Chapter XIX: Part I: Anthropogenesis (17)

Apollo is Helios, the Sun, Phoibos‐Apollo, the “Light of Life and of the World,”(880) who arises out of the Golden‐winged Cup (the Sun); hence he is the Sun‐god _par excellence_. At the moment of his birth he asks for his bow to kill Python, the Demon Dragon, who attacked his mother before his birth,(881) and whom he is divinely commissioned to destroy—like Kârttikeya, who is born for the purpose of killing Târaka, the _too holy and wise_ Demon. Apollo is born on a sidereal island called Asteria—the “golden star island,” the “earth which floats in the air,” which is the Hindû golden Hiranyapura; he is called the Pure (ἁγνὸς) Agnus Dei, the Indian Agni, as Dr. Kenealy thinks; and in the primal myth he is exempt “from all sensual love.”(882) He is, therefore, a Kumâra, like Kârttikeya, and as Indra was in his earlier life and biographies. Python, moreover, the “red Dragon,” connects Apollo with Michael, who fights the Apocalyptic Dragon, seeking to attack the woman in child‐birth, as Python attacks Apollo’s mother. Can any one fail to see the identity? Had the Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone, who prides himself on his Greek scholarship and understanding of the spirit of Homer’s allegories, ever had a real inkling of the _esoteric_ meaning of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, he would have understood St. John’s _Revelation_, and even the _Pentateuch_, better than he does. For the way to the _Bible_ lies through Hermes, Bel, and Homer, as the way to these is through the Hindû and Chaldæan religious symbols.

(3) The repetition of this archaic tradition is found in chapter xii of St. John’s _Revelation_, and comes from the Babylonian legends, without the smallest doubt, though the Babylonian story, in its turn, had its origin in the allegories of the Âryans. The fragment read by the late George Smith is sufficient to disclose the source of this chapter of the Apocalypse. Here it is as given by the eminent Assyriologist:

Our ... fragment refers to the creation of mankind, called Adam,
as [the man] in the Bible; he is made perfect, ... but afterwards
he joins with the dragon of the deep, the animal of Tiamat, the
spirit of chaos, and offends against his god, who _curses him_,
and calls down on his head all the evils and troubles of
humanity.(883)

This is followed by a war between the dragon and the powers of
evil, or chaos on one side and the gods on the other.

The gods have weapons forged for them,(884) and Merodach [the
Archangel Michael in _Revelation_] undertakes to lead the heavenly
host against the dragon. The war, which is described with spirit,
ends of course in the triumph of the principles of good.(885)

This War of the Gods with the Powers of the Deep, refers also, in its last and terrestrial application, to the struggle between the Âryan Adepts of the nascent Fifth Race and the Sorcerers of Atlantis, the Demons of the Deep, the Islanders surrounded with water who disappeared in the Deluge.

The symbols of the “Dragon” and “War in Heaven” have, as already stated, more than one significance; religious, astronomical and geological events being included in the one common allegory. But they had also a cosmological meaning. In India the Dragon story is repeated in one of its forms in the battles of Indra with Vritra. In the _Vedas_ this Ahi‐Vritra is referred to as the Demon of Drought, the terrible hot Wind. Indra is shown to be constantly at war with him; and with the help of his thunder and lightning the God compels Ahi‐Vritra to pour down in rain on Earth, and then slays him. Hence, Indra is called the Vritra‐han or the “Slayer of Vritra,” as Michael is called the Conqueror and “Slayer of the Dragon.” Both these “Enemies” are then the “Old Dragon” precipitated into the depths of the Earth, in this one sense.

The Avestaic Amshaspands are a Host with a leader like St. Michael over them, and seem identical with the legions of Heaven, to judge from the account in the _Vendîdâd_. Thus in Fargard xix, Zarathushtra is told by Ahura Mazda to “invoke the Amesha Spentas who rule over the seven Karshvares(886) of the Earth”;(887) which Karshvares in their seven applications refer equally to the seven Spheres of our Planetary Chain, to the seven Planets, the seven Heavens, etc., according to whether the sense is applied to a physical, supra‐mundane, or simply a sidereal World. In the same Fargard, in his invocation against Angra Mainyu and his Host, Zarathushtra appeals to them in these words: “I invoke the seven bright Sravah with their sons and their flocks.”(888) The “Sravah”—a word which the Orientalists have given up as one “of unknown meaning”—means the same Amshaspands, but in their highest Occult meaning. The Sravah are the Noumenoi of the phenomenal Amshaspands, the Souls or Spirits of those _manifested_ Powers; and “their sons and their flocks” refer to the Planetary Angels and their sidereal flocks of stars and constellations. “Amshaspand” is the exoteric term used in terrestrial combinations and affairs only. Zarathushtra addresses Ahura Mazda constantly as the “maker of the _material_ world.” Ormazd is the father of our Earth (Spenta Ârmaiti), who is referred to, when personified, as “the fair daughter of Ahura Mazda,”(889) who is also the creator of the Tree (of Occult and Spiritual Knowledge and Wisdom) from which the mystic and mysterious Baresma is taken. But the Occult name of the bright God was never pronounced outside the temple.

Samael or Satan the seducing Serpent of _Genesis_, and one of the primeval Angels who rebelled, is the name of the “Red Dragon.” He is the Angel of Death, for the _Talmud_ says that “the Angel of Death and Satan are the same.” He is killed by Michael, and once more killed by St. George, who also is a Dragon Slayer. But see the transformations of this. Samael is identical with the Simoom, the hot wind of the desert, or again with the Vedic Demon of Drought, as Vritra. “Simoon is called Atabutos” or—Diabolos, the Devil.

