The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2 of 4 The Synthesis of...

De Quatrefages criticizes this position in The Human Species. It is unscientific, he says, or, properly speaking, Naudin's ideas “do not form a scientific theory,” inasmuch as Primordial Blastema is connected in his theory with the “first cause,” which is credited with having made potentially in the Blastema all past, present, and future beings, and thus of having in reality created these beings en masse; moreover, Naudin does not even consider the “second causes,” or their action in [pg 127] this evolution of the organic world. Science, which is only occupied with “second causes,” has thus

Nor will it have any more to say to the Occult teachings, which are to some extent approached by Naudin. For if we but see in his “Primordial Blastema” the Dhyân-Chohanic Essence, the Chhâyâ or Double of the Pitris, which contains within itself the potentiality of all forms, we are quite in accord. But there are two real and vital differences between our teachings. M. Naudin declares that evolution has progressed by sudden leaps and bounds, instead of extending slowly over millions of years; and his Primordial Blastema is endowed only with blind instincts—a kind of unconscious First Cause in the Manifested Kosmos—which is an absurdity. Whereas it is our Dhyân-Chohanic Essence—the Causality of the Primal Cause which creates physical man—which is the living, active and potential Matter (pregnant per se with that animal consciousness of a superior kind, such as is found in the ant and the beaver) which produces the long series of physiological differentiations. Apart from this, his “ancient and general process of creation” from Proto-organisms is as Occult as any theory of Paracelsus or Khunrath could be.

The “Shadows,” or Chhâyâs, are called the Sons of the “Self-born,” as the latter name is applied to all the Gods and Beings, born through the Will, whether of Deity or Adept. The Homunculi of Paracelsus would, perhaps, be also given this name, though the latter process is on a far more material plane. The name “Sons of Twilight” shows that the “Self-born” Progenitors of our Doctrine are identical with the [pg 128] Pitris of the Brâhmanical System, as the title is a reference to their mode of birth; these Pitris being stated to have issued from Brahmâ's “Body of Twilight,” as stated in the Purânas.

21. When the Race became old, the old Waters mixed with the fresher Waters (a). When its Drops became turbid, they vanished and disappeared in the new Stream, in the Hot Stream of Life. The Outer of the First became the Inner of the Second (b). The old Wing became the new Shadow, and the Shadow of the Wing (c).

(b) This is the mysterious process of the transformation and evolution of mankind. The material of the first Forms—shadowy, ethereal, and negative—was drawn or absorbed into, and thus became the complement of the Forms of the Second Race. The Commentary explains this by saying that, as the First Race was simply composed of the Astral Shadows of the Creative Progenitors, having of course neither astral nor physical bodies of its own—the Race never died. Its “Men” melted gradually away, becoming absorbed in the bodies of their own “Sweat-born” progeny, more solid than their own. The old Form vanished and was absorbed by, disappeared in, the new Form, more human and physical. There was no death in those days of a period more blissful than the Golden Age; but the first, or parent, material was used for the formation of the new being, to form the Body and even the inner or lower Principles or Bodies of the progeny.

(c) When the “Shadow” retires, i.e., when the Astral Body becomes covered with more solid flesh, man develops a Physical Body. The “Wing,” or the ethereal Form that produced its Shadow and Image, became the Shadow of the Astral Body and its own progeny. The expression is queer and original.

As there may be no occasion to refer to this mystery later, it is as well to point out at once the dual meaning contained in the Greek myth bearing upon this particular phase of evolution. It is found in the several variants of the allegory of Leda and her two sons Castor and Pollux, each of which variants has a special meaning. Thus in Book XI of the Odyssey, Leda is spoken of as the spouse of Tyndarus, who gave birth by her husband “to two sons of valiant heart”—Castor [pg 129] and Pollux. Jupiter endows them with a marvellous gift and privilege. They are semi-immortal; they live and die, each in turn, and every alternate day (ἑτερήμεροι275). As the Tyndaridæ, the twin brothers are an astronomical symbol, and stand for Day and Night; their two wives, Phœbe and Hilaeira, the daughters of Apollo or the Sun, personifying the Dawn and the Twilight.276 Again, in the allegory where Zeus is shown as the father of the two heroes—born from the Egg to which Leda gives birth—the myth is entirely theogonical. It relates to that group of cosmic allegories in which the world is described as born from an Egg. For Leda assumes in it the shape of a white swan, when uniting herself to the Divine Swan or Brahma-Kalahamsa.

