Chapter V: Part I: Anthropogenesis (3)

Hence Cupid or Love in his primitive sense is Erôs, the Divine Will, or Desire of manifesting itself through visible creation. Thence Fohat, the prototype of Erôs, becomes on Earth the Great Power “Life‐Electricity,” or the Spirit of “Life‐giving.” Let us remember the Greek Theogony and enter into the spirit of its Philosophy. We are taught by the Greeks that all things, Gods included, owe their being to the Ocean and his wife Tethys, the latter being Gæa, the Earth or Nature. But who is Ocean? Ocean is the immeasurable Space—Spirit in Chaos—which, is the Deity; and Tethys is not the Earth, but Primordial Matter in the process of formation. In our case it is no longer Aditi‐Gæa who begets Ouranos or Varuna, the chief Âditya among the seven Planetary Gods, but Prakriti, materialized and localized. The Moon, masculine in its theogonic character, is, in its cosmic aspect only, the female generative principle, as the Sun is the male emblem thereof. Water is the progeny of the Moon, an androgyne deity with every nation.

Evolution proceeds on the laws of analogy in Kosmos as in the formation of the smallest Globe. Thus the above, applying to the _modus operandi_ at the time when the Universe was appearing, applies also in the case of our Earth’s formation.

The Stanza now being commented upon opens by speaking of thirty crores, 300,000,000 of years. We may be asked: What could the ancients know of the duration of geological periods, when no modern Scientist or Mathematician is able to calculate their duration with anything like approximate accuracy? Whether they had or had not better means—and it is maintained that they had them as is evidenced by their Zodiacs—still the chronology of the ancient Brâhmans shall now be given as faithfully as possible.

The Chronology of the Brâhmans.

No greater riddle exists in Science, no problem is more hopelessly insoluble, than the question: How old—even approximately—are the Sun and Moon, the Earth and Man? What does Modern Science know of the duration of the Ages of the World, or even of the length of Geological Periods?

Nothing; absolutely nothing.

If one turns to Science for chronological information, one is told by those who are straightforward and truthful, as for instance Mr. Pengelly, the eminent Geologist, “We do not know.”(143) One will learn that, so far, no trustworthy numerical estimate of the ages of the World and Man could be made, and that both Geology and Anthropology are at sea. Yet when a student of Esoteric Philosophy presumes to bring forward the teachings of Occult Science, he is at once sat upon. Why should this be so, since, when reduced to their own physical methods, the greatest Scientists have failed to arrive even at an approximate agreement?

It is true that Science can hardly be blamed for it. Indeed, in the Cimmerian darkness of the prehistoric ages, the explorers are lost in a labyrinth, whose great corridors are doorless, allowing no visible exit into the archaic past. Lost in the maze of their own conflicting speculations, rejecting, as they have always done, the evidence of Eastern tradition, without any clue, or one single certain milestone to guide them, what can Geologists or Anthropologists do but pick up the slender thread of Ariadne where they first perceive it, and then proceed at perfect random? Therefore we are first told that the farthest date to which documentary record extends is now generally regarded by Anthropology as but “the earliest distinctly visible point of the pre‐historic period”—in the words of the writer of the article in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_.

At the same time it is confessed that “beyond that period stretches back a vast indefinite series of pre‐historic ages.”

It is with those specified “ages” that we shall begin. They are “pre‐ historic” to the naked eye of Matter only. To the spiritual eagle eye of the Seer and the Prophet of every race, Ariadne’s thread stretches beyond that “historic period” without break or flaw, surely and steadily, into the very night of time; and the hand which holds it is too mighty to drop it, or even let it break. Records exist, although they may be rejected as fanciful by the profane; though, indeed, many of them are tacitly accepted by Philosophers and men of great learning, and meet with an unvarying refusal only from the official and collective body of _orthodox_ Science. And since the latter refuses to give us even an approximate idea of the duration of the geological Ages—save in a few conflicting and contradictory hypotheses—let us see what Âryan Philosophy can teach us.

Such computations as are given in _Manu_ and the _Purânas_—save trifling and most evidently _intentional_ exaggerations—are, as already stated, almost identical with those taught in Esoteric Philosophy. This may be seen by comparing the two in any Hindû calendar of recognized orthodoxy.

The best and most complete of all such calendars, at present, as vouched for by the learned Brâhmans of Southern India, is the already mentioned Tamil calendar called the _Tirukkanda Panchanga_, compiled, as we are told, from, and in full accordance with, secret fragments of Asuramaya’s data. As Asuramaya is said to have been the greatest Astronomer, so he is whispered to have also been the most powerful “Sorcerer” of the “White Island, which had become Black with sin,” _i.e._, of the islands of Atlantis.

The “White Island” is a symbolical name. Asuramaya is said to have lived, as in the tradition of the _Jñâna‐bhâskara_, in Romaka‐pura, in the West; because the name is an allusion to the land and cradle of the “Sweat‐born” of the Third Race. That land or continent had disappeared ages before Asuramaya lived, since he was an Atlantean; but he was a direct descendant of the Wise Race, _the Race that never dies_. Many are the legends concerning this hero, the pupil of Sûrya, the Sun‐God, himself, as the Indian accounts allege. It matters little whether he lived on one or another island, but the question is to prove that he was no myth, as Dr. Weber and others would make him. The fact of Romaka‐pura, in the West, being named as the birthplace of this hero of the Archaic Ages, is the more interesting because it is so very suggestive of the Esoteric Teaching about the Sweat‐born Races, the men born from the “pores of their parents.” “_Roma‐kûpas_” mean “hair‐pores” in Sanskrit. In the _Mahâbhârata_,(144) a people named Raumas are said to have been created from the pores of Vîrabhadra, the terrible giant, who destroyed Daksha’s sacrifice. Other tribes and people are also represented as born in this way. All these are references to the later Second and the earlier Third Root‐Races.