Typhon, or the Dragon Apophis—the Accuser in the _Book of the Dead_—is worsted by Horus, who pierces his opponent’s head with a spear; and Typhon is the all‐destroying wind of the desert, the rebellious element that throws everything into confusion. As Set, he is the darkness of night, the murderer of Osiris, who is the light of day and the Sun. Archæology demonstrates that Horus is identical with Anubis,(890) whose effigy was discovered upon an Egyptian monument, with a cuirass and a spear, like Michael and St. George. Anubis is also represented as slaying a Dragon, that has the head and tail of a serpent.(891)

Cosmologically, then, all the Dragons and Serpents conquered by their “Slayers” are, in their origin, the turbulent confused principles in Chaos, brought to order by the Sun‐gods or _Creative_ Powers. In the _Book of the Dead_ those principles are called the “Sons of Rebellion.”(892)

In that night, the oppressor, the murderer of Osiris, otherwise
called the _deceiving Serpent_ ... calls the Sons of Rebellion in
_Air_, and when they arrive to the East of the Heavens, then there
is War in Heaven and in the entire World.(893)

In the Scandinavian _Eddas_ the “War” of the Ases with the Hrimthurses or Frost giants, and of Asathor with the Jotuns, the Serpents and Dragons and the “Wolf” who comes out of “Darkness”—is the repetition of the same myth. The “Evil Spirits,”(894) who began by being simply the emblems of Chaos, have become euhemerized by the superstition of the rabble, until they have finally won the right of citizenship in what are claimed to be the most civilized and learned races of this globe _since its creation_, and have become a dogma with Christians. As George Smith has it:

The evil principles [Spirits], emblems of Chaos [in Chaldæa and
Assyria as in Egypt, we see], ... resist this change and make war
on the Moon, the eldest son of Bel, drawing over to their side the
Sun, Venus and the atmospheric god Vul.(895)

This is only another version of the Hindû “War in Heaven,” between Soma, the Moon, and the Gods; Indra being the atmospheric Vul—which shows it plainly to be both a cosmogonical and an astronomical allegory, woven into and drawn from the earliest Theogony as taught in the Mysteries.

It is in the religious doctrines of the Gnostics that we can best see the real meaning of the Dragon, the Serpent, the Goat, and all those symbols of Powers now called Evil; for it is they who, in their teachings, divulged the Esoteric nature of the Jewish substitute for Ain Suph, the true meaning of which the Rabbins concealed, while the Christians, with a few exceptions, knew nothing of it. Surely Jesus of Nazareth would have hardly advised his apostles to show themselves as _wise_ as the serpent, had the latter been a symbol of the Evil One; nor would the Ophites, the learned Egyptian Gnostics of the “Brotherhood of the Serpent,” have reverenced a living snake in their ceremonies as the emblem of _Wisdom_, the divine Sophia, and a type of the All‐good, not the All‐bad, were that reptile so closely connected with Satan. The fact is, that even as a common ophidian it has ever been a dual symbol, and as a dragon it has never been anything else than a symbol of the Manifested Deity in its great Wisdom. The _draco volans_, the “flying dragon” of the early painters, may be an exaggerated picture of the real extinct antediluvian animal, and those who have faith in the Occult Teachings believe that in the days of old there were such creatures as flying dragons, a kind of Pterodactyl, and that it is those gigantic winged lizards that served as prototypes for the Seraph of Moses and his great Brazen Serpent.(896) The Jews formerly worshipped the latter _idol_ themselves, but, after the religious reforms brought about by Hezekiah, they turned round, and called that symbol of the Great or Higher God of every other nation a Devil, and their own usurper—the “One God.”(897)

The appellation Sa’tan, in Hebrew Sâtân, an “Adversary” (from the verb _shatana_, “to be adverse,” “to persecute”) belongs by right to the first and cruellest “Adversary” _of all the other Gods_—Jehovah; not to the Serpent, which spoke only words of sympathy and wisdom, and is at the worst, even in the dogma, the “Adversary” _of men_. This dogma, based as it is on the third chapter of _Genesis_, is as illogical and unjust as it is paradoxical. For who was the first to _create_ that original and henceforward universal tempter of man—the woman? Not the Serpent surely, but the “Lord God” himself, who, saying, “It is not good that the man should be alone,” made woman, and “brought her unto the man.”(898) If the unpleasant little incident that followed _was_ and is still to be regarded as the “original sin,” then it exhibits the Creator’s divine foresight in a poor light indeed. It would have been far better for the first Adam of the first chapter to have been left either “male and female,” or “alone.” It is the Lord God, evidently, who was the real cause of all the mischief, the “_agent provocateur_,” and the Serpent—only a prototype of Azazel, “the scapegoat for the sin of [the God of] Israel,” the poor Tragos having to pay the penalty for his Master’s and Creator’s blunder. This, of course, is addressed only to those who accept the opening events of the drama of humanity in _Genesis_ in their dead‐letter sense. Those who read them Esoterically, are not reduced to fanciful speculations and hypotheses; they _know_ how to read the symbolism therein contained, and cannot err.

There is at present no need to touch upon the mystic and manifold meaning of the name Jehovah in its abstract sense, one independent of the Deity falsely called by that name. It was a “blind” purposely created by the Rabbins, a secret preserved by them with ten‐fold care after the Christians had despoiled them of this God‐name which was their own property.(899) The following statement, however, is now made. The personage who is named in the first four chapters of _Genesis_ variously as “God,” the “Lord God,” and “Lord” simply, is not one and the same person; certainly it is not Jehovah. There are three distinct classes or groups of the Elohim called Sephiroth in the _Kabalah_. Jehovah appears only in chapter iv of _Genesis_, in the first verse of which he is named Cain, and in the last transformed into _mankind_—male and female, Jah‐ veh.(900) The Serpent, moreover, is not Satan, but the bright Angel, one of the Elohim clothed in radiance and glory, who—promising the woman, if they ate of the forbidden fruit, “ye shall not surely die”—kept his promise, and made man immortal in his _incorruptible nature_. He is the Iao of the Mysteries, the chief of the Androgyne Creators of men. Chapter iii contains (Esoterically) the withdrawal of the veil of ignorance that closed the perceptions of the Angelic Man, made in the image of the “boneless” Gods, and the opening of his consciousness to his real nature; thus showing the Bright Angel (Lucifer) in the light of a giver of Immortality, and as the “Enlightener”; while the real Fall into generation and matter is to be sought in chapter iv. There, Jehovah‐Cain, the male part of Adam the _dual_ man, having separated himself from Eve, creates in her Abel, _the first natural woman_,(901) and sheds the _virgin blood_. Now Cain, being shown identical with Jehovah, on the authority of the correct reading of the first verse of chapter iv of _Genesis_, in the original Hebrew text, and the Rabbins teaching that “Kin (Cain) the Evil was the Son of Eve by Samael, the Devil, who occupied the place of Adam,”(902) and the _Talmud_ adding that “the evil Spirit, Satan, and Samael, the angel of Death, are the same”(903)—it becomes easy to see that Jehovah (mankind, or Jah‐hovah) and Satan (therefore the tempting Serpent) are one and the same in every particular. _There is no Devil, no Evil outside mankind to produce a Devil._ Evil is a necessity in, and one of the supporters of the Manifested Universe. It is a necessity for progress and evolution, as night is necessary for the production of day, and death for that of life—_that man may live for ever_.

