Chapter VIII: Part I: Anthropogenesis (6)

Concerning the rise and development of the functional activities
of the embryo, our knowledge is almost a blank. We know scarcely
anything about the various steps by which the primary fundamental
qualities of the protoplasm of the ovum are differentiated into
the complex phenomena which we have attempted in this book to
explain.(308)

The students of Trin. Coll. Cantab, will now kindly draw a veil before the statue of Hygieia and bandage the eyes of the busts of Galen and Hippocrates, lest they look reproachfully at their degenerate descendants. One further fact we must note. Sir Michael Foster is discreetly silent about the case of the ruptured umbilical cord cited by his great French _confrère_.

(_b_) This is a very curious statement as explained in the Commentaries. To make it clear: The First Race having created the Second by “budding,” as explained above, the Second Race gives birth to the Third—which itself is separated into three distinct divisions, consisting of men differently procreated. The first two of these are produced by an oviparous method, presumably unknown to modern Natural History. While the early sub‐races of the Third Humanity procreated their species by a kind of exudation of moisture or vital fluid, the drops of which coalescing formed an oviform ball—or shall we say egg—that served as an extraneous vehicle for the generation therein of a fœtus and child, the mode of procreation by the later sub‐races changed, in its results at all events. The little ones of the earlier sub‐races were entirely sexless—shapeless even for all one knows;(309) but those of the later sub‐races were born androgynous. It is in the Third Race that the separation of sexes occurred. From being previously a‐sexual, Humanity became distinctly hermaphrodite or bi‐ sexual; and finally the man‐bearing Eggs began to give birth, gradually and almost imperceptibly in their evolutionary development, first, to beings in which one sex predominated over the other, and, finally, to distinct men and women. And now let us search for corroboration of these statements in the religious legends of East and West. Let us take the “Egg‐born Race” first. Think of Kashyapa, the Vedic sage, and the most prolific of creators. He was the son of Marichi, Brahmâ’s Mind‐born Son; and he is made to become the father of the Nâgas, or Serpents, among other beings. Exoterically, the Nâgas are semi‐divine beings which have a human face and the tail of a serpent. Yet there was a race of Nâgas, said to be a thousand in number only, born or rather sprung from Kadrû, Kashyapa’s wife, for _the purpose of peopling Pâtâla_, which is undeniably America, as will be shown; and there was a Nâga‐Dvîpa, one of the seven divisions of Bhâratavarsha, India, inhabited by a people bearing the same name, who are allowed, even by some Orientalists, to be _historical_, and to have left many a trace behind them to this day.

Now the point most insisted upon at present is that, whatever origin be claimed for man, his evolution took place in this order: (1) sexless, as all the earlier forms are; (2) then, by a natural transition, he became a “solitary hermaphrodite,” a bi‐sexual being; and (3) finally separated and became what he is now. Science teaches us that all the primitive forms, though sexless, “still retained the power of undergoing the processes of a‐sexual multiplication”; why, then, should man be excluded from that law of Nature? Bi‐sexual reproduction is an evolution, a specialized and perfected form on the scale of Matter of the fissiparous act of reproduction. Occult teachings are preëminently panspermic, and the early history of humanity is hidden only “from ordinary mortals”; nor is the history of the primitive Races buried for the Initiates in the tomb of time, as it is for profane Science. Therefore, supported on the one hand by that Science which shows us progressive development and an internal cause for every external modification, as a law in Nature; and, on the other hand, by an implicit faith in the Wisdom—we may say Pansophia even—of the universal traditions gathered and preserved by the Initiates, who have perfected them into an almost faultless system—thus supported, we venture to state the doctrine clearly.

In an able article, written some fifteen years ago, our learned and respected friend Prof. Alexander Wilder, of New York, shows the absolute logic and necessity of believing “The Primeval Race Double‐Sexed,” and gives a number of scientific reasons for it.(310) He argues firstly, that a large part of the vegetable creation exhibits the phenomenon of bi‐ sexuality, the Linnæan classification enumerating thus almost all plants. This is the case in the superior families of the vegetable kingdoms as much as in the lower forms, from the hemp to the Lombardy poplar and ailanthus. In the animal kingdom also it is the same. In insect life, the moth generates a worm, and the worm becomes a moth, as in the Mysteries the great secret was expressed—_Taurus __ Taurus Draconem genuit, et Taurum Draco_. The coral‐producing family, which, according to Agassiz, has spent many hundreds of thousands of years, during the present geological period, in building out the peninsula of Florida, produce their offspring from themselves like the buds and ramifications in a tree. Bees are somewhat in the same line. The aphides, or plant lice, keep house like Amazons, and _virgin parents_ perpetuate the race for ten successive generations.

What say the old Sages, the Philosopher‐teachers of antiquity? Aristophanes speaks thus on the subject in Plato’s _Banquet_:

Our nature of old was not the same as it is now. It was
_androgynous_; the form and name partaking of, and being common to
both the male and female.... Their bodies ... were round, and the
manner of their running circular.(311) They were terrible in force
and strength and had prodigious ambition. Hence Zeus divided each
of them into two, making them weaker; Apollo, under his direction,
closed up the skin.

Meshia and Meshiane were but a single individual with the old Persians.

They also taught that man was the product of the Tree of Life,
growing in androgynous pairs, till they were separated at a
subsequent modification of the human form.

In the Book of the Generations (_Toleduth_) of Adam, the verse:

God created (_bara_, brought forth) man in his image, in the image
of God created he him, male and female created he them,

—if read Esoterically will yield the true sense, viz.:

The Elohim [Gods] brought forth from themselves [by modification]
man in their image ... created they _him_ [collective Humanity, or
Adam], male and female created _he_ [collective Deity] them.(312)

This will show the Esoteric point. The _Sexless_ Race was their first production, a modification _of_ and _from_ themselves, the pure Spiritual Existences; and this was Adam _solus_. Thence came the _Second_ Race: Adam‐Eve, or Jod‐Heva, inactive Androgynes; and finally the _Third_, or the “_Separating_ Hermaphrodite,” Cain and Abel, who produce the Fourth, Seth‐Enos, etc. It is this Third, the last semi‐spiritual Race, which was also the last vehicle of the divine and innate Wisdom, ingenerate in the Enochs, the Seers of that Mankind. The _Fourth_, which had tasted of the fruit of the Tree of Good and Evil—Wisdom already united to earthy, and therefore _impure_, intelligence(313)—had consequently to acquire that Wisdom by initiation and great struggle. And the union of Wisdom and Intelligence, the former _ruling_ the latter, is called in the Hermetic books “the God possessing the double fecundity of the two sexes.”

