Chapter XI: Part I: Anthropogenesis (9)

Here, the Akkadians are called “non‐Semitic,” as we had insisted they were in _Isis Unveiled_, which is another corroboration. Nor are we less right in always maintaining that the Jewish biblical history was a compilation of _historical_ facts, arranged from other people’s history in Jewish garb—_Genesis_ excluded, which is Esotericism pure and simple. But it is really from the Euxine to Kashmir, and beyond, that Science has to search for the cradle—or rather one of the chief cradles—of mankind and the sons of Ad‐ah; especially in after times, when the Garden of Ed‐en on the Euphrates became the College of the Astrologers and Magi, the Aleim.

But this College and this Eden belong to the Fifth Race, and are simply a faint reminiscence of the Âdi‐Varsha, of the primeval Third Race. What is the etymological meaning of the word Eden? In Greek it is ἡδονὴ, signifying “voluptuousness.” In this aspect it is no better than the Olympus of the Greeks, Indra’s Heaven, Svarga, on Mount Meru, and even the Paradise full of Houris, promised by Mahomet to the faithful. The Garden of Eden was never the property of the Jews, for China, which can hardly be suspected of having known anything of the Jews 2,000 B.C., had such a primitive Garden in Central Asia inhabited by the “Dragons of Wisdom,” the Initiates. And according to Klaproth, the hieroglyphical chart copied from a Japanese Cyclopædia in the book of _Foĕ‐kouĕ‐ki_(460) places its “Garden of Wisdom” on the Plateau of Pamir between the highest peaks of the Himâlayan ranges; and, describing it as the culminating point of Central Asia, shows the four rivers—Oxus, Indus, Ganges, and Silo—flowing from a common source, the “Lake of the Dragons.”

But this is not the Genetic Eden; nor is it the Kabalistical Garden of Eden. For the former—Eden Illa‐ah—means in one sense Wisdom, a state like that of Nirvâna, a Paradise of Bliss; while in another sense it refers to Intellectual Man himself, the container of the Eden in which grows the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil; man being the Knower thereof.

Renan and Barthélemy St. Hilaire, basing themselves “on the most solid inductions,” think it impossible to doubt any longer, and both place the cradle of humanity “in the region of the Timaus.” Finally, the _Journal Asiatique_(461) concludes that:

All the traditions of the human race gathering its primitive
families at the region of their birth‐place, show them to us
grouped around the countries where Jewish tradition places the
Garden of Eden; where the Âryans [Zoroastrians] established their
Airyana Vaêjô or the Meru [?]. They are hemmed in to the North by
the countries which join Lake Aral, and to the South by Baltistan,
or Little Tibet. Everything concurs in proving that there was the
abode of that primitive humanity to which we have to be traced.

That “primitive humanity” was in its Fifth Race, when the “Four‐mouthed Dragon,” the lake, of which very few traces are now left, was the abode of the “Sons of Wisdom,” the first Mind‐born Sons of the Third Race. Yet it was neither the only nor the primitive cradle of humanity, though it was the copy of the cradle, verily, of the first thinking _divine_ Man. It was the Paradesha, the highland of the first Sanskrit‐speaking people, the Hedone, the country of delight of the Greeks, but it was not the “Bower of Voluptuousness” of the Chaldæans, for the latter was but the reminiscence of it; nor again was it there that the “Fall of Man” occurred after the “separation.” The Eden of the Jews was _copied_ from the Chaldæan _copy_.

That the Fall of Man into generation occurred during the earliest portion of what Science calls the Mesozoic times, or the age of the reptiles, is evidenced by the bible phraseology concerning the serpent, the nature of which is explained in the _Zohar_. The question is not whether Eve’s incident with the tempting reptile is allegorical or textual, for no one can doubt that it is the former, but to show the antiquity of the symbolism on the very face of it, and that it was not a Jewish but a universal idea.

Now we find in the _Zohar_ a very strange assertion, one that is calculated to provoke the reader to merry laughter by its ludicrous absurdity. It tells us that the serpent, which was used by Shamaël, the supposed Satan, to seduce Eve, was a kind of “flying camel”—καμηλόμορφον.(462)

A “flying camel” is indeed too much for the most liberal‐minded F.R.S. Nevertheless, the _Zohar_, which can hardly be expected to use the language of a Cuvier, was right in its description; for we find it called in the old Zoroastrian MSS. Aschmogh, which in the _Avesta_ is represented as having after the Fall lost its _nature_ and its _name_, and is described as a huge serpent with a camel’s neck.

Salverte asserts that:

There are no winged serpents nor veritable dragons....
Grasshoppers are still called by the Greeks _winged serpents_, and
this metaphor may have created several narratives on the existence
of winged serpents.(463)

There are none _now_; but there is no reason why they should not have existed during the Mesozoic Age; and Cuvier, who has reconstructed their skeletons, is a witness to “flying camels.” Already, after finding simple fossils of certain saurians, the great Naturalist has written, that:

If anything can justify the hydras and other monsters, whose
figures were so often repeated by mediæval historians, it is
incontestably the Plesiosaurus.(464)

We are unaware if Cuvier has added anything in the way of a further _mea culpa_, but we may well imagine his confusion for all his slanders against archaic veracity, when he found himself in the presence of a _flying_ saurian, the Pterodactyl, found in Germany, seventy‐eight feet long, and carrying vigorous wings attached to its reptilian body. This fossil is described as a reptile, the _little fingers of whose hands_ are so elongated as to bear a long membranous wing. Here, then, the “flying camel” of the _Zohar_ is vindicated. For surely, between the long neck of the Plesiosaurus and the membranous wing of the Pterodactyl, or still better the Mosasaurus, there is enough scientific probability on which to build a “flying camel,” or a long‐necked dragon. Prof. Cope, of Philadelphia, has shown that the Mosasaurus fossil in the chalk was a winged serpent of this kind. There are characters in its vertebræ, which indicate union with the Ophidia rather than with the Lacertilia.

