Chapter XX: Part I: Anthropogenesis (18)

Then comes a violent storm, the waters of the Kâlî are strangely agitated, “when there appeared from the waves ... a man, afterwards called ÎT, at the head of a numerous army, saying ‘_abhayan_,’ or _there is no fear_”; and scattered the enemy. “The King ÎT,” explains Wilford, “is a subordinate incarnation of Mrīra”—Mrida, a form of Rudra, probably?—who “reëstablished peace and prosperity throughout all Shankha‐dvîpa, through Barbaradêsa, Misra‐st’hân and Arva‐st’hân, or Arabia,”(961) etc.

Surely, if the Hindû _Purânas_ give a description of wars on continents and islands situated beyond Western Africa in the Atlantic Ocean; if their writers speak of Barbaras and other people such as Arabs—they who were never known to navigate, or cross the Kâla‐pâni, the Black Waters of the Ocean, in the days of Phœnician navigation—then these _Purânas_ must be older than those Phœnicians who are placed at from 2,000 to 3,000 years B.C. At any rate, their traditions must have been older,(962) for an Adept writes:

_In the above accounts, the Hindûs speak of this island as existing and in great power; it must, therefore, have been more than eleven thousand years ago._

But another proof may be adduced of the great antiquity of these Hindû Âryans who described the last surviving island of Atlantis, or rather of that remnant of the Eastern portion of that Continent which had perished soon after the upheaval of the two Americas(963)—the two Varshas of Pushkara. And they described what they knew, for they had once dwelt on it. This may be demonstrated, moreover, on an astronomical calculation by an Adept who criticizes Wilford. Recalling what that Orientalist had brought forward concerning the Mount Ashburj “at the foot of which the sun sets,” where was the war between the Devatâs and the Daityas,(964) he says:

_We will consider, then, the latitude and longitude of the lost island, and of the remaining Mount Ashburj. It was on the seventh stage of the world_, _i.e._, _in the seventh climate (which is between the latitude of 24 degrees and latitude 28 degrees north).... This island, the daughter of the Ocean, is frequently described as lying in the West; and the Sun is represented as setting at the foot of its mountain (Ashburj, Atlas, Teneriffe or Nila, no matter the name), and fighting the White Devil of the __“__White Island.__”_

Now, if we consider this statement from its astronomical aspect, as Krishna is the incarnated Sun (Vishnu), a solar God, and as he is said to have killed Div‐sefid, the White Devil—a _possible_ personification of the ancient inhabitants at the foot of the Atlas—he may perchance be only a representation of the vertical beams of the Sun. Again, these inhabitants, the Atlantides, as we have seen, are accused by Diodorus of daily _cursing_ the Sun, and ever fighting his influence. This is, however, only an astronomical interpretation. It will now be proved that Shankhâsura, and Shankha‐dvîpa, and all their history, is also geographically and ethnologically Plato’s Atlantis in Hindû dress.

It has just been remarked that since, in the Paurânic accounts, the island is _still existing_, these accounts must be older than the 11,000 years which have elapsed since Shankha‐dvîpa, or the Poseidonis of Atlantis, disappeared. But is it not barely possible that Hindûs should have known the island still earlier? Let us turn again to astronomical demonstrations, which make this quite plain if with the said Adept one assumes that:

_At the time when the summer tropical __“__colure__”__ passed through the Pleiades, when Cor Leonis would be upon the equator, and when Leo_ was vertical _to Ceylon at sunset, then would Taurus be vertical to the island of Atlantis at noon_.

This explains, perhaps, why the Sinhalese, the heirs of the Râkshasas and Giants of Lankâ, and the direct descendants of Sinha, or Leo, became connected with Shankha‐dvîpa or Poseidonis (Plato’s Atlantis). Only, as shown by Mackey’s _Sphinxiad_, this must have occurred about 23,000 years ago, _astronomically_; at which time the obliquity of the ecliptic must have been rather more than 27 degrees, and consequently Taurus must have passed over Atlantis or Shankha‐dvîpa. And that it was so is clearly demonstrated. Say the Commentaries:

_The sacred bull Nandi was brought from Bhârata to Shankha to meet Rishabha [Taurus] every Kalpa. But when those of the White Island [who descended originally from Shveta‐dvîpa],_(_965_)_ who had mixed with the Daityas [Giants] of the land of iniquity, had become black with sin, then Nandi remained for ever in the White Island [or Shveta‐dvîpa].... Those of the Fourth World [Race] lost AUM._

Asburj, or Azburj, whether the peak of Teneriffe or not, was a volcano, when the sinking of the “Western Atala,” or Hell, began, and those who were saved told the tale to their children. Plato’s Atlantis perished between water below and fire above; the great mountain vomiting flames all the while.

_The __“__fire‐vomiting Monster__”__ survived alone out of the ruins of the unfortunate island._

Do the Greeks, who are accused of borrowing a Hindû fiction (Atala), and inventing from it another (Atlantis), stand also accused of getting their geographical notions and the number seven from them?

“The famous Atlantis exists no longer, but we can hardly doubt
that it did once,” says Proclus, “for Marcellus, who wrote a
history of Ethiopian affairs, says that such, and so great, an
island once existed, and this is evidenced by those who composed
histories relative to the external sea. For _they relate that in
this time there were seven islands_ in the Atlantic sea sacred to
Proserpine; and besides these, three of immense magnitude, sacred
to Pluto, ... Jupiter, ... and Neptune. And, besides this, the
inhabitants of the last island [Poseidonis] _preserved the memory
of the prodigious magnitude_ of the Atlantic island as related by
their ancestors, and of its governing for many periods all the
islands in the Atlantic sea. From this _isle_ one may pass to
other large islands beyond, which are not far from the firm land,
near which is the true sea.”