Mystically Jesus was held to be man‐woman. So also in the Orphic Hymns, sung during the Mysteries, we find: “Zeus is a male, Zeus is an immortal maid.” The Egyptian Ammon was the Goddess Neïth, in his other half. Jupiter has female breasts, Venus is bearded in some of her statues, and Ilâ, the Goddess, is also Su‐dyumna, the God, as Vaivasvata’s progeny.

Says Professor Wilder:

The name _Adam_, or man, itself implies this double form of
existence. It is identical with _Athamas_, or _Thomas_ (Tamil,
_Tam_), which is rendered by the Greek _Didumos_, a twin; if,
therefore, the first woman was formed subsequently to the first
man, she must, as a logical necessity, be “taken out of man.”
Accordingly we read: “And the _side_ which the Lord God [Elohim]
had taken from man, made he a woman.” The Hebrew word here used is
_Tzala_, which bears the translation we have given. It is easy to
trace the legend in Berosus, who says that _Thalatth_ (the
_Omorôka_, or Lady of Urka) was the beginning of creation. She was
also Telita [? Melita], the queen of the Moon....

The two memorable twin‐births of _Genesis_, that of Cain and Abel,
and of Esau and Jacob, shadow the same idea. The name _Hebel_ is
the same as Eve, and its characteristic seems to be feminine.
“Unto thee shall be his desire,” said the Lord God to Cain; “and
thou shalt rule over him.” The same language had been uttered to
Eve: “Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over
thee.”

Thus the pristine bi‐sexual unity of the human Third Root‐Race is an axiom in the Secret Doctrine. Its virgin individuals were raised to “Gods,” because that Race represented their “Divine Dynasty.” The moderns are satisfied with worshipping the male heroes of the Fourth Race, who created Gods after their own sexual image, whereas the Gods of primeval mankind were “male _and_ female.”

As stated in Volume I, the Humanities developed coördinately, and on parallel lines with the four Elements, every new Race being physiologically adapted to meet the additional Element. Our Fifth Race is rapidly approaching the Fifth Element—call it interstellar ether, if you will—which has more to do, however, with psychology than with physics. We men have learned to live in every climate, whether frigid or tropical, but the first two Races had nought to do with climate, nor were they subservient to any temperature or change therein. And thus, we are taught, men lived down to the close of the Third Root‐Race, when eternal spring reigned over the whole Globe, such as is now enjoyed by the inhabitants of Jupiter; a world, which, as M. Camille Flammarion says:

Is not subject like our own to the vicissitudes of seasons nor to
abrupt alternations of temperature, but is enriched with all the
treasures of eternal spring.(314)

Those Astronomers who maintain that Jupiter is in a molten condition, in our sense of the term, are invited to settle their dispute with this learned French Astronomer.(315) It must, however, be always borne in mind that the “eternal spring” referred to is only a condition _cognized as such by the Jovians_. It is not “spring,” _as we know it_. In this reservation is to be found the reconciliation between the two theories here cited. Both embrace _partial_ truths.

It is thus a universal tradition that mankind has evolved gradually into its present shape from an almost transparent condition of texture, and neither by miracle nor by sexual intercourse. Moreover, this is in full accord with the ancient Philosophies; from those of Egypt and India, with their Divine Dynasties, down to that of Plato. And all these universal beliefs must be classed with the “presentiments” and “obstinate conceptions,” some of them ineradicable, in popular faiths. Such beliefs, as remarked by Louis Figuier, are:

Frequently the outcome of the wisdom and observation of an
infinite number of generations of men.... [For], a tradition which
has a uniform and universal existence, has all the weight of
scientific testimony.(316)

And there is more than one such tradition in the Paurânic allegories, as has been shown. Moreover, the doctrine that the First Race of mankind was formed out of the Chhâyâs, or Astral Images, of the Pitris, is fully corroborated in the _Zohar_:

In the _Tzelem_, shadow image of Elohim [the Pitris], He made Adam
(man).(317)

It has been repeatedly urged as an objection that, however high the degree of metaphysical thought in ancient India, yet the old Egyptians had nothing but crass idolatry and zoolatry to boast of; Hermes, as alleged, being the work of Greek Mystics who lived in Egypt. To this, an answer can be given: a direct proof that the Egyptians believed in the Secret Doctrine is, that it was taught to them at Initiation. Let the objectors open the _Eclogæ Physicœ et Ethicæ_ of Stobæus, the Greek compiler of ancient fragments, who lived in the fifth century, A.D. The following is a transcription by him of an old Hermetic fragment, showing the Egyptian theory of the Soul. Translated word for word, it says:

From one Soul, that of All, spring all the souls, which spread
themselves as if purposely distributed through the world. These
souls undergo many transformations; those which are already
creeping creatures turn into aquatic animals; from these aquatic
animals are derived land animals; and from the latter the birds.
From the beings who live aloft in the air (heaven) men are born.
On reaching that status of men, the souls receive the principle of
(conscious) immortality, become spirits, then pass into the choir
of Gods.