Satan represents metaphysically simply the _reverse_ or the _polar opposite_ of everything in Nature.(904) He is the “Adversary,” allegorically, the “Murderer,” and the great Enemy of _all_, because there is nothing in the whole Universe that has not two sides—the reverses of the same medal. But in that case, light, goodness, beauty, etc., may be called Satan with as much propriety as the Devil, since they are the Adversaries of darkness, badness, and ugliness. And now the philosophy and the _rationale_ of certain early Christian sects—called _heretical_ and viewed as the abomination of the times—will become more comprehensible. We may understand how it was that the sect of Satanians came to be degraded, and were anathematized without any hope of vindication in a future day, since they kept their tenets secret. How, on the same principle, the Cainites came to be degraded, and even the (Judas) Iscariotes; the true character of the _treacherous_ apostle having never been correctly presented before the tribunal of humanity.

As a direct consequence, the tenets of the Gnostic sects also become clear. Each of these sects was founded by an Initiate, while their tenets were based on the correct knowledge of the symbolism of every nation. Thus it becomes comprehensible why Ilda‐baoth was regarded by most of them as the God of Moses, and was held to be a proud, ambitious, and impure Spirit, who had abused his power by usurping the place of the Highest God, though he was no better, and in some respects far worse than his brother Elohim; the latter representing the all‐embracing, manifested Deity only in their collectivity, since they were the Fashioners of the first differentiations of the primary Cosmic Substance for the creation of the phenomenal Universe. Therefore Jehovah was called by the Gnostics the Creator of, and one with, Ophiomorphos, the Serpent, Satan, or Evil.(905) They taught that Iurbo and Adonai were names of Iao‐Jehovah, who is an emanation of Ilda‐baoth.(906) This, in their language, amounted to saying what the Rabbins expressed in a more veiled way, by stating that “Cain had been generated by Samael or Satan.”

The Fallen Angels, in every ancient system, are made the prototypes of _fallen_ men—allegorically, and _those men themselves_—Esoterically. Thus the Elohim of the hour of creation became the Beni‐Elohim, the Sons of God, among whom is Satan, in the Semitic traditions. War in Heaven between Thrætaona and Azhi‐dahaka, the destroying Serpent, ends on Earth, according to Burnouf, in the battle of pious men against the power of Evil, “of the Iranians with the Âryan Brâhmans of India.” And the conflict of the Gods with the Asuras is repeated in the Great War—the Mahâbhârata. In the latest religion of all, Christianity, all the combatants, Gods and Demons, Adversaries in both the camps, are now transformed into Dragons and Satans, simply in order to connect Evil personified with the Serpent of _Genesis_, and thus prove the new dogma.

Noah Was A Kabir, Hence He Must Have Been A Demon.

It matters little whether it were Isis, or Ceres, the Kabiria, or again the Kabiri, who taught men agriculture; but it is very important to prevent fanatics from monopolizing all the facts in history and legend, and from fathering their distortions of truth, history, and legend upon one man. Noah is either a _myth_ along with the others, or one whose legend was built upon the Kabirian or Titanic tradition, as taught in Samothrace; he has, therefore, no claim to be monopolized by either Jew or Christian. If, as Faber tried to demonstrate at such cost of learning and research, Noah is an Atlantean and a Titan, and his family are the Kabiri or pious Titans, etc.—then biblical chronology falls by its own weight, and along with it all the Patriarchs—the Antediluvian and Pre‐Atlantean Titans. As has now been discovered and proven, Cain is Mars, the God of _power and generation_, and of the first (sexual) bloodshed.(907) Tubal‐ Cain is a Kabir, “an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron”; or—if this will please better—he is one with Hephæstus or Vulcan. Jabal again is taken from the Kabiri, instructors in agriculture, “such as have cattle,” and Jubal is “the father of all those who handle the harp,” he, or _they_ who fabricated the harp for Cronus and the trident for Poseidon.(908)

The history or “fables” about the mysterious Telchines—fables echoing each and all the archaic events of our Esoteric Teachings—furnish us with a key to the origin of Cain’s genealogy in the third chapter of _Genesis_; they give the reason why the Roman Catholic Church identifies “the accursed blood” of Cain and Ham with Sorcery, and makes it responsible for the Deluge. Were not the Telchines—it is argued—the mysterious ironworkers of Rhodes; they who were the first to raise statues to the Gods, furnish them with weapons, and men with magic arts? And is it not they who were destroyed by a Deluge at the command of Zeus, as the Cainites were by that of Jehovah?

The Telchines are simply the Kabiri and the Titans, in another form. They are the Atlanteans also. Says Decharme:

Like Lemnos and Samothrace, Rhodes, the birth‐place of the
Telchines, is an island of volcanic formation.(909)

The island of Rhodes emerged suddenly out of the seas, after having been previously engulfed by the Ocean, say the traditions. Like the Samothrace of the Kabiri, it is connected by the memory of men with the Flood legends. As enough has been said on this subject, however, it may be left for the present.

