Chapter XXI: Part I: Anthropogenesis (19)

Why should we forget that, ages before the prows of the
adventurous Genoese clove the Western waters, the Phœnician
vessels had circumnavigated the Globe, and spread civilization in
regions now silent and deserted? What Archæologist will dare
assert that the same hand which planned the Pyramids of Egypt,
Karnak, and the thousand ruins now crumbling to oblivion on the
sandy banks of the Nile, did _not_ erect the monumental Nagkon‐Wat
of Cambodia; or trace the hieroglyphics on the obelisks and doors
of the deserted Indian village, newly discovered in British
Columbia by Lord Dufferin; or those on the ruins of Palenque and
Uxmal, of Central America? Do not the relics we treasure in our
museums—last mementoes of the long “lost arts”—speak loudly in
favour of ancient civilization? And do they not prove, over and
over again, that nations and continents that have passed away have
buried along with them arts and sciences, which neither the first
crucible ever heated in a mediæval cloister, nor the last cracked
by a modern chemist, have revived, nor will—at least, in the
present century.

And the same question may be put now that was put then; it may be once more asked:

How does it happen that the most advanced standpoint that has been
reached in our times, only enables us to see in the dim distance
up the Alpine path of knowledge the monumental proofs that earlier
explorers have left to mark the plateaux they had reached and
occupied?

If modern masters are so much in advance of the old ones, why do
they not restore to us the lost arts of our postdiluvian
forefathers? Why do they not give us the unfading colours of
Luxor—the Tyrian purple, the bright vermilion, and dazzling blue
which decorate the walls of this place, and are as bright as on
the first day of their application; the indestructible cement of
the pyramids and of ancient aqueducts; the Damascus blade, which
can be turned like a corkscrew in its scabbard without breaking;
the gorgeous, unparalleled tints of the stained glass that is
found amid the dust of old ruins and beams in the windows of
ancient cathedrals; and the secret of the true malleable glass?
And if Chemistry is so little able to rival even the early
mediæval ages in some arts, why boast of achievements which,
according to strong probability, were perfectly known thousands of
years ago. The more Archæology and Philology advance, the more
humiliating to our pride are the discoveries which are daily made,
the more glorious testimony do they bear in behalf of those who,
perhaps on account of the distance of their remote antiquity, have
been until now considered ignorant flounderers in the deepest mire
of superstition.

Among other Arts and Sciences, the Ancients—ay, as an heirloom from the Atlanteans—had those of Astronomy and Symbolism, which included the knowledge of the Zodiac.

As already explained, the whole of Antiquity believed, with good reason, that humanity and its races are all intimately connected with the Planets, and these with the Zodiacal Signs. The whole world’s history is recorded in the latter. In the ancient temples of Egypt there is an example in the Dendera Zodiac; but except in an Arabic work, the property of a Sûfî, the writer has never met with a correct copy of these marvellous records of the past—and also of the _future_—history of our Globe. Yet the original records exist, most undeniably.

As Europeans are unacquainted with the real Zodiacs of India, and those they do happen to know of they fail to understand, as witness Bentley, the reader is advised, in order to verify the statement, to turn to the work of Denon(999) in which the two famous Egyptian Zodiacs can be found and examined. Having seen them personally, the writer has no longer need to trust to what other students—who have examined and studied both very carefully—have to say of them. The assertion of the Egyptian Priests to Herodotus, that the terrestrial Pole and the Pole of the Ecliptic had formerly coincided, has been corroborated by Mackey, who states that the Poles are represented on the Zodiacs in both positions.

And in that which shows the Poles [polar axes] at right angles,
there are marks which show, that it was not the last time they
were in that position; _but the first_ [—after the Zodiacs had
been traced]. Capricorn, is, therein, represented at the North
Pole; and Cancer is divided, near its middle, at the South Pole;
which is a confirmation that, originally they had their winter
when the Sun was in Cancer. But the chief characteristics of its
being a monument commemorating the _first time_ that the Pole had
been in that position, are the Lion and the Virgin.(1000)

Broadly calculated, it is believed by Egyptologists that the Great Pyramid was built 3,350 B.C.;(1001) and that Menes and his Dynasty existed 750 years before the appearance of the Fourth Dynasty—during which the Pyramids are _supposed_ to have been built. Thus 4,100 years B.C. is the age assigned to Menes. Now Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson’s declaration that all the facts lead to the conclusion that the Egyptians had already—

Made very great progress in the arts of civilization _before the
age of Menes, and perhaps before they immigrated into the valley
of the Nile_—(1002)

is very suggestive, as destroying this hypothesis of the comparatively modern civilizing of Egypt. It points to a great civilization in _pre‐ historic_ times, and a still greater antiquity. The Schesoo‐Hor, the “servants of Horus,” were the people who had settled in Egypt; and, as M. Maspéro affirms, it is to this “pre‐historic race” that—

Belongs the honour of having constituted Egypt, such as we know
it, from the commencement of the historic period.

