Chapter IV: Preface: To the Third and Revised Edition (2)

The same may be said of the whole Esoteric System. One turn of the key, and no more, was given in _Isis Unveiled_. Much more is explained in these volumes. In those days the writer hardly knew the language in which the work was written, and the disclosure of many things, freely spoken about now, was forbidden. In Century the Twentieth, some disciple more informed, and far better fitted, may be sent by the Masters of Wisdom to give final and irrefutable proofs that there exists a Science called Gupta Vidyâ; and that, like the once mysterious sources of the Nile, the source of all religions and philosophies now made known to the world has been for many ages forgotten and lost to men, but it is at last found.

Such a work as this has to be introduced with no simple preface, but with a volume rather—one that would give facts, not mere disquisitions, since THE SECRET DOCTRINE is not a treatise, or a series of vague theories, but contains all that can be given out to the world in this century.

It would be worse than useless to publish in these pages even those portions of the esoteric teachings that have now escaped from confinement, unless the genuineness and authenticity, or at any rate the probability, of the existence of such teachings were first established. Such statements as will now be made, have to be shown as warranted by various authorities, such as ancient philosophers, classical writers and even certain learned Church Fathers, some of whom knew these doctrines because they had studied them, had seen and read works written upon them; and some of whom had even been personally initiated into the ancient Mysteries, during the performance of which the arcane doctrines were allegorically enacted. The writer will have to give historical and trustworthy names, and to cite well‐known authors, ancient and modern, of recognized ability, good judgment, and truthfulness, as also to name some of the famous proficients in the secret arts and science, together with the mysteries of the latter, as they are divulged, or rather partially presented before the public in their strange archaic form.

How is this to be done; what is the best way for achieving such an object, has been the ever‐recurring question. To make our plan clearer, an illustration may be attempted. When a tourist, coming from a well‐explored country, suddenly reaches the borderland of a _terra incognita_, hedged in, and shut out from view by a formidable barrier of impassable rocks, he may still refuse to acknowledge himself baffled in his exploratory plans. Ingress beyond is forbidden. But if he cannot visit the mysterious region personally, he may still find a means of examining it from as short a distance as can be arrived at. Helped by his knowledge of the landscapes left behind, he can get a general and pretty correct idea of the transmural view, if he will only climb to the loftiest summit of the altitudes in front of him. Once there, he can gaze at it at his leisure, comparing that which he dimly perceives with that which he has just left below, now that he is, thanks to his own efforts, beyond the line of the mists and the cloud‐capped cliffs.

Such a point of preliminary observation, cannot in these two volumes be offered to those who would like to get a more correct understanding of the mysteries of the pre‐archaic periods given in the texts. But if the reader has patience, and will glance at the present state of beliefs and creeds in Europe, compare and check it with what is known to history of the ages directly preceding and following the Christian era, then he will find all this in a future volume of the present work.

In the latter volume a brief recapitulation will be made of all the principal Adepts known to history, and the downfall of the Mysteries will be described, after which began the disappearance and the systematic and final elimination from the memory of men of the real nature of Initiation and the Sacred Science. From that time its teachings became occult, and Magic sailed but too often under the venerable but frequently misleading name of Hermetic Philosophy. As real Occultism had been prevalent among the Mystics during the centuries that preceded our era, so Magic, or rather Sorcery, with its Occult Arts, followed the beginning of Christianity.

However great and zealous the fanatical efforts, during these early centuries, to obliterate every trace of the mental and intellectual labour of the Pagans, they were a failure; but the same spirit of the dark demon of bigotry and intolerance has ever since systematically perverted every bright page written in the pre‐Christian periods. Even history, in her uncertain records, has preserved enough of that which has survived to throw an impartial light upon the whole. Let, then, the reader tarry a little while with the writer on the spot of observation selected. He is asked to give all his attention to that millennium of the pre‐Christian and the post‐Christian periods, divided by the year One of the Nativity. This event—whether historically correct or not—has nevertheless been made to serve as a first signal for the erection of manifold bulwarks against any possible return of, or even a glimpse into, the hated religions of the Past; hated and dreaded, because throwing such a vivid light on the novel and intentionally veiled interpretation of what is now known as the “New Dispensation.”

However superhuman the efforts of the early Christian Fathers to obliterate the Secret Doctrine from the very memory of man, they all failed. Truth can never be killed; hence the failure to sweep away entirely from the face of the earth every vestige of that ancient Wisdom, and to shackle and gag every witness who testified to it. Let one only think of the thousands, perhaps millions, of MSS. burnt; of monuments, with their too indiscreet inscriptions and pictorial symbols, pulverized to dust; of the bands of early hermits and ascetics roaming about among the ruined cities of Upper and Lower Egypt, in desert and mountain, valley and highland, seeking for and eager to destroy every obelisk and pillar, scroll or parchment they could lay their hands on, if only it bore the symbol of the Tau, or any other sign borrowed and appropriated by the new faith—and he will then see plainly how it is that so little has remained of the records of the past. Verily, the fiendish spirit of fanaticism of early and mediæval Christianity and of Islam has loved from the first to dwell in darkness and ignorance; and both have made

... the sun like blood, the earth a tomb,
The tomb a hell, and hell itself a murkier gloom!

Both creeds have won their proselytes at the point of the sword; both have built their churches on heaven‐kissing hecatombs of human victims. Over the gateway of Century I of our era, the ominous words “THE KARMA OF ISRAEL,” fatally glowed. Over the portals of our own, the future seer may discern other words, that will point to the Karma for cunningly made‐up history, for events purposely perverted, and for great characters slandered by posterity, mangled out of recognition, between the two cars of Jagannâtha—Bigotry and Materialism; one accepting too much, the other denying all. Wise is he who holds to the golden mid‐point, who believes in the eternal justice of things. Says Faizi Díwán, the “witness to the wonderful speeches of a freethinker who belongs to a thousand sects”:

In the assembly of the day of resurrection, when past things shall
be forgiven, the sins of the Ka’bah will be forgiven for the sake
of the dust of Christian churches.