But we may add a few more words about Noah, the Jewish representative of nearly every Pagan God in one or another character. The Homeric songs contain, in poetized form, all the later fables about the Patriarchs, who are all sidereal, cosmic, and numerical symbols and signs. The attempt to disconnect the two genealogies of Seth and Cain,(910) and the further equally futile attempt to show them as _real_, _historical_ men, has only led to more serious enquiries into the history of the past, and to discoveries which have damaged for ever the supposed _revelation_. For instance, the identity of Noah and Melchizedek being established, the further identity of Melchizedek, or Father Sadik, with Cronus‐Saturn is also proved.

That it is so may be easily demonstrated. It is not denied by any of the Christian writers. Bryant(911) concurs with all those who are of opinion that Sydic, or Sadic, was the Patriarch Noah, and also Melchizedek; and that the name by which he is called, Sadic, corresponds with the character given him in _Genesis_.(912)

He was צדיק, Sadic, a _just man_, and perfect in his generation.
All science and every useful art were attributed to him, and
through his sons transmitted to posterity.(913)

Now it is Sanchuniathon, who informs the world that the Kabiri were the Sons of Sydic or Zedek (Melchi‐zedek). True enough, as this information has descended to us through the _Preparatio Evangelica_ of Eusebius, it may be regarded with a certain amount of suspicion, as it is more than likely that he dealt with Sanchuniathon’s works as he has with Manetho’s Synchronistic Tables. But let us suppose that the identification of Sydic, Cronus, or Saturn, with Noah and Melchizedek, is based on one of the Eusebian pious hypotheses. Let us accept it as such, along with Noah’s characteristic as a _just man_, and his supposed duplicate, the mysterious Melchizedek, “king of Salem, and priest of the most high God,” after “his own order”;(914) and finally, having seen what they all were spiritually, astronomically, psychically and cosmically, let us now see what they became rabbinically and kabalistically.

In speaking of Adam, Cain, Mars, etc., as _personifications_, we find the author of the _Source of Measures_ enunciating our very Esoteric Teachings in his kabalistic researches. Thus he says:

Now, Mars was the Lord of _birth_, and of _death_, of _generation_
and of _destruction_, of _ploughing_, of _building_, of
_sculpture_ or stone‐cutting, of _architecture_, ... in fine, of
all comprised under our English word ARTS. He was the _primal
principle_, disintegrating into the modification of _two opposites
for production_. Astronomically, too,(915) he held the birthplace
of the day and year, _the place of its increase of strength_,
Aries, and likewise the place of its death, Scorpio. He held the
house of Venus, and that of the Scorpion. He, as _birth_, was
_Good_; as _death_, was _Evil_. As _good_, he was _light_; as
_bad_, he was _night_. As _good_, he was _man_; as _bad_, he was
_woman_. He held the cardinal points, and as _Cain_, or
_Vulcan_,(916) or _Pater Sadic_, or _Melchizadek_, he was lord of
the _ecliptic_, or _balance_, or _line of adjustment_, and
therefore was _The Just One_. The ancients held to there being
seven planets, or great gods, growing out of eight, and Pater
Sadic, _The Just or Right One_, was Lord of the eighth, which was
_Mater Terra_.(917)

This makes their functions, after they had been degraded, plain enough, and establishes the identity.

The Noachian Deluge, as described in its dead‐letter and within the period of biblical chronology, having been shown to have never existed, the pious, but very arbitrary, supposition of Bishop Cumberland has but to follow that Deluge into the land of fiction. Indeed it seems rather fanciful to any impartial observer to be told that:

There were two distinct races of Cabiri, the first consisting of
Ham and Mizraim, whom he conceives to be Jupiter and Dionusus of
Mnaseas; the second, of the children of Shem, who are the Cabiri
of Sanchoniatho, while their father Sydyk is consequently the
scriptural Shem.(918)

The Kabirim, the “Mighty Ones,” are identical with our primeval Dhyân Chohans, with the corporeal and the incorporeal Pitris, and with all the Rulers and Instructors of the primeval races, who are referred to as the Gods and Kings of the Divine Dynasties.

The Oldest Persian Traditions About The Polar, And The Submerged Continents.

Legendary lore could not distort facts so effectually as to reduce them to unrecognizable shape. Between the traditions of Egypt and Greece on the one hand, and Persia on the other—a country ever at war with the former—there is too great a similarity of figures and numbers to admit of such coincidence being due to simple chance. This has been well proven by Bailly. Let us pause for a moment to examine these traditions from every available source, in order to the better compare those of the Magi with the so‐called Grecian “fables.”

Those legends have now passed into popular tales, the folklore of Persia, as many a real fiction has found its way into our universal history. The stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table are also fairy tales to all appearance; yet they are based on facts, and pertain to the history of England. Why should not the folklore of Iran be part and parcel of the history and the pre‐historic events of Atlantis? That folklore says as follows:

Before the creation of Adam, two races lived on Earth, the one succeeding the other; the Devs who reigned 7,000 years, and the Peris (the Izeds) who reigned but 2,000, and while the former were still in existence. The Devs were giants, strong and wicked; the Peris were smaller in stature, but wiser and kinder.

Here we recognize the Atlantean Giants and the Âryans, or the Râkshasas of the _Râmâyana_ and the children of Bharata‐varsha, or India; the Ante‐ and the Post‐diluvians of the _Bible_.