And now to the main question. It is well known that Antiquity has never claimed Palæontography and Palæontology among its arts and sciences; and it never had its Cuviers. Yet on Babylonian tiles, and especially in old Chinese and Japanese drawings, in the oldest Pagodas and monuments, and in the Imperial Library at Pekin, many a traveller has seen and recognized perfect representations of Plesiosauri and Pterodactyls in the multiform Chinese dragons.(465) Moreover, the prophets speak in the _Bible_ of the flying fiery serpents,(466) and Job mentions the Leviathan.(467) Now the following questions are put very directly:

I. How could the ancient nations know anything of the extinct monsters of the Carboniferous and Mesozoic times, and even represent and describe them orally and pictorially, unless they had either _seen those monsters themselves_ or _possessed descriptions of them in their traditions_; which descriptions necessitate _living and intelligent eye‐witnesses_?

II. And if such eye‐witnesses are once admitted (unless retrospective clairvoyance is granted), how can humanity and the first palæolithic men be no earlier than about the middle of the Tertiary period? We must bear in mind that most of the men of Science do not allow man to have appeared before the Quaternary period, and thus shut him out completely from the Cainozoic times. Here we have extinct species of animals, which disappeared from the face of the Earth millions of years ago, described by, and known to, nations whose civilization, it is said, could hardly have begun a few thousand years ago. How is this? Evidently either the Mesozoic time has to be made to overlap the Quaternary period, or man must be made the contemporary of the Pterodactyl and the Plesiosaurus.

It does not follow that, because the Occultists believe in and defend Ancient Wisdom and Science, even though winged saurians are called “flying camels” in the translations of the _Zohar_, we therefore as readily believe in all the stories which the Middle Ages give us of such dragons. Pterodactyls and Plesiosauri ceased to exist with the bulk of the Third Race. When, therefore, we are gravely asked by Roman Catholic writers to credit Christopher Scherer’s and Father Kircher’s cock‐and‐bull stories of their having seen with their own eyes living fiery and flying dragons, respectively in 1619 and 1669, we may be allowed to regard their assertions as either dreams or fibs.(468) Nor shall we regard otherwise than as a “poetical license” the story told of Petrarch, who, while following one day his Laura in the woods and passing near a cave, is credited with having found a dragon, whom he forthwith stabbed with his dagger and killed, thus preventing the monster from devouring the lady of his heart.(469) We would willingly believe the story had Petrarch lived in the days of Atlantis, when such antediluvian monsters may still have existed. We deny their existence in our present era. The sea‐serpent is one thing, the dragon quite another. The former is denied by the majority because it lives in the very depths of the ocean, is very scarce, and rises to the surface only when compelled, perhaps, by hunger. Thus keeping invisible, it may exist and still be denied. But if there was such a thing as a dragon of the above description, how could it have ever escaped detection? It is a creature contemporary with the earliest Fifth Race, and exists no more.

The reader may enquire why we speak of dragons at all? We answer: firstly, because the knowledge of such animals is a proof of the enormous antiquity of the human race; and, secondly, to show the difference between the real zoological meaning of the words “Dragon,” “Nâga,” and “Serpent,” and the metaphorical meaning, when used symbolically. The profane reader, who knows nothing of the mystery language, is likely, whenever he finds one of these words mentioned, to accept it literally. Hence, the _quidproquos_ and unjust accusations. A couple of instances will suffice.

“Sed et Serpens?” Aye: but what was the nature of the serpent? Mystics intuitionally see in the serpent of _Genesis_ an animal emblem and a high spiritual essence: a cosmic force, superintelligent, a “great fallen light,” a spirit, sidereal, aërial and tellurian at the same time, “whose influence circumambulates the globe” (_qui circumambulat terram_), as De Mirville,(470) a Christian fanatic of the dead‐letter, has it, and which only “manifested itself under the physical emblem which agreed the better with its moral and intellectual _coils_”—_i.e._, under the ophidian form.

But what will Christians make of the Brazen Serpent, the “Divine Healer,” if the serpent is to be regarded as the emblem of cunning and evil; the “Evil One” itself? How can the line of demarcation ever be settled, when it is traced arbitrarily in a sectarian theological spirit? For, if the followers of the Roman Church are taught that Mercury and Æsculapius, or Asclepios, who are, in truth, one, are “devils and sons of devils,” and the wand and serpent of the latter, the “Devil’s wand”; how about the Brazen Serpent of Moses? Every scholar knows that both the Heathen “wand” and the Jewish “serpent” are one and the same, namely, the Caduceus of Mercury, son of Apollo‐Python. It is easy to comprehend why the Jews adopted the ophidian shape for their “seducer.” With them it was purely _physiological_ and _phallic_; and no amount of casuistical reasoning on the part of the Roman Catholic Church can give it another meaning, once that the mystery language is well studied, and that the Hebrew scrolls are read numerically. The Occultists know that the Serpent, the Nâga, and the Dragon have each a septenary meaning; that the Sun, for instance, was the astronomical and cosmic emblem of the two contrasted Lights and the two Serpents of the Gnostics, the good and the evil. They also know that, when _generalized_, the conclusions of both Science and Theology present two most ridiculous extremes. For, when the former tells us that it is sufficient to trace the legends of the serpents to their primal source, the astronomical legend, and to meditate seriously on the Sun, the conqueror of Python, and the celestial Virgin in the Zodiac forcing back the devouring Dragon, if we would have the key of all the subsequent religious dogmas—it is easy to perceive that, instead of generalizing, the author simply has his eye on Christian religion and _Revelation_. We call this the one extreme. We see the other when Theology, repeating the famous decision of the Council of Trent, seeks to convince the masses that:

From the fall of man until the hour of his baptism the Devil has
full power over him, and possesses him _by right_—_diabolum
dominium et potestatem super homines habere et jure eos
possidere_.(471)

To this Occult Philosophy answers: Prove first the existence of the Devil _as an entity_, and then we may believe in such congenital possession. A very small amount of observation and knowledge of human nature may be sufficient to prove the fallacy of this theological dogma. Had Satan any reality, in the objective or even subjective world (in the ecclesiastical sense), it is the poor Devil who would find himself chronically obsessed and even possessed by the wicked—hence by the bulk of mankind. It is humanity itself, and especially the clergy, headed by the haughty, unscrupulous and intolerant Roman Church, which has begotten, given birth to, and reared in love the Evil One. But this is a digression.

The whole world of thought is reproached by the Church with having
adored the serpent.

The whole of humanity burnt incense to it or stoned it. The
_Zends_ speak of it as do the _Kings_ and _Vedas_, as the _Edda_
... and the _Bible_.... Everywhere the sacred serpent [the Nâga]
has its shrine and its priest; in Rome it is the Vestal who ...
prepares its meal with the same care that she bestows on the
sacred fire. In Greece, Æsculapius cannot cure without its
assistance, and delegates to it his powers. Every one has heard of
the famous Roman embassy sent by the Senate to the god of medicine
and its return with the not less famous serpent, which proceeded
of its own will and by itself toward its master’s temple on one of
the islands of the Tiber. Not a Bacchante that did not wind it
[the serpent] in her hair, not an Augur but questioned it with
care, not a Necromancer whose tombs are free from its presence!
The Cainites and the Ophites call it Creator, while recognizing,
as Schelling did, that the serpent is “evil in substance and in
person.”(472)

Yes, the author is right, and if one would have a complete idea of the prestige which the serpent enjoys to our own day, he ought to study the matter in India and learn all that is believed about, and still attributed to, the Nâgas (cobras) in that country; one should also visit the Africans of Whydah, the Voodoos of Port‐au‐Prince and Jamaica, the Nagals of Mexico, and the Pâ, or Men‐serpents of China, etc. But why wonder that the serpent is “adored” and at the same time cursed, since we know that from the beginning it was a symbol? In every ancient language the word _dragon_ signified what it now does in Chinese, _long_ or “the being who excels in intelligence,” and in Greek, δράκων, or “he who sees and watches.”(473) Is it to the animal of this name that any of these epithets can apply? Is it not evident, wherever superstition and oblivion of the primitive meaning may have led savages now, that the above qualifications were intended to apply to the human originals, who were symbolized by Serpents and Dragons? These originals—called to this day in China the “Dragons of Wisdom”—were the first disciples of the Dhyânîs, who were their Instructors; in short, the Primitive Adepts of the Third Race, and later, of the Fourth and Fifth Races. The name became universal, and no sane man before the Christian era would ever have confounded the man and the symbol.

The symbol of Chnouphis, or the Soul of the World, writes Champollion:

Is among others that of an enormous serpent standing on human
legs; this reptile, the emblem of the Good Genius, is a veritable
Agathodæmon. It is often represented bearded.... This sacred
animal, identical with the serpent of the Ophites, is found
engraved on numerous Gnostic or Basilidean stones.... The serpent
has various heads, but is constantly inscribed with the letters
ΧΝΟΥΒΙΣ.(474)

Agathodæmon was endowed “with the knowledge of good and evil,” _i.e._, with Divine Wisdom, for without the latter the former is impossible.(475) Repeating Jamblichus, Champollion shows him to be:

The deity called Εἰχτῶν [or the Fire of the Celestial Gods—the
Great Thot‐Hermes],(476) to whom Hermes Trismegistus attributes
the invention of magic.(477)

The “invention of magic”! A strange term to use, as though the unveiling of the eternal and actual mysteries of Nature could be _invented_! As well attribute, millenniums hence, the _invention_ instead of the discovery of radiant matter to Mr. Crookes. Hermes was not the inventor, or even the discoverer, for, as said in the last footnote but one, Thot‐Hermes is a generic name, as is Enoch—Enoïchion, the “inner, spiritual eye”—Nebo, the prophet and seer, etc. It is not the proper name of any one living man, but a generic title of many Adepts. Their connection with the serpent in symbolic allegories is due to their enlightenment by the Solar and Planetary Gods during the earliest intellectual Race, the Third. They are all the representative patrons of the Secret Wisdom. Asclepios is the son of the Sun‐God Apollo, and he is Mercury; Nebo is the son of Bel‐Merodach; Vaivasvata Manu, the great Rishi, is the son of Vivasvat—the Sun or Sûrya, etc. And while, astronomically, the Nâgas along with the Rishis, the Gandharvas, Apsarases, Grâmanîs (or Yakshas, minor Gods), Yâtudhânas and Devas, are the Sun’s attendants throughout the twelve solar months; in theogony, and also in anthropological evolution, they are Gods and Men—when incarnated in the _Nether_ World. Let the reader be reminded, in this connection, of the fact that Apollonius met in Kashmir Buddhist Nâgas. These are neither serpents zoologically, nor yet the Nâgas ethnologically, but “wise men.”