To this, Professor Max Müller replies:

The sins of Islam are _as worthless as the dust of Christianity;
on the day of resurrection both Muhammadans and Christians will
see the vanity of their religious doctrines._ Men fight about
religion on earth; in heaven they shall find out that there is
only one true religion—the worship of God’s SPIRIT.(24)

In other words, “THERE IS NO RELIGION [OR LAW] HIGHER THAN TRUTH”—(_Satyât Nâsti Paro Dharmah_)—the motto of the Mahârâjah of Benares, adopted by the Theosophical Society.

As already said in the _Preface_, THE SECRET DOCTRINE is not a version of _Isis Unveiled_, as originally intended. It is rather a volume explanatory of the latter, and, though entirely independent of the earlier work, an indispensable corollary to it. Much of what was in the former work could hardly be understood by Theosophists in those days. THE SECRET DOCTRINE will now throw light on many a problem left unsolved in the first work, especially on the opening pages, which have never been understood.

As it was concerned simply with the philosophies within historical times and the respective symbolism of the fallen nations, only a hurried glance could be thrown at the panorama of Occultism in the two volumes of _Isis_. In the present work, detailed cosmogony and the evolution of the four Races that preceded our fifth‐race Humanity are given, and now two large volumes explain that which was stated only on the first page of _Isis Unveiled_ alone, and in a few allusions scattered hither and thither throughout that work. Nor can the vast catalogue of the Archaic Sciences be attempted in the present volumes, before we have disposed of such tremendous problems as cosmic and planetary Evolution, and the gradual development of the mysterious humanities and races that preceded our Adamic Humanity. Therefore, the present attempt to elucidate some mysteries of the Esoteric Philosophy has, in truth, nothing to do with the earlier work. The writer must be allowed to illustrate what is said by an instance.

Volume I of _Isis_ begins with a reference to an “old book”:

So very old that our modern antiquarians might ponder over its
pages an indefinite time, and still not quite agree as to the
nature of the fabric upon which it is written. It is the only
original copy now in existence. The most ancient Hebrew document
on occult learning—the _Siprah Dzeniouta_—was compiled from it,
and that at a time when the former was already considered in the
light of a literary relic. One of its illustrations represents the
Divine Essence emanating from ADAM(25) like a luminous arc
proceeding to form a circle; and then, having attained the highest
point of its circumference, the ineffable Glory bends back again,
and returns to earth, bringing a higher type of humanity in its
vortex. As it approaches nearer and nearer to our planet, the
Emanation becomes more and more shadowy, until upon touching the
ground it is as black as night.

This very old book is the original work from which the many volumes of _Kiu‐ti_ were compiled. Not only the latter and the _Siphrah Dzeniouta_, but even the _Sepher Jetzirah_(26)—the work attributed by the Hebrew Kabalists to their Patriarch Abraham (!), the _Shu‐king_, China’s primitive Bible, the sacred volumes of the Egyptian Thoth‐Hermes, the _Purânas_ in India, the Chaldean _Book of Numbers_ and the _Pentateuch_ itself, are all derived from that one small parent volume. Tradition says, that it was taken down in _Senzar_, the secret sacerdotal tongue, from the words of Divine Beings, who dictated it to the Sons of Light, in Central Asia, at the very beginning of our Fifth Race; for there was a time when its language (the Senzar) was known to the Initiates of every nation, when the forefathers of the Toltec understood it as easily as the inhabitants of the lost Atlantis, who inherited it, in their turn, from the sages of the Third Race, the Mânushis, who learnt it direct from the Devas of the Second and First Races. The illustration spoken of in _Isis_ relates to the evolution of these Races and of our fourth‐ and fifth‐race Humanity in the Vaivasvata Manvantara, or Round; each Round being composed of the Yugas of the seven periods of Humanity; four of which are now passed in _our_ Life‐Cycle, the middle point of the fifth being nearly reached. This illustration is symbolical, as every one can well understand, and covers the ground from the beginning. The old book, having described cosmic evolution and explained the origin of everything on earth, including physical man, after giving the true history of the Races, from the First down to our own Fifth Race, goes no further. It stops short at the beginning of the Kali Yuga, just 4,989 years ago, at the death of Krishna, the bright Sun‐god, the once living hero and reformer.

But there exists another book. None of its possessors regard it as very ancient, as it was born with, and is only as old as the Black Age, namely, about 5,000 years. In about nine years hence, the first cycle of the first five millenniums, that began with the great cycle of the Kali Yuga, will end. And then the last prophecy contained in that book—the first volume of the prophetic record for the Black Age—will be accomplished. We have not long to wait, and many of us will witness the dawn of the New Cycle, at the end of which not a few accounts will be settled and squared between the races. Volume II of the prophecies is nearly ready, having been in preparation since the time of Buddha’s grand successor, Shankarâchârya.

One more important point must be noticed, one that stands foremost in the series of proofs given of the existence of one primeval, universal Wisdom—at any rate for Christian Kabalists and students. The teachings were, at least, partially known to several of the Fathers of the Church. It is maintained, on purely historical grounds, that Origen, Synesius, and even Clemens Alexandrinus, had themselves been initiated into the Mysteries before adding to the Neo‐Platonism of the Alexandrian school that of the Gnostics, under the Christian veil. More than this, some of the doctrines of the secret schools, though by no means all, were preserved in the Vatican, and have since become part and parcel of the Mysteries, in the shape of disfigured additions made to the original Christian programme by the Latin Church. Such is the now materialised dogma of the Immaculate Conception. This accounts for the great persecutions set on foot by the Roman Catholic Church against Occultism, Masonry, and heterodox Mysticism generally.