Gyan (or Gnan, Jnâna, True or Occult Wisdom and Knowledge), also called Gian‐ben‐Gian (or Wisdom, son of Wisdom), was the king of the Peris.(919) He had a shield as famous as that of Achilles, only instead of serving against an enemy in war, it served as a protection against black magic, the _sorcery_ of the Devs. Gian‐ben‐Gian had reigned 2,000 years when Iblis, the Devil, was permitted by God to defeat the Peris and scatter them to the other end of the world. Even the magic shield, which, by being produced on the principles of Astrology, destroyed charms, enchantments, and bad spells, could not prevail against Iblis, who was an agent of Fate, or Karma.(920) They count ten kings in their last metropolis called Khanoom, and make the tenth, Kaimurath, identical with the Hebrew Adam. These kings answer to the ten antediluvian generations of kings as given by Berosus.

Distorted as these legends are now found to be, one can hardly fail to identify them with the Chaldæan, Egyptian, Greek, and even Hebrew traditions, for the Jewish myth, though disdaining in its exclusiveness to speak of Pre‐Adamite nations, nevertheless allows these to be clearly inferred, by sending out Cain—_one of the only two living men on earth_—into the land of Nod, where he gets married and builds a city.(921)

Now if we compare the 9,000 years mentioned by the Persian tales with the 9,000 years which Plato declared had passed since the submersion of the last Atlantis, a very strange fact is made apparent. Bailly remarked on this, but distorted it by his interpretation. The Secret Doctrine may restore the figures to their true meaning. We read in the _Critias_:

First of all one must remember that 9,000 years have elapsed
_since the war of the nations_, which lived above and outside the
Pillars of Hercules, and those which peopled the lands on this
side.

In the _Timæus_ Plato says the same. The Secret Doctrine declaring that most of the later islander Atlanteans perished in the interval between 850,000 and 700,000 years ago, and that the Âryans were 200,000 years old when the first great “Island,” or Continent, was submerged, there seems hardly any reconciliation possible between the figures. But there is, in truth. Plato, being an Initiate, had to use the veiled language of the Sanctuary, and so had the Magi of Chaldæa and Persia through whose exoteric revelations the Persian legends were preserved and passed to posterity. Thus, we find the Hebrews calling a week “seven days,” and speaking of a “week of years” when each of its days represents 360 solar years, and the whole “week” is 2,520 years, in fact. They had a Sabbatical week, a Sabbatical year, etc., and their Sabbath lasted indifferently 24 hours or 24,000 years, in the secret calculations of their Sods. We of the present times call an age a “century.” They of Plato’s day, the initiated writers, at any rate, by a millennium meant not 1,000 but 100,000 years; while the Hindûs, more independent than any, have never concealed their chronology. Thus, for 9,000 years, the Initiates will read 900,000 years, during which space of time—_i.e._, from the first appearance of the Âryan Race, when the Pliocene portions of the once great Atlantis began gradually sinking(922) and other continents to appear on the surface, down to the final disappearance of Plato’s small island of Atlantis—the Âryan races had never ceased to fight with the descendants of the first giant races. This war lasted till nearly the close of the age which preceded the Kali Yuga, and was the Mahâbhârata, or Great War, so famous in Indian history. Such blending of events and epochs, and the bringing down of hundreds of thousands into thousands of years, does not interfere with the numbers of years that have elapsed, according to the statement made by the Egyptian priests to Solon, since the destruction of the last portion of Atlantis. The 9,000 years were the correct figures. The latter event had never been kept a secret, and had only faded out of the memory of the Greeks. The Egyptians had their records complete, because of their isolation; being surrounded by sea and desert, they had been left untrammelled by other nations, till about a few millenniums before our era.

History catches a glimpse of Egypt and its great Mysteries for the first time through Herodotus, if we do not take into account the _Bible_, and its queer chronology.(923) And how little Herodotus _could_ tell is confessed by himself when, speaking of a mysterious tomb of an Initiate at Saïs, in the sacred precinct of Minerva, he says:

Behind the chapel ... is the tomb of One, _whose name I consider
it impious to divulge_.... In the enclosure stand large obelisks
and there is a _lake_ near, surrounded with a stone wall formed
_in a circle_.... In this lake they perform by night, that
person’s adventures, which the Egyptians call _Mysteries_: on
these matters, however, though I am accurately acquainted with the
particulars of them, _I must observe a discreet silence_.(924)

On the other hand, it is well to know that no secret was so well preserved and so sacred with the Ancients, as that of their cycles and computations. From the Egyptians down to the Jews it was held as the highest sin to divulge anything pertaining to the correct measure of time. It was for divulging the secrets of the Gods, that Tantalus was plunged into the infernal regions; the keepers of the sacred Sibylline Books were threatened with the death penalty for revealing a word from them. Sigalions, or images of Harpocrates, were in every temple—especially in those of Isis and Serapis—each pressing a finger to the lips. And the Hebrews taught that to divulge the secrets of the Kabalah, after initiation into the Rabbinical Mysteries, was like eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge; it was punishable by death.

And yet we Europeans have accepted the exoteric chronology of the Jews! What wonder that it has ever since influenced and coloured all our conceptions of Science and the duration of things!

The Persian traditions, then, are full of two nations or races, now entirely extinct, as some think. But this is not so; they are only transformed. These traditions are ever speaking of the Mountains of Kaf (Kafaristan?), which contain a gallery built by the giant Argeak, wherein statues of the ancient men under all their forms are preserved. They call them Sulimans (Solomons) or the wise kings of the East, and count seventy‐ two kings of that name.(925) Three among them reigned for 1,000 years each.(926)

Siamek, the beloved son of Kaimurath (Adam), their first king, was murdered by his giant brother. His father had a perpetual fire preserved in the tomb which contained his cremated ashes; hence—the origin of fire‐ worship, as some Orientalists think!

Then came Huschenk, the prudent and the wise. It was his Dynasty which re‐ discovered metals and precious stones, after they had been concealed by the Devs or Giants in the bowels of the Earth, and also how to make brass‐ work, to cut canals, and improve agriculture. As usual, it is Huschenk, again, who is credited with having written the work called _Eternal Wisdom_, and even with having built the cities of Luz, Babylon and Ispahan, though indeed they were built ages later. But as modern Delhi is built on six other older cities, so these cities may be built on emplacements of other cities of an immense antiquity. As to his date, it can only be inferred from another legend.