And Staniland Wake adds:

They founded the principal cities of Egypt, and established the
most important sanctuaries.(1003)

This was _before_ the Great Pyramid epoch, and when Egypt had hardly arisen from the waters. Yet:

They possessed the hieroglyphic form of writing special to the
Egyptians, and must have been already considerably advanced in
civilization.

As says Lenormant:

It was the country of the great pre‐historic sanctuaries, seats of
the sacerdotal dominion, which played the most important part in
the origin of civilization.

What is the date assigned to this people? We hear of 4,000, at the utmost of 5,000, years B.C. (Maspéro). Now it is claimed that it is by means of the Cycle of 25,868 years (the Sidereal Year) that the approximate year of the erection of the Great Pyramid can be ascertained.

Assuming that the long narrow downward passage leading from the
entrance was directed towards the pole‐star of the pyramid
builders, astronomers have shown that in the year 2,170 B.C. the
passage pointed to Alpha Draconis, the then pole‐star.... Mr.
Richard A. Proctor, the astronomer, after stating that the pole‐
star was in the required position about 3,350 B.C., as well as in
2,170 B.C., says: “either of these would correspond with the
position of the descending passage in the Great Pyramid; but
Egyptologists tell us there can absolutely be no doubt that the
later epoch is far too late.”(1004)

But we are also told that:

This relative position of Alpha Draconis and Alcyone being an
extraordinary one ... it could not occur again for a whole
Sidereal Year.(1005)

This demonstrates that, since the Dendera Zodiac shows the passage of three Sidereal Years, the Great Pyramid must have been built 78,000 years ago, or in any case that this possibility deserves to be accepted at least as readily as the later date of 3,350 B.C.

Now on the Zodiac of a certain temple in far Northern India, the same characteristics of the signs as on the Dendera Zodiac are found. Those who know the Hindû symbols and constellations well, will be able to find out from the description of the Egyptian, whether the indications of time are correct or not. On the Dendera Zodiac, as preserved by the modern Egyptian Coptic and Greek Adepts, and explained a little differently by Mackey, the Dion stands upon the Hydra and his tail is almost straight, pointing downwards at an angle of forty or fifty degrees, this position agreeing with the _original_ conformation of these constellations. But adds Mackey:

In many places we see the Lion [Sinha], with his tail turned up
over his back, and ending with a Serpent’s head; thereby, shewing
that the Lion had been _inverted_: which, indeed, must have been
the case with the whole Zodiac, and every other Constellation,
when the Pole had been inverted.

Speaking of the _circular_ Zodiac, which is also given by Denon, he says:

There ... the Lion is standing _on_ the Serpent, and his tail
forming a curve downward, from which we find that, _though six or
seven hundred thousand years_ must have passed between the two
positions, yet they had made but little or no difference in the
Constellations of Leo and the Hydra; while Virgo is represented
very differently in the two—in the circular Zodiac, the Virgin is
_nursing her child_: but it seems that they had not had that idea
when the Pole was first within the plane of the Ecliptic; for in
_this_ Zodiac, as given by Denon, we see three Virgins between the
Lion and the Scales, the last of which holds, in her hand, an ear
of wheat. It is much to be lamented that, there is in this Zodiac
a breach of the figures in the latter part of Leo and the
beginning of Virgo, which has taken away one _Decan_ out of each
sign.(1006)

Nevertheless, the meaning is plain, as the three Zodiacs belong to three different epochs; namely, to the last three family races of the fourth sub‐race of the Fifth Root‐Race, each of which must have lived approximately from 25,000 to 30,000 years. The first of these, the “Âryan‐ Asiatics,” witnessed the doom of the last of the populations of the Giant Atlanteans(1007) (the Ruta and Daitya Island‐Continents) who perished some 850,000 years ago, toward the close of the Miocene Age.(1008) The fourth sub‐race witnessed the destruction of the last remnant of the Atlanteans—the Âryo‐Atlanteans in the last island of Atlantis, namely, some 11,000 years ago. In order to understand this, the reader is asked to glance at the diagram of the Genealogical Tree of the Fifth Root‐ Race—generally, though hardly correctly, called the Âryan Race—and the explanations appended to it.

