The Secret Doctrine · 65 of 137

Volume II — Anthropogenesis: Stanza VI — Commentary

Our teachings show that, while it is quite correct to say that Nature had, at one time, built round the human astral form an ape‐like external shape, it is also as correct that this shape was no more that of the “missing link,” than were the multitudinous other coverings of that astral form, during the course of its natural evolution through all the kingdoms of Nature. Nor was it, as has been shown, on this Fourth Round Planet that such evolution took place, but only during the First, Second, and Third Rounds, when Man was, in turn, “a stone, a plant, and an animal” until he became what he was in the First Root‐Race of present Humanity. The real line of evolution differs from the Darwinian, and the two systems are irreconcilable, unless the latter is divorced from the dogmas of “natural selection” and the like. Indeed, between the Moneron of Hæckel and the Sarîsripa of Manu, there lies an impassable chasm in the shape of the Jîva; for the “human” Monad, whether “immetallized” in the stone‐atom, or “in‐vegetalized” in the plant, or “inanimalized” in the animal, is still ever a divine, hence also a human Monad. It ceases to be human only when it becomes absolutely divine. The terms “mineral,” “vegetable” and “animal” Monad are intended to create a superficial distinction: there is no such thing as a Monad (Jîva) other than divine, and consequently having once been, or having in the future to become, human. The latter term has to remain meaningless unless this difference is well understood. The Monad is a drop out of the Shoreless Ocean beyond, or, to be correct, within, the plane of primæval differentiation. It is divine in its higher and human in its lower condition—the adjectives “higher” and “lower” being used for lack of better words—but a Monad it remains at all times, save in the Nirvânic state, under whatever conditions, or whatever external forms. As the Logos reflects the Universe in the Divine Mind, and the Manifested Universe reflects itself in each of its Monads, as Leibnitz put it repeating an Eastern teaching, so the Monad has, during the cycle of its incarnations, to reflect in itself every root‐form of each kingdom. Therefore, the Kabalists say correctly that “Man becomes a stone, a plant, an animal, a man, a spirit, and finally God,” thus accomplishing his cycle or circuit and returning to the point from which he had started as the Heavenly Man. But by “Man” the Divine Monad is meant, and not the Thinking Entity, much less his Physical Body. The men of Science now try to trace the immortal Soul, while rejecting its existence, through a series of animal forms from the lowest to the highest; whereas, in truth, all the present fauna are the descendants of those primordial monsters of which the Stanzas speak. The animals—the creeping beasts and those in the waters that preceded Man in this Fourth Round, as well as those contemporary with the Third Race, and again the mammalia that are posterior to the Third and Fourth Races—all are either directly or indirectly the mutual and correlative product, physically, of Man. It is correct to say that the man of this Manvantara, i.e., of the three preceding Rounds, has passed through all the kingdoms of Nature. That he was “a stone, a plant, an animal.” But (a) these stones, plants, and animals were the prototypes, the filmy presentments of those of the Fourth Round; and (b) even those at the beginning of the Fourth Round were the astral shadows, as the Occultists express it, of the present stones, plants and animals. And finally, neither the forms nor genera of either man, animal, or plant were what they became later. Thus the astral prototypes of the lower beings of the animal kingdom of the Fourth Round, which preceded the Chhâyâs of Men, were the consolidated, though still very ethereal sheaths of the still more ethereal forms, or models, produced at the close of the Third Round on Globe D, as set forth in Esoteric Buddhism; produced “from the residue of the substance; matter from dead bodies of men and [other extinct] animals of the Wheel before,” or the previous Third Round—as Shloka 28 tells us. Hence, while the nondescript “animals” that preceded the Astral Man at the beginning of this Life‐cycle on our Earth were still, so to speak, the progeny of the Man of the Third Round, the mammalians of this Round owe their existence, in a great measure, to Man again. Moreover, the “ancestor” of the present anthropoid animal, the ape, is the direct production of the yet mindless Man, who desecrated his human dignity by putting himself physically on the level of an animal.

The above accounts for some of the alleged physiological proofs, brought forward by the Anthropologists as a demonstration of the descent of man from the animals.

The point most insisted upon by the Evolutionists is that, “The history of the embryo is an epitome of that of the race.” That:

Every organism, in its development from the egg, runs through a series of forms, through which, in like succession, its ancestors have passed in the long course of earth’s history.(428) The history of the embryo ... is a picture in little, and outline of that of the race. This conception forms the gist of our fundamental biogenetic law, which we are obliged to place at the head of the study of the fundamental law of organic development.(429)

This modern theory was known as a fact to, and far more philosophically expressed by, the Sages and Occultists from the remotest ages. A passage from Isis Unveiled may here be cited to furnish a few points of comparison. It was asked why, with all their great learning, Physiologists were unable to explain teratological phenomena?

Any Anatomist who has made the development and growth of the embryo ... “a subject of special study,” can tell, without much brain‐work, what daily experience and the evidence of his own eyes show him, viz., that up to a certain period, the human embryo is a facsimile of a young batrachian in its first remove from the spawn—a tadpole. But no Physiologist or Anatomist seems to have had the idea of applying to the development of the human being—from the first instant of its physical appearance as a germ to its ultimate formation and birth—the Pythagorean esoteric doctrine of metempsychosis, so erroneously interpreted by critics. The meaning of the Kabalistic axiom: “A stone becomes a plant; a plant, a beast; a beast, a man,” etc., was mentioned in another place in relation to the spiritual and physical evolution of men on this Earth. We will now add a few more words to make the matter clearer.

What is the primitive shape of the future man? A grain, a corpuscle, say some Physiologists; a molecule, an ovum of the ovum, say others. If it could be analyzed—by the microscope or otherwise—of what ought we to expect to find it composed? Analogically, we should say, of a nucleus of inorganic matter, deposited from the circulation at the germinating point, and united with a deposit of organic matter. In other words, this infinitesimal nucleus of the future man is composed of the same elements as a stone—of the same elements as the Earth, which the man is destined to inhabit. Moses is cited by the Kabalists as authority for the remark, that it required earth and water to make a living being, and thus it may be said that man first appears as a stone.

At the end of three or four weeks the ovum has assumed a plant‐ like appearance, one extremity having become spheroidal and the other tapering, like a carrot. Upon dissection it is found to be composed, like an onion, of very delicate laminæ or coats, enclosing a liquid. The laminæ approach each other at the lower end, and the embryo hangs from the root of the umbilicus almost like the fruit from the bough. The stone has now become changed, by “metempsychosis,” into a plant. Then the embryonic creature begins to shoot out, from the inside outward, its limbs, and develops its features. The eyes are visible as two black dots; the ears, nose, and mouth form depressions, like the points of a pineapple, before they begin to project. The embryo develops into an animal‐like fœtus—the shape of a tadpole—and, like an amphibious reptile, lives in water and develops from it. Its monad has not yet become either human or immortal, for the Kabalists tell us that this only occurs at the “fourth hour.” One by one the fœtus assumes the characteristics of the human being, the first flutter of the immortal breath passes through its being: it moves; ... and the divine essence settles in the infant frame, which it will inhabit until the moment of physical death, when man becomes a spirit.

This mysterious process of a nine‐months’ formation, the Kabalists call the completion of the “individual cycle of evolution.” As the fœtus develops amidst the liquor amnii in the womb, so the Earths germinate in the Universal Ether, or Astral Fluid, in the Womb of the Universe. These cosmic children, like their pigmy inhabitants, are first nuclei; then ovules; then gradually mature; and becoming mothers, in their turn, develop mineral, vegetable, animal, and human forms. From centre to circumference, from the imperceptible vesicle to the uttermost conceivable bounds of the cosmos, those glorious thinkers, the Occultists, trace cycle merging into cycle, containing and contained in an endless series. The embryo evolving in its pre‐natal sphere, the individual in his family, the family in the state, the state in mankind, the earth in our system, that system in its central universe, the universe in the Kosmos, and the Kosmos in the ONE CAUSE—the Boundless and Endless.(430)

Thus runs their philosophy of evolution, differing as we see, from that of Hæckel.

All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and (Parabrahm) the Soul.

These are the proofs of Occultism, and they are rejected by Science. But how is the chasm between the mind of man and animal to be bridged in this case? How, if the anthropoid and homo primigenius had, argumenti gratiâ, a common ancestor—in the way modern speculation puts it—how did the two groups diverge so widely from one another as regards mental capacity? True, the Occultist may be told that in every case Occultism does what Science repeats; it gives a common ancestor to ape and man, since it makes the former issue from Primæval Man. Aye, but that “Primæval Man” was man only in external form. He was mindless and soulless at the time he begot, with a female animal monster, the forefather of a series of apes. This speculation—if speculation it be—is at least logical, and fills the chasm between the mind of man and animal. Thus it accounts for and explains the hitherto unaccountable and inexplicable. The fact—of which Science is almost certain—that, in the present stage of evolution, no issue can follow from the union of man and animal, is considered and explained elsewhere.

Now what is the fundamental difference between the accepted (or nearly so) conclusions—as enunciated in The Pedigree of Man—that man and ape have a common ancestor, and the teachings of Occultism, which deny this conclusion and accept the fact that all things and all living beings have originated from one common source? Materialistic Science makes man evolve gradually to what he is now. Starting from the first protoplasmic speck called Moneron—which we are told has, like the rest, “originated in the course of immeasurable ages from a few, or from one simple, spontaneously arising original form, that has obeyed one law of evolution”—he is made to pass through “unknown and unknowable” types up to the ape, and thence to the human being. Where the transitional shapes are discoverable we are not told; for the simple reason that no “missing‐links” between man and the apes have ever yet been found, though this fact in no way prevents men like Hæckel from inventing them ad libitum.

Nor will they ever be met with; simply, again, because that link which unites man with his real ancestry is searched for on the objective plane and in the material world of forms, whereas it is safely hidden from the microscope and dissecting knife within the animal tabernacle of man himself. We repeat what we have said in Isis Unveiled:

All things had their origin in Spirit—evolution having originally begun from above and proceeded downward, instead of the reverse, as taught in the Darwinian theory. In other words, there has been a gradual materialization of forms until a fixed ultimate of debasement is reached. This point is that at which the doctrine of modern evolution enters into the arena of speculative hypothesis. Arrived at this period we shall find it easier to understand Hæckel’s Anthropogeny, which traces the pedigree of man “from its protoplasmic root, sodden in the mud of seas which existed before the oldest of the fossiliferous rocks were deposited,” according to Mr. Huxley’s exposition. We may more easily still believe man (of the Third Round) evolved “by gradual modification of an [astral] mammal of ape‐like organization,” when we remember that the same theory, in a more condensed and less elegant, but equally comprehensible, phraseology, was said by Berosus to have been taught many thousands of years before his time by the man‐ fish Oannes or Dagon, the semi‐demon of Babylonia(431) (though on somewhat modified lines).

But what lies back of the Darwinian line of descent? So far as Darwin is concerned nothing but “unverifiable hypotheses.” For, as he puts it, he views all beings “as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited.”(432) He does not attempt to show us what these “few beings” were. But it answers our purpose quite as well, for, in the bare admission of their existence, recourse to the ancients for corroboration and elaboration of the idea receives the stamp of scientific approbation.(433)

Truly, as we said in our first work, if we accept Darwin’s theory of the development of species, we find that his starting‐point lies in front of an open door. We are at liberty either to remain within with him, or cross the threshold, beyond which lies the limitless and the incomprehensible, or rather the Unutterable. If our mortal language is inadequate to express what our spirit—while on this earth—dimly foresees in the great “Beyond,” it must realize it at some point in the timeless Eternity. But what lies “beyond” Hæckel’s theory? Why Bathybius Hæckelii, and no more!

Stanza IX. The Final Evolution Of Man.

33. The creators repent. 34. They atone for their neglect. 35. Men become endowed with minds. 36. The Fourth Race develops perfect speech. 37. Every androgynous unit is separated and becomes bisexual.

33. SEEING WHICH,(434) THE LHAS(435) WHO HAD NOT BUILT MEN,(436) WEPT, SAYING:

34. “THE AMÂNASA(437) HAVE DEFILED OUR FUTURE ABODES. THIS IS KARMA. LET US DWELL IN THE OTHERS. LET US TEACH THEM BETTER, LEST WORSE SHOULD HAPPEN.” THEY DID....

35. THEN ALL MEN BECAME ENDOWED WITH MANAS.(438) THEY SAW THE SIN OF THE MINDLESS.

But they had already separated, before the ray of divine reason had enlightened the dark region of their hitherto slumbering minds, and had sinned. That is to say, they had committed evil unconsciously, by producing an effect which was unnatural. Yet, like the other six primitive brother or fellow races, even so this seventh, henceforth degenerated race, which will have to bide its time for its final development on account of the sin committed—even this race will find itself on the last day on one of the Seven Paths. For:

The Wise(439) guard the home of nature’s order, they assume excellent forms in secret.(440)

But we must see whether the “animals” tampered with, were of the same kind as those known to Zoölogy.

The “Fall” occurred, according to the testimony of ancient Wisdom and the old records, as soon as Daksha—the reïncarnated Creator of men and things in the early Third Race—disappeared to make room for that portion of mankind which had “separated.” This is how one Commentary explains the details that preceded the “Fall”:

In the initial period of man’s Fourth Evolution, the human kingdom branched off in several and various directions. The outward shape of its first specimens was not uniform, for the vehicles [the egg‐like, external shells, in which the future fully physical man gestated] were often tampered with, before they hardened, by huge animals, of species now unknown, and belonging to the tentative efforts of Nature. The result was that intermediate races of monsters, half animals, half men, were produced. But as they were failures, they were not allowed to breathe long and live, although, the intrinsically paramount power of psychic over physical nature being yet very weak, and hardly established, the “Egg‐ born” Sons had taken several of their females unto themselves as mates, and bred other human monsters. Later, animal species and human races becoming gradually equilibrized, they separated, and mated no longer. Man created no more—he begot. But he also begot animals as well as men, in days of old. Therefore the Sages [or wise men], who speak of males who had no more will‐begotten offspring, but begat various animals along with Dânavas [Giants] on females of other species—animals being as [or in the manner of] sons putative to them; and they [the human males] refusing in time to be regarded as [putative] fathers of dumb creatures—spoke truthfully and wisely. Upon seeing this [state of things], the Kings and Lords of the last Races [of the Third and the Fourth] placed the seal of prohibition upon the sinful intercourse. It interfered with Karma, it developed new [Karma](441). They [the Divine Kings] struck the culprits with sterility. They destroyed the Red and Blue Races.(442)

In another we find:

There were blue and red‐faced animal‐men even in later times; not from actual intercourse [between the human and animal species], but by descent.

And still another passage mentions:

Red‐haired, swarthy men going on all‐fours, who bend and unbend [stand erect and fall on their hands again], who speak as their forefathers, and run on their hands as their giant fore‐mothers.

Perchance in these specimens Hæckelians might recognize, not the “Homo Primigenius,” but some of the lower tribes, such as some tribes of the Australian savages. Nevertheless, even these are not descended from the anthropoid apes, but from human fathers and semi‐human mothers, or, to speak more correctly, from human monsters—those “failures” mentioned in the first Commentary. The real anthropoids, Hæckel’s Catarrhini and Platyrrhini, came far later, in the closing times of Atlantis. The Orang‐ Outang, the Gorilla, the Chimpanzee and Cynocephalus are the latest and purely physical evolutions from lower anthropoid mammalians. They have a spark of the purely human essence in them; man on the other hand, has not one drop of pithecoid(443) blood in his veins. Thus saith old Wisdom and universal tradition.

How was the separation of sexes effected? it is asked. Are we to believe in the old Jewish fable of the rib of Adam yielding Eve? Even such belief is more logical and reasonable than the descent of man from the Quadrumana without any reservation; as the former hides an Esoteric truth under a fabulous version, while the latter conceals no deeper fact than a desire to force upon mankind a materialistic fiction. The rib is bone, and when we read in Genesis that Eve was made out of the rib, it only means that the Race “with bones” was produced out of a previous Race and Races, which were “boneless.” This is an Esoteric tenet spread far and wide. It is almost universal under its various forms. A Tahitian tradition states that man was created out of Aræa, “red earth.” Taaroa, the Creative Power, the chief God, “put man to sleep for long years, for several lives.” This means racial periods, and is a reference to his mental sleep, as shown elsewhere. During that time the deity pulled an Ivi (bone) out of man and she became a woman.(444)

Nevertheless, whatever the allegory may signify, even its exoteric meaning necessitates a divine Builder of man—a “Progenitor.” Do we then believe in such “supernatural” Beings? We say: No. Occultism has never believed in anything, whether animate or inanimate, outside Nature. Nor are we Cosmolaters or Polytheists for believing in “Heavenly Man” and Divine Men, for we have the accumulated testimony of the ages, with its unvarying evidence on every essential point, to support us in this; the Wisdom of the Ancients and universal tradition. We reject, however, such groundless and baseless traditions as have outgrown strict allegory and symbolism, although they may have found acceptance in exoteric creeds. But that which is preserved in unanimous tradition, only the wilfully blind could reject. Hence we believe in races of Beings other than our own in far remote geological periods; in races of ethereal, following incorporeal (Arûpa) Men, with form but no solid substance, giants who preceded us pigmies; in Dynasties of Divine Beings, those Kings and Instructors of the Third Race in arts and sciences, compared with which our little Modern Science stands less chance than elementary arithmetic with geometry.

No, certainly not. We do not believe in supernatural but only in superhuman, or rather interhuman, intelligences. One can easily appreciate the feeling of reluctance that an educated person would have to being classed with the superstitious and ignorant; and even realize the great truth uttered by Renan when he says that:

The supernatural has become like the original sin, a blemish that everyone seems ashamed of—even those most religious persons who refuse in our day to accept be it a minimum of Bible miracles in all their crudeness, and who, seeking to reduce them to the minimum, hide and conceal it in the furthermost corners of the past.(445)

But the “supernatural” of Renan belongs to dogma and its dead letter. It has nought to do with its spirit nor with the reality of facts in Nature. If Theology asks us to believe that it was only four or five thousand years ago that men lived 900 years and more, that a portion of mankind, the enemies of the people of Israel exclusively, was composed of giants and monsters, we decline to believe that such a thing existed in Nature only five thousand years back. For Nature never proceeds by jumps and starts, and logic and common sense, besides Geology, Anthropology and Ethnology, have justly rebelled against such assertions. But if this same Theology, giving up her fantastic chronology, had claimed that men lived 969 years—the age of Methuselah—five million years ago, we should have nothing to say against the claim. For in those days the physical frame of men was, compared to the present human body, as that of a Megalosaurus to a common lizard.

A Naturalist suggests another difficulty. The human is the only species which, however unequal in its races, can breed together. “There is no question of selection between human races,” say the anti‐Darwinists, and no Evolutionist can deny the argument—one which very triumphantly proves specific unity. How then can Occultism insist that a portion of the Fourth Race humanity begot young ones from females of another, only semi‐ human, if not quite an animal, race; the hybrids resulting from which union not only bred freely but produced the ancestors of the modern anthropoid apes? Esoteric Science replies to this that it was in the very beginnings of physical man. Since then, Nature has changed her ways, and sterility is the only result of the crime of man’s bestiality. But we have even to‐day proofs of this. The Secret Doctrine teaches that the specific unity of mankind is not without exceptions even now. For there are, or rather still were a few years ago, descendants of these half‐animal tribes or races, both of remote Lemurian and Lemuro‐Atlantean origin. The world knows them as Tasmanians (now extinct), Australians, Andaman Islanders, etc. The descent of the Tasmanians can be almost proved by a fact, which struck Darwin a good deal, without his being able to make anything of it. This fact deserves notice.

De Quatrefages and other Naturalists, who seek to prove Monogenesis by the very fact of every race of mankind being capable of crossing with every other, have left out of their calculations exceptions, which do not in this case confirm the rule. Human crossing may have been a general rule from the time of the separation of sexes, but this does not prevent another law asserting itself, viz., sterility between two human races, just as between two animal species of different kinds, in those rare cases when a European, condescending to see in a female of a savage tribe a mate, happens to choose a member of such mixed tribes.(446) Darwin notes such a case in a Tasmanian tribe, whose women were suddenly struck with sterility, en masse, some time after the arrival among them of European colonists. The great Naturalist tried to explain this fact by change of diet, food conditions, etc., but finally gave up the solution of the mystery. For the Occultist it is very evident. “Crossing,” as it is called, of Europeans with Tasmanian women—i.e., the representatives of a race, whose progenitors were a “soulless”(447) and mindless monster, with a real human, though still as mindless a man—brought on sterility; and this, not only as a consequence of a physiological law, but also as a decree of Karmic evolution in the question of further survival of the abnormal race. In no one point of the above is Science prepared to believe as yet—but it will have to in the long run. Esoteric Philosophy, let us remember, only fills the gaps left by Science and corrects her false premisses.

Yet, in this particular, Geology and even Botany and Zoology support the Esoteric Teachings. It has been suggested by many Geologists that the Australian native—coëxisting as he does with an archaic fauna and flora—must date back to an enormous antiquity. The whole environment of this mysterious race, about whose origin Ethnology is silent, is a testimony to the truth of the Esoteric position. As Jukes says:

It is a very curious fact that not only these marsupial animals [the mammals found in the Oxfordshire Stone‐field Slates], but several of the shells—as for instance, the Trigonias and even some of the plants found fossil in the Oolitic rocks—much more nearly resemble those now living in Australia than the living forms of any other part of the globe. This might be explained on the supposition that, since the Oolitic [Jurassic] period less change has taken place in Australia than elsewhere, and that the Australian flora and fauna consequently retain something of the Oolitic type, while it had been altogether supplanted and replaced on the rest of the globe [! !].(448)

Now why has less change taken place in Australia than elsewhere? Where is the raison d’être for such a “curse of retardation”? It is simply because the nature of the environment develops pari passu with the race concerned. Correspondences rule in every quarter. The survivors of those later Lemurians, who escaped the destruction of their fellows when the main Continent was submerged, became the ancestors of a portion of the present native tribes. Being a very low sub‐race, begotten originally of animals, of monsters, whose very fossils are now resting miles under the sea floors, their stock has since existed in an environment strongly subjected to the law of retardation. Australia is one of the oldest lands now above the waters, and in the senile decrepitude of old age, its “virgin soil” notwithstanding. It can produce no new forms, unless helped by new and fresh races, and artificial cultivation and breeding.

To return once more, however, to the history of the Third Race, the “Sweat‐born,” the “Egg‐bearing,” and the “Androgyne.” Almost sexless, in its early beginnings, it became bisexual or androgynous; very gradually of course. The passage from the first to the last transformation required numberless generations, during which the simple cell that issued from the earliest parent (the two in one), first developed into a bisexual being; and then the cell, becoming a regular egg, gave forth a unisexual creature. The Third Race mankind is the most mysterious of all the five hitherto developed Races. The mystery of the “How” of the generation of the distinct sexes must, of course, be very obscure here, as it is the business of an embryologist and a specialist; the present work giving only faint outlines of the process. But it is evident that the units of the Third Race humanity began to separate in their pre‐natal shells, or eggs,(449) and to issue out of them as distinct male and female babes, ages after the appearance of its early progenitors. And, as time rolled on its geological periods, the newly born sub‐races began to lose their natal capacities. Toward the end of the fourth sub‐race of the Third Race, the babe lost its faculty of walking as soon as liberated from its shell, and by the end of the fifth, mankind was born under the same conditions and by identically the same process as our historical generations. This required, of course, millions of years. The reader has been made acquainted with the approximate figures, at least of the exoteric calculations.(450)

We are approaching the turning‐point of the evolution of the Races. Let us see what Occult Philosophy says on the origin of language.

36. THE FOURTH RACE DEVELOPED SPEECH.

The Commentaries explain that the First Race—the ethereal or astral Sons of Yoga, also called “Self‐born”—was, in our sense, speechless, for it was devoid of mind on our plane. The Second Race had a “sound‐language,” to wit, chant‐like sounds composed of vowels alone. The Third Race developed in the beginning a kind of language which was only a slight improvement on the various sounds in Nature, on the cry of gigantic insects and of the first animals, which, however, were hardly nascent in the day of the “Sweat‐born” or the early Third Race. In its second half, when the “Sweat‐born” gave birth to the “Egg‐born,” the middle Third Race; and when these, instead of “hatching out”—may the reader pardon the rather ridiculous expression when applied to human beings in our age—as androgynous beings, began to evolve into separate males and females; and when the same law of evolution led them to reproduce their kind sexually—an act which forced the Creative Gods, compelled by Karmic law, to incarnate in mindless men; then only was speech developed. But even then it was still no better than a tentative effort. The whole human race was at that time of “one language and of one lip.” This did not prevent the last two sub‐races of the Third Race(451) from building cities, and sowing far and wide the first seeds of civilization under the guidance of their Divine Instructors,(452) and their own already awakened minds. Let the reader also bear in mind that, as each of the seven Races is divided into four Ages—the Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron Age—so is every smallest division of such Races. Speech then developed, according to Occult Teaching, in the following order:

I. Monosyllabic speech: that of the first approximately fully developed human beings at the close of the Third Root‐Race, the “golden‐coloured,” yellow‐complexioned men, after their separation into sexes, and the full awakening of their minds. Before that, they communicated through what would now be called “thought‐transference,” though, with the exception of the Race called the “Sons of Will and Yoga”—the first in whom the “Sons of Wisdom” had incarnated—thought was but very little developed in nascent physical man, and never soared above a low terrestrial level. Their physical bodies belonging to the Earth, their Monads remained on a higher plane altogether. Language could not be well developed before the full acquisition and development of their reasoning faculties. This monosyllabic speech was the vowel‐parent, so to speak, of the monosyllabic languages mixed with hard consonants, still in use amongst the yellow races which are known to the Anthropologist.(453)

II. Agglutinative speech: these linguistic characteristics developed into the agglutinative languages. The latter were spoken by some Atlantean races, while other parent stocks of the Fourth Race preserved the mother‐ language. And as languages have their cyclic evolution, their childhood, purity, growth, fall into matter, admixture with other languages, maturity, decay and finally death,(454) so the primitive speech of the most civilized Atlantean races—that language, which is referred to as Râkshasî Bhâshâ, in old Sanskrit works—decayed and almost died out. While the “cream” of the Fourth Race gravitated more and more toward the apex of physical and intellectual evolution, thus leaving as an heirloom to the nascent Fifth (the Âryan) Race the inflectional, highly developed languages, the agglutinative decayed and remained as a fragmentary fossil idiom, now scattered, and nearly limited to the aboriginal tribes of America.

III. Inflectional speech: the root of the Sanskrit, very erroneously called the “elder sister” of the Greek, instead of its mother—was the first language, now the mystery tongue of the Initiates, of the Fifth Race. The “Semitic” languages are the bastard descendants of the first phonetic corruptions of the eldest children of the early Sanskrit. The Occult Doctrine admits of no such divisions as the Âryan and the Semite, and accepts even the Turanian with ample reservations. The Semites, especially the Arabs, are later Âryans—degenerate in spirituality and perfected in materiality. To these belong all the Jews and the Arabs. The former are a tribe descended from the Chandâlas of India, the outcasts, many of them ex‐Brâhmans, who sought refuge in Chaldæa, in Scinde, and Aria (Iran), and were truly born from their father A‐Bram (No‐Brâhman) some 8,000 years B.C. The latter, the Arabs, are the descendants of those Âryans who would not go into India at the time of the dispersion of nations, some of whom remained on the borderlands thereof, in Afghanistan and Kabul(455) and along the Oxus, while others penetrated into and invaded Arabia. But this was when Africa had already been raised as a continent.

We have meanwhile to follow, as closely as limited space will permit, the gradual evolution of the now truly human species. It is in the suddenly arrested evolution of certain sub‐races, and their forced and violent diversion into the purely animal line by artificial cross‐breeding, truly analogous to the hybridization which we have now learned to utilize in the vegetable and animal kingdoms, that we have to look for the origin of the anthropoids.

In these red‐haired and hair‐covered monsters, the fruit of the unnatural connection between men and animals, the “Lords of Wisdom” did not incarnate, as we see. Thus through a long series of transformations due to unnatural cross‐breeding—unnatural “sexual selection”—originated in due course of time the lowest specimens of humanity; while further bestiality and the fruit of their first animal efforts of reproduction begat a species which developed into mammalian apes ages later.(456)

As to the separation of sexes, it did not occur suddenly, as one may think. Nature proceeds slowly in whatever she does.

37. THE ONE(457) BECAME TWO; ALSO ALL THE LIVING AND CREEPING THINGS THAT WERE STILL ONE, GIANT FISH, BIRDS AND SERPENTS WITH SHELL‐HEADS.

This relates evidently to the so‐called age of amphibious reptiles, during which Science denies that man existed! But what could the Ancients know of antediluvian prehistoric animals and monsters? Nevertheless, in Book VI of the Commentaries is found a passage which, freely translated, says:

When the Third separated and fell into sin by breeding men‐animals, these [the animals] became ferocious, and men and they mutually destructive. Till then, there was no sin, no life taken. After [the separation] the Satya [Yuga] was at an end. The eternal spring became constant change and seasons succeeded. Cold forced men to build shelters and devise clothing. Then man appealed to the superior Fathers [the higher Gods or Angels]. The Nirmânakâyas, of the Nâgas, the wise Serpents and Dragons of Light, came, and the precursors of the Enlightened [the Buddhas]. Divine Kings descended and taught men sciences and arts, for man could live no longer in the first land [Âdi‐Varsha, the Eden of the first Races], which had turned into a white frozen corpse.

The above is suggestive. We will see what can be inferred from this brief statement. Some may incline to think that there is more in it than is apparent at first sight.

Edens, Serpents, And Dragons.

Whence the idea, and the true meaning of the term “Eden”? Christians will maintain that the Garden of Eden is the holy Paradise, the place desecrated by the sin of Adam and Eve; the Occultist will deny this dead‐letter interpretation, and show the reverse. One need not believe in the Bible and see in it divine revelation, to say that this ancient book, if read esoterically, is based upon the same universal traditions as the other ancient scriptures. What Eden was is partially shown in Isis Unveiled, where it is said that:

The Garden of Eden as a locality is no myth at all; it belongs to those landmarks of history which occasionally disclose to the student that the Bible is not all mere allegory. “Eden, or the Hebrew גן עדן, Gan‐Eden, meaning the Park or the Garden of Eden, is an archaic name of the country watered by the Euphrates and its many branches, from Asia and Armenia to the Erythraian sea.”(458) In the Chaldæan Book of Numbers, its location is designated in numerals, and in the cypher Rosicrucian manuscript, left by Count St. Germain, it is fully described. In the Assyrian Tablets it is rendered Gan‐duniyas. “Behold,” say the אלהִם, Elohim, of Genesis, “the man is become as one of us.” The Elohim may be accepted in one sense for gods or powers, and in another for Aleim, or priests—the hierophants initiated into the good and evil of this world; for there was a college of priests called the Aleim, while the head of their caste, or the chief of the hierophants, was known as Java‐Aleim. Instead of becoming a neophyte, and gradually obtaining his esoteric knowledge through a regular initiation, an Adam, or Man, uses his intuitional faculties and, prompted by the serpent—Woman and Matter—tastes of the Tree of Knowledge, the Esoteric or Secret Doctrine, unlawfully. The priests of Hercules, or Mel‐karth, the “Lord” of the Eden, all wore “coats of skin.” The text says: “And Java‐Aleim made for Adam and his wife, כתנותעור. Chitonuth‐our.” The first Hebrew word, Chiton, is the Greek Χιτὼν (Chitôn). It became a Slavonic word by adoption from the Bible, and means a coat, an upper garment.

Though containing the same substratum of esoteric truth as does every early Cosmogony, the Hebrew Scripture wears on its face the marks of a double origin. Its Genesis is purely a reminiscence of the Babylonian captivity. The names of places, men, and even objects, can be traced from the original text to the Chaldæans and the Akkadians, the progenitors and Âryan instructors of the former. It is strongly contested that the Akkad tribes of Chaldæa, Babylonia and Assyria were in any way cognate with the Brâhmans of Hindûstan; but there are more proofs in favour of this opinion than otherwise. The Shemite or Assyrian ought, perchance, to have been called the Turanian, and the Mongolians have been denominated Scyths. But if the Akkadians ever existed, otherwise than in the imagination of some Philologists and Ethnologists, they certainly would never have been a Turanian tribe, as some Assyriologists have striven to make us believe. They were simply emigrants on their way to Asia Minor from India, the cradle of humanity, and their sacerdotal adepts tarried to civilize and initiate a barbarian people. Halévy proved the fallacy of the Turanian mania in regard to Akkadian people, and other scientists have proved that the Babylonian civilization was neither born nor developed in that country. It was imported from India, and the importers were Brâhmanical Hindûs.(459)

And now, ten years after this was written, we find ourselves corroborated by Professor Sayce, who says in his first Hibbert Lecture that the culture of the Babylonian city Eridu was of “foreign importation.” It came from India.

Much of the theology was borrowed by the Semites from the non‐ Semitic Akkadians or Proto‐Chaldæans, whom they supplanted, and whose local cults they had neither the will nor the power to uproot. Indeed, throughout a long course of ages the two races, Semites and Akkadians, lived side by side, their notions and worship of the gods blending insensibly together.

Here, the Akkadians are called “non‐Semitic,” as we had insisted they were in Isis Unveiled, which is another corroboration. Nor are we less right in always maintaining that the Jewish biblical history was a compilation of historical facts, arranged from other people’s history in Jewish garb—Genesis excluded, which is Esotericism pure and simple. But it is really from the Euxine to Kashmir, and beyond, that Science has to search for the cradle—or rather one of the chief cradles—of mankind and the sons of Ad‐ah; especially in after times, when the Garden of Ed‐en on the Euphrates became the College of the Astrologers and Magi, the Aleim.

But this College and this Eden belong to the Fifth Race, and are simply a faint reminiscence of the Âdi‐Varsha, of the primeval Third Race. What is the etymological meaning of the word Eden? In Greek it is ἡδονὴ, signifying “voluptuousness.” In this aspect it is no better than the Olympus of the Greeks, Indra’s Heaven, Svarga, on Mount Meru, and even the Paradise full of Houris, promised by Mahomet to the faithful. The Garden of Eden was never the property of the Jews, for China, which can hardly be suspected of having known anything of the Jews 2,000 B.C., had such a primitive Garden in Central Asia inhabited by the “Dragons of Wisdom,” the Initiates. And according to Klaproth, the hieroglyphical chart copied from a Japanese Cyclopædia in the book of Foĕ‐kouĕ‐ki(460) places its “Garden of Wisdom” on the Plateau of Pamir between the highest peaks of the Himâlayan ranges; and, describing it as the culminating point of Central Asia, shows the four rivers—Oxus, Indus, Ganges, and Silo—flowing from a common source, the “Lake of the Dragons.”

But this is not the Genetic Eden; nor is it the Kabalistical Garden of Eden. For the former—Eden Illa‐ah—means in one sense Wisdom, a state like that of Nirvâna, a Paradise of Bliss; while in another sense it refers to Intellectual Man himself, the container of the Eden in which grows the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil; man being the Knower thereof.

Renan and Barthélemy St. Hilaire, basing themselves “on the most solid inductions,” think it impossible to doubt any longer, and both place the cradle of humanity “in the region of the Timaus.” Finally, the Journal Asiatique(461) concludes that:

All the traditions of the human race gathering its primitive families at the region of their birth‐place, show them to us grouped around the countries where Jewish tradition places the Garden of Eden; where the Âryans [Zoroastrians] established their Airyana Vaêjô or the Meru [?]. They are hemmed in to the North by the countries which join Lake Aral, and to the South by Baltistan, or Little Tibet. Everything concurs in proving that there was the abode of that primitive humanity to which we have to be traced.

That “primitive humanity” was in its Fifth Race, when the “Four‐mouthed Dragon,” the lake, of which very few traces are now left, was the abode of the “Sons of Wisdom,” the first Mind‐born Sons of the Third Race. Yet it was neither the only nor the primitive cradle of humanity, though it was the copy of the cradle, verily, of the first thinking divine Man. It was the Paradesha, the highland of the first Sanskrit‐speaking people, the Hedone, the country of delight of the Greeks, but it was not the “Bower of Voluptuousness” of the Chaldæans, for the latter was but the reminiscence of it; nor again was it there that the “Fall of Man” occurred after the “separation.” The Eden of the Jews was copied from the Chaldæan copy.

That the Fall of Man into generation occurred during the earliest portion of what Science calls the Mesozoic times, or the age of the reptiles, is evidenced by the bible phraseology concerning the serpent, the nature of which is explained in the Zohar. The question is not whether Eve’s incident with the tempting reptile is allegorical or textual, for no one can doubt that it is the former, but to show the antiquity of the symbolism on the very face of it, and that it was not a Jewish but a universal idea.

Now we find in the Zohar a very strange assertion, one that is calculated to provoke the reader to merry laughter by its ludicrous absurdity. It tells us that the serpent, which was used by Shamaël, the supposed Satan, to seduce Eve, was a kind of “flying camel”—καμηλόμορφον.(462)

A “flying camel” is indeed too much for the most liberal‐minded F.R.S. Nevertheless, the Zohar, which can hardly be expected to use the language of a Cuvier, was right in its description; for we find it called in the old Zoroastrian MSS. Aschmogh, which in the Avesta is represented as having after the Fall lost its nature and its name, and is described as a huge serpent with a camel’s neck.

Salverte asserts that:

There are no winged serpents nor veritable dragons.... Grasshoppers are still called by the Greeks winged serpents, and this metaphor may have created several narratives on the existence of winged serpents.(463)

There are none now; but there is no reason why they should not have existed during the Mesozoic Age; and Cuvier, who has reconstructed their skeletons, is a witness to “flying camels.” Already, after finding simple fossils of certain saurians, the great Naturalist has written, that:

If anything can justify the hydras and other monsters, whose figures were so often repeated by mediæval historians, it is incontestably the Plesiosaurus.(464)

We are unaware if Cuvier has added anything in the way of a further mea culpa, but we may well imagine his confusion for all his slanders against archaic veracity, when he found himself in the presence of a flying saurian, the Pterodactyl, found in Germany, seventy‐eight feet long, and carrying vigorous wings attached to its reptilian body. This fossil is described as a reptile, the little fingers of whose hands are so elongated as to bear a long membranous wing. Here, then, the “flying camel” of the Zohar is vindicated. For surely, between the long neck of the Plesiosaurus and the membranous wing of the Pterodactyl, or still better the Mosasaurus, there is enough scientific probability on which to build a “flying camel,” or a long‐necked dragon. Prof. Cope, of Philadelphia, has shown that the Mosasaurus fossil in the chalk was a winged serpent of this kind. There are characters in its vertebræ, which indicate union with the Ophidia rather than with the Lacertilia.

And now to the main question. It is well known that Antiquity has never claimed Palæontography and Palæontology among its arts and sciences; and it never had its Cuviers. Yet on Babylonian tiles, and especially in old Chinese and Japanese drawings, in the oldest Pagodas and monuments, and in the Imperial Library at Pekin, many a traveller has seen and recognized perfect representations of Plesiosauri and Pterodactyls in the multiform Chinese dragons.(465) Moreover, the prophets speak in the Bible of the flying fiery serpents,(466) and Job mentions the Leviathan.(467) Now the following questions are put very directly:

I. How could the ancient nations know anything of the extinct monsters of the Carboniferous and Mesozoic times, and even represent and describe them orally and pictorially, unless they had either seen those monsters themselves or possessed descriptions of them in their traditions; which descriptions necessitate living and intelligent eye‐witnesses?

II. And if such eye‐witnesses are once admitted (unless retrospective clairvoyance is granted), how can humanity and the first palæolithic men be no earlier than about the middle of the Tertiary period? We must bear in mind that most of the men of Science do not allow man to have appeared before the Quaternary period, and thus shut him out completely from the Cainozoic times. Here we have extinct species of animals, which disappeared from the face of the Earth millions of years ago, described by, and known to, nations whose civilization, it is said, could hardly have begun a few thousand years ago. How is this? Evidently either the Mesozoic time has to be made to overlap the Quaternary period, or man must be made the contemporary of the Pterodactyl and the Plesiosaurus.

It does not follow that, because the Occultists believe in and defend Ancient Wisdom and Science, even though winged saurians are called “flying camels” in the translations of the Zohar, we therefore as readily believe in all the stories which the Middle Ages give us of such dragons. Pterodactyls and Plesiosauri ceased to exist with the bulk of the Third Race. When, therefore, we are gravely asked by Roman Catholic writers to credit Christopher Scherer’s and Father Kircher’s cock‐and‐bull stories of their having seen with their own eyes living fiery and flying dragons, respectively in 1619 and 1669, we may be allowed to regard their assertions as either dreams or fibs.(468) Nor shall we regard otherwise than as a “poetical license” the story told of Petrarch, who, while following one day his Laura in the woods and passing near a cave, is credited with having found a dragon, whom he forthwith stabbed with his dagger and killed, thus preventing the monster from devouring the lady of his heart.(469) We would willingly believe the story had Petrarch lived in the days of Atlantis, when such antediluvian monsters may still have existed. We deny their existence in our present era. The sea‐serpent is one thing, the dragon quite another. The former is denied by the majority because it lives in the very depths of the ocean, is very scarce, and rises to the surface only when compelled, perhaps, by hunger. Thus keeping invisible, it may exist and still be denied. But if there was such a thing as a dragon of the above description, how could it have ever escaped detection? It is a creature contemporary with the earliest Fifth Race, and exists no more.

The reader may enquire why we speak of dragons at all? We answer: firstly, because the knowledge of such animals is a proof of the enormous antiquity of the human race; and, secondly, to show the difference between the real zoological meaning of the words “Dragon,” “Nâga,” and “Serpent,” and the metaphorical meaning, when used symbolically. The profane reader, who knows nothing of the mystery language, is likely, whenever he finds one of these words mentioned, to accept it literally. Hence, the quidproquos and unjust accusations. A couple of instances will suffice.

Insight

Chapter 65 is the long commentary on Stanza VI (the appearance of speech and the entry of Manas, mind, into the human form). Like chapter 64, the corpus does not break out the sub-sections present in the 1888 edition; you are reading what was originally a chapter with internal headers as if it were one stretch of prose. The dragons here are not, in Blavatsky's reading, any one of the historical reptilian fauna science would later assemble (dinosaurs were not yet widely known by that name in 1888 - Owen had coined Dinosauria in 1842 but the deep-time iconography had not yet entered popular consciousness). She is using dragon in its older symbolic register: the divine serpents of Egyptian, Chinese, and Hindu traditions, the ouroboros of Hermetic alchemy, what she elsewhere calls Initiates. The polysemy is doing real work; it is also where the doctrine is hardest to test against any external evidence.On the symbolic dragon see Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology (1959), ch. 7; Marie-Louise von Franz, Creation Myths (1972); for the late-nineteenth-century state of paleontology see Richard Owen, Report on British Fossil Reptiles (1842).

“Sed et Serpens?” Aye: but what was the nature of the serpent? Mystics intuitionally see in the serpent of Genesis an animal emblem and a high spiritual essence: a cosmic force, superintelligent, a “great fallen light,” a spirit, sidereal, aërial and tellurian at the same time, “whose influence circumambulates the globe” (qui circumambulat terram), as De Mirville,(470) a Christian fanatic of the dead‐letter, has it, and which only “manifested itself under the physical emblem which agreed the better with its moral and intellectual coils”—i.e., under the ophidian form.

But what will Christians make of the Brazen Serpent, the “Divine Healer,” if the serpent is to be regarded as the emblem of cunning and evil; the “Evil One” itself? How can the line of demarcation ever be settled, when it is traced arbitrarily in a sectarian theological spirit? For, if the followers of the Roman Church are taught that Mercury and Æsculapius, or Asclepios, who are, in truth, one, are “devils and sons of devils,” and the wand and serpent of the latter, the “Devil’s wand”; how about the Brazen Serpent of Moses? Every scholar knows that both the Heathen “wand” and the Jewish “serpent” are one and the same, namely, the Caduceus of Mercury, son of Apollo‐Python. It is easy to comprehend why the Jews adopted the ophidian shape for their “seducer.” With them it was purely physiological and phallic; and no amount of casuistical reasoning on the part of the Roman Catholic Church can give it another meaning, once that the mystery language is well studied, and that the Hebrew scrolls are read numerically. The Occultists know that the Serpent, the Nâga, and the Dragon have each a septenary meaning; that the Sun, for instance, was the astronomical and cosmic emblem of the two contrasted Lights and the two Serpents of the Gnostics, the good and the evil. They also know that, when generalized, the conclusions of both Science and Theology present two most ridiculous extremes. For, when the former tells us that it is sufficient to trace the legends of the serpents to their primal source, the astronomical legend, and to meditate seriously on the Sun, the conqueror of Python, and the celestial Virgin in the Zodiac forcing back the devouring Dragon, if we would have the key of all the subsequent religious dogmas—it is easy to perceive that, instead of generalizing, the author simply has his eye on Christian religion and Revelation. We call this the one extreme. We see the other when Theology, repeating the famous decision of the Council of Trent, seeks to convince the masses that:

From the fall of man until the hour of his baptism the Devil has full power over him, and possesses him by right—diabolum dominium et potestatem super homines habere et jure eos possidere.(471)

To this Occult Philosophy answers: Prove first the existence of the Devil as an entity, and then we may believe in such congenital possession. A very small amount of observation and knowledge of human nature may be sufficient to prove the fallacy of this theological dogma. Had Satan any reality, in the objective or even subjective world (in the ecclesiastical sense), it is the poor Devil who would find himself chronically obsessed and even possessed by the wicked—hence by the bulk of mankind. It is humanity itself, and especially the clergy, headed by the haughty, unscrupulous and intolerant Roman Church, which has begotten, given birth to, and reared in love the Evil One. But this is a digression.

The whole world of thought is reproached by the Church with having adored the serpent.

The whole of humanity burnt incense to it or stoned it. The Zends speak of it as do the Kings and Vedas, as the Edda ... and the Bible.... Everywhere the sacred serpent [the Nâga] has its shrine and its priest; in Rome it is the Vestal who ... prepares its meal with the same care that she bestows on the sacred fire. In Greece, Æsculapius cannot cure without its assistance, and delegates to it his powers. Every one has heard of the famous Roman embassy sent by the Senate to the god of medicine and its return with the not less famous serpent, which proceeded of its own will and by itself toward its master’s temple on one of the islands of the Tiber. Not a Bacchante that did not wind it [the serpent] in her hair, not an Augur but questioned it with care, not a Necromancer whose tombs are free from its presence! The Cainites and the Ophites call it Creator, while recognizing, as Schelling did, that the serpent is “evil in substance and in person.”(472)

Yes, the author is right, and if one would have a complete idea of the prestige which the serpent enjoys to our own day, he ought to study the matter in India and learn all that is believed about, and still attributed to, the Nâgas (cobras) in that country; one should also visit the Africans of Whydah, the Voodoos of Port‐au‐Prince and Jamaica, the Nagals of Mexico, and the Pâ, or Men‐serpents of China, etc. But why wonder that the serpent is “adored” and at the same time cursed, since we know that from the beginning it was a symbol? In every ancient language the word dragon signified what it now does in Chinese, long or “the being who excels in intelligence,” and in Greek, δράκων, or “he who sees and watches.”(473) Is it to the animal of this name that any of these epithets can apply? Is it not evident, wherever superstition and oblivion of the primitive meaning may have led savages now, that the above qualifications were intended to apply to the human originals, who were symbolized by Serpents and Dragons? These originals—called to this day in China the “Dragons of Wisdom”—were the first disciples of the Dhyânîs, who were their Instructors; in short, the Primitive Adepts of the Third Race, and later, of the Fourth and Fifth Races. The name became universal, and no sane man before the Christian era would ever have confounded the man and the symbol.

The symbol of Chnouphis, or the Soul of the World, writes Champollion:

Is among others that of an enormous serpent standing on human legs; this reptile, the emblem of the Good Genius, is a veritable Agathodæmon. It is often represented bearded.... This sacred animal, identical with the serpent of the Ophites, is found engraved on numerous Gnostic or Basilidean stones.... The serpent has various heads, but is constantly inscribed with the letters ΧΝΟΥΒΙΣ.(474)

Agathodæmon was endowed “with the knowledge of good and evil,” i.e., with Divine Wisdom, for without the latter the former is impossible.(475) Repeating Jamblichus, Champollion shows him to be:

The deity called Εἰχτῶν [or the Fire of the Celestial Gods—the Great Thot‐Hermes],(476) to whom Hermes Trismegistus attributes the invention of magic.(477)

The “invention of magic”! A strange term to use, as though the unveiling of the eternal and actual mysteries of Nature could be invented! As well attribute, millenniums hence, the invention instead of the discovery of radiant matter to Mr. Crookes. Hermes was not the inventor, or even the discoverer, for, as said in the last footnote but one, Thot‐Hermes is a generic name, as is Enoch—Enoïchion, the “inner, spiritual eye”—Nebo, the prophet and seer, etc. It is not the proper name of any one living man, but a generic title of many Adepts. Their connection with the serpent in symbolic allegories is due to their enlightenment by the Solar and Planetary Gods during the earliest intellectual Race, the Third. They are all the representative patrons of the Secret Wisdom. Asclepios is the son of the Sun‐God Apollo, and he is Mercury; Nebo is the son of Bel‐Merodach; Vaivasvata Manu, the great Rishi, is the son of Vivasvat—the Sun or Sûrya, etc. And while, astronomically, the Nâgas along with the Rishis, the Gandharvas, Apsarases, Grâmanîs (or Yakshas, minor Gods), Yâtudhânas and Devas, are the Sun’s attendants throughout the twelve solar months; in theogony, and also in anthropological evolution, they are Gods and Men—when incarnated in the Nether World. Let the reader be reminded, in this connection, of the fact that Apollonius met in Kashmir Buddhist Nâgas. These are neither serpents zoologically, nor yet the Nâgas ethnologically, but “wise men.”

The Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is but a series of historical records of the great struggle between White and Black Magic, between the Adepts of the Right Path, the Prophets, and those of the Left, the Levites, the clergy of the brutal masses. Even the students of Occultism, though some of them have more archaic MSS. and direct teaching to rely upon, find it difficult to draw a line of demarcation between the Sodales of the Right Path and those of the Left. The great schism that arose between the sons of the Fourth Race, as soon as the first Temples and Halls of Initiation had been erected under the guidance of the “Sons of God,” is allegorized in the Sons of Jacob. That there were two Schools of Magic, and that the orthodox Levites did not belong to the holy one, is shown in the words pronounced by the dying Jacob. And here it may be well to quote a few sentences from Isis Unveiled.(478)

The dying Jacob thus describes his sons: “Dan,” he says, “shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse‐heels, so that his rider shall fall backwards [i.e., he will teach candidates Black Magic]. I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord!” Of Simeon and Levi the patriarch remarks that they “are brethren; instruments of cruelty are in their habitations. O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly.”(479) Now in the original, the words “their secret” read—“their Sod.”(480) And Sod was the name for the great Mysteries of Baal, Adonis and Bacchus, who were all Sun‐Gods and had serpents for symbols. The Kabalists explain the allegory of the fiery serpents by saying that this was the name given to the tribe of Levi, to all the Levites, in short, and that Moses was the chief of the Sodales.(481)

It is to the Mysteries that the original meaning of the “Dragon‐Slayers” has to be traced, and the question is fully treated of hereafter.

Meanwhile it follows that, if Moses was the Chief of the Mysteries, he was the Hierophant thereof; and further, if, at the same time, we find the Prophets thundering against the “abominations” of the people of Israël, that there were two Schools. “Fiery serpents” was, then, simply the epithet given to the Levites of the priestly caste, after they had departed from the Good Law, the traditional teachings of Moses, and to all those who followed Black Magic. Isaiah, when referring to the “rebellious children” who will have to carry their riches into the lands whence come “the viper and fiery flying serpent,”(482) or Chaldæa and Egypt, whose Initiates had already greatly degenerated in his day (700 B.C.), meant the sorcerers of those lands.(483) But these must be carefully distinguished from the “Fiery Dragons of Wisdom” and the “Sons of the Fire‐Mist.”

In the Great Book of the Mysteries we are told that:

Seven Lords created seven Men; three Lords [Dhyân Chohans or Pitris] were holy and good, four less heavenly and full of passion.... The Chhâyâs [phantoms] of the Fathers were as they.

This accounts for the differences in human nature, which is divided into seven gradations of good and evil. There were seven tabernacles ready to be inhabited by Monads under seven different Karmic conditions. The Commentaries explain on this basis the easy spread of evil, as soon as the human Forms had become real men. Some ancient philosophers, however, in their genetical accounts, ignored the seven and gave only four. Thus the Mexican local Genesis has “four good men,” described as the four real ancestors of the human race, “who were neither begotten by the Gods nor born of woman”; but whose creation was a wonder wrought by the Creative Powers, and who were made only after “three attempts at manufacturing men had failed.” The Egyptians in their theology had only “four Sons of God”—whereas in Pymander seven are given—thus avoiding any mention of the evil nature of man. When, however, Set from a God sank into Set‐ Typhon, he began to be called the “seventh son”; whence probably arose the belief that “the seventh son of the seventh son” is always a natural‐born magician—though at first only a sorcerer was meant. Apap, the serpent symbolizing evil, is slain by Aker, Set’s serpent;(484) therefore Set‐ Typhon could not be that evil. In the Book of the Dead, it is commanded that Chapter clxiii should be read “in the presence of a serpent on two legs,” which means a high Initiate, a Hierophant, for the discus and ram’s horns(485) that adorn his “serpent’s” head in the hieroglyphics of the title of the said chapter, denote this. Over the “serpent” are represented the two mystic eyes of Ammon,(486) the hidden “Mystery God.” The above passages corroborate our assertion, and show what the word “serpent” really meant in antiquity.

But as to the Nagals and Nargals; whence came the similarity or names between the Indian Nâgas and the American Nagals?

The Nargal was the Chaldæan and Assyrian chief of the Magi [Rab‐ Mag], and the Nagal was the chief sorcerer of the Mexican Indians. Both derive their names from Nergal‐Serezer, the Assyrian god, and the Hindû Nâgas. Both have the same faculties and the power to have an attendant Dæmon, with whom they identify themselves completely. The Chaldæan and Assyrian Nargal kept his Dæmon, in the shape of some animal considered sacred, inside the temple; the Indian Nagal keeps his wherever he can—in the neighbouring lake, or wood, or in the house, in the shape of some household animal.(487)

Such similarity cannot be attributed to coincidence. A new world is discovered, and we find that, for our forefathers of the Fourth Race, it was already an old one; that Arjuna, Krishna’s companion and Chelâ, is said to have descended into Pâtâla, the “antipodes” and therein married Ulûpî,(488) a Nâga, or Nâgî rather, the daughter of the king of the Nâgas, Kauravya.(489)

And now it may be hoped the full meaning of the serpent emblem is proven. It is neither that of evil, nor, least of all, that of the devil; but is, indeed, the ΣΕΜΕΣ ΕΙΛΑΜ ΑΒΡΑΣΑΞ, the “Eternal Sun Abrasax,” the Central Spiritual Sun of all the Kabalists, represented in some diagrams by the circle of Tiphereth.

And here, again, we may quote from our earlier volumes and enter into further explanations.

From this region of unfathomable Depth (Bythos, Aditi, Shekinah, the Veil of the Unknown) issues forth a Circle formed of spirals. This is Tiphereth; which, in the language of symbolism, means a grand Cycle, composed of smaller ones. Coiled within, so as to follow the spirals, lies the Serpent—emblem of Wisdom and Eternity—the Dual Androgyne; the cycle representing Ennoia, or the Divine Mind (a Power which does not create but which must assimilate), and the Serpent, the Agathodæmon, the Ophis, the Shadow of the Light (non‐eternal, yet the greatest Divine Light on our plane). Both were the Logoi of the Ophites; or the Unity as Logos manifesting itself as a double principle of Good and Evil.(490)

Were it Light alone, inactive and absolute, the human mind could not appreciate nor even realize it. Shadow is that which enables Light to manifest itself, and gives it objective reality. Therefore, Shadow is not evil, but is the necessary and indispensable corollary which completes Light or Good; it is its creator on Earth.

According to the views of the Gnostics, these two principles are immutable Light and Shadow; Good and Evil being virtually one and having existed through all eternity, as they will ever continue to exist so long as there are manifested worlds.

This symbol accounts for the adoration by this sect of the Serpent, as the Saviour, coiled either round the sacramental loaf, or a Tau (the phallic emblem). As a unity, Ennoia and Ophis are the Logos. When separated, one is the Tree of Spiritual Life, the other, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Therefore, we find Ophis urging the first human couple—the material production of Ilda‐baoth, but owing its spiritual principle to Sophia‐ Achamoth—to eat of the forbidden fruit, although Ophis represents divine Wisdom.

The Serpent, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Tree of Life, are all symbols transplanted from the soil of India. The Arasa‐maram [?], the banyan tree, so sacred with the Hindûs—since Vishnu during one of his incarnations, reposed under its mighty shade and there taught human philosophy and sciences—is called the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life. Under the protecting foliage of this king of the forests, the Gurus teach their pupils their first lessons on immortality and initiate them into the mysteries of life and death. The Java‐Aleim of the Sacerdotal College are said, in the Chaldæan tradition, to have taught the sons of men to become like one of them. To the present day Foh‐ tchou(491) who lives in his Foh‐Maëyu, or the temple of Buddha, on the top of the Kouin‐Long‐Sang,(492) the great mountain, produces his greatest religious miracles under a tree called in Chinese Sung‐Ming‐Shŭ, or the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life, for ignorance is death, and knowledge alone gives immortality. This marvellous display takes place every three years, when an immense concourse of Chinese Buddhists assembles in pilgrimage at the holy place.(493)

Now it may become comprehensible why the earliest Initiates and Adepts, or the “Wise Men,” who are claimed to have been initiated into the Mysteries of Nature by the Universal Mind, represented by the highest Angels, were named the “Serpents of Wisdom” and “Dragons”; and also how the first physiologically complete couples—after being initiated into the Mystery of Human Creation through Ophis, the Manifested Logos and the Androgyne, by eating of the fruit of knowledge—gradually began to be accused by the material spirit of posterity of having committed sin, of having disobeyed the “Lord God,” and of having been tempted by the Serpent.

So little have the first Christians—who despoiled the Jews of their Bible—understood the first four chapters of Genesis in their esoteric meaning, that they have never perceived that not only was no sin intended in this disobedience, but that the “Serpent” was actually the “Lord God” himself, who, as the Ophis, the Logos, or the bearer of divine creative wisdom, taught mankind to become creators in their turn.(494) They never realized that the Cross was an evolution from the Tree and the Serpent, and thus became the salvation of mankind. By this it would become the very first fundamental symbol of Creative Cause, applying to geometry, to numbers, to astronomy, to measure and to animal reproduction. According to the Kabalah, the curse on man came with the formation of woman.(495) The circle was separated from its diameter line.

From the possession of the double principle in one, that is, the Androgyne condition, the separation of the dual principle was made, presenting two opposites, whose destiny it was, for ever after, to seek reünion into the original one condition. The curse was this, viz., that Nature, impelling the search, evaded the desired result by the production of a new being, distinct from that reünion or oneness desired, by which the natural longing to recover a lost state was and is for ever being cheated. It is by this tantalizing process of a continued curse that Nature lives.(496)

The allegory of Adam being driven away from the Tree of Life means, Esoterically, that the newly separated Race abused and dragged down the mystery of Life into the region of animalism and bestiality. For, as the Zohar shows, Matronethah—Shekinah, the wife of Metatron symbolically—“is the way to the great Tree of Life, the Mighty Tree,” and Shekinah is Divine Grace. As explained, this Tree reaches the heavenly vale and is hidden between three mountains (the upper Triad of Principles, in man). From these three mountains, the Tree ascends above (the Adept’s knowledge aspires heavenward), and then redescends below (into the Adept’s Ego on earth). This Tree is revealed in the day time and is hidden during the night, i.e., revealed to an enlightened mind and hidden to ignorance, which is night.(497) As says the Commentary:

The Tree of the Knowledge of the Good and the Evil grows from the roots of the Tree of Life.

But then also, as the author of The Source of Measures writes:

In the Kabalah it is plainly to be found that the “Tree of Life” was the ansated cross in its sexual aspect, and that the “Tree of Knowledge” was the separation and the coming together again to fulfil the fatal condition. To display this in numbers the values of the letters composing the word Otz (עץ), tree, are 7 and 9, the seven being the holy feminine number and the nine the number of the phallic or male energy. This ansated cross is the symbol of the Egyptian female‐male, Isis‐Osiris, the germinal principle in all forms, based on the primal manifestation applicable in all directions and in all senses.

This is the Kabalistic view of the Western Occultists, and it differs from the more philosophical Eastern or Âryan views upon the subject.(498) The separation of the sexes was in the programme of Nature and of natural evolution; and the creative faculty in male and female was a gift of Divine Wisdom. In the truth of such traditions the whole of Antiquity, from the patrician philosopher to the humblest spiritually inclined plebeian, has believed. And as we proceed, we may successfully show that the relative truth of such legends, if not their absolute exactness—vouched for by such giants of intellect as were Solon, Pythagoras, Plato, and others—begins to dawn upon more than one modern Scientist. He is perplexed; he stands startled and confused before proofs that are being daily accumulated before him; he feels that there is no way of solving the many historical problems that stare him in the face, unless he begins by accepting ancient traditions. Therefore, in saying that we believe absolutely in ancient records and universal legends, we need hardly plead guilty before the impartial observer, for other and far more learned writers, and that too among those who belong to the modern Scientific School, evidently believe in much that the Occultists do—in “dragons,” for instance, and not only symbolically, but also in their actual existence at one time.

It would have indeed been a bold step for anyone, some thirty years ago, to have thought of treating the public to a collection of stories ordinarily reputed fabulous, and of claiming for them the consideration due to genuine realities, or to have advocated tales, time‐honoured as fictions, as actual facts; and those of the nursery as being, in many instances, legends, more or less distorted, descriptive of real beings or events. Nowadays it is a less hazardous proceeding.(499)

Thus opens the Introduction to a recent (1886) and most interesting work by Mr. Charles Gould, called Mythical Monsters. He boldly states his belief in most of these monsters. He submits that:

Many of the so‐called mythical animals, which throughout long ages and in all nations have been the fertile subjects of fiction and fable, come legitimately within the scope of plain matter‐of‐fact Natural History, and that they may be considered, not as the outcome of exuberant fancy, but as creatures which really once existed, and of which, unfortunately, only imperfect and inaccurate descriptions have filtered down to us, probably very much refracted, through the mists of time; ... traditions of creatures once coëxisting with man, some of which are so weird and terrible as to appear at first sight to be impossible....

For me the major part of those creatures are not chimeras but objects of rational study. The dragon, in place of being a creature evolved out of the imagination of Âryan man by the contemplation of lightning flashing through the caverns which he tenanted, as is held by some mythologists, is an animal which once lived and dragged its ponderous coils and perhaps flew....

To me the specific existence of the unicorn seems not incredible, and, in fact, more probable than that theory which assigns its origin to a lunar myth.(500)...

For my part I doubt the general derivation of myths from “the contemplation of the visible workings of external nature.” It seems to me easier to suppose that the palsy of time has enfeebled the utterance of these oft‐told tales until their original appearance is almost unrecognizable, than that uncultured savages should possess powers of imagination and poetical invention far beyond those enjoyed by the most instructed nations of the present day; less hard to believe that these wonderful stories of gods and demigods, of giants and dwarfs, of dragons and monsters of all descriptions are transformations than to believe them to be inventions.(501)

It is shown by the same Geologist that:

Palæontologists have successively traced back the existence of man to periods variously estimated at from thirty thousand to one million years—to periods when he coëxisted with animals which have long since become extinct.(502)

These animals, “weird and terrible,” were, to give a few instances: (1) The genus Cidastes, whose huge bones and vertebræ show them to have attained a length of nearly two hundred feet. The remains of such monsters, no less than ten in number, were seen by Professor Marsh in the Mauvaises Terres of Colorado, strewn upon the plains. (2) The Titanosaurus Montanus, reaching fifty or sixty feet in length. (3) The Dinosaurians, in the Jurassic beds of the Rocky Mountains, of still more gigantic proportions. (4) The Atlantosaurus Immanis, a femur of which alone is over six feet in length, and which would be thus over one hundred feet in length. But even yet the line has not been reached, and we hear of the discovery of remains of such titanic proportions as to possess a thigh‐ bone over twelve feet in length!(503) Then we read of the monstrous Sivatherium in the Himâlayas, the four‐horned stag, as large as an elephant, and exceeding the latter in height; of the gigantic Megatherium; of colossal flying lizards, Pterodactyli, with crocodile jaws on a duck’s head, etc. All these were coëxistent with man, most probably attacked man, as man attacked them. And we are asked to believe that the said man was no larger then than he is now! Is it possible to conceive that, surrounded in Nature with such monstrous creatures, man, unless himself a colossal giant, could have survived, while all his foes have perished? Is it with his stone hatchet that he had the best of a Sivatherium or a gigantic flying saurian? Let us always bear in mind that at least one great man of Science, de Quatrefages, sees no good scientific reasons why man should not have been “contemporaneous with the earliest mammalia and go back as far as the Secondary Period.”(504)

The very conservative Professor Jukes writes:

It appears that the flying dragons of romance had something like a real existence in former ages of the world.(505)

And the author goes on to ask.

Does the written history of man, comprising a few thousand years, embrace the whole course of his intelligent existence? Or have we in the long mythical eras, extending over hundreds of thousands of years, and recorded in the chronologies of Chaldæa and China, shadowy mementoes of prehistoric man, handed down by tradition, and perhaps transported by a few survivors to existing lands, from others which, like the fabled Atlantis of Plato, may have been submerged, or the scene of some great catastrophe which destroyed them with all their civilization?(506)

The few remaining giant animals, such as elephants—themselves smaller than their ancestors the Mastodons—and hippopotami, are the only surviving relics, and tend to disappear more entirely every day. But even they have already had a few pioneers of their future genus, and have decreased in size in the same proportion as men have done. For the remains of a pigmy elephant, E. Falconeri, were found in the cave deposits of Malta; and the same author asserts that they were associated with the remains of pigmy hippopotami, the former being only two feet six inches high. There is also the still existing Hippopotamus (Chœropsis) Liberiensis, “which M. Milne‐ Edwards figures as little more than two feet in height.”(507)

Sceptics may smile and denounce our work as full of nonsense or fairy‐ tales. But by so doing they only justify the wisdom of the Chinese philosopher Chuang, who said that:

The things that men do know can in no way be compared, numerically speaking, to the things that are unknown.(508)

Thus they laugh only at their own ignorance.

The “Sons Of God” And The “Sacred Island.”

The “legend” given in Isis Unveiled(509) in relation to a portion of the globe which Science now concedes to have been the cradle of humanity—though it was but one of the seven cradles, in truth—runs as follows:

Tradition says, and the records of the Great Book (the Book of Dzyan) explain, that long before the days of Ad‐am, and his inquisitive wife, He‐va, where now are found but salt lakes and desolate barren deserts, there was a vast inland sea, which extended over Middle Asia, north of the proud Himâlayan range, and its western prolongation. In it an island, which, for its unparalleled beauty, had no rival in the world, was inhabited by the last remnant of the Race which preceded ours.

“The last remnant” means the “Sons of Will and Yoga,” who, with a few tribes, survived the great cataclysm. For it was the Third Race, inhabiting the great Lemurian Continent, which preceded the veritable and complete human Races—the Fourth and the Fifth. Therefore was it said in Isis Unveiled that:

This race could live with equal ease in water, air, or fire, for it had an unlimited control over the elements. These were the “Sons of God”; not those who saw the daughters of men, but the real Elohim, though in the oriental Kabalah they have another name. It was they who imparted Nature’s most weird secrets to men, and revealed to them the ineffable, and now lost “word.”

The “Island,” according to belief, exists to the present hour, as an oasis surrounded by the dreadful wildernesses of the great Gobi Desert—whose sands “no foot hath crossed in the memory of man.”

This word, which is no word, has travelled once round the globe, and still lingers as a far‐off dying echo in the hearts of some privileged men. The hierophants of all the Sacerdotal Colleges were aware of the existence of this island; but the “word” was known only to the Java Aleim (Mahâ Chohan in another tongue), or chief Lord of every College, and was passed to his successor only at the moment of death. There were many such Colleges, and the old classical authors speak of them.

There was no communication with the fair island by sea, but subterranean passages, known only to the chiefs, communicated with it in all directions.(510)

Tradition asserts, and Archæology accepts the truth of the legend, that there is more than one city now flourishing in India, which is built on several other cities, making thus a subterranean city of six or seven stories high. Delhi is one of them, Allahabad another; examples being found even in Europe, e.g., in Florence, which is built on several defunct Etruscan and other cities. Why, then, could not Ellora, Elephanta, Karli, and Ajunta have been built over subterranean labyrinths and passages, as it is claimed? Of course we do not allude to the caves which are known to every European, whether de visu or by hearsay, notwithstanding their enormous antiquity, though that even is disputed by modern Archæology; but to a fact, known to the initiated Brâhmans of India and especially to Yogîs, viz., that there is not a cave‐temple in the country but has its subterranean passages running in every direction, and that these underground caves and endless corridors have in their turn their caves and corridors.

Who can tell whether the lost Atlantis—which is also mentioned in the Secret Book, but, again, under another name, peculiar to the sacred language—did not still exist in those days?— we went on to ask. It did exist most assuredly, for it was approaching its greatest days of glory and civilization when the last of the Lemurian continents went down.

The great lost Continent might have, perhaps, been situated south of Asia, extending from India to Tasmania.(511) If the hypothesis—now so much doubted, and positively denied by some learned authors, who regard it as a joke of Plato—is ever verified, then, perhaps, will the Scientists believe that the description of the God‐inhabited continent was not altogether a fable.(512) And they may then perceive that Plato’s guarded hints and his attributing the narrative to Solon and the Egyptian priests, were but a prudent way of imparting the fact to the world, and at the same time, by cleverly combining truth and fiction, of disconnecting himself from a story which the obligations imposed at Initiation forbade him to divulge.

To continue the tradition, we have to add that the class of hierophants was divided into two distinct categories;(513) those who were instructed by the “Sons of God” of the island, and who were initiated in the divine doctrine of pure revelation; and others who inhabited the lost Atlantis—if such must be its name—and who, being of another race (produced sexually but of divine parents), were born with a sight which embraced all hidden things, and was independent of both distance and material obstacle. In short, they were the Fourth Race of men mentioned in the Popol Vuh, whose sight was unlimited, and who knew all things at once.

In other words, they were the Lemuro‐Atlanteans, the first who had a Dynasty of Spirit‐Kings; not of Manes, or “Ghosts,” as some believe,(514) but of actual living Devas, or Demi‐gods or Angels, again, who had assumed bodies to rule over this Race, and who, in their turn, instructed them in arts and sciences. Only, as these Dhyânîs were Rûpa or material Spirits, they were not always good. Their King Thevetat was one of the latter, and it is under the evil influence of this King‐Demon that the Atlantis‐Race became a nation of wicked “magicians.”

In consequence of this, war was declared, the story of which would be too long to narrate; its substance may be found in the disfigured allegories of the race of Cain, the giants, and that of Noah and his righteous family. The conflict came to an end by the submersion of Atlantis, which finds its imitation in the stories of the Babylonian and Mosaic flood. The giants and magicians “and all flesh died ... and every man.” All except Xisuthrus and Noah, who are substantially identical with the great Father of the Thlinkithians,(515) who, they say, also escaped in a large boat like the Hindû Noah Vaivasvata.

If we believe the tradition at all, we have to credit the further story that, from the intermarrying of the progeny of the hierophants of the island and the descendants of the Atlantean Noah, a mixed race of righteous and wicked sprang up. On the one side the world had its Enochs, Moseses, various Buddhas, its numerous “Saviours,” and great hierophants; on the other hand, its “natural magicians” who, through lack of the restraining power of proper spiritual enlightenment, ... perverted their gifts to evil purposes.

We may supplement this by the testimony of some records and traditions. In L’Histoire des Vierges: les Peuples et les Continents Disparus, Louis Jacolliot says:

One of the most ancient legends of India, preserved in the temples by oral and written tradition, relates that several hundred thousand years ago there existed in the Pacific Ocean an immense continent, which was destroyed by geological upheaval, and the fragments of which must be sought in Madagascar, Ceylon, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, and the principal isles of Polynesia.

The high plateaux of Hindûstan and Asia, according to this hypothesis, would only have been represented in those distant epochs by great islands contiguous to the central continent.... According to the Brâhmans, this country had attained a high civilization, and the peninsula of Hindûstan, enlarged by the displacement of the waters, at the time of the grand cataclysm, has but continued the chain of the primitive traditions born in this place. These traditions give the name of Rutas to the peoples which inhabited this immense equinoctial continent, and from their speech was derived the Sanskrit. The Indo‐Hellenic tradition, preserved by the most intelligent population which emigrated from the plains of India, also relates the existence of a continent and a people to which it gives the name of Atlantis and Atlantides, and which it locates in the Atlantic in the northern portion of the Tropics.

Apart from this fact, the supposition of an ancient continent in those latitudes, the vestiges of which may be found in the volcanic islands and mountainous surface of the Azores, the Canaries and Cape de Verd Islands, is not devoid of geographical probability. The Greeks, who, moreover, never dared to pass beyond the Pillars of Hercules, on account of their dread of the mysterious Ocean, appeared too late in antiquity for the stories preserved by Plato to be anything else than an echo of the Indian legend. Moreover, when we cast a look on a planisphere, at the sight of the islands and islets strewn from the Malayan Archipelago to Polynesia, from the Straits of Sunda to Easter Island, it is impossible, upon the hypothesis of continents preceding those which we inhabit, not to place there the most important of all.

A religious belief, common to Malacca and Polynesia, that is to say, to the two opposite extremes of the Oceanic world, affirms “that all these islands once formed two immense countries, inhabited by yellow men and black men, always at war; and that the gods, wearied with their quarrels, having charged Ocean to pacify them, the latter swallowed up the two continents, and, since then, it has been impossible to make him give up his captives. Alone, the mountain‐peaks and high plateaux escaped the flood, by the power of the gods, who perceived too late the mistake they had committed.”

Whatever there may be in these traditions, and whatever may have been the place where a civilization more ancient than that of Rome, of Greece, of Egypt, and of India was developed, it is certain that this civilization did exist, and it is highly important to Science to recover its traces, however feeble and fugitive they may be.(516)

This Oceanic tradition corroborates the legend given from the “Records of the Secret Doctrine.” The war mentioned between the yellow and the black men, relates to a struggle between the “Sons of Gods” and the “Sons of Giants,” or the inhabitants and magicians of Atlantis.

The final conclusion of the author, who personally visited all the islands of Polynesia, and devoted years to the study of the religion, language, and traditions of nearly all the peoples, is as follows:

As to the Polynesian continent which disappeared at the time of the final geological cataclysms, its existence rests on such proofs that to be logical we can doubt no longer.

The three summits of this continent, the Sandwich Islands, New Zealand, Easter Island, are distant from each other from fifteen to eighteen hundred leagues, and the groups of intermediate islands, Viti (Fiji), Samoa, Tonga, Foutouna (? Foutouha), Ouvea (? Oueeha), the Marquesas, Tahiti, Poumoutou (? Pomatou), the Gambiers, are themselves distant from these extreme points from seven or eight hundred to one thousand leagues.

All navigators agree in saying that the extreme and the central groups could never have communicated in view of their actual geographical position, and with the insufficient means they had at hand. It is physically impossible to cross such distances in a pirogue ... without a compass, and travel months without provisions.

On the other hand, the aborigines of the Sandwich Islands, of Viti, of New Zealand, of the central groups, of Samoa, Tahiti, etc., had never known each other, had never heard of each other, before the arrival of the Europeans. And yet each of these people maintained that their island had at one time formed part of an immense stretch of land which extended towards the West on the side of Asia. And all, brought together, were found to speak the same language, to have the same usages, the same customs, the same religious belief. And all to the question, “Where is the cradle of your race?” for sole response, extended their hand toward the setting sun.(517)

Geographically, this description clashes slightly with the facts in the Secret Records; but it shows the existence of such traditions, and this is all one cares for. For, as there is no smoke without fire, so a tradition must be based on some approximate truth.

In its proper place we will show Modern Science fully corroborating the above and other traditions of the Secret Doctrine with regard to the two lost Continents. The Easter Island relics, for instance, are the most astounding and eloquent memorials of the primeval giants. They are as grand as they are mysterious; and one has but to examine the heads of the colossal statues, that have remained unbroken, to recognize at a glance the features of the type and character attributed to the Fourth Race giants. They seem of one cast though different in features—of a distinctly sensual type, such as the Atlanteans (the Daityas and “Atalantians”) are said to have had in the Esoteric Hindû books. Compare these with the faces of some other colossal statues in Central Asia—those near Bamian, for instance—the portrait‐statues, tradition tells us, of Buddhas belonging to previous Manvantaras; of those Buddhas and heroes who are mentioned in the Buddhist and Hindû works, as men of fabulous size,(518) the good and holy brothers of their wicked coüterine brothers generally, just as Râvana, the giant king of Lankâ, was the brother of Kumbhakarna; all descendants of the Gods through the Rishis, and thus, like “Titan and his enormous brood,” all “Heaven’s first‐born.” These “Buddhas,” though often spoilt by the symbolical representation of great pendent ears, show a suggestive difference, perceived at a glance, in the expression of their faces from that of the Easter Island statues. They may be of one race—but the former are “Sons of Gods”; the latter the brood of mighty sorcerers. All these are reïncarnations however, and, apart from unavoidable exaggerations in popular fancy and tradition, they are historical characters.(519) When did they live? How long ago lived the two Races, the Third and Fourth; and how long after did the various tribes of the Fifth begin their strife, the wars between Good and Evil? We are assured by the Orientalists that chronology is both hopelessly mixed and absurdly exaggerated in the Purânas and other Hindû Scriptures. We feel quite prepared to agree with the accusation. But, if Âryan writers have occasionally allowed their chronological pendulum to swing too far one way, beyond the legitimate limit of fact; nevertheless, when the distance of that deviation is compared with the distance of the Orientalists’ deviation in the opposite direction, moderation will be found on the Brâhmanical side. It is the Pandit who will, in the long run, be found more truthful and nearer to fact than the Sanskritist. The Sanskritist’s curtailing—even when proved to have been resorted to in order to fit a personal hobby—is regarded by Western public opinion as “a cautious acceptance of facts,” whereas the Pandit is brutally treated in print as a “liar.” But, surely, this is no reason why everyone should be compelled to see this in the same light! An impartial observer may judge it otherwise. He may either proclaim both unscrupulous historians, or justify both, each on his respective ground, and say: Hindû Âryans wrote for their Initiates, who read truth between the lines; not for the masses. If they did mix up events and confuse Ages intentionally, it was not with the view of deceiving any one, but in order to preserve their knowledge from the prying eye of the foreigner. But, to him who can count the generations from the Manus, and the series of incarnations specified in the cases of some heroes,(520) in the Purânas, the meaning and chronological order are very clear. As for the Western Orientalist, he must be excused, on account of his undeniable ignorance of the methods used by archaic Esotericism.

But such existing prejudices will have to give way and disappear very soon before the light of new discoveries. Already Dr. Weber’s and Prof. Max Müller’s favourite theories—namely, that writing was not known in India, even in the days of Pânini (!); that the Hindûs had all their arts and sciences—even to the Zodiac and their architecture (Fergusson)—from the Macedonian Greeks; these and other such cock‐and‐bull hypotheses, are threatened with ruin. It is the ghost of old Chaldæa that comes to the rescue of truth. In his third Hibbert Lecture (1887) Professor Sayce of Oxford, speaking of newly‐discovered Assyrian and Babylonian cylinders, refers at length to Ea, the God of Wisdom, now identified with the Oannes of Berosus, the half‐man, half‐fish, who taught the Babylonians culture and the art of writing. This Ea, to whom, thanks only to the Biblical Deluge, an antiquity of hardly 1,500 B.C. had been hitherto allowed, is now spoken of in the following terms, to summarize from the Professor:

The city of Ea was Eridu, which stood 6,000 years ago on the shores of the Persian Gulf. The name means “the good city,” a particularly holy spot, since it was the centre from which the earliest Chaldæan civilization made its way to the north. As the culture‐god was represented as coming from the sea, it was possible that the culture of which Eridu was the seat was of foreign importation. We now know that there was intercourse at a very early period between Chaldæa and the Sinaitic peninsula, as well as with India. The statues discovered by the French at Tel‐ loh (dating from at latest B.C. 4,000) were made of the extremely hard stone known as diorite, and the inscriptions on them stated the diorite to have been brought from Magan—i.e., the Sinaitic peninsula, which was then ruled by the Pharaohs. The statues are known to resemble in general style the diorite statue, Kephren, the builder of the second Pyramid, while, according to Mr. Petrie, the unit of measurement marked on the plan of the city, which one of the Tel‐loh figures holds on his lap, is the same as that employed by the Pyramid builders. Teak wood has been found at Mugheir, or Ur of the Chaldees, although that wood is an Indian special product; add to this that an ancient Babylonian list of clothing mentions sindhu or “muslin,” explained as “vegetable cloth.”(521)

Muslin, best known now as Dacca muslin, known in Chaldæa as Hindu (Sindhu), and teak wood used 4,000 years B.C., and yet the Hindûs, to whom Chaldæa owes its civilization, as has been well proven by Colonel Vans Kennedy, were ignorant of the art of writing before the Greeks taught them their alphabet—if, at least, we have to believe Orientalists!

Stanza X. The History Of The Fourth Race.

38. The birth of the Fourth (Atlantean) Race. 39. The sub‐races of the Fourth Humanity begin to divide and interblend; they form the first mixed races of various colours. 40. The superiority of the Atlantean over other Races. 41. They fall into sin and beget children and monsters. 42. The first germs of anthropomorphism and sexual religion. They lose their “third eye.”

38. THUS, TWO BY TWO, ON THE SEVEN ZONES, THE THIRD RACE GAVE BIRTH TO THE FOURTH; THE SURA BECAME A‐SURA.(522)

39. THE FIRST,(523) ON EVERY ZONE, WAS MOON‐COLOURED;(524) THE SECOND YELLOW LIKE GOLD; THE THIRD RED; THE FOURTH BROWN, WHICH BECAME BLACK WITH SIN.(525) THE FIRST SEVEN HUMAN SHOOTS WERE ALL OF ONE COMPLEXION.(526) THE NEXT SEVEN,(527) BEGAN MIXING.(528)

To understand Shloka 38, it must be read together with the Shlokas of Stanza IX. Up to this point of evolution man belongs more to metaphysical than physical Nature. It is only after the so‐called “Fall,” that the Races began to develop rapidly into a purely human shape. In order that the student may correctly comprehend the full meaning of the Fall—so mystic and transcendental in its real significance—he must at once be told the details which preceded it, seeing that modern Theology has made of the event a pivot on which its most pernicious and absurd dogmas and beliefs are made to turn.

The Archaic Commentaries, as the reader may remember, explain that, of the Host of Dhyânîs, whose turn it was to incarnate as the Egos of the immortal, but, on this plane, senseless Monads—some “obeyed” (the Law of Evolution) immediately the men of the Third Race became physiologically and physically ready, i.e., when they had separated into sexes. These were those early conscious Beings who, now adding conscious knowledge and will to their inherent divine purity, “created” by Kriyâshakti the semi‐ divine man, who became the Seed on Earth for future Adepts. Those, on the other hand, who, jealous of their intellectual freedom—unfettered as it then was by the bonds of Matter—said: “We can choose, ... we have wisdom,”(529) and so incarnated far later—these had their first Karmic punishment prepared for them. They got bodies inferior (physiologically) to their Astral Models, because their Chhâyâs had belonged to Progenitors of an inferior degree in the seven Classes. As to those “Sons of Wisdom” who “deferred” their incarnation till the Fourth Race, which was already tainted (physiologically) with sin and impurity, these produced a terrible cause, the Karmic result of which weighs on them to this day. It was produced in themselves, and they became the carriers of that seed of iniquity for æons to come, because the bodies they had to inform had become defiled through their own procrastination.(530)

This was the “Fall of the Angels,” owing to their rebellion against Karmic Law. The “fall of man” was no fall, for he was irresponsible. But “creation” having been invented on the dualistic system as the “prerogative of God alone”—the legitimate attribute patented by Theology in the name of an infinite Deity of their own making—the power of Kriyâshakti had to be regarded as “Satanic,” and as a usurpation of divine rights. Thus, in the light of such narrow views, the foregoing must naturally be considered as a terrible slander on man, “created in the image of God,” and a still more dreadful blasphemy in the face of the dead‐letter dogma. “Your doctrine,” the Occultists have already been told, “makes of man, created out of dust in the likeness of his God, a vehicle of the Devil, from the first.” “Why do you make of your God a Devil—both, moreover, created in your own image?”—is our reply. The Esoteric interpretation of the Bible, however, sufficiently refutes this slanderous invention of Theology; the Secret Doctrine must some day become the just Karma of the Churches—more anti‐Christian than the representative assemblies of the most confirmed Materialists and Atheists.

The true meaning of the old doctrine of the “Fallen Angels,” in its anthropological and evolutionary sense, is contained in the Kabalah, and explains the Bible. It is found preëminently in Genesis when the latter is read in a spirit of research for truth, with no eye to dogma, and in no mood of preconception. This is easily proven. In Genesis (vi), the “Sons of God”—B’ne Aleim—become enamoured of the daughters of men, marry, and reveal to their wives the mysteries unlawfully learnt by them in Heaven, according to Enoch; and this is the “Fall of the Angels.”(531) But what, in reality, is the Book of Enoch itself, from which the author of Revelation and even the St. John of the Fourth Gospel(532) have so profusely quoted? Simply a Book of Initiation, giving out in allegory and cautious phraseology the programme of certain Archaic Mysteries performed in the inner Temples. The author of the Sacred Mysteries among the Mayas and Quichés very justly suggests that the so‐called “Visions” of Enoch relate to his (Enoch’s) experience at Initiation, and what he learned in the Mysteries; while he very erroneously states his opinion that Enoch had learned them before being converted to Christianity (! !); furthermore, he believes that this book was written “at the beginning of the Christian era, when ... the customs and religion of the Egyptians fell into decadency”! This is hardly possible, since Jude, in his Epistle,(533) quotes from the Book of Enoch; and, therefore, as Archbishop Laurence, the translator of the Book of Enoch from the Ethiopic version, remarks, it “could not have been the production of a writer who lived after ... or was even coëval with” the writers of the New Testament, unless, indeed, Jude and the Gospels, and all that follows, were also a production of the already established Church—which, some critics say, is not impossible. But we are now concerned with the “Fallen Angels” of Enoch, rather than with Enoch himself.

In Indian exotericism, these Angels (Asuras) are also denounced as the “enemies of the Gods”; those who oppose sacrificial worship offered to the Devas. In Christian Theology they are broadly referred to as the “Fallen Spirits,” the heroes of various conflicting and contradictory legends, gathered from Pagan sources. The coluber tortuosus, the “tortuous snake”—a qualification said to have originated with the Jews—had quite another meaning before the Roman Church distorted it; among others, a purely astronomical signification.

The “Serpent” fallen from on high (deorsum fluens) was credited with the possession of the Keys of the Empire of the Dead (τοῦ θανάτου ἀρχή) to the day when Jesus saw it fall “as lightning ... from heaven,”(534) notwithstanding the Roman Catholic interpretation of “cadebat ut fulgur.” It means indeed that even “the devils are subject” to the Logos—who is Wisdom, but at the same time, as the opponent of ignorance, Satan or Lucifer. This remark refers to divine Wisdom falling like lightning on, and so quickening, the intellects of those who fight the devils of ignorance and superstition. Up to the time when Wisdom, in the shape of the incarnating Spirits of Mahat, descended from on high to animate and call the Third Race to real conscious life—Humanity, if it can be so called in its animal, senseless state, was of course doomed to moral as well as to physical death. The Angels fallen into generation are referred to metaphorically as Serpents and Dragons of Wisdom. On the other hand, regarded in the light of the Logos, the Christian Saviour, like Krishna, whether as man or Logos, may be said to have saved those who believed in the Secret Teachings, from “eternal death,” and to have conquered the Kingdom of Darkness, or Hell, as every Initiate does. This is the human, terrestrial form of the Initiates, and also—because the Logos is Christos—that “principle” of our inner nature which develops in us into the Spiritual Ego—the Higher Self—formed of the indissoluble union of Buddhi, the sixth, and the spiritual efflorescence of Manas, the fifth “principle.”(535) “The Logos is passive Wisdom in Heaven and conscious, self‐active Wisdom on Earth,” we are taught. It is the Marriage of the “Heavenly Man” with the “Virgin of the World,” or Nature, as described in Pymander; the result of which is their progeny—immortal man. It is this which is called in St. John’s Revelation(536) the marriage of the Lamb with his Bride. This “wife” is now identified with the Church of Rome owing to the arbitrary interpretations of her votaries. But they seem to forget that her “linen” may be “clean and white” outwardly, like the “whited sepulchre,” but that the rottenness she is inwardly filled with, is not the “righteousness of saints,”(537) but rather the blood of the saints she has “slain upon the earth.”(538) Thus the remark made by the great Initiate, in Luke—referring allegorically to the ray of enlightenment and reason, falling like lightning from on high into the hearts and minds of the converts to the old Wisdom‐Religion, then presented in a new form by the wise Galilean Adept(539)—was distorted out of all recognition, as was also his own personality, and made to fit in with one of the most cruel and the most pernicious of all theological dogmas.

But if Western Theology alone holds the patent and copyright of Satan—in all the dogmatic horror of that fiction—other nationalities and religions have committed equal errors in their misinterpretation of a tenet, which is one of the most profoundly philosophical and ideal conceptions of ancient thought. They have both disfigured, and hinted at, the correct meaning of it in their numerous allegories on the subject. Nor have the semi‐esoteric dogmas of Paurânic Hindûism failed to evolve very suggestive symbols and allegories concerning the rebellious and fallen Gods. The Purânas teem with them; and we find a direct hint at the truth in the frequent allusions of Parâshara, in the Vishnu Purâna, to all those Rudras, Rishis, Asuras, Kumâras and Munis, who have to be born in every age—to reïncarnate in every Manvantara. This, Esoterically, is equivalent to saying that the “Flames” born of the Universal Mind, or Mahat, owing to the mysterious workings of Karmic Will and the impulse of Evolutionary Law, had—without any gradual transition—landed on this Earth, after having, as in Pymander, broken through the “Seven Circles of Fire,” or, in short, the seven intermediate Worlds.

There is an Eternal Cyclic Law of Re‐births, and the series is headed at every new Manvantaric Dawn by those who have enjoyed their rest from reïncarnations in previous Kalpas for incalculable Æons—by the highest and the earliest Nirvânîs. It was the turn of these “Gods” to incarnate in the present Manvantara; hence their presence on Earth, and the ensuing allegories; hence, also, the perversion of the original meaning.(540) The Gods who had “fallen into generation,” whose mission it was to complete Divine Man, are found represented later on as Demons, Evil Spirits, and Fiends, at feud and war with Gods, or the irresponsible agents of the one Eternal Law. But no conception of such creatures as the Devils and the Satan of the Christian, Jewish, and Mahommedan religions was ever intended by these thousand and one Âryan allegories.(541)

The true Esoteric view about “Satan,” the opinion held on this subject by the whole of philosophic antiquity, is admirably brought out in an Appendix, entitled “The Secret of Satan,” to the second edition of Dr. A. Kingsford’s Perfect Way.(542) No better and clearer indication of the truth could be offered to the intelligent reader, and it is therefore quoted here at some length:

1. And on the seventh day [seventh creation of the Hindûs],(543) there went forth from the presence of God a mighty Angel, full of wrath and consuming, and God gave him the dominion of the outermost sphere.(544)

2. Eternity brought forth Time; the Boundless gave birth to Limit; Being descended into generation.(545)

4. Among the Gods is none like unto him, into whose hands are committed the kingdoms, the power and the glory of the worlds:

5. Thrones and empires, the dynasties of kings,(546) the fall of nations, the birth of churches, the triumphs of Time.

For, as is said in Hermes:

20. Satan is the door‐keeper of the Temple of the King; he standeth in Solomon’s porch; he holdeth the Keys of the Sanctuary;

21. That no man may enter therein save the anointed, having the arcanum of Hermes.

These suggestive and majestic verses had reference, with the ancient Egyptians and other civilized peoples of antiquity, to the creative and generative Light of the Logos—Horus, Brahmâ, Ahura Mazda, etc., as primeval manifestations of the Ever‐unmanifested Principle, whether called Ain Suph, Parabrahman, or Zeruâna Akerne, or Boundless Time, Kâla—but the meaning is now degraded in the Kabalah. The “Anointed”—who has the secrets and mysteries of Hermes, or Budha, Wisdom, and who alone is entrusted with the “Keys of the Sanctuary,” the Womb of Nature, in order to fructify it and call to active life and being the whole Kosmos—has become, with the Jews, Jehovah, the “God of Generation” on the Lunar Mountain—Sinai, the Mountain of the Moon (Sin). The “Sanctuary” has become the “Holy of Holies,” and the arcanum has been anthropomorphized, and “phallicized,” and dragged down into Matter, indeed. Hence arose the necessity of making of the “Dragon of Wisdom,” the “Serpent” of Genesis; of the conscious God who needed a body to clothe his too subjective divinity, Satan. But the “innumerable incarnations of Spirit,” and “the ceaseless pulse and current of Desire,”(547) refer, the first, to our doctrine of Karmic and Cyclic Rebirths, the second—to Erôs, not the later God of material, physiological love, but to the Divine Desire in the Gods, as well as in all Nature, to create and give life to Beings. This, the Rays of the one “Dark,” because invisible and incomprehensible, “Flame” could achieve only by themselves descending into Matter. Therefore, as continued in the Appendix:

12. Many names hath God given him [Satan], names of mystery, secret and terrible.

13. ... The Adversary, because Matter opposeth Spirit, and Time accuseth even the saints of the Lord.

28. Stand in awe of him, and sin not: speak his name with trembling....

29. For Satan is the magistrate of the Justice of God [Karma]; he beareth the balance and the sword.

31. For to him are committed Weight and Measure and Number.

Compare the last sentence with what the Rabbi, who explains the Kabalah to the Prince in the Book of Al Chazari, says, and it will be found that Weight and Measure and Number are, in the Sepher Jetzirah, the attributes of the Sephiroth (the three Sephrim, or figures, ciphers), covering the whole collective number of 10; and that the Sephiroth are the collective Adam Kadmon, the “Heavenly Man” or the Logos. Thus Satan and the Anointed were identified in ancient thought. Therefore:

33. Satan is the minister of God, Lord of the seven mansions of Hades, the Angel of the manifest Worlds.

The seven Lokas, or Saptaloka, of the Earth with the Hindûs; for Hades, or the Limbo of Illusion, of which Theology makes a region bordering on Hell, is simply our Globe, the Earth, and thus Satan is called the “Angel of the manifest Worlds.”

It is “Satan who is the God of our planet and the only God,” and this without any metaphorical allusion to its wickedness and depravity. For he is one with the Logos.

The first and “eldest of the gods,” in the order of microcosmic [divine] evolution, Saturn (Satan) [astronomically] is the seventh and last in the order of macrocosmic emanation, being the circumference of the Kingdom of which Phœbus [the Light of Wisdom, also the Sun] is the centre.

The Gnostics were right, then, in calling the Jewish God an “Angel of Matter,” or he who breathed (conscious) life into Adam, and whose Planet was Saturn.

34. And God hath put a girdle about his loins [the rings of Saturn], and the name of the girdle is Death.

In Anthropogony this “girdle” is the human body with its two lower principles. These three die, while the innermost Man is immortal. And now we approach the secret of Satan.

37. ... Upon Satan only is the shame of generation.

38. He hath lost his virginal estate [so hath the Kumâra, by incarnating]: uncovering heavenly secrets, he hath entered into bondage.

39. He encompasseth with bonds and limits all things....

42. Twain are the armies of God: in heaven the hosts of Michael; in the abyss [the manifested world] the legions of Satan.

43. These are the Unmanifest and the Manifest; the free and the bound [in Matter]; the virginal and the fallen.

44. And both are the ministers of the Father, fulfilling the Word divine.

Therefore:

55. Holy and venerable is the Sabbath of God: blessed and sanctified is the name of the Angel of Hades [Satan].

For:

41. The glory of Satan is the shadow of the Lord [God in the manifested World]: the throne of Satan is the footstool of Adonai [the whole Kosmos].

When the Church, therefore, curses Satan, it curses the Kosmic reflection of God; it anathematizes God made manifest in Matter or in the objective; it maledicts God, or the ever‐incomprehensible Wisdom, revealing itself as Light and Shadow, Good and Evil in Nature, in the only manner comprehensible to the limited intellect of Man.

This is the true philosophical and metaphysical interpretation of Samael, or Satan, the Adversary in the Kabalah; the same tenets and spirit being found in the allegorical interpretations of every other ancient religion. This philosophical view does not interfere, however, with the historical records connected with it. We say “historical,” because allegory and mythical ornamentation round the kernel of tradition, in nowise prevent that kernel being a record of real events. Thus, the Kabalah, repeating the time‐honoured revelations of the once universal history of our Globe and the evolution of its Races, has presented it under the legendary form of the various records which have formed the Bible. Its historical foundation, in however imperfect a form, is now offered in these pages from the Secret Doctrine of the East; and thus the allegorical and symbolical meaning of the Serpent of Genesis is found explained by the “Sons of Wisdom”—or Angels from higher Spheres, though all and each pertain to the Kingdom of Satan, or Matter—revealing to men the mysteries of Heaven. Hence, also, all the so‐called myths of the Hindû, Grecian, Chaldæan, and Jewish Pantheons are found to be built on fact and truth. The Giants of Genesis are the historical Atlanteans of Lankâ, and the Greek Titans.

Who can forget that Troy was once upon a time proclaimed a myth, and Homer a non‐existent personage, while the existence of such cities as Herculaneum and Pompeii was denied, and attributed to mere fairy legends? Yet Schliemann has proved that Troy did really exist, and the two latter cities, though buried for long ages under the Vesuvian lava, have had their resurrection day, and live again on the surface of the Earth. How many more cities and localities called “fabulous” are on the list of future discoveries, how many more personages regarded as mythical(548) will one day become historical, those alone can tell who read the decrees of Fate in the Astral Light.