The following figures are from the calendar just referred to; a foot‐note marks the points of disagreement with the figures of the Ârya Samâj school:

I. From the beginning of Cosmic Evolution,(145) up to the Hindû year Tarana (or 1887), 1,955,884,687 years.

II. The (astral), mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms up to Man, have taken to evolve, 300,000,000 years.(146)

III. Time, from the first appearance of “Humanity” (on our Planetary Chain), 1,664,500,987 years.(147)

IV. The number that elapsed since the Vaivasvata, Manvantara(148)—or the _Human_ Period—up to the year 1887, is just 18,618,728 years.

V. The full period of one Manvantara is 308,448,000 years.

VI. Fourteen Manvantaras, _plus_ the period of one Satya Yuga make one Day of Brahmâ, or a complete Manvantara, or 4,320,000,000 years.

Therefore a Mahâ Yuga consists of 4,320,000 years.(149)

The year 1887 is from the commencement of Kali Yuga, 4,989 years.

To make this still clearer in its details, the following computations by Rao Bahadur P. Sreenivas Row, are given from the _Theosophist_ of November, 1885.

360 days of mortals make a year

Krita Yuga contains 1,728,000

Tretâ Yuga contains 1,296,000

Dvâpara Yuga contains 864,000

Kali Yuga contains 432,000

The total of the said four Yugas constitute a Mahâ Yuga, 4,320,000

Seventy‐one of such Mahâ Yugas form the period of the reign of one
Manu, 306,720,000

The reign of fourteen Manus embraces the duration of 994 Mahâ
Yugas, which is equal to 4,294,080,000

Add Sandhis, _i.e._, intervals between the reign of each Manu,
which amount to six Mahâ Yugas, equal to 25,920,000

The total of these reigns and interregnums of fourteen Manus, is
1,000 Mahâ Yugas, which constitute a Kalpa, _i.e._, one Day of
Brahmâ, 4,320,000,000

As Brahmâ’s Night is of equal duration, one Day and Night of
Brahmâ would contain 8,640,000,000

360 of such days and nights make one Year of Brahmâ equal to
3,110,400,000,000

100 such Years constitute the whole period of Brahmâ’s Age,
_i.e._, Mahâ Kalpa, 311,040,000,000,000

These are the exoteric figures accepted throughout India, and they dovetail pretty nearly with those of the Secret Works. The latter, moreover, amplify them by a division into a number of Esoteric Cycles, never mentioned in Brâhmanical popular writings—one of which, the division of the Yugas into Racial Cycles, is given elsewhere as an instance. The rest, in their details, have of course never been made public. They are, nevertheless, known to every “Twice‐born” (Dvija, or Initiated) Brâhman, and the _Purânas_ contain references to some of them in veiled terms, which no matter‐of‐fact Orientalist has yet endeavoured to make out, nor could he if he would.

These sacred Astronomical Cycles are of immense antiquity, and most of them pertain, as stated, to the calculations of Nârada and Asuramaya. The latter has the reputation of a Giant and a Sorcerer. But the Antediluvian Giants—the Gibborim of the Bible—were not all bad or Sorcerers, as Christian Theology, which sees in every Occultist a servant of the Evil One, would have it; nor were they worse than many of “the faithful sons of the Church.” A Torquemada and a Catherine de Médicis certainly did more harm in their day, and in the name of their Master, than any Atlantean Giant or Demigod of antiquity ever did, whether named Cyclops, or Medusa, or yet the Orphic Titan, the anguipedal monster known as Ephialtes. There were _good_ “giants” in days of old just as there are _bad_ “pigmies” now; and the Râkshasas and Yakshas of Lankâ are no worse than our modern dynamiters, and certain Christian and civilized generals during modern wars. Nor are they myths.

He who would laugh at Briareus and Orion ought to abstain from
going to, or even talking of, Carnac or Stonehenge.

remarks somewhere a modern writer.

As the Brâhmanical figures given above are approximately the basic calculations of our Esoteric System, the reader is requested to carefully keep them in mind.

In the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ we find, as the last word of Science, that the antiquity of man is allowed to stretch _only over_ “tens of thousands of years.” It becomes evident that as these figures may be made to fluctuate between 10,000 and 100,000, therefore they mean very little if anything, and only render still denser the darkness surrounding the question. Moreover, what matters it that Science places the birth of man in the “pre‐ or post‐ glacial drift,” if we are told at the same time that the so‐called “Ice Age” is simply a long succession of ages which

Shaded without abrupt change of any kind into what is termed the
human or recent period ... the overlapping of geological periods
having been the rule from the beginning of time.(150)

The latter “rule” only results in the still more puzzling, even if strictly scientific and correct, information, that:

Even to‐day man is contemporary with the ice‐age in the Alpine
valleys and in the Finmark.(151)

Thus, had it not been for the lessons taught by the Secret Doctrine, and even by exoteric Hindûism and its traditions, we should to this day be left to float in perplexed uncertainty between the indefinite “Ages” of one school of Science, the “tens of thousands” of years of the other, and the 6,000 years of the Bible interpreters. This is one of the several reasons why, with all the respect due to the conclusions of the men of learning of our modern day, we are forced to ignore them in all such questions of pre‐historic antiquity.

Modern Geology and Anthropology must, of course, disagree with our views. But Occultism will find as many weapons against these two Sciences as it has against astronomical and physical theories, in spite of Mr. Laing’s assurances that:

In [chronological] calculations of this sort, concerning older and
later formations, there is no _theory_, they are based on positive
facts, limited only by a certain possible [?] amount of error
either way.(152)

Occultism will prove, scientific confessions in hand, that Geology is very much in error, and very often even more so than Astronomy. In this very passage by Mr. Laing, which gives to Geology preëminence for correctness over Astronomy, we find a passage in flagrant contradiction to the admissions of the best Geologists themselves. Says the author:

In short, the conclusions of Geology, at any rate up to the
Silurian period(153) when the present order of things was fairly
inaugurated, are approximate [truly so] _facts_ and not
_theories_, while the astronomical conclusions are _theories_
based on _data_ so uncertain, that while in some cases they give
results incredibly short, ... in others they give results almost
incredibly long.(154)

After which, the reader is advised that the “safest course”

Seems to be to assume that Geology really proves the duration of
the present order of things to have been somewhere over 100
millions of years, and that Astronomy gives an enormous though
unknown time beyond in the past, and to come in the future, for
the birth, growth, maturity, decline, and death of the solar
system, of which our earth is a small planet now passing through
the habitable phase.(155)

Judging from past experience, we do not entertain the slightest doubt that, once called upon to answer “the absurd unscientific and preposterous claims of exoteric (and Esoteric) Âryan chronology,” the Scientist of the “results incredibly short,” _i.e._, only 15,000,000 years, and the Scientist, who “would require 600,000,000 years,” together with those who accept Mr. Huxley’s figures of 1,000,000,000(156) “since sedimentation began in Europe,” would all be as dogmatic the one as the other. Nor would they fail to remind the Occultist and the Brâhman, that it is the modern men of Science alone who represent exact Science, whose duty it is to fight “inaccuracy” and “superstition.”