These seven Dvîpas [inaccurately rendered islands] constitute,
according to Marcellus, the body of the famous Atlantis.... This
evidently shows that _Atlantis is the old continent_.... The
Atlantis was destroyed after a violent storm [?]: this is well
known to the Paurâunics, some of whom assert that in consequence
of this dreadful convulsion of nature, six of the Dvîpas
disappeared.(966)

Enough proofs have now been given to satisfy the greatest sceptic. Nevertheless, direct proofs based on exact Science will also be added. And yet even though volumes were written, it would be to no purpose for those who will neither see nor hear, except through the eyes and ears of their respective authorities.

Hence the teaching of the Roman Catholic scholiasts, namely, that Hermon, the mount in the land of Mizpeth—meaning “anathema,” “destruction”—is the same as Mount Armon. As a proof of this, Josephus is often quoted, as affirming that still in his own day enormous bones of giants were daily discovered on it. But it was the land of Balaam the prophet, whom the “Lord loved well.” And so mixed up are facts and personages in the said scholiasts’ brains, that, when the _Zohar_ explains the “Birds” which inspired Balaam to mean “Serpents,” to wit, the Wise Men and Adepts at whose School he had learnt the mysteries of prophecy—the opportunity is again taken of showing Mount Hermon inhabited by the “winged dragons of Evil, whose chief is Samael”—the Jewish Satan! As Spencer says:

It is to those unclean spirits chained on Mount Hermon of the
Desert, that the scape‐goat of Israel, who assumed the name of one
of them [Azaz(y)el], was sent.

We say it is not so. The _Zohar_ has the following explanation on the practice of magic which is called in Hebrew Nehhaschim, or the “Serpents’ Works.” It says (part iii. col. 302):

It is called Nehhaschim, because the magicians [practical
Kabalists] work _surrounded by the light of the Primordial
Serpent_, which they perceive in heaven as a luminous zone
composed of myriads of small stars.

This means simply the Astral Eight, so called by the Martinists, by Éliphas Lévi, and now by all the modern Occultists.

The “Curse” From A Philosophical Point Of View.

The foregoing teachings of the Secret Doctrine, supplemented by universal traditions, must now have demonstrated that the _Brâhmanas_ and _Purânas_, the _Vendîdâd_ and other Mazdean scriptures, down to the Egyptian, Greek, and Roman, and finally to the Jewish sacred records, all have the same origin. None are meaningless and baseless stories, invented to entrap the unwary profane; all are allegories intended to convey, under a more or less fantastic veil, the great truths gathered in the same field of pre‐ historic tradition. Space forbids us, in these volumes, from entering into further and more minute details with respect to the four Races which preceded our own. But before offering to the student the history of the psychic and spiritual evolution of the direct antediluvian fathers of our Fifth (Âryan) Humanity, and before demonstrating its bearing upon all the other side branches grown from the same trunk, we have to elucidate a few more facts. It has been shown, on the evidence of the whole ancient literary world, and the intuitional speculations of more than one Philosopher and Scientist of the later ages, that the tenets of our Esoteric Doctrine are, in almost every case, corroborated by inferential as well as by direct proof, that neither the “legendary” Giants, nor the lost Continents, nor yet the evolution of the preceding Races, are quite baseless tales. In the Addenda which close this volume, Science will find itself more than once unable to reply; these Addenda, will, it is hoped, finally dispose of every sceptical remark with regard to the sacred number in nature, and our figures in general.

Meanwhile, one task is left incomplete—the disposing of that most pernicious of all the theological dogmas, the Curse under which man‐kind is alleged to have suffered ever since the supposed disobedience of Adam and Eve in the bower of Eden.

Creative powers in man were the gift of Divine Wisdom, not the result of sin. This is clearly instanced in the paradoxical behaviour of Jehovah, who first _curses_ Adam and Eve (or Humanity) for the supposed crime committed, and then _blesses_ his “chosen people” by saying, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.”(967) The Curse was not brought on mankind by the Fourth Race, for the comparatively sinless Third Race, the still more gigantic Antediluvians, had perished in the same way; hence the Deluge was no punishment, but simply a result of a periodical and geological law. Nor was the Curse of Karma called down upon them for seeking _natural_ union, as all the mindless animal‐world does in its proper seasons; but, for abusing the creative power, for desecrating the divine gift, and wasting the life‐essence for no purpose except bestial personal gratification. When understood, the third chapter of _Genesis_ will be found to refer to the Adam and Eve of the closing Third and the commencing Fourth Races. In the beginning, conception was as easy for woman as it was for all animal creation. Nature had never intended that woman should bring forth her young ones “in sorrow.” Since that period, however, during the evolution of the Fourth Race, there came enmity between its seed and the “Serpent’s” seed, the seed or product of Karma and Divine Wisdom. For the seed of woman, or lust, _bruised the head_ of the seed of _the fruit of wisdom and knowledge_, by turning the holy mystery of procreation into animal gratification; hence the Law of Karma “bruised the _heel_” of the Atlantean Race, by gradually changing physiologically, morally, physically, and mentally, the whole nature of the Fourth Race of mankind,(968) until, from being the healthy king of animal creation in the Third Race, man became in the Fifth, our Race, a helpless, scrofulous being, and has now become the wealthiest heir on the Globe to constitutional and hereditary diseases, the most consciously and intelligently bestial of all animals!(969)

This is the real Curse from the physiological standpoint, almost the only one touched upon in Kabalistic Esotericism. Viewed from this aspect, the Curse is undeniable, for it is evident. The intellectual evolution, in its progress hand‐in‐hand with the physical, has certainly been a curse instead of a blessing—a gift quickened by the “Lords of Wisdom,” who have poured on the human Manas the fresh dew of their own Spirit and Essence. The Divine Titan has then suffered in vain; and one feels inclined to regret his benefaction to mankind, and sigh for those days so graphically depicted by Æschylus in his “Prometheus Bound,” when, at the close of the first Titanic Age (the Age that followed that of Ethereal Man, of the pious Kandu and Pramlochâ), nascent, physical mankind, still mindless and (physiologically) senseless, is described as—

Seeing, they saw in vain;
Hearing, they heard not; but like shapes in dreams,
Through the long time all things at random mixed.