As the tenets of the Eastern Doctrine, however, have always been kept secret, and as the reader can hardly hope to be shown the original texts unless he becomes an accepted disciple, let the Greek and Latin scholar turn to the original texts of Hermetic literature. Let him, for instance, read carefully the opening pages of the Pymander of Hermes Trismegistus, and he will see our doctrines corroborated therein, however veiled its text. There also he will find the evolution of the Universe, of our Earth, called “Nature” in Pymander, as of everything else, from the “Moyst Principle,” or the great Deep, Father‐Mother—the first differentiation in the manifested Kosmos. First the “Universal Mind,” which the hand of the Christian translator has metamorphosed in the earliest renderings into God, the Father; then the “Heavenly Man,”(549) the great Total of that Host of Angels, which was too pure for the creation of the inferior Worlds or of the Men of our Globe, but which nevertheless fell into Matter by virtue of that same evolution, as the Second Logos of the “Father.”(550)

Synthetically, every Creative Logos, or “the Son who is one with the Father,” is the Host of the Rectores Mundi in itself. Even Christian Theology makes of the seven “Angels of the Presence” the Virtues, or the personified attributes, of God, which, being created by him, as the Manus were by Brahmâ, became Archangels. The Roman Catholic Theodice itself, recognizing in its creative Verbum Princeps the Head of these Angels (caput angelorum) and the Angel of the great Counsel (magni consilii angelus), thus recognizes the identity of Christ with them.

“The Sura became A‐Sura”—the Gods became No‐Gods—says the text; i.e., Gods became Fiends—Satan, when read literally. But Satan will now be shown, in the teaching of the Secret Doctrine, to be allegorized as Good and Sacrifice, a God of Wisdom, under different names.

The Kabalah teaches that Pride and Presumption—the two chief prompters of Selfishness and Egotism—are the causes that emptied Heaven of one‐ third of its divine denizens, mystically, and of one‐third of the stars, astronomically; in other words, the first statement is an allegory, and the second a fact. The former, nevertheless, is, as shown, intimately connected with humanity.

In their turn the Rosicrucians, who were well acquainted with the secret meaning of the tradition, kept it to themselves, teaching merely that the whole of “creation” was due to, and the result of, that legendary “War in Heaven,” brought on by the rebellion of the Angels(551) against Creative Law, or the Demiurge. The statement is correct, but the inner meaning is to this day a mystery. To elude further explanation of the difficulty, by appealing to divine mystery, or to the sin of prying into its policy—is to say nothing at all. It may prove sufficient for believers in the Pope’s infallibility, but will hardly satisfy the philosophical mind. Yet the truth, although known to most of the higher Kabalists, has never been told by any of their number. One and all, Kabalists and Symbologists, have shown an extraordinary reluctance to confess the primitive meaning of the Fall of the Angels. In a Christian such silence is only natural. Neither Alchemist nor Philosopher during the Mediæval Ages could have uttered that(552) which in the sight of Orthodox Theology was terrible blasphemy, for it would have led them directly through the “Holy” Office of the Inquisition, to rack and stake. But for our modern Kabalists and Freethinkers the case is different. With the latter, we fear, it is merely human pride, vanity based on a loudly rejected but ineradicable superstition. Since the Church, in her struggle with Manicheeïsm, invented the Devil, and by placing a theological extinguisher on the radiant Star‐ God Lucifer, the “Son of the Morning,” thus created the most gigantic of all her paradoxes, a black and tenebrous Light—the myth has struck its roots too deeply into the soil of blind faith to permit, in our age, even those, who do not acquiesce in her dogmas, and laugh at her horned and cloven‐footed Satan, to come out bravely and confess the antiquity of the oldest of all traditions. In a few brief words it is this. Semi‐ exoterically, the “First‐born” of the Almighty—Fiat Lux—or the Angels of Primordial Light, were commanded to “create”; one‐third of them rebelled and “refused”; while those who “obeyed” as Fetahil did—failed most signally.

To realize the refusal and failure in their correct physical meaning, one must study and understand Eastern Philosophy; one has to be acquainted with the fundamental mystical tenets of the Vedântins, as to the utter fallacy of attributing functional activity to the Infinite and Absolute Deity. Esoteric Philosophy maintains that during the Sandhyâs, the “Central Sun” emits Creative Light—passively, so to say. Causality is latent. It is only during the active periods of Being that it gives rise to a stream of ceaseless Energy, whose vibrating currents acquire more activity and potency with every rung of the hebdomadic ladder of Being which they descend. Hence it becomes comprehensible how the process of “creating,” or rather of fashioning, the organic Universe, with all its units of the seven kingdoms, necessitated intelligent Beings—who became collectively a Being or Creative God, differentiated already from the One Absolute Unity, unrelated as the latter is to conditioned “creation.”(553)

Now the Vatican MS. of the Kabalah—the only copy of which (in Europe) is said to have been in the possession of Count St. Germain—contains the most complete exposition of the doctrine, including the peculiar version accepted by the Luciferians(554) and other Gnostics; and in that parchment the “Seven Suns of Life” are given in the order in which they are found in the Saptasûrya. Only four of these, however, are mentioned in the editions of the Kabalah which are procurable in public libraries, and that even in a more or less veiled phraseology. Nevertheless even this reduced number is amply sufficient to show an identical origin, as it refers to the quaternary group of the Dhyân Chohans, and proves the speculation to have had its origin in the Secret Doctrines of the Âryans. As is well known, the Kabalah did not originate with the Jews, for the latter got their ideas from the Chaldæans and the Egyptians.

Thus even the exoteric Kabalistic teachings speak of a “Central Sun,” and of three secondary Suns in each Solar System—our own included. As shown in that able though too materialistic work, New Aspects of Life and Religion, which is a synopsis of the views of the Kabalists in an aspect deeply thought out and assimilated:

The central sun ... was to them [as much as to the Âryans] the centre of rest; the centre to which all motion was to be ultimately referred. Round this central sun ... “the first of three systemic suns ... revolved on a polar plane ... the second, on an equatorial plane” ... and the third only was our visible sun. These four solar bodies were “the organs on whose action what man calls the creation, the evolution of life on the planet earth, depends.” The channels through which the influence of these bodies was conveyed to the earth they [the Kabalists] held to be electrical.... The radiant energy flowing from the central sun(555) called the earth into being as a watery globe, ... [whose tendency], as the nucleus of a planetary body, was to rush to the (central) sun ... within the sphere of whose attraction it had been created.... But the radiant energy, similarly electrifying both, withheld the one from the other, and so changed motion towards into motion round the centre of attraction, which the revolving planet [earth] thus sought to reach.

In the organic cell the visible sun found its own proper matrix, and produced through this the animal [while maturing the vegetable] kingdom, finally placing man at its head, in whom, through the animating action of that kingdom, it originated the psychic cell. But the man so placed at the head of the animal kingdom, at the head of the creation, was the animal, the soul‐ less, the perishable man.... Hence man, although apparently its crown, would, by his advent have marked the close of creation; since creation, culminating in him, would at his death have entered on its decline.(556)

This Kabalistic view is here quoted, to show its perfect identity in spirit with the Eastern Doctrine. Explain, or complete the teaching of the Seven Suns with the seven systems of Planes of Being, of which the “Suns” are the central bodies, and you have the seven Angelic Planes, whose “Host” collectively are the Gods thereof.(557) They are the Head Group divided into four Classes, from the Incorporeal down to the Semi‐ corporeal. These Classes are directly connected—though in very different ways as regards voluntary connection and functions—with our mankind. They are three, synthesized by the fourth, the first and highest, which is called the “Central Sun” in the Kabalistic doctrine just quoted. This is the great difference between the Semitic and the Âryan Cosmogony—one materializing, humanizes the mysteries of Nature; the other spiritualizes Matter, and its physiology is always made subservient to metaphysics. Thus, though the seventh “principle” reaches man through all the phases of Being, pure as an indiscrete element and an impersonal unity, it passes through—the Kabalah teaches from—the Central Spiritual Sun and Group the Second, the Polar Sun, which two radiate on man his Âtmâ. Group Three, the Equatorial Sun, cements the Buddhi to Âtman and the higher attributes of Manas; while Group Four, the Spirit of our visible Sun, endows him with his Manas and its vehicle, the Kâma Rûpa, or body of passions and desires—the two elements of Ahamkâra which evolve individualized consciousness, the personal Ego. Finally, it is the Spirit of the Earth, in its triple unity, that builds the Physical Body, attracting to it the Spirits of Life and forming his Linga Sharîra.

But everything proceeds cyclically, the evolution of man like everything else, and the order in which he is generated is described fully in the Eastern Teachings, whereas it is only hinted at in the Kabalah. Says the Book of Dzyan with regard to Primeval Man when first projected by the “Boneless,” the Incorporeal Creator:

First, the Breath, then Buddhi, and the Shadow‐Son [the Body] were “created.” But where was the Pivot [the Middle Principle, Manas]? Man is doomed. When alone, the Indiscrete [Undifferentiated Element] and the Vâhan [Buddhi]—the Cause of the Causeless—break asunder from manifested life.

“Unless,” explains the Commentary:

Unless cemented and held together by the Middle Principle, the Vehicle of the personal consciousness of Jîva.

In other words, the two higher “principles” can have no individuality on Earth, cannot be man, unless there is (a) the Mind, the Manas‐Ego, to cognize itself, and (b) the terrestrial false Personality, or the Body of egotistical desires and personal Will, to cement the whole, as if round a Pivot—which it is, truly—to the physical form of man. It is the fifth and the fourth “principles”(558)—Manas and Kâma Rûpa—that contain the dual Personality; the real immortal Ego, if it assimilates itself to the two higher, and the false and transitory Personality, the Mâyâvi or Astral Body, so‐called, or the Animal‐human Soul—the two having to be closely blended for purposes of a full terrestrial existence. Incarnate the Spiritual Monad of a Newton, grafted on that of the greatest saint on Earth, in a physical body the most perfect you can think of—i.e., in a two or even a three‐principled Body composed of its Sthûla Sharîra, Prâna (Life‐principle) and Linga Sharîra—and, if it lacks its middle and fifth “principles,” you will have created an idiot—at best a beautiful, soul‐ less, empty and unconscious appearance. “Cogito—ergo sum” can find no room in the brain of such a creature, not on this plane, at any rate.

There are students, however, who have long ago understood the philosophical meaning underlying the allegory—so tortured and disfigured by the Roman Church—of the “Fallen Angels.”

The kingdom of spirits and spiritual action, which flows from and is the product of spirit volition, is outside and contrasted with and in contradiction to the kingdom of [divine] souls and divine action.(559)

As said in the text of Commentary xiv:

Like produces like and no more at the genesis of Being, and evolution with its limited conditioned laws comes later. The Self Existent(560) are called “Creations,” for they appear in the Spirit‐Ray, manifested through the potency inherent in its Unborn Nature, which is beyond Time and [limited or conditioned] Space. Terrene products, animate and inanimate, including mankind, are falsely called creation and creatures; they are the development [evolution] of the Discrete Elements.

Again:

The Heavenly Rûpa [Dhyân Chohan] creates [man] in his own form; it is a spiritual ideation consequent on the first differentiation and awakening of the universal [manifested] Substance; that form is the ideal Shadow of Itself: and this is the Man of the First Race.

To express it in still clearer form, limiting the explanation to this Earth only, it was the duty of the first “differentiated” Egos—the Church calls them Archangels—to imbue Primordial Matter with the evolutionary impulse and guide its formative powers in the fashioning of its productions. This it is which is referred to in the sentences both in the Eastern and Western tradition—“the Angels were commanded to create.” After the Earth had been made ready by the lower and more material Powers, and its three Kingdoms fairly started on their way to be “fruitful and multiply,” the higher Powers, the Archangels or Dhyânîs, were compelled by the Evolutionary Law to descend on Earth, in order to construct the crown of its evolution—Man. Thus the “Self‐created” and the “Self‐existent” projected their pale Shadows; but Group the Third, the Fire‐Angels, rebelled and refused to join their fellow Devas.

Hindû exotericism represents them all as Yogins, whose piety inspired them to refuse to “create,” as they desired to remain eternally Kumâras, “Virgin Youths,” in order, if possible, to anticipate their fellows in progress towards Nirvâna‐the final liberation. But, agreeably to Esoteric interpretation, it was a self‐sacrifice for the benefit of mankind. The “Rebels” would not create will‐less irresponsible men, as the “obedient” Angels did; nor could they endow human beings with even the temporary reflections of their own attributes; for the latter, belonging to another and a so much higher plane of consciousness, would leave man still irresponsible, hence interfere with any possibility of higher progress. No spiritual and psychic evolution is possible on Earth—the lowest and most material plane—for one who, on that plane at all events, is inherently perfect and cannot accumulate either merit or demerit. Had Man remained the pale Shadow of the inert, immutable, and motionless Perfection, the one negative and passive attribute of the real I am that I am, he would have been doomed to pass through life on Earth as in a heavy dreamless sleep; hence a failure on this plane. The Beings, or the Being, collectively called Elohim, who first pronounced (if, indeed, they ever were pronounced) the cruel words, “Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever ...”—must have been indeed the Ilda‐baoth, the Demiurge of the Nazarenes, filled with rage and envy against his own creature, the reflection of which created Ophiomorphos. In this case it is but natural—even from the dead‐letter standpoint—to view Satan, the Serpent of Genesis, as the real creator and benefactor, the Father of Spiritual Mankind. For it is he who was the “Harbinger of Light,” bright radiant Lucifer, who opened the eyes of the automaton “created” by Jehovah, as alleged. And he who was the first to whisper, “in the day ye eat thereof ye shall be as Elohim, knowing good and evil,” can only be regarded in the light of a Saviour. An “Adversary” to Jehovah, the “personating spirit,” he still remains in Esoteric Truth the ever‐loving “Messenger,” the Angel, the Seraphim and Cherubim who both “knew” well, and “loved” still more, and who conferred on us Spiritual, instead of Physical Immortality—the latter a kind of static immortality that would have transformed man into an undying “Wandering Jew.”

As narrated in King’s Gnostics and their Remains concerning Ildabaoth, whom several sects regarded as the God of Moses:

Ildabaoth was far from being a pure spirit; ambition and pride dominated in his composition. He therefore resolved to break off all connection with his mother, Achamoth, and to create a world entirely for himself. Aided by his own Six Spirits, he created Man, intending him for the image of his power; but he failed utterly in his work, his Man proving a vast, soulless monster, crawling upon the earth. The Six Spirits were obliged to bring their work again before their father, to be animated: he did so by communicating the ray of Divine Light which he himself had inherited from Achamoth, who by this loss punished him for his pride and self‐sufficiency.

Man, thus favoured by Achamoth at the expense of her own son, followed the impulse of the Divine Light that she had transferred to him, collected a further supply out of the creation with which it was intermingled, and began to present not the image of his creator Ildabaoth, but rather that of the Supreme Being, the “Primal Man.” At this spectacle the Demiurgus was filled with rage and envy at having produced a being so superior to himself. His looks, inspired by his passions, were reflected in the Abyss, as in a mirror, the image became instinct with life, and forth arose “Satan Serpent‐formed,” Ophiomorphos, the embodiment of envy and cunning.(561)

This is the exoteric rendering of the Gnostics, and the allegory, though a sectarian version, is suggestive, and seems true to life. It is the natural deduction from the dead‐letter text of Chapter iii of Genesis. Hence the allegory of Prometheus, who steals the Divine Fire so as to allow men to proceed consciously on the path of Spiritual Evolution, thus transforming the most perfect of animals on Earth into a potential God, and making him free to “take the kingdom of heaven by violence.” Hence, also, the curse pronounced by Zeus against Prometheus, and by Jehovah‐ Ilda‐baoth against his “rebellious son,” Satan. The cold, pure snows of the Caucasian mountain and the never‐dying, singeing fire and flames of an inextinguishable Hell, two poles, yet the same idea, the dual aspect of a refined torture; a “Fire‐producer”—the personified emblem of Φωσφόρος (Phósphoros), of the Astral Fire and Light in the Anima Mundi (that Element of which the German materialist philosopher Moleschott said: “ohne Phosphor kein Gedanke,” or “without phosphorus no thought”)—burning in the fierce Flames of his terrestrial Passions; the conflagration fired by his Thought, discerning as it now does good from evil, and yet a slave to the passions of its earthly Adam; feeling the vulture of doubt and full consciousness gnawing at its heart—a Prometheus indeed, because a conscious, and hence a responsible entity.(562) The curse of life is great, yet, with the exception of some Hindû and Sufi mystics, how few are those who would exchange all the tortures of conscious life, all the evils of a responsible existence, for the unconscious perfection of a passive (objectively) incorporeal Being, or even the universal static Inertia personified in Brahmâ during his “Night’s” Rest. For, to quote from an able article by one(563) who, confusing the planes of existence and consciousness, fell a victim thereto:

Satan [or Lucifer] represents the Active, or, as [M. Jules] Baissac calls it, the “Centrifugal” Energy of the Universe [in a cosmic sense]. He is Fire, Light, Life, Struggle, Effort, Thought, Consciousness, Progress, Civilization, Liberty, Independence. At the same time he is Pain, which is the Reaction of the Pleasure of Action, and Death—which is the Revolution of Life—Satan, burning in his own Hell, produced by the fury of his own momentum—the expansive disintegration of the Nebula which is to concentrate into New Worlds. And fitly is he again and again baffled by the Eternal Inertia of the Passive Energy of the Kosmos—the inexorable “I am”—the Flint from which the sparks are beaten out. And fitly ... are he and his adherents ... consigned to the “Sea of Fire”—because it is the Sun [in one sense only in the cosmic allegory], the Fount of Life in our system, where they are purified (meaning thereby disintegrated) and churned up to reärrange them for another life (the Resurrection)—that Sun which, as the Origin of the Active Principle of our Earth, is at once the Home and the Source of the Mundane Satan....

Furthermore, as if to demonstrate the accuracy of Baissac’s general theory [in Le Diable et Satan] cold is known to have a “Centripetal” effect. Under the influence of Cold everything contracts.... Under it Life hybernates, or dies out, Thought congeals, and Fire is extinguished. Satan is immortal in his own Fire‐Sea—it is only in the “Nifl‐Heim” [the cold Hell of the Scandinavian Eddas] of the “I am” that he cannot exist. But for all that there is a kind of Immortal Existence in Nifl‐Heim, and that Existence must be Painless and Peaceful, because it is Unconscious and Inactive. In the Kingdom of Jehovah [if this God were all that the Jews and Christians claim for him] there is no misery, no war, no marrying and giving in marriage, no change, no Individual Consciousness.(564) All is absorbed in the spirit of the Most Powerful. It is emphatically a Kingdom of Peace and loyal Submission, as that of the “Arch‐Rebel” is one of War and Revolution.... It [the former] is in fact what Theosophy calls Nirvâna. But then Theosophy teaches that Separation from the Primal Source having once occurred, Reünion can only be achieved by Will‐Effort—which is distinctly Satanic in the sense of this essay.(565)

It is “Satanic” from the standpoint of orthodox Romanism, for it is owing to the prototype of that which became in time the Christian Devil—to the Radiant Archangels, Dhyân Chohans, who refused to create, because they wanted Man to become his own creator and an immortal God—that men can reach Nirvâna and the Haven of heavenly Divine Peace.

To close this rather lengthy comment, the Secret Doctrine teaches that the Fire‐Devas, the Rudras, and the Kumâras, the “Virgin‐Angels,” (to whom the Archangels, Michael and Gabriel, both belong,) the Divine “Rebels”—called by the all‐materializing and positive Jews, the Nahash or “Deprived”—preferred the curse of incarnation and the long cycles of terrestrial existence and rebirths, to seeing the misery, even if unconscious, of the beings who were evolved as Shadows out of their Brethren, through the semi‐passive energy of their too spiritual Creators. If “man’s uses of life should be such as neither to animalize nor to spiritualize, but to humanize Self,”(566) to do so, he must be born human not angelic. Hence, tradition shows the celestial Yogîs offering themselves as voluntary victims in order to redeem Humanity, which was created god‐like and perfect at first, and endow him with human affections and aspirations. To do this they had to give up their natural status, descend on our Globe, and take up their abode on it for the whole cycle of the Mahâyuga, thus exchanging their impersonal Individualities for individual Personalities—the bliss of sidereal existence for the curse of terrestrial life. This voluntary sacrifice of the Fiery Angels, whose nature was Knowledge and Love, has been construed by the exoteric theologies into a statement that shows “the Rebel Angels hurled down from Heaven into the darkness of Hell”—our Earth. Hindû Philosophy hints at the truth by teaching that the Asuras, hurled down by Shiva, are only in an intermediate state, in which they prepare for higher degrees of purification and redemption from their wretched condition; but Christian Theology—claiming to be based on the rock of the divine love, charity, and justice of him it appeals to as its Saviour—to paradoxically enforce that claim, has invented the dreary dogma of Hell, that Archimedean lever of Roman Catholic philosophy.

Whereas Rabbinical wisdom—than which there is none more positive, materialistic, or grossly terrestrial, as it brings everything down to physiological mysteries—calls these Beings, the “Evil One”; and the Kabalists—Nahash, “Deprived,” as just said, and the Souls that have, after having been alienated in Heaven from the Holy One, thrown themselves into an Abyss at the dawn of their very existence, and have anticipated the time when they are to descend on Earth.(567)

And let me explain at once that our quarrel is not with the Zohar or any other book of the Kabalah in its right interpretation—for the latter is the same as our own—but only with the gross, pseudo‐esoteric explanations of the later, and especially of the Christian Kabalists.

Says the Commentary:

Our earth and man [are] the products of the three Fires.

The names of these three answer, in Sanskrit, to the “Electric Fire,” the “Solar Fire,” and the “Fire produced by Friction.” Explained on the cosmic and human planes, these three Fires are Spirit, Soul, and Body, the three great Root Groups, with their four additional divisions. These vary with the Schools, and—according to their applications—become the Upâdhis and the Vehicles, or the Noumena of these. In the exoteric accounts, they are personified by the “three sons of surpassing brilliancy and splendour” of Agni Abhimânin, the eldest son of Brahmâ, the Cosmic Logos, by Svâhâ, one of Daksha’s(568) daughters. In the metaphysical sense, the “Fire by Friction” means the union between Buddhi, the sixth, and Manas, the fifth “principle,” which thus are united or cemented together, the fifth merging partially into and becoming part of the Monad; in the physical, it relates to the “creative spark,” or germ, which fructifies and generates the human being. The three Fires, whose names are Pâvaka, Pavamâna and Shuchi, were condemned, it is said, by a curse of Vasishtha, the great Sage, “to be born over and over again.”(569) This is clear enough.

Insight

The three Fires named here as Electric, Solar, and Friction-born map onto Spirit, Soul, and Body, and Blavatsky takes the trichotomy as universal. It is not far off. Paul distinguishes pneuma, psyche, and soma in 1 Thessalonians 5:23 and develops it in 1 Corinthians 15:44-46. Origen builds Christian psychology on the same threefold (On First Principles II.10). The Vedantic tradition layers the koshas in the Taittiriya Upanishad. Plato's Phaedrus 246a-b runs a tripartite chariot. What is distinctively Theosophical is the insistence on locating the same triad in the Sanskrit fire-vocabulary (the three sacrificial fires of the Vedic ritualist - garhapatya, ahavaniya, dakshinagni - get pulled into the metaphysical map). Whether the etymological alignments hold is the kind of question Sanskritists will fight over; the underlying claim that the soul is layered rather than simple is one of the most durable claims any religion has made.1 Thessalonians 5:23; Paul, 1 Corinthians 15:44-46; Origen, On First Principles II.10; Taittiriya Upanishad II.1-5; Plato, Phaedrus 246a-b; on the Vedic three sacrificial fires see Frits Staal, Agni: The Vedic Ritual of the Fire Altar (1983).

Therefore, the Flames, whose functions are confused in the exoteric books, and who are called indifferently Prajâpatis, Pitris, Manus, Asuras, Rishis, Kumâras,(570) etc., are said to incarnate personally in the Third Root‐Race and thus find themselves “reborn over and over again.” In the Esoteric Doctrine they are generally named Asuras, or the Asura Devatâ or Pitar Devatâ (Gods), for, as said, they were first Gods—and the highest—before they became “No‐Gods,” and had from Spirits of Heaven fallen into Spirits of Earth(571)—exoterically, note well, in orthodox dogma.

No Theologian or Orientalist can ever understand the genealogies of the Prajâpatis, the Manus, and the Rishis, or the direct connection of these—their correlation rather—with the Gods, unless he has the key to the old primitive Cosmogony and Theogony, which all nations originally had in common. All these Gods and Demi‐gods are found reborn on Earth, in various Kalpas and in as various characters; each, moreover, having his Karma distinctly traced, and every effect assigned to its cause.

Before other Stanzas could be explained, it was, as may be seen, absolutely necessary to show that the Sons of “Dark Wisdom,” though identical with the Archangels which Theology has chosen to call the “Fallen,” are as divine and as pure, if not more pure, than all the Michaels and Gabriels so glorified in the Churches. The “Old Book” also goes into various details of Astral Life, which at this juncture would be quite incomprehensible to the reader. It must, therefore, be left for later explanation, and the First and Second Races will now receive only bare notice. Not so the Third Race—the Root‐Race which separated into sexes, and which was the first to be endowed with reason; men evolving pari passu with the Globe, and the latter having “incrustated” more than a hundred millions of years before the first human sub‐race had yet begun to materialize or solidify, so to say. But, as the Stanza has it:

The Inner Man [the Conscious Entity] was not.

This “Conscious Entity” Occultism says, comes from, nay, in many cases is, the very essence and esse of the high Intelligences, condemned, by the undeviating law of Karmic evolution, to reïncarnate in this Manvantara.

(b) Shloka 39 relates exclusively to the racial divisions. Strictly speaking, Esoteric Philosophy teaches a modified polygenesis. For, while it assigns to humanity a oneness of origin, in so far that its Forefathers or “Creators” were all Divine Beings—though of different classes or degrees of perfection in their Hierarchy—it teaches that men were nevertheless born at seven different centres of the Continent of that period. Though all were of one common origin, yet, for reasons given, their potentialities and mental capabilities, outward or physical forms, and future characteristics, were very different.(572) As to their complexions, there is a suggestive allegory told in Linga Purâna. The Kumâras—the Rudra Gods, so called—are described as incarnations of Shiva, the Destroyer (of outward forms), called also Vâmadeva. The latter, as a Kumâra, the “Eternal Celibate,” the chaste Virgin Youth, springs from Brahmâ in each great Manvantara, and “again becomes four”; a reference to the four great divisions of the human Races, as regards complexion and type—and the three chief variations of these. Thus in the twenty‐ninth Kalpa—in this case a reference to the transformation and evolution of the human form, which Shiva ever destroys and remodels periodically down to the great Manvantaric turning point, about the middle of the Fourth (Atlantean) Race—in the twenty‐ninth Kalpa, Shiva, as Shvetalohita, the Root‐Kumâra, from moon‐coloured becomes white; in his next transformation, he is red (and in this the exoteric version differs from the Esoteric Teaching); in the third, yellow; in the fourth, black.

Esotericism now classes these seven variations, with their four great divisions, into only three distinct primeval Races—as it does not take into consideration the First Race, which had neither type nor colour, and a hardly objective, though colossal, form. The evolution of these Races, their formation and development, proceeded on parallel lines with the evolution, formation, and development of three geological strata, from which the human complexion was as much derived as it was determined by the climates of these zones. The Esoteric Teaching names three great divisions, namely, the red‐yellow, the black, and the brown‐ white.(573) The Âryan races, for instance, now varying from dark brown, almost black, red‐brown‐yellow, down to the whitest creamy colour, are nevertheless all of one and the same stock, the Fifth Root‐Race, and spring from one single Progenitor, called in Hindû exotericism by the generic name of Vaivasvata Manu; the latter, remember, being that Generic Personage, the Sage, who is said to have lived over 18,000,000 years ago, and also 850,000 years ago—at the time of the sinking of the last remnants of the Great Continent of Atlantis,(574) and who is said to live even now in his mankind.(575) The light yellow is the colour of the first solid human race, which appeared after the middle of the Third Root‐Race—after its fall into generation, as just explained—bringing on the final changes. For, it is only at that period that the last transformation took place, which brought forth man as he is now, only on a magnified scale. This Race gave birth to the Fourth Race; “Shiva” gradually transforming that portion of Humanity which became “black with sin” into red‐yellow, of which the red Indians and the Mongolians are the descendants, and finally into brown‐white races—which now, together with the yellow races, form the great bulk of Humanity. The allegory in Linga Purâna is curious, as showing the great ethnological knowledge of the ancients.

When reading of the “last transformation,” which is said to have taken place 18,000,000 years ago, let the reader at this juncture, consider how many millions more it must have required to reach that final stage. And if Man, in his gradual consolidation, developed pari passu with the Earth, how many millions of years must have elapsed during the First, Second, and the first half of the Third Race. For the Earth was in a comparatively ethereal condition before it reached its last consolidated state. The Archaic Teachings, moreover, tell us that, during the middle period of the Lemuro‐Atlantean Race, three and a half Races after the Genesis of Man, the Earth, Man, and everything on the Globe, were of a still grosser and more material nature, while such things as corals and some shells were still in a semi‐gelatinous, astral state. The cycles that have intervened since then, have already carried us onward, on the opposite ascending arc, some steps toward our “dematerialization,” as the Spiritualists would say. The Earth, ourselves, and all things have softened since then—aye, even our brains. But it has been objected by some Theosophists that an ethereal Earth even some 15 or 20,000,000 years ago, “does not square with Geology,” which teaches us that winds blew, rains fell, waves broke on the shore, sands shifted and accumulated, etc.; that, in short, all natural causes now in operation were then in force, “in the very earliest ages of geological time, aye, that of the oldest palæozoic rocks.” To this the following answers are given. Firstly, what is the date assigned by Geology to these “oldest palæozoic rocks”? And secondly, why could not the winds blow, rain fall, and waves—of “carbonic acid” apparently, as Science seems to imply—break on the shore, on an Earth semi‐astral, i.e., viscid? The word “astral” does not necessarily, in Occult phraseology, mean as thin as smoke, but rather “starry,” shining or pellucid, in various and numerous degrees, from a quite filmy to a viscid state, as just observed. But it is further objected: “How could an astral Earth have affected the other Planets in this System? Would not the whole process get out of gear now if the attraction of one Planet were suddenly removed?” The objection is evidently invalid, since our System is composed of older and younger Planets, some dead—like the Moon—others in process of formation, for all that Astronomy knows to the contrary. Nor has the latter ever affirmed, so far as we know, that all the bodies of our System have sprung into existence and developed simultaneously. The Cis‐Himâlayan Secret Teachings differ from those of India in this respect. Hindû Occultism teaches that the Vaivasvata Manu Humanity is 18,000,000 and odd years old. We say, yes; but only so far as physical or approximately physical, Man is concerned, who dates from the close of the Third Root‐Race. Beyond that period Man, or his filmy image, may have existed for 300,000,000 years, for all we know; since we are not taught figures which are and will remain secret with the Masters of Occult Science, as justly stated in Esoteric Buddhism. Moreover, whereas the Hindû Purânas speak of one Vaivasvata Manu, we affirm that there were several, the name being a generic one.

We must now say a few more words on the physical evolution of man.

Archaic Teachings In The “Purânas” And “Genesis.” Physical Evolution.

The writer cannot give too much proof that the system of Cosmogony and Anthropogony above described actually existed, that its records are preserved, and that it is found mirrored even in the modern versions of ancient Scriptures.

The Purânas on the one hand, and the Jewish Scriptures on the other, are based on the same scheme of evolution, which, if read Esoterically and expressed in modern language, would be found to be quite as scientific as much of what now passes current as the final word of recent discovery. The only difference between the two schemes is, that the Purânas, giving as much, and perhaps more, attention to causes than to effects, allude to the pre‐cosmic and pre‐genetic periods rather than to those of so‐called “creation,” whereas the Bible, after saying only a few words on the former period, plunges forthwith into material genesis, and, while almost skipping the Pre‐Adamic races, proceeds with its allegories concerning the Fifth Race.

Now, whatever the onslaught made on the “order of creation” in Genesis—and its dead‐letter account certainly lends itself admirably to criticism(576)—the Hindû Purânas, notwithstanding their allegorical exaggerations will be found quite in accordance with Physical Science.

Even what, on the face of it, appears to be the perfectly nonsensical allegory of Brahmâ assuming the form of a Boar to rescue the Earth from under the waters, finds a perfectly scientific explanation in the Secret Commentaries, relating as it does to the many risings and sinkings, the constant alternation of water and land from the earliest to the latest geological periods of our Globe; for Science teaches us now that nine‐ tenths of the stratified formations of the Earth’s crust have been gradually constructed beneath the water at the bottom of the seas. The ancient Âryans are credited with having known nothing whatever of Natural History, Geology, and so on. The Jewish race is, on the other hand, proclaimed even by its severest critic, an uncompromising opponent of the Bible, to have the merit of having conceived the idea of monotheism “earlier, and retained it more firmly, than any of the less philosophical and more immoral religions (!!) of the ancient world.”(577) Only, while in biblical Esotericism, we find physiological sexual mysteries symbolized, and very little more, something for which very little real Philosophy is requisite—in the Purânas one can find the most scientific and philosophical “dawn of creation,” which, if impartially analyzed and rendered into plain language from its fairy‐tale‐like allegories, would show that modern Zoology, Geology, Astronomy, and nearly all the branches of modern knowledge, have been anticipated in ancient Science, and were known to ancient Philosophers in their general features, if not in such detail as at present.

Paurânic Astronomy, with all its deliberate concealment and confusion for the purpose of leading the profane off the real track, has been shown even by Bentley to be a real science; and those who are versed in the mysteries of Hindû astronomical treatises, will prove that the modern theories of the progressive condensation of nebulæ, nebulous stars and suns, with the most minute details about the cyclic progress of asterisms for chronological and other purposes—far more correct than Europeans have even now—were known in India to perfection.

If we turn to Geology and Zoology we find the same. What are all the myths and endless genealogies of the seven Prajâpatis, of their sons, the seven Rishis or Manus, and of their wives, sons and progeny, but a vast detailed account of the progressive development and evolution of animal creation, one species after the other? Were the highly philosophical and metaphysical Âryans—the authors of the most perfect philosophical system of transcendental Psychology, of codes of Ethics, of such a grammar as Pânini’s, of the Sânkhya and Vedânta systems, of a moral code (Buddhism), proclaimed by Max Müller the most perfect on earth—were the Âryans such fools, or children, as to lose their time in writing “fairy tales,” such as the Purânas now seem to be in the eyes of those who have not the remotest idea of their secret meaning? What is the “fable,” the genealogy and origin of Kashyapa, with his twelve wives by whom he had a numerous and diversified progeny of serpents (Nâgas), reptiles, birds, and all kinds of living things, who was thus the “father” of all kinds of animals, but a veiled record of the order of evolution in this Round? So far, we do not see that any Orientalist has ever had the remotest conception of the truths concealed under the allegories and personifications. The Shatapatha Brâhmana, says one, gives “a not very intelligible account” of Kashyapa’s origin.

According to the Mahâbhârata, the Râmâyana, and the Purânas, he was the son of Marîchi, the son of Brahmâ, the father of Vivasvat, the father of Manu, the progenitor of mankind.

According to the Shatapatha Brahmâna: Having assumed the form of a tortoise, Prajâpati created offspring. That which he created he made (akarot); hence the word kûrma (tortoise). Kashyapa means tortoise; hence men say, “All creatures are descendants of Kashyapa.”(578)

He was all this; he was also the father of the bird Garuda, the “king of the feathered tribe,” who descends from, and is of one stock with the reptiles, the Nâgas, and who becomes their mortal enemy subsequently—as he is also a cycle, a period of time, when, in the course of evolution, the birds which developed from reptiles in their “struggle for life” and “survival of the fittest,” etc., turned in preference on those from whom they issued to devour them, perhaps prompted by natural law, in order to make room for other and more perfect species.

In that admirable epitome, Modern Science and Modern Thought, a lesson in Natural History is offered to Mr. Gladstone, showing the utter variance of the Bible with it. The author remarks that Geology traces the “dawn of creation” through a line of scientific research:

Commencing with the earliest known fossil, the Eozoon Canadense of the Laurentian, and continued in a chain, every link of which is firmly welded, through the Silurian, with its abundance of molluscous, crustacean, and vermiform life, and first indication of fishes; the Devonian, with its predominance of fish and first appearance of reptiles; the Mesozoic with its batrachians; the Secondary formations, in which reptiles of the sea, land and air preponderated, and the first humble forms of vertebrate land animals began to appear; and finally the Tertiary, in which mammalian life has become abundant, and type succeeding to type and species to species, are gradually differentiated and specialized, through the Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene periods, until we arrive at the Glacial and Prehistoric periods, and at positive proof of the existence of man.(579)

The same order, plus the description of animals unknown to Modern Science, is found in the Commentaries on the Purânas in general, and in the Book of Dzyan especially. The only difference—a grave one, no doubt, as implying a spiritual and divine nature of man independent of his physical body in this illusionary world, in which the false personality and its cerebral basis alone is known to orthodox Psychology—is as follows. Having been in all the so‐called seven “creations,” which stand allegorically for the seven evolutionary changes, or sub‐races, as we may call them, of the First Root‐Race of Mankind—Man has been on Earth in this Round from the beginning. Having passed through all the Kingdoms of Nature in the previous three Rounds,(580) his physical frame—one adapted to the thermal conditions of those early periods—was ready to receive the Divine Pilgrim at the first dawn of human life, i.e., 18,000,000 years ago. It is only at the mid‐point of the Third Root‐Race that man was endowed with Manas. Once united, the Two and then the Three made One; for though the lower animals, from the amœba to man, received their Monads, in which all the higher qualities are potential, these qualities have to remain dormant till the animal reaches its human form, before which stage Manas (mind) has no development in them. In the animals every principle is paralyzed, and in a fœtus‐like state, save the second, the Vital, and the third, the Astral, and the rudiments of the fourth, Kâma, which is desire, instinct—whose intensity and development varies and changes with the species. To the materialist wedded to the Darwinian theory, this will read like a fairy‐tale, a mystification; to the believer in the inner, spiritual man, the statement will have nothing unnatural in it.

As Commentary ix says:

Men are made complete only during their Third, toward the Fourth Cycle [Race]. They are made “Gods” for good and evil, and responsible, only when the two arcs meet [after three and a half Rounds towards the Fifth Race]. They are made so by the Nirmânakâya [Spiritual or Astral remains] of the Rudra‐Kumâras, “cursed to be reborn on Earth again” [meaning—doomed in their natural turn to reïncarnation in the higher ascending arc of the terrestrial Cycle].

Now the writer is certain to be met with what will be termed insuperable objections. We shall be told that the line of embryology, the gradual development of every individual life, and the progress of what is known to take place in the order of progressive stages of specialization—that all this is opposed to the idea of man preceding mammals. Man begins as the humblest and most primitive vermiform creature:

From the primitive speck of protoplasm, and the nucleated cell in which all life originates ... and “is developed through stages undistinguishable from those of fish, reptile and mammal, until the cell finally attains the highly specialized development of the quadrumanous, and, last of all, of the human type.”(581)

This is perfectly scientific, and we have nothing against that; for it all relates to the shell of man—his body, which, in its growth, is subject, of course, like every other once so‐called morphological unit, to such metamorphoses. It is not those who teach the transformation of the mineral atom through crystallization—which is the same function, and bears the same relation to its so‐called inorganic Upâdhi, or basis, as the formation of cells to their organic nuclei, through plant, insect and animal into man—it is not they who will reject this theory, as it will finally lead to the recognition of a Universal Deity in Nature, ever‐ present, and as ever invisible and unknowable, and of intra‐cosmic Gods, who were all once men.(582)

But we would ask, what does Science and its exact discoveries and now axiomatic theories prove against our Occult theory? Those who believe in the law of evolution and gradual progressive development from a cell—which from a vital became a morphological cell, until it finally awoke as protoplasm pure and simple—can surely never limit their belief to one line of evolution! The types of life are innumerable; and the progress of evolution, moreover, does not go at the same rate in every kind of species. The constitution of primordial matter in the Silurian age—we mean the “primordial” matter of Science—was the same in every essential particular, save its degree of present grossness, as the primordial living matter of to‐day. Nor do we find that which ought to be found, if the now orthodox theory of evolution were quite correct, namely, a constant, ever‐flowing progress in every species of being. Instead of this, what does one see? While the intermediate groups of animal beings all tend toward a higher type, and while specializations, now of one type and now of another, develop through the geological ages, change forms, assume new shapes, appear and disappear with a kaleidoscopic rapidity, in the description of Palæontologists from one period to another, the two solitary exceptions to the general rule are those at the two opposite poles of life and type, namely—man and the lower genera of being!

Certain well‐marked forms of living beings have existed through enormous epochs, surviving not only the changes of physical conditions, but persisting comparatively unaltered, while other forms of life have appeared and disappeared. Such forms may be termed “persistent types” of life; and examples of them are abundant enough in both the animal and the vegetable worlds.(583)

Nevertheless, we are not given any good reason why Darwin links together reptiles, birds, amphibians, fishes, mollusca, etc., as off‐shoots of a moneric ancestry. Nor are we told whether reptiles, for instance, are direct descendants of the amphibia, the latter of fishes, and fishes of lower forms—which they certainly are. For the Monads have passed through all these forms of being up to Man, on every Globe, in the three preceding Rounds; every Round, as well as every subsequent Globe, from A to G, having been, and still having to be, the arena of the same evolution, only repeated each time on a more solid material basis. Therefore the question, “What relation is there between the Third Round astral prototypes and ordinary physical development in the course of the origination of pre‐mammalian organic species?”—is easily answered. One is the shadowy prototype of the other, the preliminary, hardly defined, and evanescent sketch on the canvas, of objects which are destined to receive their final and vivid form under the brush of the painter. The fish evolved into an amphibian—a frog—in the shadows of ponds, and man passed through all his metamorphoses on this Globe in the Third Round as he did in this, his Fourth Cycle. The Third Round types contributed to the formation of the types in the present Round. On strict analogy, the cycle of seven Rounds in their work of the gradual formation of man through every Kingdom of Nature, is repeated on a microscopical scale in the first seven months of gestation of a future human being. Let the student think over and work out this analogy. As the seven months’ old unborn baby, though quite ready, yet needs two months more in which to acquire strength and consolidate; so man, having perfected his evolution during seven Rounds, remains two periods more in the womb of Mother‐Nature before he is born, or rather reborn a Dhyâni, still more perfect than he was before he launched forth as a Monad on the newly built Chain of Worlds. Let the student ponder over this mystery, and then he will easily convince himself that, as there are also physical links between many classes, so there are precise domains wherein the Astral merges into Physical Evolution. Of this Science breathes not one word. Man has evolved with and from the monkey, it says. But now see the contradiction.

Huxley proceeds to point out plants, ferns, club‐mosses, some of them generically identical with those now living, which are met with in the Carboniferous epoch, for:

The cone of the oolitic Araucaria is hardly distinguishable from that of existing species.... Sub‐kingdoms of animals yield the same instances. The Globigerina of the Atlantic soundings is identical with the cretaceous species of the same genus ... the tabulate corals of the Silurian epoch are wonderfully like the millepores of our own seas.... The Arachnida, the highest group of which, the scorpions, is represented in the coal by a genus differing from its living congeners only in ... the eyes. [etc.]

All of which may be closed with Dr. Carpenter’s authoritative statement about the Foraminifera:

There is no evidence of any fundamental modification or advance in the foraminiferous type from the palæozoic period to the present time.... The foraminiferous fauna of our own series probably present a greater range of variety than existed at any previous period; but there is no indication of any tendency to elevation towards a higher type.(584)

Now, as in the Foraminifera, Protozoa of the lowest type of life, mouthless and eyeless, there is no indication of change except their now greater variety—so man, who is on the uppermost rung of the ladder of being, indicates still less change, as we have seen; the skeleton of his palæolithic ancestor being even found superior in some respects to his present frame. Where is, then, the uniformity of law which is claimed—the absolute rule for one species shading off into another and thus, by insensible gradations, into higher types? We see Sir William Thomson admitting as much as 400,000,000 years for the time since the surface of the Globe became sufficiently cool to permit of the presence of living things;(585) and during that enormous lapse of time in the Oolitic period alone, the so‐called “Age of Reptiles,” we find a most extraordinary variety and abundance of Saurian forms, the Amphibian type reaching its highest development. We learn of Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri in the lakes and rivers, and of winged crocodiles or lizards flying in the air. After which, in the Tertiary period:

We find the Mammalian type exhibiting remarkable divergences from previously existing forms ... Mastodons, Megatheriums, and other unwieldy denizens of the ancient forests and plains.

And, subsequently, we are notified of:

The gradual modification of one of the ramifications of the Quadrumanous order, into those beings from whom primeval Man himself may claim to have been evolved.(586)

He may; but no one, except a Materialist, can see why he should; as there is not the slightest necessity for it, nor is such an evolution warranted by facts, for those most interested in the proofs thereof confess their utter failure to find one single fact to support their theory. There is no need for the numberless types of life to represent the members of one progressive series. They are “the products of various and different evolutional divergences, taking place now in one direction and now in another.” Therefore it is far more justifiable to say that the monkey evolved into the quadrumanous order, than that primeval man—who has remained stationary in his human specialization since the first fossil skeleton found in the oldest strata, and of whom no variety is found save in colour and facial type—has developed from a common ancestor together with the ape.

That man originates like other animals in a cell and develops “through stages indistinguishable from those of fish, reptile, and mammal until the cell attains the highly specialized development of the quadrumanous and at last the human type,” is an Occult axiom thousands of years old. The Kabalistic axiom: “A stone becomes a plant; a plant a beast; a beast a man; a man a God,” holds good throughout the ages. Hæckel, in his Schöpfungsgeschichte, shows a double drawing representing two embryos—that of a dog six weeks old, and that of a man, eight weeks. The two, with the exception of a slight difference in the head, which is larger and wider about the brain in the man, are indistinguishable.

In fact, we may say that every human being passes through the stage of fish and reptile before arriving at that of mammal, and finally of man.

If we take him up at the more advanced stage, where the embryo has already passed the reptilian form, we find that for a considerable time, the line of development remains the same as that of other mammalia. The rudimentary limbs are exactly similar, the five fingers and toes develop in the same way, and the resemblance after the first four weeks’ growth between the embryo of a man and a dog is such that it is scarcely possible to distinguish them. Even at the age of eight weeks the embryo man is an animal with a tail, hardly to be distinguished from an embryo puppy.(587)

Why, then, not make man and dog evolve from a common ancestor, or from a reptile—a Nâga, instead of coupling man with the Quadrumana? This would be just as logical as the latter, if not more so. The shape and the stages of the human embryo have not changed since historical times, and these metamorphoses were known to Æsculapius and Hippocrates as well as to Mr. Huxley. Therefore, since the Kabalists had remarked it from prehistoric times, it is no new discovery.(588)

As the embryo of man has no more of the ape in it than of any other mammal, but contains in itself the totality of the kingdoms of nature, and since it seems to be a “persistent type” of life, far more so than even the Foraminifera, it seems as illogical to make him evolve from the ape as it would be to trace his origin to the frog or the dog. Both Occult and Eastern Philosophies believe in Evolution, which Manu and Kapila(589) give with far more clearness than any Scientist does at present. No need to repeat what has been fully debated in Isis Unveiled, as the reader may find all these arguments and the description of the basis on which all the Eastern doctrines of Evolution rest, in our earlier volumes.(590) But no Occultist can accept the unreasonable proposition that all the now existing forms, “from the structureless Amœba to man,” are the direct lineal descendants of organisms which lived millions and millions of years before the birth of man, in the pre‐Silurian epochs, in the sea or land‐ mud. The Occultists believe in an Inherent Law of Progressive Development.(591) Mr. Darwin never did, and says so himself; for we find him stating that, since there can be no advantage “to the infusorian animalcule or an intestinal worm ... to become highly organized,” therefore, “natural selection,” not necessarily including progressive development—leaves the animalcule and the worm, the “persistent types,” quiet.(592)

There does not appear much uniform law in such behaviour of Nature; and it looks more like the discriminative action of some super‐physical selection; perhaps, that aspect of Karma, which Eastern Occultists would call the “Law of Retardation,” may have something to do with it.

But there is every reason to doubt whether Mr. Darwin himself ever gave such an importance to his law as is now given to it by his atheistic followers. The knowledge of the various living forms in the geological periods that have gone by is very meagre. The reasons given for this by Dr. Bastian are very suggestive:

First, on account of the imperfect manner in which the several forms may be represented in the strata pertaining to the period; secondly, on account of the extremely limited nature of the explorations which have been made in these imperfectly representative strata; and, thirdly, because so many parts of the record are absolutely inaccessible to use—nearly all beneath the Silurian system having been blotted out by time, whilst those two‐ thirds of the earth’s surface in which the remaining strata are to be found are now covered over by seas. Hence Mr. Darwin says: “For my part, following out Lyell’s metaphor, I look at the geological record as a history of the world imperfectly kept, and written in a changing dialect; of this history we possess the last volume alone, relating only to two or three countries. Of this volume, only here and there a short chapter has been preserved; and of each page only here and there a few lines.”(593)

It is not on such meagre data, certainly, that the last word of Science can be said. Nor is it on any ground of human pride, or unreasonable belief in man’s representing even here on Earth—in our period, perhaps—the highest type of life, that Occultism denies that all the preceding forms of human life belonged to types lower than our own; for it is not so. But simply because the “missing link,” which will prove the existing theory undeniably, will never be found by Palæontologists. Believing as we do that man has, during the preceding Rounds, evolved from, and passed through, the lowest forms of every life, vegetable and animal, on Earth, there is nothing very degrading in the idea of having the Orang Outang as an ancestor of our physical form. Quite the reverse; as it would most irresistibly forward the Occult Doctrine with regard to the final evolution of everything in terrestrial nature into man. One may even enquire how it is that Biologists and Anthropologists, having once firmly accepted the theory of the descent of man from the ape—how it is that they have hitherto left untouched the future evolution of the existing apes into man? This is only a logical sequence of the first theory—unless Science would make of man a privileged being, and his evolution a non‐precedent in Nature, quite a special and unique case. And that is what all this leads Physical Science to. The reason, however, why the Occultists reject the Darwinian, and especially the Hæckelian, hypothesis is because it is the ape, not man, which is, in sober truth, a special and unique instance. The Pithecoid is an accidental creation, a forced growth, the result of an unnatural process.