The days of Constantine were the last turning‐point in history, the period of the supreme struggle, that ended in the Western world throttling the old religions in favour of the new one, built on their bodies. From thence the vista into the far distant past, beyond the Deluge and the Garden of Eden, began to be forcibly and relentlessly shut out by every fair and unfair means from the indiscreet gaze of posterity. Every issue was blocked up, every record upon which hands could be laid, destroyed. Yet there remains enough, even among such mutilated records, to warrant us in saying that there is in them every requisite evidence of the actual existence of a Parent Doctrine. Fragments have survived geological and political cataclysms, to tell the story; and every survival shows evidence that the now secret Wisdom was once the one fountain head, the ever‐ flowing perennial source, from which were fed all the streamlets—the later religions of all nations—from the first down to the last. This period, beginning with Buddha and Pythagoras at the one end and finishing with the Neo‐Platonists and Gnostics at the other, is the only focus left in History wherein converge for the last time the bright rays of light streaming from the æons of times gone by, unobscured by the hand of bigotry and fanaticism.

This accounts for the necessity under which the writer has laboured of ever explaining the facts given from the hoariest past by evidence gathered from the historical period, even at the risk of being once more charged with a lack of method and system. No other means was at hand. The public must be made acquainted with the efforts of many world‐adepts, of initiated poets and writers in the classics of every age, to preserve in the records of humanity the knowledge at least of the existence of such a philosophy, if not actually of its tenets. The Initiates of 1888 would indeed remain incomprehensible and even a seemingly impossible myth, were not like Initiates shown to have lived in every other age of history. This could be done only by naming chapter and verse where mention may be found of these great characters, who were preceded and followed by a long and interminable line of other famous antediluvian and postdiluvian Masters in the arts. Thus only could it be shown, on semi‐traditional and semi‐ historical authority, that occult knowledge and the powers it confers on man, are not altogether fictions, but that they are as old as the world itself.

To my judges, past and future, therefore—whether they are serious literary critics, or those howling dervishes in literature who judge a book according to the popularity or unpopularity of the author’s name, who, hardly glancing at its contents, fasten like lethal _bacilli_ on the weakest points of the body—I have nothing to say. Nor shall I condescend to notice those crack‐brained slanderers—fortunately very few in number—who, hoping to attract public attention by throwing discredit on every writer whose name is better known than their own, foam and bark at their very shadows. These, having first maintained for years that the doctrines taught in the _Theosophist_, and which culminated in _Esoteric Buddhism_, had been all _invented_ by the present writer, have finally turned round, and denounced _Isis Unveiled_ and the rest as a plagiarism from Éliphas Lévi (!), Paracelsus (!!), and, _mirabile dictu_, Buddhism and Brâhminism (!!!). As well charge Renan with having stolen his _Vie de Jésus_ from the Gospels, and Max Müller his _Sacred Books of the East_ or his _Chips_ from the philosophies of the Brâhmans and of Gautama, the Buddha. But to the public in general and the readers of THE SECRET DOCTRINE I may repeat what I have stated all along, and which I now clothe in the words of Montaigne:

_Gentlemen, __“__I have here made only a nosegay of culled
flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the string that
ties them.__”_

Pull the “string” to pieces and cut it up in shreds, if you will. As for the nosegay of _facts_—you will never be able to make away with these. You can only ignore them, and no more.

We may close with a parting word concerning this first volume. In an introduction prefacing chapters dealing chiefly with cosmogony, certain subjects brought forward may be deemed out of place, but one more consideration added to those already given has led me to touch upon them. Every reader will inevitably judge the statements made from the stand‐ point of his own knowledge, experience, and consciousness, basing his judgment on what he has already learnt. This fact the writer is constantly obliged to bear in mind; hence, also the frequent references in this first volume to matters which, properly speaking, belong to a later part of the work, but which could not be passed by in silence, lest the reader should look upon it as a fairy tale indeed—a fiction of some modern brain.

Thus, the Past shall help to realize the Present, and the latter to better appreciate the Past. The errors of the day must be explained and swept away, yet it is more than probable—nay in the present case it amounts to certitude—that once more the testimony of long ages and of history will fail to impress any but the very intuitional—which is equal to saying the very few. But in this as in all like cases, the true and the faithful may console themselves by presenting the sceptical modern Sadducee with the mathematical proof and memorial of his obdurate obstinacy and bigotry. There still exists somewhere in the archives of the French Academy, the famous law of probabilities worked out by certain mathematicians for the benefit of sceptics by an algebraical process. It runs thus: If two persons give their evidence to a fact, and thus impart to it each of them 5/6 of certitude; that fact will have then 35/36 of certitude; _i.e._, its probability will bear to its improbability the ratio of 35 to 1. If three such evidences are joined together the certitude will become 215/216. The agreement of ten persons giving each 1/2 of certitude will produce 1023/1024, etc., etc. The Occultist may remain satisfied with such certitude, and care for no more.

PROEM: PAGES FROM A PRE‐HISTORIC RECORD.