Our Saviours, the Agnishvâtta and other divine “Sons of the Flame of Wisdom”—personified by the Greeks in Prometheus(970)—may well be left unrecognized and unthanked, in the injustice of the human heart. They may, in our ignorance of the truth, be indirectly cursed for Pandora’s gift; but to find themselves proclaimed and declared by the mouth of the clergy, as the Evil Ones, is too heavy a Karma for “Him” who, when Zeus “ardently desired” to quench the entire human race, “dared alone” to save that “mortal race” from perdition, or, as the suffering Titan is make to say:

From sinking blasted down to Hades’ gloom.
For this by these dire tortures I am bent,
Grievous to suffer, piteous to behold,
I who did mortals pity....

The chorus remarking very pertinently:

Vast boon was this thou gavest unto mortals!

Prometheus answers:

Yea, and besides ’twas I that gave them fire.

CHORUS: Have now these short‐lived creatures flame‐eyed fire?

PROM.: Ay, and by it full many arts will learn....

But, with the arts, the “fire” received has turned into the greatest curse; the animal element, and _consciousness_ of its possession, has changed periodical instinct into chronic animalism and sensuality.(971) It is this which hangs over humanity like a heavy funereal pall. Thus arises the responsibility of free‐will; the Titanic passions which represent humanity in its darkest aspect;

The restless insatiability of the lower passions and desires,
when, with self‐asserting insolence, they bid defiance to the
restraints of law.(972)

Prometheus having endowed man, according to Plato’s _Protagoras_, with that “wisdom which ministers to physical well‐being,” but the lower aspect of Manas of the animal (Kâma) having remained unchanged, instead of “an untainted mind, heaven’s first gift,” there was created the eternal vulture of ever unsatisfied desire, of regret and despair, coupled with “the dreamlike feebleness that fetters the blind race of mortals” (556), unto the day when Prometheus is released by his heaven‐appointed deliverer, Herakles.

Now Christians—Roman Catholics especially—have tried to prophetically connect this drama with the coming of Christ. No greater mistake could be made. The true Theosophist, the pursuer of Divine Wisdom and worshipper of Absolute Perfection—the Unknown Deity which is neither Zeus nor Jehovah—will demur to such an idea. Pointing to antiquity he will prove that there never has been an _original_ sin, but only an abuse of physical intelligence—the Psychic being guided by the Animal, and both putting out the light of the Spiritual. He will say: All you who can read between the lines, study Ancient Wisdom in the old dramas, the Indian and the Greek; read carefully the “Prometheus Bound,” enacted in the theatres of Athens 2,400 years ago! The myth belongs to neither Hesiod nor Æschylus; but, as Bunsen says, it “is older than the Hellenes themselves,” for it belongs, in truth, to the dawn of human consciousness. The _crucified_ Titan is the personified symbol of the collective Logos, the “Host,” and of the “Lords of Wisdom” or the Heavenly Man, who incarnated in Humanity. Moreover, as his name (_Pro_‐me‐_theus_, “he who sees before him” or futurity) shows(973)—in the arts he devised and taught to humanity, psychological insight was not the least. For as he complains to the daughters of Oceanus:

Of prophecies the various modes I fixed, (492)
And among dreams did first discriminate
The truthful vision ... and mortals guided
To a mysterious art....
All arts to mortals from Prometheus came....

Leaving for a few pages the main subject, let us pause and see what may be the hidden meaning of this, the most ancient as it is the most suggestive of traditional allegories. As it relates directly to the early Races, this will be no real digression.

The subject of Æschylus’ trilogy, of which two plays are lost, is known to all cultured readers. The Demi‐god robs the Gods (the Elohim) of their secret—the mystery of the _Creative Fire_. For this sacrilegious attempt he is struck down by Cronus(974) and delivered unto Zeus, the Father and Creator of a mankind which he would have wished to have blind intellectually, and animal‐like; a _Personal_ Deity, which will not see Man “like one of us.” Hence Prometheus, the “Fire and Light‐giver,” is chained on Mount Caucasus and condemned to suffer torture. But the triform Fates (Karma), whose decrees, as the Titan says, even Zeus—

E’en he the fore‐ordained cannot escape....

—ordain that those sufferings will last only to that day when a son of Zeus—

Ay, a son bearing stronger than his sire (787)

One of thine [Io’s] own descendants it must be (791)

—is born. This “Son” will deliver Prometheus (suffering Humanity) from his own fatal gift. His name is, “He who has to come.”

On the authority, then, of these few lines, which, like any other allegorical sentence, may be twisted into almost any meaning—on the authority of the words pronounced by Prometheus and addressed to Io, the daughter of Inachus, persecuted by Zeus—a whole prophecy is constructed by some Catholic writers. Says the crucified Titan:

And, portent past belief, the speaking oaks
By which full clearly, in no riddling phrase,
Wast hailed _as the illustrious spouse of Zeus_ ... (853)
... stroking thee
With _touch alone of unalarming hand_;
Then thou _dark Epaphos_ shalt bear, whose name
Records his sacred gendering ... (870).

This was construed by several fanatics—Des Mousseaux and De Mirville amongst others—into a clear prophecy. Io “is the mother of God,” we are told, and “dark Epaphos”—Christ. But, the latter has not dethroned his Father, except metaphorically, if one has to regard Jehovah as that Father; nor has the Christian Saviour hurled _his_ Father down into Hades. Prometheus says (in verse 930) that Zeus will be humbled yet:

... such marriage he prepares
Which from his throne of power to nothingness
Shall hurl him down; so shall be all fulfilled
His father Kronos’ curse....
.... Then let him sit
Confiding in his lofty thunder‐peals,
And wielding with both hands the fiery bolt;
For _these shall not avail, but fall he shall,_
_A fall disgraceful_, not to be endured.... (980).