Let the reader remember well that which is said of the divisions of Root‐ Races and the evolution of Humanity in this work, and stated clearly and concisely in Mr. Sinnett’s _Esoteric Buddhism_.

1. There are seven Rounds in every Manvantara; this Round is the Fourth, and we are in the Fifth Root‐Race, at present.

2. Each Root‐Race has seven sub‐races.

3. Each sub‐race has, in its turn, seven ramifications, which may be called “branch” or “family” races.

4. The little tribes, shoots, and offshoots of the last‐named are countless, and depend on Karmic action.

Examine the Genealogical Tree hereto appended, and you will understand. The illustration is purely diagrammatic, and is only intended to assist the reader in obtaining a slight grasp of the subject, amidst the confusion which exists between the terms which have been used at different times for the divisions of Humanity. It is also here attempted to express in figures—but only within approximate limits, for the sake of comparison—the duration of time through which it is possible to definitely distinguish one division from another. It would only lead to hopeless confusion if any attempt were made to give accurate dates to a few; for the Races, sub‐races, etc., down to their smallest ramifications, overlap and are entangled with each other until it is nearly impossible to separate them.

The Human Race has been compared to a tree, and this serves admirably as an illustration.

The main stem of a tree may be compared to the Root‐Race (A).

Its larger limbs to the various sub‐races; seven in number (B1, B2, etc.).

On each of these limbs are seven “branches,” or “family” races (C).

After this the cactus‐plant is a better illustration, for its fleshy “leaves” are covered with sharp spines, each of which may be compared to a nation or tribe of human beings.

Now our Fifth Root‐Race has already been in existence—as a Race _sui generis_ and quite free from its parent stem—about 1,000,000 years; therefore it must be inferred that each of the four preceding sub‐races has lived approximately 210,000 years; thus each family race has an average existence of about 30,000 years, and thus the European “family race” has still a good many thousand years to run, although the nations or the innumerable spines upon it, vary with each succeeding “season” of three or four thousand years. It is somewhat curious to mark the comparative approximation of duration between the lives of a “family race” and a Sidereal Year.

The knowledge of the foregoing, and the absolutely correct divisions of time, formed part and parcel of the Mysteries, where these Sciences were taught to the Disciples, and where they were transmitted by one Hierophant to another. Everyone is aware that the European Astronomers assign—arbitrarily enough—the date of the invention of the Egyptian Zodiac to the years 2,000 or 2,400 B.C. (Proctor); and insist that the date of this invention coincides with that of the erection of the Great Pyramid. This, to an Occultist and Eastern Astronomer, must appear quite absurd. The Cycle of the Kali Yuga is said to have begun between the 17th and 18th of February in the year 3,102 B.C. Now the Hindûs claim that in the year 20,400 before Kali Yugam, the origin of their Zodiac coincided with the Spring Equinox—there being at the time a conjunction of the Sun and Moon—and Bailly proved by a lengthy and careful computation of that date, that, even if fictitious, the epoch from which they had started to establish the beginning of their Kali Yuga was _very real_. That “epoch is the year 3,102 before our era,” he writes.(1009) The lunar eclipse arriving just a fortnight after the beginning of the Black Age—it took place in a point situated between the Wheat Ear of Virgo and the star Θ of the same constellation. One of their most esoteric Cycles is based upon certain conjunctions and respective positions of Virgo and the Pleiades (Krittika). Hence, as the Egyptians brought their Zodiac from Southern India and Lankâ,(1010) the esoteric meaning was evidently identical. The “three Virgins,” or Virgo in three different positions, meant, with both, the record of the first three “Divine or Astronomical Dynasties,” who taught the Third Root‐Race; and after having abandoned the Atlanteans to their doom, returned, or redescended rather, during the third sub‐race of the Fifth, in order to reveal to saved humanity the mysteries of their birth‐place—the Sidereal Heavens. The same symbolical record of the human Races and the three Dynasties (Gods, Manes—Semi‐divine Astrals of the Third and Fourth—and the Heroes of the Fifth Race) which preceded the purely human kings, was found in the distribution of the tiers and passages of the Egyptian Labyrinth. As the three inversions of the Poles of course changed the face of the Zodiac, a new one had to be constructed each time. In Mackey’s _Sphinxiad_ the speculations of the bold author must have horrified the orthodox portion of the population of Norwich, for he says, fantastically enough:

But, after all, the greatest length of time recorded by those
monuments [the Labyrinth, the Pyramids and the Zodiacs] _does not
exceed five millions of years_:(1011) which falls short of the
records given us both by the [esoteric] Chinese and Hindoos: which
latter nation has registered a knowledge of time for seven or
eight millions of years:(1012) which I have seen upon a talisman
of porcelain.(1013)