The _Bible_, from _Genesis_ to _Revelation_, is but a series of historical records of the great struggle between White and Black Magic, between the Adepts of the Right Path, the Prophets, and those of the Left, the Levites, the clergy of the brutal masses. Even the students of Occultism, though some of them have more archaic MSS. and direct teaching to rely upon, find it difficult to draw a line of demarcation between the Sodales of the Right Path and those of the Left. The great schism that arose between the sons of the Fourth Race, as soon as the first Temples and Halls of Initiation had been erected under the guidance of the “Sons of God,” is allegorized in the Sons of Jacob. That there were two Schools of Magic, and that the orthodox Levites did not belong to the holy one, is shown in the words pronounced by the dying Jacob. And here it may be well to quote a few sentences from _Isis Unveiled_.(478)

The dying Jacob thus describes his sons: “Dan,” he says, “shall be
a _serpent_ by the way, an _adder_ in the path, that biteth the
horse‐heels, so that his rider shall fall backwards [_i.e._, he
will teach candidates _Black_ Magic]. I have waited for thy
salvation, O Lord!” Of Simeon and Levi the patriarch remarks that
they “are brethren; instruments of _cruelty_ are in their
habitations. O my soul, come not thou into their _secret_; unto
their _assembly_.”(479) Now in the original, the words “their
secret” read—“their Sod.”(480) And Sod was the name for the great
Mysteries of Baal, Adonis and Bacchus, who were all Sun‐Gods and
had serpents for symbols. The Kabalists explain the allegory of
the fiery serpents by saying that this was the name given to the
tribe of Levi, to all the Levites, in short, and that Moses was
the chief of the Sodales.(481)

It is to the Mysteries that the original meaning of the “Dragon‐Slayers” has to be traced, and the question is fully treated of hereafter.

Meanwhile it follows that, if Moses was the Chief of the Mysteries, he was the Hierophant thereof; and further, if, at the same time, we find the Prophets thundering against the “abominations” of the people of Israël, that there were two Schools. “Fiery serpents” was, then, simply the epithet given to the Levites of the priestly caste, after they had departed from the Good Law, the traditional teachings of Moses, and to all those who followed Black Magic. Isaiah, when referring to the “rebellious children” who will have to carry their riches into the lands whence come “the viper and _fiery_ flying _serpent_,”(482) or Chaldæa and Egypt, whose Initiates had already greatly degenerated in his day (700 B.C.), meant the sorcerers of those lands.(483) But these must be carefully distinguished from the “Fiery Dragons of Wisdom” and the “Sons of the Fire‐Mist.”

In the _Great Book of the Mysteries_ we are told that:

_Seven Lords created seven Men; three Lords [Dhyân Chohans or Pitris] were holy and good, four less heavenly and full of passion.... The Chhâyâs [phantoms] of the Fathers were as they._

This accounts for the differences in human nature, which is divided into seven gradations of good and evil. There were seven tabernacles ready to be inhabited by Monads under seven different Karmic conditions. The Commentaries explain on this basis the easy spread of evil, as soon as the human Forms had become real men. Some ancient philosophers, however, in their genetical accounts, ignored the seven and gave only four. Thus the Mexican local _Genesis_ has “four _good_ men,” described as the four real ancestors of the human race, “who were neither begotten by the Gods nor born of woman”; but whose creation was a wonder wrought by the Creative Powers, and who were made only after “_three attempts at manufacturing men had failed_.” The Egyptians in their theology had only “four Sons of God”—whereas in _Pymander_ _seven_ are given—thus avoiding any mention of the evil nature of man. When, however, Set from a God sank into Set‐ Typhon, he began to be called the “seventh son”; whence probably arose the belief that “the seventh son of the seventh son” is always a natural‐born magician—though at first only a _sorcerer_ was meant. Apap, the serpent symbolizing evil, is slain by Aker, Set’s serpent;(484) therefore Set‐ Typhon could not be that evil. In the _Book of the Dead_, it is commanded that Chapter clxiii should be read “in the presence of a serpent on two legs,” which means a high Initiate, a Hierophant, for the discus and ram’s horns(485) that adorn his “serpent’s” head in the hieroglyphics of the title of the said chapter, denote this. Over the “serpent” are represented the two mystic eyes of Ammon,(486) the hidden “Mystery God.” The above passages corroborate our assertion, and show what the word “serpent” really meant in antiquity.

But as to the Nagals and Nargals; whence came the similarity or names between the Indian Nâgas and the American Nagals?

The Nargal was the Chaldæan and Assyrian chief of the Magi [Rab‐
Mag], and the Nagal was the chief sorcerer of the Mexican Indians.
Both derive their names from Nergal‐Serezer, the Assyrian god, and
the Hindû Nâgas. Both have the same faculties and the power to
have an attendant Dæmon, with whom they identify themselves
completely. The Chaldæan and Assyrian Nargal kept his Dæmon, in
the shape of some animal considered sacred, inside the temple; the
Indian Nagal keeps his wherever he can—in the neighbouring lake,
or wood, or in the house, in the shape of some household
animal.(487)

Such similarity cannot be attributed to _coincidence_. A new world is discovered, and we find that, for our forefathers of the Fourth Race, it was already an old one; that Arjuna, Krishna’s companion and Chelâ, is said to have descended into Pâtâla, the “antipodes” and therein married Ulûpî,(488) a Nâga, or Nâgî rather, the daughter of the king of the Nâgas, Kauravya.(489)

And now it may be hoped the full meaning of the serpent emblem is proven. It is neither that of evil, nor, least of all, that of the devil; but is, indeed, the ΣΕΜΕΣ ΕΙΛΑΜ ΑΒΡΑΣΑΞ, the “Eternal Sun Abrasax,” the Central Spiritual Sun of all the Kabalists, represented in some diagrams by the circle of Tiphereth.

And here, again, we may quote from our earlier volumes and enter into further explanations.

