Chapter XVII: Part I: Anthropogenesis (15)

The contention that no larger statues exist on the whole globe, is easily proven on the evidence of all the travellers who have examined them and taken their measurements. Thus, the largest is 173 feet high, or _seventy_ feet higher than the “Statue of Liberty” now at New York, as the latter is only 105 feet or 34 mètres high. The famous Colossus of Rhodes itself, between whose legs the largest vessels of those days passed with ease, measured only 120 to 130 feet in height. The second largest statue, which is also cut out in the rock like the first, is only 120 feet or fifteen feet taller than the said “Liberty.”(755) The third statue is only 60 feet high, the two others still smaller, the last being only a little larger than the average tall man of our present Race. The first and largest of the colossi represents a man draped in a kind of “toga”; M. de Nadeylac thinks that the general appearance of the figure, the lines of the head, the drapery, and especially the large hanging ears, are undeniable indications that Buddha was meant to be represented. But they really prove nothing. Notwithstanding the fact that most of the now existing figures of Buddha, represented in the posture of Samâdhi, have large drooping ears, this is a later innovation and an afterthought. The primitive idea was due to Esoteric allegory. The unnaturally large ears symbolize the omniscience of wisdom, and were meant as a reminder of the power of Him who _knows and hears all_, and whose benevolent love and attention for all creatures nothing can escape. As a Shloka says:

_The merciful Lord, our Master, hears the cry of agony of the smallest of the small, beyond vale and mountain, and hastens to its deliverance._

Gautama Buddha was an Âryan Hindû, and an approach to such ears is found only among the Mongolian Burmese and Siamese, who, as in Cochin, distort their ears artificially. The Buddhist monks, who turned the grottoes of the Miao‐tse into Vihâras and cells, came into Central Asia about or in the first century of the Christian era. Therefore, Hiouen Thsang, speaking of the colossal statue, says that “the shining of the gold ornamentation that overlaid the statue” in his day “dazzled one’s eyes,” but of such gilding there remains not a vestige in modern times. The drapery, in contrast to the figure itself, which is cut out of the standing rock, is made of plaster and modelled over the stone image. Talbot, who has made the most careful examination, found that this drapery belonged to a far later epoch. The statue itself has therefore to be assigned to a far earlier period than Buddhism. In such case, it may be asked, Whom does it represent?

Once more tradition, corroborated by written records, answers the query, and explains the mystery. The Buddhist Arhats and Ascetics found the five statues, and many more, now crumbled down to dust. Three of them standing in colossal niches at the entrance of their future abode, they covered with plaster, and, over the old, modelled new statues made to represent Lord Tathâgata. The interior walls of the niches are covered to this day with bright paintings of human figures, and the sacred image of Buddha is repeated in every group. These frescoes and ornaments—which remind one of the Byzantine style of painting—are all due to the piety of the monk‐ ascetics, as also are some other minor figures and rock‐cut ornamentations. But the five statues belong to the handiwork of the Initiates of the Fourth Race, who, after the submersion of their Continent, sought refuge in the fastnesses and on the summits of the Central Asian mountain chains. Thus, the five statues are an imperishable record of the Esoteric Teaching as to the gradual evolution of the Races.

The largest is made to represent the First Race of mankind, its ethereal body being commemorated in hard, everlasting stone, for the instruction of future generations, as its remembrance would otherwise never have survived the Atlantean Deluge. The second—120 feet high—represents the Sweat‐born; and the third—measuring 60 feet—immortalizes the Race that fell, and thereby inaugurated the first _physical_ Race, born of father and mother, the last descendants of which are represented in the statues found on Easter Isle. These were only from 20 to 25 feet in stature at the epoch when Lemuria was submerged, after it had been nearly destroyed by volcanic fires. The Fourth Race was still smaller, though gigantic in comparison with our present Fifth Race, and the series culminated finally in the latter.

These are, then, the “Giants” of antiquity, the ante‐ and post‐diluvian Gibborim of the _Bible_. They lived and flourished one million years ago rather than between three and four thousand only. The Anakim of Joshua, whose hosts were as “grasshoppers” in comparison with the Jews, are thus a piece of Israelite fancy, unless indeed the people of Israel claim for Joshua an antiquity and origin in the Eocene, or at any rate in the Miocene age, and change the millenniums of their chronology into millions of years.

In everything that pertains to prehistoric times the reader ought to bear in mind the wise words of Montaigne. Saith the great French Philosopher:

It is a sottish presumption to disdaine and condemne that for
false, which unto us seemeth to beare no show of likelihood or
truth: which is an ordinarie fault in those who perswade
themselves to be of more sufficiencie than the vulgar sort....

But reason hath taught me, that so resolutely to condemne a thing
for false and impossible, is to assume unto himself the advantage
to have the bounds and limits of God’s will, and the power of our
common mother Nature tied to his sleeve, and that there is no
greater folly in the world than to reduce them to the measure of
our capacitie and bounds of our sufficiencie....

If we term those things monsters or miracles to which our reason
cannot attain, how many such doe daily present themselves unto our
sight? Let us consider through what cloudes, and how blinde‐folde,
we are led to the knowledge of most things that passe our hands;
verily we shall finde it is rather custome than science that
receiveth the strangenesse of them from us: and that those things,
were they newly presented unto us, wee should doubtless deeme them
as much or more unlikely and incredible than any other.(756)

A fair‐minded scholar, before denying the possibility of _our_ history and records, should search modern history, as well as the universal traditions scattered throughout ancient and modern literature, for traces left by these marvellous early races. Few among the unbelievers suspect the wealth of corroborative evidence which is to be found scattered about and buried, even in the British Museum alone. The reader is asked to throw one more glance at the subject‐matter treated of in the Section which follows.

Cyclopean Ruins And Colossal Stones As Witnesses To Giants.