23. THE SELF‐BORN WERE THE CHHÂYÂS, THE SHADOWS FROM THE BODIES OF THE SONS OF TWILIGHT. NEITHER WATER NOR FIRE COULD DESTROY THEM. THEIR SONS WERE.(318)

This verse cannot be understood without the help of the Commentaries. It means that the First Root‐Race, the “Shadows” of the Progenitors, could not be injured, or destroyed by death. Being so ethereal and so little human in constitution, they could not be affected by any element—flood or fire. But their “Sons,” the Second Root‐Race, could be and were so destroyed. As the Progenitors merged wholly in their own Astral Bodies, which were their progeny, so that progeny was absorbed in its descendants, the “Sweat‐born.” These were the Second Humanity—composed of the most heterogeneous gigantic semi‐human monsters—the first attempts of material nature at building human bodies. The ever‐blooming lands (Greenland, among others) of the Second Continent were transformed, successively, from Edens with their eternal spring, into hyperborean Hades. This transformation was due to the displacement of the great waters of the Globe, to oceans changing their beds; and the bulk of the Second Race perished in this first great throe of the evolution and consolidation of the Globe during the human period. Of such great cataclysms there have already been four.(319) And we may expect a fifth for ourselves in due course of time.

A Few Words About “Deluges” And “Noahs.”

The accounts in the various _Purânas_ about our Progenitors are as contradictory, _in their details_, as everything else. Thus while, in the _Rig Veda_, Idâ, or Ilâ, is called the Instructress of Vaivasvata Manu, Sâyana makes of her a Goddess presiding over the Earth, and the _Shatapatha Brâhmana_ shows her to be the Manu’s daughter, an offspring of _his sacrifice_, and later on, his (Vaivasvata’s) _wife, by whom he begat the race of Manus_. In the _Purânas_ she is, again, Vaivasvata’s daughter, yet the wife of Budha (Wisdom), the illegitimate son of the Moon (Soma) and the planet Jupiter’s (Brihaspati’s) wife, Târâ. All this, which seems a jumble to the profane, is full of philosophical meaning to the Occultist. On the very face of the narrative a secret and sacred meaning is perceivable; all the details, however, being so purposely mixed up that the experienced eye of an Initiate alone can follow them and place the events in their proper order.

The story as told in the _Mahâbhârata_ strikes the key‐note, and yet it needs to be explained by the secret sense contained in the _Bhagavad Gîtâ_. It is the _prologue_ to the drama of our (Fifth) Humanity. While Vaivasvata was engaged in devotion on the river bank, a fish craves his protection from a bigger fish. He saves it and places it in a jar; where, growing larger and larger, it communicates to him the news of the forthcoming Deluge. This Fish is the well‐known Matsya Avatâra, the first Avatâra of Vishnu, the Dagon(320) of the Chaldæan Xisuthrus, and many other things besides. The story is too well known to need repetition. Vishnu orders a ship to be built, in which Manu is saved along with the seven Rishis, according to the _Mahâbhârata_; this, however, being absent from other texts. Here the seven Rishis stand for the seven Races, the seven Principles, and various other things; for there is again a double mystery involved in this manifold allegory.

We have said elsewhere that the Great Flood had several meanings, and that it referred, as also does the “Fall,” to both spiritual and physical, both cosmic and terrestrial, events: as above, so it is below. The Ship or Ark—Navis—in short, being the symbol of the female generative Principle, is typified in the heavens by the Moon, and on Earth by the Womb; both being the vessels and bearers of the seeds of life and being, which the Sun, or Vishnu, the male Principle, vivifies and fructifies. The First Cosmic Flood refers to Primordial Creation, or the formation of Heaven and the Earths; in which case Chaos and the great Deep stand for the “Flood,” and the Moon for the “Mother,” from whom proceed all the life‐germs.(321) But the Terrestrial Deluge and its story has also its dual application. In one case it has reference to that mystery when mankind was saved from utter destruction, by the mortal woman being made the receptacle of the human seed at the end of the Third Race,(322) and in the other to the real and historical Atlantean Submersion. In both cases the “Host”—or the Manu which saved the “seed”—is called Vaivasvata Manu. Hence the diversity between the Paurânic and other versions; while in the _Shatapatha Brâhmana_, Vaivasvata produces a daughter and begets from her the race of Manu—a reference to the first human Manushyas, who had to create women by Will (Kriyâshakti), before they were naturally born from the Hermaphrodites as an independent sex, and were, therefore, regarded as their creator’s “daughters.” The Paurânic accounts make Idâ, or Ilâ, the wife of Budha (Wisdom). This version refers to the events of the Atlantean Flood, when Vaivasvata, the great Sage on Earth, saved the Fifth Root‐Race from being destroyed along with the remnants of the Fourth.

This is shown very clearly in the _Bhagavad Gîtâ_, where Krishna is made to say:

The seven Great Rishis, the _four preceding_ Manus, partaking of
my essence, were born from my mind: from them sprang (was born)
the human race and the world.(323)

Here the four preceding Manus, out of the seven, are the four Races(324) which have already lived, for Krishna belongs to the Fifth Race, his death having inaugurated the Kali Yuga. Thus Vaivasvata Manu, the son of Sûrya, the Sun, and the Saviour of our Race, is connected with the “Seed of Life,” both physically and spiritually. But, at present, while speaking of all, we have to concern ourselves only with the first two.

The “Deluge” is undeniably a “universal tradition.” “Glacial Periods” were numerous, and so were the “Deluges,” for various reasons. Stockwell and Croll enumerate some half‐dozen Glacial Periods and subsequent Deluges—the earliest of all being dated by them 850,000, and the last about 100,000 years ago.(325) But which was _our_ Deluge? Assuredly the former, the one which to this date remains recorded in the traditions of all the peoples from the remotest antiquity; the one that finally swept away the last peninsulas of Atlantis, beginning with Ruta and Daitya and ending with the comparatively small island mentioned by Plato. This is shown by the agreement of certain details in all the legends. It was the last of its gigantic character. The little deluge, the traces of which Baron Bunsen found in Central Asia, and which he places at about 10,000 years B.C., had nothing to do with either the _semi_‐universal Deluge, or Noah’s Flood—the latter being a purely mythical rendering of old traditions—nor even with the submersion of the last Atlantean island; or, at least, having with them only a moral connection.

Our Fifth Race—the non‐initiated portions of it—hearing of many Deluges, have confused them, and now know of but one. This one altered the whole aspect of the Globe in its interchange, and shifting, of land and sea.

