The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 3 of 4 The Synthesis of...

The celestial sphere with the earth, was divided into twelve compartments [astronomically], and these compartments were esteemed assexed, thelordsorhusbandsbeing respectively the planets presiding over them. This being the settled scheme, want of proper correction would bring it to pass, after a time, that error and confusion would ensue by the compartments coming under the lordship of the wrong planets. Instead of lawful wedlock, there would be illegal intercourse, as between the planets,“sons of Elohim”and these compartments,“daughters of H-Adam,”or theearth-man; and in fact the fourth verse of sixthGenesiswill bearthisinterpretation for the usual one,viz.,“In the same days, or periods, there were untimely births in the earth; and also behind that, when the sons of Elohim came to the daughters of H-Adam, they begat to them the offspring of harlotry,”etc., astronomically indicating this confusion.370

Do any of these learned explanations explain anything except a possible ingenious allegory, and a personification of the celestial bodies, by the ancient Mythologists and Priests? Carried to their last word they would undeniably explain much, and would thus furnish one of the right seven keys, fitting a great many of the Biblical puzzles yet opening none naturally and entirely, instead of being scientific and cunning master-keys. But they yet prove one thing—that neither the septiform chronology nor the septiform theogony and evolution of all things is of divine origin in the Bible. For let us see the sources at which the Bible sipped its divine inspiration with regard to the sacred number seven. Says Mr. Massey in the same lecture:

TheBook of Genesistells us nothing about the nature of these Elohim, erroneously rendered“God,”who are creators of the Hebrew beginning, and who are themselves preëxtant and seated when the theatre opens and the curtain ascends. It says that in the beginning the Elohim created the heaven and the earth. In thousands of books the Elohim have been discussed, but ... with no conclusive result.... The Elohim are Seven in number, whether as nature-powers, gods of constellations, or planetary gods, ... as the Pitris and Patriarchs, Manus and Fathers of earlier times. The Gnostics, however, and the JewishKabalahpreserve an account of the Elohim ofGenesisby which we are able to identify them with other forms of the seven primordial powers.... Their names are Ildabaoth, Jehovah (or Jao), Sabaoth, Adonai, Eloeus, Oreus, and Astanphæus. Ildabaoth signifies the Lord God of the fathers, that is the fathers who preceded the Father; and thus the seven are identical with the seven Pitris or Fathers of India (Irenæus, B. I., xxx., 5). Moreover, the Hebrew Elohim were preëxtant by name and nature as Phœnician divinities or powers. Sanchoniathon mentions them by name, and describes them as Auxiliaries of Kronos or Time. In this phase, then, the Elohim are time-keepers in heaven! In the Phœnician mythology the Elohim are the Seven sons of Sydik [Melchizedek], identical with[pg 195]the Seven Kabiri, who in Egypt are the Seven sons of Ptah, and the Seven Spirits of Ra inThe Book of the Dead; ... in America with the seven Hohgates, ... in Assyria with the seven Lumazi....

They are always seven in number ... whoKab—that is, turn round, together, whence the“Kab-iri.”... They are also the Ili or Gods, in Assyrian, who were seven in number!... They were first born of the Mother in Space,371and then the Seven Companions passed into the sphere of time as auxiliaries of Kronus, or Sons of the Male Parent. As Damascius says in hisPrimitive Principles, the Magi consider that space and time were the source of all; and from being powers of the air the gods were promoted to become time-keepers for men. Seven constellations were assigned to them.... As the seven turned round in the ark of the sphere they were designated the Seven Sailors' Companions, Rishis, or Elohim. The first“Seven Stars”are not planetary. They are the leading stars of seven constellations which turned round with the Great Bear in describing the circle of the year.372These the Assyrians called the seven Lumazi, or leaders of the flocks of stars, designated sheep. On the Hebrew line of descent or development, these Elohim are identified for us by the Kabalists and Gnostics, who retained the hidden wisdom or gnosis, the clue of which is absolutely essential to any proper understanding of mythology or theology.... There were two constellations with seven stars each.Wecall them the Two Bears. But the seven stars of the Lesser Bear were once considered to be the seven heads of the Polar Dragon, which we meet with—as the beast with seven heads—in the Akkadian Hymns and inRevelation. The mythical dragon originated in the crocodile, which is the dragon of Egypt....

Now in one particular cult, the Sut-Typhonian, the first god was Sevekh [the seven-fold], who wears the crocodile's head, as well as the Serpent, and who is the Dragon, or whose constellation was the Dragon.... In Egypt the Great Bear was the constellation of Typhon, orKepha, the old genetrix, called the Mother of the Revolutions; and the Dragon with seven heads was assigned to her son, Sevekh-Kronus, or Saturn, called the Dragon of Life. That is, the typical dragon or serpent with seven heads was female at first, and then the type was continued, as male in her son Sevekh, the Sevenfold Serpent, in Ea the Sevenfold, ... Iao Chnubis, and others. We find these two inThe Book of Revelation. One is the Scarlet Lady, the mother of mystery, the great harlot, who sat on a scarlet-coloured beast with seven heads, which is the Red Dragon of the Pole. She held in her hand the unclean things of her fornication. That means the emblems of the male and female, imaged by the Egyptians at the Polar Centre, the very uterus of creation, as was indicated by the Thigh constellation, called the Khepsh of Typhon, the old Dragon, in the northern birthplace of Time in heaven. The two revolved about thepole of heaven, or the Tree, as it was called, which was figured at the centre of the starry motion. InThe Book of Enochthese two constellations are identified as Leviathan and Behemoth-Bekhmut, or the Dragon and Hippopotamus = Great Bear, and they are the primal pair that were first created in the Garden of Eden.

So that the Egyptian first[pg 196]mother, Kefa [or Kepha] whose name signifies“mystery,”was the original of the Hebrew Chavah, our Eve; and therefore Adam is one with Sevekh the sevenfold one, the solar dragon in whom the powers of light and darkness were combined, and the sevenfold nature was shown in the seven rays worn by the Gnostic Iao-Chnubis, god of the number seven, who is Sevekh by name and a form of the first father as head of the Seven.373

All this gives the key to the astronomical prototype of the allegory in Genesis, but it furnishes no other key to the mystery involved in the sevenfold glyph. The able Egyptologist shows also that Adam himself according to Rabbinical and Gnostic tradition, was the chief of the Seven who fell from Heaven, and he connects these with the Patriarchs, thus agreeing with the Esoteric Teaching. For by mystic permutation and the mystery of primeval rebirths and adjustment, the Seven Rishis are in reality identical with the seven Prajâpatis, the fathers and creators of mankind, and also with the Kumâras, the first sons of Brahmâ, who refused to procreate and multiply. This apparent contradiction is explained by the seven-fold nature—make it four-fold on metaphysical principles and it will come to the same thing—of the celestial men, the Dhyân Chohans. This nature is made to divide and separate; and while the higher principles (Âtmâ-Buddhi) of the “Creators of Men” are said to be the Spirits of the seven constellations, their middle and lower principles are connected with the earth and are shown

Adam as the father among the Seven is identical with the Egyptian Atum, ... whose other name of Adon is identical with the Hebrew Adonai. In this way the second Creation inGenesisreflects and continues the later creation in the mythos which explains it. The Fall of Adam to the lower world led to his being humanised on earth, by which process the celestial was turned into the mortal, and this, which[pg 197]belongs to the astronomical allegory, got literalised as the Fall of Man, or descent of the soul into matter, and the conversion of the angelic into an earthly being.... It is found in the [Babylonian] texts, when Ea, the first father, is said to“grant forgiveness to the conspiring gods,”for whose“redemption did he create mankind.”(Sayce;Hib. Lec., p. 140) ... The Elohim, then, are the Egyptian, Akkadian, Hebrew, and Phœnician form of the Universal Seven Powers, who are Seven in Egypt, Seven in Akkad, Babylon, Persia, India, Britain, and Seven among the Gnostics and Kabalists. They were the Seven fathers who preceded the Father in Heaven, because they were earlier than the individualised fatherhood on earth.... When the Elohim said:“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,”there were seven of them who represented the seven elements, powers, or souls that went to the making of the human being who came into existence before the Creator was represented anthropomorphically, or could have conferred the human likeness on the Adamic man.

It was in the sevenfold image of the Elohim that man was first created, with his seven elements, principles or souls,375and therefore he could not have been formed in the image of the one God. The seven Gnostic Elohim tried to make a man in their own image, but could not for lack of virile power.376Thus their creation in earth and heaven was a failure ... because they themselves were lacking in the soul of the fatherhood! When the Gnostic Ildabaoth,377chief of the Seven, cried:“I am the father and God,”his mother Sophia [Achamoth] replied:“Do not tell lies, Ildabaoth, for the first man (Anthropos, son of Anthropos)378is above thee.”That is, man who had now been created in the image of the fatherhood was superior to the gods who were derived from the Mother-Parent alone!379For, as it had been first on earth, so was it afterwards in heaven [the Secret Doctrine teaches the reverse]; and thus the primary gods were held to be soulless like the earliest races of men.... The Gnostics taught that the Spirits of Wickedness, the inferior Seven, derived their origin from the great Mother alone, who produced without the fatherhood! It was in the image, then, of the sevenfold Elohim that the seven races were formed which we sometimes hear of as the Pre-Adamite races of men, because they were earlier than the fatherhood, which was individualised only in the second Hebrew Creation.380

This shows sufficiently how the echo of the Secret Doctrine—of the Third and Fourth Races of men, made complete by the incarnation in humanity of the Mânasa Putra, Sons of Intelligence or Wisdom—reached every corner of the globe. The Jews, however, although they borrowed of the older nations the groundwork on which to build their [pg 198] revelation, never had more than three keys out of the seven in their mind, while composing their national allegories—the astronomical, the numerical (metrology), and above all the purely anthropological, or rather physiological key. This resulted in the most phallic religion of all, and has now passed, part and parcel, into Christian theology, as is proved by the lengthy quotations made from a lecture of an able Egyptologist, who can make naught of it save astronomical myths and phallicism, as is implied by his explanations of “fatherhood” in the allegories.