An archaic Manuscript—a collection of palm leaves made impermeable to water, fire, and air, by some specific and unknown process—is before the writer’s eye. On the first page is an immaculate white disk within a dull black ground. On the following page, the same disk, but with a central point. The first, the student knows, represents Kosmos in Eternity, before the reäwakening of still slumbering Energy, the Emanation of the World in later systems. The point in the hitherto immaculate disk, Space and Eternity in Pralaya, denotes the dawn of differentiation. It is the Point in the Mundane Egg, the Germ within it which will become the Universe, the All, the boundless, periodical Kosmos—a Germ which is latent and active, periodically and by turns. The one circle is divine Unity, from which all proceeds, whither all returns: its circumference—a forcibly limited symbol, in view of the limitation of the human mind—indicates the abstract, ever incognizable PRESENCE, and its plane, the Universal Soul, although the two are one. Only, the face of the disk being white, and the surrounding ground black, clearly shows that its plane is the sole knowledge, dim and hazy though it still is, that is attainable by man. It is on this plane that the manvantaric manifestations begin; for it is in this SOUL, that slumbers, during the Pralaya, the Divine Thought,(27) wherein lies concealed the plan of every future cosmogony and theogony.

It is the ONE LIFE, eternal, invisible, yet omnipresent, without beginning or end, yet periodical in its regular manifestations—between which periods reigns the dark mystery of Non‐Being; unconscious, yet absolute Consciousness, unrealizable, yet the one self‐existing Reality; truly, “a Chaos to the sense, a Kosmos to the reason.” Its one absolute attribute, which is Itself, eternal, ceaseless Motion, is called in esoteric parlance the Great Breath,(28) which is the perpetual motion of the Universe, in the sense of limitless, ever‐present Space. That which is motionless cannot be Divine. But then there is nothing in fact and reality absolutely motionless within the Universal Soul.

Almost five centuries B.C. Leucippus, the instructor of Democritus, maintained that Space was eternally filled with atoms actuated by a ceaseless motion, which, in due course of time, as they aggregated, generated rotatory motion, through mutual collisions producing lateral movements. Epicurus and Lucretius taught the same doctrine, adding however to the lateral motion of the atoms the idea of affinity—an Occult teaching.

From the beginning of man’s inheritance, from the first appearance of the architects of the globe he lives on, the unrevealed Deity was recognized and considered under its only philosophical aspect—Universal Motion, the thrill of the creative Breath in Nature. Occultism sums up the One Existence thus: “_Deity is an arcane, living [or moving] Fire, and the eternal witnesses to this unseen Presence, are Light, Heat, Moisture_,”—this trinity including, and being the cause of, every phenomenon in Nature.(29) Intra‐cosmic motion is eternal and ceaseless; cosmic motion—the visible, or that which is subject to perception—is finite and periodical. As an eternal abstraction it is the Ever‐Present; as a manifestation, it is finite both in the coming direction and the opposite, the two being the Alpha and Omega of successive reconstructions. Kosmos—the Noumenon—has nought to do with the causal relations of the phenomenal World. It is only with reference to the intra‐cosmic Soul, the ideal Kosmos in the immutable Divine Thought, that we may say: “It never had a beginning nor will it have an end.” With regard to its body or cosmic organization, though it cannot be said that it had a first, or will ever have a last construction, yet at each new Manvantara, its organization may be regarded as the first and the last of its kind, as it evolves every time on a higher plane.

A few years ago only, it was stated that:

The esoteric doctrine, like Buddhism and Brâhmanism, and even
Kabalism, teaches that the one infinite and unknown Essence exists
from all eternity, and in regular and harmonious successions is
either passive or active. In the poetical phraseology of Manu
these conditions are called the Days and the Nights of Brahmâ. The
latter is either “awake” or “asleep.” The Svâbhâvikas, or
philosophers of the oldest school of Buddhism, which still exists
in Nepaul, speculate only upon the active condition of this
“Essence,” which they call Svabhâvat, and deem it foolish to
theorize upon the abstract and “unknowable” power in its passive
condition. Hence they are called Atheists by both Christian
theologians and modern scientists, for neither of the two are able
to understand the profound logic of their philosophy. The former
will allow of no other God than the personified secondary powers
which have worked out the visible universe, and which becomes with
them the anthropomorphic God of the Christians—the male Jehovah,
roaring amid thunder and lightning. In its turn, rationalistic
science greets the Buddhists and the Svâbhâvikas as the
“Positivists” of the archaic ages. If we take a one‐sided view of
the philosophy of the latter, our materialists may be right in
their own way. The Buddhists maintain that there is no Creator,
but an infinitude of creative powers, which collectively form the
one eternal substance, the essence of which is inscrutable—hence
not a subject for speculation for any true philosopher. Socrates
invariably refused to argue upon the mystery of universal being,
yet no one would ever have thought of charging him with atheism,
except those who were bent upon his destruction. Upon inaugurating
an active period, says the Secret Doctrine, an expansion of this
Divine Essence from without inwardly and from within outwardly,
occurs in obedience to eternal and immutable law, and the
phenomenal or visible universe is the ultimate result of the long
chain of cosmical forces thus progressively set in motion. In like
manner, when the passive condition is resumed, a contraction of
the Divine Essence takes place, and the previous work of creation
is gradually and progressively undone. The visible universe
becomes disintegrated, its material dispersed; and “darkness”
solitary and alone, broods once more over the face of the “deep.”
To use a metaphor from the secret books, which will convey the
idea still more clearly, an out‐breathing of the “unknown essence”
produces the world; and an inhalation causes it to disappear. This
process has been going on from all eternity, and our present
universe is but one of an infinite series, which had no beginning
and will have no end.(30)

This passage will be explained, as far as it is possible, in the present work. Though it contains nothing new to the Orientalist, as it now stands, its esoteric interpretation may contain a good deal which has hitherto remained entirely unknown to the Western student.