We may compare the tradition of the Peruvians that:

The Incas, _seven_ in number, have repeopled the earth after the
deluge.(326)

Humboldt mentions the Mexican version of the same legend, but confuses somewhat the details of the still‐preserved legend concerning the American Noah. Nevertheless, the eminent Naturalist mentions _twice seven_ companions and the “divine bird” which preceded the boat of the Aztecs, and thus makes fifteen elect instead of the seven and the fourteen. This was written probably under some involuntary reminiscence of Moses, who is said to have mentioned fifteen grandsons of Noah, who escaped with their grandsire. Then again Xisuthrus, the Chaldæan Noah, is saved and translated “alive” to heaven—like Enoch—with the seven Gods, the Kabirim, or the seven divine Titans. Again the Chinese Yao has _seven_ figures which sail with him and which he will “animate” when he lands, and use for “human seed.” Osiris, when he enters the Ark, or Solar Boat, takes _seven_ Rays with him, etc.

Sanchuniathon makes the Aletæ or Titans (the Kabirim) contemporary with Agruerus, the great Phœnician God—whom Faber sought to identify with Noah;(327) further, it is suspected that the name “Titan” is derived from Tit‐Ain,—the “fountains of the chaotic abyss”(328) (Tit‐Theus, or Tityus is the “divine deluge”); and thus the Titans, who are _seven_, are shown to be connected with the Flood and the seven Rishis saved by Vaivasvata Manu.(329)

These Titans are the sons of Kronos, Time, and Rhea, the Earth; and as Agruerus, Saturn and Sydyk are one and the same personage, and as the seven Kabiri are also said to be the sons of Sydyk or Kronos‐Saturn, the Kabiri and Titans are identical. For once the pious Faber was right in his conclusions when he wrote:

I have no doubt of the seven Titans or Cabiri being the same also
as the seven Rishis of the Hindoo mythology (?), who are said to
have escaped in a boat along with Menu the head (?) of the
family.(330)

But he is less fortunate in his speculations when he adds:

The Hindoos, in their wild _legends_ have variously perverted the
_history_ of the Noachidæ (? !), yet it is remarkable that they
seem to have religiously adhered to the number seven:(331) hence
Capt. Wilford very judiciously observes, that, “perhaps, the seven
Menus, the seven Brahmâdicas, with the seven Rishis, are the same,
and make only seven individual persons.(332) The seven Brahmâdicas
were _prajâpatis_, or lords of the _prajas_, or creatures. From
them mankind was born, and they are probably the same with the
seven Menus.... These seven grand ancestors of the human race were
... created for the purpose of replenishing the earth with
inhabitants.”(333) The mutual resemblance of the Cabiri, the
Titans, the Rishis, and the Noëtic family, is too striking to be
the effect of mere accident.(334)

Faber was led into this mistake, and subsequently built his entire theory concerning the Kabiri, on the fact that the name of the scriptural Japhet is on the list of the Titans contained in a verse of the Orphic Hymns. According to Orpheus the names of the seven Arkite Titans—whom Faber refuses to identify with the _impious_ Titans, their descendants—were Kœus, Krœus, Phorcys, Cronus, Oceanus, Hyperion, and _Iapetus_.

Κοιον τε, Κροιον τε μεγαν, Φορκυν τε κραταιον,
Και Κρονον, Ὠκεανον θ᾽, Ὑπεριονα τ᾽, Ἰαπετον τε.(335)

But why could not the Babylonian Ezra have adopted the name of Iapetus for one of Noah’s sons? The Kabiri, who are the Titans, are also called Manes and their mother Mania, according to Arnobius.(336) The Hindûs can therefore claim with far more reason that the Manes mean their Manus, and that Mania is the _female_ Manu of the _Râmâyana_. Mania is Ilâ, or Idâ, the wife and daughter of Vaivasvata Manu, from whom “he begat the race of Manus.” Like Rhea, the mother of the Titans, she is the Earth—Sâyana making her the Goddess of the Earth—and she is but the second edition and repetition of Vâch. Both Idâ and Vâch are turned into males and females; Idâ becoming Sudyumna, and Vâch, the “female Virâj,” turning into a woman in order to punish the Gandharvas; one version referring to cosmic and divine Theogony, the other to the later period. The Manes and Mania of Arnobius are names of Indian origin, appropriated by the Greeks and Latins and disfigured by them.

Thus it is no accident, but the result of one archaic doctrine, common to all, of which the Israëlites, through Ezra, the author of the modernized Mosaic books, were the latest adapters. So unceremonious were they with other people’s property, that the Pseudo‐Berosus,(337) shows that Titæa—of whom Diodorus Siculus(338) makes the mother of the Titans or Diluvians—was the _wife of Noah_. Faber calls him the “Pseudo‐Berosus,” yet accepts the information in order to register one proof more that the Pagans have borrowed all their Gods from the Jews, by transforming patriarchal material. According to our humble opinion, this is one of the best proofs possible of exactly the reverse. It shows as clearly as facts can show, that it is the Biblical pseudo‐personages which are all borrowed from Pagan myths, if myths they must be. It shows, at any rate, that Berosus was well aware of the source of _Genesis_, and that it bore the same cosmic astronomical character as the allegories of Isis‐Osiris, and the Ark, and other older “Arkite” symbols. For, Berosus says that “Titæa Magna” was afterwards called Aretia,(339) and worshipped with the Earth; and this identifies Titæa, Noah’s consort, with Rhea, the Mother of the Titans, and with Idâ; both being Goddesses who preside over the Earth, and the Mothers of the Manus and Manes, or Titan‐Kabiri. And Titæa‐Aretia was worshipped as Horchia, says the same Berosus, and this is a title of Vesta, Goddess of the Earth.

