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The Secret Doctrine
THE SYNTHESIS OF SCIENCE, RELIGION, AND PHILOSOPHY.
By H. P. Blavatsky
"There is no Religion higher than Truth."
Vol. I. -- COSMOGENESIS.
London:
THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING COMPANY, LIMITED.
7, Duke Street, Adelphi, W.C.
WILLIAM Q. JUDGE,
117, Nassau Street, New York.
THE MANAGER OF THE THEOSOPHIST,
Adyar, Madras.
---
1888.
"Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1888, by H. P. Blavatsky,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C."
HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY
1831-1891
This Work
I Dedicate to all True Theosophists,
In every Country,
And of every Race,
For they called it forth, and for them it was recorded.
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PREFACE.
THE Author -- the writer, rather -- feels it necessary to apologise for the long
delay which has occurred in the appearance of this work. It has been occasioned
by ill-health and the magnitude of the undertaking. Even the two volumes now
issued do not complete the scheme, and these do not treat exhaustively of the
subjects dealt with in them. A large quantity of material has already been
prepared, dealing with the history of occultism as contained in the lives of the
great Adepts of the Aryan Race, and showing the bearing of occult philosophy
upon the conduct of life, as it is and as it ought to be. Should the present
volumes meet with a favourable reception, no effort will be spared to carry out
the scheme of the work in its entirety. The third volume is entirely ready; the
fourth almost so.
This scheme, it must be added, was not in contemplation when the preparation of
the work was first announced. As originally announced, it was intended that the
"Secret Doctrine" should be an amended and enlarged version of "Isis Unveiled."
It was, however, soon found that the explanations which could be added to those
already put before the world in the last-named and other works dealing with
esoteric science, were such as to require a different method of treatment: and
consequently the present volumes do not contain, in all, twenty pages extracted
from "Isis Unveiled."
The author does not feel it necessary to ask the indulgence of her readers and
critics for the many defects of literary style, and the imperfect English which
may be found in these pages. She is a foreigner, and her knowledge of the
language was acquired late in life. The English tongue is employed because it
offers the most widely-diffused medium for conveying the truths which it had
become her duty to place before the world.
These truths are in no sense put forward as a revelation; nor does the author
claim the position of a revealer of mystic lore, now made public for the first
time in the world's history. For what is contained in this work is to be found
scattered throughout thousands of volumes embodying the scriptures of the great
Asiatic and early European religions, hidden under glyph and symbol, and
hitherto left unnoticed because of this veil. What is now attempted is to gather
the oldest tenets together and to make of them one harmonious and unbroken
whole. The sole advantage which the writer has over her predecessors, is that
she need not resort to personal speculations and theories. For this work is a
partial statement of what she herself has been taught by more advanced students,
supplemented, in a few details only, by the results of her
own study and observation. The publication of many of the facts herein stated
has been rendered necessary by the wild and fanciful speculations in which many
Theosophists and students of mysticism have indulged, during the last few years,
in their endeavour to, as they imagined, work out a complete system of thought
from the few facts previously communicated to them.
It is needless to explain that this book is not the Secret Doctrine in its
entirety, but a select number of fragments of its fundamental tenets, special
attention being paid to some facts which have been seized upon by various
writers, and distorted out of all resemblance to the truth.
But it is perhaps desirable to state unequivocally that the teachings, however
fragmentary and incomplete, contained in these volumes, belong neither to the
Hindu, the Zoroastrian, the Chaldean, nor the Egyptian religion,.neither to
Buddhism, Islam, Judaism nor Christianity exclusively. The Secret Doctrine is
the essence of all these. Sprung from it in their origins, the various religious
schemes are now made to merge back into their original element, out of which
every mystery and dogma has grown, developed, and become materialised.
It is more than probable that the book will be regarded by a large section of
the public as a romance of the wildest kind; for who has ever even heard of the
book of Dzyan?
The writer, therefore, is fully prepared to take all the responsibility for what
is contained in this work, and even to face the charge of having invented the
whole of it. That it has many shortcomings she is fully aware; all that she
claims for it is that, romantic as it may seem to many, its logical coherence
and consistency entitle this new Genesis to rank, at any rate, on a level with
the "working hypotheses" so freely accepted by modern science. Further, it
claims consideration, not by reason of any appeal to dogmatic authority, but
because it closely adheres to Nature, and follows the laws of uniformity and
analogy.
The aim of this work may be thus stated: to show that Nature is not "a
fortuitous concurrence of atoms," and to assign to man his rightful place in the
scheme of the Universe; to rescue from degradation the archaic truths which are
the basis of all religions; and to uncover, to some extent, the fundamental
unity from which they all spring; finally, to show that the occult side of
Nature has never been approached by the Science of modern civilization.
If this is in any degree accomplished, the writer is content. It is written in
the service of humanity, and by humanity and the future generations it must be
judged. Its author recognises no inferior court of appeal. Abuse she is
accustomed to; calumny she is daily acquainted with; at slander she smiles in
silent contempt.
De minimis non curat lex.
H.P.B.
London, October, 1888.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS.
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INTRODUCTION ... xvii.
The Need of such a Book ... xix.
The Antiquity of Documents and MSS. ... xxiii.
What the Book is intended to do ... xxviii.
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VOLUME FIRST.
COSMOGENESIS.
PROEM ... 1
The Oldest MSS. in the world and its Symbolism ... 2
The One Life, Active and Passive ... 4
The Secret Doctrine -- Pantheism -- Atheism ... 6
"Space" in all Religions and in Occultism ... 9
Seven Cosmic Elements -- Seven Races of Mankind ... 12
The Three Postulates of the Secret Doctrine ... 14
Description of the Stanzas from the Book of Dzyan ... 20
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BOOK I. -- PART I.
COSMIC EVOLUTION.
SEVEN STANZAS FROM THE BOOK OF DZYAN ... 27
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STANZA I. -- THE NIGHT OF THE UNIVERSE... 35
The Seven Eternities ... 36
"Time" ... 37
The Universal Mind and the Dhyan Chohans ... 38
Nidana and Maya: The Causes of Misery ... 39
The Great Breath ... 43
Being and Non-Being ... 45
The Eye of Dangma ... 47
Alaya, the Universal Soul ... 49
[[Vol. 1, Page]] x CONTENTS.
STANZA II. -- THE IDEA OF DIFFERENTIATION ... 53
The Absolute knows Itself not ... 55
The Germ of Life was not yet ... 57
The Universe was still concealed in the Divine Thought ... 61
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STANZA III. -- THE AWAKENING OF KOSMOS ... 62
The Great Vibration ... 63
Nature's Symbols ... 65
The Power of Numbers ... 67
The Logoi and the Dragon ... 73
The Astral Light ... 75
Primeval Radiations from Unity ... 79
The Web of Being ... 83
Conscious Electricity: Fohat ... 85
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STANZA IV. -- THE SEPTENARY HIERARCHIES ... 86
The Sons of the Fire ... 86
The Vehicle of the Universe -- the Dhyan Chohans ... 89
The Army of the Voice ... 93
Speech and Mind ... 95
The Ogdoad and the Heptad ... 99
The Stellar "Sons of Light" ... 103
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STANZA V. -- FOHAT: THE CHILD OF THE SEPTENARY HIERARCHIES ... 106
The Fiery Whirlwind and the Primordial Seven ... 106
They Produce Fohat ... 108
The Correlation of the "Gods" ... 113
Evolution of the "Principles" of Nature ... 119
The Mystery of the Fire ... 121
The Secret of the Elements ... 123
The Square of the Tabernacle ... 125
The Planetary Spirits and the Lipika ... 129
The Ring "Pass Not" ... 130
The Sidereal Book of Life ... 131
The Soul's Pilgrimage and its "Rest" ... 134
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STANZA VI. -- OUR WORLD, ITS GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT ... 136
The Logos ... 136
Mystery of the Female Logos ... 137
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xi CONTENTS.
The Seven Layu Centres ... 138
The "Elementary Germs" ... 139
The Evolution of the Elements ... 140
The Building of the Worlds ... 145
A Neutral Centre ... 147
"Dead" Planets -- The Moon ... 149
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THEOSOPHICAL MISCONCEPTIONS ... 152
The Planetary Divisions and the Human Principles ... 153
The Moon ... 155
Transmigrations of the Ego ... 159
The Septenary Chain ... 161
Relation of the other Planets to the Earth ... 163
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EXPLANATIONS CONCERNING THE GLOBES AND THE MONADS ... 170
The Lunar Chain and the Earth Chain ... 172
The Earth, the Child of the Moon ... 173
Classification of the Monads ... 175
The Monad Defined ... 177
The Lunar Monads -- the Pitris ... 179
A Triple Evolution in Nature ... 181
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STANZA VI. -- CONTINUED ... 191
"Creation" in the Fourth Round ... 191
The "Curse," "Sin," and "War" ... 193
The Struggle for Life and the Birth of the Worlds ... 202
The Adepts and the Sacred Island ... 207
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STANZA VII. -- THE PARENTS OF MAN ON EARTH ... 213
Divisions of the Hierarchies ... 214
Correlations of Beings ... 223
What incarnates in Animal Man ... 233
Formation of Man: the Thinker ... 238
Occult and Kabalistic Pneumatics ... 243
Akasa and Ether ... 257
The Invisible "Lives" ... 259
Occult Vital Chemistry and Bacteriology ... 261
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xii CONTENTS.
The Watcher and his Shadow ... 265
Earth peopled by the Shadows of the Gods ... 267
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SUMMING UP ... 269
The pith and marrow of the Secret Doctrine ... 273
Hermes in Christian Garb ... 285
Some Occult Aphorisms ... 289
The Seven Powers of Nature ... 293
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BOOK I. -- PART II.
THE EVOLUTION OF SYMBOLISM IN ITS APPROXIMATE ORDER.
§§
I. SYMBOLISM AND IDEOGRAPHS ... 303
Emblem and Symbol differ ... 305
Magic Potency of Sound ... 307
Mystery Language ... 309
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II. THE MYSTERY LANGUAGE AND ITS KEYS ... 310
Egypt's many Religions ... 311
The Jews and their System ... 313
Moses copied from Sargon ... 319
Identity of Ancient Symbols ... 323
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III. PRIMORDIAL SUBSTANCE AND DIVINE THOUGHT ... 325
Divine Thought, or Cineritious Matter? ... 327
Ether and Intelligence ... 330
The Seven Prakritis ... 335
The Mystic Fire ... 339
One Tree of Knowledge ... 341
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IV. CHAOS -- THEOS -- KOSMOS ... 342
The Union of Chaos and Spirit ... 343
The Birth of Mind ... 345
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V. THE HIDDEN DEITY, ITS SYMBOLS AND GLYPHS ... 349
The Gnostic Idea ... 351
International Correlation of Gods ... 355
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xiii CONTENTS.
§§ PAGE.
VI. THE MUNDANE EGG ... 359
Egg-born Logoi ... 363
The Winged Globe ... 365
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VII. THE DAYS AND NIGHTS OF BRAHMA ... 368
Human Gods and Divine Men ... 369
The Rebirth of Gods ... 371
The Puranic Prophecy ... 377
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VIII. THE LOTUS AS A UNIVERSAL SYMBOL ... 379
Exoteric and Esoteric ... 381
The Purity of early Phallicism ... 383
The Egyptian Lotus ... 385
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IX. DEUS LUNUS ... 386
A Glance at the Lunar Myth ... 387
A Key-note to the Moon ... 389
Copies and Originals... 393
The Moon Bi-sexual ... 397
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X. TREE AND SERPENT AND CROCODILE WORSHIP ... 403
Degeneration of the Symbol ... 405
The Seven-headed Dragons ... 407
Dragon and Crocodile ... 409
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XI. DEMON EST DEUS INVERSUS ... 411
Death is Life ... 413
The Fall of the Angels ... 418
Transformation of the Legend ... 421
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XII. THE THEOGONY OF THE CREATIVE GODS ... 424
The Point within the Circle ... 426
The Logos or Verbum ... 429
The Factors of Creation ... 432
Identity of the Hierarchies in all Religions ... 438
Difference between the Aryan and Semitic Systems ... 444
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xiv CONTENTS.
§§ PAGE.
XIII. THE SEVEN CREATIONS ... 445
The Gnostic and the Hindu Versions ... 449
The Seven Puranic "Creations" ... 450
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XIV. THE FOUR ELEMENTS. ... 460
The "Gods" and the "Elements" ... 463
The Language of the Elements ... 464
Pagan and Christian Worship of the Elements ... 467
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XV. ON KWAN-SHI-YIN AND KWAN-YIN ... 470
Kwan-Shi-Yin and Phallicism ... 471
The Real Meaning ... 472
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BOOK I. -- PART III.
SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED.
§§
I. REASONS FOR THESE ADDENDA ... 477
Occultism versus Materialism ... 479
The Sabbath of the Mystic ... 481
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II. MODERN PHYSICISTS ARE PLAYING AT BLIND MAN'S BUFF ... 482
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III. AN LUMEN SIT CORPUS NEC NON? ... 483
The Hypothetical Ether ... 485
Scientific Theories of its Constitution ... 489
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IV. IS GRAVITATION A LAW? ... 490
Intelligences or Blind Forces? ... 493
The Cause of Attraction ... 498
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xv CONTENTS.
§§ PAGE.