The first illustration is a plain disk, [circle]. The second in the archaic symbol shows a disk with a point in it, [circle with dot]—the first differentiation in the periodical manifestations of the ever‐eternal Nature, sexless and infinite, “Aditi in THAT,”(31) or potential Space within abstract Space. In its third stage the point is transformed into a diameter, [circle with line]. It now symbolizes a divine immaculate Mother‐Nature within the all‐embracing absolute Infinitude. When the horizontal diameter is crossed by a vertical one, [circle with cross], it becomes the Mundane Cross. Humanity has reached its Third Root‐Race; it is the sign for the origin of human Life. When the circumference disappears and leaves only the [cross], it is a sign that the fall of man into matter is accomplished, and the Fourth Race begins. The cross within a circle symbolizes pure Pantheism; when the cross is left uninscribed, it becomes phallic. It had the same and yet other meanings as a Tau inscribed within a circle, [circle with lines (Tau)]; or as a Thor’s Hammer—the so‐called Jaina cross, or Svastika, within a circle, [circle with swastika].

By the third symbol—the circle divided in two by a horizontal diameter—was meant the first manifestation of creative Nature—still passive, because feminine. The first shadowy perception of man connected with procreation is feminine, because man knows his mother more than his father. Hence female deities were more sacred than male. Nature is therefore feminine, and, to a degree, objective and tangible, and the Spirit Principle which fructifies it, is concealed.(32) By adding to the horizontal line in the circle, a perpendicular, the Tau was formed, [T], the oldest form of the letter. It was the glyph of the Third Root‐Race to the day of its symbolical Fall—_i.e._, when the separation of sexes by natural evolution took place—when the figure became [circle with vertical line], or sexless life modified or separated—a double glyph or symbol. With the sub‐races of our Fifth Race it became in symbology the Sacr’, and in Hebrew N’cabvah, of the first‐formed Races;(33) then it changed into the Egyptian emblem of life, [Ankh], and still later into the sign of Venus, [female symbol]. Then comes the Svastika (Thor’s Hammer, now the Hermetic Cross), entirely separated from its circle, thus becoming purely phallic. The esoteric symbol of Kali Yuga is the five‐pointed star reversed, with its two points (horns) turned heavenward, thus [five‐pointed star], the sign of human sorcery, a position every Occultist will recognize as one of the “left‐ hand,” and used in ceremonial magic.

It is hoped that during the perusal of this work the erroneous ideas of the public in general with regard to Pantheism will be modified. It is wrong and unjust to regard the Buddhists and Advaitin Occultists as Atheists. If not all of them philosophers, they are, at any rate, all logicians, their objections and arguments being based on strict reasoning. Indeed, if the Parabrahman of the Hindûs may be taken as a representative of the hidden and nameless deities of other nations, this absolute Principle will be found to be the prototype from which all the others were copied. Parabrahman is not “God,” because It is not _a_ God. “It is that which is supreme, and not supreme (_paravara_).”(34) It is supreme as cause, not supreme as effect. Parabrahman is simply, as a Secondless Reality, the all‐inclusive Kosmos—or rather the infinite Cosmic Space—in the highest spiritual sense, of course. Brahman (neuter) being the unchanging, pure, free, undecaying supreme Root, the “One true Existence, Paramârthika,” and the absolute Chit and Chaitanya (Intelligence, Consciousness), cannot be a cognizer, “for THAT can have no subject of cognition.” Can the Flame be called the Essence of Fire? This Essence is “the Life and Light of the Universe, the visible fire and flame are destruction, death, and evil.” “Fire and Flame destroy the body of an Arhat, their essence makes him immortal.”(35) “The knowledge of the absolute Spirit, like the effulgence of the sun, or like heat in fire, is naught else than the absolute Essence itself,” says Shankarâchârya. IT—is “the Spirit of the Fire,” not Fire itself; therefore, “the attributes of the latter, Heat or Flame, are not the attributes of the Spirit, but of that of which that Spirit is the unconscious cause.” Is not the above sentence the true key‐note of later Rosicrucian philosophy? Parabrahman is, in short, the collective aggregate of Kosmos in its infinity and eternity, the “THAT” and “THIS” to which distributive aggregates can not be applied.(36) “In the beginning THIS was the Self, one only;”(37) and the great Shankarâchârya explains that “_This_” refers to the Universe (Jagat); the words, “in the beginning,” meaning before the reproduction of the phenomenal Universe.

Therefore, when the Pantheists echo the _Upanishads_, which state, as in the Secret Doctrine, that “This” cannot create, they do not deny a Creator, or rather a collective aggregate of creators; they simply refuse, very logically, to attribute “creation” and especially formation—something finite—to an Infinite Principle. With them, Parabrahman is a passive because an absolute Cause, the unconditioned Mukta. It is only limited omniscience and omnipotence that are refused to the latter, because these are still attributes, reflected in man’s perceptions; and because Parabrahman, being the Supreme ALL, the ever invisible Spirit and Soul of Nature, changeless and eternal, can have no attributes, the term Absoluteness very naturally precluding any idea of the finite or conditioned from being connected with it. And if the Vedântins postulate attributes as belonging simply to its emanation, calling it Îshvara _plus_ Mâyâ, and Avidyâ (Agnosticism and Nescience rather than Ignorance), it is difficult to find any Atheism in this conception.(38) Since there can be neither two Infinites nor two Absolutes in a Universe supposed to be boundless, this Self‐Existence can hardly be conceived of as creating personally. To the senses and in the perceptions of finite _beings_, THAT is Non‐_Being_, in the sense that it is the One _Be‐ness_; for, in this ALL lies concealed its coëternal and coëval emanation or inherent radiation, which, becoming periodically Brahmâ (the male‐female Potency), expands itself into the manifested Universe. “Nârâyana moving on the [abstract] Waters of Space,” is transformed into the Waters of concrete substance moved by him, who now becomes the manifested Word or Logos.

