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

This, regardless of modern materialistic evolution, which speculates in this wise: “The primitive human form, whence as we think all human species sprang, has perished this long time. [This we deny: it has only decreased in size and changed in texture.] But many facts point to the conclusion that it was hairy and dolichocephalic. [African races are even now dolichocephalic in a great measure, but the palæolithic Neanderthal skull, the oldest we know of, is of a large size, and no nearer to the capacity of the gorilla's cranium than that of any other now-living man.] Let us, for the time being, call this hypothetical species homo primigenius.... This first species, or the ape-man, the ancestor of all the others, probably arose in the tropical regions of the old world from anthropoid apes.” Asked for proofs, the Evolutionist, not the least daunted, replies: “Of these no fossil remains are as yet known to us, but they were probably akin to the Gorilla and Orang of the present day.” And then the Papuan negro is mentioned as the probable descendant in the first line. (Pedigree of Man, p. 80.)

Hæckel holds fast to Lemuria, which, with East Africa and South Asia also, he mentions as the possible cradle of the primitive ape-men. So also do many Geologists. Mr. A. R. Wallace admits its reality, though in a rather modified sense, in his Geographical Distribution of Animals. But let not Evolutionists speak so lightly of the comparative size of the brains of man and the ape, for this is very unscientific, especially when they pretend to see no difference between the two, or very little at any rate. For Vogt himself showed that, while the highest of the apes, the Gorilla, has a brain of only 30 to 51 cubic inches, the brain of the lowest of the Australian aborigines amounts to 99·35 cubic inches. The former is thus “not half of the size of the brain of a new-born babe,” says Pfaff.

Of such semi-animal creatures, the sole remnants known to Ethnology were the Tasmanians, a portion of the Australians and a mountain tribe in China, the men and women of which are entirely covered with hair. They were the last descendants in a direct line of the semi-animal latter-day Lemurians referred to. There are, however, considerable numbers of the mixed Lemuro-Atlantean peoples produced by various crossings with such semi-human stocks—e.g., the wild men of Borneo, the Veddhas of Ceylon, classed by Prof. Flower among Âryans (!), most of the remaining Australians, Bushmen, Negritos, Andaman Islanders, etc.

The Australians of the Gulf of St. Vincent and the neighbourhood of Adelaide are very hairy, and the brown down on the skin of boys of five or six years of age assumes a furry appearance. They are, however, degraded men; not the closest approximation to the “pithecoid man,” as Hæckel so sweepingly affirms. Only a portion of these men are a Lemurian relic. (Cf. Esoteric Buddhism, pp. 64 et seqq.)

In general, the so-called orthodox Christian conceptions about the “fallen” Angels or Satan, are as remarkable as they are absurd. About a dozen could be cited, of the most varied character as to details, and all from the pens of educated lay authors, “university graduates” of the present quarter of our century. Thus, the author of Earth's Earliest Ages, G. H. Pember, M.A., devotes a thick volume to proving Theosophists, Spiritualists, Agnostics, Mystics, metaphysicians, poets, and every contemporary author on Oriental speculations, to be the devoted servants of the “Prince of the Air,” and irretrievably damned. He describes Satan and his Antichrist in this wise:

“Satan is the ‘Anointed Cherub’ of old.... God created Satan, the fairest and wisest of all His creatures in this part of His Universe, and made him Prince of the World, and of the Power of the Air.... He was placed in an Eden, which was both far anterior to the Eden of Genesis ... and of an altogether different and more substantial character, resembling the New Jerusalem. Thus, Satan being perfect in wisdom, and beauty, his vast empire is our earth, if not the whole solar system.... Certainly no other angelic power of greater or even equal dignity has been revealed to us. The Archangel Michael himself is quoted by Jude as preserving towards the Prince of Darkness the respect due to a superior, however wicked he may be, until God has formally commanded his deposition.” Then we are informed that “Satan was from the moment of his creation surrounded by the insignia of royalty” (! !): that he “awoke to consciousness to find the air filled with the rejoicing music of those whom God had appointed.” Then the Devil “passes from the royalty to his priestly dignity” (! ! !). “Satan was also a priest of the Most High,” etc., etc. And now—“Antichrist will be Satan incarnate.” (Chap. III and pp. 56-59.) The pioneers of the coming Apollyon have already appeared—they are the Theosophists, the Occultists, the authors of the Perfect Way, of Isis Unveiled, of the Mystery of the Ages, and even of the Light of Asia ! ! The author notes the “avowed origin” of Theosophy from the “descending angels,” from the “Nephilim,” or the Angels of Genesis (vi), and the Giants.

He ought to note his own descent from them also, as our Secret Doctrine endeavours to show—unless he refuses to belong to the present humanity.

“For the Mind, a deity abounding in both sexes, being Light and Life, brought forth by its Word another Mind or Workman; which, being God of the Fire and the Spirit, fashioned and formed seven other Governors, which in their Circles contain the Phenomenal World, and whose disposition is called Fate or Destiny.” (Sect. ix. c. 1, ed. of 1579.)

Here it is evident that Mind, the Primeval Universal Divine Thought, is neither the Unknown Unmanifested One, since it abounds in both sexes—is male and female—nor yet the Christian “Father,” as the latter is a male and not an androgyne. The fact is that the “Father,” “Son,” and “Man” are hopelessly mixed up in the translations of Pymander.

Why, for instance, should Éliphas Lévi, the very fearless and outspoken Kabalist, have hesitated to divulge the mystery of the Fallen Angels so-called? That he knew the fact and the real meaning of the allegory, both in its religious and mystical, as well as in its physiological sense, is proved by his voluminous writings and frequent allusions and hints. Yet Éliphas, after having alluded to it a hundred times in his previous works, says in his later Histoire de la Magie (pp. 220, 221): “We protest with all our might against the sovereignty and the ubiquity of Satan. We pretend neither to deny nor affirm here the tradition on the Fall of the Angels.... But if so ... then the prince of the Angelic Rebels can be at best the last and the most powerless among the condemned—now that he is separated from deity—which is the principle of every power.” This is hazy and evasive enough; but see what Hargrave Jennings writes in his weird, staccato-like style:

“Both Saint Michael and Saint George are types. They are sainted personages, or dignified heroes, or powers apotheosized. They are each represented with their appropriate faculties and attributes. These are reproduced and stand multiplied—distinguished by different names in all the mythologies [including the Christian]. But the idea regarding each is a general one. This idea and representative notion is that of the all-powerful champion—child-like in his ‘virgin innocence’—so powerful that this God-filled innocence (the Seraphim ‘know most,’ the Cherubim ‘love most’) can shatter the world (articulated—so to use the word—in the magic of Lucifer, but condemned), in opposition to the artful constructions, won out of the permission of the Supreme—artful constructions (‘this side life’)—of the magnificent apostate, the mighty rebel, but yet, at the same time, the ‘Light-bringer,’ the Lucifer—the ‘Morning Star,’ the ‘Son of the Morning’—the very highest title ‘out of heaven,’ for in heaven it cannot be, but out of heaven it is everything. In an apparently incredible side of his character—for let the reader carefully remark that qualities are of no sex—this Archangel Saint Michael is the invincible, sexless, celestial ‘Energy’—to dignify him by his grand characteristics—the invincible ‘Virgin-Combatant,’ clothed ... and at the same time armed, in the denying mail of the Gnostic ‘refusal to create.’ This is another myth, a ‘myth within myths,’ ... a stupendous ‘mystery of mysteries,’ because it is so impossible and contradictory. Unexplainable as the Apocalypse.

Unrevealable as the ‘Revelation.’ ” (Phallicism, pp. 212, 213.)

Nevertheless, this unexplainable and unrevealable mystery will now be explained and revealed by the doctrines of the East. Though, of course, as the very erudite, but still more puzzling author of Phallicism gives it, no uninitiated mortal would ever understand his real drift.

The traditions of every country and nation point to this fact. Donnelly quotes from Father Duran's Historia Antigua de la Nueva España of 1885, in which a native of Cholula, a centenarian, accounts for the building of the great pyramid of Cholula, as follows: “In the beginning, before the light of the sun had been created, this land [Cholula] was in obscurity and darkness ... but immediately after the light of the sun arose in the East, there appeared gigantic men ... who built the said pyramid, its builders being scattered after that to all parts of the earth.”

“A great deal of the Central American history is taken up with the doings of an ancient race of Giants called Quinanes,” says the author of Atlantis (p. 204).

Genesis, v. Treating of the Chinese Dragon and the literature of China, Mr. Charles Gould, in his Mythical Monsters (p. 212), writes: “Its mythologies, histories, religions, popular stories, and proverbs, all teem with references to a mysterious being who has a physical nature and spiritual attributes. Gifted with an accepted form, which he has the supernatural power of casting off for the assumption of others, he has the power of influencing the weather, producing droughts or fertilizing rains at pleasure, of raising tempests and allaying them. Volumes could be compiled from the scattered legends which everywhere abound relating to this subject.”

This “mysterious being” is the mythical Dragon, i.e., the symbol of the historical and actual Adept, the Master and Professor of Occult Sciences of old. It has already been stated elsewhere, that the great “Magicians” of the Fourth and Fifth Races were generally called “Serpents” and “Dragons” after their Progenitors. All these belonged to the Hierarchy of the so-called “Fiery Dragons of Wisdom,” the Dhyân Chohans, answering to the Agnishvâtta Pitris, the Maruts and Rudras generally, as the issue of Rudra their father, who is identified with the God of Fire. More is said in the text. Now Clement, an initiated Neo-Platonist, knew, of course, the origin of the word “Dragon,” and why the initiated Adepts were so called, as he knew the secret of the Agathodæmon, the Christ, the seven-vowelled Serpent of the Gnostics. He knew that the dogma of his new faith required the transformation of all the rivals of Jehovah—the Angels supposed to have rebelled against that “Elohim,” as the Titan Prometheus rebelled against Zeus, the usurper of his father's kingdom—and that “Dragon” was the mystic appellation of the “Sons of Wisdom”; from this knowledge came his definition, as cruel as it was arbitrary, “serpents and giants signify demons,” i.e., not “Spirits,” but Devils, in Church parlance.

Our best modern novelists, although they are neither Theosophists nor Spiritualists, nevertheless begin to have very psychological and suggestively Occult dreams; witness Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson and his Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, than which no grander psychological essay on Occult lines exists. Has the rising novelist Mr. Rider Haggard also had a prophetic, or rather a retrospective, clairvoyant dream before he wrote She? His imperial Kor, the great city of the dead, whose surviving inhabitants sailed northwards after the plague had killed almost a whole nation, seems, in its general outlines, to step out from the imperishable pages of the old archaic records. Ayesha suggests “that those men who sailed north may have been the fathers of the first Egyptians”; and then seems to attempt a synopsis of certain letters of a Master quoted in Esoteric Buddhism, for, she says: “Time after time have nations, ay, and rich and strong nations, learned in the arts, been, and passed away, and been forgotten, so that no memory of them remains. This [the nation of Kor] is but one of several; for time eats up the work of man unless, indeed, he digs in caves like the people of Kor, and then mayhap the sea swallows them, or the earthquake shakes them in.... Yet were not these people utterly destroyed, as I think. Some few remained in the other cities, for their cities were many.

But the barbarians ... came down upon them, and took their women to wife, and the race of the Amahagger that is now is a bastard brood of the mighty sons of Kor, and behold it dwelleth in the tombs with its fathers' bones” (pp. 180, 181).

Here the clever novelist seems to repeat the history of all the now degraded and down-fallen races of humanity. Geologists and Anthropologists would place at the head of humanity—as descendants of Homo Primigenius—the ape-man, of which “no fossil remains are as yet known to us,” though they “were probably akin to the Gorilla and Orang of the present day” (Hæckel). In answer to whose “probably,” Occultists point to another and a greater probability—viz., the one given in our text.

It is said by the incarnate Logos, Krishna, in the Bhagavad Gîtâ, “The seven great Rishis, the four preceding Manus, partaking of my nature, were born from my mind: from them sprang [emanated or were born] the human race and the world” (x. 6).

Here, by the seven Great Rishis, the seven great Rûpa Hierarchies or Classes of Dhyân Chohans, are meant. Let us bear in mind that the seven Rishis, Saptarshi, are the Regents of the seven stars of the Great Bear, and therefore, of the same nature as the Angels of the Planets, or the seven Great Planetary Spirits. They were all reborn as men on Earth in various Kalpas and Races. Moreover, “the four preceding Manus” are the four Classes of the originally Arûpa Gods—the Kumâras, the Rudras, the Asuras, etc.; who are also said to have incarnated. They are not Prajâpatis, as are the first, but their informing “principles”—some of which have incarnated in men, while others have made other men simply the vehicles of their “reflections.” As Krishna truly says—the same words being repeated later by another vehicle of the Logos—“I am the the same to all beings ... those who worship me [the sixth principle or the divine Intellectual Soul, Buddhi, made conscious by its union with the higher faculties of Manas] are in me, and I am in them.” (Ibid., x. 29.) The Logos, being no “personality” but the Universal Principle, is represented by all the divine Powers, born of its Mind—the pure Flames, or, as they are called in Occultism, the “Intellectual Breaths”—those Angels who are said to have made themselves independent, i.e., passed from the passive and quiescent, into the active state of Self-Consciousness. When this is recognized, the true meaning of Krishna becomes comprehensible. But see Mr. Subba Row's excellent Lecture on the Bhagavad Gîtâ (Theosophist, April, 1887, p. 444).

For the Stanzas call this locality by a term translated in the Commentary as a place of no latitude (Niraksha), the Abode of the Gods. As a scholiast says in the Sûrya Siddhânta (xii. 42-44):

“Above them goes the sun when situated at the equinoxes; they have neither equinoctial shadow nor elevation of the pole (akshonnati).

“In both directions from Meru are two pole-stars (dhruvatârâ), fixed in the midst of the sky, to those who are situated in places of no latitude (niraksha), both these have their place in the horizon.

“Hence there is, in those cities [in that land], no elevation of the poles, the two pole-stars being situated in their horizon; but their degrees of co-latitude (lambaka) are ninety: at Meru the degrees of latitude (aksha) are of the same number.” (See Vishnu Purâna, Wilson's Trans., ii. 208.)

See the foot-note (p. 431) concerning the etymology of προ-μῆτις or forethought. Prometheus confesses it in the drama when saying:

O holy ether, swiftly-wingèd gales.... Behold what I, a god, from gods endure.

And yet what say I? Clearly I foreknow All that must happen.... ... The Destined it behoves, As best I may, to bear, for well I wot How incontestable the strength of Fate.... (105)

“Fate” stands here for Karma, or Nemesis.

Mercure Trismegiste, Pimandre, chap. i, sec. 16: “Oh, ma pensée, que s'ensuit-il? car je désire grandement ce propos. Pimandre diet, ceci est un mystère celé, jusques à ce jour d'hui. Car nature, soit mestant avec l'hôme, a produit le miracle très merveilleux, aîant celluy qui ie t'av diet, la nature de l'harmonie des sept du père, et de l'esprit. Nature ne s'arresta pas là, mais incontinent a produict sept hômes, selon les natures des sept gouverneurs en puissance des deux sexes et esleuez.... La génération de ces sept s'est donnée en ceste manière....”

And a gap is made in the translation, which can be filled partially by resorting to the Latin text of Apuleius. The commentator, the Bishop, says: “Nature produced in him [man] seven men” (seven principles).

Historical View of the Hindû Astronomy. Quoting from the work in reference to “Argabhatta” [? Âryabhatta] who is said to give a near approach to the true relation among the various values for the computations of the value of π, the author of The Source of Measures reproduces a curious statement. “Mr. Bentley,” it is said, “was greatly familiar with the Hindû astronomical and mathematical knowledge.... This statement of his may then be taken as authentic. The same remarkable trait, among so many Eastern and ancient nations, of sedulously concealing the arcana of this kind of knowledge, is a marked one among the Hindûs. That which was given out to be popularly taught, and to be exposed to public inspection, was but the approximate of a more exact but hidden knowledge. And this very formulation of Mr. Bentley will strangely exemplify the assertion; and, explained, will show that it [the Hindû exoteric astronomy and sciences] was derived from a system exact beyond the European one, in which Mr. Bentley himself, of course, trusted, as far in advance of the Hindû knowledge, at any time, in any generation” (pp. 86, 87).

This is Mr. Bentley's misfortune, and does not take away from the glory of the ancient Hindû Astronomers, who were all Initiates.

Having given a number of illustrations from natural history, the doctor adds: “The facts I have briefly glanced at are general facts, and cannot happen day after day in so many millions of animals of every kind. from the larva or ovum of a minute insect up to man, at definite periods, from a mere chance or coincidence.... Upon the whole it is, I think, impossible to come to any less general conclusion than this, that, in animals, changes occur every three and a half, seven, fourteen, twenty-one, or twenty-eight days, or at some definite number of weeks”—or septenary cycles. Again, the same Dr. Laycock states that: “Whatever type the fever may exhibit, there will be a paroxysm on the seventh day.... fourteenth will be remarkable as a day of amendment ... [either cure or death taking place]. If the fourth [paroxysm] be severe, and the fifth less so, the disease will end at the seventh paroxysm, and ... the change for the better ... will be seen on the fourteenth day ... namely, about three or four o'clock a.m., when the system is most languid.” (Approaching End of the Age, by Grattan Guinness, pp. 258 to 269, wherein this is quoted).

This is pure “soothsaying” by cyclic calculations, and it is connected with Chaldæan Astrolatry and Astrology. Thus Materialistic Science—in its medicine, the most materialistic of all—applies our Occult laws to diseases, studies natural history with its help, recognizes its presence as a fact in Nature, and yet must needs pooh-pooh the same archaic knowledge when claimed by the Occultists. For if the mysterious Septenary Cycle is a law in Nature, and it is one, as proven; if it is found controlling both evolution and involution (or death) in the realms of entomology, ichthyology and ornithology, as in the kingdom of the animal mammalia and man—why cannot it be present and acting in Kosmos, in general, in its natural (though occult) divisions of time, races, and mental development? And why, furthermore, should not the most ancient Adepts have studied and thoroughly mastered these cyclic laws under all their aspects? Indeed, Dr. Stratton states as a physiological and pathological fact, that “in health the human pulse is more frequent in the morning than in the evening for six days out of seven; and that on the seventh day it is slower.” (Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, Jan. 1843; ibid., loc. cit.) Why, then, should not an Occultist show the same in cosmic and terrestrial life in the pulse of the Planet and Races? Dr. Laycock divides life by three great septenary periods; the first and last, each stretching over 21 years, and the central period or prime of life lasting 28 years, or four times seven.

He subdivides the first into seven distinct stages, and the other two into three minor periods, and says that: “The fundamental unit of the greater periods is one week of seven days, each day being twelve hours, and that single and compound multiples of this unit, determine the length of these periods by the same ratio, as multiples of the unit of twelve hours determine the lesser periods. This law binds all periodic vital phenomena together, and links the periods observed in the lowest annulose animals, with those of man himself, the highest of the vertebrata.” (Ibid., p. 267.) If Science does this, why should she scorn the Occult information, that—to use Dr. Laycock's language—one Week of the Manvantaric (Lunar) Fortnight, of fourteen Days (or seven Manus), that Fortnight of twelve Hours in a Day representing seven Periods or seven Races—is now passed? This language of Science fits our Doctrine admirably. Mankind has lived over “a week of seven days, each day being twelve hours,” since three and a half Races are now gone for ever, the Fourth is submerged, and we are now in the Fifth Race.

The mental barrier between man and ape, characterized by Huxley as an “enormous gap, a distance practically immeasurable” (! !) is, indeed, in itself conclusive. Certainly it constitutes a standing puzzle to the Materialist, who relies on the frail reed of “natural selection.” The physiological differences between Man and the Apes are in reality—despite a curious community of certain features—equally striking. Says Dr. Schweinfurth, one of the most cautious and experienced of Naturalists:

“In modern times there are no animals in creation that have attracted a larger amount of attention from the scientific student of nature than these great quadrumana [the anthropoids], which are stamped with such a singular resemblance to the human form as to have justified the epithet of anthropomorphic.... But all investigation at present only leads human intelligence to a confession of its insufficiency; and nowhere is caution more to be advocated, nowhere is premature judgment more to be deprecated than in the attempt to bridge over the mysterious chasm which separates man and beast.” (Heart of Africa, i., 520. Ed., 1873.)

“At this period,” writes Darwin, “the arteries run in arch-like branches, as if to carry the blood to branchiæ which are not present in the higher vertebrata, though the slits on the side of the neck still remain, marking their former [?] position.”