“Dark Epaphos” was the Dionysus‐Sabasius, the son of Zeus and of Demeter in the Sabasian Mysteries, during which the “Father of the Gods,” assuming the shape of a _Serpent_, begot on Demeter Dionysus, or the Solar Bacchus. Io is the Moon, and at the same time the Eve of a _new race_, and so is Demeter—in the present case. The Promethean myth is a prophecy indeed; but it does not relate to any of the cyclic Saviours who have appeared periodically in various countries and among various nations, in their transitionary conditions of evolution. It points to the last of the mysteries of cyclic transformations, in the series of which mankind, having passed from the ethereal to the solid physical state, from spiritual to physiological procreation, is now carried onward on the opposite arc of the cycle, toward that second phase of its primitive state, when _woman knew no man_, and human progeny _was created, not begotten_.

That state will return to it and to the world at large, when the latter shall discover and really appreciate the truths which underlie this vast problem of sex. It will be like “the light that never shone on sea or land,” and has to come to men through the Theosophical Society. That light will lead on and up to _true spiritual intuition_. Then, as expressed once in a letter to a Theosophist,

_The world will have a race of Buddhas and Christs, for the world
will have discovered that individuals have it in their own powers
to procreate Buddha‐like children—or Demons_.... When that
knowledge comes, all dogmatic religions, and with these the
Demons, will die out.

If we reflect upon the serial development of the allegory, and the character of the heroes, the mystery may be unriddled. Cronus is of course “Time” in its cyclic course. He swallows his children—the _personal_ Gods of exoteric dogmas included. Instead of Zeus he has swallowed his stone idol; but the symbol has grown, and has only developed in human fancy as mankind has been cycling down toward only its physical and intellectual—not spiritual—perfection. When it is as far advanced in its spiritual evolution Cronus will be no longer deceived. Instead of the stone image he will have swallowed the anthropomorphic fiction itself. Because, the Serpent of Wisdom, represented in the Sabasian Mysteries by the anthropomorphized Logos, the unity of spiritual and physical Powers, will have begotten in Time (Cronus) a progeny—Dionysus‐Bacchus, or the “dark Epaphos,” the “mighty one,” the Race that will overthrow him. Where will he be born? Prometheus traces him to his origin and birth‐place in his prophecy to Io. Io is the Moon‐goddess of generation—for she is Isis and she is Eve, the Great Mother.(975) He traces the path of the (racial) wanderings as plainly as words can express it. She has to quit Europe and go to Asia’s continent, reaching there the highest of the mountains of Caucasus (v. 737), the Titan telling her:

When thou hast crossed the flood, limit betwixt
Two continents, fronting the burning East.... (810)—

that she must travel Eastward, after passing the “Kimmerian Bosphorus,” and cross what is evidently the Volga and now Astrakhân on the Caspian Sea. After this she will encounter “fierce northern blasts” and cross thither to the land of the “Arimaspian host” (East of Herodotus’ Scythia) to—

Pluto’s gold‐abounding flood.... (825).

This is rightly conjectured by Professor Newman to have meant the Ural, the Arimaspi of Herodotus being “the recognized inhabitants of this golden region.”

And here comes (between verses 825 and 835) a puzzle to all the European interpreters. Says the Titan:

To these [Arimaspi and Grypes] approach not; a far border land
Thou next shalt reach, where dwells a swarthy race
Near the Sun’s founts, whence is the Æthiop river;
Along its banks proceed till thou attain
The mighty rapids, where from Bybline heights
Pure draughts of sacred water Neilos sends.

There Io was ordained to found a colony for herself and her sons. Now we must see how the passage is interpreted. Io is told that she has to travel Eastward till she comes to the river Ethiops, which she is to follow till it falls into the Nile—hence the perplexity. “According to the geographical theories of the earliest Greeks,” we are informed by the author of the version of “Prometheus Bound”:

This condition was fulfilled by the river Indus. Arrian (vi. 1)
mentions that Alexander the Great, when preparing to sail down the
Indus [having seen crocodiles in the river Indus, and in no other
river except the Nile ...], seemed to himself to have discovered
the sources of the Nile; as though the Nile, rising from some
place in India, and flowing through much desert land, and thereby
losing its name Indus, next ... flowed through inhabited land,
being now called Nile by the Ethiopians of those parts and
afterwards by the Egyptians. Virgil in the IVth Georgic echoes the
obsolete error.(976)

Both Alexander and Virgil may have erred considerably in their geographical notions; but the prophecy of Prometheus has not in the least so sinned—not, at any rate, in its Esoteric spirit. When a certain Race is symbolized, and events pertaining to its history are rendered allegorically, no topographical accuracy ought to be expected in the itinerary traced for its personification. Yet it so happens, that the river Ethiops is certainly the Indus, and it is also the Nîl or Nîlâ. It is the river born on the Kailâsa Heaven mountain, the Mansion of the Gods—22,000 feet above the level of the sea. It was the Ethiops river, and was so called by the Greeks, long before the days of Alexander, because its banks, from Attock down to Sind, were peopled by tribes generally referred to as the Eastern Ethiopians. India and Egypt were two kindred nations, and the Eastern Ethiopians—the mighty builders—have come from India, as is pretty well proved, it is hoped, in _Isis Unveiled_.(977)

Then why could not Alexander, and even the learned Virgil, have used the word Nile or Neilos when speaking of the Indus, since it is one of its names? To this day the Indus is called, in the regions around Kalabagh, Nîl, “blue,” and Nîlâ, the “blue river.” The water there is of such a dark blue colour that this name was given to it from time immemorial; a small town on its banks being called by the same name, and existing to this day. Evidently Arrian, who wrote far later than the days of Alexander, and who was ignorant of the old name of the Indus, has unconsciously slandered the Greek conqueror. Nor are our modern historians much wiser, in judging as they do, for they often make the most sweeping declarations on mere appearances, as much as their ancient colleagues ever did in days of old, when no Encyclopædias were yet ready for them.