Sicanus deificavit Aretiam, et nominavit eam linguâ Janigenâ
Horchiam.(340)

Scarcely an ancient poet of historic or prehistoric days fails to mention the sinking of the two continents—often called isles—in one form or another. Hence the destruction, besides Atlantis, of the Phlegyan Island. Pausanius and Nonnus both tell how:

From its deep‐rooted base the Phlegyan isle
Stern Neptune shook, and plunged beneath the waves
Its impious inhabitants.(341)

Faber felt convinced that the Phlegyan Island was Atlantis. But all such allegories are more or less distorted echoes of the Hindû tradition about that great Cataclysm, which befell the Fourth, really human, though gigantic, Race, the one which preceded the Âryan. Yet, as just said, like all other legends, the legend of the Deluge has more than one meaning. It refers, in Theogony, to _pre‐cosmic transformations_, to _spiritual correlations_—however absurd the term may sound to a scientific ear—and also to subsequent Cosmogony; to the great Flood of Waters (Matter) in Chaos, awakened and fructified by those Spirit‐Rays which were swamped by, and _perished_ in, the mysterious differentiation—a pre‐cosmic mystery, the Prologue to the drama of Being. Anu, Bel, and Noah preceded Adam Kadmon, Adam the Red, and Noah; just as Brahmâ, Vishnu, and Shiva preceded Vaivasvata and the rest.(342)

All this goes to show that the _semi_‐universal deluge known to Geology—the first Glacial Period—must have occurred just at the time allotted to it by the Secret Doctrine: namely, 200,000 years, in round numbers, after the commencement of our Fifth Race, or about the time assigned by Messrs. Croll and Stockwell for the first Glacial Period: _i.e._, about 850,000 years ago. Thus, as the latter disturbance is attributed by Geologists and Astronomers to “an extreme eccentricity of the earth’s orbit,” and as the Secret Doctrine attributes it to the same source, but with the addition of another factor, the shifting of the Earth’s axis—a proof of which may be found in the _Book of Enoch_,(343) if the veiled language of the _Purânas_ be not understood—all this should tend to show that the Ancients knew something of the “modern discoveries” of Science. Enoch, when speaking of “the great inclination of the Earth,” which “is in travail,” is quite significant and clear.

Is not this evident? Nuah is Noah, _floating on the waters_ in his
ark; the latter being the emblem of the Argha, or Moon, the
feminine Principle; Noah is the “Spirit” falling into Matter. We
find him, as soon as he descends upon the Earth, planting a
vineyard, drinking of the wine, and getting drunk thereon, _i.e._,
the pure Spirit becomes intoxicated as soon as it is finally
imprisoned in Matter. The seventh chapter of _Genesis_ is only
another version of the first. Thus, while the latter reads: “And
darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God
moved upon the face of the waters”; in the former it is said: “And
the waters prevailed; ... and the ark went [with Noah, the Spirit]
upon the face of the waters.” Thus Noah, if identical with the
Chaldæan Nuah, is the Spirit vivifying Matter, which latter is
Chaos, represented by the Deep, or the Waters of the Flood. In the
Babylonian legend (the pre‐cosmical blended with the terrestrial
event) it is Istar (Ashteroth, or Venus, the Lunar Goddess) who is
shut up in the ark and sends out a _dove_ in search of dry
land.(344)

George Smith notes in the “Tablets,” first the creation of the
Moon, and then that of the Sun: “Its beauty and perfection are
extolled, and the regularity of its orbit, which led to its being
considered the type of a judge and the regulator of the world.” If
this story related simply to a cosmogonical cataclysm‐even were
this latter universal‐why should the goddess Istar or Ashteroth,
the Moon, speak of the _creation of the sun_ after the deluge? The
waters might have reached as high as the mountain of Nizir of the
Chaldæan version, or Jebel Djudi, the deluge mountains of the
Arabian legend, or yet Ararat of the Biblical narrative, and even
the Himalaya of the Hindû tradition, and yet not have reached the
Sun; the _Bible_ itself stopped short of such a miracle! It is
evident that the deluge to the people who first recorded it had
another meaning, less problematical and far more philosophical
than that of a _universal_ deluge, of which there are no
geological traces whatever.(345)

As all such Cataclysms are periodical and cyclical, and as Manu Vaivasvata figures as a _generic_ character, under various circumstances and events, there seems to be no serious objection to the supposition that the first “great flood” had an allegorical, as well as a cosmic meaning, and that it happened at the end of the Satya Yuga, the “Age of Truth,” when the Second Root‐Race, “the Manu with bones,” made its primeval appearance as the “Sweat‐born.”

The Second Flood—the so‐called “universal”—which affected the Fourth Root‐ Race—now conveniently regarded by Theology as “the accursed race of giants,” the Cainites, and the “sons of Ham”—is the flood which was first perceived by Geology. If one carefully compares the accounts in the various legends of the Chaldees and other exoteric works of the nations, it will be found that all of them agree with the orthodox narratives given in the Brâhmanical books. And it may be perceived that while, in the first account, “there is no God or mortal yet on Earth,” when Manu Vaivasvata lands on Himavân, in the second, the Seven Rishis are allowed to keep him company; thus showing that whereas some accounts refer to the Sidereal and Cosmic Flood before the so‐called “Creation,” the others treat, one of the Great Flood of Matter on Earth, and the other of a real watery deluge. In the _Shatapatha Brâhmana_, Manu finds that the Flood had swept away all living creatures, and he alone was left—_i.e._, _the seed of life_ alone remained from the previous Dissolution of the Universe, or Mahâpralaya, after a “Day of Brahmâ”; and the _Mahâbhârata_ refers simply to the geological cataclysm which swept away nearly all the Fourth Race to make room for the Fifth. Therefore is Vaivasvata Manu shown under three distinct attributes in our Esoteric Cosmogony:(346) as the “Root‐Manu,” on Globe A, in the First Round; (_b_) as the “_Seed_ of Life,” on Globe D, in the Fourth Round; and (_c_) as the “Seed of Man,” at the beginning of every Root‐Race—in our Fifth Race especially. The very commencement of the latter witnesses, during the Dvâpara Yuga,(347) the destruction of the accursed sorcerers;

Of that island [Plato speaks only of its last island] beyond the
Pillars of Hercules, in the Atlantic Ocean, from which there was
an easy transition to other islands in the neighbourhood of
another _large continent_ [America].