In the same tradition this wise prince is credited with having made war against the Giants on a twelve‐legged Horse, whose birth is attributed to the _amours_ of a crocodile with a female hippopotamus. This “Dodecapod” was found on the “dry island” or new continent; much force and cunning had to be used to secure the wonderful animal, but no sooner had Huschenk mounted him, than he defeated every enemy. No Giants could withstand his tremendous power. Finally, however, this king of kings was killed by an enormous rock which the Giants threw at him from the great mountains of Damavend.(927)

Tahmurath is the third king of Persia, the St. George of Iran, the knight who always has the best of, and finally kills, the Dragon. He is the great enemy of the Devs who, in his day, dwelt in the Mountains of Kaf, and occasionally made raids on the Peris. The old French chronicles of the Persian folklore call him the Dev‐bend, the conqueror of the Giants. He, too, is credited with having founded Babylon, Nineveh, Diarbek, etc. Like his grand‐sire Huschenk, Tahmurath (Taimuraz) also had his steed, only far more rare and rapid—a bird called Simorgh‐Anke. A marvellous bird, in truth, intelligent, a polyglot, and even very religious.(928) What says that Persian Phœnix? It complains of its old age, for it was born cycles and cycles before the days of Adam (Kaimurath). It has witnessed the revolutions of long centuries. It has seen the birth and the close of twelve cycles of 7,000 years each, which multiplied Esoterically will give us again 840,000 years.(929) Simorgh is born with the last Deluge of the Pre‐Adamites, says the “Romance of Simorgh and the good Khalif”!(930)

What says the _Book of Numbers_? Esoterically, Adam Rishoon is the Lunar Spirit (Jehovah, in a sense, or the Pitris), and his three sons—Ka‐yin, Habel, and Seth—represent the three Races, as already explained. Noah‐ Xisuthrus represents, in his turn (in the cosmo‐geological key), the Third Race separated, and his three sons, its last three races; Ham, moreover, symbolizing that race which uncovered the “nakedness” of the Parent Race, and of the “Mindless,” _i.e._, committed sin.

Tahmurath visits on his winged steed the Mountains of Koh‐Kaf or Kaph. He finds there the Peris ill‐treated by the Giants, and slays Argen, and the giant Demrusch. Then he liberates the good Peri, Mergiana,(931) whom Demrusch had kept as a prisoner, and takes her over to the “dry island,” _i.e._, the new continent of Europe.(932) After him came Giamschid, who builds Esikekar, or Persepolis. This king reigns 700 years, and, in his great pride, believes himself immortal, and demands divine honours. Fate punishes him; he wanders for 100 years in the world under the name of Dhulkarnayn, the “two‐horned.” But this epithet has no connection with the “two‐horned” gentleman of the cloven foot. The “two‐horned” is the epithet given in Asia—which is uncivilized enough to know nothing of the attributes of the Devil—to those conquerors who have subdued the world from the East to the West.

Then come the usurper Zohac, and Feridan, one of the Persian heroes, who vanquishes the former, and shuts him up in the mountains of Damavend. These are followed by many others down to Kaikobad, who founded a new Dynasty.

Such is the legendary history of Persia, and we have to analyze it. To begin with, what are the Mountains of Kaf?

Whatever they may be in their geographical status, whether they are the Caucasian or Central Asian mountains, legend places the Devs and Peris far beyond these mountains to the North, the Peris being the remote ancestors of the Parsîs or Farsîs. Oriental tradition is ever referring to an unknown glacial, gloomy sea, and to a dark region, within which, nevertheless, are situated the “Fortunate Islands,” wherein, from the beginning of life on earth, bubbles the “Fountain of Life.”(933) The legend asserts, moreover, that a portion of the first “dry island” (continent), having detached itself from the main body, has remained, since then, beyond the Mountains of Koh‐Kaf, “the stony girdle that surrounds the world.” A journey of seven months’ duration will bring him who is possessed of “Soliman’s Ring” to that “Fountain,” if he keep on journeying North, straight before him as the bird flies. Journeying, therefore, from Persia _straight_ North, will bring one along the sixtieth degree of longitude, holding to the West, to Nova Zembla; and from the Caucasus to the eternal ice beyond the Arctic Circle would land one between the sixtieth and forty‐fifth degrees of longitude, or between Nova Zembla and Spitzbergen. This, of course, if one has the dodecapodian Horse of Huschenk or the winged Simorgh of Tahmurath, or Taimuraz, upon which to cross over the Arctic Ocean.(934)

Nevertheless, the wandering songsters of Persia and the Caucasus will maintain, to this day, that far beyond the snow‐capped summits of Kap, or Caucasus, _there is a great continent now concealed from all_; that it is reached by those who can secure the services of the twelve‐legged progeny of the crocodile and the female hippopotamus, whose legs become at will twelve _wings_,(935) or by those who have the patience to wait for the good pleasure of Simorgh‐Anke, who promised that before she dies she will reveal the hidden continent to all, and make it once more visible and within easy reach, by means of a bridge, which the Ocean Devs will build between that portion of the “dry island” and its severed parts.(936) This relates, of course, to the Seventh Race, Simorgh being the Manvantaric Cycle.

It is very curious that Cosmas Indicopleustes, who lived in the sixth century A.D., should have always maintained that man was born, and dwelt at first, in a country “beyond the Ocean,” a proof of which had been given him in India, by a learned Chaldæan. He says:

The lands we live in are surrounded by the Ocean, but beyond that
Ocean there is another land which touches the walls of the sky;
and it is in this land that man was created and lived in Paradise.
During the Deluge, Noah was carried in his ark into the land his
posterity now inhabits.(937)

The twelve‐legged Horse of Huschenk was found on that continent named the “dry island.”