The Occult Doctrine is, we think, more logical. It teaches a cyclic, never varying Law in Nature, the latter having no personal “special design,” but acting on a uniform plan that prevails through the whole Manvantaric period and deals with the land‐worm as it deals with man. Neither the one nor the other have sought to come into being, hence both are under the same Evolutionary Law, and both have to progress according to Karmic Law. Both have started from the same Neutral Centre of Life and both have to re‐merge into it at the consummation of the Cycle.

It is not denied that in the preceding Round man was a gigantic ape‐like creature; and when we say “man” we ought perhaps to say, the rough mould that was developing for the use of man in this Round only—the middle, or the transition, point of which we have hardly reached. Nor was man during the first two and a half Root‐Races what he is now. That point he reached, as said before, only 18,000,000 years ago, during the Secondary period, as we claim.

Till then he was, according to tradition and Occult Teaching, “a God on Earth who had fallen into Matter,” or generation. This may or may not be accepted, since the Secret Doctrine does not impose itself as an infallible dogma, and since, whether its prehistoric records are accepted or rejected, it has nothing to do with the question of the actual Man and his Inner Nature; the Fall mentioned above having left no “original sin” on Humanity. But all this has been sufficiently dealt with.

Furthermore, we are taught that the transformations through which man passed on the descending arc—which is centrifugal for Spirit and centripetal for Matter—and those he is preparing to go through, henceforward, on his ascending path, which will reverse the direction of the two forces—viz., Matter will become centrifugal and Spirit centripetal—that all such transformations are next in store for the anthropoid apes also; all those, at any rate, who have reached the remove next to man in this Round—for these will all be men in the Fifth Round, just as the present men inhabited ape‐like forms in the Third, the preceding Round.

Behold, then, in the modern denizens of the great forests of Sumatra the degraded and dwarfed examples—“blurred copies,” as Mr. Huxley has it—of ourselves, as we (the majority of mankind) were in the earliest sub‐races of the Fourth Root‐Race during the period of what is called the “fall into generation.” The ape we know is not the product of natural evolution but an accident, a cross‐breed between an animal being, or form, and man. As has been shown in the present volume, it is the speechless animal that first began sexual connection, for it was the first to separate into male and female. Nor was it intended by Nature that man should follow this bestial example—as is now shown by the comparatively painless procreation of their species by animals, and the terrible suffering and danger of the same in woman. The ape is, indeed, as remarked in Isis Unveiled:

A transformation of species most directly connected with that of the human family‐a bastard branch engrafted on their own stock before the final perfection of the latter.(594)

The apes are millions of years later than the speaking human being, and are the latest contemporaries of our Fifth Race. Thus, it is most important to remember that the “Egos” of the apes are entities compelled by their Karma to incarnate in the animal forms, which resulted from the bestiality of the latest Third and the earliest Fourth Race men. They are entities who had already reached the “human stage” before this Round. Consequently, they form an exception to the general rule. The numberless traditions about Satyrs are no fables, but represent an extinct race of animal men. The animal “Eves” were their foremothers, and the human “Adams” their forefathers; hence the Kabalistic allegory of Lilith or Lilatu, Adam’s first wife, whom the Talmud describes as a “charming” woman, “with long wavy hair,” i.e.—a female hairy animal of a character now unknown, still a female animal, who in the Kabalistic and Talmudic allegories is called the female reflection of Samael, Samael‐Lilith, or man‐animal united, a being called, in the Zohar, Hayo Bischat, the Beast or Evil Beast. It is from this unnatural union that the present apes descended. The latter are truly “speechless men,” and will become speaking animals, or men of a lower order, in the Fifth Round, while the Adepts of a certain School hope that some of the “Egos” of the apes of a higher intelligence will reäppear at the close of the Sixth Root‐Race. What their form will be is of secondary consideration. The form means nothing. Genera and species of the flora, fauna, and the highest animal, its crown—man, change and vary according to the environments and climatic variations, not only with every Round, but every Root‐Race likewise, as well as after every geological cataclysm that puts an end to, or produces a turning point in, the latter. In the Sixth Root‐Race, the fossils of the Orang, the Gorilla and the Chimpanzee will be those of extinct quadrumanous mammals; and new forms—though fewer and ever wider apart as ages pass on and the close of the Manvantara approaches—will develop from the “cast off” types of the human races as they revert once again to astral, out of the mire of physical, life. There were no apes before man, and they will be extinct before the Seventh Race develops. Karma will lead on the Monads of the unprogressed men of our Race and lodge them in the newly evolved human frames of the thus physiologically regenerated Baboon.

This will take place, of course, millions of years hence. But the picture of this cyclic precession of all that lives and breathes now on Earth, of each species in its turn, is a true one, and needs no “special creation” or miraculous formation of man, beast, and plant ex nihilo.

This is how Occult Science explains the absence of any link between ape and man, and shows the former evolving from the latter.

A Panoramic View Of The Early Races.

There is a period of a few millions of years to cover between the first “mindless” race and the highly intelligent and intellectual later Lemurians; there is another between the earliest civilization of the Atlanteans and the historic period.

As witnesses to the Lemurians but a few silent records in the shape of half a dozen broken colossi and old cyclopean ruins are left. These are not allowed a hearing, as they are “productions of blind natural forces,” we are assured by some; “quite modern” we are told by others. Tradition is left contemptuously unnoticed by Sceptic and Materialist, and made subservient to the Bible in every case by the too zealous Churchman. Whenever a legend, however, refuses to fit in with the Noachian Deluge theory, it is declared by the Christian clergy to be “the insanely delirious voice of old superstition.” Atlantis is denied, when not confused with Lemuria and other departed Continents, because, perhaps, Lemuria is half the creation of Modern Science, and has, therefore, to be believed in; while Plato’s Atlantis is regarded by most of the Scientists as a dream.

Atlantis is often described by believers in Plato as a prolongation of Africa. An old continent is also suspected to have existed on the Eastern coast. But Africa, as a continent, was never part and parcel of either Lemuria or Atlantis, as we have agreed to call the Third and Fourth Continents. Their archaic appellations are never mentioned in the Purânas, nor anywhere else. But with only one of the Esoteric keys in hand, it becomes an easy task to identify these departed lands in the numberless “Lands of the Gods,” Devas and Munis described in the Purânas, in their Varshas, Dvîpas, and Zones. Their Shveta‐dvîpa, during the early days of Lemuria, stood out like a giant‐peak from the bottom of the sea; the area between Atlas and Madagascar being occupied by the waters till about the early period of Atlantis, after the disappearance of Lemuria, when Africa emerged from the bottom of the ocean, and Atlas was half‐sunk.

It is of course impossible to attempt, within the compass of even several volumes, a consecutive and detailed account of the evolution and progress of the first three Races‐except so far as to give a general view of it, as will be done presently. Race the First had no history of its own. Of Race the Second the same may be said. We shall have, therefore, to pay careful attention to the Lemurians and the Atlanteans only, before the history of our own Race, the Fifth, can be attempted.

What is known of other Continents, besides our own, and what does history know or accept of the early Races? Everything outside the repulsive speculations of Materialistic Science is daubed with the contemptuous term “superstition.” The wise men of to‐day will believe nothing. Plato’s “winged” and “hermaphrodite” races, and his Golden Age, under the reign of Saturn and the Gods, are quietly brought back by Hæckel to their new place in Nature; our Divine Races are shown to be the descendants of Catarrhine apes, and our ancestor, a piece of “sea slime”!

Nevertheless, as expressed by Faber:

The fictions of ancient poetry ... will be found to comprehend some portion of historical truth.

However one‐sided the efforts of the learned author of A Dissertation on the Mysteries of the Cabiri—efforts directed throughout his two volumes to constrain the classical myths and symbols of old Paganism, “to bear testimony to the truth of Scripture”—time and further research have avenged, partially at least, that “truth” by showing it unveiled. Thus it is the clever adaptations of Scripture, on the contrary, which are made to bear evidence to the great wisdom of Archaic Paganism. This, notwithstanding the inextricable confusion into which the truth about the Kabiri—the most mysterious Gods of antiquity—has been thrown by the wild and contradictory speculations of Bishop Cumberland, Dr. Shuckford, Cudworth, Vallancey, etc., and finally by Faber. Nevertheless, all of these scholars, from first to last, had to come to a certain conclusion framed by the latter, as follows:

We have no reason to think that the idolatry of the Gentile world was of a merely arbitrary contrivance; on the contrary, it seems to have been built, almost universally, upon a traditional remembrance of certain real events. These events I apprehend to be the destruction of the first [the Fourth in Esoteric Teaching] race of mankind by the waters of the Deluge.(595)

To this, Faber adds:

I am persuaded that the tradition of the sinking of the Phlegyan isle is the very same as that of the sinking of the island Atlantis. They both appear to me to allude to one great event, the sinking of the whole world beneath the waters of the deluge, or, if we suppose the arch of the earth to have remained in its original position, the rising of the central water above it. M. Bailly indeed in his work upon the Atlantis of Plato, the object of which is evidently to depreciate the authority of the scriptural chronology, labours to prove that the Atlantians were a very ancient northern nation, long prior to the Hindoos, the Phenicians, and the Egyptians.(596)

In this Faber is in agreement with Bailly, who shows himself more learned and intuitional than those who accept biblical chronology. Nor is the latter wrong when saying that the Atlanteans were the same as the Titans and the Giants.(597) Faber adopts the more willingly the opinion of his French confrère, as Bailly mentions Cosmas Indicopleustes, who preserved an ancient tradition about Noah—that he “formerly inhabited the island Atlantis.” This island, whether it was the “Poseidonis” mentioned in Esoteric Buddhism, or the Continent of Atlantis, does not much matter. The tradition is there, recorded by a Christian.

No Occultist would ever think of dispossessing Noah of his prerogatives if he is claimed to be an Atlantean; for this would simply show that the Israelites repeated the story of Vaivasvata Manu, Xisuthrus, and so many others, and that they only changed the name, which they had the same right to do as any other nation or tribe. What we object to is the literal acceptation of biblical chronology, as it is absurd, and in accord with neither geological data nor reason. Moreover, if Noah was an Atlantean, then he was a Titan, a Giant, as Faber shows; and if a Giant, then why is he not shown as such in Genesis?(598)

Bailly’s mistake was to reject the submersion of Atlantis, and to call the Atlanteans simply a Northern and post‐diluvian nation, which, however, as he says, certainly flourished before the foundation of the Hindû, Egyptian, and Phœnician empires. In this, had he only known of the existence of what we have agreed to call Lemuria, he would have again been right. For the Atlanteans were post‐diluvian to the Lemurians, and Lemuria was not submerged as Atlantis was, but was sunk under the waves, owing to earthquakes and subterranean fires, as Great Britain and Europe will be one day. It is the ignorance of our men of Science, who will accept neither the tradition that several Continents have already sunk, nor the periodical law which acts throughout the Manvantaric Cycle—it is this ignorance that is the chief cause of all the confusion. Nor is Bailly wrong again in assuring us that the Hindûs, Egyptians, and Phœnicians came after the Atlanteans, for the latter belonged to the Fourth, while the Âryans and their Semitic Branch are of the Fifth Race. Plato, while repeating the story as narrated to Solon by the priests of Egypt, intentionally confuses—as every Initiate would—the two Continents, and assigns to the small island which last sunk, all the events pertaining to the two enormous Continents, the prehistoric and traditional. Therefore, he describes the first couple, from whom the whole island was peopled, as being formed of the Earth. In so saying, he means neither Adam and Eve, nor yet his own Hellenic forefathers. His language is simply allegorical, and by alluding to “Earth,” he means Matter, as the Atlanteans were really the first purely human and terrestrial Race—those that preceded it being more divine and ethereal than human and solid.

Yet Plato must have known, as would any other initiated Adept, about the history of the Third Race after its “Fall,” though as one pledged to silence and secrecy he never showed his knowledge in so many words. Nevertheless, it may become easier now, after acquainting oneself with even the approximate chronology of the Eastern nations—all of which was based upon, and followed the early Âryan calculations—to realize the immense periods of time that must have elapsed since the separation of the sexes, without mentioning the First or even the Second Root‐Races. As these must remain beyond the comprehension of minds trained in Western thought, it is found useless to speak in detail of the First and Second, and even of the Third Race in its earliest stage.(599) It is only when the latter has reached its full human period that a beginning can be made, without the uninitiated reader finding himself hopelessly bewildered.

The Third Race fell—and created no longer; it begat its progeny. Being still mindless at the period of separation, it begat, moreover, anomalous offspring, until its physiological nature had adjusted its instincts in the right direction. Like the “Lords Gods” of the Bible, the “Sons of Wisdom,” the Dhyân Chohans, had warned it to leave alone the fruit forbidden by Nature; but the warning proved of no value. Men realized the unfitness—we must not say sin—of what they had done, only when too late; after the Angelic Monads from higher Spheres had incarnated in, and endowed them with understanding. To that day they had remained simply physical, like the animals generated from them. For what is the distinction? The Doctrine teaches that the only difference between animate and inanimate objects on Earth, between an animal and a human frame, is that in some the various “Fires” are latent, and in others they are active. The Vital Fires are in all things and not an atom is devoid of them. But no animal has the three higher “principles” awakened in him; they are simply potential, latent, and thus non‐existing. And so would the animal frames of men be to this day, had they been left as they came out from the bodies of their Progenitors, whose Shadows they were, to grow, unfolded only by the powers and forces immanent in Matter. But as said in Pymander:

This is a Mystery that to this day was sealed and hidden. Nature(600) being mingled with Man(601) brought forth a wondrous miracle; the harmonious commingling of the essence of the Seven [Pitris, or Governors] and her own; the Fire and the Spirit and Nature [the Noumenon of Matter]; which [commingling] forthwith brought forth seven men of opposite sexes [negative and positive] according to the essences of the Seven Governors.(602)

Thus saith Hermes, the thrice great Initiate,(603) the “Power of the Thought Divine.” St. Paul, another Initiate, called our World, “the enigmatical mirror of pure truth,” and St. Gregory of Nazianzen corroborated Hermes by stating that:

Things visible are but the shadow and delineation of things that we cannot see.

It is an eternal combination, and images are repeated from the higher rung of the Ladder of Being down to the lower. The “Fall of the Angels,” and the “War in Heaven” are repeated on every plane, the lower “mirror” disfiguring the image of the superior “mirror,” and each repeating it in its own way. Thus the Christian dogmas are but the reminiscences of the paradigms of Plato, who spoke of these things cautiously, as every Initiate would. But it is all as expressed in these few sentences of the Desatir:

All that is on earth, saith the Lord [Ormazd], is the shadow of something that is in the superior spheres. This luminious object [light, fire, etc.] is the shadow of that which is still more luminous than itself, and so on till it reaches me, who am the light of lights.

In the Kabalistic books, in the Zohar prëeminently, the idea that every objective thing on Earth or in this Universe is the “Shadow” (Dyooknah) of the eternal Light or Deity, is very strong.

The Third Race was prëeminently the bright “Shadow,” at first, of the Gods, whom tradition exiles on to the Earth after the allegorical War in Heaven. This became still more allegorical on Earth, for it was the War between Spirit and Matter. This War will last till the Inner and Divine Man adjusts his outer terrestrial self to his own spiritual nature. Till then the dark and fierce passions of that self will be at eternal feud with his Master, the Divine Man. But the animal will be tamed one day, because its nature will be changed, and harmony will reign once more between the two as before the “Fall,” when even mortal man was “created” by the Elements and was not born.

The above is made clear in all the great Theogonies, principally in the Grecian, as in that of Hesiod. The mutilation of Uranus by his son Cronus, who thus condemns him to impotency, has never been understood by the modern Mythographers. Yet, it is very plain; and as it was universal(604) it must have contained a great abstract and philosophical idea, now lost to our modern sages. This punishment in the allegory marks, indeed, “a new period, a second phase in the development of creation,” as justly remarked by Decharme,(605) who, however, does not attempt to explain it. Uranus tried to oppose an impediment to that development, or natural evolution, by destroying all his children as soon as born. Uranus, who personifies all the creative powers of, and in, Chaos—Space, or the Unmanifested Deity—is thus made to pay the penalty; for it is these powers which cause the Pitris to evolve primordial “men” from themselves—as, later on, these men, in their turn, evolve their progeny—without any sense or desire for procreation. The work of generation, suspended for a moment, passes into the hands of Cronus (Chronos) Time,(606) who unites himself with Rhea (the Earth—‐in Esotericism, Matter in general), and thus produces celestial and terrestrial Titans. The whole of this symbolism relates to the mysteries of evolution.

This allegory is the exoteric version of the Esoteric Doctrine given in this part of our work. For in Cronus we see the same story repeated again. As Uranus destroyed his children by Gæa (one in the world of manifestation with Aditi, or the Great Cosmic Deep), by confining them in the bosom of the Earth, Titæa, so Cronus, at this second stage of creation, destroyed his children by Rhea—by devouring them. This is an allusion to the fruitless efforts of Earth, or Nature, alone to create real human “men.”(607) Time swallows its own fruitless work. Then comes Zeus, Jupiter, who dethrones his father in his turn.(608) Jupiter the Titan, is Prometheus, in one sense,(609) and varies from Zeus, the great “Father of the Gods.” He is the “disrespectful son” in Hesiod. Hermes calls him the “Heavenly Man” in Pymander; and even in the Bible he is found again under the name of Adam, and, later on—by transmutation—under that of Ham. Yet these are all personifications of the “Sons of Wisdom.” The necessary corroboration that Jupiter belongs to the purely human Atlantean Cycle—if Uranus and Cronus who precede him are found insufficient—may be read in Hesiod, who tells us that:

The Immortals made the race of the Golden and Silver Age [First and Second Races]; Jupiter made the generation of Bronze [an admixture of two elements], that of the Heroes, and of the Iron Age.(610)

After this he sends his fatal present, Pandora, to Epimetheus.(611) Hesiod calls this present of the first woman “a fatal gift.” It was a punishment, he explains, sent to man “for the theft of [divine creative] fire.” Her apparition on Earth is the signal for every kind of evil. Before her appearance, the human races lived happy, exempt from sickness and suffering—as the same races are made to live under Yima’s rule, in the Mazdean Vendidâd.

Two Deluges may also be traced, in universal tradition, by carefully comparing Hesiod, the Rig Veda, the Zend Avesta, etc., but no first man is ever mentioned in any of the Theogonies save in the Bible.(612) Everywhere the man of our Race appears after a cataclysm of water. After this, tradition mentions only the several designations of continents and islands which sink under the ocean waves in due time.(613) Gods and mortals have one common origin according to Hesiod;(614) and Pindar echoes the statement.(615) Deucalion and Pyrrha, who escape the Deluge by constructing an Ark like Noah’s,(616) ask Jupiter to reänimate the human race whom he had made to perish under the waters of the Flood. In the Slavonian mythology all men are drowned, and two old people, a man and his wife, alone remain. Then Pram’zimas, the “master of all,” advises them to jump seven times on the rocks of the Earth, and seven new races (couples) are born, from which come the nine Lithuanian tribes.(617) As well understood by the author of Mythologie de la Grèce Antique—the Four Ages signify periods of time, and are also an allegorical allusion to the Races. As he says:

The successive races, destroyed and replaced by others, without any period of transition, are characterized in Greece by the name of metals, to express their ever‐decreasing value. Gold, the most brilliant and precious of all, symbol of brightness ... qualifies the first race.... The men of the second race, those of the Age of Silver, are already far inferior to the first. Inert and weak creatures, all their life is no better than a long and stupid infancy.... They disappear.... The men of the Age of Bronze are robust and violent [the Third Race]; ... their strength is extreme. “They had arms made of bronze, habitations of bronze; used nought but bronze. Iron, the black metal, was yet unknown.”(618) The fourth race is, with Hesiod, that of the heroes who fell before Thebes,(619) or under the walls of Troy.(620)

Thus, as the four Races are found mentioned by the oldest Greek poets, though very much confused and anachronistically, our doctrines are once more corroborated in the classics. But this is all “mythology” and poetry. What can Modern Science have to say to such a euhemerization of old fictions? The verdict is not difficult to foresee. Therefore, an attempt must be made to answer by anticipation, and to prove that so much of the domain of this same Science is taken up by fictions and empirical speculations that none of the men of learning have the slightest right, with such a heavy beam in their own eye, to point to the speck in the eye of the Occultist, even supposing that speck were not a figment of their own imagination.

40. THEN THE THIRD AND FOURTH(621) BECAME TALL WITH PRIDE. “WE ARE THE KINGS;(622) WE ARE THE GODS” (A).

41. THEY TOOK WIVES FAIR TO LOOK UPON. WIVES FROM THE MINDLESS, THE NARROW‐HEADED. THEY BRED MONSTERS, WICKED DEMONS, MALE AND FEMALE, ALSO KHADO,(623) WITH LITTLE MINDS (B).

42. THEY BUILT TEMPLES FOR THE HUMAN BODY. MALE AND FEMALE THEY WORSHIPPED (C). THEN THE THIRD EYE ACTED NO LONGER (D).

(a) Such were the first truly physical men, whose first characteristic was—pride! It is the memory of this Third Race and the gigantic Atlanteans, which has lingered from one generation and race to another generation and race down to the days of Moses, and has found an objective form in those antediluvian giants, those terrible sorcerers and magicians, of whom the Roman Church has preserved such vivid, and at the same time distorted, legends. Anyone who has read and studied the Commentaries on the Archaic Doctrine, will easily recognize in some of these Atlanteans the prototypes of the Nimrods, the Builders of the Tower of Babel, the Hamites, and all those tutti quanti of “accursed memory,” as theological literature expresses it; of those, in short, who have furnished posterity with the orthodox types of Satan. And this naturally leads us to enquire into the religious ethics of these early Races, mythical as they may be.

What was the religion of the Third and Fourth Races? In the common acceptation of the term, neither the Lemurians, nor yet their progeny, the Lemuro‐Atlanteans, had any; for they knew no dogma, nor had they to believe on faith. No sooner had the mental eye of man been opened to understanding, than the Third Race felt itself one with the ever‐present, as also the ever to be unknown and invisible, All, the One Universal Deity. Endowed with divine powers, and feeling in himself his inner God, each felt he was a Man‐God in his nature, though an animal in his physical self. The struggle between the two began from the very day they tasted of the fruit of the Tree of Wisdom; a struggle for life between the spiritual and the psychic, the psychic and the physical. Those who conquered the lower “principles” by obtaining mastery over the body, joined the “Sons of Light.” Those who fell victims to their lower natures, became the slaves of Matter. From “Sons of Light and Wisdom” they ended by becoming the “Sons of Darkness.” They fell in the battle of mortal life with Life Immortal, and all those so fallen became the seed of the future generations of Atlanteans.(624)

At the dawn of his consciousness, the man of the Third Root‐Race had thus no beliefs that could be called religion. That is to say, he was not only ignorant of “gay religions, full of pomp and gold” but even of any system of faith or outward worship. But if the term is to be defined as the binding together of the masses in one form of reverence paid to those we feel higher than ourselves, of piety—as a feeling expressed by a child toward a loved parent—then even the earliest Lemurians from the very beginning of their intellectual life, had a religion, and a most beautiful one. Had they not their bright Gods of the Elements around them, and even within themselves?(625) Was not their childhood passed with, nursed and tended by, those who had given them being and called them forth to intelligent, conscious life? We are assured it was so, and we believe it. For the evolution of Spirit into Matter could never have been achieved, nor would it have received its first impulse, had not the bright Spirits sacrificed their own respective super‐ethereal essences to animate the man of clay, by endowing each of his inner “principles” with a portion, or rather, a reflection, of that essence. The Dhyânîs of the Seven Heavens—the seven planes of Being—are the Noumena of the actual and the future Elements, just as the Angels of the Seven Powers of Nature—the grosser effects of which we perceive in what Science is pleased to call “modes of motion,” the imponderable forces and what not—are the still higher Noumena of still higher Hierarchies.

It was the “Golden Age” in those days of old, the Age when the “Gods walked the earth, and mixed freely with the mortals.” When it ceased, the Gods departed—i.e., became invisible—and later generations ended by worshipping their kingdoms—the Elements.

It was the Atlanteans, the first progeny of semi‐divine man after his separation into sexes—hence the first‐begotten and humanly‐born mortals—who became the first “sacrificers” to the God of Matter. They stand, in the dim far‐away past, in ages more than prehistoric, as the prototype on which the great symbol of Cain was built,(626) as the first Anthropomorphists who worshipped Form and Matter—a worship which very soon degenerated into self‐worship, and thence led to phallicism, which reigns supreme to this day in the symbolism of every exoteric religion of ritual, dogma, and form. Adam and Eve became matter, or furnished the soil, Cain and Abel—the latter the life‐bearing soil, the former “the tiller of that ground or field.”

Thus the first Atlantean races, born on the Lemurian Continent, separated from their earliest tribes into the righteous and the unrighteous; into those who worshipped the one unseen Spirit of Nature, the Ray of which man feels within himself—or the Pantheists, and those who offered fanatical worship to the Spirits of the Earth, the dark, cosmic, anthropomorphic Powers, with whom they made alliance. These were the earliest Gibborim, the “mighty men ... of renown” in those days,(627) who become with the Fifth Race the Kabirim, Kabiri with the Egyptians and the Phœnicians, Titans with the Greeks, and Râkshasas and Daityas with the Indian races.

Such was the secret and mysterious origin of all the subsequent and modern religions, especially of the worship of the later Hebrews for their tribal God. At the same time this sexual religion was closely allied to, based upon, and, so to say, blended with, astronomical phenomena. The Lemurians gravitated toward the North Pole, or the Heaven of their Progenitors—the Hyperborean Continent; the Atlanteans, toward the South Pole, the “Pit,” cosmically and terrestrially—whence breathe the hot passions blown into hurricanes by the cosmic Elementals, whose abode it is. The two Poles were denominated, by the Ancients, Dragons and Serpents—hence good and bad Dragons and Serpents, and also the names given to the “Sons of God”—Sons of Spirit and Matter—the good and bad Magicians. This is the origin of the dual and triple nature in man. The legend of the “Fallen Angels” in its Esoteric signification, contains the key to the manifold contradictions of human character; it points to the secret of man’s self‐consciousness; it is the support on which hinges his entire Life‐Cycle—the history of his evolution and growth.

On a firm grasp of this doctrine depends the correct understanding of Esoteric Anthropogenesis. It gives a clue to the vexed question of the Origin of Evil; and shows how man himself is the separator of the One into various contrasted aspects.

The reader, therefore, will not be surprised if so much space is devoted to an attempt to elucidate this difficult and obscure subject every time it presents itself. A good deal must necessarily be said on its symbological aspect; because, by so doing, hints are given to the thoughtful student for his own investigations, and more light can thus be suggested than it is possible to convey in the technical phrases of a more formal, philosophical exposition. The “Fallen Angels,” so‐called, are Humanity itself. The Demon of Pride, Lust, Rebellion, and Hatred, had no being before the appearance of physical conscious man. It is man who has begotten and nurtured the fiend, and allowed it to develop in his heart; it is he, again, who has contaminated the Indwelling God in himself, by linking the pure Spirit with the impure Demon of Matter. And, if the Kabalistic saying, “Demon est Deus inversus,” finds its metaphysical and theoretical corroboration in dual manifested Nature, nevertheless, its practical application is found in Mankind alone.

Thus it has now become self‐evident that, postulating as we do, (a) the appearance of Man before that of other Mammalia, and even before the Ages of the huge Reptiles; (b) Periodical Deluges and Glacial Periods owing to the Karmic disturbance of the axis; and chiefly (c) the birth of man from a Superior Being, or what Materialism would call a “supernatural” Being, though it is only super‐human—our teachings have very few chances of an impartial hearing. Add to it the claim that a portion of Mankind in the Third Race—all those Monads of men who had reached the highest point of Merit and Karma in the preceding Manvantara—owed their psychic and rational natures to divine Beings “hypostasizing” into their Fifth Principles, and the Secret Doctrine must lose caste in the eyes of not only Materialism but even of dogmatic Christianity. For, no sooner will the latter have learned that these Angels are identical with their “Fallen” Spirits, than the Esoteric tenet will be proclaimed most terribly heretical and pernicious.(628) The Divine Man dwelt in the animal, and therefore, when the physiological separation took place in the natural course of evolution—when also “all the animal creation was untied,” and males were attracted to females—that race fell; not because they had eaten of the Fruit of Knowledge and knew Good from Evil, but because they knew no better. Propelled by the sexless creative instinct, the early sub‐ races had evolved an intermediate race in which, as hinted in the Stanzas, the higher Dhyân Chohans had incarnated.(629) “When we have ascertained the extent of the universe (and learnt to know all that there is in it) we will multiply our race,” answer the Sons of Will and Yoga to their brethren of the same race, who invite them to do as they do. This means that the great Adepts and Initiated Ascetics will “multiply,” i.e., once more produce “mind‐born” immaculate sons—in the Seventh Root‐Race.

It is so stated in the Vishnu and Brahmâ Purânas, in the Mahâbhârata(630) and in the Harivamsha. In one portion of the Pushkara Mâhâtmya, moreover, the separation of the sexes is allegorized by Daksha, who, seeing that his will‐born progeny, the “Sons of passive Yoga,” will not create men, “converts half himself into a female by whom he begets daughters,” the future females of the Third Race which begat the Giants of Atlantis, the Fourth Race, so called. In the Vishnu Purâna it is simply said that Daksha, the father of mankind, established sexual intercourse as the means of peopling the world.(631)

Happily for the Human Race the “Elect Race” had already become the vehicle of incarnation of the highest Dhyânîs (intellectually and spiritually) before Humanity had become quite material. When the last sub‐races—save some of the lowest—of the Third Race had perished with the great Lemurian Continent, the “Seeds of the Trinity of Wisdom” had already acquired the secret of immortality on Earth, that gift which allows the same Great Personality to step ad libitum from one worn‐out body into another.

(b) The first War that Earth knew, the first shedding of human gore, was the result of man’s eyes and senses being opened, which made him see that the daughters of his brethren were fairer than his own—and their wives also. There were rapes committed before that of the Sabines, and Menelauses robbed of their Helens before the Fifth Race was born. The Titans or Giants were the stronger; their adversaries, the wiser. This took place during the Fourth Race—that of the Giants.

For “there were Giants” in the days of old, indeed.(632) The evolutionary series of the animal world is a warrant that the same thing took place within the human races. Lower still in the order of creation we find witnesses for the same proportionate size in the flora going pari passu with the fauna. The pretty ferns we collect and dry among the leaves of our favourite volumes are the descendants of the gigantic ferns which grew during the Carboniferous period.

Scriptures, and fragments of philosophical and scientific works—in short, almost every record that has come down to us from antiquity—contain references to Giants. No one can fail to recognize the Atlanteans of the Secret Doctrine in the Râkshasas of Lankâ—the opponents conquered by Râma. Are these accounts no better than the production of empty fancy? Let us give the subject a few moments’ attention.

Are Giants A Fiction?

Here, again, we come into collision with Science, which so far denies that man has ever been much larger than the average of tall and powerful men now met with occasionally. Dr. Henry Gregor denounces the traditions of Giants as resting upon ill‐digested facts, and instances of mistaken judgments are brought forward as disproof of such traditions. Thus, in 1613, in a locality, called from time immemorial the “Field of Giants,” in Lower Dauphiné, France, four miles from St. Romans, enormous bones were found deeply buried in the sandy soil. They were attributed to human remains, and even to Teutobodus, the Teuton chief slain by Marius. But Cuvier’s later research proved them to be the fossil remains of the Dinotherium Giganteum, 18 feet long. Ancient buildings are pointed to as an evidence that our earliest ancestors were not much larger than we are, the entrance doors being of no larger size then than now. The tallest man of antiquity known to us, we are told, was the Roman Emperor Maximus, whose height was only seven and a half feet. Nevertheless, in our modern day, every year we see men taller than this. The Hungarian who exhibited himself in the London Pavilion was nearly 9 feet high. In America a giant was shown 9 feet 6 inches tall; the Montenegrin Danilo was 8 feet 7 inches. In Russia and Germany one often sees men in the lower classes above 7 feet. Now, as the ape‐theorists are told by Mr. Darwin that the species of animals which result from cross breeding always betray “a tendency to revert to the original type,” they ought to apply the same law to men. Had there been no giants as a type in ancient days, there would be none now.

All this applies only to the historic period. And if the skeletons of the prehistoric ages have failed so far to prove undeniably in the opinion of Science the claim here advanced, it is but a question of time. We, however, positively deny the reality of the failure. Moreover, as already stated, human stature is little changed since the last Racial Cycle. The giants of old are all buried under the oceans, and hundreds of thousands of years of constant friction by water would reduce to dust a brazen, much more a human skeleton. And whence the testimony of well‐known classical writers, of philosophers and men who, otherwise, never had the reputation for lying? Let us bear in mind, furthermore, that before the year 1847, when Boucher de Perthes forced it upon the attention of Science, hardly anything was known of fossil man, for Archæology complacently ignored his existence. Of giants who were “in the earth in those days” of old, the Bible alone had spoken to the wise men of the West; the Zodiac being the solitary witness called upon to corroborate the statement in the persons of Orion or Atlas, whose mighty shoulders were said to support the world.

Nevertheless, even the giants have not been left without their witnesses, and one may as well examine both sides of the question. The three Sciences—geological, sidereal and scriptural, the latter in its universal character—may furnish us with the needed proofs. To begin with Geology: it has already confessed that the older the excavated skeletons, the larger, taller and the more powerful their structure. This is already a certain proof in hand. Frédéric de Rougemont, who, though believing too piously in the Bible and Noah’s Ark, is none the less a scientific witness, writes:

All those bones, found in the Departments of the Gard, in Austria, Liège, etc., those skulls which all remind one of the negro type ... and which by reason of their type might be mistaken for animals, have all belonged to men of high stature.(633)

The same is repeated by Lartet, an authority, who attributes a “tall stature” to those who were submerged in the Deluge—not necessarily “Noah’s”—and a smaller stature to the races which lived subsequently.

As for the evidence furnished by ancient writers, we need not trouble ourselves with that of Tertullian, who assures us that in his day a number of giants were found at Carthage—for, before his testimony can be accepted, his own identity,(634) if not actual existence, would have to be proven. We may, however, turn to the papers of 1858, which speak of a “sarcophagus of giants” found that year on the site of this same city. As to the ancient Pagan writers, we have the evidence of Philostratus, who speaks of a giant skeleton twenty‐two cubits long, as well as of another of twelve cubits, seen by himself on the promontory of Sigæum. This skeleton may perhaps not have belonged, as believed by Protesilas, to the giant killed by Apollo at the siege of Troy; nevertheless, it was that of a giant, as was that of the other discovered by Messecrates of Stira, in Lemnos—“horrible to behold,” according to Philostratus.(635) Is it possible that prejudice would carry Science so far as to class all these men as either fools or liars?

Pliny speaks of a giant in whom he thought he recognized Orion, or Otus, the brother of Ephialtes.(636) Plutarch declares that Sertorius saw the tomb of Antæus, the Giant; and Pausanias vouches for the actual existence of the tombs of Asterius and of Geryon, or of Hillus, son of Hercules—all Giants, Titans and mighty men. Finally the Abbé Pegues, affirms in his curious work, Les Volcans de la Grèce, that:

In the neighbourhood of the volcanoes of the isle of Thera, giants with enormous skulls were found laid out under colossal stones, the erection of which in every place must have necessitated the use of titanic powers, and which tradition associates in all countries with the ideas about giants, volcanoes and magic.(637)

In the same work above cited, the author wonders why in the Bible and tradition the Gibborim, the giants or the “mighty ones,” the Rephaim, the spectres or the “phantoms,” the Nephilim, or the “fallen ones” (irruentes), are shown as if identical, though they are “all men,” since the Bible calls them the primitive and the mighty ones—e.g., Nimrod. The Secret Doctrine explains the secret. These names, which belong by right only to the four preceding Races and the earliest beginning of the Fifth, allude very clearly to the first two Phantom (Astral) Races, to the “Fallen” Race—the Third, and to the Race of the Atlantean Giants—the Fourth, after which “men began to decrease in stature.”

Bossuet sees the cause of subsequent universal idolatry in the “original sin.” “Ye shall be as Gods,” says the Serpent of Genesis to Eve, thus laying the first germ of the worship of false divinities.(638) Hence, he thinks, came idolatry, or the cult and adoration of images, of anthropomorphized or human figures. But, if it is this that idolatry is made to rest upon, then the two Churches—the Greek, and the Latin especially—are as idolatrous and pagan as any other religion.(639) It was only in the Fourth Race that men, who had lost all right to be considered divine, resorted to body worship, in other words to phallicism. Till then, they had been truly Gods, as pure and as divine as their Progenitors, and the expression of the allegorical “Serpent,” as has been sufficiently shown in the preceding pages, does not refer at all to the physiological “Fall” of men, but to their acquiring the Knowledge of Good and Evil; and this knowledge came to them prior to their fall. It must not be forgotten that it is only after his forced expulsion from Eden that “Adam knew Eve his wife.” We shall not, however, check the tenets of the Secret Doctrine by the dead‐letter of the Hebrew Bible, but rather point out the great similarities between the two in their Esoteric meaning.

It was only after his defection from the Neo‐Platonists, that Clement of Alexandria began to translate gigantes by serpentes, explaining that “serpents and giants signify demons.”(640)

We may be told that, before we draw parallels between our tenets and those of the Bible, we have to show better evidence of the existence of the Giants of the Fourth Race than the reference to them found in Genesis. We answer, that the proofs we give are more satisfactory, at any rate are supported by more literary and scientific evidence, than those of Noah’s Deluge will ever be. Even the historical works of China are full of such reminiscences about the Fourth Race. In the French translation of the Shoo‐King,(641) we read:

When the Miao‐tse (that antediluvian and perverted race [explains the annotator] which retired in the days of old to the rocky caves, and the descendants of whom are said to be still found in the neighbourhood of Canton),(642) according to our ancient documents, had, owing to the beguilements of Tchy‐Yeoo, troubled all the earth, it became full of brigands.... The Lord (Chang‐ty [a King of the Divine Dynasty]) cast his eyes over the people, and saw no longer among them any trace of virtue. Then he commanded Tchong and Ly [two lower Dhyân Chohans] to cut away every communication between heaven and earth. Since then, there has been no more going up and down!(643)

“Going up and down” means an untrammelled communication and intercourse between the two Worlds.

As we are not in a position to give out a full and detailed history of the Third and Fourth Races, as many isolated facts concerning them as are permitted must be now collated together, especially those corroborated by direct as well as by inferential evidence found in ancient literature and history. As the “coats of skin” of men thickened, and they fell more and more into physical sin, the intercourse between Physical and Ethereal Divine Man was stopped. The Veil of Matter between the two planes became too dense for even the Inner Man to penetrate. The Mysteries of Heaven and Earth, revealed to the Third Race by their Celestial Teachers in the days of their purity, became a great focus of light, the rays from which became necessarily weakened as they were diffused and shed upon an uncongenial, because too material, soil. With the masses they degenerated into Sorcery, taking later on the shape of exoteric religions, of idolatry full of superstitions, and man‐, or hero‐worship. Alone a handful of primitive men—in whom the spark of Divine Wisdom burnt bright, and became only strengthened in its intensity as it got dimmer and dimmer with every age in those who turned it to evil purposes—remained the elect custodians of the Mysteries revealed to mankind by the Divine Teachers. There were those among them, who remained in their Kaumâric condition from the beginning; and tradition whispers, what the Secret Teachings affirm, namely, that these Elect were the germ of a Hierarchy which has never died since that period. As the Catechism of the Inner Schools says:

The Inner Man of the First ... only changes his body from time to time; he is ever the same, knowing neither rest nor Nirvâna, spurning Devachan and remaining constantly on Earth for the salvation of mankind.... Out of the seven Virgin‐men [Kumâra](644) four sacrificed themselves for the sins of the world and the instruction of the ignorant, to remain till the end of the present Manvantara. Though unseen, they are ever present. When people say of one of them, “He is dead”; behold, he is alive and under another form. These are the Head, the Heart, the Soul, and the Seed of undying Knowledge [Jñâna]. Thou shall never speak, O Lanoo, of these great ones [Mahâ ...] before a multitude, mentioning them by their names. The wise alone will understand.(645)

It is these sacred “Four” who have been allegorized and symbolized in the Linga Purâna, which states that Vâmadeva (Shiva) as a Kumâra is reborn in each Kalpa (Race, in this instance), as four youths—four, white; four, red; four, yellow; and four, dark or brown. Let us remember that Shiva is preëminently and chiefly an ascetic, the patron of all Yogîs and Adepts, and the allegory will become quite comprehensible. It is the spirit of Divine Wisdom and chaste Asceticism itself which incarnates in these Elect. It is only after getting married and being dragged by the Gods from his terrible ascetic life, that Rudra becomes Shiva, a God—and not one of a very virtuous or merciful type—in the Hindû Pantheon. Higher than the “Four” is only ONE on Earth as in Heavens—that still more mysterious and solitary Being described in Volume I.

We have now to examine the nature of the “Sons of the Flame” and of “Dark Wisdom,” as well as the pros and cons of the Satanic assumption.

Such broken sentences as could be made out from the fragments of the tile, which George Smith calls “The Curse after the Fall,”(646) are of course allegorical; yet they corroborate that which is taught of the true nature of the Fall of the Angels in our Books. Thus, it is said that the “Lord of the Earth his name called out, the Father Elu [Elohim],” and pronounced his “curse,” which “the God Hea heard, and his liver was angry, because his man [Angelic Man] had corrupted his purity,” for which Hea expresses the desire that “wisdom and knowledge hostilely may they injure him [man].”(647)

The latter sentence points to the direct connection of the Chaldæan with the Genetic account. While Hea tries to bring to nought the wisdom and knowledge gained by man, through his newly‐acquired intellectual and conscious capacity of creating in his turn—thus taking the monopoly of creation out of the hands of God (the Gods)—the Elohim do the same in the third chapter of Genesis. Therefore the Elohim sent him out of Eden.

But this was of no avail. For the Spirit of Divine Wisdom being upon and in man—verily the Serpent of Eternity and all Knowledge, that Mânasic Spirit, which made him learn the secret of “creation” on the Kriyâshaktic, and of procreation on the Earthly planes—led him as naturally to discover his way to immortality, notwithstanding the jealousy of all the Gods.

The early Atlanto‐Lemurians are charged with taking unto themselves (the divine incarnations) wives of a lower race, namely, the race of the hitherto mindless men. Every ancient Scripture has the same, more or less disfigured, legend. Primarily, the Angelic “Fall,” which has transformed the “First‐born” of God into the Asuras, or into the Ahriman or Typhon of the “Pagans”—i.e., if the accounts given in the Book of Enoch,(648) and in Hermes, in Purânas and Bible are taken literally—has, when read Esoterically, the following simple signification:

Sentences such as, “In his [Satan’s] ambition he raises his hand against the Sanctuary of the God of Heaven,” etc., ought to read: Prompted by the Law of Eternal Evolution and Karma, the Angel incarnated on Earth in Man; and as his Wisdom and Knowledge are still divine, although his Body is earthly, he is (allegorically) accused of divulging the Mysteries of Heaven. He combines and uses the two for purposes of human, instead of super‐human, procreation. Henceforth, “man will beget, not create.”(649) But as, by so doing, he has to use his weak Body as the means of procreation, that Body will pay the penalty for this Wisdom, carried from Heaven down to the Earth; hence the corruption of physical purity will become a temporary curse.

The Mediæval Kabalists knew this well, since one of them did not fear to write:

The Kabalah was first taught by God himself to a select Company of Angels who formed a theosophic school in Paradise. After the Fall the Angels most graciously communicated this heavenly doctrine to the disobedient child of Earth, to furnish the protoplasts with the means of returning to their pristine nobility and felicity.(650)

This shows how the incident of the Sons of God, marrying and imparting the Divine Secrets of Heaven to the Daughters of Men—as allegorically told by Enoch and in the sixth chapter of Genesis—was interpreted by the Christian Kabalists. The whole of this period may be regarded as the pre‐human period, that of Divine Man, or as plastic Protestant Theology now has it—the Pre‐Adamite period. But even Genesis begins its real history (Chap. vi) by the giants of “those days” and the “sons of God” marrying and teaching their wives—the “daughters of men.”

This period is the one described in the Purânas; and relating as it does to days lost in archaic ages, hence pre‐historic, how can any Anthropologist feel certain whether the mankind of that period was or was not as he knows it now? The whole personnel of the Brâhmanas and Purânas—the Rishis, Prajâpatis, Manus, their wives and progeny—belong to that pre‐human period. All these are the Seed of Humanity, so to speak. It is around these “Sons of God,” the “mind‐born” astral Children of Brahmâ, that our physical frames have grown and developed to what they are now. For, the Paurânic histories of all those men are those of our Monads, in their various and numberless incarnations on this and other Spheres, events perceived by the “Shiva Eye” of the ancient Seers—the “Third Eye” of our Stanzas—and described allegorically. Later on, they were disfigured for sectarian purposes; mutilated, but still left with a considerable ground‐work of truth in them. Nor is the philosophy less profound in such allegories for being so thickly veiled by the overgrowth of fancy.

But with the Fourth Race we reach the purely human period. Those who were hitherto semi‐divine Beings, self‐imprisoned in bodies which were human only in appearance, became physiologically changed and took unto themselves wives who were entirely human and fair to look upon, but in whom lower, more material, though sidereal, Beings had incarnated. These Beings in female forms—Lilith is the prototype of them in the Jewish traditions—are called in the Esoteric accounts Khado (Dâkinî, in Sanskrit). Allegorical legends call the Chief of these Liliths Sangye Khado (Buddha Dâkinî, in Sanskrit); all are credited with the art of “walking in the air,” and the “greatest kindness to mortals;” but with no mind—only animal instinct.(651)

(c) This is the beginning of a worship which, ages later, was doomed to degenerate into phallicism and sexual worship. It began by the worship of the human body—that “miracle of miracles,” as an English author calls it—and ended by that of its respective sexes. The worshippers were giants in stature; but they were not giants in knowledge and learning, though it came to them more easily than it does to the men of our modern times. Their science was innate in them. The Lemuro‐Atlantean had no need of discovering and fixing in his memory that which his informing principle knew at the moment of its incarnation. Time alone, and the ever‐growing obtuseness of the Matter in which the “principles” had clothed themselves, could, the one, weaken the memory of their pre‐natal knowledge, the other, blunt and even extinguish every spark of the spiritual and divine in them. Therefore had they, from the first, fallen victims to their animal natures and bred “monsters”—i.e., men of distinct varieties from themselves.

Speaking of the Giants, Creuzer well describes them in saying that:

Those children of Heaven and Earth were endowed at their birth by the Sovereign Powers, the authors of their being, with extraordinary faculties both moral and physical. They commanded the Elements, knew the secrets of Heaven and the Earth, of the sea and the whole world, and read futurity in the stars.... It seems, indeed, as though, when reading of them, one has to deal not with men as we are but with Spirits of the Elements sprung from the bosom of Nature and having full sway over her.... All these beings are marked with a character of magic and sorcery....

And so they were, those now legendary heroes of the pre‐historic, still once really existing, races. Creuzer was wise in his generation, for he did not charge with deliberate deceit, or dulness and superstition, an endless series of recognized Philosophers, who mention these races and assert that, even in their own time, they had seen their fossils. There were sceptics in days of old—as many and great as they are now. But even a Lucian, a Democritus and an Epicurus, yielded to the evidence of facts and showed the discriminative capacity of really great intellects, which can distinguish fiction from fact, and truth from exaggeration and fraud. Ancient writers were no more fools than are our modern wise men; for, as well remarked by the author of “Notes on Aristotle’s Psychology in Relation to Modern Thought,” in Mind:

The common division of history into ancient and modern is ... misleading. The Greeks in the fourth century, B.C., were in many respects moderns; especially, we may add, in their scepticism. They were not very likely to accept fables so easily.

Yet the Lemurians and the Atlanteans, those “children of Heaven and Earth,” were indeed marked with a character of sorcery; for the Esoteric Doctrine charges them precisely with what, if believed, would put an end to the difficulties of Science with regard to the origin of man, or rather, his anatomical similarities to the anthropoid ape. It accuses them of having committed the (to us) abominable crime of breeding with so‐ called “animals,” and thus producing a truly pithecoid species, now extinct. Of course, as also in the question of spontaneous generation—in which Esoteric Science believes, and which it teaches—the possibility of such a cross‐breed between man and an animal of any kind will be denied. But apart from the consideration that in those early days, as already remarked, neither the human Atlantean Giants, nor yet the “animals,” were the physiologically perfect men and mammalians that are now known to us, the modern notions upon this subject—those of the Physiologists included—are too uncertain and fluctuating to permit them an absolute à priori denial of such a fact.