The Egyptian priests had the Zodiacs of the Atlantean Asura Maya, as the modern Hindûs still have. As stated in _Esoteric Buddhism_, the Egyptians, as well as the Greeks and “Romans” some thousand years ago, were “remnants of the Atlanto‐Âryans”—the former, of the older, or the Ruta Atlanteans; the last‐named, the descendants of the last race of that island, whose sudden disappearance was narrated to Solon by the Egyptian Initiates. The _human_ Dynasty of the older Egyptians, beginning with Menes, had all the _knowledge_ of the Atlanteans, though there was no longer Atlantean blood in their veins. Nevertheless, they had preserved all their Archaic Records. All this has been shown long ago.(1014) And it is just because the Egyptian Zodiac is between 75,000 and 80,000 years old that the Zodiac of the Greeks is far later. Volney has correctly pointed out that it is only 16,984 years old, or up to the present date 17,082.(1015)

Conclusion.

Space forbids us to say anything more, and this part of _The Secret Doctrine_ has to be closed. The forty‐nine Stanzas and the few fragments from the Commentaries which have been given are all that can be published in these Volumes. These, with some still older Records—to which none but the highest Initiates have access—and a whole library of comments, glossaries, and explanations, form the synopsis of Man’s Genesis.

It is from these Commentaries that we have hitherto quoted and tried to explain the hidden meaning of some of the allegories, thus showing the true views of Esoteric Antiquity upon Geology, Anthropology, and even Ethnology. In the Part which follows we will endeavour to establish a still closer metaphysical connection between the earliest Races and their Creators, the _Divine_ Men from other Worlds; accompanying the statements proffered with the most important demonstrations of the same in Esoteric Astronomy and Symbolism.

The duration of the “periods” that separate, in space and time, the Fourth from the Fifth Race—in the historical(1016) or even the legendary beginnings of the latter—is too tremendous for us to offer, even to a Theosophist, any more detailed accounts of them. During the course of the Post‐diluvian Ages, which were marked at certain periodical epochs by the most terrible cataclysms, too many races and nations were born, and disappeared almost without leaving a trace, for anyone to offer any description of the slightest value concerning them. Whether the Masters of Wisdom have a full and consecutive history of our Race from its incipient stage down to the present times; whether they possess the uninterrupted record of man since he developed into a complete physical being, and became thereby the king of the animals and master on this Earth—is not for the writer to say. Most probably they have, and such is our own personal conviction. But if so, this knowledge is only for the highest Initiates, who do not take their students into their confidence. The writer can, therefore, give but what she has herself been taught, and no more, and even this will appear to the profane reader rather as a weird, fantastic dream, than as a possible reality.

This is only natural and as it should be, since for years such was the impression made upon the humble writer of these pages herself. Born and bred in European, matter‐of‐fact and presumably civilized, countries, she assimilated the foregoing with the utmost difficulty. But there are proofs of a certain character which become irrefutable and are undeniable in the long run, to every earnest and unprejudiced mind. For a series of years such were offered to her, and now she has the full certitude that our present Globe and its human Races must have been born, grown and developed in this, and in no other way.

But this is the personal view of the writer; and her orthodoxy cannot be expected to have any more weight than any other “doxy,” in the eyes of those to whom every fresh theory is heterodox until otherwise proved. Therefore are we Occultists fully prepared for such questions as these: How do we know that the writer has not invented the whole scheme? And supposing _she_ has not, how can one tell that the whole of the foregoing, as given in the Stanzas, is not the product of the imagination of the ancients? How could they have preserved the records of such an immense, such an incredible antiquity?

The answer that the history of this world since its formation and to its end is “written in the stars,” _i.e._, is recorded in the Zodiac and Universal Symbolism, whose keys are in the keeping of the Initiates, will hardly satisfy the doubters. The antiquity of the Zodiac in Egypt is much doubted, and it is denied point‐blank with regard to India. “Your conclusions are often excellent, but your premises are always doubtful,” the writer was once told by a profane friend. To this, the answer came that it was at least one point gained on scientific syllogisms, for, with the exception of a few problems from the domain of purely Physical Science, both the premises and conclusions of men of Science are as hypothetical as they are almost invariably erroneous. And if they do not so appear to the profane, the reason is simply this: the said profane are very little aware, taking as they do their scientific data on faith, that both premises and conclusions are generally the product of the same brains, which, however learned, are not infallible—a truism demonstrated daily by the shifting and re‐shifting of scientific theories and speculations.