De Mirville, in his enormous works, “Mémoires Adressées aux Académies,” carrying out the task of proving the reality of the Devil and showing his abode in every ancient and modern idol, has collected several hundred pages of “historical evidence” that, in the days of “miracle,” both pagan and biblical, stones walked, spoke, delivered oracles, and even sang. That finally, the “Christ‐stone,” or Christ‐rock, “the spiritual Rock” that followed Israel,(757) “became a Jupiter‐lapis,” swallowed by his father Saturn, “under the shape of a stone.”(758) We will not stop to discuss the evident misuse and materialization of biblical metaphors simply for the sake of proving the “Satanism” of idols, though a good deal might be said(759) on this subject. But without claiming any such peripateticism and innate psychic faculties for our stones, we may collect, in our turn, every available evidence to hand, to show that: (_a_) had there been no giants to move such colossal rocks, there could never have been a Stonehenge, a Carnac (Brittany), or other such Cyclopean structures; and (_b_) were there no such thing as Magic, there could never have been so many witnesses to “oracular” and “speaking” stones.

In the _Achaica_ we find Pausanias confessing that, in beginning his work, he had regarded the Greeks as mighty _stupid_ “for worshipping stones.” But, having reached Arcadia, he adds: “I have changed my way of thinking.”(760) Therefore, without worshipping stones or stone idols and statues, which is the same thing—a crime with which Roman Catholics are unwise to reproach Pagans, as they do—one may be allowed to believe in what so many great Philosophers and holy men have believed in, without deserving to be called an “idiot” by modern Pausaniuses.

The reader is referred to the _Académie des Inscriptions_, if he would study the various properties of flints and pebbles from the standpoint of magic and psychic powers. In a poem on “Stones” attributed to Orpheus, these stones are divided into Ophites and Sideritês, the “Serpent‐stone” and “Star‐stone.”

The Ophitês is shaggy, hard, heavy, black, and has _the gift of
speech_; when one prepares to cast it away, it produces a sound
_similar to the cry of a child_. It is by means of this stone that
Helenus foretold the ruin of Troy, his fatherland.(761)

Sanchuniathon and Philo Byblus, in referring to these “bétyles,” call them “_animated_ stones.” Photius repeats what Damascius, Asclepiades, Isidorus and the physician Eusebius had asserted before him. Eusebius especially never parted with his Ophitês, which he carried in his bosom, and received oracles from it, delivered _in a small voice resembling a low whistling_.(762) Arnobius, a holy man, who “from a Pagan had become one of the _lights of the Church_,” as Christians tell their readers, confesses he could never meet with one of such stones without putting it a question, “which it answered occasionally in a _clear and sharp small voice_.” Where, then, is the difference between the Christian and the Pagan Ophitês, we ask?

The famous stone at Westminster was called _liafail_, “the speaking stone,” and raised its voice only to name the king that had to be chosen. Cambry, in his _Monuments Celtiques_, says he saw it when it still bore the inscription:(763)

_Ni fallat fatum, Scoti quocumque locatum_
_Invenient lapidem, regnasse tenentur ibidem_.

Finally, Suidas speaks of a certain Heræscus, who could distinguish at a glance the inanimate stones from those which were endowed with motion; and Pliny mentions stones which “ran away when a hand approached them.”(764)

De Mirville—who seeks to justify the _Bible_—enquires very pertinently, why the monstrous stones of Stonehenge were called in days of old _chior‐ gaur_ or the “dance of giants” (from _côr_, “dance,” whence _chorea_, and _gaur_, “giant”)? And then he sends the reader to receive his reply from the Bishop St. Gildas. But the authors of such works as _Voyage dans le Comté de Cornouailles, sur les Traces des Géants_, and of various learned works on the ruins of Stonehenge,(765) Carnac, and West Hoadley, give far fuller and more reliable information upon this particular subject. In those regions—true forests of rocks—immense monoliths are found, “some weighing over 500,000 kilograms.” These “hanging stones” of Salisbury Plain are believed to be the remains of a Druidical temple. But the Druids were historical men and not Cyclopes, or giants. Who then, _if not giants_, could ever raise such masses—especially those at Carnac and West Hoadley—range them in such symmetrical order that they should represent the planisphere, and place them in such wonderful equipoise that they seem to hardly touch the ground, and though set in motion at the slightest touch of the finger, would nevertheless resist the efforts of twenty men should they attempt to displace them.

Now if we say that most of these stones are relics of the last Atlanteans, we shall be answered that all the Geologists claim them to be of a natural origin; that, a rock when “weathering”—_i.e._, losing flake after flake of its substance under the influence of the weather—assumes this form; that, the “tors” in West England exhibit curious forms, also produced by this cause. And thus since all Scientists consider the “rocking stones to be of purely natural origin, wind, rain, etc., causing disintegration of rocks in layers”—our statement will be justly denied, especially as “we see this process of rock‐modification in progress around us to‐day.” Let us then examine the case.

First read what Geology has to say, and you will then learn that often these gigantic masses are entire strangers in the countries wherein they are now fixed; that their geological congeners often pertain to strata unknown in those countries and which are only to be found far beyond the seas. Mr. William Tooke, in speculating upon the enormous blocks of granite which are strewn over Southern Russia and Siberia, tells the reader that where they now rest, there are neither rocks nor mountains; and that they must have been brought over “from immense distances and with prodigious efforts.”(766) Charton speaks of a specimen of such rock from Ireland, which had been submitted to the analysis of an eminent English Geologist, who assigned to it a foreign origin “_perhaps even African_.”(767)

This is a strange _coincidence_, for Irish tradition attributes the origin of her circular stones to a _Sorcerer who brought them from Africa_. De Mirville sees in this Sorcerer “an accursed Hamite.”(768) We see in him a dark Atlantean, or perhaps even some earlier Lemurian, who had survived till the birth of the British Islands—a giant in any and every case.(769) Says Cambry, naively:

Men have nothing to do with it ... for never could _human_ power
and industry undertake anything of this kind. Nature alone has
accomplished it all [!!] and Science will demonstrate it some day
[!!].(770)

Nevertheless, it was _human_, though gigantic power, which accomplished it, and no more “Nature” alone than God or Devil.