The Earth is passing through the “habitable phase” only for the _present order_ of things, and as far as our present mankind is concerned with its actual “coats of skin” and phosphorus for bones and brain.

We are ready to concede the 100 millions of years offered by Geology, since we are taught that our present physical mankind—or the Vaivasvata Humanity—began only eighteen millions of years ago. But Geology has no facts to give us for the duration of geological periods, as we have shown, no more indeed than has Astronomy. The authentic letter from Mr. W. Pengelly, F.R.S., quoted elsewhere, says:

It is at present, and perhaps always will be, _impossible_ to
reduce, even approximately, geological time into years or even
into millenniums.

And having never, hitherto, excavated a fossil man of any other than the _present form_—what does Geology know of him? It has traced zones or strata and, with these, primordial zoological life, down to the Silurian. When it has, in the same way, traced man down to his primordial protoplasmic form, then we will admit that it may know something of primordial man. If it is not very material to “the bearings of modern scientific discovery on modern thought,” whether

Man has existed in a state of constant though slow progression for
the last 50,000 years of a period of 15 millions, or for the last
500,000 years of a period of 150 millions,(157)

as Mr. S. Laing tells his readers, it is very much so for the claims of the Occultists. Unless the latter show that it is a _possibility_, if not a perfect certainty, that man lived eighteen millions of years ago, the _Secret Doctrine_ might as well have remained unwritten. An attempt must, therefore, be made in this direction, and it is our modern Geologists and men of Science generally who will be brought to testify to this fact in the Third Part of this Volume. Meanwhile, and notwithstanding the fact that Hindû Chronology is constantly represented by the Orientalists as a fiction based on no “actual” computation,(158) but simply a “childish boasting,” it is nevertheless often twisted out of recognition to make it yield to, and fit in with, Western theories. No figures have ever been more meddled with and tortured than the famous 4, 3, 2, followed by cyphers, of the Yugas and Mahâ Yugas.

As the whole Cycle of pre‐historic events, such as the evolution and transformation of Races and the extreme antiquity of man, hangs upon the said Chronology, it becomes extremely important to check it by other existing calculations. If the Eastern Chronology is rejected, we shall at least have the consolation of proving that no other—whether in the figures of Science or of the Churches—is one whit more reliable. As Professor Max Müller expresses it, it is often as useful to prove what a thing is not as to show what it may be. And once we succeed in pointing out the fallacies of both Christian and Scientific computations—by allowing them a fair chance of comparison with our Chronology—neither of these will have a reasonable ground to stand upon, in pronouncing the Esoteric figures less reliable than its own.

We may here refer the reader to our earlier work, _Isis Unveiled_,(159) for some remarks concerning the figures which were cited a few pages back.

To‐day a few more facts may be added to the information there given, which is already known to every Orientalist. The sacredness of the cycle of 4,320, with additional cyphers, lies in the fact that the figures which compose it, taken separately or joined in various combinations, are each and all symbolical of the greatest mysteries in Nature. Indeed, whether one takes the 4 separately, or the 3 by itself, or the two together making 7, or again the three, 4, 3, 2, added together and yielding 9, all these numbers have their application in the most sacred and Occult matters, and record the workings of Nature in her eternally periodical phenomena. They are never erring, perpetually recurring numbers, unveiling, to him who studies the secrets of Nature, a truly divine System, an intelligent plan in Cosmogony, which results in natural cosmic divisions of times, seasons, invisible influences, astronomical phenomena, with their action and reäction on terrestrial and even moral nature; on birth, death, and growth, on health and disease. All these natural events are based and depend upon cyclical processes in the Kosmos itself, producing periodic agencies which, acting from without, affect the Earth and all that lives and breathes on it, from the one end to the other of any Manvantara. Causes and effects are esoteric, exoteric and “endexoteric,” so to say.

In _Isis Unveiled_ we wrote that which we now repeat: _We are at the bottom of a cycle and evidently in a transitory state_. Plato divides the intellectual progress of the Universe during every Cycle into fertile and barren periods. In the sublunary regions, the spheres of the various elements remain eternally in perfect harmony with the Divine Nature, he says; “but their parts,” owing to a too close proximity to earth, and their commingling with the earthly (which is Matter, and therefore the realm of evil), “are sometimes according, and sometimes contrary to (Divine) Nature.” When those circulations—which Éliphas Lévi calls “currents of the Astral Light”—in the universal Ether which contains in itself every element, take place in harmony with the Divine Spirit, our Earth and everything pertaining to it enjoys a fertile period. The Occult powers of plants, animals, and minerals magically sympathize with the “superior natures,” and the Divine Soul of man is in perfect intelligence with these “inferior” ones. But during the barren periods, the latter lose their magic sympathy, and the spiritual sight of the majority of mankind is so blinded as to lose every notion of the superior powers of its own Divine Spirit. We are in a barren period; the eighteenth century, during which the malignant fever of scepticism broke out so irrepressibly, has entailed unbelief as a hereditary disease upon the nineteenth. The divine intellect is veiled in man; his animal brain alone “philosophizes.” And philosophizing alone, how can it understand the “Soul Doctrine”?