However it may be, the records of the temples, zodiacal and traditional, as well as the ideographic records of the East, as read by the Adepts of the Sacred Science or Vidyâ, are not a whit more doubtful than the so‐ called ancient history of the European nations, now edited, corrected, and amplified by half a century of archæological discoveries, and the very problematical readings of the Assyrian tiles, cuneiform fragments, and Egyptian hieroglyphics. Our data also are based upon the same “readings”—in addition to an almost inexhaustible number of secret works of which Europe knows nothing—_plus_ the perfect knowledge by the Initiates of the symbolism of every word so recorded. Some of these records belong to an immense antiquity. Every Archæologist and Palæontologist is acquainted with the ideographic productions of certain semi‐savage tribes, who from time immemorial have aimed at rendering their thoughts symbolically. This is the earliest mode of recording events and ideas. And how old this knowledge is in the human race may be inferred from some signs, evidently ideographic, found on hatchets of the Palæolithic period. The Red Indian tribes of America, only a few years ago, comparatively speaking, petitioned the President of the United States to grant them possession of four small lakes, the petition being written on the tiny surface of a piece of fabric, which was covered with barely a dozen representations of animals and birds. The American savages have a number of such different kinds of writing, but not one of our Scientists is yet familiar with, or even knows of, the early hieroglyphic cypher, still preserved in some Fraternities, and named in Occultism the Senzar. Moreover, all those who have decided to regard such modes of writing—_e.g._, the ideographs of the Red Indians, and even the Chinese characters—as “attempts of the early races of mankind to express their untutored thoughts,” will decidedly object to our statement, that writing was invented by the Atlanteans, and not at all by the Phœnicians. Indeed, such a claim as that writing was known to mankind many hundreds of millenniums ago, in the face of the Philologists who have decreed that writing was unknown in the days of Pânini, in India, as also to the Greeks in the time of Homer, will be met by general disapprobation, if not with silent scorn. All denial and ridicule notwithstanding, the Occultists will maintain the claim, and simply for this reason: from Bacon down to our modern Royal Society, we have too long a period full of the most ludicrous mistakes made by Science, to warrant our believing in modern scientific assumptions rather than in the statements of our Teachers. Writing, our Scientists say, was unknown to Pânini; and this Sage nevertheless composed a grammar which contains 3,996 rules, and is the most perfect of all the grammars that were ever made! Pânini is made out to have lived barely a few centuries B.C., by the most liberal; and the rocks in Iran and Central Asia—whence the Philologists and Historians show us the ancestors of the same Pânini, the Brâhmans, coming into India—are _covered with writing_, two and three thousand years old, at least, and twelve thousand, according to some fearless Palæontologists.

Writing was an _ars incognita_ in the days of Hesiod and Homer, agreeably to Grote, and was unknown to the Greeks so late as 770 B.C.; and the Phœnicians who had _invented_ it, and knew writing as far back as 1,500 B.C. at the earliest,(1017) were living among the Greeks, and elbowing them, all the time! All these scientific and contradictory conclusions disappeared, however, into thin air, when Schliemann discovered (_a_) the site of ancient Troy, whose actual existence had been so long regarded as a fable, and (_b_) excavated from that site earthenware vessels with inscriptions _in characters unknown_ to Palæontologists and the all‐ denying Sanskritists. Who will now deny Troy, or these archaic inscriptions? As Professor Virchow witnesses:

I was myself an eye‐witness of two such discoveries, and helped to
gather the articles together. The slanderers have long since been
silenced, who were not ashamed to charge the discoverer with an
imposture.(1018)

Nor were truthful women spared any more than truthful men. Du Chaillu, Gordon Cumming, Madame Merian,(1019) Bruce, and a host of others were charged with lying.

Says the author of _Mythical Monsters_, who gives this information in the Introduction:(1020)

Madame Merian was accused of deliberate falsehood in reference to
her description of a bird‐eating spider nearly two hundred years
ago. But now‐a‐days ... reliable observers have confirmed it in
regard to South America, India, and elsewhere.

Audubon was similarly accused by botanists of having invented the
yellow water‐lily, which he figured in his _Birds of the South_
under the name of Nymphæa lutea, and after having lain under the
imputation for years, was confirmed at last by the discovery of
the long‐lost flower in Florida ... in ... 1876.(1021)

And, as Audubon was called a liar for this, and for his Haliætus Washingtonii,(1022) so Victor Hugo was ridiculed for his marvellous word‐ painting of the devil‐fish, and his description of a man becoming its helpless victim.