The orthodox Brâhmans, those who rise the most against the Pantheists and Advaitins, calling them Atheists, are forced, if Manu is any authority in this matter, to accept the death of Brahmâ, the Creator, at the expiration of every Age of this deity—100 Divine Years, a period which in our years requires fifteen figures to express. Yet no philosopher among them will view this “death” in any other sense than as a temporary disappearance from the manifested plane of existence, or as a periodical rest.

The Occultists are, therefore, at one with the Advaita Vedântin philosophers as to the above tenet. They show, on philosophical grounds, the impossibility of accepting the idea of the absolute ALL creating or even evolving the Golden Egg, into which it is said to enter in order to transform itself into Brahmâ, the Creator, who later expands himself into the Gods and all the visible Universe. They say that absolute Unity cannot pass to Infinity, for Infinity presupposes the limitless extension of _something_, and the duration of that something; and the One All—like Space, which is its only mental and physical representation on this earth, or our plane of existence—is neither an object of, nor a subject to, perception. If one could suppose the eternal infinite All, the omnipresent Unity, instead of being in Eternity, becoming through periodical manifestation a manifold Universe or a multiple Personality, that Unity would cease to be one. Locke’s idea, that “pure space is capable of neither resistance nor motion,” is incorrect. Space is neither a “limitless void,” nor a “conditioned fulness,” but both. Being—on the plane of absolute abstraction—the ever‐incognizable Deity, which is void only to finite minds,(39) and on that of mâyâvic perception, the Plenum, the absolute Container of all that is, whether manifested or unmanifested, it is, therefore, that ABSOLUTE ALL. There is no difference between the Christian Apostle’s “in Him we live and move and have our being,” and the Hindû Rishi’s “the Universe lives in, proceeds from, and will return to, Brahmâ”: for Brahman (neuter), the unmanifested, is that Universe _in abscondito_, and Brahmâ, the manifested, is the Logos, made male‐ female(40) in the symbolical orthodox dogmas, the God of the Apostle‐ Initiate and of the Rishi being both the Unseen and the Visible Space. Space is called, in esoteric symbolism, the “Seven‐Skinned Eternal Mother‐ Father.” From its undifferentiated to its differentiated surface it is composed of seven layers.

“_What is that which was, is, and will be, whether there is a Universe or not; whether there be gods or none?_” asks the esoteric Senzar Catechism. And the answer made is—“_Space_.”

It is not the One unknown ever‐present God in Nature, or Nature _in abscondito_, that is rejected, but the “God” of human dogma, and his _humanized_ “Word.” Man, in his infinite conceit and inherent pride and vanity, shaped it himself with his sacrilegious hand out of the material he found in his own small brain‐fabric, and forced it upon his fellows as a direct revelation from the one unrevealed SPACE.(41) The Occultist accepts revelation as coming from divine yet still finite Beings, the manifested Lives, never from the unmanifestable ONE LIFE; from those Entities, called Primordial Man, Dhyâni‐Buddhas, or Dhyân Chohans, the Rishi‐Prajâpati of the Hindus, the Elohim or Sons of God of the Jews, the Planetary Spirits of all nations, who have become Gods for men. The Occultist also regards the Âdi‐Shakti—the direct emanation of Mûlaprakriti, the eternal Root of THAT, and the female aspect of the Creative Cause, Brahmâ, in her âkâshic form of the Universal Soul—as philosophically a Mâyâ, and cause of human Mâyâ. But this view does not prevent him from believing in its existence so long as it lasts, to wit, for one Mahâmanvantara; nor from applying Âkâsha, the radiation of Mûlaprakriti,(42) to practical purposes, connected as this World‐Soul is with all natural phenomena known or unknown to Science.

The oldest religions of the world—exoterically, for the esoteric root or foundation is one—are the Indian, the Mazdean, and the Egyptian. Next comes the Chaldean, the outcome of these, now entirely lost to the world, except in its disfigured Sabeanism as at present rendered by the archæologists. Then, passing over a number of religions that will be mentioned later, comes the Jewish, esoterically following in the line of Babylonian Magism, as in the _Kabalah_; exoterically, a collection of allegorical legends, as in _Genesis_ and the _Pentateuch_. Read by the light of the _Zohar_, the four initial chapters of _Genesis_ are the fragment of a highly philosophical page in the world’s cosmogony. Left in their symbolical disguise, they are a nursery tale, an ugly thorn in the side of science and logic, an evident effect of Karma. To let them serve as a prologue to Christianity was a cruel revenge on the part of the Rabbis, who knew better what their _Pentateuch_ meant. It was a silent protest against their spoliation, and the Jews have now certainly the better of their traditional persecutors. The above‐named exoteric creeds will be explained in the light of the universal doctrine as we proceed.