V. THE THEORIES OF ROTATION SCIENCE ... 500
Conflicting Hypotheses ... 502
More Hypotheses ... 505
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VI. THE MASKS OF SCIENCE ... 506
What are the "Forces?" ... 508
The View of the Occultists ... 510
Scientific and Occult Theories on Heat ... 515
The Atoms of Science ... 519
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VII. AN ATTACK ON THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF FORCE BY A MAN OF SCIENCE ... 523
Ether and Atoms ... 527
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VIII. LIFE, FORCE, OR GRAVITY? ... 529
Dr. Richardson on Nervous Ether ... 531
The Senses and their Action ... 535
Too much "Life" may Kill ... 539
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IX. THE SOLAR THEORY ... 540
The Primordial Element ... 542
Elements and Meta-Elements ... 546
The Tree of Life and Being ... 549
Prof. Crookes on the Elements ... 552
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X. THE COMING FORCE ... 554
Mr. Keeley, an Unconscious Occultist ... 557
Inter-Etheric Waves ... 561
The Secrets of Sound and Odour ... 565
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Xl. ON THE ELEMENTS AND ATOMS ... 566
Metaphysical Chemistry ... 569
What are the Seven Planets? ... 575
The Cyclic Fall of the Gods ... 577
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xvi CONTENTS.
§§ PAGE.
XII. ANCIENT THOUGHT IN MODERN DRESS ... 579
All-Potential Unity ... 583
The "Seventh" in Chemistry ... 585
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XIII. THE MODERN NEBULAR THEORY ... 588
Forces are Emanations ... 591
What is the Nebula? ... 595
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XIV. FORCES -- MODES OF MOTION OR INTELLIGENCES? ... 601
The Vital Principle ... 603
Occult and Physical Science ... 605
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XV. GODS, MONADS, AND ATOMS ... 610
The Gods of the Ancients -- the Monads ... 613
The Monad and the Duad ... 617
The Genesis of the Elements ... 621
Hermes and Huxley ... 625
The Teaching of Leibnitz ... 627
The Monads according to Occultism ... 632
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XVI. CYCLIC EVOLUTION AND KARMA ... 634
Karmic Cycles and Universal Ethics ... 637
Destiny and Karma ... 639
Karma-Nemesis ... 643
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XVII. THE ZODIAC AND ITS ANTIQUITY ... 647
The Jewish Patriarchs and the Signs of the Zodiac ... 651
Zodiacal Cycles ... 656
Hindu Astronomy ... 661
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XVIII. SUMMARY OF THE MUTUAL POSITION ... 668
Science Confesses her Ignorance ... 669
Materialism is leading Europe towards a catastrophe ... 675
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INTRODUCTORY.
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"Gently to hear, kindly to judge."
-- SHAKESPEARE.
SINCE the appearance of Theosophical literature in England, it has become
customary to call its teachings "Esoteric Buddhism." And, having become a habit
-- as an old proverb based on daily experience has it -- "Error runs down an
inclined plane, while Truth has to laboriously climb its way up hill."
Old truisms are often the wisest. The human mind can hardly remain entirely free
from bias, and decisive opinions are often formed before a thorough examination
of a subject from all its aspects has been made. This is said with reference to
the prevailing double mistake (a) of limiting Theosophy to Buddhism: and (b) of
confounding the tenets of the religious philosophy preached by Gautama, the
Buddha, with the doctrines broadly outlined in "Esoteric Buddhism." Any thing
more erroneous than this could be hardly imagined. It has enabled our enemies to
find an effective weapon against theosophy; because, as an eminent Pali scholar
very pointedly expressed it, there was in the volume named "neither esotericism
nor Buddhism." The esoteric truths, presented in Mr. Sinnett's work, had ceased
to be esoteric from the moment they were made public; nor did it contain the
religion of Buddha, but simply a few tenets from a hitherto hidden teaching
which are now supplemented by many more, enlarged and explained in the present
volumes. But even the latter, though giving out many fundamental tenets from the
SECRET DOCTRINE of the East, raise but a small corner of the dark veil. For no
one, not even the greatest living adept, would be permitted to, or could -- even
if he would -- give out promiscuously, to a mocking, unbelieving world, that
which has been so effectually concealed from it for long aeons and ages.
"Esoteric Buddhism" was an excellent work with a very unfortunate
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xviii INTRODUCTORY.
title, though it meant no more than does the title of this work, the "SECRET
DOCTRINE." It proved unfortunate, because people are always in the habit of
judging things by their appearance, rather than their meaning; and because the
error has now become so universal, that even most of the Fellows of the
Theosophical Society have fallen victims to the same misconception. From the
first, however, protests were raised by Brahmins and others against the title;
and, in justice to myself, I must add that "Esoteric Buddhism" was presented to
me as a completed volume, and that I was entirely unaware of the manner in which
the author intended to spell the word "Budh-ism."
This has to be laid directly at the door of those who, having been the first to
bring the subject under public notice, neglected to point out the difference
between "Buddhism" -- the religious system of ethics preached by the Lord
Gautama, and named after his title of Buddha, "the Enlightened" -- and Budha,
"Wisdom," or knowledge (Vidya), the faculty of cognizing, from the Sanskrit root
"Budh," to know. We theosophists of India are ourselves the real culprits,
although, at the time, we did our best to correct the mistake. (See Theosophist,
June, 1883.) To avoid this deplorable misnomer was easy; the spelling of the
word had only to be altered, and by common consent both pronounced and written
"Budhism," instead of "Buddhism." Nor is the latter term correctly spelt and
pronounced, as it ought to be called, in English, Buddhaism, and its votaries
"Buddhaists."
This explanation is absolutely necessary at the beginning of a work like this
one. The "Wisdom Religion" is the inheritance of all the nations, the world
over, though the statement was made in "Esoteric Buddhism" (Preface to the
original Edition) that "two years ago (i.e. 1883), neither I nor any other
European living, knew the alphabet of the Science, here for the first time put
into a scientific shape," etc. This error must have crept in through
inadvertence. For the present writer knew all that which is "divulged" in
"Esoteric Buddhism" -- and much more -- many years before it became her duty (in
1880) to impart a small portion of the Secret Doctrine to two European
gentlemen, one of whom was the author of "Esoteric Buddhism"; and surely the
present writer has the undoubted, though to her, rather equivocal, privilege of
being a European, by birth and education. Moreover, a considerable part of the
philosophy
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xix INTRODUCTORY.
expounded by Mr. Sinnett was taught in America, even before Isis Unveiled was
published, to two Europeans and to my colleague, Colonel H. S. Olcott. Of the
three teachers the latter gentleman has had, the first was a Hungarian Initiate,
the second an Egyptian, the third a Hindu. As permitted, Colonel Olcott has
given out some of this teaching in various ways; if the other two have not, it
has been simply because they were not allowed: their time for public work having
not yet come. But for others it has, and the appearance of Mr. Sinnett's several
interesting books is a visible proof of the fact. It is above everything
important to keep in mind that no theosophical book acquires the least
additional value from pretended authority.
In etymology Adi, and Adhi Budha, the one (or the First) and "Supreme Wisdom" is
a term used by Aryasanga in his Secret treatises, and now by all the mystic
Northern Buddhists. It is a Sanskrit term, and an appellation given by the
earliest Aryans to the Unknown deity; the word "Brahma" not being found in the
Vedas and the early works. It means the absolute Wisdom, and "Adi-bhuta" is
translated "the primeval uncreated cause of all" by Fitzedward Hall. AEons of
untold duration must have elapsed, before the epithet of Buddha was so
humanized, so to speak, as to allow of the term being applied to mortals and
finally appropriated to one whose unparalleled virtues and knowledge caused him
to receive the title of the "Buddha of Wisdom unmoved." Bodha means the innate
possession of divine intellect or "understanding"; "Buddha," the acquirement of
it by personal efforts and merit; while Buddhi is the faculty of cognizing the
channel through which divine knowledge reaches the "Ego," the discernment of
good and evil, "divine conscience" also; and "Spiritual Soul," which is the
vehicle of Atma. "When Buddhi absorbs our EGOtism (destroys it) with all its
Vikaras, Avalokiteshvara becomes manifested to us, and Nirvana, or Mukti, is
reached," "Mukti" being the same as Nirvana, i.e., freedom from the trammels of
"Maya" or illusion. "Bodhi" is likewise the name of a particular state of trance
condition, called Samadhi, during which the subject reaches the culmination of
spiritual knowledge.
Unwise are those who, in their blind and, in our age, untimely hatred of
Buddhism, and, by re-action, of "Budhism," deny its esoteric teachings (which
are those also of the Brahmins), simply because the name
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xx INTRODUCTORY.
suggests what to them, as Monotheists, are noxious doctrines. Unwise is the
correct term to use in their case. For the Esoteric philosophy is alone
calculated to withstand, in this age of crass and illogical materialism, the
repeated attacks on all and everything man holds most dear and sacred, in his
inner spiritual life. The true philosopher, the student of the Esoteric Wisdom,
entirely loses sight of personalities, dogmatic beliefs and special religions.
Moreover, Esoteric philosophy reconciles all religions, strips every one of its
outward, human garments, and shows the root of each to be identical with that of
every other great religion. It proves the necessity of an absolute Divine
Principle in nature. It denies Deity no more than it does the Sun. Esoteric
philosophy has never rejected God in Nature, nor Deity as the absolute and
abstract Ens. It only refuses to accept any of the gods of the so-called
monotheistic religions, gods created by man in his own image and likeness, a
blasphemous and sorry caricature of the Ever Unknowable. Furthermore, the
records we mean to place before the reader embrace the esoteric tenets of the
whole world since the beginning of our humanity, and Buddhistic occultism
occupies therein only its legitimate place, and no more. Indeed, the secret
portions of the "Dan" or Jan-na"* ("Dhyan") of Gautama's metaphysics -- grand as
they appear to one unacquainted with the tenets of the Wisdom Religion of
antiquity -- are but a very small portion of the whole. The Hindu Reformer
limited his public teachings to the purely moral and physiological aspect of the
Wisdom Religion, to Ethics and MAN alone. Things "unseen and incorporeal," the
mystery of Being outside our terrestrial sphere, the great Teacher left entirely
untouched in his public lectures, reserving the hidden Truths for a select
circle of his Arhats. The latter received their Initiation at the famous
Saptaparna cave (the Sattapanni of Mahavansa) near Mount Baibhar (the Webhara of
the Pali MSS.). This cave was in Rajagriha, the ancient capital of Mogadha, and
was the Cheta cave of Fa-hian, as rightly suspected by some archaeologists.**
Time and human imagination made short work of the purity and philo-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Dan, now become in modern Chinese and Tibetan phonetics ch'an, is the general
term for the esoteric schools, and their literature. In the old books, the word
Janna is defined as "to reform one's self by meditation and knowledge," a second
inner birth. Hence Dzan, Djan phonetically, the "Book of Dzyan."
** Mr. Beglor, the chief engineer at Buddhagaya, and a distinguished
archaeologist, was the first, we believe, to discover it.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxi INTRODUCTORY.
sophy of these teachings, once that they were transplanted from the secret and
sacred circle of the Arhats, during the course of their work of proselytism,
into a soil less prepared for metaphysical conceptions than India; i.e., once
they were transferred into China, Japan, Siam, and Burmah. How the pristine
purity of these grand revelations was dealt with may be seen in studying some of
the so-called "esoteric" Buddhist schools of antiquity in their modern garb, not
only in China and other Buddhist countries in general, but even in not a few
schools in Thibet, left to the care of uninitiated Lamas and Mongolian
innovators.
Thus the reader is asked to bear in mind the very important difference between
orthodox Buddhism -- i.e., the public teachings of Gautama the Buddha, and his
esoteric Budhism. His Secret Doctrine, however, differed in no wise from that of
the initiated Brahmins of his day. The Buddha was a child of the Aryan soil; a
born Hindu, a Kshatrya and a disciple of the "twice born" (the initiated
Brahmins) or Dwijas. His teachings, therefore, could not be different from their
doctrines, for the whole Buddhist reform merely consisted in giving out a
portion of that which had been kept secret from every man outside of the
"enchanted" circle of Temple-Initiates and ascetics. Unable to teach all that
had been imparted to him -- owing to his pledges -- though he taught a
philosophy built upon the ground-work of the true esoteric knowledge, the Buddha
gave to the world only its outward material body and kept its soul for his
Elect. (See also Volume II.) Many Chinese scholars among Orientalists have heard
of the "Soul Doctrine." None seem to have understood its real meaning and
importance.
That doctrine was preserved secretly -- too secretly, perhaps -- within the
sanctuary. The mystery that shrouded its chief dogma and aspirations -- Nirvana
-- has so tried and irritated the curiosity of those scholars who have studied
it, that, unable to solve it logically and satisfactorily by untying the Gordian
knot, they cut it through, by declaring that Nirvana meant absolute
annihilation.
Toward the end of the first quarter of this century, a distinct class of
literature appeared in the world, which became with every year more defined in
its tendency. Being based, soi-disant, on the scholarly researches of
Sanskritists and Orientalists in general, it was held scientific. Hindu,
Egyptian, and other ancient religions, myths, and emblems were made to yield
anything the symbologist wanted them to
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxii INTRODUCTORY.
yield, thus often giving out the rude outward form in place of the inner
meaning. Works, most remarkable for their ingenious deductions and speculations,
in circulo vicioso, foregone conclusions generally changing places with
premisses as in the syllogisms of more than one Sanskrit and Pali scholar,
appeared rapidly in succession, over-flooding the libraries with dissertations
rather on phallic and sexual worship than on real symbology, and each
contradicting the other.