“Science,” having undertaken to demonstrate that even the Mind and Spirit of man are simply the production of “blind forces,” is quite capable of accepting the task, and it may be that she will come out some fine morning, and seek to prove that Nature alone has marshalled the gigantic rocks of Stonehenge, traced their position with mathematical precision, given them the form of the Dendera planisphere and of the signs of the Zodiac, and brought stones weighing over one million of pounds from Africa and Asia to England and Ireland!

It is true that Cambry recanted later on, when saying:

I believed for a long time in _Nature_, but I _recant_, ... for
chance _is unable to create_ such marvellous combinations, ... and
those who placed the said rocks in equipoise, are the same who
have raised the moving masses of the pond of Huelgoat, near
Concarneau.

Dr. John Watson, quoted by the same author, when speaking of the _moving_ rocks, or “rocking stones” situated on the slope of Golcar (the “Enchanter”) says:

The astonishing movement of those masses poised in equilibrium
made the Celts compare them to Gods.(771)

In _Stonehenge_, by Flinders Petrie, it is said that:

Stonehenge is built of the stone of the district, a red sandstone,
or “sarsen” stone, locally called “grey wethers.” But some of the
stones, especially those which are said to have been devoted to
astronomical purposes, have been brought from a distance, probably
the North of Ireland.

To close, the reflections of a man of Science, in an article upon the subject published in 1850 in the _Revue Archéologique_, are worthy of being quoted:

Every stone is a block whose weight would try the most powerful
machines. There are, in a word, scattered throughout the globe,
masses, before which the word _materials_ seems to remain
inexplicable, at the sight of which imagination is confounded, and
that had to be endowed with a name as colossal as the things
themselves. Besides which, these _immense rocking_ stones, called
sometimes _routers_, placed upright on one of their sides as on a
point, their equipoise being so perfect that the slightest touch
is sufficient to set them in motion ... betray a most positive
knowledge of statics. Reciprocal counter‐motion, surfaces, plane,
convex and concave, in turn ... all this allies them to Cyclopean
monuments, of which it can be said with good reason, repeating De
la Vega, that “the demons seem to have worked on them more than
men.”(772)

For once we agree with our friends and foes, the Roman Catholics, and ask whether such prodigies of statics and equilibrium, with masses weighing millions of pounds, can be the work of Palæolithic _savages_, of cave‐men, taller than the average man in our century, yet ordinary mortals as we are? It is not our purpose to refer to the various traditions attached to the rocking stones. Still, it may be as well to remind the English reader of Giraldus Cambrensis, who speaks of such a stone on the Isle of Mona, which returned to its place, notwithstanding every effort to keep it elsewhere. At the time of the conquest of Ireland by Henry II, a Count Hugo Cestrensis, desiring to convince himself of the reality of the fact, tied the Mona stone to a far larger one and had them thrown into the sea. On the following morning it was found in its accustomed place. The learned William of Salisbury warrants the fact by testifying to its presence in the wall of a church where he had seen it in 1554. And this reminds one of what Pliny said of the stone left by the Argonauts at Cyzicum, which the Cyzicans had placed in the Prytaneum, “whence it _ran away several times_, and so they were forced to weight it with lead.”(773) Here we have immense stones stated by all antiquity to be “living, moving, speaking, and self‐ perambulating.” They were also capable, it seems, of making people run away, since they were called _routers_, from the word to “rout,” or “put to flight”; and Des Mousseaux shows them all to be prophetic stones, and sometimes called “_mad_ stones.”(774)

The rocking stone is accepted by Science. But why did it rock? One must be blind not to see that this motion was one more means of divination, and that they were called for this very reason the “stones of truth.”(775)

_This is history_, the past of prehistoric times warranting the same in later ages. The Dracontia, sacred to the Moon and the Serpent, were the more ancient “rocks of destiny” of older nations; and their motion, or _rocking_, was a code perfectly clear to the initiated priests, who alone had the key to this ancient _reading_. Vormius and Olaus Magnus show that it was according to the orders of the oracle, whose voice spoke through “these immense rocks raised by the colossal powers of [ancient] giants,” that the kings of Scandinavia were elected. Says Pliny:

In India and Persia it is she (the Persian Otizoë) whom the Magi
had to consult for the election of their sovereigns;(776)

and he further describes a rock overshadowing Harpasa, in Asia, and placed in such a manner that “a single finger can move it, while the weight of the whole body makes it resist.”(777) Why then should not the rocking stones of Ireland, or those of Brimham, in Yorkshire, have served for the same mode of _divination_ or oracular communications? The hugest of them are evidently the relics of the Atlanteans; the smaller, such as Brimham Rocks, with revolving stones on their summit, are copies from the more ancient lithoi. Had not the Bishops of the Middle Ages destroyed all the plans of the Dracontia they could lay their hands on, Science would know more of these.(778) As it is, we know that they were universally used during long prehistoric ages, and all for the same purposes of prophecy and _magic_. É. Biot, a member of the Institute of France, published in the _Antiquités de France_ (vol. ix), an article showing the Chatampéramba (the “Field of Death,” or ancient burial ground in Malabar), to be identical in situation with the old tombs at Carnac; that is to say, “a prominence and a central tomb.” Bones are found in the tombs, and Mr. Halliwell tells us that some of these are enormous, the natives calling the tombs the “dwellings of the Râkshasas” or giants. Several stone circles, “considered the work of the Panch Pândava (five Pândus), as all such monuments are in India, where they are to be found in such great numbers,” when opened by the direction of Rajah Vasariddi, “were found to contain _human bones of a very large size_.”(779)