It is this Atlantic Land which was connected with the “White Island,” and this White Island was Ruta; but it was not the Atala and the “White Devil” of Colonel Wilford,(348) as already shown. It may well be remarked here that the Dvâpara Yuga lasts 864,000 years, according to the Sanskrit texts; and that, if the Kali Yuga began only about 5,000 years ago, that it is just 869,000 years since that destruction took place. Again, these figures are not very widely different from those given by the Geologists, who place their Glacial Period at 850,000 years ago.

The _Shatapatha_ then tells us that a woman was produced who came to Manu and declared _herself his daughter, with whom he lived and begat the offspring of Manu_. This refers to the physiological transformation of sexes during the Third Root‐Race. And the allegory is too transparently clear to need much explanation. Of course, as already remarked, in the separation of sexes an androgyne being was supposed to divide his body into two halves—as in the case of Brahmâ and Vâch, and even of Adam and Eve—and thus the female is, in a certain sense, his daughter, just as he will be her son, “the flesh of his [and her] flesh and the bone of his [and her] bone.” Let it be also well remembered that not one of our Orientalists has yet learned to discern in those “contradictions and amazing nonsense,” as some call the _Purânas_, that a reference to a Yuga may mean a Round, a Root‐Race, and often a sub‐race, as well as form a page torn out of pre‐cosmic Theogony. This double and triple meaning is proved by various references to one and the same individual apparently, under an identical name, while in reality the references are to events divided by entire Kalpas. A good instance is that of Ilâ. She is first represented as one thing and then as another. In the exoteric legends it is said that Manu Vaivasvata, desiring to create sons, instituted a sacrifice to Mitra and Varuna; but, through a mistake of the officiating Brâhman, a daughter only was obtained—Ilâ or Idâ. Then, “through the favour of the two deities,” her _sex is changed_ and she becomes a man, Sudyumna. Then she is again turned into a woman, and so on; the fable adding that Shiva and his consort were pleased that “she should be a male one month and a female another.” This has a direct reference to the Third Root‐Race, whose men were androgynes. But some very learned Orientalists(349) think and have declared that:

Idâ is primarily food, nourishment, or a libation of milk; thence
a stream of praise, personified as the goddess of speech.

The “profane” are not told, however, the reason why “a libation of milk,” or “a stream of praise,” should be _male_ and _female_ by turn: unless, indeed, there is some “internal evidence” which the Occultists fail to perceive.

In its most mystical meaning, the union of Svâyambhuva Manu with Vâch‐ Shata‐Rûpâ, his own daughter—this being the first “euhemerization” of the dual principle of which Vaivasvata Manu and Ilâ are a secondary and a third form—stands in cosmic symbolism as the Root‐Life, the Germ from which spring all the Solar Systems, the Worlds, Angels and the Gods. For, as says Vishnu:

From Manu all creation, gods, Asuras, man must be produced:
By him the world must be created, that which moves and moveth not.

But we may find worse opponents than even the Western Scientists and Orientalists. If, on the question of figures, Brâhmans may agree with our teaching, we are not so sure that some of the orthodox conservatives may not raise objections to the modes of procreation attributed to their Pitri Devatâs. We shall be called upon to produce the works from which we quote, and we will invite them to read their own _Purânas_ a little more carefully and with an eye to the esoteric meaning. And then, we repeat again, they will find, under the veil of more or less transparent allegories, every statement made herein corroborated by their own works. One or two instances have already been given as regards the appearance of the Second Race, which is called the “Sweat‐born.” This allegory is regarded as a fairy‐tale, and yet it conceals a psycho‐physiological phenomenon, and one of the greatest mysteries of Nature.

But in view of the chronological statements made herein, it is natural to ask:

COULD MEN EXIST 18,000,000 YEARS AGO?

To this Occultism answers in the affirmative, notwithstanding all scientific objectors. Moreover, this duration covers only the Vaivasvata‐ Manu Man, _i.e._, the male and female entity already separated into distinct sexes. The two and a half Races that preceded that event may have lived 300,000,000 years ago for all that Science can tell. For the geological and physical difficulties in the way of the theory could not exist for the _primeval, ethereal_ Man of the Occult Teachings. _The whole issue of the quarrel between the Profane and the Esoteric Sciences depends upon the belief in, and demonstration of, the existence of an Astral Body within the Physical_, the former independent of the latter. Paul d’Assier, the Positivist, seems to have proven the fact pretty plainly,(350) not to speak of the accumulated testimony of the ages, and that of the modern “Spiritualists” and Mystics. It will be found difficult to reject this fact in our age of proofs, tests, and ocular demonstrations.

The Secret Doctrine maintains that, notwithstanding the general cataclysms and disturbances of the Fourth Round of our Globe, which—owing to its being the period of its greatest physical development, for the Fourth Round is the middle‐point of the Life Cycle allotted to it—were far more terrible and intense than during any of the three preceding Rounds—the Cycles of its earlier psychic and spiritual life and of its semi‐ethereal conditions—Physical Humanity has existed upon it for the last 18,000,000 years.(351) This period was preceded by 300,000,000 years of the mineral and vegetable development. To this, all those who refuse to accept the theory of a “boneless,” purely ethereal, man, will object. Science, which knows only of physical organisms, will feel indignant; and materialistic Theology still more so. The former will object on logical and reasonable grounds, based on the preconception that all animate organisms have always existed on the same plane of materiality in all the ages; the latter on a tissue of most absurd fictions. The ridiculous claim usually brought forward by Theologians is based on the virtual assumption that mankind (read Christians) on this Planet have the honour of being the only human beings in the whole Kosmos, who dwell on a Globe, and that they are consequently, the best of their kind.(352)

The Occultists, who believe firmly in the teachings of the Mother‐ Philosophy, repel the objections of both Theologians and Scientists. They maintain, on their side, that, even during those periods when there must have been insufferable heat, even at the two poles, with successive floods, upheaval of the valleys and constant shifting of the great waters and seas, none of these circumstances could form an impediment to human life and organization, such _as is assigned by them_ to early mankind. Neither the heterogeneity of ambient regions, full of deleterious gases, nor the perils of a crust hardly consolidated, could prevent the First and Second Races from making their appearance even during the Carboniferous, or the Silurian Age itself.