From this region of unfathomable Depth (Bythos, Aditi, Shekinah,
the Veil of the Unknown) issues forth a Circle formed of spirals.
This is Tiphereth; which, in the language of symbolism, means a
grand Cycle, composed of smaller ones. Coiled within, so as to
follow the spirals, lies the Serpent—emblem of Wisdom and
Eternity—the Dual Androgyne; the cycle representing Ennoia, or the
Divine Mind (a Power which does not create but which must
assimilate), and the Serpent, the Agathodæmon, the Ophis, the
_Shadow_ of the Light (non‐eternal, yet the greatest Divine Light
on our plane). Both were the Logoi of the Ophites; or the Unity as
Logos manifesting itself as a double principle of Good and
Evil.(490)

Were it Light alone, inactive and absolute, the human mind could not appreciate nor even realize it. Shadow is that which enables Light to manifest itself, and gives it objective reality. Therefore, Shadow is not evil, but is the necessary and indispensable corollary which completes Light or Good; it is its _creator_ on Earth.

According to the views of the Gnostics, these two principles are immutable Light and Shadow; Good and Evil being virtually one and having existed through all eternity, as they will ever continue to exist so long as there are manifested worlds.

This symbol accounts for the adoration by this sect of the
Serpent, as the Saviour, coiled either round the sacramental loaf,
or a Tau (the phallic emblem). As a unity, Ennoia and Ophis are
the Logos. When separated, one is the Tree of Spiritual Life, the
other, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Therefore, we find
Ophis urging the first human couple—the material production of
Ilda‐baoth, but owing its spiritual principle to Sophia‐
Achamoth—to eat of the forbidden fruit, although Ophis represents
divine Wisdom.

The Serpent, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Tree
of Life, are all symbols transplanted from the soil of India. The
Arasa‐maram [?], the banyan tree, so sacred with the Hindûs—since
Vishnu during one of his incarnations, reposed under its mighty
shade and there taught human philosophy and sciences—is called the
Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life. Under the protecting
foliage of this king of the forests, the Gurus teach their pupils
their first lessons on immortality and initiate them into the
mysteries of life and death. The Java‐Aleim of the Sacerdotal
College are said, in the Chaldæan tradition, to have taught the
sons of men to become like one of them. To the present day Foh‐
tchou(491) who lives in his Foh‐Maëyu, or the temple of Buddha, on
the top of the Kouin‐Long‐Sang,(492) the great mountain, produces
his greatest religious miracles under a tree called in Chinese
Sung‐Ming‐Shŭ, or the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life, for
ignorance is death, and knowledge alone gives immortality. This
marvellous display takes place every three years, when an immense
concourse of Chinese Buddhists assembles in pilgrimage at the holy
place.(493)

Now it may become comprehensible why the earliest Initiates and Adepts, or the “Wise Men,” who are claimed to have been initiated into the Mysteries of Nature by the Universal Mind, represented by the highest Angels, were named the “Serpents of Wisdom” and “Dragons”; and also how the first physiologically complete couples—after being initiated into the Mystery of Human Creation through Ophis, the Manifested Logos and the Androgyne, by eating of the fruit of knowledge—gradually began to be accused by the material spirit of posterity of having _committed sin_, of having disobeyed the “Lord God,” and of having been tempted by the Serpent.

So little have the first Christians—who despoiled the Jews of their _Bible_—understood the first four chapters of _Genesis_ in their esoteric meaning, that they have never perceived that not only was no sin intended in this disobedience, but that the “Serpent” was actually the “Lord God” himself, who, as the Ophis, the Logos, or the bearer of divine creative wisdom, taught mankind to become creators in their turn.(494) They never realized that the Cross was an evolution from the Tree and the Serpent, and thus became the _salvation of mankind_. By this it would become the very first fundamental symbol of Creative Cause, applying to geometry, to numbers, to astronomy, to measure and to animal reproduction. According to the _Kabalah_, _the curse on man came with the formation of woman_.(495) The circle was separated from its diameter line.

From the possession of the double principle in one, that is, the
Androgyne condition, the separation of the dual principle was
made, presenting two opposites, whose destiny it was, for ever
after, to seek reünion into the original _one_ condition. The
curse was this, viz., that Nature, impelling the search, evaded
the desired result by the production of a new being, distinct from
that reünion or oneness desired, by which the natural longing to
recover a lost state was and is for ever being cheated. It is by
this tantalizing process of a continued curse that Nature
lives.(496)

The allegory of Adam being driven away from the Tree of Life means, Esoterically, that the newly separated Race abused and dragged down the mystery of Life into the region of animalism and bestiality. For, as the _Zohar_ shows, Matronethah—Shekinah, the wife of Metatron symbolically—“is the way to the great Tree of Life, the Mighty Tree,” and Shekinah is Divine Grace. As explained, this Tree reaches the heavenly vale and is hidden between three mountains (the upper Triad of Principles, in man). From these three mountains, the Tree ascends above (the Adept’s knowledge aspires heavenward), and then redescends below (into the Adept’s Ego on earth). This Tree is revealed in the day time and is hidden during the night, _i.e._, revealed to an enlightened mind and hidden to ignorance, which is night.(497) As says the Commentary:

_The Tree of the Knowledge of the Good and the Evil grows from the roots of the Tree of Life._

But then also, as the author of _The Source of Measures_ writes:

In the Kabalah it is plainly to be found that the “Tree of Life”
was the ansated cross in its sexual aspect, and that the “Tree of
Knowledge” was the separation and the coming together again to
fulfil the fatal condition. To display this in numbers the values
of the letters composing the word Otz (עץ), tree, are 7 and 9, the
seven being the holy feminine number and the nine the number of
the phallic or male energy. This ansated cross is the symbol of
the Egyptian _female‐male_, Isis‐Osiris, the germinal principle in
all forms, based on the primal manifestation applicable in all
directions and in all senses.