This is the true reason, perhaps, why the outline of a few fundamental truths
from the Secret Doctrine of the Archaic ages is now permitted to see the light,
after long millenniums of the most profound silence and secrecy. I say "a few
truths," advisedly, because that which must remain unsaid could not be contained
in a hundred such volumes, nor could it be imparted to the present generation of
Sadducees. But, even the little that is now given is better than complete
silence upon those vital truths. The world of to-day, in its mad career towards
the unknown -- which it is too ready to confound with the unknowable, whenever
the problem eludes the grasp of the physicist -- is rapidly progressing on the
reverse, material plane of spirituality. It has now become a vast arena -- a
true valley of discord and of eternal strife -- a necropolis, wherein lie buried
the highest and the most holy aspirations of our Spirit-Soul. That soul becomes
with every new generation more paralyzed and atrophied. The "amiable infidels
and accomplished profligates" of Society, spoken of by Greeley, care little for
the revival of the dead sciences of the past; but there is a fair minority of
earnest students who are entitled to learn the few truths that may be given to
them now; and now much more than ten years ago, when "Isis Unveiled," or even
the later attempts to explain the mysteries of esoteric science, were published.
One of the greatest, and, withal, the most serious objection to the correctness
and reliability of the whole work will be the preliminary STANZAS: "How can the
statements contained in them be verified?" True, if a great portion of the
Sanskrit, Chinese, and Mongolian works quoted in the present volumes are known
to some Orientalists, the chief work -- that one from which the Stanzas are
given -- is not in the possession of European Libraries. The Book of Dzyan (or
"Dzan") is utterly unknown to our Philologists, or at any rate was never heard
of by them under its present name. This is, of course, a great drawback
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxiii INTRODUCTORY.
to those who follow the methods of research prescribed by official Science; but
to the students of Occultism, and to every genuine Occultist, this will be of
little moment. The main body of the Doctrines given is found scattered
throughout hundreds and thousands of Sanskrit MSS., some already translated --
disfigured in their interpretations, as usual, -- others still awaiting their
turn. Every scholar, therefore, has an opportunity of verifying the statements
herein made, and of checking most of the quotations. A few new facts (new to the
profane Orientalist, only) and passages quoted from the Commentaries will be
found difficult to trace. Several of the teachings, also, have hitherto been
transmitted orally: yet even those are in every instance hinted at in the almost
countless volumes of Brahminical, Chinese and Tibetan temple-literature.
However it may be, and whatsoever is in store for the writer through malevolent
criticism, one fact is quite certain. The members of several esoteric schools --
the seat of which is beyond the Himalayas, and whose ramifications may be found
in China, Japan, India, Tibet, and even in Syria, besides South America -- claim
to have in their possession the sum total of sacred and philosophical works in
MSS. and type: all the works, in fact, that have ever been written, in whatever
language or characters, since the art of writing began; from the ideographic
hieroglyphs down to the alphabet of Cadmus and the Devanagari.
It has been claimed in all ages that ever since the destruction of the
Alexandrian Library (see Isis Unveiled, Vol. II., p. 27), every work of a
character that might have led the profane to the ultimate discovery and
comprehension of some of the mysteries of the Secret Science, was, owing to the
combined efforts of the members of the Brotherhoods, diligently searched for. It
is added, moreover, by those who know, that once found, save three copies left
and stored safely away, such works were all destroyed. In India, the last of the
precious manuscripts were secured and hidden during the reign of the Emperor
Akbar.*
It is maintained, furthermore, that every sacred book of that kind, whose text
was not sufficiently veiled in symbolism, or which had any
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Prof. Max Muller shows that no bribes or threats of Akbar could extort from
the Brahmans the original text of the Veda; and boasts that European
Orientalists have it (Lecture on the "Science of Religion," p. 23). Whether
Europe has the complete text is very doubtful, and the future may have very
disagreeable surprises in store for the Orientalists.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxiv INTRODUCTORY.
direct references to the ancient mysteries, after having been carefully copied
in cryptographic characters, such as to defy the art of the best and cleverest
palaeographer, was also destroyed to the last copy. During Akbar's reign, some
fanatical courtiers, displeased at the Emperor's sinful prying into the
religions of the infidels, themselves helped the Brahmans to conceal their MSS.
Such was Badaoni, who had an undisguised horror for Akbar's mania for idolatrous
religions.*
Moreover in all the large and wealthy lamasaries, there are subterranean crypts
and cave-libraries, cut in the rock, whenever the gonpa and the lhakhang are
situated in the mountains. Beyond the Western Tsay-dam, in the solitary passes
of Kuen-lun** there are several such hiding places. Along the ridge of
Altyn-Toga, whose soil no European foot has ever trodden so far, there exists a
certain hamlet, lost in a deep gorge. It is a small cluster of houses, a hamlet
rather than a monastery, with a poor-looking temple in it, with one old lama, a
hermit, living near by to watch it. Pilgrims say that the subterranean galleries
and halls under it contain a collection of books, the number of which, according
to the accounts given, is too large to find room even in the British Museum.***
All this is very likely to provoke a smile of doubt. But then, before
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Badaoni wrote in his Muntakhab at Tawarikh: "His Majesty relished inquiries
into the sects of these infidels (who cannot be counted, so numerous they are,
and who have no end of revealed books) . . . As they (the Sramana and Brahmins)
surpass other learned men in their treatises on morals, on physical and
religious sciences, and reach a high degree in their knowledge of the future, in
spiritual power, and human perfection, they brought proofs based on reason and
testimony, and inculcated their doctrines so firmly that no man could now raise
a doubt in his Majesty even if mountains were to crumble to dust, or the heavens
were to tear asunder." This work "was kept secret, and was not published till
the reign of Jahangir." (Ain i Akbari, translated by Dr. Blochmann, p. 104,
note.)
** Karakorum mountains, Western Tibet.
*** According to the same tradition the now desolate regions of the waterless
land of Tarim -- a true wilderness in the heart of Turkestan -- were in the days
of old covered with flourishing and wealthy cities. At present, hardly a few
verdant oases relieve its dead solitude. One such, sprung on the sepulchre of a
vast city swallowed by and buried under the sandy soil of the desert, belongs to
no one, but is often visited by Mongolians and Buddhists. The same tradition
speaks of immense subterranean abodes, of large corridors filled with tiles and
cylinders. It may be an idle rumour, and it may be an actual fact.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxv INTRODUCTORY.
the reader rejects the truthfulness of the reports, let him pause and reflect
over the following well known facts. The collective researches of the
Orientalists, and especially the labours of late years of the students of
comparative Philology and the Science of Religions have led them to ascertain as
follows: An immense, incalculable number of MSS., and even printed works known
to have existed, are now to be found no more. They have disappeared without
leaving the slightest trace behind them. Were they works of no importance they
might, in the natural course of time, have been left to perish, and their very
names would have been obliterated from human memory. But it is not so; for, as
now ascertained, most of them contained the true keys to works still extant, and
entirely incomprehensible, for the greater portion of their readers, without
those additional volumes of Commentaries and explanations. Such are, for
instance, the works of Lao-tse, the predecessor of Confucius.*
He is said to have written 930 books on Ethics and religions, and seventy on
magic, one thousand in all. His great work, however, the heart of his doctrine,
the "Tao-te-King," or the sacred scriptures of the Taosse, has in it, as
Stanislas Julien shows, only "about 5,000 words" (Tao-te-King, p. xxvii.),
hardly a dozen of pages, yet Professor Max Muller finds that "the text is
unintelligible without commentaries, so that Mr. Julien had to consult more than
sixty commentators for the purpose of his translation," the earliest going back
as far as the year 163 B.C., not earlier, as we see. During the four centuries
and a half that preceded this earliest of the commentators there was ample time
to veil the true Lao-tse doctrine from all but his initiated priests. The
Japanese, among whom are now to be found the most learned of the priests and
followers of Lao-tse, simply laugh at the blunders and hypotheses of the
European Chinese scholars; and tradition affirms that the commentaries to which
our Western Sinologues have access are not the real occult records, but
intentional veils, and that the true commentaries, as well as almost all the
texts, have long since disappeared from the eyes of the profane.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "If we turn to China, we find that the religion of Confucius is founded on the
Five King and the Four Shu-books, in themselves of considerable extent and
surrounded by voluminous Commentaries, without which even the most learned
scholars would not venture to fathom the depth of their sacred canon." (Lectures
on the "Science of Religion," p. 185. Max Muller.) But they have not fathomed it
-- and this is the complaint of the Confucianists, as a very learned member of
that body, in Paris, complained in 1881.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxvi INTRODUCTORY.
If one turns to the ancient literature of the Semitic religions, to the Chaldean
Scriptures, the elder sister and instructress, if not the fountain-head of the
Mosaic Bible, the basis and starting-point of Christianity, what do the scholars
find? To perpetuate the memory of the ancient religions of Babylon; to record
the vast cycle of astronomical observations of the Chaldean Magi; to justify the
tradition of their splendid and eminently occult literature, what now remains?
-- only a few fragments, said to be by Berosus.
These, however, are almost valueless, even as a clue to the character of what
has disappeared. For they passed through the hands of his Reverence the Bishop
of Caesarea -- that self-constituted censor and editor of the sacred records of
other men's religions -- and they doubtless bear to this day the mark of his
eminently veracious and trustworthy hand. For what is the history of this
treatise on the once grand religion of Babylon?
Written in Greek by Berosus, a priest of the temple of Belus, for Alexander the
Great, from the astronomical and chronological records preserved by the priests
of that temple, and covering a period of 200,000 years, it is now lost. In the
first century B.C. Alexander Polyhistor made a series of extracts from it --
also lost. Eusebius used these extracts in writing his Chronicon (270-340 A.D.).
The points of resemblance -- almost of identity -- between the Jewish and the
Chaldean Scriptures,* made the latter most dangerous to Eusebius, in his role of
defender and champion of the new faith which had adopted the Jewish Scriptures,
and with them an absurd chronology. It is pretty certain that Eusebius did not
spare the Egyptian Synchronistic tables of Manetho -- so much so that Bunsen**
charges him with mutilating history most unscrupulously. And Socrates, a
historian of the fifth century, and Syncellus, vice-patriarch of Constantinople
(eighth century), both denounce him as the most daring and desperate forger.
Is it likely, then, that he dealt more tenderly with the Chaldean records, which
were already menacing the new religion, so rashly accepted?
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Found out and proven only now, through the discoveries made by George Smith
(vide his "Chaldean account of Genesis"), and which, thanks to this Armenian
forger, have misled all the civilized nations for over 1,500 years into
accepting Jewish derivations for direct Divine Revelation!
** Bunsen's "Egypt's Place in History," vol. i. p. 200
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxvii INTRODUCTORY.
So that, with the exception of these more than doubtful fragments, the entire
Chaldean sacred literature has disappeared from the eyes of the profane as
completely as the lost Atlantis. A few facts that were contained in the Berosian
History are given in Part II. of Vol. II., and may throw a great light on the
true origin of the Fallen Angels, personified by Bel and the Dragon.
Turning now to the oldest Aryan literature, the Rig-Veda, the student will find,
following strictly in this the data furnished by the said Orientalists
themselves, that, although the Rig-Veda contains only "about 10,580 verses, or
1,028 hymns," in spite of the Brahmanas and the mass of glosses and
commentaries, it is not understood correctly to this day. Why is this so?
Evidently because the Brahmanas, "the scholastic and oldest treatises on the
primitive hymns," themselves require a key, which the Orientalists have failed
to secure.
What do the scholars say of Buddhist literature? Have they got it in its
completeness? Assuredly not. Notwithstanding the 325 volumes of the Kanjur and
the Tanjur of the Northern Buddhists, each volume we are told, "weighing from
four to five pounds," nothing, in truth, is known of Lamaism. Yet, the sacred
canon of the Southern Church is said to contain 29,368,000 letters in the
Saddharma alankara,* or, exclusive of treatises and commentaries, "five or six
times the amount of the matter contained in the Bible," the latter, in the words
of Professor Max Muller, rejoicing only in 3,567,180 letters. Notwithstanding,
then, these "325 volumes" (in reality there are 333, Kanjur comprising 108, and
Tanjur 225 volumes), "the translators, instead of supplying us with correct
versions, have interwoven them with their own commentaries, for the purpose of
justifying the dogmas of their several schools."** Moreover, "according to a
tradition preserved by the Buddhist schools, both of the South and of the North,
the sacred Buddhist Canon comprised originally 80,000 or 84,000 tracts, but most
of them were lost, so that there remained but 6,000," the professor tells his
audiences. "Lost" as usual for Europeans. But who can be quite sure that they
are likewise lost for Buddhists and Brahmins?
Considering the sacredness for the Buddhists of every line written
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Spence Hardy, "The Legends and Theories of the Buddhists," p. 66.
** "Buddhism in Tibet," p. 78.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxviii INTRODUCTORY.
upon Buddha or his "Good Law," the loss of nearly 76,000 tracts does seem
miraculous. Had it been vice versa, every one acquainted with the natural course
of events would subscribe to the statement that, of these 76,000, five or six
thousand treatises might have been destroyed during the persecutions in, and
emigrations from, India. But as it is well ascertained that Buddhist Arhats
began their religious exodus, for the purpose of propagating the new faith
beyond Kashmir and the Himalayas, as early as the year 300 before our era,* and
reached China in the year 61 A.D.** when Kashyapa, at the invitation of the
Emperor Ming-ti, went there to acquaint the "Son of Heaven" with the tenets of
Buddhism, it does seem strange to hear the Orientalists speaking of such a loss
as though it were really possible. They do not seem to allow for one moment the
possibility that the texts may be lost only for West and for themselves; or,
that the Asiatic people should have the unparalleled boldness to keep their most
sacred records out of the reach of foreigners, thus refusing to deliver them to
the profanation and misuse of races even so "vastly superior" to themselves.