A careful perusal of the Commentaries would make one think that the Being with which the new “Incarnate” bred, was called an “animal,” not because he was no human being, but rather because he was so dissimilar physically and mentally to the more perfect races, which had developed physiologically at an earlier period. Remember Stanza VII and what is said in Shloka 24, viz., that when the “Sons of Wisdom” came to incarnate the first time, some of them incarnated fully, others projected into the forms only a Spark, while some of the Shadows were left over from the filling and perfecting, till the Fourth Race. Those races, then, which “remained destitute of knowledge,” or those again which were left “mindless,” remained as they were, even after the natural separation of the sexes. It is these who committed the first cross‐breeding, so to speak, and bred monsters; and it is from the descendants of these that the Atlanteans chose their wives. Adam and Eve, with Cain and Abel, were supposed to be the only human family on Earth. Yet we see Cain going to the land of Nod and taking there a wife. Evidently one race only was supposed perfect enough to be called human; and, even in our own day, while the Sinhalese regard the Veddhas of their jungles as speaking animals and no more, some British people, in their arrogance, firmly believe that every other human family—especially the dark Indians—is an inferior race. Moreover there are Naturalists who have seriously considered the problem whether some savage tribes—like the Bushmen, for instance—can be regarded as men at all. The Commentary says, in describing that species (or race) of animals “fair to look upon,” as a biped:

Having human shape, but having the lower extremities, from the waist down, covered with hair.

Hence the race of the satyrs, perhaps.

If men existed two million years ago, they must have been—just as were the animals—quite different physically and anatomically from what they have now become, and nearer then to the type of pure mammalian animal than they are now. Anyhow, we learn that the animal world has bred strictly inter se—i.e., in accordance with genus and species—only since the appearance on this Earth of the Atlantean Race. As demonstrated by the author of that able work, Modern Science and Modern Thought, this idea of the refusal to breed with another species, or that sterility is the only result of such breeding, “appears to be a primâ facie deduction rather than an absolute law” even now. He shows that:

Different species do, in fact, often breed together, as is seen in the familiar instance of the horse and ass. It is true that in this case the mule is sterile.... But this rule is not universal, and quite recently one new hybrid race, that of the leporine, or hare‐rabbit, has been created which is perfectly fertile.

The progeny of wolf and dog is also instanced, as also that of several other domestic animals; foxes and dogs again, and the modern Swiss cattle shown by Rütimeyer as descended from “three distinct species of fossil‐ oxen, the Bos primigenius, Bos longifrons and Bos frontosus.”(652) Yet some of those species, as the ape family, which so clearly resembles man in physical structure, contain, we are told,

Numerous branches, which graduate into one another, but the extremes of which differ more widely than man does from the highest of the ape series.

The gorilla and chimpanzee, for instance.

Thus Mr. Darwin’s remark—or shall we say the remark of Linnæus?—natura non facit saltum, is not only corroborated by Esoteric Science but would—were there any chance of the real doctrine being accepted by any others than its direct votaries—reconcile the modern evolution theory, in more than one way, if not entirely, with facts, as also with the absolute failure of the Anthropologists to meet with the “missing link” in our Fourth Round geological formations.

We will show elsewhere that Modern Science, however unconsciously to itself, pleads our case by its own admissions, and that de Quatrefages is perfectly right, when he suggests in his last work, that it is far more likely that the anthropoid ape should be discovered to be the descendant of man, than that these two types should have a common, fantastic and nowhere‐to‐be‐found ancestor. Thus the wisdom of the compilers of the old Stanzas is vindicated by at least one eminent man of Science, and the Occultist prefers to believe, as he has ever done, that, as the Commentary says:

Man was the first and highest [mammalian] animal that appeared in this [Fourth Round] creation. Then came still huger animals; and last of all the dumb man who walks on all fours. [For] the Râkshasas [Giant‐Demons] and Daityas [Titans] of the White Dvipa [Continent] spoiled his [the dumb man’s] sires.

Furthermore, as we see, there are Anthropologists who have traced man back to an epoch which goes far to break down the apparent barrier that exists between the chronologies of Modern Science and the Archaic Doctrine. It is true that English Scientists generally have declined to commit themselves to the sanction of the hypothesis of even a Tertiary man. They, each and all, measure the antiquity of Homo Primigenius by their own lights and prejudices. Huxley, indeed, ventures to speculate on a possible Pliocene or Miocene man. Prof. Seeman and Mr. Grant Allen have relegated his advent to the Eocene, but, speaking generally, English Scientists consider that we cannot safely go beyond the Quaternary. Unfortunately, the facts do not accommodate the too cautious reserve of these latter. The French school of Anthropology, basing their views on the discoveries of l’Abbé Bourgeois, Capellini, and others, has accepted, almost without exception, the doctrine that the traces of our ancestors are certainly to be found in the Miocene, while M. de Quatrefages now inclines to postulate a Secondary‐Age man. Further on we shall compare such estimates with the figures given in the Brâhmanical exoteric books which approximate to the Esoteric Teaching.

(d) “Then the Third Eye acted no longer,” says the Shloka, because Man had sunk too deep into the mire of Matter.

What is the meaning of this strange and weird statement in Shloka 42, concerning the Third Eye of the Third Race which had died and acted no longer?

A few more Occult Teachings must now be given with reference to this point as well as some others. The history of the Third and Fourth Races must be amplified, in order that it may throw some more light on the development of our present humanity; and show how the faculties, called into activity by Occult training, restore man to the position he previously occupied in reference to spiritual perception and consciousness. But the phenomenon of the Third Eye has to be first explained.

The Races With The “Third Eye.”

The subject is so unusual, the paths pursued so intricate, so full of dangerous pitfalls prepared by adverse theories and criticism, that good reasons have to be given for every step taken. While turning the light of the bull’s‐eye, called Esotericism, on almost every inch of the Occult ground travelled over, we have also to use its lens to throw into stronger objectivity the regions explored by exact Science; this, not only in order to contrast the two, but to defend our position.(653)

It may be complained by some that too little is said of the physical, human side of the extinct races, in the history of their growth and evolution. Much more might be said, assuredly, if simple prudence did not make us hesitate at the threshold of every new revelation. All that finds possibility and landmarks in the discoveries of Modern Science, is given; all that of which exact knowledge knows nothing and upon which it is unable to speculate—and therefore denies as fact in nature—is withheld.

But even such statements as, for instance, that, of all the mammalians, man was the earliest, that it is man who is the indirect ancestor of the ape, and that he was a kind of Cyclops in days of old—all will be contested; yet Scientists will never be able to prove, except to their own satisfaction, that it was not so. Nor can they admit that the first two Races of men were too ethereal and phantom‐like in their constitution, organism, and shape even, to be called physical men. For, if they do, it will be found that this is one of the reasons why their relics can never be expected to be exhumed among other fossils. Nevertheless all this is maintained. Man was the Store‐house, so to speak, of all the seeds of life for this Round, vegetable and animal alike.(654) As Ain Suph is “One, notwithstanding the innumerable forms which are in him,”(655) so is man, on Earth the microcosm of the macrocosm.

As soon as man appeared, everything was complete ... for everything is comprised in man. He unites in himself all forms.(656)

The mystery of the earthly man is after the mystery of the Heavenly Man.(657)

The human form—so called because it is the vehicle (under whatever shape) of the Divine Man—is, as so intuitionally remarked by the author of “Esoteric Studies,” the new type, at the beginning of every Round.

As man never can be, so he never has been, manifested in a shape belonging to the animal kingdom in esse, i.e., he never formed part of that kingdom. Derived, only derived, from the most finished class of the latter, a new human form must always have been the new type of the cycle. The human shape in one ring [?], as I imagine, becomes cast‐off clothes in the next; it is then appropriated by the highest order in the servant‐kingdom below.(658)

If the idea is what we understand it to mean—for the “rings” spoken of somewhat confuse the matter—then it is the correct Esoteric Teaching. Having appeared at the very beginning, and at the head of sentient and conscious life, Man—the Astral, or the “Soul,” for the Zohar, repeating the Archaic Teaching, distinctly says that “the real man is the soul, and his material frame no part of him”—Man became the living and animal Unit, from which the “cast‐off clothes” determined the shape of every life and animal in this Round.(659)

Thus, he “created,” for ages, the insects, reptiles, birds, and animals, unconsciously to himself, from his remains and relics from the Third and the Fourth Rounds. The same idea and teaching are as distinctly given in the Vendîdâd of the Mazdeans, as they are in the Chaldæan and Mosaic allegory of the Ark, all of which are the many national versions of the original legend given in the Hindû Scriptures. It is found in the allegory of Vaivasvata Manu and his Ark with the Seven Rishis, each of whom is shown the Father and Progenitor of specified animals, reptiles, and even monsters, as in the Vishnu and other Purânas. Open the Mazdean Vendîdâd, and read the command of Ahura Mazda to Yima, a Spirit of the Earth, who symbolizes the three Races, after telling him to build a Vara—“an enclosure,” an Argha or Vehicle.

Thither [into the Vara] thou shalt bring the seeds of men and women, of the greatest, best, and finest kinds on this earth; thither thou shalt bring the seeds of every kind of cattle, etc.... All those seeds shalt thou bring, two of every kind to be kept inexhaustible there, so long as those men shall stay in the Vara.(660)

Those “men” in the “Vara” are the “Progenitors,” the Heavenly Men or Dhyânîs, the future Egos who are commissioned to inform mankind. For the Vara, or Ark, or again the Vehicle, simply means Man.(661)

Thou shalt seal up the Vara [after filling it up with the seeds], and thou shalt make a door, and a window self‐shining within [which is the Soul].(662)

And when Yima enquires of Ahura Mazda how he shall manage to make that Vara, he is answered:

Crush the earth ... and knead it with thy hands, as the potter does when kneading the potter’s clay.(663)

The Egyptian ram‐headed God makes man of clay on a potter’s wheel, and so in Genesis do the Elohim fashion him out of the same material.

When the “Maker of the material world,” Ahura Mazda, is asked, furthermore, what is to give light “to the Vara which Yima made,” he answers that:

There are uncreated lights and created lights. There [in Airyana Vaêjô, where Vara is built], the stars, the moon, and the sun are only once (a year) seen to rise and set, and a year seems only as a day [and night].(664)

This is a clear reference to the “Land of the Gods” or the (now) Polar Regions. Moreover another hint is contained in this verse, a distinct allusion to the “uncreated lights” which enlighten man within—his “principles.” Otherwise, no sense or reason could be found in Ahura Mazda’s answer which is forthwith followed by the words:

Every fortieth year, to every couple [hermaphrodite] two are born, a male and female.(665)

The latter is a distinct echo of the Secret Doctrine, of a Stanza which says:

At the expiration of every forty [annual] Suns, at the end of every fortieth Day, the double one becomes four; male and female in one, in the first and second and the third....

This is clear, since every “Sun” meant a whole year, the latter being composed of one Day then, as in the Arctic Circle it is now composed of six months. According to the old teaching, the axis of the Earth gradually changes its inclination to the ecliptic, and at the period referred to, this inclination was such that a polar Day lasted during the whole period of the Earth’s revolution about the Sun, when a kind of twilight of very short duration intervened; after which the polar land resumed its position directly under the solar rays. This may be contrary to Astronomy as now taught and understood; but who can say that changes in the motion of the Earth, which do not take place now, did not occur millions of years back?

Returning once more to the statement that Vara meant the Man of the Fourth Round, as much as the Earth of those days, the Moon, and even Noah’s Ark, if one will so have it—this is again shown in the dialogue between Ahura Mazda and Zarathushtra. Thus when the latter asks:

O Maker of the material world, thou Holy One! Who is he who brought the law of Mazda into the Vara which Yima made?

Ahura Mazda answered: “It was the bird Karshipta, O holy Zarathushtra!”(666)

And the note explains:

The bird Karshipta dwells in the heavens: were he living on the earth, he would be king of birds. He brought the law into the Var of Yima, and recites the Avesta in the language of birds.(667)

This again is an allegory and a symbol misunderstood by the Orientalists only, who see in this bird “an incarnation of lightning,” and say its song was “often thought to be the utterance of a god and a revelation,” and what not. Karshipta is the human Mind‐Soul, and the deity thereof, symbolized in ancient Magianism by a bird, as the Greeks symbolized it by a butterfly. No sooner had Karshipta entered the Vara or Man, than he understood the law of Mazda, or Divine Wisdom. In the “Book of Concealed Mystery” it is said of the Tree, which is the Tree of knowledge of good and evil:

In its branches the birds lodge and build their nests (the souls and the angels have their place).(668)

Therefore, with the Kabalists it was a like symbol. “Bird” was a Chaldæan, and has become a Hebrew, synonym and symbol for Angel, a Soul, a Spirit, or Deva; and the “Bird’s Nest” was, with both, Heaven, and is God’s Bosom, in the Zohar. The perfect Messiah enters Eden “into that place which is called the Bird’s Nest.”(669)

“Like a bird that is flying from its nest,” and that is the Soul from which the She’kheen‐ah [divine wisdom or grace] does not move away.(670)

The Nest of the Eternal Bird, the flutter of whose wings produces Life, is boundless Space,

—says the Commentary, meaning Hamsa, the Bird of Wisdom.

It is Adam Kadmon who is the tree of the Sephiroth, and it is he who becomes the “tree of knowledge of good and evil,” Esoterically. And that “tree hath around it seven columns [seven pillars] of the world, or Rectores [the same Progenitors or Sephiroth again], operating through the respective orders of Angels in the spheres of the seven planets,” etc., one of which orders begets Giants (Nephilim) on Earth.

It was the belief of all antiquity, Pagan and Christian, that the earliest mankind was a race of giants. Certain excavations in America in mounds and in caves, have already, in isolated cases, yielded groups of skeletons of nine and twelve feet high.(671) These belong to tribes of the early Fifth Race, now degenerated to an average size of between five and six feet. But we can easily believe that the Titans and Cyclopes of old really belonged to the Fourth (Atlantean) Race, and that all the subsequent legends and allegories found in the Hindû Purânas and the Greek poems of Hesiod and Homer, were based on the hazy reminiscences of real Titans—men of a tremendous super‐human physical power, which enabled them to defend themselves, and hold at bay the gigantic monsters of the Mesozoic and early Cenozoic times—and of actual Cyclopes, “three‐eyed” mortals.

It has been often remarked by observant writers, that the “origin of nearly every popular myth and legend could be traced invariably to a fact in Nature.”

In these fantastic creations of an exuberant subjectivism, there is always an element of the objective and real. The imagination of the masses, disorderly and ill‐regulated as it may be, could never have conceived and fabricated ex nihilo so many monstrous figures, such a wealth of extraordinary tales, had it not had, to serve it as a central nucleus, those floating reminiscences, obscure and vague, which unite the broken links of the chain of time to form with them the mysterious, dream foundation of our collective consciousness.(672)

The evidence for the Cyclopes—a race of Giants—will, in forthcoming Sections, be pointed out in the Cyclopean remnants, which are so called to this day. An indication that the early Fourth Race—during its evolution and before the final adjustment of the human organism, which became perfect and symmetrical only in the Fifth Race—may have been three‐eyed, without having necessarily a third eye in the middle of the brow, like the legendary Cyclops, is also furnished by Science.

To Occultists who believe that spiritual and psychic involution proceeds on parallel lines with physical evolution—that the inner senses, innate in the first human races, atrophied during racial growth and the material development of the outer senses—to the students of Esoteric symbology the above statement is no conjecture or possibility, but simply a phase of the law of growth, a proven fact, in short. They understand the meaning of the passage in the Commentaries which says:

There were four‐armed human creatures in those early days of the male‐ females [hermaphrodites]; with one head, yet three eyes. They could see before them and behind them.(673) A Kalpa later [after the separation of the sexes] men having fallen into matter, their spiritual vision became dim; and coördinately the Third Eye commenced to lose its power.... When the Fourth [Race] arrived at its middle age, the Inner Vision had to be awakened, and acquired by artificial stimuli, the process of which was known to the old Sages.(674)... The Third Eye, likewise, getting gradually petrified,(675) soon disappeared. The double‐faced became the one‐faced, and the eye was drawn deep into the head and is now buried under the hair. During the activity of the Inner Man [during trances and spiritual visions] the eye swells and expands. The Arhat sees and feels it, and regulates his action accordingly.... The undefiled Lanoo [Disciple, Chelâ] need fear no danger; he who keeps himself not in purity [who is not chaste] will receive no help from the “Deva Eye.”

Unfortunately not. The “Deva Eye” exists no more for the majority of mankind. The Third Eye is dead, and acts no longer; but it has left behind a witness to its existence. This witness is now the Pineal Gland. As for the “four‐armed” men, it is they who became the prototypes of the four‐armed Hindû Gods, as shown in a preceding footnote.

Such is the mystery of the human eye that some Scientists have been forced to resort to Occult explanations in their vain endeavours to explain and account for all the difficulties surrounding its action. The development of the human eye gives more support to Occult Anthropology than to that of the Materialistic Physiologists. “The eyes in the human embryo grow from within without”—out of the brain, instead of being part of the skin, as in the insects and cuttlefish. Professor Lankester—thinking the brain a queer place for the eye, and attempting to explain the phenomenon on Darwinian lines—suggests the curious view that “our” earliest vertebrate ancestor was a “transparent” creature and hence did not mind where the eye was! And so was man a “transparent creature” once upon a time, we are taught; and hence our theory holds good. But how does the Lankester hypothesis square with the Hæckelian view that the vertebrate eye originated by changes in the epidermis? If it started inside, the latter theory goes into the waste basket. This seems to be proved by embryology. Moreover, Professor Lankester’s extraordinary suggestion—or shall we say admission?—is perhaps rendered necessary by evolutionist necessities. Occultism, with its teaching as to the gradual development of senses “from within without,” from astral prototypes, is far more satisfactory. The Third Eye retreated inwards when its course was run—another point in favour of Occultism.

The allegorical expression of the Hindû mystics who speak of the “Eye of Shiva,” the Tri‐lochana, or “three‐eyed,” thus receives its justification and raison d’être: the transference of the Pineal Gland (once that Third Eye) to the forehead, being an exoteric licence. This throws also a light on the mystery—incomprehensible to some—of the connection between abnormal, or spiritual Seership, and the physiological purity of the Seer. The question is often asked: Why should celibacy and chastity be a sine quâ non condition of regular Chelâship, or the development of psychic and occult powers? The answer is contained in the Commentary. When we learn that the Third Eye was once a physiological organ, and that later on, owing to the gradual disappearance of spirituality and increase of materiality, the spiritual nature being extinguished by the physical, it became an atrophied organ, as little understood now by Physiologists as is the spleen—when we learn this, the connection becomes clear. During human life the greatest impediment in the way of spiritual development, and especially to the acquirement of Yoga powers, is the activity of our physiological senses. Sexual action also being closely connected, by interaction, with the spinal cord and the grey matter of the brain, it is useless to give any longer explanation. Of course, the normal and abnormal state of the brain, and the degree of active work in the Medulla Oblongata, reacts powerfully on the Pineal Gland, for, owing to the number of “centres” in that region, which controls by far the greatest number of the physiological actions of the animal economy, and also owing to the close and intimate neighbourhood of the two, a very powerful “inductive” action must be exerted by the Medulla on the Pineal Gland.

All this is quite plain to the Occultist, but is very vague in the sight of the general reader. The latter must then be shown the possibility of a three‐eyed man in Nature, in those periods when his formation was yet in a comparatively chaotic state. Such a possibility may be inferred from anatomical and zoological knowledge, first of all, and then it may rest on the assumptions of Materialistic Science itself.

It is asserted upon the authority of Science, and upon evidence, which is this time not merely a fiction of theoretical speculation, that many of the animals—especially among the lower orders of the vertebrata—have a third eye, now atrophied, but which was necessarily active in its origin.(676) The Hatteria species, a lizard of the order Lacertilia, recently discovered in New Zealand—a part of ancient Lemuria so called, mark well—presents this peculiarity in a most extraordinary manner; and not only the Hatteria Punctata, but the Chameleon, and certain reptiles, and even fishes. It was thought, at first, that this was no more than the prolongation of the brain which ended with a small protuberance, called Epiphysis, a little bone separated from the main bone by a cartilage, and found in every animal. But it was soon found to be more than this. As its development and anatomical structure showed, it offered such an analogy with that of the eye, that it was found impossible to see in it anything else. There are Palæontologists who to this day feel convinced that this Third Eye originally functioned, and they are certainly right. For this is what is said of the Pineal Gland in Quain’s Anatomy:

It is from this part, constituting at first the whole and subsequently the hinder part of the anterior primary encephalic vesicle, that the optic vesicles are developed in the earliest period, and the fore part is that in connection with which the cerebral hemispheres and accompanying parts are formed. The thalamus opticus of each side is formed by a lateral thickening of the medullary wall, while the interval between, descending towards the base, constitutes the cavity of the third ventricle with its prolongation in the infundibulum. The grey commissure afterwards stretches across the ventricular cavity.... The hinder part of the roof is developed by a peculiar process to be noticed later into the pineal gland, which remains united on each side by its pedicles to the thalamus, and behind these a transverse band is formed as posterior commissure.

The lamina terminalis (lamina cinerea) continues to close the third ventricle in front, below it the optic commissure forms the floor of the ventricle, and further back the infundibulum descends to be united in the sella turcica with the tissue adjoining the posterior lobe of the pituitary body.

The two optic thalami, formed from the posterior and outer part of the anterior vesicle, consist at first of a single hollow sac of nervous matter, the cavity of which communicates on each side in front with that of the commencing cerebral hemispheres, and behind with that of the middle cephalic vesicle (corpora quadrigemina). Soon, however, by increased deposit taking place in their interior behind, below, and at the sides, the thalami become solid, and at the same time a cleft or fissure appears between them above, and penetrates down to the internal cavity, which continues open at the back part opposite the entrance of the Sylvian aqueduct. This cleft or fissure is the third ventricle. Behind, the two thalami continue united by the posterior commissure, which is distinguishable about the end of the third month, and also by the peduncles of the pineal gland....

At an early period the optic tracts may be recognized as hollow prolongations from the outer part of the wall of the thalami while they are still vesicular. At the fourth month these tracts are distinctly formed. They subsequently are prolonged backwards into connection with the corpora quadrigemina.

The formation of the pineal gland and pituitary body presents some of the most interesting phenomena which are connected with the development of the thalamencephalon.(677)

The above is specially interesting when it is remembered that, were it not for the development of the posterior part of the cerebral hemispheres, the Pineal Gland would be perfectly visible on the removal of the parietal bones. It is very interesting also to note the obvious connection which can be traced between the originally hollow Optic Tract and the Eyes anteriorly, and the Pineal Gland and its Peduncles posteriorly, and between all of these and the Optic Thalami. So that the recent discoveries in connection with the third eye of Hatteria Punctata have a very important bearing on the history of the development of the human senses, and on the Occult assertions in the text.

It is well known that Descartes saw in the Pineal Gland the Seat of the Soul, though this is now regarded as a fiction by those who have ceased to believe in the existence of an immortal principle in man. Although the Soul is joined to every part of the body, he said, there is one special portion of the latter in which the Soul exercises its functions more specially than in any other. And, as neither the heart, nor yet the brain could be that “special” locality, he concluded that it was that little gland which was tied to the brain, and yet had an action independent of it, as it could easily be put into a kind of swinging motion “by the animal spirits(678) which cross the cavities of the skull in every sense.”

Unscientific as this may appear in our day of exact learning, Descartes was yet far nearer the Occult truth than is any Hæckel. For the Pineal Gland is, as shown, far more closely connected with Soul and Spirit than with the physiological senses of man. Had the leading Scientists a glimmer of the real processes employed by the Evolutionary Impulse, and the winding cyclic course of this great Law, they would know instead of conjecturing, and would feel certain of the future physical transformations which await the human kind by the knowledge of its past forms. Then would they see the fallacy and the absurdity of their modern “blind‐force” and “mechanical” processes of Nature; and, in consequence of such knowledge, would realize that the said Pineal Gland, for instance, could not but be disabled for physical use at this stage of our Cycle. If the odd “eye” is now atrophied in man, it is a proof that, as in the lower animal, it has once been active; for Nature never creates the smallest, the most insignificant, form without some definite purpose and for some use. It was an active organ, we say, at that stage of evolution when the spiritual element in man reigned supreme over the hardly nascent intellectual and psychic elements. And, as the Cycle ran down towards that point where the physiological senses were developed by, and went pari passu with, the growth and consolidation of physical man—the interminable and complex vicissitudes and tribulations of zoological development—this median “eye” at last atrophied together with the early spiritual and purely psychic characteristics in man. The eye is the mirror and also the window of the Soul, says popular wisdom,(679) and Vox populi, vox Dei.

In the beginning, every class and family of the living species was hermaphrodite and objectively one‐eyed. In the animal—whose form was as ethereal (astrally) as that of man, before the bodies of both began to evolve their “coats of skin,” viz., to evolve, from within without, the thick coating of physical substance or matter with its internal physiological mechanism—the Third Eye was primarily, as in man, the only seeing organ. The two physical front eyes only developed(680) later on in both brute and man, whose organ of physical sight was, at the commencement of the Third Race, in the same position as that of some of the blind vertebrates, in our day, i.e., beneath an opaque skin.(681) Only, the stages of the odd, or primeval, eye, in man and brute, are now inverted, as the former has already passed that animal non‐rational stage in the Third Round, and is ahead of mere brute creation by a whole plane of consciousness. Therefore, while the Cyclopean eye was, and still is, in man the organ of spiritual sight, in the animal it was that of objective vision. And this eye, having performed its function, was replaced, in the course of physical evolution from the simple to the complex, by two eyes, and thus was stored and laid aside by Nature for further use in æons to come.

This explains why the Pineal Gland reached its highest development proportionately with the lowest physical development. It is in the Vertebrata that it is the most prominent and objective, whereas in man it is most carefully hidden and inaccessible, except to the Anatomist. No less light, however, is thereby thrown on the future physical, spiritual, and intellectual state of mankind, in periods corresponding on parallel lines with other past periods, and always on the lines of ascending and descending cyclic evolution and development. Thus, a few centuries before the Kali Yuga—the Age which began nearly 5,000 years ago—it was said in Commentary Twenty, if it is paraphrased into comprehensible sentences:

We [the Fifth Root‐Race] in our first half [of duration] onward [on the now ascending arc of the Cycle] are on the mid point of [or between] the First and Second Races—falling downward [i.e., the Races were then on the descending arc of the Cycle].... Calculate for thyself, Lanoo, and see.

Calculating as advised, we find that during that transitional period—namely, in the second half of the First spiritual ethereo‐astral Race—nascent mankind was devoid of the intellectual brain element, as it was on its descending line. And as we are parallel to it, on the ascending, we are, therefore, devoid of the spiritual element, which is now replaced by the intellectual. For, remember well, as we are in the Mânasa period of our Cycle of Races, or in the Fifth, we have, therefore, crossed the meridian point of the perfect adjustment of Spirit and Matter—or the equilibrium between brain intellect and spiritual perception. One important point, has, however, to be borne in mind.

[Illustration: Evolution of Root‐Races in the Fourth Round]

[Transcriber’s Note: The graph shows, to the left, “Downward Cycle. Evolution of Physical and Intellectual Nature and the Gradual Regression of Spirituality.” To the right is “Ascending Cycle. Reëvolution or Reversion of Spirituality and the Gradual Decrease of Materiality and mere Brain‐intellectuality.” Below is “Meridian of Races.”]

We are only in the Fourth Round, and it is in the Fifth that the full development of Manas, as a direct ray from the Universal Mahat—a ray unimpeded by Matter—will be finally reached. Nevertheless, as every sub‐ race and nation have their cycles and stages of evolutionary development repeated on a smaller scale, much more must it be so in the case of a Root‐Race. Our Race then has, as a Root‐Race, crossed the equatorial line and is cycling onward on the spiritual side; but some of our sub‐races still find themselves on the shadowy descending arc of their respective national cycles; while others again—the oldest—having crossed the crucial point, which alone decides whether a race, a nation, or a tribe, will live or perish, are at the apex of spiritual development as sub‐races.

It now becomes comprehensible why the Third Eye was gradually transformed into a simple gland, after the physical Fall of those we have agreed to call the Lemurians.

It is a curious fact that in human beings the cerebral hemispheres and the lateral ventricles have been especially developed, whereas it is the Optic Thalami, Corpora Quadrigemina, and Corpora Striata which are the principal parts developed in other mammalian brains. Moreover, it is asserted that the intellect of a man may, to some extent, be gauged by the development of the central convolutions and the fore part of the cerebral hemispheres. It would seem a natural corollary to this that if the development of the Pineal Gland may be considered to be an index of the astral capacities and spiritual proclivities of any man, there will be a corresponding development of that part of the cranium, or an increase in the size of the Pineal Gland at the expense of the posterior part of the cerebral hemispheres. This is a curious speculation and would receive confirmation in the present case. We should see, below and behind, the cerebellum which has been held to be the seat of all the animal proclivities of the human being, and which is allowed by Science to be the great centre for all the physiologically coördinated movements of the body, such as walking, eating, etc.; in front, the fore‐part of the brain, the cerebral hemispheres, the part especially connected with the development of the intellectual powers in man; and in the middle, dominating them both, and especially the animal functions, the developed Pineal Gland, in connection with the more highly evolved, or spiritual man.

It must be remembered that these are only physical correspondences; just as the ordinary human brain is the registering organ of memory, but not memory itself.

This is, then, the organ which has given rise to so many legends and traditions, among others to that of men with one head but two faces. These legends may be found in several Chinese works, besides being referred to in the Chaldæan fragments. Apart from the work already cited, the Shan Hai King, compiled by Kung Chia from engravings on nine urns made by the Emperor Yü, 2,255 B.C., they may be found in another work, called the Bamboo Books, and in a third, the ’Rh Ya, whose author was “initiated according to tradition by Chow Kung, uncle of Wu Wang, the first Emperor of the Chow Dynasty, 1,122 B.C.” The Bamboo Books contain the ancient annals of China, found A.D. 279 on opening the grave of King Seang of Wei, who died 295 B.C.(682) Both these works mention men with two faces on one head—one in front and one behind.

Now what students of Occultism ought to know is that the Third Eye is indissolubly connected with Karma. The tenet is so mysterious that very few have heard of it.

The “Eye of Shiva” did not become entirety atrophied before the close of the Fourth Race. When spirituality and all the divine powers and attributes of the Deva‐Man of the Third Race had been made the hand‐ maidens of the newly‐awakened physiological and psychic passions of the physical man, instead of the reverse, the Eye lost its powers. But such was the law of evolution, and it was, in strict accuracy, no Fall. The sin was not in using those newly‐developed powers, but in misusing them; in making of the tabernacle, designed to contain a God, the fane of every spiritual iniquity. And if we say “sin” it is merely that everyone should understand our meaning, for Karma(683) would be the more correct term to use in this case; moreover the reader who should feel perplexed at the use of the term “spiritual” instead of “physical” iniquity, is reminded of the fact that there can be no physical iniquity. The body is simply the irresponsible organ, the tool of the Psychic, if not of the Spiritual, Man. And in the case of the Atlanteans, it was precisely the Spiritual Being which sinned, the Spirit Element being still the “Master” Principle in man, in those days. Thus it is in those days that the heaviest Karma of the Fifth Race was generated by our Monads.

As this sentence may again be found puzzling, it is better that it should be explained for the benefit of those who are ignorant of Theosophical Teachings.

Questions with regard to Karma and Re‐births are constantly being put forward, and great confusion seems to exist upon the subject. Those who are born and bred in the Christian faith, and have been trained in the idea that a new Soul is created by God for every newly‐born infant, are among the most perplexed. They ask whether the number of Monads incarnating on Earth is limited; to which they are answered in the affirmative. For, however countless, in our conception, the number of the incarnating Monads, still, there must be a limit. This is so even if we take into account the fact that ever since the Second Race, when their respective seven Groups were furnished with bodies, several births and deaths may be allowed for every second of time in the æons already passed. It has been stated that Karma‐Nemesis, whose bond‐maid is Nature, adjusted everything in the most harmonious manner; and that, therefore, the fresh pouring‐in, or arrival of new Monads, ceased as soon as Humanity had reached its full physical development. No fresh Monads have incarnated since the middle‐point of the Atlanteans. Let us remember that, save in the case of young children, and of individuals whose lives have been violently cut off by some accident, no Spiritual Entity can reïncarnate before a period of many centuries has elapsed, and such gaps alone must show that the number of Monads is necessarily finite and limited. Moreover, a reasonable time must be given to other animals for their evolutionary progress.

Hence the assertion that many of us are now working off the effects of the evil Karmic causes produced by us in Atlantean bodies. The Law of Karma is inextricably interwoven with that of Reïncarnation.

It is only the knowledge of the constant re‐births of one and the same Individuality throughout the Life‐Cycle; the assurance that the same Monads—among whom are many Dhyân Chohans, or the “Gods” themselves—have to pass through the “Circle of Necessity,” rewarded or punished by such rebirth for the suffering endured or crimes committed in the former life; that those very Monads, which entered the empty, senseless Shells, or Astral Figures of the First Race emanated by the Pitris, are the same who are now amongst us—nay, ourselves, perchance; it is only this doctrine, we say, that can explain to us the mysterious problem of Good and Evil, and reconcile man to the terrible apparent injustice of life. Nothing but such certainty can quiet our revolted sense of justice. For, when one unacquainted with the noble doctrine looks around him, and observes the inequalities of birth and fortune, of intellect and capacities; when one sees honour paid to fools and profligates, on whom fortune has heaped her favours by mere privilege of birth, and their nearest neighbour, with all his intellect and noble virtues—far more deserving in every way—perishing of want and for lack of sympathy; when one sees all this and has to turn away, helpless to relieve the undeserved suffering, one’s ears ringing and heart aching with the cries of pain around him—that blessed knowledge of Karma alone prevents him from cursing life and men, as well as their supposed Creator.(684)

Of all the terrible blasphemies and what are virtually accusations thrown at their God by the Monotheists, none is greater or more unpardonable than that (almost always) false humility which makes the presumably “pious” Christian assert, in the face of every evil and undeserved blow, that “such is the will of God.”

Dolts and hypocrites! Blasphemers and impious Pharisees who speak in the same breath of the endless merciful love and care of their God and Creator for helpless man, and of that God scourging the good, the very best of his creatures, bleeding them to death like an insatiable Moloch! Shall we be answered to this, in Congreve’s words:

But who shall dare to tax Eternal Justice?

Logic and simple common sense, we answer. If we are asked to believe in “original sin,” in one life only on this Earth for every Soul, and in an anthropomorphic Deity, who seems to have created some men only for the pleasure of condemning them to eternal hell‐fire—and this whether they be good or bad, says the Predestinarian(685)—why should not everyone of us who is endowed with reasoning powers, condemn in his turn such a villainous Deity? Life would become unbearable, if one had to believe in the God created by man’s unclean fancy. Luckily he exists only in human dogmas, and in the unhealthy imagination of some poets, who believe they have solved the problem by addressing him as:

Thou great Mysterious Power, who hast involved The pride of human wisdom, to confound The daring scrutiny and prove the faith Of thy presuming creatures!

Truly a robust “faith” is required to believe that it is “presumption” to question the justice of one, who creates helpless little man but to “perplex” him, and to test a “faith” with which that “Power,” moreover, may have forgotten, if not neglected, to endow him, as happens sometimes.

Compare this blind faith with the philosophical belief, based on every reasonable evidence and on life‐experience, in Karma‐Nemesis, or the Law of Retribution. This Law—whether Conscious or Unconscious—predestines nothing and no one. It exists from and in Eternity, truly, for it is Eternity itself; and as such, since no act can be coëqual with Eternity, it cannot be said to act, for it is Action itself. It is not the wave which drowns a man, but the personal action of the wretch who goes deliberately and places himself under the impersonal action of the laws that govern the ocean’s motion. Karma creates nothing, nor does it design. It is man who plans and creates causes, and Karmic Law adjusts the effects, which adjustment is not an act, but universal harmony, tending ever to resume its original position, like a bough, which, bent down too forcibly, rebounds with corresponding vigour. If it happen to dislocate the arm that tried to bend it out of its natural position, shall we say that it is the bough which broke our arm, or that our own folly has brought us to grief? Karma has never sought to destroy intellectual and individual liberty, like the God invented by the Monotheists. It has not involved its decrees in darkness purposely to perplex man; nor shall it punish him who dares to scrutinize its mysteries. On the contrary, he who through study and meditation unveils its intricate paths, and throws light on those dark ways, in the windings of which so many men perish owing to their ignorance of the labyrinth of life—is working for the good of his fellow‐men. Karma is an Absolute and Eternal Law in the World of Manifestation; and as there can only be one Absolute, as One eternal ever‐ present Cause, believers in Karma cannot be regarded as Atheists or Materialists—still less as Fatalists,(686) for Karma is one with the Unknowable, of which it is an aspect, in its effects in the phenomenal world.

Intimately, or rather indissolubly, connected with Karma, then, is the Law of Re‐birth, or of the reïncarnation of the same spiritual Individuality in a long, almost interminable, series of Personalities. The latter are like the various characters played by the same actor, with each of which that actor identifies himself and is identified by the public, for the space of a few hours. The inner, or real Man, who personates those characters, knows the whole time that he is Hamlet only for the brief space of a few acts, which, however, on the plane of human illusion, represent the whole life of Hamlet. He knows also that he was, the night before, King Lear, the transformation in his turn of the Othello of a still earlier preceding night. And though the outer, visible character is supposed to be ignorant of the fact, and in actual life that ignorance is, unfortunately, but too real, nevertheless, the permanent Individuality is fully aware of it, and it is through the atrophy of the “spiritual” Eye in the physical body, that that knowledge is unable to impress itself on the consciousness of the false Personality.

The possession of a physical Third Eye, we are told, was enjoyed by the men of the Third Root‐Race down to nearly the middle period of the third sub‐race of the Fourth Root‐Race, when the consolidation and perfection of the human frame caused it to disappear from the outward anatomy of man. Psychically and spiritually, however, its mental and visual perception lasted till nearly the end of the Fourth Race, when its functions, owing to the materiality and depraved condition of mankind, died out altogether. This was prior to the submersion of the bulk of the Atlantean Continent. And now we may return to the Deluges and their many “Noahs.”

The student has to bear in mind that there were many such Deluges as that mentioned in Genesis, and three far more important ones, which will be mentioned and described in the Section of Part III devoted to the subject of pre‐historic “Submerged Continents.” To avoid erroneous conjectures, however, with regard to the claim that the Esoteric Doctrine has much in common with the legends contained in the Hindû Scriptures; that, again, the chronology of the latter is almost that of the former—only explained and made clear; and that finally the belief that Vaivasvata Manu—a generic term indeed!—was the Noah of the Âryans and the prototype of the biblical patriarch, all this—as pertaining also to the belief of the Occultists—necessitates a new explanation at this juncture.

The Primeval Manus Of Humanity.

Those who are aware that the “Great Flood,” which was connected with the sinking of an entire Continent (save only a few islands) could not have happened so far back as 18,000,000 years ago, and that Vaivasvata Manu is the Indian Noah connected with the Matsya, or the Fish, Avatâra of Vishnu, may feel perplexed at the apparent discrepancy between the facts stated and the chronology previously given. But there is no discrepancy in truth. The reader is asked to turn to The Theosophist of July, 1883, for by studying the article therein, on “The Septenary Principle in Esotericism,” the whole question can be explained to him. It is in the explanation there given, I believe, that the Occultists differ from the Brâhmans.

For the benefit of those, however, who may not have The Theosophist of that date to hand, a passage or two may now be quoted from it:

Who was Manu, the son of Svâyambhuva? The Secret Doctrine tells us that this Manu was no man, but the representation of the first human races, evolved with the help of the Dhyân Chohans (Devas), at the beginning of the First Round. But we are told in his Laws (i. 80) that there are fourteen Manus for every Kalpa, or “interval from creation to creation”—read rather interval from one minor Pralaya to another(687)—and that “in the present divine age, there have been as yet seven Manus.” Those who know that there are seven Rounds, of which we have passed three, and are now in the Fourth; and who are taught that there are seven Dawns and seven Twilights, or fourteen Manvantaras; that at the beginning of every Round and at the end, and on, and between, the planets [Globes] there is an “awakening to illusive life,” and an “awakening to real life”; and that, moreover, there are Root‐ Manus, and what we have to clumsily translate as Seed‐Manus—the seeds for the human races of the forthcoming Round (or the Shishtas—the surviving fittest(688); a mystery divulged only to those who have passed their third degree in Initiation)—those who have learned all this will be better prepared to understand the meaning of the following. We are told in the Hindû Sacred Scriptures that, “The first Manu produced six other Manus [seven primary Manus in all], and these produced in their turn each seven other Manus”(689) (Bhrigu, i. 61‐63)—the production of the latter standing in the Occult treatises as 7 x 7. Thus it becomes clear that Manu—the last one, the Progenitor of our Fourth‐Round Humanity—must be the seventh, since we are on our Fourth Round,(690) and there is a Root‐Manu at Globe A, and a Seed‐Manu at Globe G. Just as each planetary Round commences with the appearance of a Root‐Manu (Dhyân Chohan) and closes with a Seed‐Manu, so a Root‐ and a Seed‐Manu appear respectively at the beginning and the termination of the human period on any particular planet [Globe].(691) It will be easily seen from the foregoing statement that a Manvantaric period (Manu‐antara) means, as the term implies, the time between the appearance of two Manus or Dhyân Chohans; and hence a Minor Manvantara is the duration of the seven Races on any particular planet [Globe], and a Major Manvantara is the period of one human Round along the Planetary Chain. Moreover, as it is said that each of the seven Manus creates 7 x 7 Manus, and that there are 49 Root‐Races on the seven planets [Globes] during each Round, then every Root‐Race has its Manu. The present seventh Manu is called “Vaivasvata” and stands in the exoteric texts for that Manu who in India represents the Babylonian Xisuthrus and the Jewish Noah.

But in the Esoteric books we are told that Manu Vaivasvata, the progenitor of our Fifth Race—who saved it from the flood that nearly exterminated the Fourth or Atlantean—is not the seventh Manu, mentioned in the nomenclature of the Root or Primitive Manus, but one of the 49 Manus emanated from this Root‐Manu.

For clearer comprehension we here give the names of the 14 Manus in their respective order and in their relation to each Round:

1st Round, 1st (Root) Manu on Planet A—Svâyambhuva. 1st Round, 1st (Seed) Manu on Planet G—Svârochi, or Svârochisha. 2nd Round, 2nd (Root) Manu on Planet A—Auttami. 2nd Round, 2nd (Seed) Manu on Planet G—Tâmasa. 3rd Round, 3rd (Root) Manu on Planet A—Raivata. 3rd Round, 3rd (Seed) Manu on Planet G—Châkshusha. 4th Round, 4th (Root) Manu on Planet A—Vaivasvata (our Progenitor). 4th Round, 4th (Seed) Manu on Planet G—Sâvarna. 5th Round, 5th (Root) Manu on Planet A—Daksha‐sâvarna. 5th Round, 5th (Seed) Manu on Planet G—Brahma‐sâvarna. 6th Round, 6th (Root) Manu on Planet A—Dharma‐sâvarna. 6th Round, 6th (Seed) Manu on Planet G—Rudra‐sâvarna. 7th Round, 7th (Root) Manu on Planet A—Rauchya. 7th Round, 7th (Seed) Manu on Planet G—Bhautya.

Vaivasvata, thus, though seventh in the order given, is the primitive Root‐Manu of our Fourth Human Wave (the reader must always remember that Manu is not a man but collective humanity), while our Vaivasvata was but one of the seven Minor Manus, who are made to preside over the seven Races of this our planet [Globe]. Each of these has to become the witness of one of the periodical and ever‐recurring cataclysms (by fire and water) that close the cycle of every Root‐Race. And it is this Vaivasvata—the Hindû ideal embodiment, called respectively Xisuthrus, Deucalion, Noah and other names—who is the allegorical “Man” who rescued our Race, when nearly the whole population of one hemisphere perished by water, while the other hemisphere was awakening from its temporary obscuration.(692)

Thus it is shown that there is no real discrepancy in speaking of the Vaivasvata Manvantara (Manu‐antara, lit., “between two Manus”) as 18,000,000 odd years ago, when physical, or the truly human, Man first appeared in his Fourth Round on this Earth; and of the other Vaivasvatas, e.g., the Manu of the Great Cosmic or Sidereal Flood—a mystery—or again the Manu Vaivasvata of the submerged Atlantis, when the Racial Vaivasvata saved the elect of Humanity, the Fifth Race, from utter destruction. As these several and quite distinct events are purposely blended in the Vishnu and other Purânas in one narrative, there may yet be a great deal of perplexity left in the profane reader’s mind. Therefore, as constant elucidation is needed, we must be forgiven unavoidable repetitions. The “blinds” which conceal the real mysteries of Esoteric Philosophy are great and puzzling, and even now the last word cannot be given. The veil, however, may be a little more removed, and some explanations, hitherto denied, may now be offered to the earnest student.

As Colonel Vans Kennedy, if we do not mistake, remarked: “the first principle in Hindû religious philosophy is unity in diversity.” If all those Manus and Rishis are called by one generic name, it is due to the fact that they are one and all the manifested Energies of one and the same Logos, the celestial as well as the terrestrial Messengers and Permutations of that Principle which is ever in a state of activity—conscious during the period of Cosmic Evolution, unconscious (from our point of view) during Cosmic Rest—for the Logos sleepeth in the bosom of THAT which “sleepeth not,” nor is it ever awake, for it is Sat or “Be‐ness,” not a Being. It is from IT that issues the great Unseen Logos, who evolves all the other Logoi; the Primeval Manu who gives being to the other Manus, who emanate the universe and all in it collectively, and who represent in their aggregate the Manifested Logos.(693) Hence we learn in the Commentaries that while no Dhyân Chohan, not even the highest, can realize completely

The condition of the preceding Cosmic Evolution, ... the Manus retain a knowledge of their experiences in all the Cosmic Evolutions throughout Eternity.

This is very plain: the first Manu is called Svâyambhuva, the “Self‐ manifested,” the Son of the Unmanifested Father. The Manus are the Creators of the Creators of our First Race—the Spirit of Mankind—which does not prevent the seven Manus from having been the first “Pre‐Adamic” Men on Earth.

Manu declares himself created by Virâj,(694) or Vaishvânara, the Spirit of Humanity,(695) which means that his Monad emanates from the never resting Principle in the beginning of every new Cosmic Activity—that Logos or Universal Monad (collective Elohim) which radiates from within himself all those Cosmic Monads that become the centres of activity—Progenitors of the numberless Solar Systems as well as of the yet undifferentiated human Monads of Planetary Chains as well as of every being thereon. Svâyambhuva, or Self‐born, is the name of every Cosmic Monad which becomes the Centre of Force, from within which emerges a Planetary Chain (of which Chains there are seven in our System). And the radiations of this Centre become again so many Manus Svâyambhuva (a mysterious generic name, meaning far more than appears), each of them becoming, as a Host, the Creator of his own Humanity.

As to the question of the four distinct Races of mankind that preceded our Fifth Race, there is nothing mystical in the subject, except the ethereal bodies of the first Races; and this is a matter of legendary, nevertheless very correct, history. The legend is universal. And if the Western savant pleases to see in it only a myth, it does not make the slightest difference. The Mexicans had, and still have, the tradition of the fourfold destruction of the world by fire and water, just as the Egyptians had, and the Hindûs have, to this day.

Trying to account for the community of legends held by Chinese, Chaldæans, Egyptians, Indians and Greeks, in remote antiquity, and for the absence of any certain vestige of civilization more ancient than 5,000 years, the author of Mythical Monsters remarks that:

We must ... not be surprised if we do not immediately discover the vestiges of the people of ten, fifteen, or twenty thousand years ago. With an ephemeral architecture ... [as in China], the sites of vast cities may have become entirely lost to recollection in a few thousands of years from natural decay, and how much more ... if ... minor cataclysms have intervened, such as local inundations, earthquakes, deposition of volcanic ashes, ... the spread of sandy deserts, destruction of life by deadly pestilence, by miasma, or by the outpour of sulphurous fumes.(696)

How many of such cataclysms have changed the whole surface of the earth may be inferred from the following Stanza of Commentary Twenty‐two:

During the first seven crores [70,000,000 years] of the Kalpa the Earth and its two Kingdoms [mineral and vegetable], one already having achieved its seventh circle, the other, hardly nascent, are luminous and semi‐ ethereal, cold, lifeless, and translucid. In the eleventh crore(697) the Mother [Earth] grows opaque, and in the fourteenth(698) the throes of adolescence take place. These convulsions of Nature [geological changes] last till her twentieth crore of years, uninterruptedly, after which they become periodical, and at long intervals.

The last change took place nearly twelve crores [120,000,000] of years ago. But the Earth with everything on her face had become cool, hard and settled ages earlier.

Thus, if we are to believe Esoteric Teaching, universal geological disturbances and changes have not occurred for the last 120 million years, but the Earth, even before that time, was ready to receive her human stock. The appearance of the latter, however, in its full physical development, as already stated, took place only about 18,000,000 years ago, after the first great failure of Nature to create beings alone—i.e., without the help of the divine “Fashioners”—had been followed by the successive evolution of the first three Races.(699) The actual duration of the first two and a half Races is withheld from all but the higher Initiates. The history of the Races begins at the separation of the sexes, when the preceding egg‐bearing androgynous Race perished rapidly, and the subsequent sub‐races of the Third Root‐Race appeared as an entirely new race physiologically. It is this “Destruction” which is allegorically called the great “Vaivasvata Manu Deluge,” when the account shows Vaivasvata Manu, or Humanity, remaining alone on Earth in the Ark of Salvation towed by Vishnu in the shape of a monstrous fish, and the Seven Rishis “with him.” The allegory is very plain.