This is the Kabalistic view of the Western Occultists, and it differs from the more philosophical Eastern or Âryan views upon the subject.(498) The separation of the sexes was in the programme of Nature and of natural evolution; and the creative faculty in male and female was a gift of Divine Wisdom. In the truth of such traditions the whole of Antiquity, from the patrician philosopher to the humblest spiritually inclined plebeian, has believed. And as we proceed, we may successfully show that the _relative_ truth of such legends, if not their absolute exactness—vouched for by such giants of intellect as were Solon, Pythagoras, Plato, and others—begins to dawn upon more than one modern Scientist. He is perplexed; he stands startled and confused before proofs that are being daily accumulated before him; he feels that there is no way of solving the many historical problems that stare him in the face, unless he begins by accepting ancient traditions. Therefore, in saying that we believe absolutely in ancient records and _universal_ legends, we need hardly plead guilty before the impartial observer, for other and far more learned writers, and that too among those who belong to the modern Scientific School, evidently believe in much that the Occultists do—in “dragons,” for instance, and not only symbolically, but also in their actual existence at one time.

It would have indeed been a bold step for anyone, some thirty
years ago, to have thought of treating the public to a collection
of stories ordinarily reputed fabulous, and of claiming for them
the consideration due to genuine realities, or to have advocated
tales, time‐honoured as fictions, as actual facts; and those of
the nursery as being, in many instances, legends, more or less
distorted, descriptive of real beings or events. Nowadays it is a
less hazardous proceeding.(499)

Thus opens the Introduction to a recent (1886) and most interesting work by Mr. Charles Gould, called _Mythical Monsters_. He boldly states his belief in most of these monsters. He submits that:

Many of the so‐called mythical animals, which throughout long ages
and in all nations have been the fertile subjects of fiction and
fable, come legitimately within the scope of plain matter‐of‐fact
Natural History, and that they may be considered, not as the
outcome of exuberant fancy, but as creatures which really once
existed, and of which, unfortunately, only imperfect and
inaccurate descriptions have filtered down to us, probably very
much refracted, through the mists of time; ... traditions of
creatures _once coëxisting with man, some of which are so weird
and terrible as to appear at first sight to be impossible_....

For me the major part of those creatures are not chimeras but
objects of rational study. The dragon, in place of being a
creature evolved out of the imagination of Âryan man by the
contemplation of lightning flashing through the caverns which he
tenanted, as is held by some mythologists, is an animal which once
lived and dragged its ponderous coils and perhaps flew....

To me the specific existence of the unicorn seems not incredible,
and, in fact, more probable than that theory which assigns its
origin to a lunar myth.(500)...

For my part I doubt the general derivation of myths from “the
contemplation of the visible workings of external nature.” It
seems to me easier to suppose that the palsy of time has enfeebled
the utterance of these oft‐told tales until their original
appearance is almost unrecognizable, than that _uncultured savages
should possess powers of imagination and poetical invention far
beyond those enjoyed by the most instructed nations of the present
day_; less hard to believe that these wonderful stories of gods
and demigods, of giants and dwarfs, of dragons and monsters of all
descriptions are _transformations_ than to believe them to be
_inventions_.(501)

It is shown by the same Geologist that:

Palæontologists have successively traced back the existence of man
to periods variously estimated at from _thirty thousand to one
million_ years—to periods when he coëxisted with animals which
have long since become extinct.(502)

These animals, “weird and terrible,” were, to give a few instances: (1) The genus Cidastes, whose huge bones and vertebræ show them to have attained a length of nearly two hundred feet. The remains of such monsters, no less than ten in number, were seen by Professor Marsh in the Mauvaises Terres of Colorado, strewn upon the plains. (2) The Titanosaurus Montanus, reaching fifty or sixty feet in length. (3) The Dinosaurians, in the Jurassic beds of the Rocky Mountains, of still more gigantic proportions. (4) The Atlantosaurus Immanis, a femur of which alone is over six feet in length, and which would be thus over one hundred feet in length. But even yet the line has not been reached, and we hear of the discovery of remains of such titanic proportions as to possess a thigh‐ bone over twelve feet in length!(503) Then we read of the monstrous Sivatherium in the Himâlayas, the four‐horned stag, as large as an elephant, and exceeding the latter in height; of the gigantic Megatherium; of colossal flying lizards, Pterodactyli, with crocodile jaws on a duck’s head, etc. _All these were coëxistent with man, most probably attacked man, as man attacked them._ And we are asked to believe that the said man was no larger then than he is now! Is it possible to conceive that, surrounded in Nature with such monstrous creatures, man, unless himself a colossal giant, could have survived, while all his foes have perished? Is it with his stone hatchet that he had the best of a Sivatherium or a gigantic flying saurian? Let us always bear in mind that at least one great man of Science, de Quatrefages, sees no good scientific reasons why man should not have been “contemporaneous with the earliest mammalia and go back _as far as the Secondary Period_.”(504)

The very conservative Professor Jukes writes:

It appears that the flying dragons of romance had something like a
real existence in former ages of the world.(505)

And the author goes on to ask.