Owing to the expressed regrets and numerous confessions of almost every one of
the Orientalists (See Max Muller's Lectures for example) the public may feel
sufficiently sure (a) that the students of ancient religions have indeed very
few data upon which to build such final conclusions as they generally do about
the old religions, and (b) that such lack of data does not prevent them in the
least from dogmatising. One would imagine that, thanks to the numerous records
of the Egyptian theogony and mysteries preserved in the classics, and in a
number of ancient writers, the rites and dogmas of Pharaonic Egypt ought to be
well understood at least; better, at any rate, than the too abstruse
philosophies and Pantheism of India, of whose religion and language Europe had
hardly any idea before the beginning of the present century. Along the Nile and
on the face of the whole country, there stand to this hour, exhumed yearly and
daily, fresh relics which eloquently tell their own history. Still it is not so.
The learned Oxford philologist himself confesses the truth by saying that
"Though . . . we see still standing the Pyramids, and the ruins of temples and
labyrinths, their walls
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Lassen, ("Ind. Althersumkunde" Vol. II, p. 1,072) shows a Buddhist monastery
erected in the Kailas range in 137 B.C.; and General Cunningham, earlier than
that.
** Reverend T. Edkins, "Chinese Buddhism."
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxix INTRODUCTORY.
covered with hieroglyphic inscriptions, and with the strange pictures of gods
and goddesses. . . . . . . . On rolls of papyrus, which seem to defy the ravages
of time, we have even fragments of what may be called the sacred books of the
Egyptians; yet, though much has been deciphered in the ancient records of that
mysterious race, the mainspring of the religion of Egypt and the original
intention of its ceremonial worship are far from being fully disclosed to us."*
Here again the mysterious hieroglyphic documents remain, but the keys by which
alone they become intelligible have disappeared.
Nevertheless, having found that "there is a natural connection between language
and religion"; and, secondly, that there was a common Aryan religion before the
separation of the Aryan race; a common Semitic religion before the separation of
the Semitic race; and a common Turanian religion before the separation of the
Chinese and the other tribes belonging to the Turanian class; having, in fact,
only discovered "three ancient centres of religion" and "three centres of
language," and though as entirely ignorant of those primitive religions and
languages, as of their origin, the professor does not hesitate to declare "that
a truly historical basis for a scientific treatment of those principal religions
of the world has been gained!"
A "scientific treatment" of a subject is no guarantee for its "historical
basis"; and with such scarcity of data on hand, no philologist, even among the
most eminent, is justified in giving out his own conclusions for historical
facts. No doubt, the eminent Orientalist has proved thoroughly to the world's
satisfaction, that according to Grimm's law of phonetic rules, Odin and Buddha
are two different personages, quite distinct from each other, and he has shown
it scientifically. When, however, he takes the opportunity of saying in the same
breath that Odin "was worshipped as the supreme deity during a period long
anterior to the age of the Veda and of Homer" (Compar. Theol., p. 318), he has
not the slightest "historical basis" for it. He makes history and fact
subservient to his
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* So little acquainted are our greatest Egyptologists with the funerary rites of
the Egyptians and the outward marks of the difference of sexes made on the
mummies, that it has led to the most ludicrous mistakes. Only a year or two
since, one of that kind was discovered at Boulaq, Cairo. The mummy of what had
been considered the wife of an unimportant Pharaoh, has turned out, thanks to an
inscription found on an amulet hung on his neck, to be that of Sesostris -- the
greatest King of Egypt!
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxx INTRODUCTORY.
own conclusions, which may be very "scientific," in the sight of Oriental
scholars, but yet very wide of the mark of actual truth. The conflicting views
on the subject of chronology, in the case of the Vedas, of the various eminent
philologists and Orientalists, from Martin Haug down to Mr. Max Muller himself,
are an evident proof that the statement has no historical basis to stand upon,
"internal evidence" being very often a jack-o'lantern, instead of a safe beacon
to follow. Nor has the Science of modern Comparative Mythology any better proof
to show, that those learned writers, who have insisted for the last century or
so that there must have been "fragments of a primeval revelation, granted to the
ancestors of the whole race of mankind . . . . preserved in the temples of
Greece and Italy," were entirely wrong. For this is what all the Eastern
Initiates and Pundits have been proclaiming to the world from time to time.
While a prominent Cinghalese priest assured the writer that it was well known
that the most important Buddhist tracts belonging to the sacred canon were
stored away in countries and places inaccessible to the European pundits, the
late Swami Dayanand Sarasvati, the greatest Sanskritist of his day in India,
assured some members of the Theosophical Society of the same fact with regard to
ancient Brahmanical works. When told that Professor Max Muller had declared to
the audiences of his "Lectures" that the theory . . . . "that there was a
primeval preternatural revelation granted to the fathers of the human race,
finds but few supporters at present," -- the holy and learned man laughed. His
answer was suggestive. "If Mr. Moksh Mooller, as he pronounced the name, were a
Brahmin, and came with me, I might take him to a gupta cave (a secret crypt)
near Okhee Math, in the Himalayas, where he would soon find out that what
crossed the Kalapani (the black waters of the ocean) from India to Europe were
only the bits of rejected copies of some passages from our sacred books. There
was a "primeval revelation," and it still exists; nor will it ever be lost to
the world, but will reappear; though the Mlechchhas will of course have to
wait."
Questioned further on this point, he would say no more. This was at Meerut, in
1880.
No doubt the mystification played, in the last century at Calcutta, by the
Brahmins upon Colonel Wilford and Sir William Jones was a cruel one. But it had
been well deserved, and no one was more to be blamed
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxxi INTRODUCTORY.
in that affair than the Missionaries and Colonel Wilford themselves. The former,
on the testimony of Sir William Jones himself (see Asiat. Res., Vol. I., p.
272), were silly enough to maintain that "the Hindus were even now almost
Christians, because their Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesa were no other than the
Christian trinity."* It was a good lesson. It made the Oriental scholars doubly
cautious; but perchance it has also made some of them too shy, and caused, in
its reaction, the pendulum of foregone conclusions to swing too much the other
way. For "that first supply on the Brahmanical market," made for Colonel
Wilford, has now created an evident necessity and desire in the Orientalists to
declare nearly every archaic Sanskrit manuscript so modern as to give to the
missionaries full justification for availing themselves of the opportunity. That
they do so and to the full extent of their mental powers, is shown by the absurd
attempts of late to prove that the whole Puranic story about Chrishna was
plagiarized by the Brahmins from the Bible! But the facts cited by the Oxford
Professor in his Lectures on the "Science of Religion," concerning the now
famous interpolations, for the benefit, and later on to the sorrow, of Col.
Wilford, do not at all interfere with the conclusions to which one who studies
the Secret Doctrine must unavoidably come. For, if the results show that neither
the New nor even the Old Testament borrowed anything from the more ancient
religion of the Brahmans and Buddhists, it does not follow that the Jews have
not borrowed all they knew from the Chaldean records, the latter being mutilated
later on by Eusebius. As to the Chaldeans, they assuredly got their primitive
learning from the Brahmans, for Rawlinson shows an undeniably Vedic influence in
the early mythology of Babylon; and Col. Vans Kennedy has long since justly
declared that Babylonia was, from her origin, the seat of Sanskrit and Brahman
learning. But all such proofs must lose their value, in the presence of the
latest theory worked out by Prof. Max Muller. What it is everyone knows. The
code of phonetic laws has now become a universal solvent for every
identification and "connection" between
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See Max Muller's "Introduction to the Science of Religion." Lecture On False
Analogies in comparative Theology, pp. 288 and 296 et seq. This relates to the
clever forgery (on leaves inserted in old Puranic MSS.), in correct and archaic
Sanskrit, of all that the Pundits of Col. Wilford had heard from him about Adam
and Abraham, Noah and his three sons, etc., etc
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxxii INTRODUCTORY.
the gods of many nations. Thus, though the Mother of Mercury (Budha,
Thot-Hermes, etc.), was Maia, the mother of Buddha (Gautama), also Maya, and the
mother of Jesus, likewise Maya (illusion, for Mary is Mare, the Sea, the great
illusion symbolically) -- yet these three characters have no connection, nor can
they have any, since Bopp, has "laid down his code of phonetic laws."
In their efforts to collect together the many skeins of unwritten history, it is
a bold step for our Orientalists to take, to deny, a priori, everything that
does not dovetail with their special conclusions. Thus, while new discoveries
are daily made of great arts and sciences having existed far back in the night
of time, even the knowledge of writing is refused to some of the most ancient
nations, and they are credited with barbarism instead of culture. Yet the traces
of an immense civilization, even in Central Asia, are still to be found. This
civilization is undeniably prehistoric. And how can there be civilization
without a literature, in some form, without annals or chronicles? Common sense
alone ought to supplement the broken links in the history of departed nations.
The gigantic, unbroken wall of the mountains that hem in the whole table-land of
Tibet, from the upper course of the river Khuan-Khe down to the Kara-Korum
hills, witnessed a civilization during millenniums of years, and would have
strange secrets to tell mankind. The Eastern and Central portions of those
regions -- the Nan-Schayn and the Altyne-taga -- were once upon a time covered
with cities that could well vie with Babylon. A whole geological period has
swept over the land, since those cities breathed their last, as the mounds of
shifting sand, and the sterile and now dead soil of the immense central plains
of the basin of Tarim testify. The borderlands alone are superficially known to
the traveller. Within those table-lands of sand there is water, and fresh oases
are found blooming there, wherein no European foot has ever yet ventured, or
trodden the now treacherous soil. Among these verdant oases there are some which
are entirely inaccessible even to the native profane traveller. Hurricanes may
"tear up the sands and sweep whole plains away," they are powerless to destroy
that which is beyond their reach. Built deep in the bowels of the earth, the
subterranean stores are secure; and as their entrances are concealed in such
oases, there is little fear that any one should discover them, even should
several armies invade the sandy wastes where --
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxxiii INTRODUCTORY.
"Not a pool, not a bush, not a house is seen,
And the mountain-range forms a rugged screen
Round the parch'd flats of the dry, dry desert. . . . ."
But there is no need to send the reader across the desert, when the same proofs
of ancient civilization are found even in comparatively populated regions of the
same country. The oasis of Tchertchen, for instance, situated about 4,000 feet
above the level of the river Tchertchen-D'arya, is surrounded with the ruins of
archaic towns and cities in every direction. There, some 3,000 human beings
represent the relics of about a hundred extinct nations and races -- the very
names of which are now unknown to our ethnologists. An anthropologist would feel
more than embarrassed to class, divide and subdivide them; the more so, as the
respective descendants of all these antediluvian races and tribes know as little
of their own forefathers themselves, as if they had fallen from the moon. When
questioned about their origin, they reply that they know not whence their
fathers had come, but had heard that their first (or earliest) men were ruled by
the great genii of these deserts. This may be put down to ignorance and
superstition, yet in view of the teachings of the Secret Doctrine, the answer
may be based upon primeval tradition. Alone, the tribe of Khoorassan claims to
have come from what is now known as Afghanistan, long before the days of
Alexander, and brings legendary lore to that effect as corroboration. The
Russian traveller, Colonel (now General) Prjevalsky, found quite close to the
oasis of Tchertchen, the ruins of two enormous cities, the oldest of which was,
according to local tradition, ruined 3,000 years ago by a hero and giant; and
the other by the Mongolians in the tenth century of our era. "The emplacement of
the two cities is now covered, owing to shifting sands and the desert wind, with
strange and heterogeneous relics; with broken china and kitchen utensils and
human bones. The natives often find copper and gold coins, melted silver,
ingots, diamonds, and turquoises, and what is the most remarkable -- broken
glass. . . . ." "Coffins of some undecaying wood, or material, also, within
which beautifully preserved embalmed bodies are found. . . . . The male mummies
are all extremely tall powerfully built men with long waving hair. . . . . A
vault was found with twelve dead men sitting in it. Another time, in a separate
coffin, a young girl was discovered by us. Her eyes were closed with golden
discs, and the jaws held firm by a golden circlet running from under the chin
across the top of the head. Clad in a narrow
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxxiv INTRODUCTORY.
woollen garment, her bosom was covered with golden stars, the feet being left
naked." (From a lecture by N. M. Prjevalsky.) To this, the famous traveller adds
that all along their way on the river Tchertchen they heard legends about
twenty-three towns buried ages ago by the shifting sands of the deserts. The
same tradition exists on the Lob-nor and in the oasis of Kerya.
The traces of such civilization, and these and like traditions, give us the
right to credit other legendary lore warranted by well educated and learned
natives of India and Mongolia, when they speak of immense libraries reclaimed
from the sand, together with various reliques of ancient MAGIC lore, which have
all been safely stowed away.
To recapitulate. The Secret Doctrine was the universally diffused religion of
the ancient and prehistoric world. Proofs of its diffusion, authentic records of
its history, a complete chain of documents, showing its character and presence
in every land, together with the teaching of all its great adepts, exist to this
day in the secret crypts of libraries belonging to the Occult Fraternity.
This statement is rendered more credible by a consideration of the following
facts: the tradition of the thousands of ancient parchments saved when the
Alexandrian library was destroyed; the thousands of Sanskrit works which
disappeared in India in the reign of Akbar; the universal tradition in China and
Japan that the true old texts with the commentaries, which alone make them
comprehensible -- amounting to many thousands of volumes -- have long passed out
of the reach of profane hands; the disappearance of the vast sacred and occult
literature of Babylon; the loss of those keys which alone could solve the
thousand riddles of the Egyptian hieroglyphic records; the tradition in India
that the real secret commentaries which alone make the Veda intelligible, though
no longer visible to profane eyes, still remain for the initiate, hidden in
secret caves and crypts; and an identical belief among the Buddhists, with
regard to their secret books.
The Occultists assert that all these exist, safe from Western spoliating hands,
to re-appear in some more enlightened age, for which in the words of the late
Swami Dayanand Sarasvati, "the Mlechchhas (outcasts, savages, those beyond the
pale of Aryan civilization) will have to wait."
