arc is placed; the result being, that when the seventh Globe is reached, in whatever Round, the nature of everything that is evolving returns to the condition it was in at its starting point—_plus_, every time, a new and superior degree in the states of consciousness. Thus it becomes clear that the “origin of man,” so‐called, in this our present Round, or Life‐Cycle, on this Planet, must occupy the same place in the same order—save details based on local conditions and time—as in the preceding Round. Again, it must be explained and remembered that, as the work of each Round is said to be apportioned to a different Group of so‐ called Creators, or Architects, so is that of every Globe; that is, it is under the supervision and guidance of special Builders and Watchers—the various Dhyân Chohans.

“Creators” is an incorrect word to use, as no other religion, not even the sect of the Visishthadvaitîs in India, one which anthropomorphizes even Parabrahman, believes in creation _ex nihilo_, as Christians and Jews do, but only in evolution out of preëxisting materials.

The Group of the Hierarchy which is commissioned to “create” men is a special Group, then; yet it evolved shadowy man in this Cycle, just as a higher and still more spiritual Group evolved him in the Third Round. But as it is the Sixth, on the downward scale of Spirituality—the last and Seventh being the Terrestrial Spirits (Elementals), which gradually form, build and condense his physical body—this Sixth Group evolves no more than the future man’s shadowy form, a filmy, hardly visible, transparent copy of themselves. It becomes the task of the Fifth Hierarchy—the mysterious Beings that preside over the constellation Capricornus, Makara, or “Crocodile,” in India and in Egypt—to inform the empty and ethereal animal form, and make of it the Rational Man. This is one of those subjects upon which very little may be said to the general public. It is a Mystery truly, but only to him who is prepared to reject the existence of intellectual and conscious Spiritual Beings in the Universe, and to limit full Consciousness to man alone, and that only as a “function of the brain.” Many are those among the Spiritual Entities, who have incarnated bodily in man, since his first appearance, and who, for all that, still exist as independently as they did before, in the infinitudes of Space.

To put it more clearly, such an invisible Entity may be bodily present on earth without, however, abandoning its status and functions in the supersensuous regions. If this needs explanation, we can do no better than remind the reader of like cases in so‐called “Spiritualism”; though such cases are very rare, at least as regards the nature of the Entity incarnating, or taking temporary possession of a medium. For the so‐called “spirits” that may occasionally possess themselves of the bodies of mediums are not the Monads, or Higher Principles, of disembodied Personalities. Such “spirits” can only be either Elementaries, or—Nirmânakâyas. Just as certain persons, whether by virtue of a peculiar organization, or through the power of acquired mystic knowledge, can be seen in their “double” in one place, while their body is many miles away; so the same thing can occur in the case of superior Beings.

Man, philosophically considered, is, in his outward form, simply an animal, hardly more perfect than his pithecoid‐like ancestor of the Third Round. He is a living Body, not a living Being, since the realization of existence, the “_Ego Sum_,” necessitates self‐consciousness, and an animal can only have direct consciousness, or instinct. This was so well understood by the ancients, that even the Kabalists made of soul and body two Lives, independent of each other. In the _New Aspects of Life_, the author states the Kabalistic teaching:

They held that, functionally, Spirit and Matter, of corresponding
opacity and density, tended to coalesce; and that the resultant
created Spirits, in the disembodied state, were constituted on a
scale in which the differing opacities and transparencies of
elemental or uncreated Spirit were reproduced. And that these
Spirits, in the disembodied state, attracted, appropriated,
digested and assimilated elemental Spirit and elemental Matter
whose condition was conformed to their own.... They therefore
taught that there was a wide difference in the conditions of
created Spirits; and that, in the intimate association between the
Spirit‐world and the world of Matter, the more opaque Spirits, in
the disembodied state, were drawn towards the more dense parts of
the material world, and therefore tended towards the centre of the
Earth, where they found the conditions most suited to their state;
while the more transparent Spirits passed into the surrounding
aura of the planet, the most rarefied finding their home in its
satellite.(370)

This relates exclusively to our Elemental Spirits, and has naught to do with either the Planetary, Sidereal, Cosmic or Inter‐Etheric Intelligent Forces, or “Angels” as they are termed by the Roman Church. The Jewish Kabalists, especially the practical Occultists who dealt with Ceremonial Magic, busied themselves solely with the Spirits of the Planets and the “Elementals” so‐called. Therefore the above covers only a portion of the Esoteric teaching.