Does the written history of man, comprising a few thousand years,
embrace the whole course of his intelligent existence? Or have we
in the long mythical eras, extending over hundreds of thousands of
years, and recorded in the chronologies of Chaldæa and China,
shadowy mementoes of prehistoric man, handed down by tradition,
and perhaps transported by a few survivors to existing lands, from
others which, like the fabled Atlantis of Plato, may have been
submerged, or the scene of some great catastrophe which destroyed
them with all their civilization?(506)

The few remaining giant animals, such as elephants—themselves smaller than their ancestors the Mastodons—and hippopotami, are the only surviving relics, and tend to disappear more entirely every day. But even they have already had a few pioneers of their future genus, and have decreased in size in the same proportion as men have done. For the remains of a pigmy elephant, E. Falconeri, were found in the cave deposits of Malta; and the same author asserts that they were associated with the remains of pigmy hippopotami, the former being only two feet six inches high. There is also the still existing Hippopotamus (Chœropsis) Liberiensis, “which M. Milne‐ Edwards figures as little more than two feet in height.”(507)

Sceptics may smile and denounce our work as full of nonsense or fairy‐ tales. But by so doing they only justify the wisdom of the Chinese philosopher Chuang, who said that:

The things that men do know can in no way be compared, numerically
speaking, to the things that are unknown.(508)

Thus they laugh only at their own ignorance.

The “Sons Of God” And The “Sacred Island.”

The “legend” given in _Isis Unveiled_(509) in relation to a portion of the globe which Science now concedes to have been the cradle of humanity—though it was but one of the _seven_ cradles, in truth—runs as follows:

Tradition says, and the records of the _Great Book_ (the _Book of
Dzyan_) explain, that long before the days of Ad‐am, and his
inquisitive wife, He‐va, where now are found but salt lakes and
desolate barren deserts, there was a vast inland sea, which
extended over Middle Asia, north of the proud Himâlayan range, and
its western prolongation. In it an island, which, for its
unparalleled beauty, had no rival in the world, was inhabited by
the last remnant of the Race which preceded ours.

“The last remnant” means the “Sons of Will and Yoga,” who, with a few tribes, survived the great cataclysm. For it was the Third Race, inhabiting the great Lemurian Continent, which preceded the veritable and complete human Races—the Fourth and the Fifth. Therefore was it said in _Isis Unveiled_ that:

This race could live with equal ease in water, air, or fire, for
it had an unlimited control over the elements. These were the
“Sons of God”; not those who saw the daughters of men, but the
real Elohim, though in the oriental _Kabalah_ they have another
name. It was they who imparted Nature’s most weird secrets to men,
and revealed to them the ineffable, and now _lost_ “word.”

The “Island,” according to belief, exists to the present hour, as an oasis surrounded by the dreadful wildernesses of the great Gobi Desert—whose sands “no foot hath crossed in the memory of man.”

This word, which is no word, has travelled once round the globe,
and still lingers as a far‐off dying echo in the hearts of some
privileged men. The hierophants of all the Sacerdotal Colleges
were aware of the existence of this island; but the “word” was
known only to the Java Aleim (Mahâ Chohan in another tongue), or
chief Lord of every College, and was passed to his successor only
at the moment of death. There were many such Colleges, and the old
classical authors speak of them.

There was no communication with the fair island by sea, but
subterranean passages, known only to the chiefs, communicated with
it in all directions.(510)

Tradition asserts, and Archæology accepts the truth of the legend, that there is more than one city now flourishing in India, which is built on several other cities, making thus a subterranean city of six or seven stories high. Delhi is one of them, Allahabad another; examples being found even in Europe, _e.g._, in Florence, which is built on several defunct Etruscan and other cities. Why, then, could not Ellora, Elephanta, Karli, and Ajunta have been built over subterranean labyrinths and passages, as it is claimed? Of course we do not allude to the caves which are known to every European, whether _de visu_ or by hearsay, notwithstanding their enormous antiquity, though that even is disputed by modern Archæology; but to a fact, known to the initiated Brâhmans of India and especially to Yogîs, viz., that there is not a cave‐temple in the country but has its subterranean passages running in every direction, and that these underground caves and endless corridors have in their turn _their_ caves and corridors.

Who can tell whether the lost Atlantis—which is also mentioned in
the _Secret Book_, but, again, under another name, peculiar to the
sacred language—did not still exist in those days?—

we went on to ask. It _did_ exist most assuredly, for it was approaching its greatest days of glory and civilization when the last of the Lemurian continents went down.

The great lost Continent might have, perhaps, been situated south
of Asia, extending from India to Tasmania.(511) If the
hypothesis—now so much doubted, and positively denied by some
learned authors, who regard it as a joke of Plato—is ever
verified, then, perhaps, will the Scientists believe that the
description of the God‐inhabited continent was not altogether a
fable.(512) And they may then perceive that Plato’s guarded hints
and his attributing the narrative to Solon and the Egyptian
priests, were but a prudent way of imparting the fact to the
world, and at the same time, by cleverly combining truth and
fiction, of disconnecting himself from a story which the
obligations imposed at Initiation forbade him to divulge.

To continue the tradition, we have to add that the class of
hierophants was divided into two distinct categories;(513) those
who were instructed by the “Sons of God” of the island, and who
were initiated in the divine doctrine of pure revelation; and
others who inhabited the lost Atlantis—if such must be its
name—and who, being of another race (produced _sexually_ but of
_divine_ parents), were born with a sight which embraced all
hidden things, and was independent of both distance and material
obstacle. In short, they were the Fourth Race of men mentioned in
the _Popol Vuh_, whose sight was unlimited, and who knew all
things at once.

In other words, they were the Lemuro‐Atlanteans, the first who had a Dynasty of Spirit‐Kings; not of Manes, or “Ghosts,” as some believe,(514) but of actual living Devas, or Demi‐gods or Angels, again, who had assumed bodies to rule over this Race, and who, in their turn, instructed them in arts and sciences. Only, as these Dhyânîs were Rûpa or material Spirits, they were not always good. Their King Thevetat was one of the latter, and it is under the evil influence of this King‐Demon that the Atlantis‐Race became a nation of wicked “magicians.”

