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

22. Then the Second evolved the Egg-born, the Third.305The Sweat grew, its Drops grew, and the Drops became hard and round. The Sun warmed it; the Moon cooled and shaped it; the Wind fed it until its ripeness. The White Swan from the Starry Vault306overshadowed the big Drop. The Egg of the Future Race, the Man-swan307of the later Third (a). First male-female, then man and woman (b).

(a) The text of the Stanza clearly implies that the human embryo was nourished ab extra by Cosmic Forces, and that the “Father-Mother” furnished apparently the germ that ripened; in all probability a “sweat-born egg,” to be hatched out, in some mysterious way, disconnected from the “double” parent. It is comparatively easy to conceive of an oviparous humanity, since even now man is, in one sense, “egg-born.” Magendie, moreover, in his Precis Élémentaire de Physiologie, citing

“Ah, but,” the sceptic may urge, “Magendie's book belongs to the last generation, and Science has since made such strides that his stigma of ignorance can no longer be fixed upon the profession.” Indeed; then let us turn to a very great authority upon Physiology, viz., Sir Michael Foster, and, to the disadvantage of Modern Science, we shall find him saying:

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

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

(b) This is a very curious statement as explained in the Commentaries. To make it clear: The First Race having created the Second by “budding,” as explained above, the Second Race gives birth to the Third—which itself is separated into three distinct divisions, consisting of men differently procreated. The first two of these are produced by an oviparous method, presumably unknown to modern Natural History. While the early sub-races of the Third Humanity procreated their species by a kind of exudation of moisture or vital fluid, the drops of which coalescing formed an oviform ball—or shall we say egg—that served as an extraneous vehicle for the generation therein of a fœtus and child, the mode of procreation by the later sub-races changed, in its results at all events. The little ones of the earlier sub-races were entirely sexless—shapeless even for all one knows;309 but those of the later sub-races were born androgynous. It is in the Third Race that the separation of sexes occurred. From being previously a-sexual, Humanity became distinctly hermaphrodite or bi-sexual; and finally the man-bearing Eggs began to give birth, gradually and almost imperceptibly in their evolutionary development, first, to beings in which one sex predominated over the other, and, finally, to distinct men and women. And now let us search for corroboration of these statements in the religious legends of East and West. Let us take the “Egg-born Race” first. Think of Kashyapa, the Vedic sage, and the most prolific of creators.

He was the son of Marichi, Brahmâ's Mind-born Son; and he is made to become the father of the Nâgas, or Serpents, among other beings. Exoterically, the Nâgas are semi-divine beings which have a human face and the tail of a serpent. Yet there was a race of Nâgas, said to be a thousand in number only, born or rather sprung [pg 141] from Kadrû, Kashyapa's wife, for the purpose of peopling Pâtâla, which is undeniably America, as will be shown; and there was a Nâga-Dvîpa, one of the seven divisions of Bhâratavarsha, India, inhabited by a people bearing the same name, who are allowed, even by some Orientalists, to be historical, and to have left many a trace behind them to this day.

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

In an able article, written some fifteen years ago, our learned and respected friend Prof. Alexander Wilder, of New York, shows the absolute logic and necessity of believing “The Primeval Race Double-Sexed,” and gives a number of scientific reasons for it.310 He argues firstly, that a large part of the vegetable creation exhibits the phenomenon of bi-sexuality, the Linnæan classification enumerating thus almost all plants. This is the case in the superior families of the vegetable kingdoms as much as in the lower forms, from the hemp to the Lombardy poplar and ailanthus. In the animal kingdom also it is the same. In insect life, the moth generates a worm, and the worm becomes a moth, as in the Mysteries the great secret was expressed—Taurus[pg 142]Taurus Draconem genuit, et Taurum Draco. The coral-producing family, which, according to Agassiz, has spent many hundreds of thousands of years, during the present geological period, in building out the peninsula of Florida, produce their offspring from themselves like the buds and ramifications in a tree. Bees are somewhat in the same line. The aphides, or plant lice, keep house like Amazons, and virgin parents perpetuate the race for ten successive generations.

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

This will show the Esoteric point. The Sexless Race was their first production, a modification of and from themselves, the pure Spiritual Existences; and this was Adam solus. Thence came the Second Race: Adam-Eve, or Jod-Heva, inactive Androgynes; and finally the Third, or the “Separating Hermaphrodite,” Cain and Abel, who produce the Fourth, Seth-Enos, etc. It is this Third, the last semi-spiritual Race, [pg 143] which was also the last vehicle of the divine and innate Wisdom, ingenerate in the Enochs, the Seers of that Mankind. The Fourth, which had tasted of the fruit of the Tree of Good and Evil—Wisdom already united to earthy, and therefore impure, intelligence313—had consequently to acquire that Wisdom by initiation and great struggle. And the union of Wisdom and Intelligence, the former ruling the latter, is called in the Hermetic books “the God possessing the double fecundity of the two sexes.”

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

The nameAdam, or man, itself implies this double form of existence. It is identical withAthamas, orThomas(Tamil,Tam), which is rendered by the GreekDidumos, a twin; if, therefore, the first woman was formed subsequently to the first man, she must, as a logical necessity, be“taken out of man.”Accordingly we read:“And thesidewhich the Lord God [Elohim] had taken from man, made he a woman.”The Hebrew word here used isTzala, which bears the translation we have given. It is easy to trace the legend in Berosus, who says thatThalatth(theOmorôka, or Lady of Urka) was the beginning of creation. She was also Telita [? Melita], the queen of the Moon....

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

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

As stated in Volume I, the Humanities developed coördinately, and [pg 144] on parallel lines with the four Elements, every new Race being physiologically adapted to meet the additional Element. Our Fifth Race is rapidly approaching the Fifth Element—call it interstellar ether, if you will—which has more to do, however, with psychology than with physics. We men have learned to live in every climate, whether frigid or tropical, but the first two Races had nought to do with climate, nor were they subservient to any temperature or change therein. And thus, we are taught, men lived down to the close of the Third Root-Race, when eternal spring reigned over the whole Globe, such as is now enjoyed by the inhabitants of Jupiter; a world, which, as M. Camille Flammarion says:

Those Astronomers who maintain that Jupiter is in a molten condition, in our sense of the term, are invited to settle their dispute with this learned French Astronomer.315 It must, however, be [pg 145] always borne in mind that the “eternal spring” referred to is only a condition cognized as such by the Jovians. It is not “spring,” as we know it. In this reservation is to be found the reconciliation between the two theories here cited. Both embrace partial truths.

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

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

It has been repeatedly urged as an objection that, however high the degree of metaphysical thought in ancient India, yet the old Egyptians had nothing but crass idolatry and zoolatry to boast of; Hermes, as alleged, being the work of Greek Mystics who lived in Egypt. To this, an answer can be given: a direct proof that the Egyptians believed in [pg 146] the Secret Doctrine is, that it was taught to them at Initiation. Let the objectors open the Eclogæ Physicœ et Ethicæ of Stobæus, the Greek compiler of ancient fragments, who lived in the fifth century, a.d. The following is a transcription by him of an old Hermetic fragment, showing the Egyptian theory of the Soul. Translated word for word, it says:

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