The Soul, whose body‐vehicle is the astral, ethereo‐substantial envelope, could die and man be still living on earth. That is to say, the Soul could free itself from and quit the tabernacle for various reasons, such as insanity, spiritual and physical depravity, etc. The possibility of the “Soul”—that is, the eternal Spiritual Ego—dwelling in the unseen worlds, while its body goes on living on Earth, is a preeminently Occult doctrine, especially in Chinese and Buddhist philosophy. Many are the _soulless_ men among us, for the occurrence is found to take place in wicked materialists as well as in persons “who advance in holiness and never turn back.”

Therefore, that which living men (Initiates) can do, the Dhyânis, who have no physical body to hamper them, can do still better. This was the belief of the antediluvians, and it is fast becoming that of modern intellectual society in “Spiritualism,” as well as in the Greek and Roman Churches, which teach the ubiquity of their Angels. The Zoroastrians regarded their Amshaspends as dual entities (Ferouers), applying this duality—in Esoteric philosophy, at any rate—to all the spiritual and invisible denizens of the numberless worlds in space, which are visible to our eye. In a note of Damascius (sixth century) on the Chaldean Oracles, we have ample evidence of the universality of this doctrine, for he says: “In these Oracles, the seven Cosmocratores of the World [‘the World‐Pillars’], mentioned likewise by St. Paul, are double; one set being commissioned to rule the superior worlds, the spiritual and the sidereal, and the other to guide and watch over the worlds of matter.” Such is also the opinion of Jamblichus, who makes an evident distinction between the Archangels and the Archontes.(371)

The above may be applied, of course, to the distinction made between the degrees or orders of Spiritual Beings, and it is in this sense that the Roman Catholic Church tries to interpret and teach the difference; for while the Archangels are in her teaching divine and holy, she denounces their “Doubles” as Devils. But the word Ferouer is not to be understood in this sense, for it means simply the reverse or the opposite side of some attribute or quality. Thus when the Occultist says that the “Demon is the inverse of God”—evil, the reverse of the medal—he does not mean two separate actualities, but two aspects or facets of the same Unity. But the best man living, side by side with an Archangel—as described in Theology—would appear a fiend. Hence a certain reason in depreciating a lower “Double,” immersed far deeper in matter than its original. But still there is as little cause to regard them as Devils, and this is precisely what the Roman Catholics maintain against all reason and logic.

This identity between the Spirit and its material “Double”—in man it is the reverse—explains still better the confusion, already alluded to in this work, in the names and individualities, as well as in the numbers, of the Rishis and Prajâpatis; especially of those of the Satya Yuga and the Mahâbhâratan Period. It also throws additional light on what the Secret Doctrine teaches with regard to the Root‐ and the Seed‐Manus. Not only these Progenitors of our mankind, but every human being, we are taught, has his prototype in the Spiritual Spheres, which prototype is the highest essence of his Seventh Principle. Thus the seven Manus become fourteen, the Root‐Manu being the Prime Cause, and the Seed‐Manu its Effect; and from the Satya Yuga (the first stage) to the Heroic Period, these Manus or Rishis become twenty‐one in number.