In order not to break the thread of the narrative we shall give some striking proofs of these cyclic laws in Part II, proceeding meanwhile with our explanations of Geological and Racial Cycles.

Stanza III. Attempts To Create Man.

11. The Descent of the Demiurge. 12. The Lunar Gods ordered to
create. 13. The Higher Gods refuse.

11. THE LORD OF THE LORDS CAME. FROM HER BODY HE SEPARATED THE WATERS, AND THAT WAS HEAVEN ABOVE, THE FIRST HEAVEN.(160)

Here tradition falls again into the Universal. As in the earliest version, repeated in the _Purânas_, so in the latest, the Mosaic account. In the first it is said:

He the Lord [the God who has the form of Brahmâ], when the world
had become one ocean, concluding that within the waters lay the
earth, and desirous to raise it up [to separate it], created
himself in another form. As in the preceding Kalpa [Manvantara] he
had assumed the shape of a tortoise, so in this one he took the
shape of a boar, etc.(161)

In the Elohistic “creation,”(162) “God” creates “a firmament in the midst of the waters,” and says “let _dry land_ appear.” And now comes the traditional peg whereunto is hung the Esoteric portion of the Kabalistic interpretation.

12. THE GREAT CHOHANS(163) CALLED THE LORDS OF THE MOON, OF THE AIRY BODIES: “BRING FORTH MEN,(164) MEN OF YOUR NATURE. GIVE THEM(165) THEIR FORMS WITHIN. SHE(166) WILL BUILD COVERINGS WITHOUT.(167) MALES‐FEMALES WILL THEY BE. LORDS OF THE FLAME ALSO....”

Who are the “Lords of the Moon”? In India they are called Pitris or “Lunar Ancestors,” but in the Hebrew scrolls it is Jehovah himself who is the “Lord of the Moon,” collectively as the Host, and also as one of the Elohim. The Astronomy of the Hebrews and their “observance of _times_” was regulated by the Moon. A Kabalist, having shown that “Daniel ... told off God’s providence by set _times_” and that the _Revelation_ of John “speaks of a carefully measured _cubical_ city descending out of the heavens,” etc., adds:

But the vitalizing power of heaven lay chiefly with _the moon_....
It was the Hebrew יהוה [Jehovah],—and St. Paul enjoins:—“Let no
man judge you for your observance of the 7th day, and the day of
_new moon,—which are a shadow of things to come_; but the body (or
substance) is of Christ,” _i.e._, Jehovah,—that function of this
power that “made the barren woman the joyful mother of
children,”—“for they are the gift of Jehovah,” ... which is a key
to the objection which her husband made to the Shunamite, as to
her going to the man of God:—“for it is neither the 7th day nor
the day of _new moon_.” The living spiritual powers of the
constellations had mighty wars marked by the movements and
positions of the stars and planets, and especially as the result
of the conjunction of the moon, earth and sun. Bentley comments on
the Hindû “war between the gods and the giants,” as marked by the
eclipse of the sun at the ascending node of the moon, 945 B.C.
[!], at which time was born,(168) or produced from the sea, SRI
(Sarai), S‐r‐i, the wife of the Hebrew Abram(169), who was the
Venus‐Aphroditus [_sic_] of the Westerns, emblem “of the luni‐
solar year, or the moon, [as Sri is the wife of the Moon; see
foot‐note], the goddess of increase.”(170) ... [Therefore] the
grand monument and land‐mark of the exact period of the lunar year
and month, by which this cycle [of 19 tropical years of the sun
and 235 revolutions of the moon] could be calculated, was Mount
Sinai,—the Lord Jehovah coming down thereon.... Paul speaks [then]
as a mystagogue, when he says concerning the freed woman and bond
woman of Abraham:—“For this Hagar (the bond woman of Abraham) is
Mount Sinai in Arabia.” How could a woman be a mountain? and such
a mountain! Yet, in one sense, ... she was, and in a very
marvellously true one. Her name was Hagar, הגר whose numbers read
235, or in exact measure, the very number of lunar months to equal
19 tropical years to complete this cycle and make the likeness and
similitude good; Mount Sinai being, in the esoteric language of
this wisdom, the monument of the exact time of the lunar year and
month, by which this spiritual vitalizing cycle could be computed,
and which mountain, indeed, was called (Fuerst) “the Mountain of
the Moon (Sin).” So also Sarai (SRI), the wife of Abram, could
have no child until her name was changed to Sarah, שרה, giving to
her the property of this lunar influence.(171)

This may be regarded as a digression from the main subject; but it is a very necessary one with a view to Christian readers. For who, after studying dispassionately the respective legends of Abram or Abraham, Sarai or Sarah, who was “fair to look upon,” and those of Brahmâ and Sarasvatî, or Shrî, Lakshmî‐Venus, with the relations of all these to the Moon and Water;—and especially one who understands the real Kabalistic meaning of the name Jehovah and its relation to, and connection with, the Moon—who can doubt that the story of Abram is based upon that of Brahmâ, or that _Genesis_ was written upon the old lines used by every ancient nation? All in the ancient Scriptures is allegorical—all based upon and inseparably connected with Astronomy and Cosmolatry.

13. THEY(172) WENT EACH ON HIS ALLOTTED LAND: SEVEN OF THEM, EACH ON HIS LOT. THE LORDS OF THE FLAME REMAIN BEHIND. THEY WOULD NOT GO, THEY WOULD NOT CREATE.

The Secret Teachings show the divine Progenitors creating men on seven portions of the Globe “each on his lot”—_i.e._, each a different Race of men externally and internally, and on different Zones. This polygenistic claim is considered elsewhere, in Stanza VII. But who are “They” who create, and the “Lords of the Flame,” “who would not”? Occultism divides the “Creators” into Twelve Classes; of which four have reached “Liberation” to the end of the “Great Age,” the fifth is ready to reach it, but still remains active on the intellectual planes, while seven are still under direct Karmic Law. These last act on the man‐bearing Globes of our Chain.