The race of Io, the “cow‐horned maid,” is then simply the first pioneer race of the Æthiopians brought by her from the Indus to the Nile, which received its name in memory of the mother river of the colonists from India.(978) Therefore Prometheus says to Io(979) that the sacred Neilos—the God, not the river—shall guide her “to the land, _three‐ cornered_,” namely, to the Delta, where her sons are foreordained to found “that far‐off colony.” (833 _et seqq._)

It is there that a new race (the Egyptians) will begin, and a “female race” (873) which, “fifth in descent” from dark Epaphos—

Fifty in number shall return to Argos.

Then one of the fifty virgins will fail through love and shall—

... A kingly race in Argos bear....

But from this seed shall dauntless heroes spring,
Bow—famous, who shall free me from these ills.

When these heroes shall arise, the Titan does not reveal; for as he remarks:

This, to set forth at large needs lengthy speech.

But “Argos” is Arghyavarsha, the Land of Libations of the old Hierophants, whence the Deliverer of Humanity will appear, a name which became ages later that of its neighbour, India—the Aryâvarta of old.

That the subject formed part of the Sabasian Mysteries is made known by several ancient writers; among others by Cicero(980) and by Clemens Alexandrinus.(981) The latter writers are the only ones who attribute the fact of Æschylus being charged by the Athenians with sacrilege and condemned to be stoned to death to its true cause. They say that being himself uninitiated, Æschylus had profaned the Mysteries by exposing them in his Trilogies on a public stage.(982) But he would have incurred the same condemnation had he been initiated; which must have been the case, as otherwise he must, like Socrates, have had a Daimon to reveal to him the secret and sacred allegorical Drama of Initiation. At all events, it is not the “father of the Greek tragedy” who invented the prophecy of Prometheus; for he only repeated in dramatic form that which was revealed by the priests during the Mysteria of the Sabasia.(983) The latter was one of the oldest sacred festivals, whose origin is to this day unknown to history. Mythologists connect it through Mithras, the Sun, called Sabasius on some old monuments, with Jupiter and Bacchus. It was never, however, the property of the Greeks, but dates from days immemorial.

The translator of the drama wonders how Æschylus could become guilty of such

Discrepancy between the character of Zeus as portrayed in the
“Prometheus Bound” and that depicted in the remaining dramas.(984)

This is just because Æschylus, like Shakespeare, was and will ever remain the intellectual “Sphinx” of the ages. Between Zeus, the Abstract Deity of Grecian thought, and the Olympic Zeus, there was an abyss. The latter represented in the Mysteries no higher a principle than the lower aspect of human physical intelligence—Manas wedded to Kâma; whereas Prometheus—the divine aspect of Manas merging into and aspiring to Buddhi—was the divine Soul. Zeus, whenever shown as yielding to his lower passions, is the Human Soul and nothing more—the _jealous_ God, revengeful and cruel in its Egotism or “I‐am‐ness.” Hence, Zeus is represented as a Serpent—the intellectual tempter of man—which, nevertheless, begets in the course of cyclic evolution the “Man‐Saviour,” the Solar Bacchus or Dionysus—_more than a man_.

Dionysus is one with Osiris, with Krishna, and with Buddha, the heavenly Wise One, and with the coming (tenth) Avatâra, the glorified Spiritual Christos, who will deliver the suffering Chrestos—mankind, or Prometheus, on its trial. This, say Brâhmanical and Buddhistic legends, echoed by the Zoroastrian and now by the Christian teachings (the latter only occasionally), will happen at the end of the Kali Yuga. It is only after the appearance of Kalki Avatâra, or Sosiosh, that man will be born from woman without sin. Then will Brahmâ, the Hindû deity, Ahura Mazda (Ormazd), the Zoroastrian, Zeus, the Greco‐Olympian Don Juan, Jehovah, the jealous, repenting, cruel, tribal God of the Israelites, and all their likes in the universal Pantheon of human fancy—vanish and disappear in thin air. And along with these will vanish their shadows, the _dark aspects_ of all these Deities, ever represented as their “twin brothers” and creatures, in exoteric legend—their own _reflection_ on Earth, in Esoteric Philosophy. The Ahrimans and Typhons, the Samaels and Satans, must be all dethroned on that day, when every dark evil passion will be subdued.

There is one Eternal Law in Nature, one that always tends to adjust contraries, and to produce final harmony. It is owing to this Law of spiritual development superseding the physical and purely intellectual, that mankind will become freed from its false Gods, and find itself finally—Self‐redeemed.

In its final revelation, the old myth of Prometheus, of whom the proto‐ and anti‐types are found in every ancient Theogony, stands in each of them at the very origin of physical evil, because at the threshold of human physical life. Cronus is “Time,” whose first law is that the order of the successive and harmonious phases, in the process of evolution during cyclic development, should be strictly preserved—under the severe penalty of abnormal growth with all its ensuing results. It was not in the programme of natural development, that man—higher animal though he may be—should become at once, intellectually, spiritually, and psychically, the Demi‐god he is on Earth, while his physical frame remains weaker, more helpless and ephemeral, than that of almost any huge mammal. The contrast is too grotesque and violent; the tabernacle much too unworthy of its indwelling God. The gift of Prometheus thus became a Curse—though _foreknown_ and _foreseen_ by the Host personified in that personage, as his name well shows.(985) It is in this that rests, at one and the same time, its sin and its redemption. For the Host that incarnated in a portion of humanity, though led to it by Karma or Nemesis, preferred free‐ will to passive slavery, intellectual self‐conscious pain and even torture, “while myriad time shall flow,” to inane, imbecile, instinctual beatitude. Knowing such an incarnation was premature and not in the programme of Nature, the Heavenly Host, “Prometheus,” still sacrificed itself to benefit thereby, at least, one portion of mankind.(986) But while saving man from mental darkness, they inflicted upon him the tortures of the self‐consciousness of his responsibility—the result of his free will—besides every ill to which mortal man and flesh are heir. This torture Prometheus accepted for himself, since the Host became henceforward blended with the tabernacle prepared for them, which was still un‐achieved at that period of formation.