The Occult Catechism contains the following questions and answers:

_What is it that ever is?_—_Space, the eternal Anupâdaka [Parentless]._ _What is it that ever was?—The Germ in the Root. What is it that is ever coming and going?—The Great Breath. Then, there are three Eternals?—No, __ the three are one. That which ever is is one, that which ever was is one, that which is ever being and becoming is also one: and this is Space._

_Explain, O Lanoo [disciple].—The One is an unbroken Circle [Ring] with no circumference, for it is nowhere and everywhere; the One is the boundless Plane of the Circle, manifesting a Diameter only during the manvantaric periods; the One is the indivisible Point found nowhere, perceived everywhere during those periods; it is the Vertical and the Horizontal, the Father and the Mother, the summit and base of the Father, the two extremities of the Mother, reaching in reality nowhere, for the One is the Ring as also the Rings that are within that Ring. Light in Darkness and Darkness in Light: the __“__Breath which is eternal.__”__ It proceeds from without inwardly, when it is everywhere, and from within outwardly, when it is nowhere—(i.e., Mâyâ,_(_43_)_ one of the Centres)._(_44_)_ It expands and contracts [exhalation and inhalation]. When it expands, the Mother diffuses and scatters; when it contracts, the Mother draws back and ingathers. This produces the periods of Evolution and Dissolution, Manvantara and Pralaya. The Germ is invisible and fiery; the Root [the Plane of the Circle] is cool; but during Evolution and Manvantara her garment is cold and radiant. Hot Breath is the Father who devours the progeny of the many‐faced Element [heterogeneous], and leaves the single‐ faced ones [homogeneous]. Cool Breath is the Mother, who conceives, forms, brings forth, and receives them back into her bosom, to reform them at the Dawn [of the Day of Brahmâ, or Manvantara]._

For clearer understanding on the part of the general reader, it must be stated that Occult Science recognizes _seven_ Cosmic Elements—four entirely physical, and the fifth (Ether) semi‐material, which will become visible in the Air towards the end of our Fourth Round, to reign supreme over the others during the whole of the Fifth. The remaining two are as yet absolutely beyond the range of human perception. They will, however, appear as presentments during the Sixth and Seventh Races of this Round, and will be fully known in the Sixth and Seventh Rounds respectively.(45) These seven Elements with their numberless sub‐elements, which are far more numerous than those known to Science, are simply _conditional_ modifications and aspects of the One and only Element. This latter is not Ether,(46) not even Âkâsha, but the _source_ of these. The Fifth Element, now quite freely advocated by Science, is not the Ether hypothesized by Sir Isaac Newton—although he calls it by that name, having probably associated it in his mind with Æther, the “Father‐Mother” of antiquity. As Newton intuitionally says, “Nature is a perpetual circulatory worker, generating fluids out of solids, fixed things out of volatile, and volatile out of fixed, subtile out of gross, and gross out of subtile.... Thus, perhaps, may all things be originated from Ether.”(47)

The reader has to bear in mind that the Stanzas treat only of the cosmogony of our own planetary system and of what is visible around it, after a Solar Pralaya. The secret teachings with regard to the evolution of the Universal Kosmos cannot be given, since they could not be understood by even the highest minds in this age, and there seem to be very few Initiates, even among the greatest, who are allowed to speculate upon this subject. Moreover the Teachers say openly that not even the highest Dhyâni‐Chohans have ever penetrated the mysteries beyond those boundaries that separate the milliards of solar systems from the Central Sun, as it is called. Therefore, that which is given relates only to our visible Cosmos, after a Night of Brahmâ.

Before the reader proceeds to the consideration of the Stanzas from the _Book of Dzyan_ which form the basis of the present work, it is absolutely necessary that he should be made acquainted with the few fundamental conceptions which underlie and pervade the entire system of thought to which his attention is invited. These basic ideas are few in number, but on their clear apprehension depends the understanding of all that follows; therefore no apology is required for asking the reader to make himself familiar with these first, before entering on the perusal of the work itself.

The Secret Doctrine then, establishes three fundamental propositions:

I. An Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless and Immutable PRINCIPLE, on which all speculation is impossible, since it transcends the power of human conception and can only be dwarfed by any human expression or similitude. It is beyond the range and reach of thought—in the words of the _Mândûkya_, “unthinkable and unspeakable.”

To render these ideas clearer to the general reader, let him set out with the postulate that there is One Absolute Reality which antecedes all manifested, conditioned Being. This Infinite and Eternal Cause—dimly formulated in the “Unconscious” and “Unknowable” of current European philosophy—is the Rootless Root of “all that was, is, or ever shall be.” It is of course devoid of all attributes and is essentially without any relation to manifested, finite Being. It is “Be‐ness” rather than Being, Sat in Sanskrit, and is beyond all thought or speculation.

This Be‐ness is symbolized in the Secret Doctrine under two aspects. On the one hand, absolute Abstract Space, representing bare subjectivity, the one thing which no human mind can either exclude from any conception, or conceive of by itself. On the other, absolute Abstract Motion representing Unconditioned Consciousness. Even our Western thinkers have shown that consciousness is inconceivable to us apart from change, and motion best symbolizes change, its essential characteristic. This latter aspect of the One Reality, is also symbolized by the term the Great Breath, a symbol sufficiently graphic to need no further elucidation. Thus, then, the first fundamental axiom of the Secret Doctrine is this metaphysical One Absolute BE‐NESS—symbolized by finite intelligence as the theological Trinity.

It may, however, assist the student if a few further explanations are here given.

Herbert Spencer has of late so far modified his Agnosticism, as to assert that the nature of the “First Cause,”(48) which the Occultist more logically derives from the Causeless Cause, the “Eternal,” and the “Unknowable,” may be essentially the same as that of the consciousness which wells up within us: in short, that the impersonal Reality pervading the Kosmos is the pure noumenon of thought. This advance on his part brings him very near to the Esoteric and Vedântin tenet.(49)

Parabrahman, the One Reality, the Absolute, is the field of Absolute Consciousness, _i.e._, that Essence which is out of all relation to conditioned existence, and of which conscious existence is a conditioned symbol. But once that we pass in thought from this (to us) Absolute Negation, duality supervenes in the contrast of Spirit (or Consciousness) and Matter, Subject and Object.

Spirit (or Consciousness) and Matter are, however, to be regarded, not as independent realities, but as the two symbols or aspects of the Absolute, Parabrahman, which constitute the basis of conditioned Being whether subjective or objective.