In the symbolism of every nation, the “Deluge” stands for chaotic unsettled Matter—Chaos itself; and Water for the Feminine Principle—the “Great Deep.” As the Greek Lexicon of Parkhurst gives it:

Ἀρχὴ answers to the Hebrew rasit, or Wisdom ... and [at the same time] to the emblem of the female generative power, the arg or arca, in which the germ of nature [and of mankind] floats or broods on the great abyss of the waters, during the interval which takes place after every mundane [or racial] cycle.

Archê (Ἀρχὴ) or Ark is also the mystic name of the Divine Spirit of Life which broods over Chaos. Now Vishnu is the Divine Spirit, as an abstract principle, and also as the Preserver and Generator, or Giver of Life—the third Person of the Trimûrti—composed of Brahmâ, the Creator, Shiva, the Destroyer, and Vishnu, the Preserver. Vishnu is shown, in the allegory, under the form of a Fish, guiding the Ark of Vaivasvata Manu across the Waters of the Flood. There is no use in expatiating upon the esoteric meaning of the word Fish (as Payne Knight, Inman, Gerald Massey, and others have done). Its theological meaning is phallic, but the metaphysical, divine. Jesus was called the Fish, as were Vishnu and Bacchus; ΙΗΣ, the “Saviour” of Mankind, being but the monogram of the God Bacchus, who was also called ΙΧΘΥΣ, the Fish.(700) Moreover, the Seven Rishis in the Ark symbolized the seven “principles,” which became complete in man only after he had separated, and become a human, and thus ceased to be a divine creature.

But to return to the Races; details as to the submersion of the Continent inhabited by the Second Root‐Race are not numerous. The history of the Third, or Lemuria, is given, as is also that of Atlantis, but the others are only alluded to. Lemuria is said to have perished about 700,000 years before the commencement of what is now called the Tertiary Age (the Eocene).(701) During this Deluge—an actual geological deluge this time—Vaivasvata Manu is also shown saving mankind, allegorically—in reality, a portion of it, the Fourth Race—just as he saved the Fifth Race during the destruction of the last Atlanteans, the remnants that perished 850,000 years ago,(702) after which there was no great submersion until the day of Plato’s Atlantis, or Poseidonis, which was known to the Egyptians only because it happened in such relatively recent times.

It is the submersion of the great Atlantis which is the most interesting. This is the Cataclysm of which the old records, as in the Book of Enoch, say, “the ends of the Earth got loose”; and upon which have been built the legends and allegories of Vaivasvata, Xisuthrus, Noah, Deucalion and all the tutti quanti of the Elect Saved. Tradition, not taking into account the difference between sidereal and geological phenomena, calls both “Deluges” indifferently. Yet there is a great difference. The Cataclysm which destroyed the huge Continent of which Australia is the largest relic, was due to a series of subterranean convulsions and the breaking asunder of the ocean floors. That which put an end to its successor—the Fourth Continent—was brought on by successive disturbances in the axial rotation. It began during the earliest Tertiary periods, and, continuing for long ages, carried away successively the last vestige of Atlantis, with the exception, perhaps, of Ceylon and a small portion of what is now Africa. It changed the face of the globe, and no memory of its flourishing continents and isles, of its civilizations and sciences, have remained in the annals of history, save in the Sacred Records of the East.

Hence, Modern Science denies the existence of Atlantis. It even denies any violent shiftings of the Earth’s axis, and would attribute the change of climate to other causes. But this question is still an open one. If Dr. Croll will have it that all such alterations can be accounted for by the effects of nutation and the precession of the equinoxes, there are others, such as Sir Henry James and Sir John Lubbock,(703) who feel more inclined to accept the idea that they are due to a change in the position of the axis of rotation. Against this the majority of the Astronomers are again arrayed. But then, what have they not denied before now, and what have they not denounced—only to accept it later on, whenever the hypothesis became undeniable fact?

How far our figures agree, or rather disagree, with Modern Science will be seen further in the Addenda to this Volume, where the Geology and Anthropology of our modern day are carefully compared with the teachings of Archaic Science. At any rate, the period assigned by the Secret Doctrine for the sinking of Atlantis, does not seem to disagree very much with the calculations of Modern Science, which, however, calls Atlantis “Lemuria” whenever it accepts such a submerged Continent. With regard to the pre‐human period, all that can be said, at present, is, that even prior to the appearance of the “mindless” First Race, the Earth was not without its inhabitants. We might, however, add that what Science, which recognizes physical man only, has a right to regard as the pre‐human period, may be conceded to have extended from the First Race down to the first half of the Atlantean Race, since it is only then that man became the “complete organic being he is now.” And this would make Adamic Man no older than a few millions of years.(704)

The author of the Qabbalah truly remarks that: “Man to‐day, as an individual, is only a concatenation of the being‐hood of precedent human life,” or lives, rather.

According to the Qabbalah, the soul sparks contained in Adam, went into three principal classes corresponding to his three sons, viz.: Hesed, Habel, Ge’boor‐ah, Qai‐yin and Ra’h‐min Seth. These three were divided into ... 70 species, called; the principal roots of the human race.(705)

Said Rabbi Yehudah: “How many garments [of the incorporeal man] are these which are crowned (from the day man was created)?” Said R. El’azar: “The mountains of the world (the great men of the generation) are in discussion upon it, but there are three: one to clothe in that garment the Rua’h spirit, which is in the garden (of Eden) on earth: one which is more precious than all, in which the Neshamah is clothed in that Bundle of Life, between the angels of the Kings ...: and one outside garment, which exists and does not exist, is seen and not seen. In that garment, the Nephesh is clothed, and she goes and flies in it, to and fro in the world.”(706)

This relates to the Races, their “garments,” or degree of materiality, and to the three “principles” of man in their three vehicles.

Stanza XI. The Civilization And Destruction Of The Fourth And Fifth Races.

43. The Lemuro‐Atlanteans build cities and spread civilization. The incipient stage of anthropomorphism. 44. Statues, witnesses to the size of the Lemuro‐Atlanteans. 45. Lemuria destroyed by fire, Atlantis by water. The Flood. 46. The destruction of the Fourth Race and of the last antediluvian monster‐animals.

43. THEY(707) BUILT HUGE CITIES. OF RARE EARTHS AND METALS THEY BUILT. OUT OF THE FIRES(708) VOMITED, OUT OF THE WHITE STONE(709) OF THE MOUNTAINS AND OF THE BLACK STONE,(710) THEY CUT THEIR OWN IMAGES, IN THEIR SIZE AND LIKENESS, AND WORSHIPPED THEM.

At this point, as the history of the first two human races—the last of the Lemurians and the first of the future Atlanteans—proceeds, we have to blend the two, and speak of them for a time collectively.

Here reference is also made to the divine Dynasties, which were claimed by the Egyptians, Chaldæans, Greeks, etc., to have preceded their human Kings. These are still believed in by the modern Hindûs, and are enumerated in their sacred books. Of these, however, we shall treat in their proper place. What remains to be shown is, that our modern Geologists are now being driven into admitting the demonstrable existence of submerged continents. But to confess the existence of the continents is quite a different thing from admitting that there were men on them during the early geological periods(711)—ay, men and civilized nations, not Palæolithic savages only; who, under the guidance of their divine Rulers, built large cities, cultivated Arts and Sciences, and knew Astronomy, Architecture and Mathematics to perfection. The primeval civilization of the Lemurians did not, as one may think, immediately follow their physiological transformation. Between the final physiological evolution and the first city built, many hundred thousands of years had passed. Nevertheless, we find the Lemurians in their sixth sub‐race building their first rock‐cities out of stone and lava.(712) One of these great cities of primitive structure was built entirely of lava, some thirty miles west from where Easter Island now stretches its narrow strip of sterile ground, and was totally destroyed by a series of volcanic eruptions. The oldest remains of Cyclopean buildings were all the handiwork of the last sub‐races of the Lemurians; and an Occultist, therefore, shows no surprise on learning that the stone relics which were found on the small piece of land called Easter Island by Captain Cook, are

Very much like the walls of the Temple of Pachacamac or the Ruins of Tia‐Huanaco in Peru,(713)

and also that they are in the Cyclopean style. The first large cities, however, were built in that region of the Continent which is now known as the island of Madagascar. There were civilized people and savages in those days as there are now. Evolution achieved its work of perfection on the former, and Karma—its work of destruction on the latter. The Australians and their like are the descendants of those, who, instead of vivifying the Spark projected into them by the “Flames,” extinguished it by long generations of bestiality.(714) Whereas the Âryan nations could trace their descent through the Atlanteans from the more spiritual races of the Lemurians, in whom the “Sons of Wisdom” had personally incarnated.(715)

It is with the advent of the divine Dynasties that the first civilizations were started. And while, in some regions of the Earth, a portion of mankind preferred leading a nomadic and patriarchal life, and in others savage man was hardly learning to build a fire and to protect himself against the Elements—his brothers, more favoured than he by their Karma, and helped by the divine intelligence which informed them, built cities, and cultivated Arts and Sciences. Nevertheless, notwithstanding civilization, while their pastoral brethren enjoyed wondrous powers as their birthright, the “builders” could now obtain their powers only gradually; even those they did obtain being generally used for conquest over physical nature and selfish and unholy purposes. Civilization has ever developed the physical and the intellectual at the cost of the psychic and spiritual. The command over and the guidance of one’s own psychic nature, which foolish men now associate with the supernatural, were with early Humanity innate and congenital, and came to man as naturally as walking and thinking.

“There is no such thing as magic” philosophizes “She”—the author forgetting that “magic” in early days still meant the great Science of Wisdom, and that Ayesha could not possibly know anything of the modern perversion of thought—“though,” she adds, “there is such a thing as knowledge of the Secrets of Nature.”(716) But they have become “Secrets” only in our Race, and were public property with the Third.

Gradually, mankind decreased in stature, for, even before the real advent of the Fourth or Atlantean Race, the majority of mankind had fallen into iniquity and sin, save only the Hierarchy of the “Elect,” the followers and disciples of the “Sons of Will and Yoga”—called later the “Sons of the Fire‐Mist.”

Then came the Atlanteans; the giants whose physical beauty and strength reached their climax, in accordance with evolutionary law, toward the middle period of their fourth sub‐race. But, as said in the Commentary:

The last survivors of the fair child of the White Island [the primitive Shveta‐dvîpa] had perished ages before. Their [Lemuria’s] Elect, had taken shelter on the Sacred Island [now the “fabled” Shamballah, in the Gobi Desert], while some of their accursed races, separating from the main stock, now lived in the jungles and underground [“cave‐men”], when the golden yellow Race [the Fourth] became in its turn “black with sin.” From pole to pole the Earth had changed her face for the third time, and was no longer inhabited by the Sons of Shveta‐dvîpa, the blessed, and Adbhitanya [?], east and west, the first, the one and the pure, had become corrupted.... The Demi‐Gods of the Third had made room for the Semi‐Demons of the Fourth Race. Shveta‐dvîpa,(717) the White Island, had veiled her face. Her children now lived on the Black Land, wherein, later on, Daityas from the seventh Dvîpa (Pushkara) and Râkshasas from the seventh climate replaced the Sâdhus and the Ascetics of the Third Age, who had descended to them from other and higher regions....

In their dead letter, the Purânas, in general, read like an absurd tissue of fairy tales and no better. And if one were to read the first three chapters of Book II of Vishnu Purâna and accept verbatim the geography, geodesy, and ethnology in the account of Priyavrata’s seven sons among whom their father divides the seven Dvîpas (Islands or Continents); and then proceed to study how his eldest son, Agnîdhra, the King of Jambu‐dvîpa, apportioned Jambu‐dvîpa among his nine sons; and then how Nâbhi, his son, had a hundred sons and apportioned lands to all these in his turn—he would most likely throw the book away and pronounce it a farrago of nonsense. But the student of Esotericism will understand that, when the Purânas were written, their true meaning was intended to be clear only to the Initiated Brâhmans, and so the compilers wrote these works allegorically and would not give the whole truth to the masses. And he will, further, explain to the Orientalists—who, beginning with Colonel Wilford and ending with Professor Weber, have made and still are making such a mess of it—that the first three chapters purposely confuse the following subjects and events:

I. The series of Kalpas, or Ages, and also of Races, are never taken into account; and events which have happened in one are allowed to stand along with those which took place in another. The chronological order is entirely ignored. This is shown by several of the Sanskrit commentators, who explain the incompatibility of events and calculations in saying:

Whenever any contradictions in different Purânas are observed, they are ascribed ... to differences of Kalpas and the like.

II. The several meanings of the words “Manvantara” and “Kalpa” or Age, are withheld, the general signification only being given.

III. In the genealogy of the Kings and the geography of their dominions, the Varshas (countries) and Dvîpas are all regarded as terrestrial regions.

Now, the truth is that, without entering into too minute details, it is permissible and easy to show that:

(a) The Seven Dvîpas apportioned to Priyavrata’s septenary progeny refer to several localities—first of all to our Planetary Chain. In this Jambu‐ dvîpa alone represents our Globe, while the six others are the (to us) invisible companion Globes of the Chain. This is shown by the very nature of the allegorical and symbolic descriptions. Jambu‐dvîpa “is in the centre of all these”—the so‐called “Insular Continents”—and is surrounded by a sea of salt water (Lavana), whereas Plaksha, Shâlmalia, Kusha, Krauncha, Shâka, and Pushkara, are surrounded severally “by great seas ... of sugar‐cane juice, of wine, of clarified butter, of curds, of milk,” etc., and such like metaphorical names.(718)

(b) Bhâskara Âchârya, who uses expressions from the books of the Secret Doctrine, in his description of the sidereal position of all these Dvîpas, speaks of: “the sea of milk and the sea of curds,” etc., as meaning the Milky Way, and the various congeries of Nebulæ; the more so, since he calls “the country to the south of the equator” Bhûr Loka, that to the north Bhuva, Svar, Mahar, Jana, Tapo and Satya Lokas; and adds: “These lokas are gradually attained by increasing religious merits,” i.e., they are various “Paradises.”(719)

(c) That this geographical distribution of seven allegorical continents, islands, mountains, seas and countries, does not belong only to our Round, or even to our Races—the name of Bhârata‐varsha (India) notwithstanding—is explained in the texts themselves by the narrator of Vishnu Purâna, who tells us that:

Bharata [the son of Nâbhi, who gave his name to Bhârata‐varsha or India] ... consigned the kingdom to his son Sumati ... and abandoned his life at ... Shâlagrâma. He was afterwards born again, as a Brahman, in a distinguished family of ascetics.... Under these princes [Bharata’s descendants] Bhârata‐varsha was divided into nine portions; and their descendants successively held possession of the country for seventy‐one periods of the aggregate of the four ages (or for the reign of a Manu) [representing a Mahâyuga of 4,320,000 years].(720)

But having said so much, Parâshara suddenly explains that:

This was the creation of Svâyambhuva (Manu), by which the earth was peopled when he presided over the first Manvantara, in the Kalpa of Varâha [i.e., the Boar incarnation, or Avatâra].

Now every Brâhman knows that our Humanity began on this Earth (or Round) only with Vaivasvata Manu. And if the Western reader turns to the sub‐ section on “The Primeval Manus of Humanity,”(721) he will see that Vaivasvata is the seventh of the fourteen Manus who preside over our Planetary Chain during its Life Cycle; but as every Round has two Manus (a Root‐ and a Seed‐Manu), he is the Root‐Manu of the Fourth Round, hence the seventh. Wilson finds in this only incongruity, and speculates that:

The patriarchial genealogies are older than the chronological system of Manvantaras and Kalpas, and [thus] have been rather clumsily distributed amongst the different periods.

It is nothing of the kind; but as Orientalists know nothing of the Secret Teaching, they persist in taking everything literally, and then turn round and abuse the writers for that which they do not comprehend!

These Genealogies embrace a period of three and a half Rounds; they speak of pre‐human periods, and explain the descent into generation of every Manu—the first manifested sparks of the One Unity—and, furthermore, show each of these human Sparks dividing into, and multiplying by, first, the Pitaras, the human Ancestors, then by the human Races. No Being can become God, or Deva, unless he passes through the human Cycles. Therefore the Shloka says:

Happy are those who are born, even from the [latent] condition of gods, as men, in Bhârata‐varsha; as that is the way to ... final liberation.(722)

In Jambu‐dvîpa Bhârata is considered the best of its divisions, because it is the land of works. In it alone it is that:

The succession of four Yugas, or ages, the Krita, the Tretâ, the Dvâpara, and Kali take place.

When, therefore, Parâshara, on being asked by Maitreya “to give him the descriptions of the Earth,” returns again to the enumeration of the same Dvîpas with the same seas, etc., as those he had described in the Svâyambhuva Manvantara—it is simply a “blind”; yet, to him who reads between the lines, the Four great Races and the Fifth are there, ay, with their sub‐divisions, islands and continents, some of which were called by the names of celestial Lokas, and by those of other Globes. Hence the confusion.

All these islands and lands are called by the Orientalists “mythical” and “fabulous.”(723) Very true, some are not of this Earth, but they still exist. The White Island and Atala, at all events, are no myths, since Atala was the name contemptuously applied by the earliest pioneers of the Fifth Race to the Land of Sin—Atlantis, in general, not to Plato’s island alone; and since the White Island was (a) the Shveta‐dvîpa of Theogony, and (b) Shâka‐dvîpa, or Atlantis (its earliest portions rather) in its beginnings. This was when it yet had its “seven holy rivers that washed away all sin,” and its “seven districts, wherein there was no dereliction of virtue, no contention, no deviation from virtue,” as it was then inhabited by the caste of the Magas—that caste which even the Brâhmans acknowledged as not inferior to their own, and which was the nursery of the first Zarathushtra. The Brâhmans are shown consulting with Gauramukha, on Nârada’s advice, who told them to invite the Magas as priests of the Sun to the temple built by Sâmba the reputed son of Krishna, for in reality the latter had none. In this the Purânas are historical, allegory notwithstanding, and Occultism is stating facts.

The whole story is told in Bhavishya Purâna. It is stated that Sâmba having been cured of leprosy by Sûrya (the Sun), built a temple and dedicated it to the Deity. But when he was looking for pious Brâhmans to perform the appointed rites in it, and receive donations made to the God, Nârada—the virgin Ascetic who is found in every age in the Purânas—advised him not to do so, as Manu forbade the Brâhmans to receive emoluments for the performance of religious rites. He therefore referred Sâmba to Gauramukha (White‐face), the Purohita, or family priest, of Ugrasena, King of Mathura, who would tell him whom he could best employ. The priest directed Sâmba to invite the Magas, the worshippers of Sûrya, to discharge the duty. But as he was ignorant of the place where they lived, Sûrya, the Sun himself, directs Sâmba to Shâka‐dvîpa beyond the salt water. Then Sâmba performs the journey, using Garuda, the Great Bird, the vehicle of Vishnu and Krishna, who transports him to the Magas, etc.(724)

Now Krishna, who lived 5,000 years ago, and Nârada, who is found reborn in every Cycle (or Race), in addition to Garuda—the symbol Esoterically of the Great Cycle—give the key to the allegory; nevertheless the Magas are the Magi of Chaldæa, and their caste and worship were born on the earlier Atlantis, in Shâka‐dvîpa, the Sinless. All the Orientalists are agreed that the Magas of Shâka‐dvîpa are the forefathers of the fire‐worshipping Parsîs. Our quarrel with them rests, as usual, on their dwarfing periods of hundreds of thousands of years this time into only a few centuries; in spite of Nârada and Sâmba, they carry the event only to the days of the flight of the Parsîs to Gujerat. This is simply absurd, as this took place only in the eighth century of our era. True, the Magas are credited in the Bhavishya Purâna with still living in Shâka‐dvîpa in the day of Krishna’s “son,” nevertheless the last portion of that Continent—Plato’s “Atlantis”—had perished 6,000 years before. They were Magas “late of” Shâkadvîpa, and in those days lived in Chaldæa. This, again, is an intentional confusion.

The earliest pioneers of the Fourth Race were not Atlanteans, nor yet were they the human Asuras and the Râkshasas which they became later. In those days large portions of the future Continent of Atlantis were yet part and parcel of the ocean floors. Lemuria, as we have called the Continent of the Third Race, was then a gigantic land.(725) It covered the whole area from the foot of the Himâlayas, which separated it from the inland sea rolling its waves over what is now Tibet, Mongolia, and the Great Desert of Shamo (Gobi); from Chittagong, westward to Hardwar, and eastward to Assam [? Annam]. From thence, it stretched south across what is known to us as Southern India, Ceylon, and Sumatra; then embracing on its way, as we go south, Madagascar on its right hand and Australia and Tasmania on its left, it ran down to within a few degrees of the Antarctic Circle; and from Australia, an inland region on the Mother Continent in those ages, it extended far into the Pacific Ocean, beyond Rapa‐nui (Teapy, or Easter Island) which now lies in latitude 26°S., and longitude 110°W.(726) This statement seems to be corroborated by Science—even if only partially. When discussing continental trends, and showing the infra‐Arctic masses trending generally with the meridian, several ancient continents are mentioned, though inferentially. Among such are mentioned the “Mascarene continent,” which included Madagascar, stretching north and south, and another ancient continent which “stretched from Spitzbergen to the Straits of Dover, while most of the other parts of Europe were sea bottom.”(727) This corroborates the Occult teaching which says that what are now the polar regions were formerly the earliest of the seven cradles of Humanity, and the tomb of the bulk of the Mankind of that region during the Third Race, when the gigantic Continent of Lemuria began separating into smaller continents. This is due, according to the explanation in the Commentary, to a decrease of velocity in the Earth’s rotation:

When the Wheel runs at the usual rate, its extremities [the poles] agree with its middle Circle [the equator], when it runs slower and tilts in every direction, there is a great disturbance on the face of the Earth. The waters flow toward the two ends, and new lands arise in the middle Belt [equatorial lands], while those at the ends are subject to Pralayas by submersion.

And again:

Thus the Wheel [the Earth] is subject to, and regulated by, the Spirit of the Moon, for the breath of its waters [tides]. Toward the close of the age [Kalpa] of a great [Root‐] Race, the Regents of the Moon [the Fathers, or Pitris] begin drawing harder, and thus flatten the Wheel about its Belt, when it goes down in some places and swells in others, and the swelling running toward the extremities [poles], new lands will arise and old ones be sucked in.

We have only to read astronomical and geological works, to see the meaning of the above very clearly. Scientists—modern Specialists—have ascertained the influence of the tides on the geological distribution of land and water on the planet, and have noted the shifting of the oceans with a corresponding subsidence and rise of continents and new lands. Science knows, or thinks it knows, that this occurs periodically.(728) Professor Todd believes he can trace the series of oscillations backward to the periods of the Earth’s first incrustation.(729) Therefore it seems easy for Science to verify the Esoteric statement. We propose to treat of this at greater length in the Addenda.

Some Theosophists who have understood from a few words in Esoteric Buddhism that “old continents” which have been submerged will reäppear, have asked the question: “What will Atlantis be like when raised?” Here, again, there is a slight misconception. Were identically the same lands of Atlantis that were submerged to be raised again, then they would, indeed, be barren for ages. But because the Atlantic sea‐bottom is covered with some 5,000 feet of chalk at present, and more is forming—a new “cretaceous formation” of strata, in fact—that is no reason why, when the time for a new Continent to appear arrives, a geological convulsion and upraising of the sea‐bottom should not dispose of these 5,000 feet of chalk for the formation of some mountains and 5,000 more come to the surface. The Racial Cataclysms are not a Noah’s Deluge of forty days—a kind of Bombay monsoon.

That the periodical sinking and reäppearance of the mighty Continents, now called Atlantis and Lemuria by modern writers, is no fiction, will be demonstrated in the Section in which all the evidence has been collated together. The most archaic Sanskrit and Tamil works teem with references to both Continents. The seven sacred Islands (Dvîpas) are mentioned in the Sûrya Siddhânta, the oldest astronomical work in the whole world, and in the works of Asura Maya, the Atlantean Astronomer whom Professor Weber has made out to be “reïncarnated” in Ptolemy. Yet, it is a mistake to call these “Sacred Islands” Atlantean—as is done by us; for, like everything else in the Hindû Sacred Books, they are made to refer to several things. The heirloom left by Priyavrata, the Son of Svâyambhuva Manu, to his seven sons—was not Atlantis, even though one or two of these Islands survived the subsidence of their fellows, and offered shelter, ages later, to Atlanteans, whose Continent had been submerged in its turn. When first mentioned by Parâshara in the Vishnu Purâna, the seven refer to an Esoteric Doctrine which is explained further on. In this connection, of all the seven Islands, Jambu‐dvîpa (our Globe) is the only one that is terrestrial. In the Purânas every reference to the North of Meru is connected with that Primeval Eldorado, now the North Polar region, which, when the magnolia blossomed where now we see an unexplored endless desert of ice, was then a Continent. Science speaks of an “ancient continent” which stretched from Spitzbergen down to the Straits of Dover. The Secret Doctrine teaches that, in the earliest geological periods, these regions formed a horse‐shoe‐like continent, whose one end, the Eastern, far more northward than North Cornwall, included Greenland, and the other contained Behring’s Straits as an inland piece of ground, and descended southward in its natural trend down to the British Isles, which in those days must have been right under the lower curve of the semi‐circle. This Continent was raised simultaneously with the submersion of the equatorial portions of Lemuria. Ages later, some of the Lemurian remains reäppeared again on the face of the oceans. Therefore, though it can be said, without departing from truth, that Atlantis is included in the seven great Insular Continents since the Fourth Race Atlanteans came into possession of some of the Lemurian relics, and settling on the islands, included them among their lands and continents, yet a difference should be made and an explanation given, once that a fuller and more accurate account is attempted, as in the present work. Easter Island was also taken possession of in this manner by some Atlanteans; who, having escaped from the Cataclysm which befell their own land, settled on this remnant of Lemuria, but only to perish thereon, when it was destroyed in one day by volcanic fires and lava. This may be regarded as fiction by certain Geographers and Geologists; to the Occultists, however, it is history. What does Science know to the contrary?

Until the appearance of a map, published at Basle in 1522, wherein the name of America appears for the first time, the latter was believed to be part of India.... Science also refuses to sanction the wild hypothesis that there was a time when the Indian peninsula at one end of the line, and South America at the other, connected by a belt of islands and continents. The India of the pre‐historic ages ... was doubly connected with the two Americas. The lands of the ancestors of those whom Ammianus Marcellinus calls the “Brâhmans of Upper India,” stretched from Kashmir far into the (now) deserts of Shamo. A pedestrian from the north might then have reached—hardly wetting his feet—the Alaskan Peninsula, through Manchooria, across the future Gulf of Tartary, the Kurile and Aleutian Islands; while another traveller, furnished with a canoe, and starting from the south, could have walked over from Siam, crossed the Polynesian Islands and trudged into any part of the continent of South America.(730)

This was written from the words of a Master—a rather doubtful authority for the Materialists and Sceptics. But here we have one of their own flock, and a bird of the same feather, Ernst Hæckel, who, in his distribution of races, corroborates the statement almost verbatim:

It would seem that the region on the earth’s surface where the evolution of these primitive men from the closely related catarrhine apes [!!] took place, must be sought either in Southern Asia or Eastern Africa [which, by the bye, was not even in existence when the Third Race flourished], or in Lemuria. Lemuria is an ancient continent now sunk beneath the waters of the Indian Ocean which, lying to the South of the Asia of to‐day, stretched on the one hand eastwards to Upper India and Sunda Island, on the other westward as far as Madagascar and Africa.(731)

In the epoch of which we are treating, the Continent of Lemuria had already broken asunder in many places, and formed new separate continents. Nevertheless, neither Africa nor the Americas, still less Europe, existed in those days; all of them slumbering as yet on the ocean‐floors. Nor was there much of present Asia; for the Cis‐Himâlayan regions were covered with seas, and beyond them stretched the “lotus leaves” of Shveta‐dvîpa, the countries now called Greenland, Eastern and Western Siberia, etc. The immense Continent, which had once reigned supreme over the Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans, now consisted of huge islands which were gradually disappearing one after the other, until the final convulsion engulfed the last remains of it. Easter Island, for instance, belongs to the earliest civilization of the Third Race. It was a volcanic and sudden uplifting of the ocean‐floor, which raised this small relic of the Archaic Ages—after it had been submerged with the rest—untouched, with its volcano and statues, during the Champlain epoch of north polar submersion, as a standing witness to the existence of Lemuria. It is said that some of the Australian tribes are the last remnants of the last descendants of the Third Race.

In this we are again corroborated to a degree by Materialistic Science. Hæckel, when speaking of Blumenbach’s brown or Malay race, and the Australians and Papuans, remarks:

There is much likeness between these last and the Aborigines of Polynesia, that Australian island‐world, that seems to have been once on a time a gigantic and continuous continent.(732)

It certainly was “a gigantic and continuous continent,” for, during the Third Race, it stretched east and west, as far as where the two Americas now lie. The present Australia was but a portion of it, and in addition to this there are a few surviving islands strewn hither and thither on the face of the Pacific, and a large strip of California, which belonged to it. Funnily enough, Hæckel, in his fantastic Pedigree of Man, considers:

The Australians of to‐day as the lineal descendants, almost unchanged [?!], of that second branch of the primitive human race ... that spread northwards, at first chiefly in Asia, from the home of man’s infancy, and seems to have been the parent of all the other straight‐haired races of men.... The one, woolly‐ haired, migrated in part westwards [i.e., to Africa and eastwards to New Guinea, which countries had then, as said, no existence as yet].... The other, straight‐haired, was evolved farther to the North, in Asia, and ... peopled Australia.(733)

As writes a Master:

Behold the relics of that once great nation [Lemuria of the Third Race] in some of the flat‐headed aborigines of your Australia.(734)

But they belong to the last remnants of the seventh sub‐race of the Third. Professor Hæckel must also have dreamt a dream and seen for once a true vision!

It is to this period that we have to look for the first appearance of the ancestors of those, whom we term the most ancient peoples of the world—now called respectively the Âryan Hindûs, the Egyptians, and the oldest Persians, on the one hand, and the Chaldees and Phœnicians on the other. These were governed by the Divine Dynasties, i.e., Kings and Rulers who had of mortal man only his physical appearance as it was then, but who were Beings from Spheres higher and more celestial than our own Sphere will be, long Manvantaras hence. It is, of course, useless to attempt to force the existence of such Beings on sceptics. Their greatest pride consists in proving their patronymic denomination as Catarrhinides—a fact which they try to demonstrate on the alleged authority of the Coccyx appended to their Os Sacrum, that rudimentary tail which, if it were only long enough, they would wag with joy and for ever, in honour of its eminent discoverer. These will remain as faithful to their Ape‐ancestors as Christians will to tailless Adam. The Secret Doctrine, however, sets Theosophists and students of the Occult Sciences right on this point.

If we regard the second portion of the Third Race as the first representatives of the really human race with solid bones, then Hæckel’s surmise that “the evolution of the primitive men took place ...in either Southern Asia or ... Lemuria”—Africa, whether Eastern or Western being out of the question—is correct enough, if not entirely so. To be accurate, however, just as the evolution of the First Race, from the bodies of the Pitris, took place on seven distinctly separated regions, at the Arctic Pole of the (then) only Earth—so did the ultimate transformation of the Third occur. It began in those northern regions, which have just been described as including Behring’s Straits, and what there then was of dry land in Central Asia, when the climate was semi‐tropical even in the Arctic regions and excellently adapted to the primitive wants of nascent physical man. That region, however, has been more than once frigid and tropical in turn since the appearance of man. The Commentary tells us that the Third Race was only about the middle point of its development when:

The axle of the Wheel tilted. The Sun and Moon shone no longer over the heads of that portion of the Sweat‐born; people knew snow, ice, and frost, and men, plants, and animals were dwarfed in their growth. Those that did not perish remained as half‐grown babes(735) in size and intellect. This was the third Pralaya of the Races.(736)

This means again, that our Globe is subject to seven periodical and entire changes which go pari passu with the Races. For the Secret Doctrine teaches that, during this Round, there must be seven terrestrial Pralayas, occasioned by the change in the inclination of the Earth’s axis. It is a Law which acts at its appointed time, and not at all blindly, as Science may think, but in strict accordance and harmony with Karmic Law. In Occultism this Inexorable Law is referred to as the “Great Adjuster.” Science confesses its ignorance of the cause producing climatic vicissitudes and also the changes in the axial direction, which are always followed by these vicissitudes. In fact, it does not seem at all sure of the axial changes. And being unable to account for them, it is prepared to deny the axial phenomena altogether, rather than admit the intelligent hand of the Karmic Law which alone can reasonably explain these sudden changes and their accompanying results. It has tried to account for them by various and more or less fantastic speculations; one of which, as de Boucheporn imagined, would be the sudden collision of our Earth with a Comet, thus causing all the geological revolutions. But we prefer holding to our Esoteric explanation, since Fohat is as good as any Comet, and, in addition, has universal Intelligence to guide him.

Thus, since Vaivasvata Manu’s Humanity appeared on this Earth, there have already been four such axial disturbances. The old Continents—save the first—were sucked in by the oceans, other lands appeared, and huge mountain chains arose where there had been none before. The face of the Globe was completely changed each time; the “survival of the fittest” nations and races was secured through timely help; and the unfit ones—the failures—were disposed of by being swept off the Earth. Such sorting and shifting does not happen between sunset and sunrise, as one may think, but requires several thousands of years before the new house is set in order.

The sub‐races are also subject to the same cleansing process, and the side‐branchlets or family‐races as well. Let any one, well acquainted with astronomy and mathematics, throw a retrospective glance into the twilight and shadows of the Past. Let him observe and take notes of what he knows of the history of peoples and nations, and collate their respective rises and falls with what is known of astronomical cycles—especially with the Sidereal Year, which is equal to 25,868 of our solar years.(737) Then, if the observer is gifted with the faintest intuition, he will find how the weal and woe of nations are intimately connected with the beginning and close of this Sidereal Cycle. True, the non‐occultist has the disadvantage that he has no such far distant times to rely upon. He knows nothing, through exact Science, of what took place nearly 10,000 years ago; yet he may find consolation in the knowledge of, or—if he so prefers—speculation about, the fate of every one of the modern nations he knows of—some 16,000 years hence. Our meaning is very clear. Every Sidereal Year the tropics recede from the pole four degrees in each revolution from the equinoctial points, as the equator turns through the Zodiacal constellations. Now, as every Astronomer knows, at present the tropic is only twenty‐three degrees and a fraction less than half a degree from the equator. Hence it has still two and a half degrees to run before the end of the Sidereal Year. This gives humanity in general, and our civilized races in particular, a reprieve of about 16,000 years.

After the Great Flood of the Third Race (the Lemurians) as Commentary Thirty‐three tells us:

Men decreased considerably in stature, and the duration of their lives was diminished. Having fallen down in godliness they mixed with animal races, and intermarried among giants and pigmies [the dwarfed races of the Poles].... Many acquired divine, nay more—unlawful knowledge, and followed willingly the Left Path.

Thus were the Atlanteans approaching destruction in their turn. How many geological periods it took to accomplish this fourth destruction who can tell! But we are told that:

44. THEY(738) BUILT GREAT IMAGES NINE YATIS HIGH,(739) THE SIZE OF THEIR BODIES (a). INNER FIRES HAD DESTROYED THE LAND OF THEIR FATHERS.(740) WATER THREATENED THE FOURTH(741) (b).

(a) It is well worth noticing that most of the gigantic statues discovered on Easter Island, a portion of an undeniably submerged continent, as also those found on the outskirts of Gobi, a region which had been submerged for untold ages, are all between twenty and thirty feet high. The statues found by Cook on Easter Island measured almost all twenty‐seven feet in height, and eight feet across the shoulders.(742) The writer is well aware that the modern Archæologists have decided that “these statues are not very old,” as declared by one of the high officials of the British Museum, where some of them now are. But this is one of those arbitrary decisions of Modern Science which does not carry much weight.

We are told that after the destruction of Lemuria by subterranean fires men went on steadily decreasing in stature—a process already commenced after their physical Fall—and that finally, some millions of years later, they decreased to between six and seven feet, and are now, as in the older Asiatic races, dwindling down to nearer five than six feet. As Pickering shows, there is in the Malay race (a sub‐race of the Fourth Root‐Race) a singular diversity of stature; the members of the Polynesian family, such as the Tahitians, Samoans, and Tonga islanders, are of a higher stature than the rest of mankind; but the Indian tribes and the inhabitants of the Indo‐Chinese countries are decidedly below the general average. This is easily explained. The Polynesians belong to the very earliest of the surviving sub‐races, the others to the very latest and most transitory stock. As the Tasmanians are now completely extinct, and the Australians rapidly dying out, so will the other old races soon follow.

(b) How could those records have been preserved? we may be asked. Even the knowledge of the Zodiac by the Hindûs is denied by our kind and learned Orientalists, who conclude that the Âryan Hindûs knew nothing of it, before the Greeks brought it into the country. This uncalled‐for slander has been so sufficiently refuted by Bailly, and what is more, by the clear evidence of facts, as not to need very much additional refutation. While the Egyptian Zodiacs(743) preserve irrefutable proofs of records embracing more than three‐and‐a‐half Sidereal Years—or about 87,000 years—the Hindû calculations cover nearly thirty‐three such years, or 850,000 years. The Egyptian priests assured Herodotus that the Pole of the Earth and the Pole of the Ecliptic had formerly coincided. But, as remarked by the author of the Sphinxiad:

These poor benighted Hindoos have registered a knowledge of Astronomy for ten times 25,000 years since the [last local] Flood [in Asia], or Age of Horror.

And they possess recorded observations from the date of the first Great Flood within the Âryan historical memory—the Flood which submerged the last portions of Atlantis 850,000 years ago. The Floods which preceded are, of course, more traditional than historical.

The sinking and transformation of Lemuria began nearly at the Arctic Circle (Norway), and the Third Race ended its career in Lankâ, or rather on that which became Lankâ with the Atlanteans. The small remnant now known as Ceylon is the Northern highland of ancient Lankâ, while the enormous Island of that name was, in the Lemurian period, the gigantic Continent already described. As a Master says:

Why should not your geologists bear in mind that under the continents explored and fathomed by them ... there may be hidden, deep in the fathomless, or rather unfathomed ocean beds, other and far older continents whose strata have never been geologically explored; and that they may some day upset entirely their present theories? Why not admit that our present continents have, like Lemuria and Atlantis, been several times already submerged, and had the time to reäppear again, and bear their new groups of mankind and civilizations; and that at the first great geological upheaval at the next cataclysm, in the series of periodical cataclysms that occur from the beginning to the end of every Round, our already autopsized continents will go down, and the Lemurias and Atlantises come up again?(744)

Not identically the same Continents, of course. But here an explanation is needed. No confusion need arise as regards the postulation of a Northern Lemuria. The prolongation of that great Continent into the North Atlantic Ocean is in no way subversive of the opinions so widely held as to the site of the lost Atlantis, and one corroborates the other. It must be noted that the Lemuria, which served as the cradle of the Third Root‐ Race, not only embraced a vast area in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, but extended in the shape of a horse‐shoe past Madagascar, round “South Africa” (then a mere fragment in process of formation), through the Atlantic up to Norway. The great English fresh‐water deposit called the Wealden—which every Geologist regards as the mouth of a former great river—is the bed of the main stream which drained Northern Lemuria in the Secondary age. The former actual existence of this river is a fact of Science—its votaries acknowledge the necessity of accepting the Secondary‐ age Northern Lemuria, demanded by their data? Professor Berthold Seemann not only accepted the reality of such a mighty continent, but regarded Australia and Europe as formerly portions of one continent—thus corroborating the whole “horse‐shoe” doctrine already enunciated. No more striking confirmation of our position could be given, than the fact that the elevated ridge in the Atlantic basin, 9,000 feet in height, which runs for some two or three thousand miles southwards from a point near the British Islands, first slopes towards South America, then shifts almost at right angles to proceed in a south‐easterly line toward the African coast, whence it runs on southward to Tristan d’Acunha. This ridge is a remnant of an Atlantic continent, and, could it be traced further, would establish the reality of a submarine horse‐shoe junction with a former continent in the Indian Ocean.(745)

The Atlantic portion of Lemuria was the geological basis of what is generally known as Atlantis, but which must be regarded rather as a development of the Atlantic prolongation of Lemuria than as an entirely new mass of land upheaved to meet the special requirements of the Fourth Root‐Race. Just as in the case of Race evolution, so in that of the shifting and re‐shifting of Continental masses, no hard and fast line can be drawn as to where a new order ends and another begins. Continuity in natural processes is never broken. Thus the Fourth‐Race Atlanteans were developed from a nucleus of Northern Lemurian Third‐Race Men, centred, roughly speaking, toward a point of land in what is now the mid‐Atlantic Ocean. Their Continent was formed by the coalescence of many islands and peninsulas which were upheaved in the ordinary course of time and ultimately became the true home of the great Race known as the Atlanteans. After this consummation was once attained it follows, as stated on the highest Occult authority, that:

Lemuria should no more be confounded with the Atlantis Continent, than Europe with America.(746)

The above, coming from quarters so discredited by orthodox Science, will, of course, be regarded as a more or less happy fiction. Even the clever work of Donnelly, already mentioned, is put aside, notwithstanding that its statements are all confined within a frame of strictly scientific proofs. But we write for the future. New discoveries in this direction will vindicate the claim of the Asiatic Philosophers, that sciences—Geology, Ethnology, and History included—were pursued by the Antediluvian nations who lived untold ages ago. Future “finds” will justify the correctness of the present observations of such acute minds as H. A. Taine and Renan. The former shows that the civilizations of such archaic nations as the Egyptians, Âryans of India, Chaldæans, Chinese, and Assyrians are the result of preceding civilizations lasting “myriads of centuries”;(747) and the latter points to the fact that:

Egypt at the beginning appears mature, old, and entirely without mythical and heroic ages, as if the country had never known youth. Its civilization has no infancy, and its art no archaic period. The civilization of the Old Monarchy did not begin with infancy. It was already mature.(748)

To this Professor R. Owen adds that:

Egypt is recorded to have been a civilized and governed community before the time of Menes.

And Winchell states that:

At the epoch of Menes the Egyptians were already a civilized and numerous people. Manetho tells us that Athotis, the son of this first king Menes, built the palace of Memphis; that he was a physician, and left anatomical books.

This is quite natural if we are to believe the statement of Herodotus, who records in Euterpe (cxlii), that the written history of the Egyptian priests dated from about 12,000 years before his time. But what are 12,000 or even 120,000 years compared with the millions of years which have elapsed since the Lemurian period? The latter, however, has not been left without witnesses, notwithstanding its tremendous antiquity. The complete records of the growth, development, social and even political life of the Lemurians, have been preserved in the Secret Annals. Unfortunately, few are those who can read them; and those who could would still be unable to understand the language, unless acquainted with all the seven keys of its symbolism. For the comprehension of the Occult Doctrine is based on that of the Seven Sciences; and these Sciences find their expression in the seven different applications of the Secret Records to the exoteric texts. Thus we have to deal with modes of thought on seven entirely different planes of Ideality. Every text relates to, and has to be rendered from, one of the following standpoints:

1. The Realistic Plane of Thought.

2. The Idealistic.

3. The purely Divine or Spiritual.

The other planes too far transcend the average consciousness, especially of the materialistic mind, to admit of their being even symbolized in terms of ordinary phraseology. There is no purely mythical element in any of the ancient religious texts; but the mode of thought in which they were originally written has to be found out and closely adhered to during the process of interpretation. For it is symbolical, the archaic mode of thought; emblematical, a later though very ancient mode of thought; parabolical or allegorical; hieroglyphical; or again logogrammical, the most difficult method of all; every letter, as in the Chinese language, representing a whole word. Thus, almost every proper name, whether in the Vedas, the Book of the Dead, or, to a certain degree, in the Bible, is composed of such logograms. No one not initiated into the mystery of the Occult religious logography can presume to know what a name in any ancient fragment means, before he has mastered the meaning of every letter that composes it. How is it to be expected that the merely profane thinker, however great may be his erudition in orthodox symbolism, so to say—i.e., in that symbolism which can never get out of the old grooves of solar myth and sexual worship—how is it to be expected that the profane scholar should penetrate into the arcana behind the veil? One who deals with the husk or shell of the dead‐letter, and devotes himself to the kaleidoscopic transformation of barren word‐symbols, can never expect to get beyond the vagaries of modern Mythologists.

Thus, Vaivasvata, Xisuthrus, Deucalion, Noah, etc.,—all the head‐figures of the World‐Deluges, universal and partial, astronomical or geological—all furnish in their very names the records of the causes and effects which led to the event, if one can but read them fully. All such Deluges are based on events that took place in Nature, and stand as historical records, therefore—whether they were sidereal, geological, or even simply allegorical—of a moral event on other and higher planes of being. This we believe has now been sufficiently demonstrated during the long explanation necessitated by the allegorical Stanzas.

To speak of a race nine “yatis,” or twenty‐seven feet, high, in a work claiming a more scientific character than, let us say, the story of “Jack the Giant‐Killer,” is a somewhat unusual proceeding. Where are your proofs?—the writer will be asked. In history and tradition, is the answer. Traditions about a race of giants in days of old are universal; they exist in oral and written lore. India had her Dânavas and Daityas; Ceylon had her Râkshasas; Greece, her Titans; Egypt, her colossal Heroes; Chaldæa, her Izdubars (Nimrod); and the Jews their Emims of the land of Moab, with the famous giants, Anakim.(749) Moses speaks of Og, a king whose “bedstead” was nine cubits long (15ft. 4in.) and four wide,(750) and Goliath was “six cubits and a span in height” (or 10ft. 7in.). The only difference found between “revealed scripture” and the evidence furnished to us by Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, Homer, Pliny, Plutarch, Philostratus, etc., is this: While the Pagans mention only the skeletons of giants, dead untold ages before, relics that some of them had personally seen, the Bible interpreters unblushingly demand that Geology and Archæology should believe, that several countries were inhabited by such giants in the day of Moses; giants before whom the Jews were as grasshoppers, and who still existed in the days of Joshua and David. Unfortunately their own chronology is in the way. Either the latter or the giants has to be given up.

Of yet standing witnesses to the submerged Continents, and the colossal men that inhabited them, there are still a few. Archæology claims several such on this Earth, though beyond wondering “what these may be”—it has never made any serious attempt to solve the mystery. Not to speak of the Easter Island statues already mentioned, to what epoch belong the colossal statues, still erect and intact near Bamian? Archæology, as usual, assigns them to the first centuries of Christianity, and errs in this as it does in many other speculations. A few words of description will show the readers what are the statues of both Easter Isle and Bamian. We will first examine what is known of them to orthodox Science.

Teapi, Rapa‐nui, or Easter Island, is an isolated spot almost 2,000 miles from the South American coast.... In length it is about twelve miles, in breadth four ... and there is an extinct crater 1,050 feet high in its centre. The island abounds in craters, which have been extinct for so long that no tradition of their activity remains.(751)

But who made the great stone images(752) which are now the chief attraction of the island to visitors? “No one knows,” says a reviewer.

It is more than likely that they were here when the present inhabitants [a handful of Polynesian savages] arrived.... Their workmanship is of a high order, ... and it is believed that the race who formed them were the frequenters of the natives of Peru and other portions of South America.... Even at the date of Cook’s visit, some of the statues, measuring twenty‐seven feet in height and eight across the shoulders, were lying overthrown, while others still standing appeared much larger. One of the latter was so lofty that the shade was sufficient to shelter a party of thirty persons from the heat of the sun. The platforms on which these colossal images stood averaged from thirty to forty feet in length, twelve to sixteen broad ... all built of hewn stone in the Cyclopean style, very much like the walls of the Temple of Pachacamac, or the ruins of Tia‐Huanaco in Peru.(753)

“There is no reason to believe that any of the statues have been built up, bit by bit, by scaffolding erected around them,” adds the reviewer very suggestively—without explaining how they could be built otherwise, unless made by giants of the same size as the statues themselves. Two of the best of these colossal images are now in the British Museum. The images at Ronororaka are four in number, three deeply sunk in the soil, and one resting on the back of its head like a man asleep. Their types, though all are long‐headed, are different; and they are evidently meant for portraits, as the noses, the mouths, and chins differ greatly in form; their head‐dress, moreover—a kind of flat cap with a piece attached to it to cover the back portion of the head—shows that the originals were no savages of the stone period. Verily the question may be asked, Who made them?—but it is not Archæology nor yet Geology that is likely to answer, even though the latter recognizes in the island a portion of a submerged continent.