In consequence of this, war was declared, the story of which would
be too long to narrate; its substance may be found in the
disfigured allegories of the race of Cain, the giants, and that of
Noah and his righteous family. The conflict came to an end by the
submersion of Atlantis, which finds its imitation in the stories
of the Babylonian and Mosaic flood. The giants and magicians “and
all flesh died ... and every man.” All except Xisuthrus and Noah,
who are substantially identical with the great Father of the
Thlinkithians,(515) who, they say, also escaped in a large boat
like the Hindû Noah Vaivasvata.

If we believe the tradition at all, we have to credit the further
story that, from the intermarrying of the progeny of the
hierophants of the island and the descendants of the Atlantean
Noah, a mixed race of righteous and wicked sprang up. On the one
side the world had its Enochs, Moseses, various Buddhas, its
numerous “Saviours,” and great hierophants; on the other hand, its
“_natural_ magicians” who, through lack of the restraining power
of proper spiritual enlightenment, ... perverted their gifts to
evil purposes.

We may supplement this by the testimony of some records and traditions. In _L’Histoire des Vierges: les Peuples et les Continents Disparus_, Louis Jacolliot says:

One of the most ancient legends of India, preserved in the temples
by oral and written tradition, relates that several hundred
thousand years ago there existed in the Pacific Ocean an immense
continent, which was destroyed by geological upheaval, and the
fragments of which must be sought in Madagascar, Ceylon, Sumatra,
Java, Borneo, and the principal isles of Polynesia.

The high plateaux of Hindûstan and Asia, according to this
hypothesis, would only have been represented in those distant
epochs by great islands contiguous to the central continent....
According to the Brâhmans, this country had attained a high
civilization, and the peninsula of Hindûstan, enlarged by the
displacement of the waters, at the time of the grand cataclysm,
has but continued the chain of the primitive traditions born in
this place. These traditions give the name of Rutas to the peoples
which inhabited this immense equinoctial continent, and from their
speech _was derived the Sanskrit_. The Indo‐Hellenic tradition,
preserved by the most intelligent population which emigrated from
the plains of India, also relates the existence of a continent and
a people to which it gives the name of Atlantis and Atlantides,
and which it locates in the Atlantic in the northern portion of
the Tropics.

Apart from this fact, the supposition of an ancient continent in
those latitudes, the vestiges of which may be found in the
volcanic islands and mountainous surface of the Azores, the
Canaries and Cape de Verd Islands, is not devoid of geographical
probability. The Greeks, who, moreover, never dared to pass beyond
the Pillars of Hercules, on account of their dread of the
mysterious Ocean, appeared too late in antiquity for the stories
preserved by Plato to be anything else than an echo of the Indian
legend. Moreover, when we cast a look on a planisphere, at the
sight of the islands and islets strewn from the Malayan
Archipelago to Polynesia, from the Straits of Sunda to Easter
Island, it is impossible, upon the hypothesis of continents
preceding those which we inhabit, not to place there the most
important of all.

A religious belief, common to Malacca and Polynesia, that is to
say, to the two opposite extremes of the Oceanic world, affirms
“that all these islands once formed two immense countries,
inhabited by yellow men and black men, always at war; and that the
gods, wearied with their quarrels, having charged Ocean to pacify
them, the latter swallowed up the two continents, and, since then,
it has been impossible to make him give up his captives. Alone,
the mountain‐peaks and high plateaux escaped the flood, by the
power of the gods, who perceived too late the mistake they had
committed.”

Whatever there may be in these traditions, and whatever may have
been the place where a civilization more ancient than that of
Rome, of Greece, of Egypt, and of India was developed, it is
certain that this civilization did exist, and it is highly
important to Science to recover its traces, however feeble and
fugitive they may be.(516)

This Oceanic tradition corroborates the legend given from the “Records of the Secret Doctrine.” The war mentioned between the yellow and the black men, relates to a struggle between the “Sons of Gods” and the “Sons of Giants,” or the inhabitants and magicians of Atlantis.

The final conclusion of the author, who personally visited all the islands of Polynesia, and devoted years to the study of the religion, language, and traditions of nearly all the peoples, is as follows:

As to the Polynesian continent which disappeared at the time of
the final geological cataclysms, its existence rests on such
proofs that to be logical we can doubt no longer.

The three summits of this continent, the Sandwich Islands, New
Zealand, Easter Island, are distant from each other from fifteen
to eighteen hundred leagues, and the groups of intermediate
islands, Viti (Fiji), Samoa, Tonga, Foutouna (? Foutouha), Ouvea
(? Oueeha), the Marquesas, Tahiti, Poumoutou (? Pomatou), the
Gambiers, are themselves distant from these extreme points from
seven or eight hundred to one thousand leagues.

All navigators agree in saying that the extreme and the central
groups could never have communicated in view of their actual
geographical position, and with the insufficient means they had at
hand. It is physically impossible to cross such distances in a
pirogue ... without a compass, and travel months without
provisions.

On the other hand, the aborigines of the Sandwich Islands, of
Viti, of New Zealand, of the central groups, of Samoa, Tahiti,
etc., _had never known each other, had never heard of each other_,
before the arrival of the Europeans. _And yet each of these people
maintained that their island had at one time formed part of an
immense stretch of land which extended towards the West on the
side of Asia._ And all, brought together, were found to speak the
same language, to have the same usages, the same customs, the same
religious belief. And all to the question, “Where is the cradle of
your race?” for sole response, _extended their hand toward the
setting sun_.(517)

Geographically, this description clashes slightly with the facts in the Secret Records; but it shows the existence of such traditions, and this is all one cares for. For, as there is no smoke without fire, so a tradition must be based on some approximate truth.