The thing was derided as a monstrous impossibility; yet within a
few years were discovered, on the shores of Newfoundland, cuttle‐
fishes with arms extending to thirty feet in length, and capable
of dragging a good‐sized boat beneath the surface; and their
action has been reproduced _for centuries past_ ... by Japanese
artists.(1023)

And if Troy was denied, and regarded as a myth; the existence of Herculaneum and Pompeii declared a fiction; the travels of Marco Polo laughed at and called as absurd a fable as one of Baron Münchausen’s tales, why should the writer of _Isis Unveiled_ and of _The Secret Doctrine_ be any better treated? Mr. Charles Gould, the author of the above‐cited volume quotes, in his excellent work, a few lines from _Macmillan_ (1860), which are as true as life, and too much to the point not to be reproduced:

When a naturalist, either by visiting such spots of earth as are
still out of the way, or by his good fortune, finds a very queer
plant or animal, he is forthwith accused of inventing his game....
As soon as the creature is found to sin against preconception, the
great (mis?) guiding spirit, _à priori_ by name, who furnishes
philosophers with their omniscience _pro re natâ_, whispers that
no such thing _can_ be, and forthwith there is a charge of hoax.
The heavens themselves have been charged with hoaxes. When
Leverrier and Adams predicted a planet by calculation, it was
gravely asserted in some quarters that the planet which had been
calculated was not _the_ planet but another which had
clandestinely and improperly got into the neighbourhood of the
true body. _The disposition to suspect hoax is stronger than the
disposition to hoax._ Who was it that first announced that the
classical writings of Greece and Rome were one huge hoax
perpetrated by the monks in what the announcer would be as little
or less inclined than Dr. Maitland to call the dark ages?(1024)

Thus let it be. No disbeliever who takes _The Secret Doctrine_ for a “hoax” is forced, or even asked, to credit our statements, which have already been proclaimed to be such by certain very clever American journalists even before the work went to press.(1025)

Nor, after all, is it necessary that any one should believe in the Occult Sciences and the Old Teachings, before he knows anything of, or even believes in his own Soul. No great truth has ever been accepted _à __ priori_, and generally a century or two has passed before it has begun to glimmer in the human consciousness as a possible verity, except in such cases as the positive discovery of the thing claimed as a fact. The truths of to‐day are the falsehoods and errors of yesterday, and _vice versà_. It is only in the twentieth century that portions, if not the whole, of the present work will be vindicated.

It is not destructive of our statements, therefore, even if Sir John Evans does affirm that writing was unknown in the Stone Age. For it may have been unknown during that period in the Fifth Âryan Race, and yet have been perfectly known to the Atlanteans of the Fourth, in the palmy days of their highest civilization. The cycles of the rise and fall of nations and races are there to account for it.

If told that there have been cases before now of forged pseudographs being palmed off on the credulous, and that our work may be classed with Jacolliot’s _Bible in India_—although, by the way, there are more truths mixed up with its errors than are found in the works of orthodox and recognized Orientalists—the charge and comparison will dismay us very little. We bide our time. Even the famous _Ezour Veda_ of the last century, considered by Voltaire “the most precious gift from the East to the West,” and by Max Müller “about the silliest book that can be read,” is not altogether without facts and truths in it. The cases when the _à priori_ negations of specialists have become justified by subsequent corroborations, form but an insignificant percentage of those that have been fully vindicated by subsequent discoveries and confirmed, to the great dismay of the learned objectors. _Ezour Veda_ was a very small bone of contention compared with the triumph of Sir William Jones, Anquetil du Perron, and others in the matter of Sanskrit and its literature. Such facts are recorded by Professor Max Müller himself, who, speaking of the discomfiture of Dugald Stewart and Co. in connection with this, states that:

If the facts about Sanskrit were true, Dugald Stewart was too wise
not to see that the conclusions drawn from them were inevitable.
He therefore denied the reality of such a language as Sanskrit
altogether, and wrote his famous essay to prove that Sanskrit had
been put together after the model of Greek and Latin, by those
arch‐forgers and liars, the Brâhmans, and that the whole of
Sanskrit literature was an imposition.(1026)

The writer is quite willing and feels proud to keep company with these Brâhmans, and other _historical_ “liars,” in the opinion of our modern Dugald Stewarts. She has lived too long, and her experience has been too varied and personal, for her not to know at least something of human nature. “When you doubt, abstain,” says the wise Zoroaster, whose prudent aphorism is found corroborated in every case by daily life and experience. Yet, like St. John the Baptist, this Sage of the past ages is found preaching in the desert, in company with a more modern Philosopher, namely Bacon, who offers the same priceless bit of practical wisdom, when saying:

In contemplation [in any question of knowledge, we add], if a man
begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but _if he will be
content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties_.