Spiritual evolution being incapable of keeping pace with the physical, once its homogeneity was broken by the admixture, the gift thus became the chief cause, if not the sole origin, of Evil.(987) Highly philosophical is the allegory which shows Cronus cursing Zeus for dethroning him, in the primitive Golden Age of Saturn, when all men were Demi‐gods, and for creating a physical race of men weak and helpless in comparison; and then as delivering to his (Zeus’) revenge the culprit, who despoiled the Gods of their prerogative of creation and who thereby raised man to their level, intellectually and spiritually. In the case of Prometheus, Zeus represents the Host of the Primeval Progenitors, of the Pitaras, the “Fathers” who created man senseless and without mind; while the Divine Titan stands for the Spiritual Creators, the Devas who “fell” into generation. The former are spiritually lower, but physically stronger, than the “Prometheans”; therefore, the latter are shown conquered. “The lower Host, whose work the Titan spoiled and thus defeated the plans of Zeus,” was on this Earth in its own sphere and plane of action; whereas the superior Host was an exile from Heaven, who had got entangled in the meshes of Matter. The inferior Host were masters of all the Cosmic and lower Titanic Forces; the higher Titan possessed only the Intellectual and Spiritual Fire. This drama of the struggle of Prometheus with the Olympic tyrant and despot, sensual Zeus, one sees enacted daily within our actual mankind; the lower passions chain the higher aspirations to the rock of Matter, to generate in many a case the vulture of sorrow, pain, and repentance. In every such case one sees once more—

A god ... in fetters, anguish fraught;
The foe of Zeus, in hatred held of all—

a God, bereft even of that supreme consolation of Prometheus, who suffered in self‐sacrifice—

For that to men he [I] bore too fond a mind—

as the divine Titan is moved by altruism, but the mortal man by selfishness and egoïsm in every instance.

The modern Prometheus has now become Epi‐metneus, “he who sees only after the event”; because the universal philanthropy of the former has long ago degenerated into selfishness and self‐adoration. Man will become the _free_ Titan of old, but not before cyclic evolution has reestablished the broken harmony between the two natures—the terrestrial and the divine; after which he becomes impermeable to the lower Titanic Forces, invulnerable in his Personality, and immortal in his Individuality—but this cannot happen before every animal element is eliminated from his nature. When man understands that “_Deus non __ fecit mortem_,”(988) but that man has created it himself, he will re‐become the Prometheus before his Fall.

For the full symbolism of Prometheus and the origin of this mythos in Greece, the reader is referred to Part II of this Volume, Section XX, “Prometheus, the Titan,” etc. In the said Part—a kind of supplement to the present portion—every additional information is given upon those tenets that will be the most controverted and questioned. This work is so heterodox, when confronted with the acknowledged standards of Theology and Modern Science, that no proof which tends to show that these standards often usurp an illegal authority should be neglected.

Additional Fragments From A Commentary On The Verses Of Stanza XII.

The MS. from which these additional explanations are taken belongs to the group called _Tongshaktchi Sangye Songa_, or the “Records of the Thirty‐ five Buddhas of Confession,” as they are _exoterically_ called. These personages, however, though called in the Northern Buddhist religion Buddhas, may just as well be called Rishis, Avatâras, etc., as they are “Buddhas who have preceded Shâkyamuni” only for the Northern followers of the ethics preached by Gautama. These great Mahâtmâs, or Buddhas, are a universal and common property; they are _historical_ Sages—at any rate for all the Occultists who believe in such a Hierarchy of Sages, and who have had its existence proved to them by the learned ones of the Fraternity. They are chosen from among some ninety‐seven Buddhas in one group, and fifty‐three in another,(989) mostly imaginary personages, who are really the personifications of the powers of the first‐named.(990) These “Baskets” of the oldest writings on “palm leaves” are kept very secret. Each MS. has appended to it a short synopsis of the history of that sub‐ race to which the particular Buddha‐Lha belonged. The one special MS. from which the fragments which follow have been extracted, and then rendered into more comprehensible language, is said to have been copied from stone tablets which belonged to a Buddha of the earliest days of the Fifth Race, who had witnessed the Deluge and the submersion of the chief continents of the Atlantean Race. The day when much, if not all, of that which is given here from the Archaic Records, will be found correct, is not far distant. Then the modern Symbologists will acquire the certitude that even Odin, or the God Woden, the highest God in the German and Scandinavian mythology, is one of these thirty‐five Buddhas; one of the earliest, indeed, for the Continent to which he and his Race belonged is also one of the earliest—so early, in truth, that in those days tropical nature was to be found, where now lie eternal unthawing snows, and one could cross almost by dry land from Norway _viâ_ Iceland and Greenland, to the lands that at present surround Hudson’s Bay.(991) In similar fashion, in the palmy days of the Atlantean Giants, the sons of the “Giants from the East,” a pilgrim could perform a journey from what in our days is termed the Sahara Desert, to the lands which now rest in dreamless sleep at the bottom of the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. Events which were never written outside the human memory, but which were religiously transmitted from one generation to another, and from race to race, may have been preserved by constant transmission “within the book volume of the brain,” and through countless æons, with more truth and accuracy than inside any written document or record. “That which is part of our souls is eternal,” says Thackeray; and what can be nearer to our Souls than that which happens at the dawn of our lives? Those lives are countless, but the Soul or Spirit that animates us throughout these myriads of existences is the same; and though “the book volume” of the _physical brain_ may forget events within the scope of one terrestrial life, the bulk of collective recollections can never desert the Divine Soul within us. Its whispers may be too soft, the sound of its words too far off the plane perceived by our physical senses; yet the shadow of events _that were_, just as much as the shadow of the events _that are to come_, is within its perceptive powers, and is ever present before its mind’s eye.