But who cut the Bamian, still more colossal, statues, the tallest and the most gigantic in the whole world?—for Bartholdi’s “Statue of Liberty,” now at New York, is a dwarf when compared with the largest of the five images. Burnes, and several learned Jesuits who have visited the place, speak of a mountain “all honeycombed with gigantic cells,” with two immense giants cut in the same rock. They are referred to as the modern Miaotse (vide supra, quotation from Shoo‐King), the last surviving witnesses of the Miaotse who had “troubled the earth”; the Jesuits are right, and the Archæologists, who see Buddhas in the largest of these statues, are mistaken. For all those numberless gigantic ruins which are discovered one after the other in our day, all those immense avenues of colossal ruins that cross North America along and beyond the Rocky Mountains, are the work of the Cyclopes, the true and actual Giants of old. “Masses of enormous human bones” were found “in America, near Munte [?]” a celebrated modern traveller tells us, precisely on the spot which local tradition points out as the landing spot of those giants who overran America when it had hardly arisen from the waters.(754)

Central Asian traditions say the same of the Bamian statues. What are they, and what is the place where they have stood for countless ages, defying the cataclysms around them, and even the hand of man, as in the instance of the hordes of Timoor and the Vandal‐warriors of Nadir Shah? Bamian is a small, miserable, half‐ruined town in Central Asia, half‐way between Cabul and Balkh, at the foot of Koh‐i‐baba, a huge mountain of the Paropamisian, or Hindu‐Kush, Chain, some 8,500 feet above the level of the sea. In days of old, Bamian was a portion of the ancient city of Djooljool, ruined and destroyed to the last stone by Tchengis‐Khan in the thirteenth century. The whole valley is hemmed in by colossal rocks, which are full of partially natural and partially artificial caves and grottoes, once the dwellings of Buddhist monks who had established in them their Vihâras. Such Vihâras are to be met with in profusion, to this day, in the rock‐cut temples of India and the valleys of Jellalabad. In front of some of these caves five enormous statues—of what is regarded as Buddha—have been discovered or rather rediscovered in our century, for the famous Chinese traveller Hiouen Thsang speaks of having seen them, when he visited Bamian in the seventh century.

The contention that no larger statues exist on the whole globe, is easily proven on the evidence of all the travellers who have examined them and taken their measurements. Thus, the largest is 173 feet high, or seventy feet higher than the “Statue of Liberty” now at New York, as the latter is only 105 feet or 34 mètres high. The famous Colossus of Rhodes itself, between whose legs the largest vessels of those days passed with ease, measured only 120 to 130 feet in height. The second largest statue, which is also cut out in the rock like the first, is only 120 feet or fifteen feet taller than the said “Liberty.”(755) The third statue is only 60 feet high, the two others still smaller, the last being only a little larger than the average tall man of our present Race. The first and largest of the colossi represents a man draped in a kind of “toga”; M. de Nadeylac thinks that the general appearance of the figure, the lines of the head, the drapery, and especially the large hanging ears, are undeniable indications that Buddha was meant to be represented. But they really prove nothing. Notwithstanding the fact that most of the now existing figures of Buddha, represented in the posture of Samâdhi, have large drooping ears, this is a later innovation and an afterthought. The primitive idea was due to Esoteric allegory. The unnaturally large ears symbolize the omniscience of wisdom, and were meant as a reminder of the power of Him who knows and hears all, and whose benevolent love and attention for all creatures nothing can escape. As a Shloka says:

The merciful Lord, our Master, hears the cry of agony of the smallest of the small, beyond vale and mountain, and hastens to its deliverance.

Gautama Buddha was an Âryan Hindû, and an approach to such ears is found only among the Mongolian Burmese and Siamese, who, as in Cochin, distort their ears artificially. The Buddhist monks, who turned the grottoes of the Miao‐tse into Vihâras and cells, came into Central Asia about or in the first century of the Christian era. Therefore, Hiouen Thsang, speaking of the colossal statue, says that “the shining of the gold ornamentation that overlaid the statue” in his day “dazzled one’s eyes,” but of such gilding there remains not a vestige in modern times. The drapery, in contrast to the figure itself, which is cut out of the standing rock, is made of plaster and modelled over the stone image. Talbot, who has made the most careful examination, found that this drapery belonged to a far later epoch. The statue itself has therefore to be assigned to a far earlier period than Buddhism. In such case, it may be asked, Whom does it represent?

Once more tradition, corroborated by written records, answers the query, and explains the mystery. The Buddhist Arhats and Ascetics found the five statues, and many more, now crumbled down to dust. Three of them standing in colossal niches at the entrance of their future abode, they covered with plaster, and, over the old, modelled new statues made to represent Lord Tathâgata. The interior walls of the niches are covered to this day with bright paintings of human figures, and the sacred image of Buddha is repeated in every group. These frescoes and ornaments—which remind one of the Byzantine style of painting—are all due to the piety of the monk‐ ascetics, as also are some other minor figures and rock‐cut ornamentations. But the five statues belong to the handiwork of the Initiates of the Fourth Race, who, after the submersion of their Continent, sought refuge in the fastnesses and on the summits of the Central Asian mountain chains. Thus, the five statues are an imperishable record of the Esoteric Teaching as to the gradual evolution of the Races.

The largest is made to represent the First Race of mankind, its ethereal body being commemorated in hard, everlasting stone, for the instruction of future generations, as its remembrance would otherwise never have survived the Atlantean Deluge. The second—120 feet high—represents the Sweat‐born; and the third—measuring 60 feet—immortalizes the Race that fell, and thereby inaugurated the first physical Race, born of father and mother, the last descendants of which are represented in the statues found on Easter Isle. These were only from 20 to 25 feet in stature at the epoch when Lemuria was submerged, after it had been nearly destroyed by volcanic fires. The Fourth Race was still smaller, though gigantic in comparison with our present Fifth Race, and the series culminated finally in the latter.

These are, then, the “Giants” of antiquity, the ante‐ and post‐diluvian Gibborim of the Bible. They lived and flourished one million years ago rather than between three and four thousand only. The Anakim of Joshua, whose hosts were as “grasshoppers” in comparison with the Jews, are thus a piece of Israelite fancy, unless indeed the people of Israel claim for Joshua an antiquity and origin in the Eocene, or at any rate in the Miocene age, and change the millenniums of their chronology into millions of years.

In everything that pertains to prehistoric times the reader ought to bear in mind the wise words of Montaigne. Saith the great French Philosopher:

It is a sottish presumption to disdaine and condemne that for false, which unto us seemeth to beare no show of likelihood or truth: which is an ordinarie fault in those who perswade themselves to be of more sufficiencie than the vulgar sort....

But reason hath taught me, that so resolutely to condemne a thing for false and impossible, is to assume unto himself the advantage to have the bounds and limits of God’s will, and the power of our common mother Nature tied to his sleeve, and that there is no greater folly in the world than to reduce them to the measure of our capacitie and bounds of our sufficiencie....

If we term those things monsters or miracles to which our reason cannot attain, how many such doe daily present themselves unto our sight? Let us consider through what cloudes, and how blinde‐folde, we are led to the knowledge of most things that passe our hands; verily we shall finde it is rather custome than science that receiveth the strangenesse of them from us: and that those things, were they newly presented unto us, wee should doubtless deeme them as much or more unlikely and incredible than any other.(756)

A fair‐minded scholar, before denying the possibility of our history and records, should search modern history, as well as the universal traditions scattered throughout ancient and modern literature, for traces left by these marvellous early races. Few among the unbelievers suspect the wealth of corroborative evidence which is to be found scattered about and buried, even in the British Museum alone. The reader is asked to throw one more glance at the subject‐matter treated of in the Section which follows.

Cyclopean Ruins And Colossal Stones As Witnesses To Giants.

De Mirville, in his enormous works, “Mémoires Adressées aux Académies,” carrying out the task of proving the reality of the Devil and showing his abode in every ancient and modern idol, has collected several hundred pages of “historical evidence” that, in the days of “miracle,” both pagan and biblical, stones walked, spoke, delivered oracles, and even sang. That finally, the “Christ‐stone,” or Christ‐rock, “the spiritual Rock” that followed Israel,(757) “became a Jupiter‐lapis,” swallowed by his father Saturn, “under the shape of a stone.”(758) We will not stop to discuss the evident misuse and materialization of biblical metaphors simply for the sake of proving the “Satanism” of idols, though a good deal might be said(759) on this subject. But without claiming any such peripateticism and innate psychic faculties for our stones, we may collect, in our turn, every available evidence to hand, to show that: (a) had there been no giants to move such colossal rocks, there could never have been a Stonehenge, a Carnac (Brittany), or other such Cyclopean structures; and (b) were there no such thing as Magic, there could never have been so many witnesses to “oracular” and “speaking” stones.

In the Achaica we find Pausanias confessing that, in beginning his work, he had regarded the Greeks as mighty stupid “for worshipping stones.” But, having reached Arcadia, he adds: “I have changed my way of thinking.”(760) Therefore, without worshipping stones or stone idols and statues, which is the same thing—a crime with which Roman Catholics are unwise to reproach Pagans, as they do—one may be allowed to believe in what so many great Philosophers and holy men have believed in, without deserving to be called an “idiot” by modern Pausaniuses.

The reader is referred to the Académie des Inscriptions, if he would study the various properties of flints and pebbles from the standpoint of magic and psychic powers. In a poem on “Stones” attributed to Orpheus, these stones are divided into Ophites and Sideritês, the “Serpent‐stone” and “Star‐stone.”

The Ophitês is shaggy, hard, heavy, black, and has the gift of speech; when one prepares to cast it away, it produces a sound similar to the cry of a child. It is by means of this stone that Helenus foretold the ruin of Troy, his fatherland.(761)

Sanchuniathon and Philo Byblus, in referring to these “bétyles,” call them “animated stones.” Photius repeats what Damascius, Asclepiades, Isidorus and the physician Eusebius had asserted before him. Eusebius especially never parted with his Ophitês, which he carried in his bosom, and received oracles from it, delivered in a small voice resembling a low whistling.(762) Arnobius, a holy man, who “from a Pagan had become one of the lights of the Church,” as Christians tell their readers, confesses he could never meet with one of such stones without putting it a question, “which it answered occasionally in a clear and sharp small voice.” Where, then, is the difference between the Christian and the Pagan Ophitês, we ask?

The famous stone at Westminster was called liafail, “the speaking stone,” and raised its voice only to name the king that had to be chosen. Cambry, in his Monuments Celtiques, says he saw it when it still bore the inscription:(763)

Ni fallat fatum, Scoti quocumque locatum Invenient lapidem, regnasse tenentur ibidem.

Finally, Suidas speaks of a certain Heræscus, who could distinguish at a glance the inanimate stones from those which were endowed with motion; and Pliny mentions stones which “ran away when a hand approached them.”(764)

De Mirville—who seeks to justify the Bible—enquires very pertinently, why the monstrous stones of Stonehenge were called in days of old chior‐ gaur or the “dance of giants” (from côr, “dance,” whence chorea, and gaur, “giant”)? And then he sends the reader to receive his reply from the Bishop St. Gildas. But the authors of such works as Voyage dans le Comté de Cornouailles, sur les Traces des Géants, and of various learned works on the ruins of Stonehenge,(765) Carnac, and West Hoadley, give far fuller and more reliable information upon this particular subject. In those regions—true forests of rocks—immense monoliths are found, “some weighing over 500,000 kilograms.” These “hanging stones” of Salisbury Plain are believed to be the remains of a Druidical temple. But the Druids were historical men and not Cyclopes, or giants. Who then, if not giants, could ever raise such masses—especially those at Carnac and West Hoadley—range them in such symmetrical order that they should represent the planisphere, and place them in such wonderful equipoise that they seem to hardly touch the ground, and though set in motion at the slightest touch of the finger, would nevertheless resist the efforts of twenty men should they attempt to displace them.

Now if we say that most of these stones are relics of the last Atlanteans, we shall be answered that all the Geologists claim them to be of a natural origin; that, a rock when “weathering”—i.e., losing flake after flake of its substance under the influence of the weather—assumes this form; that, the “tors” in West England exhibit curious forms, also produced by this cause. And thus since all Scientists consider the “rocking stones to be of purely natural origin, wind, rain, etc., causing disintegration of rocks in layers”—our statement will be justly denied, especially as “we see this process of rock‐modification in progress around us to‐day.” Let us then examine the case.

First read what Geology has to say, and you will then learn that often these gigantic masses are entire strangers in the countries wherein they are now fixed; that their geological congeners often pertain to strata unknown in those countries and which are only to be found far beyond the seas. Mr. William Tooke, in speculating upon the enormous blocks of granite which are strewn over Southern Russia and Siberia, tells the reader that where they now rest, there are neither rocks nor mountains; and that they must have been brought over “from immense distances and with prodigious efforts.”(766) Charton speaks of a specimen of such rock from Ireland, which had been submitted to the analysis of an eminent English Geologist, who assigned to it a foreign origin “perhaps even African.”(767)

This is a strange coincidence, for Irish tradition attributes the origin of her circular stones to a Sorcerer who brought them from Africa. De Mirville sees in this Sorcerer “an accursed Hamite.”(768) We see in him a dark Atlantean, or perhaps even some earlier Lemurian, who had survived till the birth of the British Islands—a giant in any and every case.(769) Says Cambry, naively:

Men have nothing to do with it ... for never could human power and industry undertake anything of this kind. Nature alone has accomplished it all [!!] and Science will demonstrate it some day [!!].(770)

Nevertheless, it was human, though gigantic power, which accomplished it, and no more “Nature” alone than God or Devil.

“Science,” having undertaken to demonstrate that even the Mind and Spirit of man are simply the production of “blind forces,” is quite capable of accepting the task, and it may be that she will come out some fine morning, and seek to prove that Nature alone has marshalled the gigantic rocks of Stonehenge, traced their position with mathematical precision, given them the form of the Dendera planisphere and of the signs of the Zodiac, and brought stones weighing over one million of pounds from Africa and Asia to England and Ireland!

It is true that Cambry recanted later on, when saying:

I believed for a long time in Nature, but I recant, ... for chance is unable to create such marvellous combinations, ... and those who placed the said rocks in equipoise, are the same who have raised the moving masses of the pond of Huelgoat, near Concarneau.

Dr. John Watson, quoted by the same author, when speaking of the moving rocks, or “rocking stones” situated on the slope of Golcar (the “Enchanter”) says:

The astonishing movement of those masses poised in equilibrium made the Celts compare them to Gods.(771)

In Stonehenge, by Flinders Petrie, it is said that:

Stonehenge is built of the stone of the district, a red sandstone, or “sarsen” stone, locally called “grey wethers.” But some of the stones, especially those which are said to have been devoted to astronomical purposes, have been brought from a distance, probably the North of Ireland.

To close, the reflections of a man of Science, in an article upon the subject published in 1850 in the Revue Archéologique, are worthy of being quoted:

Every stone is a block whose weight would try the most powerful machines. There are, in a word, scattered throughout the globe, masses, before which the word materials seems to remain inexplicable, at the sight of which imagination is confounded, and that had to be endowed with a name as colossal as the things themselves. Besides which, these immense rocking stones, called sometimes routers, placed upright on one of their sides as on a point, their equipoise being so perfect that the slightest touch is sufficient to set them in motion ... betray a most positive knowledge of statics. Reciprocal counter‐motion, surfaces, plane, convex and concave, in turn ... all this allies them to Cyclopean monuments, of which it can be said with good reason, repeating De la Vega, that “the demons seem to have worked on them more than men.”(772)

For once we agree with our friends and foes, the Roman Catholics, and ask whether such prodigies of statics and equilibrium, with masses weighing millions of pounds, can be the work of Palæolithic savages, of cave‐men, taller than the average man in our century, yet ordinary mortals as we are? It is not our purpose to refer to the various traditions attached to the rocking stones. Still, it may be as well to remind the English reader of Giraldus Cambrensis, who speaks of such a stone on the Isle of Mona, which returned to its place, notwithstanding every effort to keep it elsewhere. At the time of the conquest of Ireland by Henry II, a Count Hugo Cestrensis, desiring to convince himself of the reality of the fact, tied the Mona stone to a far larger one and had them thrown into the sea. On the following morning it was found in its accustomed place. The learned William of Salisbury warrants the fact by testifying to its presence in the wall of a church where he had seen it in 1554. And this reminds one of what Pliny said of the stone left by the Argonauts at Cyzicum, which the Cyzicans had placed in the Prytaneum, “whence it ran away several times, and so they were forced to weight it with lead.”(773) Here we have immense stones stated by all antiquity to be “living, moving, speaking, and self‐ perambulating.” They were also capable, it seems, of making people run away, since they were called routers, from the word to “rout,” or “put to flight”; and Des Mousseaux shows them all to be prophetic stones, and sometimes called “mad stones.”(774)

The rocking stone is accepted by Science. But why did it rock? One must be blind not to see that this motion was one more means of divination, and that they were called for this very reason the “stones of truth.”(775)

This is history, the past of prehistoric times warranting the same in later ages. The Dracontia, sacred to the Moon and the Serpent, were the more ancient “rocks of destiny” of older nations; and their motion, or rocking, was a code perfectly clear to the initiated priests, who alone had the key to this ancient reading. Vormius and Olaus Magnus show that it was according to the orders of the oracle, whose voice spoke through “these immense rocks raised by the colossal powers of [ancient] giants,” that the kings of Scandinavia were elected. Says Pliny:

In India and Persia it is she (the Persian Otizoë) whom the Magi had to consult for the election of their sovereigns;(776)

and he further describes a rock overshadowing Harpasa, in Asia, and placed in such a manner that “a single finger can move it, while the weight of the whole body makes it resist.”(777) Why then should not the rocking stones of Ireland, or those of Brimham, in Yorkshire, have served for the same mode of divination or oracular communications? The hugest of them are evidently the relics of the Atlanteans; the smaller, such as Brimham Rocks, with revolving stones on their summit, are copies from the more ancient lithoi. Had not the Bishops of the Middle Ages destroyed all the plans of the Dracontia they could lay their hands on, Science would know more of these.(778) As it is, we know that they were universally used during long prehistoric ages, and all for the same purposes of prophecy and magic. É. Biot, a member of the Institute of France, published in the Antiquités de France (vol. ix), an article showing the Chatampéramba (the “Field of Death,” or ancient burial ground in Malabar), to be identical in situation with the old tombs at Carnac; that is to say, “a prominence and a central tomb.” Bones are found in the tombs, and Mr. Halliwell tells us that some of these are enormous, the natives calling the tombs the “dwellings of the Râkshasas” or giants. Several stone circles, “considered the work of the Panch Pândava (five Pândus), as all such monuments are in India, where they are to be found in such great numbers,” when opened by the direction of Rajah Vasariddi, “were found to contain human bones of a very large size.”(779)

Again, De Mirville is right in his generalization, if not in his conclusions. As the long cherished theory that the Dracontia are mostly witnesses to “great natural geological commotions” (Charton), and “the work of Nature” (Cambry), is now exploded, his remarks are very just:

We advise Science to reflect .... and, above all, no longer to class Titans and Giants among primitive legends; for their works are there, under our eyes, and those rocking masses will oscillate on their basis to the end of the world to help them to realize once for all, that one is not altogether a candidate for Charenton for believing in wonders certified to by the whole of Antiquity.(780)

This is just what we can never repeat too often, though it may be that the voices of both Occultists and Roman Catholics are raised in the desert. Nevertheless, no one can fail to see that Science is as inconsistent, to say the least, in its modern speculations, as was ancient and mediæval Theology in its interpretations of the so‐called Revelation. Science would have men descend from the pithecoid ape—a transformation requiring millions of years—and yet fears to make Mankind older than 100,000 years! Science teaches the gradual transformation of species, natural selection and evolution from the lowest form to the highest, from mollusc to fish, from reptile to bird and mammalian—yet it refuses to man, who is physiologically only a higher mammal and animal, such a transformation of his external form. But if the monstrous Iguanodon of the Wealden may have been the ancestor of the diminutive Iguana of to‐day, why could not the monstrous man of the Secret Doctrine have become the modern man—the link between Animal and Angel? Is there anything more unscientific in this “theory” than in that of refusing to man a spiritual immortal Ego, making of him an automaton, and ranking him, at the same time, as a distinct genus in the system of Nature? Occult Sciences may be less scientific than the present Exact Sciences, they are nevertheless more logical and consistent in their teachings. Physical forces, and the natural affinities of atoms may be sufficient as factors to transform a plant into an animal; but it requires more than the mere interplay between certain material aggregates and their environment, to call to life a fully conscious man, even though he were no more indeed than a ramification between two “poor cousins” of the quadrumanous order. Occult Sciences admit with Hæckel that (objective) Life on our Globe “is a logical postulate of scientific natural history,” but add that the rejection of a like spiritual involution, from within without, of invisible subjective Spirit‐ Life—Eternal and a Principle in Nature—is more illogical, if possible, than to say that the Universe and all in it has been gradually built by “blind forces” inherent in Matter, without any external help.

Suppose an Occultist were to claim that the first grand organ of a cathedral had come originally into being as follows: first, there was a progressive and gradual elaboration in space of an organizable material, which resulted in the production of a state of matter named organic protein; then, under the influence of incident forces, these states having been thrown into a phase of unstable equilibrium, they slowly and majestically evolved into new combinations of carved and polished wood, of brass pins and staples, of leather and ivory, wind‐pipes and bellows; after which, having adapted all its parts into one harmonious and symmetrical machine, the organ suddenly pealed forth Mozart’s “Requiem”; this was followed by a Sonata of Beethoven, etc., ad infinitum, its keys playing of themselves and the wind blowing into the pipes by its own inherent force and fancy. What would Science say to such a theory? Yet, it is precisely in such wise that the materialistic savants tell us that the Universe was formed, with its millions of beings, and man, its spiritual crown.

Whatever may have been the real inner thought of Mr. Herbert Spencer, when writing on the subject of the gradual transformation of species, his words apply to our doctrine.

Construed in terms of evolution, every kind of being is conceived as a product of modifications wrought by insensible gradations on a preëxisting kind of being.(781)

Then why, in this case, should not historical man be the product of a modification on a preëxistent and prehistorical kind of man, even supposing for argument’s sake that there is nothing within him to last longer than, or live independently of, his physical structure? But this is not so! For, when we are told that “organic matters are produced in the laboratory by what we may literally call artificial evolution”(782)—we answer the distinguished English philosopher, that Alchemists and great Adepts did as much, and, indeed, far more, before the Chemists ever attempted to “build out of dissociated elements complex combinations.” The Homunculi of Paracelsus are a fact in Alchemy, and will become one in Chemistry very likely, and then Mrs. Shelley’s Frankenstein’s monster will have to be regarded as a prophecy. But no Chemist, or Alchemist either, will ever endow such a monster with more than animal instinct, unless indeed he does that with which the “Progenitors” are credited, namely, leave his own Physical Body, and incarnate in the “Empty Form.” But even this would be an artificial, not a natural man, for our “Progenitors” had, in the course of eternal evolution, to become Gods before they became Men.

The above digression—if indeed it is one—is an attempt at justification before the few thinking men of the coming century who may read this.

It also gives the reason why the best and most spiritual men of our present day can no longer be satisfied with either Science or Theology, and why they prefer any “psychic craze” to the dogmatic assertions of the pair, since neither of them, in its infallibility, has anything better to offer than blind faith. Universal tradition is by far the safer guide in life. And universal tradition shows Primitive Man living for ages together with his Creators and first Instructors—the Elohim—in the World’s “Garden of Eden,” or “Delight.”(783)

45. THE FIRST GREAT WATERS CAME. THEY SWALLOWED THE SEVEN GREAT ISLANDS (A).

46. ALL HOLY SAVED, THE UNHOLY DESTROYED. WITH THEM MOST OF THE HUGE ANIMALS, PRODUCED FROM THE SWEAT OF THE EARTH (B).

(a) As this subject—the fourth great Deluge on our Globe in this Round—is fully treated in the Sections that follow the last Stanza, to say anything more at present would be a mere anticipation. The seven Great Islands (Dvîpas) belonged to the Continent of Atlantis. The Secret Teachings show that the Deluge overtook the Fourth, Giant Race, not on account of its depravity, or because it had become “black with sin,” but simply because such is the fate of every Continent, which—like everything else under our Sun—is born, lives, becomes decrepit, and dies. This was when the Fifth Race was in its infancy.

(b) Thus the Giants perished—the Magicians and the Sorcerers, adds the fancy of popular tradition. But “all holy saved,” and alone the “unholy” were “destroyed.” This was due, however, as much to the prevision of the “holy” ones, who had not lost the use of their Third Eye, as to Karma and Natural Law. Speaking of the subsequent Race, our Fifth Humanity, the Commentary says:

Alone the handful of those Elect, whose Divine Instructors had gone to inhabit that Sacred Island—“from whence the last Saviour will come”—now kept mankind from becoming one‐half the exterminator of the other [as mankind is now—H. P. B.]. It [mankind] became divided. Two‐ thirds of it were ruled by Dynasties of lower, material Spirits of the Earth, who took possession of the easily accessible bodies; one‐third remained faithful, and joined with the nascent Fifth Race—the Divine Incarnates. When the Poles moved [for the fourth time] this did not affect those who were protected, and who had separated from the Fourth Race. Like the Lemurians—alone the ungodly Atlanteans perished, and “were seen no more”...!

Stanza XII. The Fifth Race And Its Divine Instructors.

47. The remnants of the first two Races disappear for ever. Groups of the various Atlantean races saved from the Deluge along with the Forefathers of the Fifth. 48. The origins of our present Race, the Fifth. The first Divine Dynasties. 49. The earliest glimmerings in history, now pinned to the allegorical chronology of the Bible, and “universal” history slavishly following it. The nature of the first Instructors and Civilizers of mankind.

47. FEW(784) REMAINED. SOME YELLOW, SOME BROWN AND BLACK, AND SOME RED REMAINED. THE MOON‐COLOURED(785) WERE GONE FOR EVER (A).

48. THE FIFTH(786) PRODUCED FROM THE HOLY STOCK REMAINED; IT WAS RULED OVER BY THE FIRST DIVINE KINGS.

49. ... THE SERPENTS WHO RE‐DESCENDED, WHO MADE PEACE WITH THE FIFTH,(787) WHO TAUGHT AND INSTRUCTED IT (b)....

(a) This Shloka relates to the Fifth Race. History does not begin with it, but living and ever‐recurring tradition does. History—or what is called history—does not go back further than the fantastic origins of our fifth sub‐race, a “few thousands” of years. It is the sub‐divisions of the first sub‐race of the Fifth Root‐Race which are referred to in the sentence, “Some yellow, some brown and black, and some red remained.” The “moon‐coloured”—i.e., the First and the Second Races—were gone for ever; ay, without leaving any traces whatever—and that, so far back as the third “Deluge” of the Third Lemurian Race, that “Great Dragon,” whose tail sweeps whole nations out of existence in the twinkling of an eye. And this is the true meaning of the verse in the Commentary which says:

The Great Dragon has respect but for the Serpents of Wisdom, the Serpents whose holes are now under the Triangular Stones.

Or in other words, “the pyramids, at the four corners of the world.”

(b) This puts clearly what is mentioned more than once elsewhere in the Commentaries; namely, that the Adepts or “Wise” men of the Third, Fourth and Fifth Races dwelt in subterranean habitats, generally under some kind of pyramidal structure, if not actually under a pyramid. For such “pyramids” existed in the “four corners of the world” and were never the monopoly of the land of the Pharaohs, though indeed until they were found scattered all over the two Americas, under and above ground, beneath and amidst virgin forests, and also in plain and vale, they were generally supposed to be the exclusive property of Egypt. If true geometrically correct pyramids are no longer found in European regions, nevertheless many of the supposed early neolithic caves, of the colossal triangular pyramidal and conical “menhirs” in Morbihan, and Brittany generally, many of the Danish “tumuli” and even of the “giant tombs” of Sardinia with their inseparable companions, the “nuraghi,” are so many more or less clumsy copies of the pyramids. Most of these are the works of the first settlers on the newly‐born continent and isles of Europe, the “some yellow, some brown and black, and some red” races that remained after the submersion of the last Atlantean continents and islands, 850,000 years ago—Plato’s Island excepted—and before the arrival of the great Âryan races; while others were built by the earliest immigrants from the East. Those who can hardly accept the placing of the antiquity of the human race so far back as the 57,000 years, the age assigned by Dr. Dowler to the skeleton found by him at New Orleans on the banks of the Mississippi, will, of course, reject these facts. But they may find themselves mistaken some day. We may disparage the foolish self‐glorification of the Arcadians who styled themselves “older than the Moon” (προσέληνοι), and of the people of Attica, who claimed that they had existed before the Sun appeared in Heaven—but not their undeniable antiquity. Nor can we laugh at the universal belief that we had giant ancestors. The fact that the bones of the Mammoth and Mastodon, and, in one case, those of a gigantic Salamander, have been mistaken for human bones, does not make away with the difficulty that, of all the Mammalians, man is the only one whom Science will not allow to have dwarfed down, like all other animal frames, from the giant Homo Diluvii to the creature between five and six feet that he is now.

But the “Serpents of Wisdom” have preserved their records well, and the history of human evolution is traced in Heaven as it is traced on underground walls. Humanity and the Stars are bound together indissolubly, because of the Intelligences that rule the latter.

Modern Symbologists may scoff at this and call it “fancy,” but as Mr. Staniland Wake writes:

It is unquestionable that the Deluge has [ever] been associated in the legends of some Eastern peoples not only with the Pyramids, but also with the constellations.(788)

The “Old Dragon” is identical with the “Great Flood,” says Mr. Proctor:

We know that in the past the constellation of the Dragon was at the pole, or boss, of the celestial sphere. In stellar temples, ... the Dragon would be the uppermost or ruling constellation.... It is singular how closely these constellations ... correspond in sequence and in range of right ascension with the events recorded respecting the [Biblical] Flood.(789)

The reasons for this singularity, however, have been made abundantly clear in this work. It only shows that there were several Deluges confused in the memories and traditions of the sub‐races of the Fifth Race. The first great Flood was astronomical and cosmical, while several others were terrestrial. And yet our very learned friend Mr. Gerald Massey—an initiate truly in the mysteries of the British Museum, still only a self‐initiate—declared and insisted that the Atlantean Submersion and Deluge were only the anthropomorphized fancies of ignorant people, and that Atlantis was no better than an “astronomical allegory.” But the great zodiacal allegory is based upon historical events, and allegory can hardly interfere with history; moreover, every student of Occultism knows what that astronomical and zodiacal allegory means. Dr. Smith shows in the Nimrod Epic of the Assyrian tablets the real meaning of the allegory.

[Its twelve cantos] refer to the annual course of the Sun through the twelve months of the year. Each tablet answers to a special month, and contains a distinct reference to the animal forms in the signs of the Zodiac; ... [the eleventh canto being] consecrated to Rimmon, the God of storms and rain, and harmonizes with the eleventh sign of the Zodiac—Aquarius, or the Waterman.(790)

But even this is preceded in the old Records by the pre‐astronomical Cosmic Flood, which became allegorized and symbolized in the above Zodiacal or Noah’s Flood. But this has nothing to do with Atlantis. The Pyramids are closely connected with the ideas of both the constellation of the Great Dragon, the “Dragons of Wisdom,” or the great Initiates of the Third and Fourth Races, and the floods of the Nile, regarded as a divine reminder of the great Atlantic Flood. The astronomical records of Universal History, however, are said to have had their beginnings with the third sub‐race of the Fourth Root‐Race or the Atlanteans. When was it? Occult data show that even since the time of the regular establishment of the zodiacal calculations in Egypt, the poles have been thrice inverted.

We will presently return again to this statement. Such symbols as are represented by the Signs of the Zodiac—a fact which offers a handle to Materialists upon which to hang their one‐sided theories and opinions—have too profound a signification, and their bearing upon our Humanity is too important, to suffer dismissal in a few words. Meanwhile, we have to consider the meaning of the statement, in Shloka 48, concerning the “first Divine Kings,” who are said to have “redescended,” guided and instructed our Fifth Race after the last Deluge! We shall consider this last claim historically in the Sections that follow, but must end with a few more details on the subject of “Serpents.”

The rough commentaries on the Archaic Stanzas have to end here. Further elucidation requires proofs obtained from ancient, mediæval, and modern works which have treated of these subjects. All such evidence has now to be gathered in, collated and brought together in better order, so as to compel the attention of the reader to this wealth of historical proofs. And as the manifold meaning of the weird and suggestive symbol (so often referred to) of the “tempter of man”—in the orthodox light of the Church—can never be too strongly insisted upon, it seems more advisable to exhaust the subject by every available proof, at this juncture, even at the risk of repetition. The Titans and Kabirs have been invariably made out by our Theologians and some pious Symbologists to be indissolubly connected with the grotesque personage called the “Devil,” and every proof which goes against their theory has been hitherto as invariably rejected and ignored. The Occultist must, therefore, neglect nothing which may tend to defeat this conspiracy of slander. And so we propose to divide the subjects involved in these last three Verses into several groups, and to examine them as carefully and as fully as space permits. A few more details may thus be added to the general evidences of antiquity, on the most disputed tenets of Occultism and the Esoteric Doctrine—the bulk of which, however, will be found in Part II, on Symbology.

Serpents And Dragons Under Different Symbolisms.

The name of the Dragon in Chaldæa was not written phonetically, but was represented by two monograms, meaning probably, according to the Orientalists, the “scaly one.” “This description,” very pertinently remarks G. Smith, “of course might apply either to a fabulous dragon, a serpent, or a fish.” To this we may add that, in one aspect, it applies to Makara, the tenth Zodiacal Sign, the Sanskrit term for a nondescript amphibious animal, generally called Crocodile, but really signifying something else. This, then, is a virtual admission that the Assyriologists, at all events, know nothing certain as to the status of the Dragon in ancient Chaldæa. It was from Chaldæa that the Hebrews got their symbolism, only to be afterwards robbed of it by the Christians, who made of the “scaly one” a living entity and a maleficent power.

A specimen of Dragons, “winged and scaled,” may be seen in the British Museum. In this representation of the events of the Fall, according to the same authority, there are also two figures sitting on each side of a “tree,” and holding out their hands to the “apple,” while at the back of the “tree” is the Dragon‐Serpent. Esoterically, the two figures are two “Chaldees” ready for Initiation, the Serpent symbolizing the Initiator; while the jealous Gods, who curse the three, are the exoteric profane clergy. Not much of the literal “biblical event” there, as any Occultist can see!

“The Great Dragon has respect but for the Serpents of Wisdom,” says the Stanza; thus proving the correctness of our explanation of the two figures and the “Serpent.”

“The Serpents who redescended, .... who taught and instructed” the Fifth Race. What sane man, in our day, is capable of believing that real serpents are hereby meant? Hence the rough guess—now become almost an axiom with men of Science—that those who in antiquity wrote upon various sacred Dragons and Serpents were either superstitious and credulous people, or were bent upon deceiving those more ignorant than themselves. Yet, from Homer downwards, the term implied something hidden from the Profane.

“Terrible are the Gods when they manifest themselves”—those Gods whom men call Dragons. And Ælianus, treating in his De Naturâ Animalium of these ophidian symbols, makes certain remarks which show that he well understood the nature of these most ancient of symbols. Thus with reference to the above Homeric verse he most pertinently explains:

For the Dragon, while sacred and to be worshipped, has within himself something still more of the divine nature of which it is better [for others?] to remain in ignorance.(791)

The “Dragon” symbol has a septenary meaning, and of these seven meanings, the highest and the lowest may be given. The highest is identical with the “Self‐born,” the Logos, the Hindû Aja. With the Christian Gnostics called the Naasenians, or Serpent‐worshippers, he was the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son. His symbol was the constellation of the Dragon.(792) Its seven “Stars” are the seven stars held in the hand of the “Alpha and Omega” in Revelation. In its most terrestrial meaning, the term “Dragon” was applied to the “Wise” men.

This portion of the religious symbolism of antiquity is very abstruse and mysterious, and may remain incomprehensible to the profane. In our modern day it so jars on the Christian ear that, in spite of our boasted civilization, it can hardly escape being regarded as a direct denunciation of the most cherished of Christian dogmas. Such a subject required, to do it justice, the pen and genius of Milton, whose poetical fiction has now taken root in the Church as a revealed dogma.

Did the allegory of the Dragon and his supposed conqueror in Heaven originate with St. John, in his Revelation? Emphatically we answer—No. St. John’s “Dragon” is Neptune, the symbol of Atlantean Magic.

In order that we may demonstrate this negation, the reader is asked to examine the symbolism of the Serpent or the Dragon under its several aspects.

The Sidereal And Cosmic Glyphs.

Every Astronomer—not to speak of Occultists and Astrologers—knows that, figuratively speaking, the Astral Light, the Milky Way, and also the Path of the Sun to the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, as well as the Circles of the Sidereal or Tropical Year, were always called “Serpents” in the allegorical and mystic phraseology of the Adepts.

This, cosmically, as well as metaphorically. Poseidon is a “Dragon”—the Dragon “Chozzar, called by the profane Neptune” according to the Peratæ Gnostics, the “Good and Perfect Serpent,” the Messiah of the Naaseni, whose symbol in Heaven is Draco.

But we ought to discriminate between the various characters of this symbol. Now Zoroastrian Esotericism is identical with that of the Secret Doctrine, and when an Occultist reads in the Vendîdâd complaints uttered against the “Serpent,” whose bites have transformed the beautiful, eternal spring of Airyana Vaêjô, changing it into winter, generating disease and death, and at the same time mental and psychic consumption—he knows that the Serpent alluded to is the North Pole, and also the Pole of the Heavens.(793) These two axes produce the seasons according to their angle of inclination to each other. The two axes were no more parallel; hence the eternal spring of Airyana Vaêjô “by the good river Dâitya” had disappeared, and “the Âryan Magi had to emigrate to Sogdiana”—say the exoteric accounts. But the Esoteric Teaching states that the pole had passed from the equator, and that the “Land of Bliss” of the Fourth Race, its inheritance from the Third, had now become the region of desolation and woe. This alone ought to be an incontrovertible proof of the great antiquity of the Zoroastrian Scriptures. The Neo‐Âryans of the post‐ diluvian age could, of course, hardly recognize the mountains, on the summits of which their forefathers had met before the Flood, and conversed with the pure “Yazatas” or celestial Spirits of the Elements, whose life and food they had once shared. As shown by Eckstein:

The Vendîdâd seems to point out a great change in the atmosphere of central Asia; strong volcanic eruptions and the collapse of a whole range of mountains in the neighbourhood of the Kara‐Korum chain.(794)

The Egyptians, according to Eusebius, who, for a wonder, once wrote the truth, symbolized Kosmos by a large fiery circle, with a serpent with a hawk’s head lying across its diameter.

Here we see the pole of the earth within the plane of the ecliptic, attended with all the fiery consequences that must arise from such a state of the heavens: when the whole Zodiac, in 25,000 [odd] years, must have “redden’d with the solar blaze”; and each sign must have been vertical to the polar region.(795)

Meru, the Abode of the Gods, as explained before, was placed in the North Pole, while Pâtâla, the Nether Region, was supposed to lie towards the South. As each symbol in Esoteric Philosophy has seven keys, Meru and Pâtâla have, geographically, one significance and represent localities, while, astronomically, they have another, and mean the “two poles”; the latter meaning led to their being often rendered in exoteric sectarianism as the “Mountain” and the “Pit,” or Heaven and Hell. If we for the present hold only to the astronomical and geographical significance, it may be found that the Ancients knew the topography and nature of the Arctic and Antarctic regions better than any of our modern Astronomers. They had reasons, and good ones, for naming one the “Mountain” and the other the “Pit.” As the author just quoted half explains, Helion and Acheron meant nearly the same. “Heli‐on is the Sun in his highest,” Heli‐os or Eli‐os meaning the “most high,” and Acheron is 32 degrees above the pole, and 32 below it, the allegorical river being thus supposed to touch the northern horizon in the latitude of 32 degrees. The vast concave, that is for ever hidden from our sight and which surrounded the southern pole, the first astronomers called the Pit, while observing, toward the northern pole, that a certain circuit in the heavens always appeared above the horizon—they called it the Mountain. As Meru is the high abode of the Gods, these were said to ascend and descend periodically; by which (astronomically) the Zodiacal Gods were meant, the passing of the original north pole of the Earth to the south pole of the Heaven.

In that age at noon, the ecliptic would be parallel with the meridian, and part of the Zodiac would descend from the north pole to the north horizon; crossing the eight coils of the serpent [eight sidereal years, or over 200,000 solar years], which would seem like an imaginary ladder with eight staves reaching from the earth up to the pole, i.e., the throne of Jove. Up this ladder, then, the Gods, i.e., the Signs of the Zodiac, ascended and descended. [Jacob’s ladder and the Angels] .... It is more than 400,000 years since the Zodiac formed the sides of this ladder.(796)

This is an ingenious explanation, even if it is not altogether free from Occult heresy. Yet it is nearer the truth than many of a more scientific and especially theological character. As said, the Christian Trinity was purely astronomical from its beginning. This it was which made Rutilius say of those who euhemerized it: “Judæa gens, radix stultorum.”

But the profane, and especially Christian fanatics who are ever in search of scientific corroboration for their dead‐letter texts, persist in seeing in the Celestial Pole the true Serpent of Genesis, Satan, the enemy of mankind; whereas it is really—a cosmic metaphor. When the Gods are said to forsake the Earth, it means not only the Gods, the Protectors and Instructors, but also the minor Gods—the Regents of the Zodiacal Signs. The former, as actual and existing Entities which gave birth to, nursed, and instructed Mankind in its early youth, appear in every Scripture, in that of the Zoroastrians as well as in the Hindû Gospels. Ormazd, or Ahura Mazda, the “Lord of Wisdom,” is the synthesis of the Amshaspands, or Amesha Spentas, the “Immortal Benefactors,”(797) the “Word,” or the Logos, and its six highest aspects in Mazdeanism. These “Immortal Benefactors” are described in Zamyad Yasht as:

The Amesha Spentas, the shining, having efficacious eyes, great, helpful ... imperishable and pure ... which are all seven of like mind, like speech, all seven doing alike ... which are the creators and destroyers of the creatures of Ahura Mazda, their creators and overseers, their protectors and rulers.

These few lines are sufficient to indicate the dual and even the triple character of the Amshaspands, our Dhyân Chohans or the “Serpents of Wisdom.” They are identical with, and yet separate from Ormazd (Ahura Mazda). They are also the Angels of the Stars of the Christians—the Star‐ Yazatas of the Zoroastrians—or again the seven Planets (including the Sun) of every religion.(798) The epithet, “the shining, having efficacious eyes,” proves it. This on the physical and sidereal planes. On the spiritual, they are the Divine Powers of Ahura Mazda; but on the astral or psychic plane again, they are the “Builders,” the “Watchers,” the Pitris, or Fathers, and the first Preceptors of Mankind.

When mortals have become sufficiently spiritualized, there will be no more need of forcing them into a correct comprehension of ancient Wisdom. Men will know then, that there never yet was a great World‐reformer whose name has passed into our generation, who (a) was not a direct emanation of the Logos (under whatever name known to us) i.e., an essential incarnation of one of the “Seven,” of the “Divine Spirit who is sevenfold”; and (b) who had not appeared before, in past Cycles. They will recognize, then, the cause which produces certain riddles of the ages, in both history and chronology; the reason, for instance, why it is impossible for them to assign any reliable date to Zoroaster, who is found multiplied by twelve and fourteen in the Dabistan; why the numbers and individualities of the Rishis and Manus are so mixed up; why Krishna and Buddha speak of themselves as reïncarnations, Krishna identifying himself with the Rishi Nârâyana, and Gautama giving a series of his previous births; and why the former, especially, being “the very supreme Brahmâ,” is yet called Anshânshâvatâra—“a part of a part” only of the Supreme on Earth; finally, why Osiris is a Great God, and at the same time a “Prince on Earth,” who reäppears in Thoth Hermes; and why Jesus (in Hebrew, Joshua) of Nazareth is recognized, kabalistically, in Joshua, the son of Nun, as well as in other personages. The Esoteric Doctrine explains all this by saying that each of these, as also many others, had first appeared on Earth as one of the Seven Powers of the Logos, individualized as a God or Angel (Messenger); then, mixed with Matter, they had reäppeared in turn as great Sages and Instructors who “taught” the Fifth Race, after having instructed the two preceding Races, had ruled during the Divine Dynasties, and had finally sacrificed themselves, to be reborn under various circumstances for the good of Mankind, and for its salvation at certain critical periods; until in their last incarnations they had become truly only the “parts of a part” on Earth, though de facto the One Supreme in Nature.

This is the metaphysics of Theogony. Now every “Power” among the Seven, once he is individualized, has in his charge one of the elements of creation, and rules over it;(799) hence the many meanings in every symbol. These, unless interpreted according to the Esoteric methods, generally lead to inextricable confusion.

Does the Western Kabalist, who is generally an opponent of the Eastern Occultist, require a proof? Let him open Éliphas Lévi’s Histoire de la Magie,(800) and carefully examine his “Grand Symbole Kabbalistique” from the Zohar. He will find there, in the engraving, a development of the “interlaced triangles,” a white man above and a black woman below reversed, the legs passing under the extended arms of the male figure, and protruding behind the shoulders, while their hands join at an angle on each side. Éliphas Lévi makes of this symbol, God and Nature; or God, “Light,” mirrored inversely in Nature and Matter, “Darkness.” Kabalistically and symbolically he is right; but only so far as emblematical cosmogony goes. Neither has he invented the symbol, nor have the Kabalists. The two figures in white and black stone have existed in the temples of Egypt from time immemorial, agreeably to tradition, and historically‐ever since the day of King Cambyses, who personally saw them. Therefore the symbol must have been in existence for nearly 2,500 years. This, at the very least, for Cambyses, who was a son of Cyrus the Great, succeeded his father in the year 529 B.C. These figures were the two Kabiri personifying the opposite poles. Herodotus(801) tells posterity that when Cambyses entered the temple of the Kabirim, he burst into an inextinguishable fit of laughter, on perceiving what he thought to be a man erect and a woman standing on the top of her head before him. These were the poles, however, whose symbol was intended to commemorate “the passing of the original north pole of the earth to the south pole of the heaven,” as perceived by Mackey.(802) But they also represented the poles inverted, in consequence of the great inclination of the axis, which each time resulted in the displacement of the oceans, the submersion of the polar lands, and the consequent upheaval of new continents in the equatorial regions, and vice versâ. These Kabirim were the “Deluge” Gods.

This may help us to get at the key of the seemingly hopeless confusion among the numbers of names and titles given to one and the same Gods, and classes of Gods. Faber, at the beginning of this century, showed the identity of the Corybantes, Curetes, Dioscuri, Anactes, Dii Magni, Idei, Dactyli, Lares, Penates, Manes,(803) Titans, and Aletæ with the Kabiri. And we have shown that the latter were the same as the Manus, the Rishis, and our Dhyân Chohans who incarnated in the Elect of the Third and Fourth Races. Thus, while in Theogony the Kabiri‐Titans were seven Great Gods, cosmically and astronomically the Titans were called Atlantes, because, perhaps, as Faber says, they were connected with at‐al‐as, the “divine sun,” and with tit, the “deluge.” But this, if true, is only the exoteric version. Esoterically, the meaning of their symbols depends on the appellation, or title, used. The seven mysterious, awe‐inspiring Great Gods—the Dioscuri,(804) the deities surrounded with the darkness of Occult Nature—become the Idei Dactyli, or Ideic “Fingers,” with the Adept‐healers by metals. The true etymology of the name Lares, now signifying “Ghosts,” must be sought in the Etruscan word lars, “conductor,” “leader.” Sanchuniathon translates the word Aletæ as “fire worshippers,” and Faber believes it to be derived from al‐orit, the “God of fire.” Both are right, for in both cases it is a reference to the Sun, the “highest” God, toward whom the Planetary Gods “gravitate” (astronomically and allegorically), and whom they worship. As Lares, they are truly the Solar Deities, though Faber’s etymology, that “Lar is a contraction of El‐Ar, the solar deity,”(805) is not very correct. They are the Lares, the Conductors and Leaders of men. As Aletæ, they were the seven Planets—astronomically; and as Lares, the Regents of these Planets, our Protectors and Rulers—mystically. For purposes of exoteric or phallic worship, and also cosmically, they were the Kabiri, whose attributes and dual capacities were denoted by the names of the temples to which they respectively belonged, and also by those of their priests. They all belonged, however, to the septenary creative and informing groups of Dhyân Chohans. The Sabæans, who worshipped the “Regents of the Seven Planets” just as the Hindûs worship their Rishis, held Seth and his son Hermes (Enoch or Enos) as the highest among the Planetary Gods. Seth and Enos were borrowed from the Sabæans and then disfigured by the Jews (exoterically); but the truth about them can still be discovered even in Genesis.(806) Seth is the “Progenitor” of those early men of the Third Race in whom the Planetary Angels had incarnated; he was himself a Dhyân Chohan and belonged to the informing Gods, and Enos (Hanoch or Enoch), or Hermes, was said to be his son—Enos being a generic name for all the early “Seers” (Enoïchion). Thence the worship. The Arabic writer Soyuti says that the earliest records mention Seth, or Set, as the founder of Sabaism, and that the pyramids which embody the planetary system were regarded as the place of sepulchre of both Seth and Idrus (Hermes or Enoch);(807) that thither Sabæans proceeded on pilgrimage, and chanted prayers seven times a day, turning to the North (Mount Meru, Kaph, Olympus, etc.).(808) Abd Allatif also tells us some curious things about the Sabæans and their books. So also does Eddin Ahmed Ben Yahya, who wrote 200 years later. While the latter maintains “that each pyramid was consecrated to a star” (a Star Regent rather), Abd Allatif assures us that he had read in ancient Sabæan books that “one pyramid was the tomb of Agathodæmon and the other of Hermes”:(809)

Agathodæmon was none other than Seth, and, according to some writers, Hermes was his son, adds Mr. Staniland Wake in The Great Pyramid.(810)

Thus, while in Samothrace and the oldest Egyptian temples the Kabiri were the Great Cosmic Gods—the Seven and the Forty‐nine Sacred Fires—in the Grecian fanes their rites became mostly phallic, and therefore, to the profane, obscene. In the latter case they were three and four, or seven—the male and female principles—the crux ansata. This division shows why some classical writers held that they were only three, while others named four. And these were Axieros (in his female aspect Demeter); Axiokersa (Persephone);(811) Axiokersos (Pluto or Hades); and Kadmos or Kasmilos (Hermes—not the ithyphallic Hermes mentioned by Herodotus,(812) but “he of the sacred legend,” which was explained only during the Samothracian Mysteries). This identification, which is due, according to the Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius,(813) to an indiscretion of Mnaseas, is really no identification at all, as names alone do not reveal much.(814) Others again have maintained, being equally right in their way, that there were only two Kabiri. These were, esoterically, the two Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, and exoterically, Jupiter and Bacchus. These two personified the terrestrial poles, geodesically; the terrestrial pole, and the pole of the heavens, astronomically; and also the physical and the spiritual man. The story of Semele and Jupiter and the birth of Bacchus, Bimater, with all the circumstances attending it, needs only to be read esoterically for the understanding of the allegory. The parts played in the event by the Fire, Water, Earth, etc., in the many versions, will show how the “Father of the Gods” and the “merry God of Wine” were also made to personify the two terrestrial poles. The telluric, metalline, magnetic, electric and the fiery elements are all so many allusions and references to the cosmic and astronomic character of the diluvian tragedy. In Astronomy, the poles are indeed the “heavenly measure”; and so are the Kabiri‐Dioscuri, as will be shown, and the Kabiri‐Titans, to whom Diodorus ascribes the “invention of Fire”(815) and the art of manufacturing iron. Moreover, Pausanias(816) shows that the original Kabiric deity was Prometheus.