(_b_) The concluding sentence of this shloka shows how archaic is the belief and the doctrine that man is seven‐fold in his constitution. The “Thread” of Being, which animates man, and passes through all his Personalities, or Rebirths on this Earth—an allusion to Sûtrâtmâ—the Thread on which moreover all his “Spirits” are strung, is spun from the essence of the Three‐fold, the Four‐fold and the Five‐fold which contain all the preceding. Panchâshikha, agreeably to _Padma Purâna_,(372) is one of the seven _Kumâras_ who go to Shveta Dvîpa to worship Vishnu. We shall see, further on, what connection there is between the “celibate” and chaste Sons of Brahmâ, who refuse “to multiply,” and terrestrial mortals. Meanwhile, it is evident that the “Man‐Plant, Saptaparna,” thus refers to the seven principles, and that man is compared to this seven‐leaved plant, which is so sacred among Buddhists. The Egyptian allegory, in the _Book of the Dead_, that relates to the “reward of the Soul,” is as suggestive of our septenary doctrine as it is poetical. The Deceased is allotted a piece of land in the field of Aanroo, wherein the Manes, the deified shades of the dead, glean, as the harvest they have sown by their actions in life, the corn seven cubits high, which grows in a territory divided into seven and fourteen portions. This corn is the food on which they will live and prosper, or that will kill them, in Amenti, the realm of which the Aanroo‐ field is a domain. For, as said in the hymn,(373) the Deceased is either destroyed therein, or becomes pure spirit for the Eternity, in consequence of the “seven times seventy‐seven lives” passed, or to be passed, on Earth. The idea of the corn reaped as the “fruit of our actions” is very graphic.

4. IT IS THE ROOT THAT NEVER DIES, THE THREE‐TONGUED FLAME OF THE FOUR WICKS (_a_)... THE WICKS ARE THE SPARKS, THAT DRAW FROM THE THREE‐TONGUED FLAME,(374) SHOT OUT BY THE SEVEN, THEIR FLAME; THE BEAMS AND SPARKS OF ONE MOON, REFLECTED IN THE RUNNING WAVES OF ALL THE RIVERS OF THE EARTH(375) (_b_).

(_a_) The “Three‐tongued Flame that never dies” is the immortal spiritual Triad, the Âtmâ, Buddhi and Manas, or rather the fruitage of the last, assimilated by the first two after every terrestrial life. The “Four Wicks,” that go out and are extinguished, are the Quaternary, the four lower principles, including the body.

“I am the Three‐wicked Flame and my Wicks are immortal,” says the Defunct. “I enter into the domain of Sekhem [the God whose hand sows the seed of action produced by the disembodied soul], and I enter the region of the Flames who have destroyed their adversaries [_i.e._, got rid of the sin‐ creating Four Wicks].”(376)

“The Three‐tongued Flame of the Four Wicks” corresponds to the four Unities and the three Binaries of the Sephirothal tree.

(_b_) Just as milliards of bright sparks dance on the waters of an ocean, above which one and the same moon is shining, so our evanescent Personalities—the illusive envelopes of the immortal Monad‐Ego—twinkle and dance on the waves of Mâyâ. They appear and, as the thousands of sparks produced by the moon‐beams, last only so long as the Queen of the Night radiates her lustre on the “Running Waves” of Life, the period of a Manvantara; and then they disappear, the “Beams”—symbols of our eternal Spiritual Egos—alone surviving, remerged in, and being, as they were before, one with the Mother‐Source.

5. THE SPARK HANGS FROM THE FLAME BY THE FINEST THREAD OF FOHAT. IT JOURNEYS THROUGH THE SEVEN WORLDS OF MÂYÂ (_a_). IT STOPS IN THE FIRST,(377) AND IS A METAL AND A STONE; IT PASSES INTO THE SECOND,(378) AND BEHOLD—A PLANT; THE PLANT WHIRLS THROUGH SEVEN FORMS AND BECOMES A SACRED ANIMAL(379) (_b_).

FROM THE COMBINED ATTRIBUTES OF THESE, MANU,(380) THE THINKER, IS FORMED.