For it is not the fault of the initiates that these documents are now "lost" to
the profane; nor was their policy dictated by selfishness, or
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxxv INTRODUCTORY.
any desire to monopolise the life-giving sacred lore. There were portions of the
Secret Science that for incalculable ages had to remain concealed from the
profane gaze. But this was because to impart to the unprepared multitude secrets
of such tremendous importance, was equivalent to giving a child a lighted candle
in a powder magazine.
The answer to a question which has frequently arisen in the minds of students,
when meeting with statements such as this, may be outlined here.
"We can understand," they say, "the necessity for concealing from the herd such
secrets as the Vril, or the rock-destroying force, discovered by J. W. Keely, of
Philadelphia, but we cannot understand how any danger could arise from the
revelation of such a purely philosophic doctrine, as, e.g., the evolution of the
planetary chains."
The danger was this: Doctrines such as the planetary chain, or the seven races,
at once give a clue to the seven-fold nature of man, for each principle is
correlated to a plane, a planet, and a race; and the human principles are, on
every plane, correlated to seven-fold occult forces -- those of the higher
planes being of tremendous power. So that any septenary division at once gives a
clue to tremendous occult powers, the abuse of which would cause incalculable
evil to humanity. A clue, which is, perhaps, no clue to the present generation
-- especially the Westerns -- protected as they are by their very blindness and
ignorant materialistic disbelief in the occult; but a clue which would,
nevertheless, have been very real in the early centuries of the Christian era,
to people fully convinced of the reality of occultism, and entering a cycle of
degradation, which made them rife for abuse of occult powers and sorcery of the
worst description.
The documents were concealed, it is true, but the knowledge itself and its
actual existence had never been made a secret of by the Hierophants of the
Temple, wherein MYSTERIES have ever been made a discipline and stimulus to
virtue. This is very old news, and was repeatedly made known by the great
adepts, from Pythagoras and Plato down to the Neoplatonists. It was the new
religion of the Nazarenes that wrought a change for the worse -- in the policy
of centuries.
Moreover, there is a well-known fact, a very curious one, corroborated to the
writer by a reverend gentleman attached for years to a Russian Embassy --
namely, that there are several documents in the St. Peters-
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxxvi INTRODUCTORY.
burg Imperial Libraries to show that, even so late as during the days when
Freemasonry, and Secret Societies of Mystics flourished unimpeded in Russia,
i.e., at the end of the last and the beginning of the present century, more than
one Russian Mystic travelled to Tibet via the Ural mountains in search of
knowledge and initiation in the unknown crypts of Central Asia. And more than
one returned years later, with a rich store of such information as could never
have been given him anywhere in Europe. Several cases could be cited, and
well-known names brought forward, but for the fact that such publicity might
annoy the surviving relatives of the said late Initiates. Let any one look over
the Annals and History of Freemasonry in the archives of the Russian metropolis,
and he will assure himself of the fact stated.
This is a corroboration of that which has been stated many times before, and,
unfortunately, too indiscreetly. Instead of benefiting humanity, the virulent
charges of deliberate invention and imposture with a purpose thrown at those who
asserted but a truthful, if even a little known fact, have only generated bad
Karma for the slanderers. But now the mischief is done, and truth should no
longer be denied, whatever the consequences. Is it a new religion, we are asked?
By no means; it is not a religion, nor is its philosophy new; for, as already
stated, it is as old as thinking man. Its tenets are not now published for the
first time, but have been cautiously given out to, and taught by, more than one
European Initiate -- especially by the late Ragon.
More than one great scholar has stated that there never was a religious founder,
whether Aryan, Semitic or Turanian, who had invented a new religion, or revealed
a new truth. These founders were all transmitters, not original teachers. They
were the authors of new forms and interpretations, while the truths upon which
the latter were based were as old as mankind. Selecting one or more of those
grand verities -- actualities visible only to the eye of the real Sage and Seer
-- out of the many orally revealed to man in the beginning, preserved and
perpetuated in the adyta of the temples through initiation, during the MYSTERIES
and by personal transmission -- they revealed these truths to the masses. Thus
every nation received in its turn some of the said truths, under the veil of its
own local and special symbolism; which, as time went on, developed into a more
or less philosophical cultus, a Pantheon in mythical disguise. Therefore is
Confucius, a very ancient
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxxvii INTRODUCTORY.
legislator in historical chronology, though a very modern Sage in the World's
History, shown by Dr. Legge* -- who calls him "emphatically a transmitter, not a
maker" -- as saying: "I only hand on: I cannot create new things. I believe in
the ancients and therefore I love them."** (Quoted in "Science of Religions" by
Max Muller.)
The writer loves them too, and therefore believes in the ancients, and the
modern heirs to their Wisdom. And believing in both, she now transmits that
which she has received and learnt herself to all those who will accept it. As to
those who may reject her testimony, -- i.e., the great majority -- she will bear
them no malice, for they will be as right in their way in denying, as she is
right in hers in affirming, since they look at TRUTH from two entirely different
stand-points. Agreeably with the rules of critical scholarship, the Orientalist
has to reject a priori whatever evidence he cannot fully verify for himself. And
how can a Western scholar accept on hearsay that which he knows nothing about?
Indeed, that which is given in these volumes is selected from oral, as much as
from written teachings. This first instalment of the esoteric doctrines is based
upon Stanzas, which are the records of a people unknown to ethnology; it is
claimed that they are written in a tongue absent from the nomenclature of
languages and dialects with which philology is acquainted; they are said to
emanate from a source (Occultism) repudiated by science; and, finally, they are
offered through an agency, incessantly discredited before the world by all those
who hate unwelcome truths, or have some special hobby of their own to defend.
Therefore, the rejection of these teachings may be expected, and must be
accepted beforehand. No one styling himself a "scholar," in whatever department
of exact science, will be permitted to regard these teachings seriously. They
will be derided and rejected a priori in this century; but only in this one. For
in the twentieth century of our era scholars will begin to recognize that the
Secret Doctrine has neither been invented nor exaggerated, but, on the contrary,
simply outlined; and finally, that its teachings antedate the Vedas.*** Have not
the latter been derided, rejected, and
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Lun Yu (§ I a) Schott. "Chinesische Literatur," p. 7.
** "Life of Confucius," p. 96.
*** This is no pretension to prophecy, but simply a statement based on the
knowledge of facts. Every century an attempt is being made to show the world
that Occultism [[Footnote continued on next page]]
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxxviii INTRODUCTORY.
called "a modern forgery" even so recently as fifty years ago? Was not Sanskrit
proclaimed at one time the progeny of, and a dialect derived from, the Greek,
according to Lempriere and other scholars? About 1820, Prof. Max Muller tells
us, the sacred books of the Brahmans, of the Magians, and of the Buddhists,
"were all but unknown, their very existence was doubted, and there was not a
single scholar who could have translated a line of the Veda . . . of the Zend
Avesta, or . . . of the Buddhist Tripitaka, and now the Vedas are proved to be
the work of the highest antiquity whose 'preservation amounts almost to a
marvel' (Lecture on the Vedas).
The same will be said of the Secret Archaic Doctrine, when proofs are given of
its undeniable existence and records. But it will take centuries before much
more is given from it. Speaking of the keys to the Zodiacal mysteries as being
almost lost to the world, it was remarked by the writer in "Isis Unveiled" some
ten years ago that: "The said key must be turned seven times before the whole
system is divulged. We will give it but one turn, and thereby allow the profane
one glimpse into the mystery. Happy he, who understands the whole!"
The same may be said of the whole Esoteric system. One turn of the key, and no
more, was given in "Isis." Much more is explained in these volumes. In those
days the writer hardly knew the language in which the work was written, and the
disclosure of many things, freely spoken about now, was forbidden. In Century
the Twentieth some disciple more informed, and far better fitted, may be sent by
the Masters of Wisdom to give final and irrefutable proofs that there exists a
Science called Gupta-Vidya; and that, like the once-mysterious sources of the
Nile, the source of all religions and philosophies now known to the world has
been for many ages forgotten and lost to men, but is at last found.
Such a work as this has to be introduced with no simple Preface, but with a
volume rather; one that would give facts, not mere disquisitions, since the
SECRET DOCTRINE is not a treatise, or a series of vague theories, but contains
all that can be given out to the world in this century.
It would be worse than useless to publish in these pages even those
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] is no vain superstition. Once the door
permitted to be kept a little ajar, it will be opened wider with every new
century. The times are ripe for a more serious knowledge than hitherto
permitted, though still very limited, so far.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxxix INTRODUCTORY.
portions of the esoteric teachings that have now escaped from confinement,
unless the genuineness and authenticity -- at any rate, the probability -- of
the existence of such teachings was first established. Such statements as will
now be made, have to be shown warranted by various authorities: those of ancient
philosophers, classics and even certain learned Church Fathers, some of whom
knew these doctrines because they had studied them, had seen and read works
written upon them; and some of whom had even been personally initiated into the
ancient Mysteries, during the performance of which the arcane doctrines were
allegorically enacted. The writer will have to give historical and trustworthy
names, and to cite well-known authors, ancient and modern, of recognized
ability, good judgment, and truthfulness, as also to name some of the famous
proficients in the secret arts and science, along with the mysteries of the
latter, as they are divulged, or, rather, partially presented before the public
in their strange archaic form.
How is this to be done? What is the best way for achieving such an object? was
the ever-recurring question. To make our plan clearer, an illustration may be
attempted. When a tourist coming from a well-explored country, suddenly reaches
the borderland of a terra incognita, hedged in, and shut out from view by a
formidable barrier of impassable rocks, he may still refuse to acknowledge
himself baffled in his exploratory plans. Ingress beyond is forbidden. But, if
he cannot visit the mysterious region personally, he may still find a means of
examining it from as short a distance as can be arrived at. Helped by his
knowledge of landscapes left behind him, he can get a general and pretty correct
idea of the transmural view, if he will only climb to the loftiest summit of the
altitudes in front of him. Once there, he can gaze at it, at his leisure,
comparing that which he dimly perceives with that which he has just left below,
now that he is, thanks to his efforts, beyond the line of the mists and the
cloud-capped cliffs.
Such a point of preliminary observation, for those who would like to get a more
correct understanding of the mysteries of the pre-archaic periods given in the
texts, cannot be offered to them in these two volumes. But if the reader has
patience, and would glance at the present state of beliefs and creeds in Europe,
compare and check it with what is known to history of the ages directly
preceding and
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xl INTRODUCTORY.
following the Christian era, then he will find all this in Volume III. of this
work.
In that volume a brief recapitulation will be made of all the principal adepts
known to history, and the downfall of the mysteries will be described; after
which began the disappearance and final and systematic elimination from the
memory of men of the real nature of initiation and the Sacred Science. From that
time its teachings became Occult, and Magic sailed but too often under the
venerable but frequently misleading name of Hermetic philosophy. As real
Occultism had been prevalent among the Mystics during the centuries that
preceded our era, so Magic, or rather Sorcery, with its Occult Arts, followed
the beginning of Christianity.
However great and zealous the fanatical efforts, during those early centuries,
to obliterate every trace of the mental and intellectual labour of the Pagans,
it was a failure; but the same spirit of the dark demon of bigotry and
intolerance has perverted systematically and ever since, every bright page
written in the pre-Christian periods. Even in her uncertain records, history has
preserved enough of that which has survived to throw an impartial light upon the
whole. Let, then, the reader tarry a little while with the writer, on the spot
of observation selected. He is asked to give all his attention to that
millennium which divided the pre-Christian and the post-Christian periods, by
the year ONE of the Nativity. This event -- whether historically correct or not
-- has nevertheless been made to serve as a first signal for the erection of
manifold bulwarks against any possible return of, or even a glimpse into, the
hated religions of the Past; hated and dreaded -- because throwing such a vivid
light on the new and intentionally veiled interpretation of what is now known as
the "New Dispensation."
However superhuman the efforts of the early Christian fathers to obliterate the
Secret Doctrine from the very memory of man, they all failed. Truth can never be
killed; hence the failure to sweep away entirely from the face of the earth
every vestige of that ancient Wisdom, and to shackle and gag every witness who
testified to it. Let one only think of the thousands, and perhaps millions, of
MSS. burnt; of monuments, with their too indiscreet inscriptions and pictorial
symbols, pulverised to dust; of the bands of early hermits and ascetics roaming
about among the ruined cities of Upper and Lower Egypt, in desert and
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xli INTRODUCTORY.
mountain, valleys and highlands, seeking for and eager to destroy every obelisk
and pillar, scroll or parchment they could lay their hands on, if it only bore
the symbol of the tau, or any other sign borrowed and appropriated by the new
faith; and he will then see plainly how it is that so little has remained of the
records of the Past. Verily, the fiendish spirits of fanaticism, of early and
mediaeval Christianity and of Islam, have from the first loved to dwell in
darkness and ignorance; and both have made
"-------------- the sun like blood, the earth a tomb,
The tomb a hell, and hell itself a murkier gloom!"
Both creeds have won their proselytes at the point of the sword; both have built
their churches on heaven-kissing hecatombs of human victims. Over the gateway of
Century I. of our era, the ominous words "the KARMA OF ISRAEL," fatally glowed.
Over the portals of our own, the future seer may discern other words, that will
point to the Karma for cunningly made-up HISTORY, for events purposely
perverted, and for great characters slandered by posterity, mangled out of
recognition, between the two cars of Jagannatha -- Bigotry and Materialism; one
accepting too much, the other denying all. Wise is he who holds to the golden
mid-point, who believes in the eternal justice of things. Says Faigi Diwan, the
"witness to the wonderful speeches of a free-thinker who belongs to a thousand
sects": "In the assembly of the day of resurrection, when past things shall be
forgiven, the sins of the Ka'bah will be forgiven for the sake of the dust of
Christian churches." To this, Professor Max Muller replies: "The sins of Islam
are as worthless as the dust of Christianity. On the day of resurrection both
Muhammadans and Christians will see the vanity of their religious doctrines. Men
fight about religion on earth -- in heaven they shall find out that there is
only one true religion -- the worship of God's SPIRIT."*
In other words -- "THERE IS NO RELIGION (OR LAW) HIGHER THAN TRUTH" -- "SATYAT
NASTI PARO DHARMAH" -- the motto of the Maharajah of Benares, adopted by the
Theosophical Society.