Exoteric Hindû books mention Seven Classes of Pitris, and among them two distinct kinds of Progenitors or Ancestors: the Barhishad and the Agnishvâtta; or those possessed of the “sacred fire” and those devoid of it. Hindû ritualism seems to connect them with sacrificial fires, and with Grihastha Brâhmans in earlier incarnations; those who have, and those who have _not_ attended as they should to their household sacred fires in their previous births. The distinction, as said, is derived from the _Vedas_. The first and highest class (Esoterically), the Agnishvâtta, are represented in the exoteric allegory as Grihastha or Brâhman‐householders, who, having failed to maintain their domestic fires and to offer burnt sacrifices, in their past births in other Manvantaras, have lost every right to have oblations with fire presented to them. Whereas the Barhishad, being Brâhmans who have kept up their household sacred fires, are thus honoured to this day. Thence the Agnishvâtta are represented as devoid of, and the Barhishad as possessed of, fires.

But Esoteric Philosophy explains the original qualifications as being due to the difference between the natures of the two Classes: the Agnishvâtta Pitris are devoid of “fire” _i.e._, of creative passion, because they are too divine and pure; whereas the Barhishad, being the Lunar Spirits more closely connected with Earth, became the creative Elohim of form, or the Adam of dust.

The allegory says that Sanandana and other Vedhas, the Sons of Brahmâ, his first progeny:

Were without desire or passion, inspired with holy wisdom,
estranged from the universe and _undesirous of progeny_.(173)

This also is what is meant in the shloka by the words, “They would not create,” and is explained as follows:

“_The Primordial Emanations from the Creative Power are too near the Absolute Cause. They are transitional and latent forces, which will develop only in the next and subsequent removes._”

This makes it plain. Hence Brahmâ is said to have felt wrathful when he saw that those

Embodied spirits, produced from his limbs [_gâtra_], would not
multiply themselves.

After which, in the allegory, he creates other seven Mind‐born Sons(174) namely, Marichi, Atri, Angiras, Pulastya, Pulaha, Kratu and Vasishtha, the latter being often replaced by Daksha, the most prolific of the Creators. In most of the texts these Seven Sons of Vasishtha‐Daksha are called the Seven Rishis of the _Third_ Manvantara; the latter referring both to the Third Round and also to the Third Root‐Race and its Branch‐Races in the Fourth Round. These are all the Creators of the various Beings on this Earth, the Prajâpati, and at the same time they appear as divers reïncarnations in the early Manvantaras or Races.

It thus becomes clear why the Agnishvâtta, devoid of the grosser “creative fire,” hence unable to create physical man, having no Double, or Astral Body, to project, since they were without any “form,” are shown in exoteric allegories as Yogîs, Kumâras (chaste youths), who became “rebels,” Asuras, fighting and opposing Gods,(175) etc. Yet it is they alone who could complete man, _i.e._, make of him a self‐conscious, almost a divine Being—a God on Earth. The Barhishad, though possessed of “creative fire,” were devoid of the higher Mahat‐ic element. Being on a level with the lower “Principles”—those which precede gross objective matter—they could only give birth to the outer man, or rather to the model of the physical, the astral man. Thus, though we see them intrusted with the task by Brahmâ—the collective Mahat or Universal Divine Mind—the “Mystery of Creation” is repeated on Earth, only in an inverted sense, as in a _mirror_.

It is those who are unable to create the spiritual immortal man, who project the senseless model (the Astral) of the physical Being; and, as will be seen, it was those who would not multiply, who sacrificed themselves to the good and salvation of Spiritual Humanity. For, to complete the _septenary man_, to add to his three lower Principles and cement them with the Spiritual Monad—which could never dwell in such a form otherwise than in an _absolutely latent state_—two connecting “Principles” are needed: Manas and Kâma. This requires a living Spiritual Fire of the middle Principle from the Fifth and Third States of Plerôma. But this Fire is the possession of the Triangles, not of the (perfect) Cubes, which symbolize the Angelic Beings;(176) the former having from the First Creation possessed themselves of it and being said to have appropriated it for themselves, as in the allegory of Prometheus. These are the active, and therefore—in Heaven—no longer “pure” Beings. They have become the independent and free Intelligences, shown in every Theogony as fighting for that independence and freedom, and hence—in the ordinary sense—“rebellious to the divine passive law.” These are then those “Flames”—the Agnishvâtta—who, as shown in the shloka, “remain behind,” instead of going along with the others to create men on Earth. But the true Esoteric meaning is that most of them were destined to incarnate as the Egos of the forthcoming crop of Mankind.

The human Ego is neither Âtman nor Buddhi, but the Higher Manas; the intellectual fruitage and the efflorescence of the intellectual self‐ conscious Egotism—in the higher spiritual sense. The ancient works refer to it as Kârana Sharîra on the plane of Sûtrâtmâ, which is the “golden thread” on which, like beads, the various Personalities of this Higher Ego are strung. If the reader were told, as in the _semi‐Esoteric_ allegories, that these Beings were returning Nirvânîs from preceding Mahâ‐Manvantaras—Ages of incalculable duration which have rolled away in the Eternity, a still more incalculable time ago—he would hardly understand the text correctly; while some Vedântins might say: “This is not so; the Nirvânî can never return”; which is true during the Manvantara he belongs to, and erroneous where Eternity is concerned. For it is said in the Sacred Shlokas:

“_The Thread of Radiance which is imperishable and dissolves only in __ Nirvâna, reëmerges from it in its integrity on the day when the Great Law calls all things back into action._”

Hence, as the higher Pitris or Dhyânîs had no hand in his physical creation, we find Primeval Man—issued from the bodies of his _spiritually_ “fireless” Progenitors—described as aëriform, devoid of compactness, and “mindless.” He had no middle Principle to serve him as a medium between the Highest and the Lowest—the Spiritual Man and the physical brain—for he lacked Manas. The Monads which incarnated in those _empty_ Shells, remained as unconscious as when separated from their previous incomplete forms and vehicles. There is no potentiality for Creation, or Self‐ Consciousness, in a _pure_ Spirit on this our plane, unless its too homogeneous, perfect—because divine—nature is, so to say, mixed with, and strengthened by, an essence already differentiated. It is only the lower line of the Triangle—representing the first Triad that emanates from the Universal Monad—that can furnish this needed consciousness on the plane of differentiated Nature. But how could these pure Emanations, which, on this principle, must have originally been themselves “unconscious” (in our sense), be of any use in supplying the required Principle, as they could hardly have possessed it themselves?