Again, De Mirville is right in his _generalization_, if not in his conclusions. As the long cherished theory that the Dracontia are mostly witnesses to “great natural geological commotions” (Charton), and “the work of Nature” (Cambry), is now exploded, his remarks are very just:

We advise Science to reflect .... and, above all, no longer to
class Titans and Giants among primitive legends; for their works
are there, under our eyes, and those rocking masses will oscillate
on their basis to the end of the world to help them to realize
once for all, that one is not altogether a candidate for Charenton
for believing in wonders certified to by the whole of
Antiquity.(780)

This is just what we can never repeat too often, though it may be that the voices of both Occultists and Roman Catholics are raised in the desert. Nevertheless, no one can fail to see that Science is as inconsistent, to say the least, in its modern speculations, as was ancient and mediæval Theology in _its_ interpretations of the so‐called _Revelation_. Science would have men descend from the pithecoid ape—a transformation requiring millions of years—and yet fears to make Mankind older than 100,000 years! Science teaches the gradual transformation of species, natural selection and evolution from the lowest form to the highest, from mollusc to fish, from reptile to bird and mammalian—yet it refuses to man, who is physiologically only a higher mammal and animal, such a transformation of his external form. But if the monstrous Iguanodon of the Wealden may have been the ancestor of the diminutive Iguana of to‐day, why could not the monstrous man of the Secret Doctrine have become the modern man—the link between Animal and Angel? Is there anything more unscientific in this “theory” than in that of refusing to man a spiritual immortal Ego, making of him an automaton, and ranking him, at the same time, _as a distinct genus_ in the system of Nature? Occult Sciences may be less scientific than the present Exact Sciences, they are nevertheless more logical and consistent in their teachings. Physical forces, and the natural affinities of atoms may be sufficient as factors to transform a plant into an animal; but it requires more than the mere interplay between certain material aggregates and their environment, to call to life a _fully conscious man_, even though he were no more indeed than a ramification between two “poor cousins” of the quadrumanous order. Occult Sciences admit with Hæckel that (objective) Life on our Globe “is a logical postulate of scientific natural history,” but add that the rejection of a like _spiritual_ involution, from _within without_, of invisible subjective Spirit‐ Life—Eternal and a Principle in Nature—is more illogical, if possible, than to say that the Universe and all in it has been gradually built by “blind forces” inherent in Matter, without any _external_ help.

Suppose an Occultist were to claim that the first grand organ of a cathedral had come originally into being as follows: first, there was a progressive and gradual elaboration in space of an organizable material, which resulted in the production of a state of matter named _organic protein_; then, under the influence of incident forces, these states having been thrown into a phase of unstable equilibrium, they slowly and majestically evolved into new combinations of carved and polished wood, of brass pins and staples, of leather and ivory, wind‐pipes and bellows; after which, having adapted all its parts into one harmonious and symmetrical machine, the organ suddenly pealed forth Mozart’s “Requiem”; this was followed by a Sonata of Beethoven, etc., _ad infinitum_, its keys playing of themselves and the wind blowing into the pipes by its own inherent force and fancy. What would Science say to such a theory? Yet, it is precisely in such wise that the materialistic _savants_ tell us that the Universe was formed, with its millions of beings, and man, its spiritual crown.

Whatever may have been the real inner thought of Mr. Herbert Spencer, when writing on the subject of the gradual transformation of species, his words apply to our doctrine.

Construed in terms of evolution, every kind of being is conceived
as a product of modifications wrought by insensible gradations _on
a preëxisting kind of being_.(781)

Then why, in this case, should not historical man be the product of a modification on a preëxistent and prehistorical kind of man, even supposing for argument’s sake that there is _nothing_ within him to last longer than, or live independently of, his physical structure? But this is not so! For, when we are told that “organic matters are produced in the laboratory by what we may literally call _artificial evolution_”(782)—we answer the distinguished English philosopher, that Alchemists and great Adepts did as much, and, indeed, far more, before the Chemists ever attempted to “build out of dissociated elements complex combinations.” The Homunculi of Paracelsus are a fact in Alchemy, and will become one in Chemistry very likely, and then Mrs. Shelley’s Frankenstein’s monster will have to be regarded as a prophecy. But no Chemist, or Alchemist either, will ever endow such a monster with more than animal instinct, unless indeed he does that with which the “Progenitors” are credited, namely, leave his own Physical Body, and incarnate in the “Empty Form.” But even this would be an _artificial_, not a natural man, for our “Progenitors” had, in the course of eternal evolution, to become _Gods_ before they became Men.

The above digression—if indeed it is one—is an attempt at justification before the few thinking men of the coming century who may read this.

It also gives the reason why the best and most spiritual men of our present day can no longer be satisfied with either Science or Theology, and why they prefer any “psychic craze” to the dogmatic assertions of the pair, since neither of them, in its infallibility, has anything better to offer than _blind_ faith. _Universal_ tradition is by far the safer guide in life. And universal tradition shows Primitive Man living for ages together with his Creators and first Instructors—the Elohim—in the World’s “Garden of Eden,” or “Delight.”(783)

45. THE FIRST GREAT WATERS CAME. THEY SWALLOWED THE SEVEN GREAT ISLANDS (_A_).

46. ALL HOLY SAVED, THE UNHOLY DESTROYED. WITH THEM MOST OF THE HUGE ANIMALS, PRODUCED FROM THE SWEAT OF THE EARTH (_B_).

(_a_) As this subject—the fourth great Deluge on our Globe in this Round—is fully treated in the Sections that follow the last Stanza, to say anything more at present would be a mere anticipation. The seven Great Islands (Dvîpas) belonged to the Continent of Atlantis. The Secret Teachings show that the Deluge overtook the Fourth, Giant Race, not on account of its depravity, or because it had become “black with sin,” but simply because such is the fate of every Continent, which—like everything else under our Sun—is born, lives, becomes decrepit, and dies. This was when the Fifth Race was in its infancy.