As already said in the Preface, the Secret Doctrine is not a version of "Isis
Unveiled" -- as originally intended. It is a volume explanatory of
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Lectures on the Science of Religion," by F. Max Muller, p. 257.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xlii INTRODUCTORY.
it rather, and, though entirely independent of the earlier work, an
indispensable corollary to it. Much of what was in Isis could hardly be
understood by theosophists in those days. The Secret Doctrine will now throw
light on many a problem left unsolved in the first work, especially on the
opening pages, which have never been understood.
Concerned simply with the philosophies within our historical times and the
respective symbolism of the fallen nations, only a hurried glance could be
thrown at the panorama of Occultism in the two volumes of Isis. In the present
work, detailed Cosmogony and the evolution of the four races that preceded our
Fifth race Humanity are given, and now two large volumes explain that which was
stated on the first page of ISIS UNVEILED alone, and in a few allusions
scattered hither and thither throughout that work. Nor could the vast catalogue
of the Archaic Sciences be attempted in the present volumes, before we have
disposed of such tremendous problems as Cosmic and Planetary Evolution, and the
gradual development of the mysterious Humanities and races that preceded our
"Adamic" Humanity. Therefore, the present attempt to elucidate some mysteries of
the Esoteric philosophy has, in truth, nothing to do with the earlier work. As
an instance, the writer must be allowed to illustrate what is said.
Volume I. of "Isis" begins with a reference to "an old book" --
"So very old that our modern antiquarians might ponder over its pages an
indefinite time, and still not quite agree as to the nature of the fabric upon
which it is written. It is the only original copy now in existence. The most
ancient Hebrew document on occult learning -- the Siphrah Dzeniouta -- was
compiled from it, and that at a time when the former was already considered in
the light of a literary relic. One of its illustrations represents the Divine
Essence emanating from ADAM* like a luminous arc proceeding to form a circle;
and then, having attained the highest point of its circumference, the
ineffable glory bends back again, and returns to earth, bringing a higher type
of humanity in its vortex. As it approaches nearer and nearer to our planet,
the Emanation becomes more and more shadowy, until upon touching the ground it
is as black as night."
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The name is used in the sense of the Greek word [[anthropos]].
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xliii INTRODUCTORY.
The "very old Book" is the original work from which the many volumes of Kiu-ti
were compiled. Not only this latter and the Siphrah Dzeniouta but even the
Sepher Jezirah,* the work attributed by the Hebrew Kabalists to their Patriarch
Abraham (!), the book of Shu-king, China's primitive Bible, the sacred volumes
of the Egyptian Thoth-Hermes, the Puranas in India, and the Chaldean Book of
Numbers and the Pentateuch itself, are all derived from that one small parent
volume. Tradition says, that it was taken down in Senzar, the secret sacerdotal
tongue, from the words of the Divine Beings, who dictated it to the sons of
Light, in Central Asia, at the very beginning of the 5th (our) race; for there
was a time when its language (the Sen-zar) was known to the Initiates of every
nation, when the forefathers of the Toltec understood it as easily as the
inhabitants of the lost Atlantis, who inherited it, in their turn, from the
sages of the 3rd Race, the Manushis, who learnt it direct from the Devas of the
2nd and 1st Races. The "illustration" spoken of in "Isis" relates to the
evolution of these Races and of our 4th and 5th Race Humanity in the Vaivasvata
Manvantara or "Round"; each Round being composed of the Yugas of the seven
periods of Humanity; four of which are now passed in our life cycle, the middle
point of the 5th being nearly reached. The illustration is symbolical, as every
one can well understand, and covers the ground from the beginning. The old book,
having described Cosmic Evolution and explained the origin of everything on
earth, including physical man, after giving the true history of the races from
the First down to the Fifth (our) race, goes no further. It stops short at the
beginning of the Kali Yuga just 4989 years ago at the death of Krishna, the
bright "Sun-god," the once living hero and reformer.
But there exists another book. None of its possessors regard it as very ancient,
as it was born with, and is only as old as the Black Age,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Rabbi Jehoshua Ben Chananea, who died about A.D. 72, openly declared that he
had performed "miracles" by means of the Book of Sepher Jezireh, and challenged
every sceptic. Franck, quoting from the Babylonian Talmud, names two other
thaumaturgists, Rabbis Chanina and Oshoi. (See "Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin," c.
7, etc.; and "Franck," pp. 55, 56.) Many of the Mediaeval Occultists,
Alchemists, and Kabalists claimed the same; and even the late modern Magus,
Eliphas Levi, publicly asserts it in print in his books on Magic.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xliv INTRODUCTORY.
namely, about 5,000 years. In about nine years hence, the first cycle of the
first five millenniums, that began with the great cycle of the Kali-Yuga, will
end. And then the last prophecy contained in that book (the first volume of the
prophetic record for the Black Age) will be accomplished. We have not long to
wait, and many of us will witness the Dawn of the New Cycle, at the end of which
not a few accounts will be settled and squared between the races. Volume II. of
the Prophecies is nearly ready, having been in preparation since the time of
Buddha's grand successor, Sankaracharya.
One more important point must be noticed, one that stands foremost in the series
of proofs given of the existence of one primeval, universal Wisdom -- at any
rate for the Christian Kabalists and students. The teachings were, at least,
partially known to several of the Fathers of the Church. It is maintained, on
purely historical grounds, that Origen, Synesius, and even Clemens Alexandrinus,
had been themselves initiated into the mysteries before adding to the
Neo-Platonism of the Alexandrian school, that of the Gnostics, under the
Christian veil. More than this, some of the doctrines of the Secret schools --
though by no means all -- were preserved in the Vatican, and have since become
part and parcel of the mysteries, in the shape of disfigured additions made to
the original Christian programme by the Latin Church. Such is the now
materialised dogma of the Immaculate Conception. This accounts for the great
persecutions set on foot by the Roman Catholic Church against Occultism,
Masonry, and heterodox mysticism generally.
The days of Constantine were the last turning-point in history, the period of
the Supreme struggle that ended in the Western world throttling the old
religions in favour of the new one, built on their bodies. From thence the vista
into the far distant Past, beyond the "Deluge" and the Garden of Eden, began to
be forcibly and relentlessly closed by every fair and unfair means against the
indiscreet gaze of posterity. Every issue was blocked up, every record that
hands could be laid upon, destroyed. Yet there remains enough, even among such
mutilated records, to warrant us in saying that there is in them every possible
evidence of the actual existence of a Parent Doctrine. Fragments have survived
geological and political cataclysms to tell the story; and every survival shows
evidence that the now Secret Wisdom was once the
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xlv INTRODUCTORY.
one fountain head, the ever-flowing perennial source, at which were fed all its
streamlets -- the later religions of all nations -- from the first down to the
last. This period, beginning with Buddha and Pythagoras at the one end and the
Neo-Platonists and Gnostics at the other, is the only focus left in History
wherein converge for the last time the bright rays of light streaming from the
aeons of time gone by, unobscured by the hand of bigotry and fanaticism.
This accounts for the necessity under which the writer has laboured to be ever
explaining the facts given from the hoariest Past by evidence gathered from the
historical period. No other means was at hand, at the risk even of being once
more charged with a lack of method and system. The public must be made
acquainted with the efforts of many World-adepts, of initiated poets, writers,
and classics of every age, to preserve in the records of Humanity the Knowledge
of the existence, at least, of such a philosophy, if not actually of its tenets.
The Initiates of 1888 would indeed remain incomprehensible and ever a seemingly
impossible myth, were not like Initiates shown to have lived in every other age
of history. This could be done only by naming Chapter and Verse where may be
found mention of these great characters, who were preceded and followed by a
long and interminable line of other famous Antediluvian and Post-diluvian
Masters in the arts. Thus only could be shown, on semi-traditional and
semi-historical authority, that knowledge of the Occult and the powers it
confers on man, are not altogether fictions, but that they are as old as the
world itself.
To my judges, past and future, therefore -- whether they are serious literary
critics, or those howling dervishes in literature who judge a book according to
the popularity or unpopularity of the author's name, who, hardly glancing at its
contents, fasten like lethal bacilli on the weakest points of the body -- I have
nothing to say. Nor shall I condescend to notice those crack-brained slanderers
-- fortunately very few in number -- who, hoping to attract public attention by
throwing discredit on every writer whose name is better known than their own,
foam and bark at their very shadows. These, having first maintained for years
that the doctrines taught in the Theosophist, and which culminated in "Esoteric
Buddhism," had been all invented by the present writer, have finally turned
round, and denounced "Isis Unveiled" and the rest as a plagiarism from Eliphas
Levi (!), Paracelsus (!!), and, mirabile
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xlvi INTRODUCTORY.
dictu, Buddhism and Brahmanism (!!!) As well charge Renan with having stolen his
Vie de Jesus from the Gospels, and Max Muller his "Sacred Books of the East" or
his "Chips" from the philosophies of the Brahmins and Gautama, the Buddha. But
to the public in general and the readers of the "Secret Doctrine" I may repeat
what I have stated all along, and which I now clothe in the words of Montaigne:
Gentlemen, "I HAVE HERE MADE ONLY A NOSEGAY OF CULLED FLOWERS, AND HAVE BROUGHT
NOTHING OF MY OWN BUT THE STRING THAT TIES THEM."
Pull the "string" to pieces and cut it up in shreds, if you will. As for the
nosegay of FACTS -- you will never be able to make away with these. You can only
ignore them, and no more.
We may close with a parting word concerning this Volume I. In an INTRODUCTION
prefacing a Part dealing chiefly with Cosmogony, certain subjects brought
forward might be deemed out of place, but one more consideration added to those
already given have led me to touch upon them. Every reader will inevitably judge
the statements made from the stand-point of his own knowledge, experience, and
consciousness, based on what he has already learnt. This fact the writer is
constantly obliged to bear in mind: hence, also the frequent references in this
first Book to matters which, properly speaking, belong to a later part of the
work, but which could not be passed by in silence, lest the reader should look
down on this work as a fairy tale indeed -- a fiction of some modern brain.
Thus, the Past shall help to realise the PRESENT, and the latter to better
appreciate the PAST. The errors of the day must be explained and swept away, yet
it is more than probable -- and in the present case it amounts to certitude --
that once more the testimony of long ages and of history will fail to impress
anyone but the very intuitional -- which is equal to saying the very few. But in
this as in all like cases, the true and the faithful may console themselves by
presenting the sceptical modern Sadducee with the mathematical proof and
memorial of his obdurate obstinacy and bigotry. There still exists somewhere in
the archives of the French Academy, the famous law of probabilities worked out
by an algebraical process for the benefit of sceptics by certain mathematicians.
It runs thus: If two persons give their evidence to
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xlvii INTRODUCTORY.
a fact, and thus impart to it each of them 5/6 of certitude; that fact will have
then 35/36 of certitude; i.e., its probability will bear to its improbability
the ratio of 35 to 1. If three such evidences are joined together the certitude
will become 215/216. The agreement of ten persons giving each 1/2 of certitude
will produce 1023/1024 , etc., etc. The Occultist may remain satisfied, and care
for no more.
********************
PROEM
-------
PAGES FROM A PRE-HISTORIC PERIOD.
AN Archaic Manuscript -- a collection of palm leaves made impermeable to water,
fire, and air, by some specific unknown process -- is before the writer's eye.
On the first page is an immaculate white disk within a dull black ground. On the
following page, the same disk, but with a central point. The first, the student
knows to represent Kosmos in Eternity, before the re-awakening of still
slumbering Energy, the emanation of the Word in later systems. The point in the
hitherto immaculate Disk, Space and Eternity in Pralaya, denotes the dawn of
differentiation. It is the Point in the Mundane Egg (see Part II., "The Mundane
Egg"), the germ within the latter which will become the Universe, the ALL, the
boundless, periodical Kosmos, this germ being latent and active, periodically
and by turns. The one circle is divine Unity, from which all proceeds, whither
all returns. Its circumference -- a forcibly limited symbol, in view of the
limitation of the human mind -- indicates the abstract, ever incognisable
PRESENCE, and its plane, the Universal Soul, although the two are one. Only the
face of the Disk being white and the ground all around black, shows clearly that
its plane is the only knowledge, dim and hazy though it still is, that is
attainable by man. It is on this plane that the Manvantaric manifestations
begin; for it is in this SOUL that slumbers, during the Pralaya, the Divine
Thought,* wherein lies concealed the plan of every future Cosmogony and
Theogony.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* It is hardly necessary to remind the reader once more that the term "Divine
Thought," like that of "Universal Mind," must not be regarded as even vaguely
shadowing forth an intellectual process akin to that exhibited by man. The
"Unconscious," according to von Hartmann, arrived at the vast creative, or
rather Evolutionary Plan, "by a clairvoyant wisdom superior to all
consciousness," which in the Vedantic language would mean absolute Wisdom. Only
those who realise how far Intuition soars above the tardy processes of
ratiocinative thought can form the faintest conception of [[Footnote continued
on next page]]
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 2 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
It is the ONE LIFE, eternal, invisible, yet Omnipresent, without beginning or
end, yet periodical in its regular manifestations, between which periods reigns
the dark mystery of non-Being; unconscious, yet absolute Consciousness;
unrealisable, yet the one self-existing reality; truly, "a chaos to the sense, a
Kosmos to the reason." Its one absolute attribute, which is ITSELF, eternal,
ceaseless Motion, is called in esoteric parlance the "Great Breath,"* which is
the perpetual motion of the universe, in the sense of limitless, ever-present
SPACE. That which is motionless cannot be Divine. But then there is nothing in
fact and reality absolutely motionless within the universal soul.