Thus the Monads destined to animate future Races were ready for the new transformation. They had passed their phases of “immetalization,” of plant and animal life, from the lowest to the highest, and were waiting for their human, more intelligent form. Yet what could the Plastic Modellers do but follow the laws of evolutionary Nature? Could they, as claimed by the biblical dead‐letter, form, “Lord‐God”‐like, or as Pygmalion in the Greek allegory, Adam‐Galatea out of volcanic dust, and breathe a “Living Soul” into Man? No; because the Soul was already there, latent in its Monad, and needed but a “coating.” Pygmalion, who fails to _animate his statue_, and Bahak Zivo of the Nazaræan Gnostics, who fails to construct “a human soul in the creature,” are, as conceptions, far more philosophical and scientific than Adam, taken in the dead‐letter sense, or the biblical Elohim‐Creators. Esoteric Philosophy, which teaches spontaneous generation—after the Shishta and Prajâpati have thrown the seed of life on the Earth—shows the Lower Angels able to construct _physical_ man only, even with the help of Nature, after having evolved the Ethereal Form out of themselves, and leaving the physical form to evolve gradually from its ethereal, or what would now be called, protoplasmic, model.

This will again be objected to; “spontaneous generation” is an exploded theory, we shall be told. Pasteur’s experiments disposed of it twenty years ago, and Professor Tyndall is against it. Well, suppose he is? He ought to know that, should spontaneous generation be indeed proven impossible in our present world‐period and actual conditions—which the Occultists deny—still it would be no demonstration that it could not have taken place under different cosmic conditions, not only in the seas of the Laurentian Period, but even on the then convulsed Earth. It would be interesting to know how Science could ever account for the appearance of species and life on Earth, especially of Man, once that she rejects both the biblical teachings and spontaneous generation. Pasteur’s observations, however, are far from being perfect or proven. Blanchard and Dr. Lutaud reject their importance, and, in fact, show that they have none. The question is so far left _sub judice_, as well as the other as to when, at what period, life appeared on the Earth? As to the idea that Hæckel’s Moneron—a pinch of salt!—has solved the problem of the origin of life; it is simply absurd. Those Materialists, who feel inclined to pooh‐pooh the theory of the “Self‐existent,” the “Self‐born Heavenly Man,” represented as an Ethereal, Astral Man, must excuse even a tyro in Occultism laughing, in his turn, at some speculations of Modern Thought. After proving most learnedly that the primitive speck of Protoplasm (Moneron) is neither animal nor plant, but both, and that it has _no ancestors_ among either of these, since it is that Moneron which serves as a point of departure for all organized existence, we are finally told that the Monera are _their own ancestors_. This may be very scientific, but it is very metaphysical also; too much so, even for the Occultist.

If spontaneous generation has changed its methods now—owing, perhaps, to accumulated material on hand—so as to almost escape detection, it was, nevertheless, in full swing in the genesis of terrestrial life. Even the simple physical form and the evolution of species show how Nature proceeds. The scale‐bound, gigantic Saurian, the winged Pterodactyl, the Megalosaurus, and the hundred feet long Iguanodon of the later period, are the transformations of the earliest representatives of the animal kingdom found in the sediments of the primary epoch. There was a time when all the above enumerated “antediluvian” monsters appeared as filamentoid Infusoria without shell or crust, with neither nerves, muscles, organs nor sex, and reproduced their kind by gemmation; as do microscopical animals also, the architects and builders of our mountain ranges, agreeably to the teachings of Science. Why not man in this case? Why should he not have followed the same law in his growth, _i.e._, gradual condensation? Every unprejudiced person would prefer to believe that Primeval Humanity had at first an Ethereal—or, if so preferred, a huge filamentoid, jelly‐like Form, evolved by Gods or natural “Forces,” which grew, condensed throughout millions of ages, and became gigantic in its physical impulse and tendency, until it settled into the huge, physical form of the Fourth Race Man—rather than believe him created of the dust of the Earth (literally), or from some unknown anthropoid ancestor.

Nor does our Esoteric theory clash with scientific data, except on first appearance, as Dr. A. Wilson, F.R.S., says, in a letter to _Knowledge_ (Dec. 23, 1881):

Evolution—rather nature, in the light of evolution—has only been
studied for some _twenty‐five years or so_. That is, of course, a
mere fractional space in the history of human thought.

And just because of this we do not lose all hope that Materialistic Science will amend its ways, and will gradually accept the Esoteric Teachings—if even at first divorced from their (to Science) too metaphysical elements.

Has the last word on the subject of human evolution yet been said? As Processor Huxley says:

Each such answer to the great question [man’s real place in
nature], invariably asserted by the followers of its propounder,
if not by himself, to be _complete and final_, remains in high
authority and esteem, it may be for one century, it may be for
twenty: but, as invariably, Time proves each reply to have been a
_mere approximation to the truth—tolerable chiefly on account of
the ignorance of those by whom it was accepted, and wholly
intolerable when tested by the larger knowledge of their
successors_.(353)

Will this eminent Darwinian admit the possibility of his “Pithecoid Ancestry” being assignable to the list of “wholly intolerable beliefs,” in the “larger knowledge” of Occultists? But whence the savage? Mere “rising to the civilized state” does not account for the evolution of form.

In the same letter, “The Evolution of Man,” Dr. Wilson makes other strange confessions. Thus, he observes, in answer to the queries put to _Knowledge_, by “G. M.”:

“Has evolution effected any change in man? If so, what change? If
not, why not?”... If we refuse to admit [as science does] that man
was created a perfect being, and then became degraded, there
exists only another supposition—that of evolution. If man has
arisen from a savage to a civilized state, that surely is
evolution. _We do not yet know because such knowledge is difficult
to acquire, if the human frame is subject to the same influences
as those of lower animals._ But there is little doubt that
elevation from savagery to civilized life means and implies
“evolution,” and that of considerable extent. Mentally, man’s
evolution cannot be doubted; the ever‐widening sphere of thought
has sprung from small and rude beginnings, like language itself.
But man’s ways of life, his power of adaptation to his
surroundings, and countless other circumstances, have made the
facts and course of his “evolution” very difficult to trace.