But the fact that, astronomically, the Titan‐Kabirim were also the Generators and Regulators of the Seasons, and, cosmically, the great Volcanic Energies—the Gods presiding over all the metals and terrestrial works—does not prevent them from being, in their original divine characters, the beneficent Entities who, symbolized in Prometheus, brought light to the world, and endowed Humanity with intellect and reason. They are preëminently in every Theogony—especially in the Hindû—the Sacred Divine Fires, Three, Seven, or Forty‐nine, according as the allegory demands it. Their very names prove it, for they are the Agni‐putra, or Sons of the Fire, in India, and the Genii of the Fire under numerous names in Greece and elsewhere. Welcker, Maury, and now Decharme, show the name kabeiros meaning “the powerful through fire,” from the Greek καίω “to burn.” The Semitic word kabirim contains the idea of “the powerful, the mighty, and the great,” answering to the Greek μεγάλοι, δυνατοί, but these are later epithets. These Gods were universally worshipped, and their origin is lost in the night of time. Yet whether propitiated in Phrygia, Phœnicia, the Troad, Thrace, Egypt, Lemnos or Sicily, their cult was always connected with Fire, their temples ever built in the most volcanic localities, and in exoteric worship they belonged to the Chthonian Divinities, and therefore has Christianity made of them Infernal Gods.

They are truly “the great, beneficent and powerful Gods,” as Cassius Hermone calls them.(817) At Thebes, Core and Demeter, the Kabirim, had a sanctuary,(818) and at Memphis, the Kabiri had a temple so sacred, that none, excepting the priests, were suffered to enter its holy precincts.(819) But we must not, at the same time, lose sight of the fact that the title of Kabiri was generic; that the Kabiri, the mighty Gods as well as mortals, were of both sexes, and also terrestrial, celestial and cosmic; that while, in their later capacity of rulers of sidereal and terrestrial powers, a purely geological phenomenon—as it is now regarded—was symbolized in the persons of those rulers, they were also, in the beginning of times, the Rulers of Mankind, when, incarnated as Kings of the “Divine Dynasties,” they gave the first impulse to civilization, and directed the mind with which they had endued men, to the invention and perfection of all the arts and sciences. Thus the Kabiri are said to have appeared as the benefactors of men, and as such they lived for ages in the memory of nations. To these Kabiri or Titans is ascribed the invention of letters (the Deva‐nâgari, or alphabet and language of the Gods), of laws and legislature, of architecture, as also of the various modes of magic, so‐called, and of the medical use of plants. Hermes, Orpheus, Cadmus, Asclepius, all those Demi‐gods and Heroes, to whom is ascribed the revelation of sciences to men, and in whom Bryant, Faber, Bishop Cumberland, and so many other Christian writers—too zealous for plain truth—would force posterity to see only Pagan copies of one sole prototype, named Noah—all are generic names.

It is the Kabiri who are credited with having revealed the great boon of agriculture, by producing corn or wheat. What Isis‐Osiris, the once living Kabiria, did in Egypt, that Ceres is said to have done in Sicily; they all belong to one class.

That serpents were ever emblems of wisdom and prudence is again shown by the Caduceus of Mercury, one with Thot, the God of Wisdom, with Hermes, and so on. The two serpents, entwined round the rod, are phallic symbols of Jupiter and other Gods who transformed themselves into snakes for purposes of seducing Goddesses—only in the unclean fancies of profane Symbologists. The serpent has ever been the symbol of the Adept, and of his powers of immortality and divine knowledge. Mercury, in his psychopompic character, conducting and guiding the souls of the dead to Hades with his Caduceus and even raising them to life with it, is a simple and very transparent allegory. It shows the dual power of the Secret Wisdom: black and white Magic. It shows this personified Wisdom guiding the Soul after death, and displaying the power of calling to life that which is dead—a very deep metaphor if one but thinks over its meaning. All the peoples of antiquity, with one exception, reverenced this symbol; the exception being the Christians, who chose to forget the “brazen serpent” of Moses, and even the implied acknowledgment of the great wisdom and prudence of the “serpent” by Jesus himself, “Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” The Chinese, one of the oldest nations of our Fifth Race, made of it the emblem of their Emperors, who are thus the degenerate successors of the “Serpents” or Initiates, who ruled the early races of the Fifth Humanity. The Emperor’s throne is the “Dragon’s Seat,” and his dresses of State are embroidered with the likeness of the Dragon. The aphorisms in the oldest books of China, moreover, say plainly that the Dragon is a human, albeit divine, Being. Speaking of the “Yellow Dragon,” the chief of the others, the Twan‐ying‐t’u says:

His wisdom and virtue are unfathomable ... he does not go in company and does not live in herds [he is an ascetic].... He wanders in the wilds beyond the heavens. He goes and comes, fulfilling the decree [Karma]; at the proper seasons if there is perfection he comes forth, if not he remains [invisible].

And Lü‐lan asserts that Confucius said:

The Dragon feeds in the pure (water) [of Wisdom] and disports in the clear (water) [of Life].(820)

Our Divine Instructors.

Now Atlantis and the Phlegyan Isle are not the only records left of the Deluge. China has also her tradition and the story of an island or continent, which it calls Ma‐li‐ga‐si‐ma, and which Kæmpfer and Faber spell “Maurigasima,” for some mysterious phonetic reasons of their own. Kæmpfer, in his Japan,(821) gives the tradition: The island, owing to the iniquity of its giants, sinks to the bottom of the ocean, and Peiruun, the king, the Chinese Noah, escapes alone with his family owing to a warning of the Gods through two idols. It is that pious prince and his descendants who have peopled China. The Chinese traditions speak of the Divine Dynasties of Kings as frequently as do those of any other nation.

At the same time there is not an old fragment but shows belief in a multiform and even multigeneric evolution of human beings—spiritual, psychic, intellectual, and physical—just as is described in the present work. A few of these claims have now to be considered.

Our races—they all show—have sprung from Divine Races, by whatever name the latter may be called. Whether we deal with the Indian Rishis or Pitris; with the Chinese Chim‐nang and Tchan‐gy—their “Divine Man” and Demi‐gods; with the Akkadian Dingir and Mul‐lil—the Creative God and the “Gods of the Ghost‐world”; with the Egyptian Isis‐Osiris and Thot; with the Hebrew Elohim; or again with Manco‐Capac and his Peruvian progeny—the story varies nowhere. Every nation has either the seven and ten Rishi‐ Manus and Prajâpatis; the seven and ten Ki‐y; or ten and seven Amshaspands(822) (six exoterically); ten and seven Chaldæan Annedoti; ten and seven Sephiroth, etc. One and all have been derived from the primitive Dhyân Chohans of the Esoteric Doctrine, or the “Builders” of the Stanzas of Volume I. From Manu, Thot‐Hermes, Oannes‐Dagon, and Edris‐Enoch, down to Plato Panodorus, all tell us of seven Divine Dynasties, of seven Lemurian, and seven Atlantean divisions of the Earth; of the seven primitive and dual Gods who descend from their Celestial Abode(823) and reign on Earth, teaching mankind Astronomy, Architecture, and all the other sciences that have come down to us. These Beings appear first as Gods and Creators; then they merge in nascent man, to finally emerge as “Divine Kings and Rulers.” But this fact has been gradually forgotten. As Basnage shows, the Egyptians themselves confessed that Science had flourished in their country only since the time of Isis‐Osiris, whom they continued to adore as Gods, “though they had become princes in human form.” And he adds of the Divine Androgyne:

It is said that this prince [Isis‐Osiris] built cities in Egypt, stopped the overflowing of the Nile; invented agriculture, the use of the vine, music, astronomy, and geometry.

When Abul Feda, in his Historia Anteïslamitica,(824) says that the “Sabæan language” was established by Seth and Edris (Enoch)—he means Astronomy. In the Melelwa Nahil,(825) Hermes is called the disciple of Agathodæmon. And in another account,(826) Agathodæmon is mentioned as a “King of Egypt.” The Celepas Geraldinus gives us some curious traditions about Henoch, who is called the “Divine Giant.” In his Book of the Various Names of the Nile, the historian Ahmed Ben Yusouf Eltiphas tells us of the belief among the Semitic Arabs that Seth, who became later the Egyptian Typhon, Set, had been one of the Seven Angels, or Patriarchs, in the Bible; then he became a mortal and Adam’s son, after which he communicated the gift of prophecy and astronomical science to Jared, who passed it to his son Henoch. But Henoch (Idris), “the author of thirty books,” was “Sabæan by origin”—i.e., belonged to the Saba, “a Host”:

Having established the rites and ceremonies of primitive worship, he went to the East, where he constructed one hundred and forty cities, of which Edessa was the least important, then returned to Egypt where he became its King.(827)

Thus, he is identified with Hermes. But there were five Hermes—or rather one, who appeared, as did some Manus and Rishis, in several different characters. In the Burham i Kati, he is mentioned as Hormig, a name of the Planet Mercury or Budha; and Wednesday was sacred both to Hermes and Thot.(828) The Hermes of Oriental tradition was worshipped by the Phineatæ, and is said to have fled after the death of Argus into Egypt, and civilized it under the name of Thoth.(829) But under whichever of these characters, he is always credited with having transferred all the sciences from latent to active potency, i.e., with having been the first to teach Magic to Egypt and to Greece, before the days of Magna Græcia, and when the Greeks were not even Hellenes.

Not only does Herodotus, the “father of history,” tell us of the marvellous Dynasties of Gods that preceded the reign of mortals, followed by the Dynasties of Demi‐gods, Heroes, and finally men, but the whole series of classical authors support him. Diodorus, Eratosthenes, Plato, Manetho, etc., repeat the same story, and never vary in the order given.

As Creuzer shows:

It is, indeed, from the spheres of the stars wherein dwell the gods of light, that wisdom descends to the inferior spheres.... In the system of the ancient priests [Hierophants and Adepts] all things without exception, Gods, Genii, Souls [Manes], the whole world, are conjointly developed in space and duration. The pyramid may be considered as the symbol of this magnificent hierarchy of spirits.(830)

It is the modern historians—French Academicians, like Renan, chiefly—who have made more efforts to suppress truth by ignoring the ancient annals of Divine Kings, than is strictly consistent with honesty. But M. Renan could never have been more unwilling than was Eratosthenes (260 B.C.) to accept the unpalatable fact; and yet the latter found himself obliged to recognize its truth. For this, the great Astronomer is treated with much contempt by his colleagues 2,000 years later. Manetho becomes with them “a superstitious priest born and bred in the atmosphere of other lying priests of Heliopolis.” As the Demonologist De Mirville justly remarks:

All those historians and priests, so veracious when repeating stories of human kings and men, suddenly become extremely suspicious no sooner do they go back to their gods.

But there is the synchronistic table of Abydos, which, thanks to the genius of Champollion, has now vindicated the good faith of the priests of Egypt (of Manetho above all), and of Ptolemy, in the Turin papyrus, the most remarkable of all. In the words of the Egyptologist, De Rougé:

Champollion, struck with amazement, found that he had under his own eyes the remains of a list of Dynasties embracing the furthest mythic times, or the Reigns of the Gods and Heroes.... At the very beginning of this curious papyrus we have to arrive at the conviction that, so far back as even the period of Ramses, these mythic and heroical traditions were just as Manetho had transmitted them to us; we see figuring in them, as Kings of Egypt, the Gods Seb, Osiris, Set, Horus, Thoth‐Hermes, and the Goddess Ma, a long period of centuries being assigned to the reign of each of these.(831)

These synchronistic tables, besides the fact that they were disfigured by Eusebius for dishonest purposes, had never gone beyond Manetho. The chronology of the Divine Kings and Dynasties, like that of the age of humanity, has ever been in the hands of the priests, and kept secret from the profane multitudes.

Now though Africa, as a continent, it is said, appeared before that of Europe, nevertheless it came up later than Lemuria and even the earliest Atlantis. The whole region of what is now Egypt and the deserts was once upon a time covered with the sea. This was made known, firstly, by Herodotus, Strabo, Pliny, and others, and, secondly, through Geology. Abyssinia was once upon a time an island, and the Delta was the first country occupied by the pioneer emigrants who came with their Gods from the north‐east.

When was it? History is silent upon the subject. Fortunately we have the Dendera Zodiac, the planisphere on the ceiling of one of the oldest Egyptian temples, to record the fact. This Zodiac, with its mysterious three Virgos between Leo and Libra, has found its Œdipus to understand the riddle of its signs, and justify the truthfulness of those priests who told Herodotus, that their Initiates taught (a) that the poles of the Earth and the Ecliptic had formerly coincided, and (b) that even since their first Zodiacal records were commenced, the Poles have been three times within the plane of the Ecliptic.

Bailly had not sufficient words at command to express his surprise at the sameness of all such traditions about the Divine Races, and exclaims:

What are finally all those reigns of Indian Devas and [Persian] Peris; or, those reigns of the Chinese legends; those Tien‐hoang or the Kings of Heaven, quite distinct from the Ti‐hoang, or Kings on Earth, and the Gin‐hoang, the King men, distinctions which are in perfect accord with those of the Greeks and Egyptians, in enumerating their Dynasties of Gods, of Demi‐gods and Mortals.(832)

As says Panodorus:

Now, it is during these thousand years [before the Deluge], that the Reign of the Seven Gods who rule the world took place. It was during that period that those benefactors of humanity descended on Earth and taught men to calculate the course of the sun and moon by the twelve signs of the Ecliptic.(833)

Nearly five hundred years before the present era, the priests of Egypt showed Herodotus the statues of their human Kings and Pontiffs‐Piromis—the Arch‐prophets or Mahâ Chohans of the temples, born one from the other, without the intervention of woman—who had reigned before Menes, their first human King. These statues, he says, were enormous colossi in wood, three hundred and forty‐five in number, each of which had its name, history and annals. They also assured Herodotus—unless the most truthful of historians, the “father of history,” is now to be accused of fibbing, just in this instance—that no historian could ever understand or write an account of these superhuman Kings, unless he had studied and learned the history of the three Dynasties that preceded the human—namely, the Dynasties of the Gods, of the Demi‐gods, and of the Heroes, or Giants.(834) These “three” Dynasties are the three Races.

Translated into the language of the Esoteric Doctrine, these three Dynasties would also be those of the Devas, of the Kimpurushas, and of the Dânavas and Daityas—otherwise Gods, Celestial Spirits, and Giants or Titans. “Happy are those who are born, even from the condition of Gods, as men in Bhârata‐varsha!”—exclaim the incarnated Gods themselves, during the Third Root‐Race. Bhârata is generally India, but in this case it symbolizes the Chosen Land of those days, which was considered the best of the divisions of Jambu‐dvîpa, as it was the land of active (spiritual) works par excellence; the land of Initiation and of Divine Knowledge.(835)

Can one fail to recognize in Creuzer great powers of intuition, when, although he was almost unacquainted with the Âryan Hindû philosophies, which were but little known in his day, we find him writing:

We modern Europeans feel surprised when hearing talk of the Spirits of the Sun, Moon, etc. But we repeat again, the natural good sense and the upright judgment of the ancient peoples, quite foreign to our entirely material ideas of mechanics and physical sciences ... could not see in the stars and planets nothing but simple masses of light, or opaque bodies moving in circuits in sidereal space, merely according to the laws of attraction or repulsion; they saw in them living bodies, animated by spirits as they saw the same in every kingdom of nature.... This doctrine of spirits, so consistent and conformable to nature, from which it was derived, formed a grand and unique conception, wherein the physical, the moral, and the political aspects were all blended together.(836)

It is such a conception only that can lead man to form a correct conclusion about his origin and the genesis of everything in the Universe—of Heaven and Earth, between which he is a living link. Without such a psychological link, and the feeling of its presence, no Science can ever progress, and the realm of knowledge must be limited to the analysis of physical matter only.

Occultists believe in “spirits,” because they feel—and some see—themselves surrounded by them on every side.(837) Materialists do not. They live on this Earth, just as some creatures, in the world of insects and even of fishes, live surrounded by myriads of their own genus, without seeing, or so much as sensing them.(838)

Plato is the first sage among classical writers who speaks at length of the Divine Dynasties. He locates them on a vast continent which he calls Atlantis. Nor was Bailly the first or last to believe this. He had been preceded and anticipated in this theory by Father Kircher, the learned Jesuit, who in his Œdipus Ægyptiacus, writes:

I confess, for a long time I had regarded all this [the Dynasties and Atlantis] as pure fables (meras nugas) to the day when, better instructed in Oriental languages, I judged that all those legends must be, after all, only the development of a great truth.(839)

As De Rougemont shows, Theopompus, in his Meropis, made the priests of Phrygia and Asia Minor speak exactly as did the priests of Saïs when they revealed to Solon the history and fate of Atlantis. According to Theopompus, it was a unique continent of an indefinite size, containing two countries inhabited by two races—a fighting, warrior race, and a pious, meditative race(840)—which Theopompus symbolizes by two cities.(841) The pious “city” was continually visited by the Gods: the belligerent “city” was inhabited by various beings invulnerable by iron, who could be mortally wounded only by stone and wood.(842) De Rougemont treats this as a pure fiction of Theopompus and even sees a fraud (supercherie) in the assertion of the Saïtic priests. This was denounced by the Demonologists as illogical. In the ironical words of De Mirville:

A supercherie which was based on a belief, the product of the faith of the whole of antiquity; a supposition which yet gave its name to a whole mountain chain (Atlas); which specified with the greatest precision a topographical region (by placing this land at a small distance from Cadiz and the Strait of Calpe), which prophesied, 2,000 years before Columbus, the great transoceanic land situated beyond that Atlantis and which “is reached,” it said, “by the Islands not of the Blessed, but of the Good Spirits,” εὐδαιμόνια (our Îles Fortunées)—such a supposition can well be nothing else but a universal chimera!(843)

It is certain that, whether “chimera” or reality, the priests of the whole world had it from one and the same source—the universal tradition about the third great Continent which perished some 850,000 years ago,(844) a Continent inhabited by two distinct races, distinct physically and especially morally, both deeply versed in primeval wisdom and the secrets of nature, and mutually antagonistic in their struggle, during the course and progress of their double evolution. For whence even the Chinese teachings upon the subject, if it is but a “fiction”? Have they not recorded the existence once upon a time of a Holy Island beyond the sun, Tcheou, beyond which were situated the lands of Immortal Men?(845) Do they not still believe that the remnants of those Immortal Men—who survived when the Holy Island became black with sin and perished—have found refuge in the great Desert of Gobi, where they still reside, invisible to all and defended from approach by hosts of Spirits?

As the very unbelieving Boulanger writes:

If one has to lend ear to traditions, the latter place before the reign of Kings, that of the Heroes and Demi‐gods; and still earlier beyond they place the marvellous reign of the Gods and all the fables of the Golden Age.... One feels surprised that annals so interesting should have been rejected by almost all our historians. And yet the ideas presented by them were once universally admitted and revered by all nations; not a few revere them still, making them the basis of their daily life. Such considerations seem to necessitate a less hurried judgment.... The ancients, from whom we hold these traditions, which we accept no longer because we no longer understand them, must have had motives for believing in them, furnished by their greater proximity to the first ages, which the distance that separates us from them refuses to us.... Plato in the fourth book of his Laws, says that, long before the construction of the first cities, Saturn had established on earth a certain form of government under which man was very happy. Now as it is the Golden Age he refers to, or to that reign of Gods so celebrated in ancient fables, ... let us see the ideas he had of that happy age, and what was the occasion he had to introduce this fable into a treatise on politics. According to Plato, in order to obtain clear and precise ideas on royalty, its origin and power, one has to turn back to the first principles of history and tradition. Great changes, he says, have occurred in days of old, in heaven and on earth, and the present state of things is one of the results [Karma]. Our traditions tell us of many marvels, of changes that have taken place in the course of the sun, of Saturn’s reign, and of a thousand other matters that remain scattered in human memory; but one never hears anything of the evil which has produced these revolutions, nor of the evil which directly followed them. Yet ... that Evil is the principle one has to talk about, to be able to treat of royalty and the origin of power.(846)

That Evil, Plato seems to see in the sameness or consubstantiality of the natures of the rulers and the ruled, for he says that long before man built his cities, in the Golden Age, there was naught but happiness on Earth, for there were no needs. Why? Because Saturn, knowing that man could not rule man, without injustice forthwith filling the universe through his whims and vanity, would not allow any mortal to obtain power over his fellow creatures. To do this the God used the same means we ourselves use with regard to our flocks. We do not place a bullock or a ram over our bullocks and rams, but give them a leader, a shepherd, i.e., a being of a species quite different from their own and of a superior nature. This is just what Saturn did. He loved mankind and placed to rule over it no mortal king or prince but—“Spirits and Genii (δαίμονες) of a divine nature more excellent than that of man.”

It was God (the Logos, the Synthesis of the Host), who thus presiding over the Genii became the first Shepherd and Leader of men.(847) When the world had ceased to be so governed and the Gods retired, ferocious beasts devoured a portion of mankind. Left to their own resources and industry, Inventors then appeared among them successively and discovered fire, wheat, wine; and public gratitude deified them.(848)

And mankind was right, as fire by friction was the first mystery of nature, the first and chief property of matter that was revealed to man.

As say the Commentaries:

Fruits and grain, unknown to Earth to that day, were brought by the “Lords of Wisdom,” for the benefit of those they ruled from other Lokas [Spheres].

Now:

The earliest inventions [?] of mankind are the most wonderful that the race has ever made.... The first use of fire, and the discovery of the methods by which it can be kindled; the domestication of animals; and, above all, the processes by which the various cereals were first developed out of some wild grasses [?]—these are all discoveries with which, in ingenuity and in importance, no subsequent discoveries may compare. They are all unknown to history—all lost in the light of an effulgent dawn.(849)

This will be doubted and denied in our proud generation. But if it be asserted that there are no grains and fruits unknown to earth, then we may remind the reader that wheat has never been found in the wild state; it is not a product of the earth. All the other cereals have been traced to their primogenital forms in various species of wild grasses, but wheat has hitherto defied the efforts of Botanists to trace it to its origin. And let us bear in mind, in this connection, how sacred was this cereal with the Egyptian priests; wheat was placed even in their mummies, and has been found thousands of years later in their coffins. Remember how the servants of Horus glean the wheat in the field of Aanroo, wheat seven cubits high.(850)

Says the Egyptian Isis:

I am the Queen of these regions; I was the first to reveal to mortals the mysteries of wheat and corn.... I am she who rises in the constellation of the Dog.... Rejoice, O Egypt! thou who wert my nurse.(851)

Sirius was called the Dog‐star. It was the star of Mercury or Budha, called the great Instructor of Mankind.

The Chinese Y‐King attributes the discovery of agriculture to “the instruction given to men by celestial genii.”

Woe, woe to the men who know nought, observe nought, nor will they see. They are all blind,(852) since they remain ignorant how full the world is of various and invisible creatures which crowd even in the most sacred places.(853)

The “Sons of God” have existed and do exist. From the Hindû Brahmaputras and Mânasaputras, Sons of Brahmâ and Mind‐born Sons, down to the Bne Aleim of the Jewish Bible, the faith of the centuries and universal tradition force reason to yield to such evidence. Of what value is “independent criticism” so‐called, or “internal evidence”—based usually on the respective hobbies of the critics—in the face of the universal testimony, which has never varied throughout the historical cycles? For instance, read Esoterically the sixth chapter of Genesis, which repeats the statements of the Secret Doctrine, though slightly changing its form, and drawing a different conclusion which clashes even with the Zohar.

There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God Bne Aleim came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown [or giants].(854)

What does this sentence, “and also after that,” signify unless it means: There were Giants in the Earth before, i.e., before the Sinless Sons of the Third Race; and also after that when other Sons of God, lower in nature, inaugurated sexual connection on Earth—as Daksha did, when he saw that his Mânasaputras would not people the Earth? And then comes a long break in the chapter between verses 4 and 5. For surely, it was not in or through the wickedness of the “mighty men ... men of renown,” among whom is placed Nimrod the “mighty hunter before the Lord,” that “God saw that the wickedness of man was great,” nor in the builders of Babel, for this was after the Deluge; but in the progeny of the Giants who produced monstra quædam de genere giganteo, monsters from whence sprang the lower races of men, now represented on Earth by a few miserable dying‐out tribes and the huge anthropoid apes.

And if we are taken to task by Theologians, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, we have only to refer them to their own literal texts. The above quoted verse has ever been a dilemma, not alone for the men of Science and biblical scholars, but also for priests. For, as the Rev. Father Péronne puts it:

Either they (the Bne Aleim) were good Angels, and in such case how could they fall? Or they were bad (Angels), and in that case could not be called Bne Aleim, or sons of God.(855)

This biblical riddle—“the real sense of which no author has ever understood,” as is candidly confessed by Fourmont(856)—can only be explained by the Occult doctrine, through the Zohar to the Western, and the Book of Dzyan to the Eastern. What the latter says we have seen; what the Zohar tells us is that Bne Aleim was a name common to the Malachim, the good Messengers, and to the Ischins, the lower Angels.(857)

We may add for the benefit of the Demonologists that their Satan, the “Adversary,” is included in Job among the “sons” of God or Bne Aleim who visit their father.(858) But of this later on.

Now the Zohar says that the Ischins, the beautiful Bne Aleim, were not guilty, but mixed themselves with mortal men because they were sent on earth to do so.(859) Elsewhere the same volume shows these Bne Aleim belonging to the tenth sub‐division of the “Thrones.”(860) It also explains that the Ischins—“Men‐spirits,” viri spirituales(861)—now that men can see them no longer, help Magicians to produce, by their Science, Homunculi which are not “small men” but “men smaller (in the sense of inferiority) than men.” Both show themselves under the form that the Ischins had then, i.e., gaseous and ethereal. Their chief is Azazel.

But Azazel, whom the Church dogma persists in associating with Satan, is nothing of the kind. Azazel is a mystery, as explained elsewhere, and it is so expressed by Maimonides:

There is an impenetrable mystery in the narrative concerning Azazel.(862)

And so there is, as Lanci, a librarian to the Vatican, whom we have quoted before, and one who ought to know, says:

This venerable divine name (nome divino e venerabile) has become through the pen of biblical scholars, a devil, a wilderness, a mountain, and a he‐goat.(863)

Therefore it seems foolish to derive the name, as Spencer does, from Azal (separated) and El (God), hence “one separated from God”—the Devil. In the Zohar, Azazel is rather the “sacrificial victim” than the “formal adversary of Jehovah,” as Spencer would have it.(864)

The amount of malicious fancy and fiction bestowed on this “Host” by various fanatical writers is quite extraordinary. Azazel and his “Host” are simply the Hebrew “Prometheus,” and ought to be viewed from the same standpoint. The Zohar shows the Ischins chained to the mountain in the desert. This is allegorical, and simply alludes to these “Spirits” as being chained to the Earth during the Cycle of Incarnation. Azazel, or Azazyel, is one of the chiefs of the “transgressing” Angels in the Book of Enoch, who descending upon Ardis, the top of Mount Armon, bound themselves by swearing loyalty to each other. It is said that Azazyel taught men to make swords, knives, shields, to fabricate mirrors (?), to make one see what is behind him—viz., “magic mirrors.” Amazarak taught all the sorcerers and dividers of roots; Amers taught the solution of Magic; Barkayal, Astrology; Akibeel, the meaning of portents and signs; Tamiel, Astronomy; and Asaradel taught the motion of the Moon.(865) “These seven were the first instructors of the fourth man” (i.e., of the Fourth Race). But why should allegory be always understood as meaning just what its dead‐letter expresses?

It is the symbolical representation of the great struggle between Divine Wisdom, Nous, and its Earthly Reflection, Psyche, or between Spirit and Soul, in Heaven and on Earth. In Heaven—because the Divine Monad had voluntarily exiled itself therefrom, to descend, for incarnating purposes, to a lower plane and thus transform the animal of clay into an immortal God. For, as Éliphas Lévi tells us:

The Angels aspire to become Men; for the perfect Man, the Man‐God, is above even Angels.

On Earth—because no sooner had Spirit descended than it was strangled in the coils of Matter.

Strange to say, the Occult Teaching reverses the characters; it is the anthropomorphous Archangel in the case of the Christians, and the man‐like God with the Hindûs, which represent Matter in this case; and the Dragon, or Serpent, Spirit. Occult symbolism furnishes the key to the mystery; theological symbolism conceals it still more. For the former explains many a saying in the Bible and even in the New Testament which has hitherto remained incomprehensible; while the latter, owing to its dogma of Satan and his rebellion, has belittled the character and nature of its would‐be infinite, absolutely perfect God, and created the greatest evil and curse on Earth—belief in a personal Devil. This mystery is now partially revealed. The key to its metaphysical interpretation has now been restored, while the key to its theological interpretation shows the Gods and Archangels standing as symbols for the dead‐letter or dogmatic religions, as arrayed against the pure truths of Spirit, naked and unadorned with fancy.

Many were the hints thrown out in this direction in Isis Unveiled, and a still greater number of references to the mystery may be found scattered throughout these volumes. To make the point clear once for all; that which the clergy of every dogmatic religion, preëminently the Christian, points out as Satan, the enemy of God, is, in reality, the highest divine Spirit—Occult Wisdom on Earth—which is naturally antagonistic to every worldly, evanescent illusion, dogmatic or ecclesiastical religions included. Thus, the Latin Church, intolerant, bigoted and cruel to all who do not choose to be its slaves, the Church which calls itself the “bride” of Christ, and at the same time the trustee of Peter, to whom the rebuke of the Master “Get thee behind me, Satan” was justly addressed; and again the Protestant Church which, while calling itself Christian, paradoxically replaces the New Dispensation by the old Law of Moses which Christ openly repudiated—both these Churches are fighting against divine Truth, when repudiating and slandering the Dragon of Esoteric Divine Wisdom. Whenever they anathematize the Gnostic Solar Chnouphis, the Agathodæmon Christos, or the Theosophical Serpent of Eternity, or even the Serpent of Genesis—they are moved by the same spirit of dark fanaticism that moved the Pharisees to curse Jesus with the words: “Say we not well thou hast a devil?”

Read the account of Indra (Vâyu) in the Rig Veda, the Occult volume par excellence of Âryanism, and then compare it with the same in the Purânas—the exoteric version thereof, and the purposely garbled account of the true Wisdom Religion. In the Rig Veda, Indra is the highest and greatest of the Gods, and his Soma‐drinking is allegorical of his highly spiritual nature. In the Purânas, Indra becomes a profligate, and a regular drunkard on the Soma‐juice, in the ordinary terrestrial way. He is the conqueror of all the “enemies of the Gods” the Daityas, Nâgas (Serpents), Asuras, all the Serpent‐gods, and of Vritra, the Cosmic Serpent. Indra is the St. Michael of the Hindû Pantheon—the chief of the militant Host. Turning to the Bible, we find Satan, one of the “Sons of God,”(866) becoming in exoteric interpretation the Devil, and the Dragon, in its infernal, evil sense. But in the Kabalah,(867) Samael, who is Satan, is shown to be identical with St. Michael, the Slayer of the Dragon. How is this, when it is said that Tselem (the Image) reflects alike Michael and Samael, who are one? Both proceed, it is taught, from Ruach (Spirit), Neshamah (Soul) and Nephesh (Life). In the Chaldæan Book of Numbers Samael is the concealed (Occult) Wisdom, and Michael the higher terrestrial Wisdom, both emanating from the same source, but diverging after their issue from the Mundane Soul, which on Earth is Mahat, intellectual understanding, or Manas, the seat of intellect. They diverge, because the one (Michael) is influenced by Neshamah, while the other (Samael) remains uninfluenced. This tenet was perverted by the dogmatic spirit of the Church, which, loathing independent Spirit, uninfluenced by the external form, hence by dogma, forthwith made of Samael‐Satan—the most wise and spiritual spirit of all—the Adversary of its anthropomorphic God and sensual physical man, the Devil!

The Origin Of The Satanic Myth.

Let us, then, fathom this creation of the Patristic fancy still deeper, and find its prototype with the Pagans. The origin of the new Satanic myth is easy to trace. The tradition of the Dragon and the Sun is echoed in every part of the world, both in its civilized and semi‐savage regions. It took rise in the whisperings about secret Initiations among the profane, and was once universally established through the formerly universal heliolatrous religion. There was a time when the four parts of the world were covered with the temples sacred to the Sun and the Dragon; but the cult is now preserved mostly in China and Buddhist countries,

Bel and the Dragon being uniformly coupled together, and the priest of the Ophite religion as uniformly assuming the name of his God.(868)

Among the religions of the past, it is in Egypt we have to seek for its Western origin. The Ophites adopted their rites from Hermes Trismegistus, and heliolatrous worship with its Sun‐gods crossed over into the land of the Pharaohs from India. In the Gods of Stonehenge we recognize the divinities of Delphi and Babylon, and in those of the latter the Devas of the Vedic nations. Bel and the Dragon, Apollo and Python, Krishna and Kâliya, Osiris and Typhon, are all one under many names—the latest of which are Michael and the Red Dragon, and St. George and his Dragon. As Michael is “one as God,” or his “Double” for terrestrial purposes, and is one of the Elohim, the fighting Angel, he is thus simply a permutation of Jehovah. Whatever the cosmic or astronomical event that first gave rise to the allegory of the “War in Heaven,” its earthly origin has to be sought in the temples of Initiation and archaic crypts; and the proof is that we find (a) the priests assuming the name of the Gods they served; (b) the “Dragons” held throughout all antiquity as the symbols of Immortality and Wisdom, of secret Knowledge and of Eternity; and (c) the Hierophants of Egypt, of Babylon, and India, styling themselves generally the “Sons of the Dragon” and “Serpents”; thus corroborating the teachings of the Secret Doctrine.

There were numerous catacombs in Egypt and Chaldæa, some of them of a very vast extent. The most renowned of these were the subterranean crypts of Thebes and Memphis. The former, beginning on the western side of the Nile, extended towards the Libyan desert, and were known as the Serpent’s Catacombs, or passages. It was there that were performed the Sacred Mysteries of the Kuklos Anagkês, the “Unavoidable Cycle,” more generally known as the “Circle of Necessity”; the inexorable doom imposed upon every Soul after bodily death, when it has been judged in the Amentian region.

In De Bourbourg’s book, Votan, the Mexican Demi‐god, in narrating his expedition, describes a subterranean passage which ran on underground, and terminated at the root of the heavens, adding that this passage was a Snake’s hole, “un agujero de colubra”; and that he was admitted to it because he was himself a “Son of the Snakes,” or a Serpent.(869)

This is, indeed, very suggestive; for his description of the “Snake’s hole” is that of the ancient Egyptian crypt, as above mentioned. The Hierophants, moreover, of Egypt, and also of Babylon, generally styled themselves during the Mysteries, the “Sons of the Serpent‐god,” or “Sons of the Dragon.”

“The Assyrian priest always bore the name of his God,” says Movers. The Druids of the Celto‐Britannic regions also called themselves Snakes. “I am a Serpent, I am a Druid,” they exclaimed. The Egyptian Karnak is twin brother to the Carnac of Bretagne, the latter Carnac meaning the Serpent’s Mount. The Dracontia once covered the surface of the globe, and these temples were sacred to the Dragon, only because it was the symbol of the Sun, which, in its turn, was the symbol of the Highest God—the Phœnician Elon or Elion, whom Abraham recognized as El Elion.(870) Besides the surname of Serpents, they had also the appellation of “Builders” or “Architects,” for the immense grandeur of their temples and monuments was such that even now the pulverized remains of them “frighten the mathematical calculations of our modern engineers,” as Taliesin says.(871)

De Bourbourg hints that the chiefs of the name of Votan, the Quetzo‐ Cohuatl, or Serpent deity of the Mexicans, are the descendants of Ham and Canaan. “I am Hivim,” they say. “Being a Hivim, I am of the great race of the Dragon (Snake). I am a Snake myself, for I am a Hivim.”(872)

Furthermore, the “War in Heaven” is shown, in one of its significations, to have referred to those terrible struggles in store for the Candidate for Adeptship—struggles between himself and his (by Magic) personified human passions, when the enlightened Inner Man had to either slay them or fail. In the former case he became the “Dragon‐Slayer,” as having happily overcome all the temptations, and a “Son of the Serpent” and a Serpent himself, having cast off his old skin and being born in a new body, becoming a Son of Wisdom and Immortality in Eternity.

Seth, the reputed forefather of Israel, is only a Jewish travesty of Hermes, the God of Wisdom, called also Thoth, Tat, Seth, Set, and Satan. He is also Typhon, the same as Apophis, the Dragon slain by Horus; for Typhon was also called Set. He is simply the dark side of Osiris, his brother, as Angra Mainyu is the black shadow of Ahura Mazda. Terrestrially, all these allegories were connected with the trials of Adeptship and Initiation. Astronomically, they referred to the Solar and Lunar eclipses, the mythical explanations of which we find to this day in India and Ceylon, where anyone can study the allegorical narratives and traditions which have remained unchanged for many thousands of years.

Râhu, mythologically, is a Daitya—a Giant, a Demi‐god, the lower part of whose body ended in a Dragon’s or Serpent’s tail. During the Churning of the Ocean, when the Gods produced the Amrita, the Water of Immortality, he stole some of it, and, drinking, became immortal. The Sun and Moon, who had detected him in his theft, denounced him to Vishnu, who placed him in the stellar spheres, the upper portion of his body representing the Dragon’s head and the lower (Ketu) the Dragon’s tail; the two being the ascending and descending nodes. Since then, Râhu wreaks his vengeance on the Sun and Moon by occasionally swallowing them. But this fable has another mystic meaning, for Râhu, the Dragon’s head, played a prominent part in the Mysteries of the Sun’s (Vikartana’s) Initiation, when the Candidate and the Dragon had a supreme fight.

The caves of the Rishis, the abodes of Teiresias and the Greek seers, were modelled on those of the Nâgas—the Hindû King‐Snakes, who dwelt in cavities of the rocks under the ground. From Shesha, the thousand‐headed Serpent, on which Vishnu rests, down to Python, the Dragon‐serpent oracle, all point to the secret meaning of the myth. In India we find the fact mentioned in the earliest Purânas. The children of Surasâ are the mighty “Dragons.” The Vâyu Purâna replacing the “Dragons” of Surasâ of the Vishnu Purâna by the Dânavas, the descendants of Danu by the sage Kashyapa, and these Dânavas being the Giants, or Titans, who warred against the Gods, they are thus shown identical with the “Dragons” and “Serpents” of Wisdom.

We have only to compare the Sun‐gods of every country, to find their allegories agreeing perfectly with each other; and the more the allegorical symbol is Occult the more its corresponding symbol in exoteric systems agrees with it. Thus, if from three systems widely differing from each other in appearance—the old Âryan, the ancient Greek, and the modern Christian schemes—several Sun‐gods and Dragons are selected at random, they will be found to be copied from each other.

Let us take Agni the Fire‐god, Indra the firmament, and Kârttikeya from the Hindûs; the Greek Apollo; and Michael, the “Angel of the Sun,” the first of the Æons, called by the Gnostics the “Saviour”—and proceed in order.

(1) Agni, the Fire‐god, is called Vaishvânara in the Rig Veda. Now Vaishvânara is a Dânava, a Giant‐demon,(873) whose daughters Pulomâ and Kâlakâ are the mothers of numberless Dânavas (30 millions), by Kashyapa,(874) and live in Hiranyapura, “the golden city, floating in the air.”(875) Therefore, Indra is, in a fashion, the step‐son of these two as a son of Kashyapa; and Kashyapa is, in this sense, identical with Agni, the Fire‐god, or Sun (Kashyapa‐Âditya). To this same group belongs Skanda or Kârttikeya, God of War, the six‐faced planet Mars astronomically, a Kumâra, or Virgin‐youth, born of Agni,(876) for the purpose of destroying Târaka, the Dânava Demon, the grandson of Kashyapa by his son Hiranyâksha.(877) Târaka’s Yoga austerities were so extraordinary that they became formidable to the Gods, who feared such a rival in power.(878) While Indra, the bright God of the Firmament, kills Vritra, or Ahi, the Serpent‐Demon—for which feat he is called Vritra‐han, the “Destroyer of Vritra”—he also leads the hosts of Devas (Angels or Gods) against other Gods who rebel against Brahmâ, for which he is surnamed Jishnu, “Leader of the Celestial Host.” Kârttikeya is also found bearing the same titles. For killing Târaka, the Dânava, he is called Târaka‐jit, “Vanquisher of Târaka,”(879) Kumâra Guha, the “mysterious Virgin‐youth,” Siddha‐sena, “Leader of the Siddhas,” and Shakti‐dhara, “Spear‐holder.”

(2) Now take Apollo, the Grecian Sun‐god, and by comparing the mythical accounts given of him, see whether he does not answer both to Indra, Kârttikeya, and even Kashyapa‐Âditya, and at the same time to Michael (as the Angelic form of Jehovah) the “Angel of the Sun,” who is “like,” and “one with, God.” Later ingenious interpretations for monotheistic purposes, elevated though they be into not‐to‐be‐questioned Church dogmas, prove nothing, except, perhaps, the abuse of human authority and power.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now, Mars was the Lord of birth, and of death, of generation and of destruction, of ploughing, of building, of sculpture or stone‐cutting, of architecture, ... in fine, of all comprised under our English word ARTS. He was the primal principle, disintegrating into the modification of two opposites for production. Astronomically, too,(915) he held the birthplace of the day and year, the place of its increase of strength, Aries, and likewise the place of its death, Scorpio. He held the house of Venus, and that of the Scorpion. He, as birth, was Good; as death, was Evil. As good, he was light; as bad, he was night. As good, he was man; as bad, he was woman. He held the cardinal points, and as Cain, or Vulcan,(916) or Pater Sadic, or Melchizadek, he was lord of the ecliptic, or balance, or line of adjustment, and therefore was The Just One. The ancients held to there being seven planets, or great gods, growing out of eight, and Pater Sadic, The Just or Right One, was Lord of the eighth, which was Mater Terra.(917)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the first beginnings of [human] life, the only dry land was on the right end(938) of the Sphere, where it [the Globe] is motionless.(939) The whole Earth was one vast watery desert, and the waters were tepid.... There, man was born on the seven zones of the immortal, the indestructible of the Manvantara.(940) There was eternal spring in darkness. [But] that which is darkness to the man of to‐day, was light to the man of his dawn. There, the Gods rested, and Fohat(941) reigns ever since.... Thus the wise Fathers say that man is born in the head of his Mother [Earth], and that her feet at the left end generated [begot] the evil winds that blow from the mouth of the lower Dragon ... Between the First and Second [Races] the Eternal Central [Land] was divided by the Water of Life.(942)

It flows around and animates her [Mother Earth’s] body. Its one end issues from her head; it becomes foul at her feet [the Southern Pole]. It gets purified [on its return] to her heart—which beats under the foot of the sacred Shambalah, which then [in the beginnings] was not yet born. For it is in the belt of man’s dwelling [the Earth] that lies concealed the life and health of all that lives and breathes.(943) During the First and Second [Races] the belt was covered with the great waters. [But] the great Mother travailed under the waves and a new land was joined to the first one which our wise men call the head‐gear [the cap]. She travailed harder for the Third [Race] and her waist and navel appeared above the water. It was the belt, the sacred Himavat, which stretches around the World.(944) She broke toward the setting Sun from her neck(945) downward [to the South‐West], into many lands and islands, but the Eternal Land [the cap] broke not asunder. Dry lands covered the face of the silent waters to the four sides of the World. All these perished [in their turn]. Then appeared the abode of the wicked [the Atlantis]. The Eternal Land was now hid, for the waters became solid [frozen] under the breath of her nostrils and the evil winds from the Dragon’s mouth, etc.

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

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

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

Western Speculations, Founded On The Greek And Paurânic Traditions.

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

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

In their [the Hindû and Persian] romances, we see Cai‐caus going to the mountain of Az‐burj, or As‐burj, at the foot of which the sun sets, to fight the Div‐sefid, or white devil, the Târa‐ daitya of the Purânas, and whose abode was on the seventh stage of the world, answering to the seventh zone of the Bauddhists; ... or, in other words, to the White Island.(948)

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

The two countries north and south of Meru are shaped like a bow, ... [and that] one half of the surface of the earth is on the south of Meru and the other half on the north of Meru—beyond which is half of Pushkara.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At the time when the summer tropical “colure” passed through the Pleiades, when Cor Leonis would be upon the equator, and when Leo was vertical to Ceylon at sunset, then would Taurus be vertical to the island of Atlantis at noon.

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

The sacred bull Nandi was brought from Bhârata to Shankha to meet Rishabha [Taurus] every Kalpa. But when those of the White Island [who descended originally from Shveta‐dvîpa],(965) who had mixed with the Daityas [Giants] of the land of iniquity, had become black with sin, then Nandi remained for ever in the White Island [or Shveta‐dvîpa].... Those of the Fourth World [Race] lost AUM.

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

The “fire‐vomiting Monster” survived alone out of the ruins of the unfortunate island.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The “Curse” From A Philosophical Point Of View.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The chorus remarking very pertinently:

Vast boon was this thou gavest unto mortals!

Prometheus answers:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And, portent past belief, the speaking oaks By which full clearly, in no riddling phrase, Wast hailed as the illustrious spouse of Zeus ... (853) ... stroking thee With touch alone of unalarming hand; Then thou dark Epaphos shalt bear, whose name Records his sacred gendering ... (870).

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

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

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

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

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

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

When thou hast crossed the flood, limit betwixt Two continents, fronting the burning East.... (810)— that she must travel Eastward, after passing the “Kimmerian Bosphorus,” and cross what is evidently the Volga and now Astrakhân on the Caspian Sea. After this she will encounter “fierce northern blasts” and cross thither to the land of the “Arimaspian host” (East of Herodotus’ Scythia) to—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fifty in number shall return to Argos.

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

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

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

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

This, to set forth at large needs lengthy speech.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A god ... in fetters, anguish fraught; The foe of Zeus, in hatred held of all— a God, bereft even of that supreme consolation of Prometheus, who suffered in self‐sacrifice—

For that to men he [I] bore too fond a mind— as the divine Titan is moved by altruism, but the mortal man by selfishness and egoïsm in every instance.

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

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

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

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

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

This is what is written in one passage:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And the “Great King of the Dazzling Face” the chief of all the Yellow‐faced, was sad, seeing the sins of the Black‐faced.

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

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

“The Lords of the storm are approaching. Their chariots are nearing the land. One night and two days only shall the Lords of the Dark Face [the Sorcerers] live on this patient land. She is doomed, and they have to descend with her. The nether Lords of the Fires [the Gnomes and Fire Elementals] are preparing their magic Agnyastra [fire‐weapons worked by Magic]. But the Lords of the Dark Eye [‘Evil Eye’] are stronger than they [the Elementals] and they are the slaves of the mighty ones. They are versed in Astra [Vidyâ, the highest magical knowledge].(995) Come and use yours [i.e., your magic powers, in order to counteract those of the Sorcerers]. Let every Lord of the Dazzling Face [an Adept of the White Magic] cause the Vimâna of every Lord of the Dark Face to come into his hands [or possession], lest any [of the Sorcerers] should by its means escape from the waters, avoid the Rod of the Four [Karmic Deities], and save his wicked [followers, or people].

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

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

“The hour has struck, the black night is ready.

“Let their destiny be accomplished. We are the servants of the Great Four.(997) May the Kings of Light return.”

The great King fell upon his Dazzling Face and wept....

When the Kings assembled, the waters had already moved....

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

Still, in another passage, it is said:

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

The speaking beasts [the magic watchers] kept quiet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And Staniland Wake adds:

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

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

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

As says Lenormant:

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

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

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

But we are also told that:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration: Genealogical Tree of the Fifth Root‐Race.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Says the author of Mythical Monsters, who gives this information in the Introduction:(1020)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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