Almost five centuries B.C. Leucippus, the instructor of Democritus, maintained
that Space was filled eternally with atoms actuated by a ceaseless motion, the
latter generating in due course of time, when those atoms aggregated, rotatory
motion, through mutual collisions producing lateral movements. Epicurus and
Lucretius taught the same, only adding to the lateral motion of the atoms the
idea of affinity -- an occult teaching.
From the beginning of man's inheritance, from the first appearance of the
architects of the globe he lives in, the unrevealed Deity was recognised and
considered under its only philosophical aspect -- universal motion, the thrill
of the creative Breath in Nature. Occultism sums up the "One Existence" thus:
"Deity is an arcane, living (or moving) FIRE, and the eternal witnesses to this
unseen Presence are Light, Heat, Moisture," -- this trinity including, and being
the cause of, every
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] that absolute Wisdom which transcends
the ideas of Time and Space. Mind, as we know it, is resolvable into states of
consciousness, of varying duration, intensity, complexity, etc. -- all, in the
ultimate, resting on sensation, which is again Maya. Sensation, again,
necessarily postulates limitation. The personal God of orthodox Theism
perceives, thinks, and is affected by emotion; he repents and feels "fierce
anger." But the notion of such mental states clearly involves the unthinkable
postulate of the externality of the exciting stimuli, to say nothing of the
impossibility of ascribing changelessness to a Being whose emotions fluctuate
with events in the worlds he presides over. The conceptions of a Personal God as
changeless and infinite are thus unpsychological and, what is worse,
unphilosophical.
* Plato proves himself an Initiate, when saying in Cratylus that [[theos]] is
derived from the verb [[theein]], "to move," "to run," as the first astronomers
who observed the motions of the heavenly bodies called the planets [[theoi]],
the gods. (See Book II., "Symbolism of the Cross and Circle.") Later, the word
produced another term, [[aletheia]] -- "the breath of God."
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 3 PROEM.
phenomenon in Nature.* Intra-Cosmic motion is eternal and ceaseless; cosmic
motion (the visible, or that which is subject to perception) is finite and
periodical. As an eternal abstraction it is the EVER-PRESENT; as a
manifestation, it is finite both in the coming direction and the opposite, the
two being the alpha and omega of successive reconstructions. Kosmos -- the
NOUMENON -- has nought to do with the causal relations of the phenomenal World.
It is only with reference to the intra-cosmic soul, the ideal Kosmos in the
immutable Divine Thought, that we may say: "It never had a beginning nor will it
have an end." With regard to its body or Cosmic organization, though it cannot
be said that it had a first, or will ever have a last construction, yet at each
new Manvantara, its organization may be regarded as the first and the last of
its kind, as it evolutes every time on a higher plane . . . .
A few years ago only, it was stated that: --
"The esoteric doctrine teaches, like Buddhism and Brahminism, and even the
Kabala, that the one infinite and unknown Essence exists from all eternity, and
in regular and harmonious successions is either passive or active. In the
poetical phraseology of Manu these conditions are called the "Days" and the
"Nights" of Brahma. The latter is either "awake" or "asleep." The Svabhavikas,
or philosophers of the oldest school of Buddhism (which still exists in Nepaul),
speculate only upon the active condition of this "Essence," which they call
Svabhavat, and deem it foolish to theorise upon the abstract and "unknowable"
power in its passive condition. Hence they are called atheists by both Christian
theologians and modern scientists, for neither of the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Nominalists, arguing with Berkeley that "it is impossible . . . to form the
abstract idea of motion distinct from the body moving" ("Prin. of Human
Knowledge," Introd., par. 10), may put the question, "What is that body, the
producer of that motion? Is it a substance? Then you are believers in a Personal
God?" etc., etc. This will be answered farther on, in the Addendum to this Book;
meanwhile, we claim our rights of Conceptionalists as against Roscelini's
materialistic views of Realism and Nominalism. "Has science," says one of its
ablest advocates, Edward Clodd, "revealed anything that weakens or opposes
itself to the ancient words in which the Essence of all religion, past, present,
and to come, is given; to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly before thy
God?" Provided we connote by the word God, not the crude anthropomorphism which
is still the backbone of our current theology, but the symbolic conception of
that which is Life and Motion of the Universe, to know which in physical order
is to know time past, present, and to come, in the existence of successions of
phenomena; to know which, in the moral, is to know what has been, is, and will
be, within human consciousness. (See "Science and the Emotions." A Discourse
delivered at South Place Chapel, Finsbury, London, Dec. 27th, 1885.)
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 4 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
two are able to understand the profound logic of their philosophy. The former
will allow of no other God than the personified secondary powers which have
worked out the visible universe, and which became with them the anthropomorphic
God of the Christians -- the male Jehovah, roaring amid thunder and lightning.
In its turn, rationalistic science greets the Buddhists and the Svabhavikas as
the "positivists" of the archaic ages. If we take a one-sided view of the
philosophy of the latter, our materialists may be right in their own way. The
Buddhists maintained that there is no Creator, but an infinitude of creative
powers, which collectively form the one eternal substance, the essence of which
is inscrutable -- hence not a subject for speculation for any true philosopher.
Socrates invariably refused to argue upon the mystery of universal being, yet no
one would ever have thought of charging him with atheism, except those who were
bent upon his destruction. Upon inaugurating an active period, says the Secret
Doctrine, an expansion of this Divine essence from without inwardly and from
within outwardly, occurs in obedience to eternal and immutable law, and the
phenomenal or visible universe is the ultimate result of the long chain of
cosmical forces thus progressively set in motion. In like manner, when the
passive condition is resumed, a contraction of the Divine essence takes place,
and the previous work of creation is gradually and progressively undone. The
visible universe becomes disintegrated, its material dispersed; and 'darkness'
solitary and alone, broods once more over the face of the 'deep.' To use a
Metaphor from the Secret Books, which will convey the idea still more clearly,
an out-breathing of the 'unknown essence' produces the world; and an inhalation
causes it to disappear. This process has been going on from all eternity, and
our present universe is but one of an infinite series, which had no beginning
and will have no end." -- (See "Isis Unveiled"; also "The Days and Nights of
Brahma" in Part II.)
This passage will be explained, as far as it is possible, in the present work.
Though, as it now stands, it contains nothing new to the Orientalist, its
esoteric interpretation may contain a good deal which has hitherto remained
entirely unknown to the Western student.
The first illustration being a plain disc the second one in the Archaic symbol
shows , a disc with a point in it -- the first differentiation in the periodical
manifestations of the ever-eternal nature, sexless and infinite "Aditi in THAT"
(Rig Veda), the point in the disc, or potential Space within abstract Space. In
its third stage the point is transformed into a diameter, thus It now
symbolises a divine immaculate Mother-Nature within the all-embracing absolute
Infinitude.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 5 PROEM.
When the diameter line is crossed by a vertical one , it becomes the mundane
cross. Humanity has reached its third root-race; it is the sign for the origin
of human life to begin. When the circumference disappears and leaves only the
it is a sign that the fall of man into matter is accomplished, and the FOURTH
race begins. The Cross within a circle symbolises pure Pantheism; when the Cross
was left uninscribed, it became phallic. It had the same and yet other meanings
as a TAU inscribed within a circle or as a "Thor's hammer," the Jaina cross,
so-called, or simply Svastica within a circle
By the third symbol -- the circle divided in two by the horizontal line of the
diameter -- the first manifestation of creative (still passive, because
feminine) Nature was meant. The first shadowy perception of man connected with
procreation is feminine, because man knows his mother more than his father.
Hence female deities were more sacred than the male. Nature is therefore
feminine, and, to a degree, objective and tangible, and the spirit Principle
which fructifies it is concealed. By adding to the circle with the horizontal
line in it, a perpendicular line, the tau was formed -- -- -- the oldest form
of the letter. It was the glyph of the third root-race to the day of its
symbolical Fall -- i.e., when the separation of sexes by natural evolution took
place -- when the figure became , the circle, or sexless life modified or
separated -- a double glyph or symbol. With the races of our Fifth Race it
became in symbology the sacr', and in Hebrew n'cabvah, of the first-formed
races;* then it changed into the Egyptian (emblem of life), and still later
into the sign of Venus, Then comes the Svastica (Thor's hammer, or the
"Hermetic Cross" now), entirely separated from its Circle, thus becoming purely
phallic. The esoteric symbol of Kali Yuga is the five-pointed star reversed,
thus -- the sign of human sorcery, with its two points (horns) turned
heavenward, a position every
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See that suggestive work, "The Source of Measures," where the author explains
the real meaning of the word "sacr'," from which "sacred," "sacrament," are
derived, which have now become synonyms of "holiness," though purely phallic!
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 6 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
Occultist will recognise as one of the "left-hand," and used in ceremonial
magic.*
It is hoped that during the perusal of this work the erroneous ideas of the
public in general with regard to Pantheism will be modified. It is wrong and
unjust to regard the Buddhists and Advaitee Occultists as atheists. If not all
of them philosophers, they are, at any rate, all logicians, their objections and
arguments being based on strict reasoning. Indeed, if the Parabrahmam of the
Hindus may be taken as a representative of the hidden and nameless deities of
other nations, this absolute Principle will be found to be the prototype from
which all the others were copied. Parabrahm is not "God," because It is not a
God. "It is that which is supreme, and not supreme (paravara)," explains
Mandukya Upanishad (2.28). IT is "Supreme" as CAUSE, not supreme as effect.
Parabrahm is simply, as a "Secondless Reality," the all-inclusive Kosmos -- or,
rather, the infinite Cosmic Space -- in the highest spiritual sense, of course.
Brahma (neuter) being the unchanging, pure, free, undecaying supreme Root, "the
ONE true Existence, Paramarthika," and the absolute Chit and Chaitanya
(intelligence, consciousness) cannot be a cogniser, "for THAT can have no
subject of cognition." Can the flame be called the essence of Fire? This Essence
is "the LIFE and LIGHT of the Universe, the visible fire and flame are
destruction, death, and evil." "Fire and Flame destroy the body of an Arhat,
their essence makes him immortal." (Bodhi-mur, Book II.) "The knowledge of the
absolute Spirit, like the effulgence of the sun, or like heat in fire, is naught
else than the absolute Essence itself," says Sankaracharya. IT -- is "the Spirit
of the Fire," not fire itself; therefore, "the attributes of the latter, heat or
flame, are not the attributes of the Spirit, but of that of which that Spirit is
the unconscious cause." Is not the above sentence the true key-note of later
Rosicrucian
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* We are told by the Western mathematicians and some American Kabalists, that in
the Kabala also "the value of the Jehovah name is that of the diameter of a
circle." Add to this the fact that Jehovah is the third Sephiroth, Binah, a
feminine word, and you have the key to the mystery. By certain Kabalistic
transformations this name, androgynous in the first chapters of Genesis, becomes
in its transformations entirely masculine, Cainite and phallic. The fact of
choosing a deity among the pagan gods and making of it a special national God,
to call upon it as the "One living God," the "God of Gods," and then proclaim
this worship Monotheistic, does not change it into the ONE Principle whose
"Unity admits not of multiplication, change, or form," especially in the case of
a priapic deity, as Jehovah now demonstrated to be.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 7 PROEM.
philosophy? Parabrahm is, in short, the collective aggregate of Kosmos in its
infinity and eternity, the "THAT" and "THIS" to which distributive aggregates
can not be applied.* "In the beginning THIS was the Self, one only" (Aitareya
Upanishad); the great Sankaracharya, explains that "THIS" referred to the
Universe (Jagat); the sense of the words, "In the beginning," meaning before the
reproduction of the phenomenal Universe.
Therefore, when the Pantheists echo the Upanishads, which state, as in the
Secret Doctrine, that "this" cannot create, they do not deny a Creator, or
rather a collective aggregate of creators, but only refuse, very logically, to
attribute "creation" and especially formation, something finite to an Infinite
Principle. With them, Parabrahmam is a passive because an Absolute Cause, the
unconditioned Mukta. It is only limited Omniscience and Omnipotence that are
refused to the latter, because these are still attributes (as reflected in man's
perceptions); and because Parabrahm, being the "Supreme ALL," the ever invisible
spirit and Soul of Nature, changeless and eternal, can have no attributes;
absoluteness very naturally precluding any idea of the finite or conditioned
from being connected with it. And if the Vedantin postulates attributes as
belonging simply to its emanation, calling it "Iswara plus Maya," and Avidya
(Agnosticism and Nescience rather than ignorance), it is difficult to find any
Atheism in this conception.** Since there can be neither two INFINITES nor two
ABSOLUTES in a Universe supposed to be Boundless, this Self-Existence can hardly
be conceived of as creating personally. In the sense and perceptions of finite
"Beings," THAT is Non-"being," in the sense that it is the one BE-NESS; for, in
this ALL lies concealed its coeternal and coeval emanation or inherent
radiation, which, upon becoming periodically Brahma (the male-female Potency)
becomes or expands itself into the manifested Universe. Narayana moving on the
(abstract) waters of Space, is transformed into the Waters of concrete substance
moved by him, who now becomes the manifested WORD or Logos.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See "Vedanta Sara," by Major G. A. Jacob; as also "The Aphorisms of
S'andilya," translated by Cowell, p. 42.