(_b_) Thus the Giants perished—the Magicians and the Sorcerers, adds the fancy of popular tradition. But “all holy saved,” and alone the “unholy” were “destroyed.” This was due, however, as much to the _prevision_ of the “holy” ones, who had not lost the use of their Third Eye, as to Karma and Natural Law. Speaking of the subsequent Race, our Fifth Humanity, the Commentary says:

_Alone the handful of those Elect, whose Divine Instructors had gone to __ inhabit that Sacred Island—__“__from whence the last Saviour will come__”__—now kept mankind from becoming one‐half the exterminator of the other [as mankind is now_—H. P. B.]. _It [mankind] became divided. Two‐ thirds of it were ruled by Dynasties of lower, material Spirits of the Earth, who took possession of the easily accessible bodies; one‐third remained faithful, and joined with the nascent Fifth Race—the Divine Incarnates. When the Poles moved [for the fourth time] this did not affect those who were protected, and who had separated from the Fourth Race. Like the Lemurians—alone the ungodly Atlanteans perished, and __“__were seen no more__”__...!_

Stanza XII. The Fifth Race And Its Divine Instructors.

47. The remnants of the first two Races disappear for ever. Groups
of the various Atlantean races saved from the Deluge along with
the Forefathers of the Fifth. 48. The origins of our present Race,
the Fifth. The first Divine Dynasties. 49. The earliest
glimmerings in history, now pinned to the allegorical chronology
of the _Bible_, and “universal” history slavishly following it.
The nature of the first Instructors and Civilizers of mankind.

47. FEW(784) REMAINED. SOME YELLOW, SOME BROWN AND BLACK, AND SOME RED REMAINED. THE MOON‐COLOURED(785) WERE GONE FOR EVER (_A_).

48. THE FIFTH(786) PRODUCED FROM THE HOLY STOCK REMAINED; IT WAS RULED OVER BY THE FIRST DIVINE KINGS.

49. ... THE SERPENTS WHO RE‐DESCENDED, WHO MADE PEACE WITH THE FIFTH,(787) WHO TAUGHT AND INSTRUCTED IT (_b_)....

(_a_) This Shloka relates to the Fifth Race. History does not begin with it, but living and ever‐recurring tradition does. History—or what is called history—does not go back further than the fantastic origins of our fifth sub‐race, a “few thousands” of years. It is the sub‐divisions of the first sub‐race of the Fifth Root‐Race which are referred to in the sentence, “Some yellow, some brown and black, and some red remained.” The “moon‐coloured”—_i.e._, the First and the Second Races—were gone for ever; ay, without leaving any traces whatever—and that, so far back as the third “Deluge” of the Third Lemurian Race, that “Great Dragon,” whose tail sweeps whole nations out of existence in the twinkling of an eye. And this is the true meaning of the verse in the Commentary which says:

_The Great Dragon has respect but for the Serpents of Wisdom, the Serpents whose holes are now under the Triangular Stones._

Or in other words, “the pyramids, at the four corners of the world.”

(_b_) This puts clearly what is mentioned more than once elsewhere in the Commentaries; namely, that the Adepts or “Wise” men of the Third, Fourth and Fifth Races dwelt in subterranean habitats, generally under some kind of pyramidal structure, if not actually under a pyramid. For such “pyramids” existed in the “four corners of the world” and were never the monopoly of the land of the Pharaohs, though indeed until they were found scattered all over the two Americas, under and above ground, beneath and amidst virgin forests, and also in plain and vale, they were generally supposed to be the exclusive property of Egypt. If true geometrically correct pyramids are no longer found in European regions, nevertheless many of the supposed early neolithic caves, of the colossal triangular pyramidal and conical “menhirs” in Morbihan, and Brittany generally, many of the Danish “tumuli” and even of the “giant tombs” of Sardinia with their inseparable companions, the “nuraghi,” are so many more or less clumsy copies of the pyramids. Most of these are the works of the first settlers on the newly‐born continent and isles of Europe, the “some yellow, some brown and black, and some red” races that remained after the submersion of the last Atlantean continents and islands, 850,000 years ago—Plato’s Island excepted—and before the arrival of the great Âryan races; while others were built by the earliest immigrants from the East. Those who can hardly accept the placing of the antiquity of the human race so far back as the 57,000 years, the age assigned by Dr. Dowler to the skeleton found by him at New Orleans on the banks of the Mississippi, will, of course, reject these facts. But they may find themselves mistaken some day. We may disparage the foolish self‐glorification of the Arcadians who styled themselves “older than the Moon” (προσέληνοι), and of the people of Attica, who claimed that they had existed before the Sun appeared in Heaven—but not their undeniable antiquity. Nor can we laugh at the universal belief that we had giant ancestors. The fact that the bones of the Mammoth and Mastodon, and, in one case, those of a gigantic Salamander, have been mistaken for human bones, does not make away with the difficulty that, of all the Mammalians, man is the only one whom Science will not allow to have dwarfed down, like all other animal frames, from the giant Homo Diluvii to the creature between five and six feet that he is now.

But the “Serpents of Wisdom” have preserved their records well, and the history of human evolution _is_ traced in Heaven as it is traced on underground walls. Humanity and the _Stars_ are bound together indissolubly, because of the _Intelligences_ that rule the latter.