Leda is the mythical Bird, then, to which, in the traditions of various peoples of the Âryan race, are attributed various ornithological forms of birds which all lay golden Eggs.277 In the Kalevala, the Epic Poem of Finland, the beauteous daughter of the Ether, the “Water-Mother,” creates the World in conjunction with a “Duck”—another form of the Swan or Goose, Kalahamsa—who lays six golden eggs, and the seventh, an “egg of iron,” in her lap. But the variant of the Leda allegory which has a direct reference to mystic man is found in Pindar278 only, with a slighter reference to it in the Homeric Hymns.279 Castor and Pollux are in it no longer the Dioscuri of Apollodorus280; but become the highly significant symbol of the dual man, the Mortal and the Immortal. Not only this, but as will now be seen, they are also the symbol of the Third Race, and its transformation from the Animal-man into a God-man with only an animal body.

Pindar shows Leda uniting herself in the same night to her husband and also to the Father of the Gods—Zeus. Thus Castor is the son of the Mortal, Pollux the progeny of the Immortal. In the allegory made up for the occasion, it is said that in a riot of vengeance against the Apharides,281 Pollux kills Lynceus—“of all mortals he whose sight is the most penetrating”—but Castor is wounded by Idas, “he who sees and knows.” Zeus puts an end to the fight by hurling his thunderbolt and killing the last two combatants. Pollux finds his brother dying.282 [pg 130] In his despair he calls upon Zeus to slay him also. “Thou canst not die altogether,” answers the master of the Gods; “thou art of a divine race.” But he gives him the choice: Pollux will either remain immortal, living eternally in Olympus; or, if he would share his brother's fate in all things, he must pass half his existence underground, and the other half in the golden heavenly abodes. This semi-immortality, which is also to be shared by Castor, is accepted by Pollux.283 And thus the twin brothers live alternately, one during the day, and the other during the night.284

Is this a poetical fiction only? An allegory, one of those “solar myth” interpretations, higher than which no modern Orientalist seems able to soar? Indeed, it is much more. Here we have an allusion to the “Egg-born” Third Race; the first half of which is mortal, i.e., unconscious in its Personality, and having nothing within itself to survive;285 and the latter half of which becomes immortal in its Individuality, by reason of its Fifth Principle being called to life by the Informing Gods, and thus connecting the Monad with this Earth. This is Pollux; while Castor represents the personal, mortal man, an animal of not even a superior kind, when unlinked from the divine Individuality. “Twins” truly; yet divorced by death for ever, unless Pollux, moved by the voice of twinship, bestows on his less favoured mortal brother a share of his own divine nature, thus associating him with his own immortality.

Such is the Occult meaning of the metaphysical aspect of the allegory. The widely spread modern interpretation of it—so celebrated in antiquity, Plutarch tells us,286 as symbolical of brotherly devotion—namely, that it was an image of the Sun and Moon borrowed from the spectacle of Nature, is weak and inadequate to explain the secret meaning. Besides the fact that the Moon, with the Greeks, was feminine in exoteric mythology, and could therefore hardly be regarded as Castor, and at the same time be identified with Diana, ancient Symbologists who held the Sun, the king of all sidereal orbs, as the [pg 131] visible image of the highest Deity, would not have personified it by Pollux, a demi-god only.287

If from Greek mythology we pass to the Mosaic allegories and symbolism, we shall find a still more striking corroboration of the same tenet under another form. Unable to trace in them the “Egg-born,” we shall still unmistakably find in the first four chapters of Genesis the Androgynes and the first Three Races of the Secret Doctrine, hidden under most ingenious symbology.