The “Christian Topography” of Cosmas Indicopleustes and its merits are well known; but here the good father repeats a universal tradition, which has now, moreover, been corroborated by facts. Every arctic traveller suspects a continent or a “dry island” beyond the line of eternal ice. Perhaps now the meaning of the following passage from one of the Commentaries may become clearer.

_In the first beginnings of [human] life, the only dry land was on the right end_(_938_)_ of the Sphere, where it [the Globe] is motionless._(_939_)_ The whole Earth was one vast watery desert, and the waters were tepid.... There, man was born on the seven zones of the immortal, the indestructible of the Manvantara._(_940_)_ There was eternal spring in darkness. [But] that which is darkness to the man of to‐day, was light to the man of his dawn. There, the Gods rested, and Fohat_(_941_)_ reigns ever since.... Thus the wise Fathers say that man is born in the head of his Mother [Earth], and that her feet at the left end generated [begot] the evil winds that blow from the mouth of the lower Dragon ... Between the First and Second [Races] the Eternal Central [Land] was divided by the Water of Life._(_942_)

_It flows around and animates her [Mother Earth’s] body. Its one end issues from her head; it becomes foul at her feet [the Southern Pole]. It gets purified [on its return] to her heart—which beats under the foot of the sacred Shambalah, which then [in the beginnings] was not yet born. For it is in the belt of man’s dwelling [the Earth] that lies concealed the life and health of all that lives and breathes._(_943_)_ During the First and Second [Races] the belt was covered with the great waters. [But] the great __ Mother travailed under the waves and a new land was joined to the first one which our wise men call the head‐gear [the cap]. She travailed harder for the Third [Race] and her waist and navel appeared above the water. It was the belt, the sacred Himavat, which stretches around the World._(_944_)_ She broke toward the setting Sun from her neck_(_945_)_ downward [to the South‐West], into many lands and islands, but the Eternal Land [the cap] broke not asunder. Dry lands covered the face of the silent waters to the four sides of the World. All these perished [in their turn]. Then appeared the abode of the wicked [the Atlantis]. The Eternal Land was now hid, for the waters became solid [frozen] under the breath of her nostrils and the evil winds from the Dragon’s mouth, etc._

This shows that Northern Asia is as old as the Second Race. One may even say that Asia is contemporary with man, since from the very beginnings of human life its Root‐Continent, so to speak, already existed, and that part of the world now known as Asia was only cut off from it in a later age, and divided by the glacial waters.

If, then, the teaching is understood correctly, the first Continent which came into existence capped over the whole North Pole like one unbroken crust, and remains so to this day, beyond that inland sea which seemed like an unreachable _mirage_ to the few arctic travellers who perceived it.

During the Second Race more land emerged from under the waters as a continuation of the “head” from the “neck.” Beginning on both hemispheres, on the line above the most noryhern part of Spitzbergen,(946) on Mercator’s Projection, on our side, it may have included, on the American side, the localities that are now occupied by Baffin’s Bay and the neighbouring islands and promontories. _There_ it hardly reached, southward, the seventieth degree of latitude; _here_ it formed the horseshoe continent of which the Commentary speaks; of the two ends of which, one included Greenland with a prolongation which crossed the fiftieth degree a little South‐West, and the other Kamschatka, the two ends being united by what is now the northern fringe of the coasts of Eastern and Western Siberia. This broke asunder and disappeared. In the early part of the Third Race, Lemuria was formed. When it was destroyed in its turn, Atlantis appeared.

Western Speculations, Founded On The Greek And Paurânic Traditions.

Thus it becomes natural to find that, on even such meagre data as have reached the profane historian, Rudbeck, a Swedish Scientist, about two centuries ago, tried to prove that Sweden was the Atlantis of Plato. He even thought that he had found in the configuration of ancient Upsala, the situation and measurements of the capital of “Atlantis” as given by the Greek sage. As Bailly proved, Rudbeck was mistaken; but so was Bailly likewise, and still more so, for Sweden and Norway had formed part and parcel of ancient Lemuria, and also of Atlantis on the European side, just as Eastern and Western Siberia and Kamschatka had belonged to it, on the Asiatic. Only, once more, when was it? We can find it out approximately only by studying the _Purânas_, that is to say if we will have nought to do with the Secret Teachings.

Three‐quarters of a century have already elapsed since Wilford brought forward his fanciful theories about the British islands being the “White Island,” the Atala of the _Purânas_. This was sheer nonsense, as the Atala is one of the seven Dvîpas, or Islands, belonging to the nether Lokas, one of the seven regions of Pâtâla (the antipodes). Moreover, as Wilford(947) shows, the _Purânas_ place it “on the seventh zone or seventh climate”—rather, on the seventh measure of heat—which thus locates it between the latitudes of 24° and 28° North. It is then to be sought on the same degree as the Tropic of Cancer, whereas England is between the latitudes of 50° and 60°. Wilford speaks of it as Atala, Atlantis, the White Island. Its enemy is called the “White Devil,” the Demon of Terror, for he says:

In their [the Hindû and Persian] romances, we see Cai‐caus going
to the mountain of _Az‐burj_, or _As‐burj_, _at the foot of which_
the sun sets, to fight the _Div‐sefid_, or white devil, the _Târa‐
daitya_ of the _Purânas_, and whose abode was on the _seventh
stage_ of the world, answering to the seventh zone of the
Bauddhists; ... or, in other words, to the White Island.(948)

Now here the Orientalists have been, and are still, facing the Sphinx’s riddle, the erroneous solution of which will ever destroy their authority—if not their persons—in the eyes of every Hindû scholar, whether or not an Initiate. For there is not a statement in the _Purânas_—on the conflicting details of which Wilford based his speculations—which has not several meanings, and which does not apply to both the physical and the metaphysical worlds. If the old Hindûs divided the face of the Globe into seven Zones, Climates, Dvîpas, geographically, and into seven Hells and seven Heavens, allegorically, the measure of seven did not apply in both cases to the same localities. Now it is the North Pole, the country of “Meru,” which is the seventh division, as it answers to the seventh Principle (or fourth metaphysically), of the Occult calculation. It represents the region of Âtmâ, of pure Soul, and Spirituality. Hence Pushkara is shown as the seventh Zone, or Dvîpa, which encompasses the Kshîra Ocean, or Ocean of Milk (the ever‐frozen white region) in the _Vishnu_ and other _Purânas_.(949) And Pushkara, with its two Varshas, lies directly at the foot of Meru. For it is said that:

The two countries north and south of Meru are _shaped like a bow_,
... [and that] one half of the surface of the earth is on the
south of Meru and the other half on the north of Meru—_beyond
which is half of Pushkara_.