Modern Symbologists may scoff at this and call it “fancy,” but as Mr. Staniland Wake writes:

It is unquestionable that the Deluge has [ever] been associated in
the legends of some Eastern peoples not only with the Pyramids,
but also with the constellations.(788)

The “Old Dragon” is identical with the “Great Flood,” says Mr. Proctor:

We know that in the past the constellation of the Dragon was at
the pole, or boss, of the celestial sphere. In stellar temples,
... the Dragon would be the uppermost or ruling constellation....
It is singular how closely these constellations ... correspond in
sequence and in range of right ascension with the events recorded
respecting the [Biblical] Flood.(789)

The reasons for this _singularity_, however, have been made abundantly clear in this work. It only shows that there were _several_ Deluges confused in the memories and traditions of the sub‐races of the Fifth Race. The first great Flood was astronomical and cosmical, while several others were terrestrial. And yet our very learned friend Mr. Gerald Massey—an initiate truly in the mysteries of the British Museum, still only a self‐initiate—declared and insisted that the Atlantean Submersion and Deluge were only the anthropomorphized fancies of ignorant people, and that Atlantis was no better than an “astronomical allegory.” But the great zodiacal allegory is based upon historical events, and allegory can hardly interfere with history; moreover, every student of Occultism knows what that astronomical and zodiacal allegory means. Dr. Smith shows in the Nimrod Epic of the Assyrian tablets the real meaning of the allegory.

[Its twelve cantos] refer to the annual course of the Sun through
the twelve months of the year. Each tablet answers to a special
month, and contains a distinct reference to the animal forms in
the signs of the Zodiac; ... [the eleventh canto being]
consecrated to Rimmon, the God of storms and rain, and harmonizes
with the eleventh sign of the Zodiac—Aquarius, or the
Waterman.(790)

But even this is preceded in the old Records by the _pre_‐astronomical Cosmic Flood, which became allegorized and symbolized in the above Zodiacal or Noah’s Flood. But this has nothing to do with Atlantis. The Pyramids are closely connected with the ideas of both the constellation of the Great Dragon, the “Dragons of Wisdom,” or the great Initiates of the Third and Fourth Races, and the floods of the Nile, regarded as a divine reminder of the great Atlantic Flood. The astronomical records of Universal History, however, are said to have had their beginnings with the third sub‐race of the Fourth Root‐Race or the Atlanteans. When was it? Occult data show that even since the time of the regular establishment of the zodiacal calculations in Egypt, _the poles have been thrice inverted_.

We will presently return again to this statement. Such symbols as are represented by the Signs of the Zodiac—a fact which offers a handle to Materialists upon which to hang their one‐sided theories and opinions—have too profound a signification, and their bearing upon our Humanity is too important, to suffer dismissal in a few words. Meanwhile, we have to consider the meaning of the statement, in Shloka 48, concerning the “first Divine Kings,” who are said to have “redescended,” guided and _instructed_ our Fifth Race after the last Deluge! We shall consider this last claim historically in the Sections that follow, but must end with a few more details on the subject of “Serpents.”

The rough commentaries on the Archaic Stanzas have to end here. Further elucidation requires proofs obtained from ancient, mediæval, and modern works which have treated of these subjects. All such evidence has now to be gathered in, collated and brought together in better order, so as to compel the attention of the reader to this wealth of historical proofs. And as the manifold meaning of the weird and suggestive symbol (so often referred to) of the “tempter of man”—in the orthodox light of the Church—can never be too strongly insisted upon, it seems more advisable to exhaust the subject by every available proof, at this juncture, even at the risk of repetition. The Titans and Kabirs have been invariably made out by our Theologians and some pious Symbologists to be indissolubly connected with the grotesque personage called the “Devil,” and every proof which goes against their theory has been hitherto as invariably rejected and ignored. The Occultist must, therefore, neglect nothing which may tend to defeat this conspiracy of slander. And so we propose to divide the subjects involved in these last three Verses into several groups, and to examine them as carefully and as fully as space permits. A few more details may thus be added to the general evidences of antiquity, on the most disputed tenets of Occultism and the Esoteric Doctrine—the bulk of which, however, will be found in Part II, on Symbology.

Serpents And Dragons Under Different Symbolisms.

The name of the Dragon in Chaldæa was not written phonetically, but was represented by two monograms, meaning _probably_, according to the Orientalists, the “scaly one.” “This description,” very pertinently remarks G. Smith, “of course might apply either to a fabulous dragon, a serpent, or a fish.” To this we may add that, in one aspect, it applies to Makara, the tenth Zodiacal Sign, the Sanskrit term for a nondescript amphibious animal, generally called Crocodile, but really signifying something else. This, then, is a virtual admission that the Assyriologists, at all events, know nothing certain as to the status of the Dragon in ancient Chaldæa. It was from Chaldæa that the Hebrews got _their_ symbolism, only to be afterwards robbed of it by the Christians, who made of the “scaly one” a living entity and a maleficent power.

A specimen of Dragons, “winged and scaled,” may be seen in the British Museum. In this representation of the events of the Fall, according to the same authority, there are also two figures sitting on each side of a “tree,” and holding out their hands to the “apple,” while at the back of the “tree” is the Dragon‐Serpent. Esoterically, the two figures are two “Chaldees” ready for Initiation, the Serpent symbolizing the Initiator; while the jealous Gods, who curse the three, are the exoteric profane clergy. Not much of the literal “biblical event” there, as any Occultist can see!

“The Great Dragon has respect but for the Serpents of Wisdom,” says the Stanza; thus proving the correctness of our explanation of the two figures and the “Serpent.”

“The Serpents who redescended, .... who taught and instructed” the Fifth Race. What sane man, in our day, is capable of believing that _real_ serpents are hereby meant? Hence the rough guess—now become almost an axiom with men of Science—that those who in antiquity wrote upon various sacred Dragons and Serpents were either superstitious and credulous people, or were bent upon deceiving those more ignorant than themselves. Yet, from Homer downwards, the term implied something hidden from the Profane.

“Terrible are the Gods when they manifest themselves”—those _Gods_ whom men call _Dragons_. And Ælianus, treating in his _De Naturâ Animalium_ of these ophidian symbols, makes certain remarks which show that he well understood the nature of these most ancient of symbols. Thus with reference to the above Homeric verse he most pertinently explains:

For the Dragon, while sacred and to be worshipped, _has within
himself something still more of the divine nature_ of which it is
better [for others?] to remain in ignorance.(791)

The “Dragon” symbol has a septenary meaning, and of these seven meanings, the highest and the lowest may be given. The highest is identical with the “Self‐born,” the Logos, the Hindû Aja. With the Christian Gnostics called the Naasenians, or Serpent‐worshippers, he was the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son. His symbol was the constellation of the Dragon.(792) Its seven “Stars” are the seven stars held in the hand of the “Alpha and Omega” in _Revelation_. In its most terrestrial meaning, the term “Dragon” was applied to the “Wise” men.