The answer is difficult to comprehend, unless one is well acquainted with the philosophical metaphysics of a beginningless and endless series of Cosmic Re‐births, and becomes well impressed and familiarized with that immutable law of Nature which is ETERNAL MOTION, cyclic and spiral—therefore progressive even in its seeming retrogression. The one Divine Principle, the nameless THAT of the _Vedas_, is the Universal Total, which, neither in its spiritual aspects and emanations, nor in its physical Atoms, can ever be at “Absolute Rest” except during the Nights of Brahmâ. Hence, also, the “First‐born” are those who are first set in motion at the beginning of a Manvantara, and thus the first to fall into the lower spheres of materiality. They who are called in Theology the “Thrones,” and are the “Seat of God,” must be the first incarnated men on Earth; and it becomes comprehensible, if we think of the endless series of past Manvantaras, to find that the last had to come first, and the first last. We find, in short, that the higher Angels had broken, countless æons before, through the “Seven Circles,” and thus “robbed” them of the Sacred Fire; this means in plain words, that they had assimilated during their past incarnations, in lower as well as in higher Worlds, all the wisdom therefrom—the reflection of Mahat in its various degrees of intensity. No Entity, whether angelic or human, can reach the state of Nirvâna, or of absolute purity, except through æons of suffering and the _knowledge_ of evil as well as of good, as otherwise the latter would remain incomprehensible.

Between man and the animal—whose Monads, or Jîvas, are fundamentally identical—there is the impassable abyss of Mentality and Self‐ consciousness. What is human mind in its higher aspect, whence comes it, if it be not a portion of the essence—and, in some rare cases of incarnation, the _very essence_—of a higher Being; one from a higher and divine plane? Can man—a God in the animal form—be the product of Material Nature by evolution alone, even as is the animal which differs from man in external shape, but by no means in the materials of its physical fabric, and is informed by the same, though undeveloped, Monad—seeing that the intellectual potentialities of the two differ as the sun does from the glow‐worm? And what is it that creates such difference, unless man is an animal _plus a living God_ within his physical shell? Let us pause and ask ourselves seriously the question, regardless of the vagaries and sophisms of both the materialistic and the psychological modern Sciences.

To some extent, it is admitted that even the Esoteric Teaching is allegorical. To make the latter comprehensible to the average intelligence, the use of symbols cast in an intelligible form is needed. Hence the allegorical and semi‐mythical narratives in the exoteric, and the only _semi_‐metaphysical and objective representations in the Esoteric Teachings. For the purely and transcendentally spiritual conceptions are adapted only to the perceptions of those who “_see without eyes, hear without ears, and sense without organs_,” according to the graphic expression of the Commentary. The too puritan Idealist is at liberty to spiritualize the tenet, whereas the modern Psychologist would simply try to spirit away our “fallen,” yet still divine, human Soul—divine in its connection with Buddhi.

The mystery attached to the highly spiritual Ancestors of the _Divine_ Man within the earthly man is very great. His dual creation is hinted at in the _Purânas_, though its Esoteric meaning can be approached only by collating together the many varying accounts, and reading them in their symbolical and allegorical character. So it is in the _Bible_, both in _Genesis_ and even in the _Epistles_ of Paul. For that “Creator,” who is called in the second chapter of _Genesis_ the “Lord God,” is in the original the Elohim, or Gods (the Lords), in the plural; and while one of them makes the earthly Adam of Dust, the other breathes into him the Breath of Life, and the third makes of him a Living Soul, all of which readings are implied in the plural number of the word Elohim.(177) Or again, as Paul says:

The first man is of the earth, the second [the last, or rather
highest] is the Lord from heaven.(178)

In the Âryan allegory the rebellious Sons of Brahmâ are all represented as holy Ascetics and Yogîs. Re‐born in every Kalpa, they generally try to impede the work of human procreation. When Daksha, the chief of the Prajâpatis or Creators, brings forth 10,000 sons for the purpose of peopling the world, Nârada—a son of Brahmâ, the great Rishi, and _virtually_ a Kumâra, if not so in name—interferes with, and twice frustrates Daksha’s aim, by persuading those Sons to remain holy Ascetics and eschew marriage. For this, Daksha curses Nârada to be “re‐born as a man,” as Brahmâ had cursed him before for refusing to marry, and obtain progeny, saying: “Perish in thy (present [Deva or Angelic] form); and take up thy abode in the womb”—_i.e._, become a man.(179)

Notwithstanding several conflicting versions of the same story, it is easy to see that Nârada belongs to that Class of Brahmâ’s “First‐born,” who have all proven rebellious to the law of animal procreation, for which they had to incarnate as _men_. Of all the Vedic Rishis, Nârada, as already shown, is the most incomprehensible, because the most closely connected with the Occult Doctrines—especially with the Secret Cycles and Kalpas.

Certain contradictory statements about this Sage have much distracted the Orientalists. Thus he is shown as refusing positively to “create” or have progeny, and even as calling his father Brahmâ a “false teacher” for advising him to get married, as related in the _Nârada‐Pancha‐Râtra_; nevertheless, he is referred to as one of the Prajâpatis or Progenitors! In the _Nâradîya Purâna_, he describes the laws and the duties of the celibate Adepts; and as these Occult duties do not happen to be found in the fragment of about 3,000 Stanzas in the possession of European museums, the Brâhmans are proclaimed liars; the Orientalists forgetting that the _Nâradîya_ is credited with containing 25,000 Stanzas, and that it is not very likely that such MSS. should be found in the hands of the Hindû profane, those who are ready to sell any precious Olla for a red pottage. Suffice it to say, that Nârada is _the_ Deva‐Rishi of Occultism _par excellence_, and that the Occultist who does not ponder, analyze, and study Nârada from his seven Esoteric facets, will never be able to fathom certain anthropological, chronological, and even cosmic Mysteries. He is one of the Fires above‐mentioned, and plays a part in the evolution of this Kalpa from its incipient down to its final stage. He is an actor who appears in each of the successive acts, or Root‐Races, of the present Manvantaric drama, in the world‐allegories which strike the key‐note of Esotericism, and are now becoming more familiar to the reader. But shall we turn to other ancient Scriptures and documents for the corroboration of the “Fires,” “Sparks,” and “Flames”? They are plentiful, if one only seeks for them in the right places.