With this piece of advice from the father of English Philosophy to the representatives of British Scepticism we ought to close the debate, but our Theosophical readers are entitled to a final piece of Occult information.

Enough has been said to show that evolution in general, events, mankind, and everything else in Nature proceed in cycles. We have spoken of seven Races, five of which have nearly completed their earthly career, and have claimed that every Root‐Race, with its sub‐races and innumerable family divisions and tribes, was entirely distinct from its preceding and succeeding Race. This will be objected to, on the authority of uniform experience, in the question of Anthropology and Ethnology. Man—save in colour and type, and perhaps a difference in facial peculiarities and cranial capacity—has been ever the same under every climate and in every part of the world, say the Naturalists; ay, even in stature—this, while maintaining that man descends from the same unknown ancestor as the ape; a claim that is logically impossible without an infinite variation of stature and form from his first evolution into a biped. The very logical persons who maintain both propositions are welcome to their paradoxical views. Once more we address only those who, doubting the general derivation of myths from “the contemplation of the visible workings of external nature,” think it

Less hard to believe that these wonderful stories of gods and
demi‐gods, of giants and dwarfs, of dragons and monsters of all
descriptions, are transformations, than to believe them to be
inventions.

It is only such “transformations” in physical nature, as much as in the memory and conceptions of our present mankind, that the Secret Doctrine teaches. It confronts the purely speculative hypotheses of Modern Science, based upon the experience and exact observations of barely a few centuries, with the unbroken tradition and records of its Sanctuaries; and brushing away that tissue of cobweb‐like theories, spun in the darkness that covers a period of hardly a few millenniums, which Europeans call their “history,” the Old Science says to us: Listen, now, to my version of the memoirs of Humanity.

The Human Races are born one from the other, grow, develop, become old, and die. Their sub‐races and nations follow the same rule. If your all‐ denying Modern Science and so‐called Philosophy do not contest that the human family is composed of a variety of well‐defined types and races, it is only because the fact is undeniable; no one would say that there was no external difference between an Englishman, an African negro, and a Japanese or Chinaman. On the other hand, it is formally denied by most Naturalists that _mixed_ human races, _i.e._, the seeds for entirely new races, are any longer formed in our days, although indeed the latter is maintained on good grounds by De Quatrefages and some others.

Nevertheless our general proposition will not be accepted. It will be said that whatever forms man has passed through in the long pre‐historic past there are no more changes for him—save certain variations, as at present—in the future. Hence that our Sixth and Seventh Root‐Races are fictions.

To this it is again answered: How do you know? Your experience is limited to a few thousand years, to less than a day in the whole age of Humanity and to the present types of the actual continents and isles of our Fifth Race. How can you tell what will or will not be? Meanwhile, such is the prophecy of the Secret Books and their not uncertain statements.

Since the beginning of the Atlantean Race many million years have passed, yet we find the last of the Atlanteans still mixed up with the Âryan element, 11,000 years ago. This shows the enormous overlapping of one Race over the Race which succeeds it, though in characters and external type the elder loses its characteristics, and assumes the new features of the younger Race. This is proved in all the formations of mixed human races. Now, Occult Philosophy teaches that even now, under our very eyes, the new Race and races are preparing to be formed, and that it is in America that the transformation will take place, and has already silently commenced.

Pure Anglo‐Saxons hardly three hundred years ago, the Americans of the United States have already become a nation apart, and, owing to a strong admixture of various nationalities and inter‐marriage, almost a race _sui generis_, not only mentally, but also physically. To quote from De Quatrefages:

Every mixed race, when uniform and settled, has been able to play
the part of a primary race in fresh crossings. Mankind, in its
present state, has thus been formed, certainly for the greatest
part, by the successive crossing of a number of races _at present
undetermined_.(1027)