WHO FORMS HIM? THE SEVEN LIVES, AND THE ONE LIFE (_c_). WHO COMPLETES HIM? THE FIVE‐FOLD LHA. AND WHO PERFECTS THE LAST BODY? FISH, SIN AND SOMA(381) (_d_).

(_a_) The phrase, “through the Seven Worlds of Mâyâ,” refers here to the seven Globes of the Planetary Chain and the seven Rounds, or the forty‐ nine stations of active existence that are before the “Spark,” or Monad, at the beginning of every Great Life‐Cycle, or Manvantara. The “Thread of Fohat” is the Thread of Life before referred to.

This relates to the greatest problem of philosophy—the physical and substantial nature of Life, the independent nature of which is denied by Modern Science, because that Science is unable to comprehend it. The reïncarnationists and believers in Karma alone dimly perceive, that the whole secret of Life is in the unbroken series of its manifestations, whether in, or apart from, the physical body. Because even if:

Life, like a dome of many‐coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity—

yet it is itself part and parcel of that Eternity; for Life alone can understand Life.

What is that “Spark” which “hangs from the Flame”? It is Jîva, the Monad in conjunction with Manas, or rather its aroma—that which remains from each Personality, when worthy, and hangs from Âtmâ‐Buddhi, the Flame, by the Thread of Life. In whatever way it is interpreted, and into whatever number of principles the human being is divided, it may be easily shown that this doctrine is supported by all the ancient religions, from the Vedic to the Egyptian, from the Zoroastrian to the Jewish. In the case of the last‐mentioned, the Kabalistic works offer abundant proof of this statement. The entire system of the Kabalistic numerals is based on the divine Septenary hanging from the Triad, thus forming the Decad, and its permutations 7, 5, 4, and 3, which, finally, all merge into the _One_ itself; an endless and boundless Circle.

As says the _Zohar_:

The Deity [the ever invisible Presence] manifests itself through
the _ten_ Sephiroth, which are its radiating witnesses. The Deity
is like the sea from which outflows a stream called Wisdom, the
waters of which fall into a lake named Intelligence. From the
basin, like seven channels, issue the Seven Sephiroth.... For
_ten_ equal _seven_: the Decad contains _four_ Unities and _three_
Binaries.

The Ten Sephiroth correspond to the Limbs of Man.

When I [the Elohim] framed Adam Kadmon, the Spirit of the Eternal
shot out of his Body, like a sheet of lightning that radiated at
once on the billows of the _seven_ millions of skies, and my _ten_
Splendours were his Limbs.

But neither the Head nor the Shoulders of Adam Kadmon can be seen; therefore we read in the _Siphra Dtzenioutha_, the “Book of the Concealed Mystery”:

In the beginning of Time, after the Elohim [the “Sons of Light and
Life,” or the Builders] had shaped out of the eternal Essence the
Heavens and the Earth, they formed the worlds six by six.

The seventh being Malkuth, which is our Earth(382) on its plane, and the lowest on all the other planes of conscious existence. The Chaldean _Book of Numbers_ contains a detailed explanation of all this.

The first triad of the Body of Adam Kadmon [the three upper planes
of the seven (383)] cannot be seen before the Soul stands in the
presence of the Ancient of Days.

The Sephiroth of this upper Triad are: “1. Kether (the Crown), represented by the brow of Macroprosopus; 2. Chokmah (Wisdom, a male Principle), by his right shoulder; and 3. Binah (Intelligence, a female Principle), by the left shoulder.” Then come the _seven_ Limbs, or Sephiroth, on the planes of manifestation; the totality of these four planes being represented by Microprosopus, the Lesser Face, or Tetragrammaton, the “four‐lettered” Mystery. “The _seven_ manifested and the _three_ concealed Limbs are the Body of the Deity.”