This portion of the religious symbolism of antiquity is very abstruse and mysterious, and may remain incomprehensible to the profane. In our modern day it so jars on the Christian ear that, in spite of our boasted civilization, it can hardly escape being regarded as a direct denunciation of the most cherished of Christian dogmas. Such a subject required, to do it justice, the pen and genius of Milton, whose poetical fiction has now taken root in the Church as a revealed dogma.

Did the allegory of the Dragon and his supposed conqueror in Heaven originate with St. John, in his _Revelation_? Emphatically we answer—No. St. John’s “Dragon” is Neptune, the symbol of Atlantean Magic.

In order that we may demonstrate this negation, the reader is asked to examine the symbolism of the Serpent or the Dragon under its several aspects.

The Sidereal And Cosmic Glyphs.

Every Astronomer—not to speak of Occultists and Astrologers—knows that, figuratively speaking, the Astral Light, the Milky Way, and also the Path of the Sun to the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, as well as the Circles of the Sidereal or Tropical Year, were always called “Serpents” in the allegorical and mystic phraseology of the Adepts.

This, cosmically, as well as metaphorically. Poseidon is a “Dragon”—the Dragon “Chozzar, called by the profane Neptune” according to the Peratæ Gnostics, the “Good and Perfect Serpent,” the Messiah of the Naaseni, whose symbol in Heaven is Draco.

But we ought to discriminate between the various characters of this symbol. Now Zoroastrian Esotericism is identical with that of the Secret Doctrine, and when an Occultist reads in the _Vendîdâd_ complaints uttered against the “Serpent,” whose bites have transformed the beautiful, eternal spring of Airyana Vaêjô, changing it into winter, generating disease and death, and at the same time mental and psychic consumption—he knows that the Serpent alluded to is the North Pole, and also the Pole of the Heavens.(793) These two axes produce the seasons according to their angle of inclination to each other. The two axes were _no more parallel_; hence the eternal spring of Airyana Vaêjô “by the good river Dâitya” had disappeared, and “the Âryan Magi had to emigrate to Sogdiana”—say the exoteric accounts. But the Esoteric Teaching states that the pole had passed from the equator, and that the “Land of Bliss” of the Fourth Race, its inheritance from the Third, had now become the region of desolation and woe. This alone ought to be an incontrovertible proof of the great antiquity of the Zoroastrian Scriptures. The Neo‐Âryans of the post‐ diluvian age could, of course, hardly recognize the mountains, on the summits of which their forefathers had met _before_ the Flood, and conversed with the pure “Yazatas” or celestial Spirits of the Elements, whose life and _food_ they had once shared. As shown by Eckstein:

The _Vendîdâd_ seems to point out a great change in the atmosphere
of central Asia; strong volcanic eruptions and the collapse of a
whole range of mountains in the neighbourhood of the Kara‐Korum
chain.(794)

The Egyptians, according to Eusebius, who, for a wonder, once wrote the truth, symbolized Kosmos by a large fiery circle, with a serpent with a hawk’s head lying across its diameter.

Here we see the pole of the earth within the plane of the
ecliptic, attended with all the fiery consequences that must arise
from such a state of the heavens: when the whole Zodiac, in 25,000
[odd] years, must have “redden’d with the solar blaze”; and _each
sign must have been vertical_ to the polar region.(795)

Meru, the Abode of the Gods, as explained before, was placed in the North Pole, while Pâtâla, the Nether Region, was supposed to lie towards the South. As each symbol in Esoteric Philosophy has _seven_ keys, Meru and Pâtâla have, geographically, one significance and represent localities, while, astronomically, they have another, and mean the “two poles”; the latter meaning led to their being often rendered in _exoteric_ sectarianism as the “Mountain” and the “Pit,” or Heaven and Hell. If we for the present hold only to the astronomical and geographical significance, it may be found that the Ancients knew the topography and nature of the Arctic and Antarctic regions better than any of our modern Astronomers. They had reasons, and good ones, for naming one the “Mountain” and the other the “Pit.” As the author just quoted half explains, Helion and Acheron meant nearly the same. “Heli‐on is the Sun in his highest,” Heli‐os or Eli‐os meaning the “most high,” and Acheron is 32 degrees above the pole, and 32 below it, the allegorical river being thus supposed to touch the northern horizon in the latitude of 32 degrees. The vast concave, that is for ever hidden from our sight and which surrounded the southern pole, the first astronomers called the Pit, while observing, toward the northern pole, that a certain circuit in the heavens always appeared above the horizon—they called it the Mountain. As Meru is the high abode of the Gods, these were said to _ascend_ and _descend_ periodically; by which (astronomically) the _Zodiacal_ Gods were meant, the passing of the original north pole of the Earth to the south pole of the Heaven.

In that age at noon, the ecliptic would be parallel with the
meridian, and part of the Zodiac would descend from the north pole
to the north horizon; crossing the _eight coils of the serpent_
[eight sidereal years, or over 200,000 solar years], which would
seem like an imaginary _ladder_ with _eight staves_ reaching from
the earth up to the pole, _i.e._, the throne of Jove. Up this
ladder, then, the Gods, _i.e._, the Signs of the Zodiac, ascended
and descended. [Jacob’s ladder and the Angels] .... It is more
than 400,000 years since the Zodiac formed the sides of this
ladder.(796)

This is an ingenious explanation, even if it is not altogether free from Occult heresy. Yet it is nearer the truth than many of a more scientific and especially theological character. As said, the Christian Trinity was purely astronomical from its beginning. This it was which made Rutilius say of those who euhemerized it: “_Judæa gens, radix stultorum_.”