Thus the Americans have become in only three centuries a “primary race,” temporarily, before becoming a race apart, and strongly separated from all other now existing races. They are, in short, the germs of the _sixth_ sub‐race, and in some few hundred years more, will become most decidedly the pioneers of that race which must succeed to the present European or fifth sub‐race, in all its new characteristics. After this, in about 25,000 years, they will launch into preparations for the seventh sub‐race; until, in consequence of cataclysms—the first series of those which must one day destroy Europe, and still later the whole Âryan Race (and thus affect both Americas), as also most of the lands directly connected with the confines of our continent and isles—the Sixth Root‐Race will have appeared on the stage of our Round. When shall this be? Who knows save the great Masters of Wisdom, perchance, and they are as silent upon the subject as the snow‐capped peaks that tower above them. All we know is, that it will silently come into existence; so silently, indeed, that for long millenniums will its pioneers—the peculiar children who will grow into peculiar men and women—be regarded as anomalous _lusûs naturæ_, abnormal oddities physically and mentally. Then, as they increase, and their numbers become with every age greater, one day they will awake to find themselves in a majority. Then the present men will begin to be regarded as exceptional mongrels, until they die out in their turn in civilized lands, surviving only in small groups on islands—the mountain peaks of to‐day—where they will vegetate, degenerate, and finally die out, perhaps millions of years hence, as the Aztecs have, as the Nyam‐Nyam and the dwarfish Moola Koorumba of the Nilghiri Hills are dying. All these are the remnants of once mighty races, the recollection of whose existence has entirely died out of the remembrance of modern generations, just as we shall vanish from the memory of the Sixth Race Humanity. The Fifth will overlap the Sixth Race for many hundreds of millenniums, changing with it more slowly than its new successor, still changing in stature, general physique, and mentality, just as the Fourth overlapped our Âryan Race, and the Third had overlapped the Atlanteans.

This process of preparation for the Sixth great Race must last throughout the whole sixth and seventh sub‐races.(1028) But the _last_ remnants of the Fifth Continent will not disappear until some time after the birth of the _new_ Race; when another and _new_ dwelling, the Sixth Continent, will have appeared above the _new_ waters on the face of the Globe, so as to receive the new stranger. To it also will emigrate and there will settle all those who will be fortunate enough to escape the general disaster. When this shall be—as just said—it is not for the writer to know. Only, as Nature no more proceeds by sudden jumps and starts, than man changes suddenly from a child into a mature man, the final cataclysm will be preceded by many smaller submersions and destructions both by wave and volcanic fires. The exultant pulse will beat high in the heart of the race now in the American zone, but there will be no more Americans when the Sixth Race commences; no more, in fact, than Europeans; for they will have now become a _new Race, and many new nations_. Yet the Fifth will not die, but will survive for a while; overlapping the new Race for many hundred thousands of years to come, it will, as we have just said, become transformed with it more slowly than its new successor—still getting entirely altered in mentality, general physique, and stature. Mankind will not grow again into giant bodies as in the case of the Lemurians and the Atlanteans; because while the evolution of the Fourth Race led the latter down to the very bottom of materiality in its physical development, the present Race is on its ascending arc; and the Sixth will be rapidly growing out of its bonds of matter, and even of flesh.

Thus it is the mankind of the New World, the senior by far of our Old one—a fact men had also forgotten—of Pâtâla (the Antipodes, or the Nether World, as America is called in India), whose mission and Karma it is, to sow the seeds for a forthcoming, grander, and far more glorious Race than any of those we know of at present. The Cycles of Matter will be succeeded by Cycles of Spirituality and a fully developed mind. On the law of parallel history and races, the majority of the future mankind will be composed of glorious Adepts. Humanity is the child of Cyclic Destiny, and not one of its Units can escape its unconscious mission, or get rid of the burden of its coöperative work with Nature. Thus will Mankind, race after race, perform its appointed Cyclic Pilgrimage. Climates will, and have already begun to, change, each Tropical Year after the other dropping one sub‐race, but only to beget another higher race on the ascending cycle; while a series of other less favoured groups—the failures of Nature—will, like some individual men, vanish from the human family without even leaving a trace behind.

Such is the course of Nature under the sway of Karmic Law; of Ever‐present and Ever‐becoming Nature. For, in the words of a Sage, known only to a few Occultists:

_The Present is the child of the Past; the Future, the begotten of the Present. And yet, O present moment! knowest thou not that thou hast no parent, nor canst thou have a child; that thou art ever begetting but thyself? Before thou hast even begun to say __“__I am the progeny of the departed moment, the child of the past,__”__ thou hast become that past itself. Before thou utterest the last syllable, behold! thou art no more the Present but verily that Future. Thus, are the Past, the Present, and the Future the Ever‐living Trinity in One—the Mahámâyâ of the Absolute __“__IS.__”_

PART II. THE ARCHAIC SYMBOLISM OF THE WORLD‐RELIGIONS.

The narratives of the Doctrine are its cloak. The simple look only
at the garment—that is, upon the narrative of the Doctrine; more
they know not. The instructed, however, see not merely the cloak,
but what the cloak covers.—_Zohar_ (iii. 152; FRANCK, 119).

The Mysteries of the Faith (are) not to be divulged to all.... It
is requisite to hide in a mystery the wisdom spoken.—_Stromateis_
(12; CLEMENS ALEXANDRINUS).