Thus our Earth, Malkuth, is both the _seventh_ and the _fourth_ World; the former when counting from the first Globe above, the latter if reckoned by the planes. It is generated by the sixth Globe or Sephira, called Yezud, “Foundation,” or, as said in the _Book of Numbers_, “by Yezud, He [Adam Kadmon] fecundates the primitive Heva [Eve or our Earth].” Rendered in mystic language, this is the explanation why Malkuth, called the Inferior Mother, Matrona, Queen, and the Kingdom of the Foundation, is shown as the Bride of Tetragrammaton, or Microprosopus (the Second Logos), the Heavenly Man. When free from all impurity, she will become united with the Spiritual Logos, _i.e._, in the Seventh Race of the Seventh Round—after the regeneration, on the day of “Sabbath.” For the “_Seventh_ Day” again has an occult significance undreamed of by our theologians.

When Matronitha, the Mother, is separated and brought face to face
with the King, in the excellence of the Sabbath, all things become
one body.(384)

“Become one body” means, that all is reäbsorbed once more into the One Element, the spirits of men becoming Nirvânîs, and the elements of everything else becoming again what they were before—Protyle or Undifferentiated Substance. “Sabbath” means Rest, or Nirvâna. It is not the “_seventh_ day” after _six_ days, but a period the duration of which equals that of the seven “days,” or any period made up of seven parts. Thus a Pralaya is equal in duration to a Manvantara, or a Night of Brahmâ is equal to his Day. If the Christians will follow Jewish customs, they ought to adopt the spirit and not the dead letter thereof. They should work one week of seven days and _rest_ seven days. That the word “Sabbath” had a mystic significance, is disclosed in the contempt shown by Jesus for the Sabbath day, and by what is said in _Luke_.(385) Sabbath is there taken for the _whole week_. See the Greek text where the week is called “Sabbath.” Literally, “I fast twice in the Sabbath.” Paul, an Initiate, knew it well when referring to the eternal rest and felicity in Heaven, as Sabbath:(386) “and their happiness will be eternal, for they will ever be [one] with the Lord, and will enjoy _an eternal Sabbath_.”(387)

The difference between the Kabalah and the archaic Esoteric Vidyâ—taking the Kabalah as contained in the Chaldean _Book of Numbers_, not as misrepresented by its now disfigured copy, the _Kabalah_ of the Christian Mystics—is very small indeed, being confined to unimportant divergences of form and expression. Thus Eastern Occultism refers to our Earth as the Fourth World, the lowest of the Chain, above which run upward on both curves the six Globes, three on each side. The _Zohar_, on the other hand, calls the Earth the lower, or the _seventh_, adding that upon the six depend all things which are in it (Microprosopus). The “Smaller Face [smaller because manifested and finite] is formed of _six_ Sephiroth,” says the same work. “Seven Kings come and _die in the thrice‐destroyed World_ [Malkuth, our Earth, destroyed after each of the Three Rounds which it has gone through]. And their reign [that of the Seven Kings] will be broken up.”(388) This relates to the Seven Races, _five_ of which have already appeared, and _two_ more have still to appear in this Round.

The Shinto allegorical accounts of cosmogony and the origin of man, in Japan, hint at the same belief.

Captain C. Pfoundes, who studied the religion underlying the various sects of the land, for nearly nine years in the monasteries of Japan, says:

The Shinto idea of creation is as follows: Out of Chaos (Konton)
the Earth (In) was the sediment precipitated, and the Heavens (Yo)
the ethereal essences which ascended: Man (Jin) appeared between
the two. The first man was called Kuni‐to ko tatchino‐mikoto, and
_five other names were given to him_, and then the human race
appeared, male and female. Isanagi and Isanami begat Tenshoko
doijin, the first of the five Gods of the Earth.

These “Gods” are simply our Five Races, Isanagi and Isanami being the two kinds of “Ancestors,” the two preceding Races which give birth to animal and to rational man.