Considering this metaphysical triad as the Root from which proceeds all manifestation, the Great Breath assumes the character of Pre‐cosmic Ideation. It is the _fons et origo_ of Force and of all individual Consciousness, and supplies the guiding intelligence in the vast scheme of cosmic Evolution. On the other hand, Pre‐cosmic Root‐Substance (Mûlaprakriti) is that aspect of the Absolute which underlies all the objective planes of Nature.

Just as Pre‐cosmic Ideation is the root of all individual Consciousness, so Pre‐cosmic Substance is the substratum of Matter in the various grades of its differentiation.

Hence it will be apparent that the contrast of these two aspects of the Absolute is essential to the existence of the Manifested Universe. Apart from Cosmic Substance, Cosmic Ideation could not manifest as individual Consciousness, since it is only through a vehicle (_upâdhi_) of matter that consciousness wells up as “I am I,” a physical basis being necessary to focus a Ray of the Universal Mind at a certain stage of complexity. Again, apart from Cosmic Ideation, Cosmic Substance would remain an empty abstraction, and no emergence of Consciousness could ensue.

The Manifested Universe, therefore, is pervaded by duality, which is, as it were, the very essence of its _Ex_‐istence as Manifestation. But just as the opposite poles of Subject and Object, Spirit and Matter, are but aspects of the One Unity in which they are synthesized, so, in the Manifested Universe, there is “that” which links Spirit to Matter, Subject to Object.

This something, at present unknown to Western speculation, is called by Occultists Fohat. It is the “bridge” by which the Ideas existing in the Divine Thought are impressed on Cosmic Substance as the Laws of Nature. Fohat is thus the dynamic energy of Cosmic Ideation; or, regarded from the other side, it is the intelligent medium, the guiding power of all manifestation, the Thought Divine transmitted and made manifest through the Dhyân Chohans,(50) the Architects of the visible World. Thus from Spirit, or Cosmic Ideation, comes our Consciousness, from Cosmic Substance the several Vehicles in which that Consciousness is individualized and attains to self—or reflective—consciousness; while Fohat, in its various manifestations, is the mysterious link between Mind and Matter, the animating principle electrifying every atom into life.

The following summary will afford a clearer idea to the reader.

(1.) ABSOLUTENESS: the Parabrahman of the Vedântins or the One Reality, Sat, which is, as Hegel says, both Absolute Being and Non‐Being.

(2.) The _First_ Logos: the impersonal, and, in philosophy, Unmanifested Logos, the precursor of the Manifested. This is the “First Cause,” the “Unconscious” of European Pantheists.

(3.) The _Second_ Logos: Spirit‐Matter, Life; the “Spirit of the Universe,” Purusha and Prakriti.

(4.) The _Third_ Logos: Cosmic Ideation, Mahat or Intelligence, the Universal World‐Soul; the Cosmic Noumenon of Matter, the basis of the intelligent operations in and of Nature, also called Mahâ‐Buddhi.

The ONE REALITY: its _dual_ aspects in the conditioned Universe.

Further, the Secret Doctrine affirms:

II. The Eternity of the Universe _in toto_ as a boundless plane; periodically “the playground of numberless Universes incessantly manifesting and disappearing,” called the “Manifesting Stars,” and the “Sparks of Eternity.” “_The Eternity of the Pilgrim_(_51_)_ is like a wink of the Eye of Self‐Existence_,” as the _Book of Dyzan_ puts it. “_The appearance and disappearance of Worlds is like a regular tidal ebb of flux and reflux._”

This second assertion of the Secret Doctrine is the absolute universality of that law of periodicity, of flux and reflux, ebb and flow, which physical science has observed and recorded in all departments of nature. An alternation such as that of Day and Night, Life and Death, Sleeping and Waking, is a fact so common, so perfectly universal and without exception, that it is easy to comprehend that in it we see one of the absolutely fundamental Laws of the Universe.

Moreover, the Secret Doctrine teaches:

III. The fundamental identity of all Souls with the Universal Over‐Soul, the latter being itself an aspect of the Unknown Root; and the obligatory pilgrimage for every Soul—a spark of the former—through the Cycle of Incarnation, or Necessity, in accordance with Cyclic and Karmic Law, during the whole term. In other words, no purely spiritual Buddhi (Divine Soul) can have an independent conscious existence before the spark which issued from the pure Essence of the Universal Sixth Principle—or the OVER‐ SOUL—has (a) passed through every elemental form of the phenomenal world of that Manvantara, and (b) acquired individuality, first by natural impulse, and then by self‐induced and self‐devised efforts, checked by its Karma, thus ascending through all the degrees of intelligence, from the lowest to the highest Manas, from mineral and plant, up to the holiest Archangel (Dhyâni‐Buddha). The pivotal doctrine of the Esoteric Philosophy admits no privileges or special gifts in man, save those won by his own Ego through personal effort and merit throughout a long series of metempsychoses and reïncarnations. This is why the Hindûs say that the Universe is Brahman and Brahmâ, for Brahman is in every atom of the universe, the six Principles in Nature being all the outcome—the variously differentiated aspects—of the Seventh and One, the only Reality in the Universe whether cosmic or micro‐cosmic; and also why the permutations, psychic, spiritual and physical, on the plane of manifestation and form, of the Sixth (Brahmâ the vehicle of Brahman) are viewed by metaphysical antiphrasis as illusive and mâyâvic. For although the root of every atom individually and of every form collectively, is that Seventh Principle or the One Reality, still, in its manifested phenomenal and temporary appearance, it is no better than an evanescent illusion of our senses.