It is this Soul‐voice, perhaps, which tells those who believe in tradition more than in written history, that what is said below is all true, and relates to pre‐historic facts.

This is what is written in one passage:

_The Kings of Light have departed in wrath. The sins of men have become so black that Earth quivers in her great agony.... The Azure Seats remain empty. Who of the Brown, who of the Red, or yet among the Black [Races], can sit in the Seats of the Blessed, the Seats of Knowledge and Mercy? Who can assume the Flower of Power, the Plant of the Golden Stem and the Azure Blossom?_

The “Kings of Light” is the name given in all old records to the Sovereigns of the Divine Dynasties. The “Azure Seats” are translated “Celestial Thrones” in certain documents. The “Flower of Power” is now the Lotus; what it may have been at that period, who can tell?

The writer proceeds, like the later Jeremiah, to bewail the fate of his people. They had become bereft of their “Azure” (Celestial) Kings, and “they of the deva‐hue,” the moon‐like complexion, and “they of the refulgent (golden) face” have gone “to the Land of Bliss, the Land of Fire and Metal”—or, agreeably with the rules of symbolism, to the lands lying North and East, from whence “the Great Waters have been swept away, sucked in by the Earth and dissipated in the Air.” The wise races had perceived “the black Storm‐dragons, called down by the Dragons of Wisdom”—and “had fled, led on by the shining Protectors of the most Excellent Land”—the great ancient Adepts, presumably; those the Hindûs refer to as their Manus and Rishis. One of them was Vaivasvata Manu.

They “of the yellow hue” are the forefathers of those whom Ethnology now classes as the Turanians, the Mongols, Chinese and other ancient nations; and the land they fled to was no other than Central Asia. There, entirely new races were born; there, they lived and died until the separation of the nations. But this “separation” did not take place either in the localities assigned for it by Modern Science, nor in the way the Âryans are shown to have divided and separated by Prof. Max Müller and other Âryanists. Nearly two‐thirds of one million years have elapsed since that period. The yellow‐faced giants of the Post‐Atlantean day had ample time, through this forced confinement to one part of the world, with the same racial blood and without any fresh infusion or admixture in it, during a period of nearly 700,000 years, to branch off into the most heterogeneous and diversified types. The same is shown in Africa; nowhere does a more extraordinary variability of types exist, from black to almost white, from gigantic men to dwarfish races; and this only because of their forced isolation. The Africans have not left their continent for several hundred thousands of years. If to‐morrow the continent of Europe were to disappear and other lands to reëmerge instead, and if the African tribes were to separate and scatter on the face of the Earth, it is they who, in about a hundred thousand years hence, would form the bulk of the civilized nations. And it is the descendants of those of our highly cultured nations, who might have survived on some one island, without any means of crossing the new seas, that would fall back into a state of relative savagery. Thus the reason given for dividing humanity into _superior_ and _inferior_ races falls to the ground and becomes a fallacy.

Such are the facts given in the Archaic Records. Collating and comparing them with some modern theories of evolution, _minus_ Natural Selection,(992) these statements appear quite reasonable and logical. Thus, while the Âryans are the descendants of the _yellow_ Adam, the gigantic and highly civilized Atlanto‐Âryan race, the Semites—and the Jews along with them—are those of the _red_ Adam, and thus both De Quatrefages and the writers of the Mosaic _Genesis_ are right. For, could chapter v of the First Book of Moses be compared with the genealogies found in our Archaic Bible, the period from Adam unto Noah would be found noticed therein, though of course under different names, the respective years of the Patriarchs being turned into periods, and the whole being symbolical and allegorical. In the MS. under consideration many and frequent are the references to the great knowledge and civilization of the Atlantean nations, showing the polity of several of them and the nature of their arts and sciences. If the Third Root‐Race, the Lemuro‐Atlanteans, are already spoken of as having been drowned “with their high civilizations and Gods,”(993) how much more may the same be said of the Atlanteans!

It is from the Fourth Race that the early Âryans got their knowledge of “the bundle of wonderful things,” the Sabhâ and Mâyâsabhâ, mentioned in the _Mahâbhârata_, the gift of Mâyâsura to the Pândavas. It is from them that they learnt æronautics, Vimâna Vidyâ, the “knowledge of flying in air‐vehicles,” and, therefore, their great arts of Meteorography and Meteorology. It is from them, again, that the Âryans inherited their most valuable Science of the hidden virtues of precious and other stones, of Chemistry, or rather Alchemy, of Mineralogy, Geology, Physics and Astronomy.

Several times the writer has put to herself the question: Is the story of _Exodus_—in its details at least—as narrated in the _Old Testament_, original? Or is it, like the story of Moses himself and many others, simply another version of the legends told of the Atlanteans? For who, upon hearing the story told of the latter, will fail to perceive the great similarity of the fundamental features? Remember the anger of “God” at the obduracy of Pharaoh, his command to the “chosen” ones to spoil the Egyptians, before departing, of their “jewels of silver and jewels of gold,”(994) and finally the Egyptians and their Pharaoh drowned in the Red Sea. Then read the following fragment of the earlier story from the Commentary:

_And the __“__Great King of the Dazzling Face__”__ the chief of all the Yellow‐faced, was sad, seeing the sins of the Black‐faced._

_He sent his air‐vehicles [Vimânas] to all his brother‐chiefs [chiefs of other nations and tribes] with pious men within, saying:_

“_Prepare. Arise, ye men of the Good Law, and cross the land while [yet] dry._

“_The Lords of the storm are approaching. Their chariots are nearing the land. One night and two days only shall the Lords of the Dark Face [the Sorcerers] live on this patient land. She is doomed, and they have to descend with her. The nether Lords of the Fires [the Gnomes and Fire Elementals] are preparing their magic Agnyastra [fire‐weapons worked by Magic]. But the Lords of the Dark Eye [__‘__Evil Eye__’__] are stronger than they [the Elementals] and they are the slaves of the mighty ones. They are versed in Astra [Vidyâ, the highest magical knowledge]._(_995_)_ Come and use yours_ [i.e., _your magic powers, in order to counteract those of the Sorcerers]. Let every Lord of the Dazzling Face [an Adept of the White Magic] cause the Vimâna of every Lord of the Dark Face to come into his hands [or possession], lest any [of the Sorcerers] should by its means escape from the waters, avoid the Rod of the Four [Karmic Deities], and save his wicked [followers, or people]._