Geographically, then, Pushkara is America, Northern and Southern; and allegorically it is the prolongation of Jambu‐dvîpa,(950) in the middle of which stands Meru, for it is the country inhabited by beings who live ten thousand years, who are free from sickness or failing; where there is neither virtue nor vice, caste or laws, for these men are “of the same nature as the Gods.”(951) Wilford is inclined to see Meru in Mount Atlas, and locates there also the Lokâloka. Now Meru, we are told, which is the Svar‐loka, the abode of Brahmâ, of Vishnu, and the Olympus of Indian exoteric religions, is described geographically as “passing through the middle of the earth‐globe, and protruding on either side.”(952) On its upper station are the Gods, at the nether, or South Pole, is the abode of Demons (Hells). How then can Meru be Mount Atlas? Besides which, Târadaitya, a Demon, cannot be placed on the seventh zone if the latter be identified with the White Island, which is Shveta‐dvîpa, for reasons given in the foot‐note above.

Wilford accuses the modern Brâhmans “of having jumbled them [islands and countries] all together”; but it is _he_ who has jumbled them still more. He believes that as the _Brahmânda_ and _Vâyu Purânas_ divide the old Continent into seven Dvîpas, said to be surrounded by a vast ocean, beyond which lie the regions and mountains of Atala, hence:

Most probably the Greeks derived their notion of the celebrated
Atlantis, which, as it could not be found after having once been
discovered, they conceived to have been destroyed by some shock of
nature.(953)

As we find certain difficulties in believing that the Egyptian priests, Plato, and even Homer, all built their notions of Atlantis on Atala—a nether region located at the Southern Pole—we prefer holding to the statements given in the Secret Books. We believe in the seven Continents, four of which have already lived their day, the fifth still exists, and two are to appear in the future. We believe that each of these is not strictly a continent in the modern sense of the word, but that each name, from Jambu down to Pushkara,(954) refers to the geographical names given (i) to the dry lands covering the face of the whole Earth during the period of a Root‐Race, in general; (ii) to what remained of these after a geological Race Pralaya, as Jambu, for instance; and (iii) to those localities which will enter, after future cataclysms, into the formation of new universal Continents, Peninsulas, or Dvîpas(955)—each Continent being, in one sense, a greater or smaller region of dry land surrounded with water. Thus, that whatever “jumble” the nomenclature of these may represent to the profane, there is none, in fact, to him who has the key.

Thus, we believe we know that, though two of the Paurânic Islands—the Sixth and Seventh Continents—are yet to come, nevertheless there _were_, or there _are_, lands which will enter into the composition of the future dry lands, of new Earths whose geographical faces will be entirely changed, as were those of the past. Therefore we find in the _Purânas_ that Shâka‐dvîpa is (or will be) a Continent, and that Shankha‐dvîpa, as shown in the _Vâyu Purâna_, is only “a minor island,” one of the nine divisions (to which _Vâyu_ adds six more) of Bhârata‐varsha. Because Shankha‐dvîpa was peopled by “Mlechchhas [unclean foreigners], who worshipped Hindû divinities,” therefore they were connected with India.(956) This accounts for Shankhâsura, a King of a portion of Shankha‐ dvîpa, who was killed by Krishna; that King who resided in the palace “which was an ocean shell, and whose subjects lived in shells also,” says Wilford.

On the banks of the Nîlâ(957) there were frequent contests between
the Devatâs [Divine Beings, Demi‐gods] and the Daityas [Giants]:
but the latter tribe having prevailed, their king and leader,
Shankhâsura, who resided in the ocean, made frequent incursions
... in the night.(958)

It is not on the banks of the Nile, as Wilford supposes, but on the coasts of Western Africa, South of where now lies Morocco, that these battles took place. There was a time when the whole of the Sahara Desert was a sea, then a continent as fertile as the Delta, and then, only after another temporary submersion, it became a desert similar to that other wilderness, the Desert of Shamo or Gobi. This is shown in Paurânic tradition, for on the same page as above cited, it is said:

The people were between two fires; for, while Shankhâsura was
ravaging one side of the continent, Cracacha [or Krauncha], king
of Crauncha‐dwîp [Krauncha‐dvîpa], used to desolate the other:
both armies ... thus _changed the most fertile of regions into a
barren desert_.

That not only the last island of Atlantis, spoken of by Plato, but a large Continent, first divided, and then broken later on into seven peninsulas and islands (called Dvîpas), preceded Europe, is sure. It covered the whole of the North and South Atlantic regions, as well as portions of the North and South Pacific, and had islands even in the Indian Ocean (relics of Lemuria). The claim is corroborated by Indian _Purânas_, Greek writers, and Asiatic, Persian, and Mahommedan traditions. Wilford, who sorely confuses the Hindû and the Mussulman legends, shows this, however, clearly.(959) His facts and quotations from the _Purânas_ give direct and conclusive evidence that the Âryan Hindûs and other ancient nations were earlier navigators than the Phœnicians, who are now credited with having been the first seamen that appeared in the post‐diluvian times. This is what we read in the _Asiatick Researches_:

In this distress the few natives, who survived [in the war between
Devatâs and Daityas] raised their hands and hearts to Bhagavân,
and exclaimed, “Let him that can deliver us ... be our king”;
using the word ÎT [a _magic_ term not understood by Wilford,
evidently] which reëchoed through the whole country.(960)