This very difficulty ought to make the Evolutionists more cautious in their affirmations. But why is evolution impossible, if “man was created a perfect being, and then became degraded”? At best it can only apply to the _outward, physical man_. As remarked in _Isis Unveiled_, Darwin’s evolution begins at the middle point, instead of commencing for man, as for everything else, from universals. The Aristotle‐Baconian method may have its advantages, but it has, undeniably, already demonstrated its defects. Pythagoras and Plato, who proceeded from universals downwards, are now shown more learned, in the light of Modern Science, than was Aristotle. For the latter opposed and denounced the idea of the revolution of the Earth and even of its rotundity, when writing:

Almost all those who affirm that they have studied heaven in its
uniformity, claim that the earth is in the centre, but the
philosophers of the Italian School, otherwise called the
Pythagoreans, teach entirely the contrary.

This, because the Pythagoreans were Initiates, and followed the deductive method. Whereas Aristotle, the father of the inductive system, complained of those who taught that:

The centre of our system was occupied by the sun, and the earth
was only a star, which by a rotatory motion around the same
centre, produces night and day.(354)

The same with regard to man. The theory taught in the Secret Doctrine, and now expounded, is the only one, which—without falling into the absurdity of a “miraculous” man created out of the dust of the earth, or the still greater fallacy of man evolving from a pinch of lime‐salt, the ex‐ protoplasmic Moneron—can account for his appearance on Earth.

_Analogy_ is the guiding law in Nature, the only true Ariadne’s thread that can lead us, through the inextricable paths of her domain, toward her primal and final mysteries. Nature, as a creative potency, is infinite, and no generation of Physical Scientists can ever boast of having exhausted the list of her ways and methods, however uniform the laws upon which she proceeds. If we can conceive of a ball of “fire‐mist”—as it rolls through æons of time in the interstellar spaces—becoming gradually a Planet, a self‐luminous Globe, to settle into a _man‐bearing_ World or Earth, thus having passed from a soft plastic body into a rock‐bound Globe; and if we see on it everything evolving from the non‐nucleated jelly‐speck that becomes the Sarcode(355) of the Moneron, then passes from its protistic state(356) into the form of an animal, to grow into a gigantic reptilian monster of the Mesozoic times; then dwindling again into the (comparatively) dwarfish crocodile, now confined solely to tropical regions, and the universally common lizard(357)—if we can conceive all this, then how can man alone escape the general law? “There were giants on earth in those days” says _Genesis_, repeating the statement of all the other Eastern Scriptures; and the Titans are founded on an anthropological and physiological fact.

And, as the hard‐shelled crustacean was once upon a time a jelly‐speck, a “thoroughly homogeneous particle of albumen in a firmly adhesive condition,” so was the outward covering of primitive man, his early “coat of skin,” _plus_ an immortal spiritual Monad, and a psychic temporary form and body within that shell. The modern, hard, muscular man, almost impervious to any climate, was, perhaps, some 25,000,000 years ago, just what the Hæckelian Moneron is, strictly an “organism without organs,” an entirely homogeneous substance with a structureless albumen body within, and a human form only outwardly.

No man of Science has the right, in this century, to find the figures of the Brâhmans in the question of chronology preposterous; for their own calculations often exceed by far the claims made by Esoteric Science. This may easily be shown.

Helmholtz calculated that the cooling of our Earth from a temperature of 2,000° to 200° Cent. must have occupied a period of no less than 350,000,000 years. Western Science (including Geology) seems generally to allow our Globe an age of about 500,000,000 years altogether. Sir William Thomson, however, limits the appearance of the earliest vegetable life to 100,000,000 years ago—a statement respectfully contradicted by the Archaic Records. Speculations, furthermore, vary daily in the domains of Science. Meanwhile, some Geologists are very much opposed to such limitation. Volger calculates:

That the time requisite for the deposit of the strata known to us
must at least have amounted to 648 millions of years.

Both time and space are infinite and eternal.

The earth, as a material existence, is indeed infinite; the
changes only which it has undergone can be determined by finite
periods of time....

We must therefore assume that the starry heaven is not merely in
space, which no astronomer doubts, but also in time, without
beginning or end; that it never was created, and is
imperishable.(358)

Czolbe repeats exactly what the Occultists say. But the Âryan Occultists, we may be told, knew nothing of these later speculations. As Coleman says:

They were even ignorant of the globular form of our earth.

To this the _Vishnu Purâna_ contains a reply, which has forced certain Orientalists to open their eyes very wide.

The sun is stationed, for all time, in the middle of the day, and
over against mid‐night, in all the Dvîpas [Continents], Maitreya.
But the rising and the setting _of the sun_ being perpetually
opposite _to each other_,—and, in the same way, all the cardinal
points, and so the cross‐points, Maitreya, people speak of the
rising of the sun where they see it; and where the sun disappears,
there, _to them_, is his setting. Of the sun, which is always _in
one and the same place_, there is neither setting nor rising; for
what is called rising and setting are _only_ the seeing and the
not seeing the sun.(359)

To this Fitzedward Hall remarks:

The heliocentricism taught in this passage is remarkable. It is
contradicted, however, a little further on.(360)

Contradicted _purposely_, because it was a secret temple‐teaching. Martin Haug remarked the same teaching in another passage. It is useless to calumniate the Âryans any longer.

To return to the chronology of the Geologists and Anthropologists. We are afraid Science has no reasonable grounds on which she could oppose the views of the Occultists in this direction. Except that “of man, the highest organic being of creation, not a trace was found in the primary strata; only in the uppermost, the so‐called alluvial layer,” is all that can be urged, so far. That man was _not the last member in the mammalian family_, but the _first_ in _this_ Round, is something that Science will be forced to acknowledge one day. A similar view also has already been mooted in France on very high authority.