“_May every Yellow Face send sleep from himself to [mesmerize?] every Black Face. May even they [the Sorcerers] avoid pain and suffering. May __ every man true to the Solar Gods bind [paralyze] every man under the Lunar Gods, lest he should suffer or escape his destiny._

“_And may every Yellow Face offer of his life‐water [blood] to the speaking animal of a Black Face, lest he awaken his master._(996)

“_The hour has struck, the black night is ready._

“_Let their destiny be accomplished. We are the servants of the Great Four._(_997_)_ May the Kings of Light return._”

_The great King fell upon his Dazzling Face and wept...._

_When the Kings assembled, the waters had already moved...._

_[But] the nations had now crossed the dry lands. They were beyond the water‐mark. Their Kings reached them in their Vimânas, and led them on to the lands of Fire and Metal [East and North]._

Still, in another passage, it is said:

_Stars [meteors] showered on the lands of the Black Faces; but they slept._

_The speaking beasts [the magic watchers] kept quiet._

_The nether Lords waited for orders, but they came not, for their masters slept._

_The waters arose, and covered the valleys from one end of the Earth to the other. High lands remained, the bottom of the Earth [the lands of the antipodes] remained dry. There dwelt those who escaped; the men of the Yellow Faces and of the straight eye [the frank and sincere people]._

_When the Lords of the Dark Faces awoke and bethought themselves of their Vimânas in order to escape from the rising waters, they found them gone._

Then a passage shows some of the more powerful Magicians of the “Dark Faces,” who awoke earlier than the others, pursuing those who had “spoilt them” and who were in the rear‐guard, for—“the nations that were led away were as thick as the stars of the milky way,” says a more modern Commentary, written in Sanskrit only.

_Like as a dragon‐snake uncoils slowly its body, so the Sons of Men, led on by the Sons of Wisdom, opened their folds, and spreading out, expanded like a running stream of sweet waters ... many of the faint‐hearted among them perished on their way. But most were saved._

Yet the pursuers, “whose heads and chests soared high above the water,” chased them “for three lunar terms” until finally reached by the rising waves, they perished to the last man, the soil sinking under their feet and the Earth engulfing those who had desecrated her.

This sounds a good deal like the original material upon which the similar story in _Exodus_ was built many hundred thousands of years later. The biography of Moses, the story of his birth, childhood and rescue from the Nile by Pharaoh’s daughter, is now shown to have been adapted from the Chaldæan narrative about Sargon. And if so, the Assyrian tiles in the British Museum being a good proof of it, why not that of the Jews robbing the Egyptians of their jewels, the death of Pharaoh and his army, and so on? The gigantic Magicians of Ruta and Daitya, the “Lords of the Dark Face,” may, in the later narrative, have become the Egyptian Magi, and the yellow‐faced nations of the Fifth Race, the virtuous sons of Jacob, the “chosen people”! One more statement has to be made. There have been several Divine Dynasties—a series for every Root‐Race beginning with the Third, each series according and adapted to its Humanity. The last seven Dynasties referred to in the Egyptian and Chaldæan records belonged to the Fifth Race, which, though generally called Âryan, was not entirely so, as it was ever largely mixed up with races to which Ethnology gives other names. It would be impossible, in view of the limited space at our disposal, to go any further into the description of the Atlanteans, in whom the whole East believes as much as we believe in the ancient Egyptians, but whose existence the majority of the Western Scientists deny, as they have denied, before this, many a truth, from the existence of Homer down to that of the carrier pigeon. The civilization of the Atlanteans was greater than even that of the Egyptians. It is their degenerate descendants, the nation of Plato’s Atlantis, who built the first Pyramids in the country, and that certainty before the advent of the “Eastern Æthiopians,” as Herodotus calls the Egyptians. This may be well inferred from the statement made by Ammianus Marcellinus, who says of the Pyramids that:

There are also subterranean passages and winding retreats, which,
it is said, men skilful in the ancient mysteries, by means of
which they divined the coming of a flood, constructed in different
places lest the memory of all their sacred ceremonies should be
lost.

These men who “divined the coming of floods” were not Egyptians, who never had any, except the periodical rising of the Nile. Who were they? The last remnants of the Atlanteans, we maintain; those races which are dimly suspected by Science, and thinking of which Mr. Charles Gould, the well‐ known Geologist, says:

Can we suppose that we have at all exhausted the great museum of
nature? Have we, in fact, penetrated yet beyond its antechambers?
Does the written history of man, comprising a few thousand years,
embrace the whole course of his intelligent existence? or have we
in the long mythical eras, extending over hundreds of thousands of
years, and recorded in the chronologies of Chaldæa and of China,
shadowy mementoes of pre‐historic man, handed down by tradition,
and perhaps transported by a few survivors to existing lands from
others, which, like the fabled (?) Atlantis of Plato, may have
been submerged, or the scene of some great catastrophe which
destroyed them with all their civilization.(998)

After this one can turn with more confidence to the words of a Master who wrote, several years before these words were penned by Mr. Gould:

_The Fourth Race had its periods of the highest civilization. Greek and Roman and even Egyptian civilizations are nothing compared to the civilizations that began with the Third Race [—after its separation]._

But if this civilization and the mastery of arts and sciences are denied to the Third and Fourth Races, no one will deny that between the great civilizations of antiquity, such as those of Egypt and India, there stretched the dark ages of crass ignorance and barbarism ever since the beginning of the Christian era up to our modern civilization, during which period all recollection of these traditions was lost. As said in _Isis Unveiled_: