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

Such is the name given in Occult phraseology to man. It means, as shown elsewhere, a seven-leaved plant, and the name has a great significance in the Buddhist legends. So it had, also, under disguise, in the Greek myths. The T, or τ (Tau), formed from the figure 7, and the Greek letter Γ (Gamma), was, as stated in the last Section, the symbol of life, and of Life Eternal: of earthly life, because Γ (Gamma) is the symbol of the Earth (Gaia)1401; and of Life Eternal, because the figure 7 is the symbol of the same life linked with Divine Life, the double glyph expressed in geometrical figures being:

Now, the number six has been regarded in the Ancient Mysteries as an emblem of physical Nature. For six is the representation of the six dimensions of all bodies—the six directions which compose their form, namely, the four directions extending to the four cardinal points, North, South, East, and West, and the two directions of height and thickness that answer to the Zenith and the Nadir. Therefore, while the Senary was applied by the Sages to physical man, the Septenary was for them the symbol of that man plus his immortal Soul.1402

The same idea is found in the Indian double equilateral triangle. For, though it is called in that country the sign of Vishnu, yet in truth it is the symbol of the Triad, or Tri-mûrti. For, even in the exoteric rendering, the lower triangle, [Symbol: triangle], with the apex downward, is the symbol of Vishnu, the God of the Moist Principle and Water, Nârâyana being the Moving Principle in the Nârâ, or Waters;1404 while the [pg 626] triangle, with its apex upward, [Symbol: triangle], is Shiva, the Principle of Fire, symbolized by the triple flame in his hand.1405 It is these two interlaced triangles, wrongly called “Solomon's Seal”—which also form the emblem of our Society—that produce the Septenary and the Triad at one and the same time, and are the Decad. Whatever way this [Symbol: 6-point star] is examined, all the ten numbers are contained therein. For with a point in the middle or centre, [Symbol: 6-point star with middle dot], it is a sevenfold sign or Septenary; its triangles denote number three, or the Triad; the two triangles show the presence of the Binary; the triangles with the central point common to both yield the Quaternary; the six points are the Senary; and the central point, the Unit; the Quinary being traced by combination, as a compound of two triangles, the even number, and of three sides in each triangle, the first odd number. This is the reason why Pythagoras and the ancients made the number six sacred to Venus, since:

Belief in “Creators,” or the personified Powers of Nature, is in truth no polytheism, but a philosophical necessity. Like all the other Planets of our system, the Earth has seven Logoi—the emanating Rays of the one “Father-Ray”—the Protogonos, or the Manifested Logos, he who sacrifices his Esse (or “Flesh,” the Universe) that the World may live and every creature therein have conscious being.

Numbers 3 and 4 are respectively male and female, Spirit and Matter, and their union is the emblem of Life Eternal in Spirit on its ascending arc, and in Matter as the ever resurrecting Element—by procreation and reproduction. The spiritual male line is vertical [Symbol: bar]; the differentiated matter-line is horizontal; the two forming the cross or ☩. The 3 is invisible; the 4 is on the plane of objective perception. This is why all the Matter of the Universe, when analyzed to its ultimates by Science, can be reduced to four Elements only—Carbon, Oxygen, Nitrogen, and Hydrogen; and why the three primaries, the noumena of the four, or graduated Spirit or Force, have remained a terra incognita, and mere speculations, mere names, to exact Science. Her servants must believe in and study first the primary causes, before they can hope to fathom the nature, and acquaint themselves with the potentialities, of [pg 627] the effects. Thus, while the men of Western learning had, and still have, the four, or Matter, to toy with, the Eastern Occultists and their disciples, the great Alchemists the world over, have the whole septenate to study from.1407 As those Alchemists have it:

When the Three and the Four kiss each other, the Quaternary joins its middle nature with that of the Triangle [or Triad, i.e., the face of one of its plane surfaces becoming the middle face of the other], and becomes a Cube; then only does it [the Cube unfolded] become the vehicle and the number of Life, the Father-Mother Seven.

Now we are taught that all these earliest forms of organic life also appear in septenary groups of numbers. From minerals or “soft stones that hardened,” to use the phraseology of the Stanzas, followed by the “hard plants that softened,” which are the product of the mineral, for “it is from the bosom of the stone that vegetation is born”;1408 and then to man—all the primitive models in every kingdom of Nature begin by being ethereal, transparent, films. This, of course, takes place only in the first beginning of life. With the next period they consolidate, and at the seventh begin to branch off into species, all except men, the first of the mammalian animals1409 in the Fourth Round.

“First came three, or the Triangle.” This expression has a profound meaning in Occultism, and the fact is corroborated, in Mineralogy, Botany, and even in Geology—as has been demonstrated in the Section on “The Chronology of the Brâhmans”—by the compound number seven, the three and the four, being contained in it. Salt in solution proves this. For when its molecules, clustering together, begin to deposit themselves as a solid, the first shape they assume is that of triangles, of small pyramids and cones. It is the figure of Fire, whence the word “Pyramis”; while the second geometrical [pg 629] figure in manifested Nature is a Square or a Cube, 4 and 6; for, as Enfield says, “the particles of earth being cubical, those of fire are pyramidal”—truly. The pyramidal shape is that assumed by the pines—the most primitive tree after the fern period. Thus the two opposites in cosmic Nature—fire and water, heat and cold—begin their metrographical manifestations, one by a trimetric, the other by a hexagonal system. For the stellate crystals of snow, viewed under a microscope, are all and each of them a double or a treble six-pointed star, with a central nucleus, like a miniature star within the larger one. Says Mr. Darwin—showing that the inhabitants of the sea-shore are greatly affected by the tides:

The most ancient progenitors in the kingdom of the Vertebrata ... apparently consisted of a group of marine animals.... Animals living either about the meanhigh-water mark, or about themeanlow-water mark, pass through a complete cycle of tidal changes in a fortnight.... Now it is a mysterious fact that in the higher and now terrestrial Vertebrata ... many normal and abnormal processes have one or more weeks [septenates] as their periods ... such as gestation of mammals, the duration of fevers.1411

This number is closely connected with the Moon, whose Occult influence is ever manifesting itself in septenary periods. It is the Moon which is the guide of the Occult side of terrestrial Nature, while the Sun is the regulator and factor of manifested life. This truth has ever been evident to the Seers and the Adepts. Jakob Böhme, by insisting on the fundamental doctrine of the seven properties of everlasting Mother Nature, proved himself thereby a great Occultist.

But to return to the consideration of the septenary in ancient religious symbolism. To the metrological key of the symbolism of the Hebrews, which reveals numerically the geometrical relations of the Circle (All-Deity) to the Square, Cube, Triangle, and all the integral emanations of the divine area, may be added the theogonic key. This key explains that Noah, the Deluge-Patriarch, is in one aspect the permutation of the Deity (the Universal Creative Law), for the purpose [pg 630] of the formation of our Earth, its population, and the propagation of life on it, in general.

Now bearing in mind the septenary division in divine Hierarchies, as in cosmic and human constitutions, the student will readily understand that Jah-Noah is at the head of, and is the synthesis of the lower cosmic Quaternary. The upper Sephirothal Triad, △—of which Jehovah-Binah (Intelligence) is the left, female, angle—emanates the Quaternary, □. The latter, symbolizing by itself the Heavenly Man, the sexless Adam Kadmon, viewed as Nature in the abstract, becomes a septenate again by emanating from itself the additional three principles, the lower terrestrial or manifested physical Nature, Matter and our Earth—the seventh being Malkuth, the “Bride of the Heavenly Man”—thus forming, with the higher Triad, or Kether, the Crown, the full number of the Sephirothal Tree—the 10, the Total in Unity, or the Universe. Apart from the higher Triad, the lower creative Sephiroth are seven.

The above is not directly to our point, though it is a necessary reminder to facilitate the comprehension of what follows. The question at issue is to show that Jah-Noah, or the Jehovah of the Hebrew Bible, the alleged Creator of our Earth, of man and all upon it, is:

(c) The Noah—identical with the Hindû Shishta, the human Seed, left for the peopling of the Earth from a previous creation, or Manvantara, as expressed in the Purânas, or the pre-diluvian period as rendered allegorically in the Bible—in his cosmic character.

But whether a Quaternary (Tetragrammaton) or a Triad, the biblical Creative God is not the Universal 10, unless blended with Ain Suph (as Brahmâ with Parabrahman), but a septenary, one of the many septenaries of the Universal Septenate. In the explanation of the question now in hand, his position and status as Noah may best be shown by placing the 3, △, and 4, □, on parallel lines with the cosmic and human principles. For the latter, the old familiar classification is made use of.

“Ararat=the mount of descent= הר-י-רד,Hor-Jared. Hatho mentions it out of composition byArath= ארת. Editor of Moses Cherenensis says:‘By this, they say, is signifiedthe first place of descent(of the ark).’ ”(Bryant'sAnal., vol. iv. pp. 5, 6, 15.) Under“Berge,”mountain, Nork says ofArarat:“אררט, for ארת (i.e.,AraratforArath)earth, Aramaicreduplication.”Here it is seen that[pg 632]Nork and Hatho make use of the same equivalent, in Arath, ארש, with the meaning ofearth.1413

Noah thus symbolizing both the Root-Manu and the Seed-Manu, or the Power which developed the Planetary Chain, and our Earth, and the Seed-Race, the Fifth, which was saved while the last sub-races of the Fourth, Vaivasvata Manu, perished, the number seven will be seen to recur at every step. It is Noah who, as Jehovah's permutation, represents the septenary Host of the Elohim, and is thus the Father or Creator (the Preserver) of all animal life. Hence the verses of Genesis: “Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male [3], and the female [4]; of fowls also of the air by sevens,”1414 etc., followed by all the sevening of days and the rest.