It will be shown in Volume II, that the number seven, as well as the doctrine of the septenary constitution of man, was preëminent in all the secret systems. It plays as important a part in Western Kabalah as in Eastern Occultism. Éliphas Lévi calls the number seven “the key to the Mosaic creation and the symbols of every religion.” He shows the Kabalah faithfully following even the septenary division of man, for the diagram he gives in his _Clef des Grands Mystères_(389) is septenary. This may be seen at a glance, however cleverly the correct thought is veiled. One needs also only to look at the diagram, the “Formation of the Soul,” in Mathers’ _Kabbalah Unveiled_,(390) from the above mentioned, work of Lévi, to find the same, though with a different interpretation.

Thus it stands with both the Kabalistic and Occult names attached:

[Diagram IV]

Lévi calls Nephesh that which we name Manas, and _vice versâ_. Nephesh is the Breath of (animal) Life in man—the Breath of Life, _instinctual_ in the animal; and Manas is the Third Soul—the human in its light side, and animal, in its connection with Samaël or Kâma. Nephesh is really the “Breath of (animal) Life” breathed into Adam, the Man of Dust; it is consequently the Vital Spark, the informing Element. Without Manas, the “Reasoning Soul,” or Mind, which in Lévi’s diagram is miscalled Nephesh, Âtmâ‐Buddhi is irrational on this plane and cannot act. It is Buddhi which is the Plastic Mediator; not Manas, the intelligent medium between the upper Triad and the lower Quaternary. But there are many such strange and curious transformations to be found in the Kabalistic works—a convincing proof that this literature has become a sad jumble. We do not accept the classification, except in this one particular, in order to show the points of agreement.

We will now give in tabular form what the very cautious Éliphas Lévi says in explanation of his diagram, and what the Esoteric Doctrine teaches—and compare the two. Lévi, too, makes a distinction between Kabalistic and Occult Pneumatics.

Says Éliphas Lévi, the Kabalist: Say the Theosophists: KABALISTIC PNEUMATICS. ESOTERIC PNEUMATICS. 1. The Soul (or Ego) is a 1. The same; for it is clothed light; and this light is Âtmâ‐Buddhi‐Manas. triple. 2. Neshamah—pure Spirit. 2. The same(391). 3. Ruach—the Soul or Spirit. 3. Spiritual Soul. 4. Nephesh—Plastic 4. Mediator between Spirit and Mediator.(392) Man, the Seat of Reason, the Mind, in man. 5. The garment of the Soul is 5. Correct. the rind [body] of the Image [Astral Soul]. 6. The Image is double, because 6. Too uselessly apocalyptic. it reflects the good and the Why not say that the Astral bad. reflects the good as well as the bad man; man, who is ever tending to the upper Triad, or else disappears with the Quaternary. 7. [Image—Body.] 7. The Earthly Image.

OCCULT PNEUMATICS. OCCULT PNEUMATICS. (As given by Éliphas Lévi.) (As given by the Occultists.) 1. Nephesh is immortal, because 1. Manas is immortal, because it renews its life by the after every new incarnation it destruction of forms. [But adds to Âtmâ‐Buddhi something of Nephesh, the “Breath of Life,” itself; and thus, assimilating is a misnomer, and a useless itself to the Monad, shares its puzzle to the student.] immortality. 2. Ruach progresses by the 2. Buddhi becomes conscious by evolution of ideas (!?). the accretions it gets from Manas, on the death of man after every new incarnation. 3. Neshamah is progressive, 3. Âtmâ neither progresses, without oblivion and forgets, nor remembers. It does destruction. not belong to this plane; it is but the Ray of Light eternal which shines upon, and through, the darkness of matter—when the latter is willing. 4. The Soul has three dwellings. 4. The Soul—collectively, as the Upper Triad—_lives_ on three planes, besides its fourth, the terrestrial sphere; and it _is_ eternally on the highest of the three. 5. These dwellings are: the 5. These dwellings are: Earth Plane of Mortals; the Superior for the physical man, or Animal Eden; and the Inferior Eden. Soul; Kâma Loka (Hades, the Limbo) for the disembodied man, or his Shell; Devachan for the Higher Triad.