But the profane, and especially Christian fanatics who are ever in search of scientific corroboration for their dead‐letter texts, persist in seeing in the Celestial Pole the true Serpent of _Genesis_, Satan, the enemy of mankind; whereas it is really—a cosmic metaphor. When the Gods are said to forsake the Earth, it means not only the Gods, the Protectors and Instructors, but also the _minor_ Gods—the Regents of the Zodiacal Signs. The former, as actual and existing Entities which gave birth to, nursed, and instructed Mankind in its early youth, appear in every Scripture, in that of the Zoroastrians as well as in the Hindû Gospels. Ormazd, or Ahura Mazda, the “Lord of Wisdom,” is the synthesis of the Amshaspands, or Amesha Spentas, the “Immortal Benefactors,”(797) the “Word,” or the Logos, and its six highest aspects in Mazdeanism. These “Immortal Benefactors” are described in _Zamyad Yasht_ as:

The Amesha Spentas, the shining, having efficacious eyes, great,
helpful ... imperishable and pure ... which are all seven of like
mind, like speech, all seven doing alike ... which are _the
creators and destroyers of the creatures_ of Ahura Mazda, their
creators and overseers, their protectors and rulers.

These few lines are sufficient to indicate the dual and even the triple character of the Amshaspands, our Dhyân Chohans or the “Serpents of Wisdom.” They are identical with, and yet separate from Ormazd (Ahura Mazda). They are also the Angels of the Stars of the Christians—the Star‐ Yazatas of the Zoroastrians—or again the seven Planets (including the Sun) of every religion.(798) The epithet, “the shining, having efficacious eyes,” proves it. This on the physical and sidereal planes. On the spiritual, they are the Divine Powers of Ahura Mazda; but on the astral or psychic plane again, they are the “Builders,” the “Watchers,” the Pitris, or Fathers, and the first Preceptors of Mankind.

When mortals have become sufficiently spiritualized, there will be no more need of _forcing_ them into a correct comprehension of ancient Wisdom. Men will _know_ then, that there never yet was a great World‐reformer whose name has passed into our generation, who (_a_) was not a direct emanation of the Logos (under whatever name known to us) _i.e._, an _essential_ incarnation of one of the “Seven,” of the “Divine Spirit who is sevenfold”; and (_b_) who had not appeared before, in past Cycles. They will recognize, then, the cause which produces certain riddles of the ages, in both history and chronology; the reason, for instance, why it is impossible _for them_ to assign any reliable date to Zoroaster, who is found multiplied by twelve and fourteen in the _Dabistan_; why the numbers and individualities of the Rishis and Manus are so mixed up; why Krishna and Buddha speak of themselves as reïncarnations, Krishna identifying himself with the Rishi Nârâyana, and Gautama giving a series of his previous births; and why the former, especially, being “the _very supreme_ Brahmâ,” is yet called Anshânshâvatâra—“a part of a part” only of the Supreme on Earth; finally, why Osiris is a Great God, and at the same time a “Prince on Earth,” who reäppears in Thoth Hermes; and why Jesus (in Hebrew, Joshua) of Nazareth is recognized, kabalistically, in Joshua, the son of Nun, as well as in other personages. The Esoteric Doctrine explains all this by saying that each of these, as also many others, had first appeared on Earth as one of the Seven Powers of the Logos, individualized as a God or Angel (Messenger); then, mixed with Matter, they had reäppeared in turn as great Sages and Instructors who “taught” the Fifth Race, after having instructed the two preceding Races, had ruled during the Divine Dynasties, and had finally sacrificed themselves, to be reborn under various circumstances for the good of Mankind, and for its salvation at certain critical periods; until in their last incarnations they had become truly only the “parts of a part” on Earth, though _de facto_ the One Supreme in Nature.

This is the metaphysics of Theogony. Now every “Power” among the Seven, once he is individualized, has in his charge one of the elements of creation, and rules over it;(799) hence the many meanings in every symbol. These, unless interpreted according to the Esoteric methods, generally lead to inextricable confusion.

Does the Western Kabalist, who is generally an opponent of the Eastern Occultist, require a proof? Let him open Éliphas Lévi’s _Histoire de la Magie_,(800) and carefully examine his “Grand Symbole Kabbalistique” from the _Zohar_. He will find there, in the engraving, a development of the “interlaced triangles,” a _white_ man above and a _black_ woman below reversed, the legs passing under the extended arms of the male figure, and protruding behind the shoulders, while their hands join at an angle on each side. Éliphas Lévi makes of this symbol, God and Nature; or God, “Light,” mirrored inversely in Nature and Matter, “Darkness.” Kabalistically and symbolically he is right; but only so far as emblematical cosmogony goes. Neither has he invented the symbol, nor have the Kabalists. The two figures in white and black stone have existed in the temples of Egypt from time immemorial, agreeably to tradition, and historically‐ever since the day of King Cambyses, who personally saw them. Therefore the symbol must have been in existence for nearly 2,500 years. This, at the very least, for Cambyses, who was a son of Cyrus the Great, succeeded his father in the year 529 B.C. These figures were the two Kabiri personifying the _opposite poles_. Herodotus(801) tells posterity that when Cambyses entered the temple of the Kabirim, he burst into an inextinguishable fit of laughter, on perceiving what he thought to be a man erect and a woman standing on the top of her head before him. These were the poles, however, whose symbol was intended to commemorate “the passing of the original north pole of the earth to the south pole of the heaven,” as perceived by Mackey.(802) But they also represented the poles _inverted_, in consequence of the great inclination of the axis, which each time resulted in the displacement of the oceans, the submersion of the polar lands, and the consequent upheaval of new continents in the equatorial regions, and _vice versâ_. These Kabirim were the “Deluge” Gods.