In the Kabalistic _Book of the Concealed Mystery_ they are clearly enunciated, as also in the _Ha Idra Zuta Qadisha_, or “The Lesser Holy Assembly.” The language is very mystical and veiled, yet still comprehensible. In the latter, among the sparks of Prior Worlds, “vibrating Flames and Sparks,” from the divine flint, the “Workman” proceeds to create man, “male and female” (427). These “Flames and Sparks”—Angels and their Worlds, Stars and Planets—are said, figuratively, to become extinct and die, that is to say, remain “unmanifested” until a certain process of Nature is accomplished. To show how thickly veiled from public view are the most important facts of Anthropogenesis, two passages are now quoted from two Kabalistic books. The first is from the _Ha Idra Zuta Qadisha_:

429. From a Light‐Bearer [one of the Seven Sacred Planets] of
insupportable brightness proceeded a Radiating Flame, dashing off
like a vast and mighty hammer those sparks which were the Prior
Worlds.

430. And with most subtle ether were these intermingled and bound
mutually together, but _only when they were conjoined together_,
even the Great Father and Great Mother.

431. From _Hoa_, Himself, is AB, the Father; and from _Hoa_,
Himself, is Ruach, the Spirit; Who are hidden in the Ancient of
Days, and therein is that ether concealed.

432. And It was connected with a light‐bearer [a Planet and its
Angel or Regent], which went forth from that Light‐Bearer of
insupportable brightness, which is hidden in the bosom of Aima,
the Great Mother.(180)

Now the following extract from the _Zohar_,(181) under the heading, “The Pre‐Adamite Kings,” also deals with the same mystery:

We have learned in the Siphrah D’Tznioothah: That the _At‐tee’ kah
D’At‐tee’ keen_, Ancient of Ancients, before He prepared His Form,
built kings and engraved kings, and sketched out kings [men, the
“kings” of the animals], and they could not exist: till He
overthrew them and _hid them until after a time_, therefore it is
written; “And these are the kings which reigned in the land of
Edom.”... And they could not exist till _Resha’Hiv’rah_, the White
Head, the _At’‐tee’‐kah D’At‐tee’‐keen_, Ancient of the Ancients,
arranged Himself. When he arranged Himself He formed all forms
Above and Below.... Before He arranged Himself in His Form, had
not been formed all those whom He desired to form, and all worlds
have been destroyed.... They did not remain in their places,
because the form of the kings had not been formed as it ought to
be, and _the Holy City had not been prepared_.(182)

Now the plain meaning of these two allegorical and metaphysical disquisitions is simply this: Worlds and men were in turn formed and destroyed, _under the law of evolution_ and _from preëxisting material_, until both the Planets and their men, in our case our Earth and its animal and human races, became what they are now in the present cycle—opposite polar forces, an equilibrized compound of Spirit and Matter, of the positive and the negative, of the male and the female. Before man could become male and female _physically_, his prototype, the creating Elohim, had to arrange his Form on this sexual plane _astrally_. That is to say, the Atoms and the organic forces, descending into the plane of the given differentiation, had to be marshalled in the order intended by Nature, so as to be ever carrying out, in an immaculate way, that law which the Kabalah calls the “Balance,” through which everything that exists does so as male and female in its final perfection, in this present stage of materiality. Chokmah, Wisdom, the Male Sephira, had to diffuse itself _in_, and _through_, Binah, intelligent Nature, or Understanding. Therefore the First Root‐Race of men, sexless and mindless, had to be overthrown and “hidden until after a time”; _i.e._, the First Race, instead of dying, disappeared _in_ the Second Race, as certain lower lives and plants do in their progeny. It was a wholesale transformation. The First became the Second Root‐Race, without either begetting it, procreating it, or dying.

“They _passed by_ together,” as it is written: “And he died” and
another “reigned in his stead.”(183)

Why? Because the “_Holy City_ had not been prepared.” And what is the “Holy City”? The Ma‐qom—the Secret Place or the Shrine—on Earth; in other words, the human womb, the microcosmic copy and reflection of the Heavenly Matrix, the female Space or primeval Chaos, in which the male Spirit fecundates the germ of the Son, or the visible Universe. So much so, that in the paragraph on “The Emanation of the Male and Female Principles” in the _Zohar_, it is said that, on this Earth, the Wisdom from the “Holy Ancient” “does not shine except in male and female.”

(_Hokhmah_ Wisdom, is the Father, and _Binah_ Understanding, is
the Mother.)... And when they connect one with the other, they
bring forth and diffuse and emanate Truth. In the sayings of Rabbi
Ye‐yeva, Sabbah, _i.e._, the Old, we learned this; What is Binah
Understanding? But when they connect in one another, the י (Yod)
in the ה (Heh), they become impregnated and produce a Son. And,
therefore, it is called _Binah_, Understanding. It means BeN YaH,
_i.e._, Son of YaH. This is the completeness of the Whole.(184)

This is also the “completeness” of phallicism by the Rabbis, its perfect apotheosis, the divine being dragged into the animal, the sublime into the grossness of the terrestrial. Nothing so graphically gross exists in Eastern Occultism, nor in the primitive Kabalah—the Chaldæan _Book of Numbers_. We have said so already in _Isis Unveiled_:

We find it rather unwise on the part of Catholic writers to pour
out their vials of wrath in such sentences as these: “In a
multitude of pagodas, the phallic stone, ever and always assuming,
like the Grecian _batylos_, the brutally indecent form of the
_lingham_ ... the Mahâ Deva.” Before casting slurs on a symbol
whose profound metaphysical meaning is too much for the modern
champions of that religion of sensualism _par excellence_, Roman
Catholicism, to grasp, they are in duty bound to destroy their
oldest churches, and change the form of the cupolas of their own
temples. The Mahadeo of Elephanta, the Round Tower of Bhagulpore,
the minarets of Islam—either rounded or pointed—are the originals
of the Campanile column of San Marco, at Venice, of Rochester
Cathedral, and of the modern Duomo of Milan. All of these
steeples, turrets, domes, and Christian temples, are the
reproductions of the primitive idea of the _lithos_, the upright
phallus.(185)

Nevertheless, and however it may be, the fact that all these Hebrew Elohim, Sparks, and Cherubs are identical with the Devas, Rishis and the Fires and Flames, the Rudras and the forty‐nine Agnis of the ancient Âryas, is sufficiently proven by and in the Kabalah.

Stanza IV. Creation Of The First Races.

14. Creation of men. 15. They are empty shadows. 16. The Creators
are perplexed how to create a _thinking_ man. 17. What is needed
for the formation of a perfect Man.

14. THE SEVEN HOSTS, THE WILL‐BORN(186) LORDS, PROPELLED BY THE SPIRIT OF LIFE‐GIVING,(187) SEPARATE MEN FROM THEMSELVES, EACH ON HIS OWN ZONE.

They threw off their “Shadows” or Astral Bodies—if such an ethereal being as a “Lunar Spirit” may be supposed to rejoice in an Astral, besides a hardly tangible Body. In another Commentary it is said that the Ancestors _breathed_ out the first man, as Brahmâ is explained to have breathed out the Suras, or Gods, when they became Asuras (from Asu, breath). In a third it is said that they, the newly‐created Men, were the “shadows of the Shadows.”

With regard to this sentence—“They were the shadows of the Shadows”—a few more words may be said and a fuller explanation attempted. This first process of the evolution of mankind is far easier to accept than the one which follows it, though one and all such processes will be rejected and doubted even by some Kabalists, especially the Western, who study the present effects, but have neglected to study their primary causes. Nor does the writer feel competent to explain a mode of procreation so difficult of appreciation save for an Eastern Occultist. Therefore it is useless to enter here into details concerning the process, though it is minutely described in the Secret Books, as it would only lead to speaking of facts hitherto unknown to the profane world, and hence to their being misunderstood. An Adam made of the dust of the ground will always be found preferable, by a certain class of students, to one projected out of the ethereal body of his creator; though the former process has never been heard of, while the latter is familiar, as all know, to many Spiritualists in Europe and America, who, of all men, ought to understand it. For who of those who have witnessed the phenomenon of a materializing form oozing out of the pores of a medium or, at other times, out of his _left side_, can fail to credit the possibility, at least, of such a _birth_? If there are in the Universe such beings as Angels or Spirits, whose _incorporeal_ essence may constitute an intelligent Entity, notwithstanding the absence of any (to us) solid organism; and if there are those who believe that a God made the first man out of dust, and breathed into him a living Soul—and there are millions upon millions who believe both—what does this doctrine of ours contain that is so impossible? Very soon the day will dawn, when the world will have to choose whether it will accept the miraculous creation of man (and Kosmos too) out of _nothing_, according to the dead letter of _Genesis_, or a first man born from a fantastic link—absolutely “missing” so far—the common ancestor of man, and of the “true ape.”(188) Between these two fallacies, Occult Philosophy steps in. It teaches that the first human stock was projected by higher and semi‐ divine Beings out of their own essences. If the latter process is to be considered as abnormal or even inconceivable—because obsolete in Nature at this point of evolution—it is yet proven possible on the authority of certain “spiritualistic” _facts_. Which, then, we ask of the three hypotheses or theories is the most reasonable and the least absurd? Certainly no one—provided he be not a soul‐blind Materialist—can ever object to the Occult Teaching.

Now, as shown, we gather from the latter that man was not “created” the complete being he is now, however imperfect he still remains. There was a spiritual, a psychic, an intellectual, and an animal evolution, from the highest to the lowest, as well as a physical development—from the simple and homogeneous, up to the more complex and heterogeneous; though not quite on the lines traced for us by the modern Evolutionists. This double evolution in two contrary directions, required various ages, of divers natures and degrees of spirituality and intellectuality, to fabricate the being now known as man. Furthermore, the one absolute, ever acting and never erring law, which proceeds on the same lines from one Eternity (or Manvantara) to the other—ever furnishing an ascending scale for the manifested, or that which we call the great Illusion (Mahâ‐Mâyâ), but plunging Spirit deeper and deeper into materiality on the one hand, and then _redeeming it through flesh_ and liberating it—this law, we say, uses for these purposes the Beings from other and higher planes, men, or Minds (Manus), in accordance with their Karmic exigencies.

At this juncture, the reader is again asked to turn to the Indian Philosophy and Religion. The Esotericism of both is at one with our Secret Doctrine, however much the form may differ and vary.

On The Identity And Differences Of The Incarnating Powers.

The Progenitors of Man, called in India Fathers, Pitaras, or Pitris, are the “Creators” of our bodies and lower principles. They are ourselves, as the _first personalities_, and _we are they_. Primeval man would be “the bone of their bone and the flesh of their flesh,” if they had bones and flesh. As stated, they were “Lunar Beings.”

The endowers of man with his conscious, immortal Ego, are the “Solar Angels”—whether so regarded metaphorically or literally. The mysteries of the Conscious Ego or Human Soul are great. The Esoteric name of these Solar Angels is, literally, the “Lords” (Nâth) of “persevering ceaseless devotion” (Pranidhâna). Therefore they of the _Fifth_ Principle (Manas) seem to be connected with, or to have originated the system of the Yogîs who make of Pranidhâna their _fifth_ observance.(189) It has already been explained why the Trans‐Himâlayan Occultists regard them as evidently identical with those who in India are termed Kumâras, Agnishvâttas, and the Barhishads.