** Nevertheless, prejudiced and rather fanatical Christian Orientalists would
like to prove this pure Atheism. For proof of this, see about Major Jacob's
"Vedanta Sara." Yet, the whole Antiquity echoes this Vedantic thought: --
"Omnis enim per se divom natura necesse est
Immortali aevo summa cum pace fruatur."
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 8 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
The orthodox Brahmins, those who rise the most against the Pantheists and
Adwaitees, calling them Atheists, are forced, if Manu has any authority in this
matter, to accept the death of Brahma, the creator, at the expiration of every
"Age" of this (creative) deity (100 Divine years -- a period which in our years
requires fifteen figures to express it). Yet, no philosopher among them will
view this "death" in any other sense than as a temporary disappearance from the
manifested plane of existence, or as a periodical rest.
The Occultists are, therefore, at one with the Adwaita Vedantin philosophers as
to the above tenet. They show the impossibility of accepting on philosophical
grounds the idea of the absolute ALL creating or even evolving the "Golden Egg,"
into which it is said to enter in order to transform itself into Brahma -- the
Creator, who expands himself later into gods and all the visible Universe. They
say that Absolute Unity cannot pass to infinity; for infinity presupposes the
limitless extension of something, and the duration of that "something"; and the
One All is like Space -- which is its only mental and physical representation on
this Earth, or our plane of existence -- neither an object of, nor a subject to,
perception. If one could suppose the Eternal Infinite All, the Omnipresent
Unity, instead of being in Eternity, becoming through periodical manifestation a
manifold Universe or a multiple personality, that Unity would cease to be one.
Locke's idea that "pure Space is capable of neither resistance nor Motion" -- is
incorrect. Space is neither a "limitless void," nor a "conditioned fulness," but
both: being, on the plane of absolute abstraction, the ever-incognisable Deity,
which is void only to finite minds,* and on that of mayavic perception, the
Plenum, the absolute Container of all that is, whether manifested or
unmanifested: it is, therefore, that ABSOLUTE ALL. There is no difference
between the Christian Apostle's "In Him we live and move and have our being,"
and the Hindu Rishi's "The Universe lives in, proceeds from, and will
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The very names of the two chief deities, Brahma and Vishnu, ought to have long
ago suggested their esoteric meanings. For the root of one, Brahmam, or Brahm,
is derived by some from the word Brih, "to grow" or "to expand" (see Calcutta
Review, vol. lxvi., p. 14); and of the other, Vishnu, from the root Vis, "to
pervade," to enter in the nature of the essence; Brahma-Vishnu being this
infinite SPACE, of which the gods, the Rishis, the Manus, and all in this
universe are simply the potencies, Vibhutayah.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 9 PROEM.
return to, Brahma (Brahma)": for Brahma (neuter), the unmanifested, is that
Universe in abscondito, and Brahma, the manifested, is the Logos, made
male-female* in the symbolical orthodox dogmas. The God of the Apostle-Initiate
and of the Rishi being both the Unseen and the Visible SPACE. Space is called in
the esoteric symbolism "the Seven-Skinned Eternal Mother-Father." It is composed
from its undifferentiated to its differentiated surface of seven layers.
"What is that which was, is, and will be, whether there is a Universe or not;
whether there be gods or none?" asks the esoteric Senzar Catechism. And the
answer made is -- SPACE.
It is not the One Unknown ever-present God in Nature, or Nature in abscondito,
that is rejected, but the God of human dogma and his humanized "Word." In his
infinite conceit and inherent pride and vanity, man shaped it himself with his
sacrilegious hand out of the material he found in his own small brain-fabric,
and forced it upon mankind as a direct revelation from the one unrevealed
SPACE.** The Occultist
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See Manu's account of Brahma separating his body into male and female, the
latter the female Vach, in whom he creates Viraj, and compare this with the
esotericism of Chapters II., III., and IV. of Genesis.
** Occultism is indeed in the air at the close of this our century. Among many
other works recently published, we would recommend one especially to students of
theoretical Occultism who would not venture beyond the realm of our special
human plane. It is called "New Aspects of Life and Religion," by Henry Pratt,
M.D. It is full of esoteric dogmas and philosophy, the latter rather limited, in
the concluding chapters, by what seems to be a spirit of conditioned positivism.
Nevertheless, what is said of Space as "the Unknown First Cause," merits
quotation. "This unknown something, thus recognised as, and identified with, the
primary embodiment of Simple Unity, is invisible and impalpable" -- (abstract
space, granted); "and because invisible and impalpable, therefore incognisable.
And this incognisability has led to the error of supposing it to be a simple
void, a mere receptive capacity. But, even viewed as an absolute void, space
must be admitted to be either Self-existent, infinite, and eternal, or to have
had a first cause outside, behind, and beyond itself.
"And yet could such a cause be found and defined, this would only lead to the
transferring thereto of the attributes otherwise accruing to space, and thus
merely throw the difficulty of origination a step farther back, without gaining
additional light as to primary causation." (p. 5.)
This is precisely what has been done by the believers in an anthropomorphic
Creator, an extracosmic, instead of an intracosmic God. Many -- most of Mr.
Pratt's subjects, we may say -- are old Kabalistic ideas and theories which he
presents in quite a new garb: "New Aspects" of the Occult in Nature, indeed.
Space, however, viewed as a "Substantial Unity" -- the "living Source of Life"
-- is as the "Un- [[Footnote continued on next page]]
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 10 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
accepts revelation as coming from divine yet still finite Beings, the manifested
lives, never from the Unmanifestable ONE LIFE; from those entities, called
Primordial Man, Dhyani-Buddhas, or Dhyan-Chohans, the "Rishi-Prajapati" of the
Hindus, the Elohim or "Sons of God," the Planetary Spirits of all nations, who
have become Gods for men. He also regards the Adi-Sakti -- the direct emanation
of Mulaprakriti, the eternal Root of THAT, and the female aspect of the Creative
Cause Brahma, in her A'kasic form of the Universal Soul -- as philosophically a
Maya, and cause of human Maya. But this view does not prevent him from believing
in its existence so long as it lasts, to wit, for one Mahamanvantara; nor from
applying Akasa, the radiation of Mulaprakriti,* to practical purposes, connected
as the World-Soul is with all natural phenomena, known or unknown to science.
The oldest religions of the world -- exoterically, for the esoteric root or
foundation is one -- are the Indian, the Mazdean, and the Egyptian. Then comes
the Chaldean, the outcome of these -- entirely lost to the world now, except in
its disfigured Sabeanism as at present rendered by the archaeologists; then,
passing over a number of religions that will be mentioned later, comes the
Jewish, esoterically, as in the Kabala, following in the line of Babylonian
Magism; exoterically, as in Genesis and the Pentateuch, a collection of
allegorical legends. Read by the light of the Zohar, the initial four chapters
of Genesis are the fragment
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] known Causeless Cause," is the oldest
dogma in Occultism, millenniums earlier than the Pater-AEther of the Greeks and
Latins. So are the "Force and Matter, as Potencies of Space, inseparable, and
the Unknown revealers of the Unknown." They are all found in Aryan philosophy
personified by Visvakarman, Indra, Vishnu, etc., etc. Still they are expressed
very philosophically, and under many unusual aspects, in the work referred to.
* In contradistinction to the manifested universe of matter, the term
Mulaprakriti (from Mula, "the root," and prakriti, "nature"), or the
unmanifested primordial matter -- called by Western alchemists Adam's Earth --
is applied by the Vedantins to Parabrahmam. Matter is dual in religious
metaphysics, and septenary in esoteric teachings, like everything else in the
universe. As Mulaprakriti, it is undifferentiated and eternal; as Vyakta, it
becomes differentiated and conditioned, according to Svetasvatara Upanishad, I.
8, and Devi Bhagavata Purana. The author of the Four Lectures on the Bhagavad
Gita, says, in speaking of Mulaprakriti: "From its (the Logos') objective
standpoint, Parabrahmam appears to it as Mulaprakriti. . . . Of course this
Mulaprakriti is material to it, as any material object is material to us. . . .
Parabrahmam is an unconditioned and absolute reality, and Mulaprakriti is a sort
of veil thrown over it." (Theosophist, Vol. VIII., p. 304.)
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 11 PROEM.
of a highly philosophical page in the World's Cosmogony. (See Book III., Gupta
Vidya and the Zohar.) Left in their symbolical disguise, they are a nursery
tale, an ugly thorn in the side of science and logic, an evident effect of
Karma. To have let them serve as a prologue to Christianity was a cruel revenge
on the part of the Rabbis, who knew better what their Pentateuch meant. It was a
silent protest against their spoliation, and the Jews have certainly now the
better of their traditional persecutors. The above-named exoteric creeds will be
explained in the light of the Universal doctrine as we proceed with it.
The Occult Catechism contains the following questions and answers:
"What is it that ever is?" "Space, the eternal Anupadaka."* "What is it that
ever was?" "The Germ in the Root." "What is it that is ever coming and going?"
"The Great Breath." "Then, there are three Eternals?" "No, the three are one.
That which ever is is one, that which ever was is one, that which is ever being
and becoming is also one: and this is Space."
"Explain, oh Lanoo (disciple)." -- "The One is an unbroken Circle (ring) with no
circumference, for it is nowhere and everywhere; the One is the boundless plane
of the Circle, manifesting a diameter only during the manvantaric periods; the
One is the indivisible point found nowhere, perceived everywhere during those
periods; it is the Vertical and the Horizontal, the Father and the Mother, the
summit and base of the Father, the two extremities of the Mother, reaching in
reality nowhere, for the One is the Ring as also the rings that are within that
Ring. Light in darkness and darkness in light: the 'Breath which is eternal.' It
proceeds from without inwardly, when it is everywhere, and from within
outwardly, when it is nowhere -- (i.e., maya,** one of the centres***). It
expands and
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Meaning "parentless" -- see farther on.
** Esoteric philosophy, regarding as Maya (or the illusion of ignorance) every
finite thing, must necessarily view in the same light every intra-Cosmic planet
and body, as being something organised, hence finite. The expression, therefore,
"it proceeds from without inwardly, etc." refers in the first portion of the
sentence to the dawn of the Mahamanvantaric period, or the great re-evolution
after one of the complete periodical dissolutions of every compound form in
Nature (from planet to molecule) into its ultimate essence or element; and in
its second portion, to the partial or local manvantara, which may be a solar or
even a planetary one.
*** By "centre," a centre of energy or a Cosmic focus is meant; when the
so-called "Creation," or formation of a planet, is accomplished by that force
which is designated by the Occultists LIFE and by Science "energy," then the
process takes place [[Footnote continued on next page]]
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 12 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
contracts (exhalation and inhalation). When it expands the mother diffuses and
scatters; when it contracts, the mother draws back and ingathers. This produces
the periods of Evolution and Dissolution, Manwantara and Pralaya. The Germ is
invisible and fiery; the Root (the plane of the circle) is cool; but during
Evolution and Manwantara her garment is cold and radiant. Hot Breath is the
Father who devours the progeny of the many-faced Element (heterogeneous); and
leaves the single-faced ones (homogeneous). Cool Breath is the Mother, who
conceives, forms, brings forth, and receives them back into her bosom, to reform
them at the Dawn (of the Day of Brahma, or Manvantara). . . . ."
For clearer understanding on the part of the general reader, it must be stated
that Occult Science recognises Seven Cosmical Elements -- four entirely
physical, and the fifth (Ether) semi-material, as it will become visible in the
air towards the end of our Fourth Round, to reign supreme over the others during
the whole of the Fifth. The remaining two are as yet absolutely beyond the range
of human perception. These latter will, however, appear as presentments during
the 6th and 7th Races of this Round, and will become known in the 6th and 7th
Rounds respectively.* These seven elements with their numberless Sub-Elements
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] from within outwardly, every atom
being said to contain in itself creative energy of the divine breath. Hence,
whereas after an absolute pralaya, or when the pre-existing material consists
but of ONE Element, and BREATH "is everywhere," the latter acts from without
inwardly: after a minor pralaya, everything having remained in statu quo -- in a
refrigerated state, so to say, like the moon -- at the first flutter of
manvantara, the planet or planets begin their resurrection to life from within
outwardly.
* It is curious to notice how, in the evolutionary cycles of ideas, ancient
thought seems to be reflected in modern speculation. Had Mr. Herbert Spencer
read and studied ancient Hindu philosophers when he wrote a certain passage in
his "First Principles" (p. 482), or is it an independent flash of inner
perception that made him say half correctly, half incorrectly, "motion as well
as matter, being fixed in quantity (?), it would seem that the change in the
distribution of Matter which Motion effects, coming to a limit in whichever
direction it is carried (?), the indestructible Motion thereupon necessitates a
reverse distribution. Apparently, the universally co-existent forces of
attraction and repulsion which, as we have seen, necessitate rhythm in all minor
changes throughout the Universe, also necessitate rhythm in the totality of its
changes -- produce now an immeasurable period during which the attracting forces
predominating, cause universal concentration, and then an immeasurable period,
during which the repulsive forces predominating, cause universal diffusion --
alternate eras of Evolution and dissolution."
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 13 PROEM.
far more numerous than those known to Science) are simply conditional
modifications and aspects of the ONE and only Element. This latter is not
Ether,* not even A'kasa but the Source of these. The Fifth Element, now
advocated quite freely by Science, is not the Ether hypothesised by Sir Isaac
Newton -- although he calls it by that name, having associated it in his mind
probably with the AEther, "Father-Mother" of Antiquity. As Newton intuitionally
says, "Nature is a perpetual circulatory worker, generating fluids out of
solids, fixed things out of volatile, and volatile out of fixed, subtile out of
gross, and gross out of subtile. . . . . Thus, perhaps, may all things be
originated from Ether," (Hypoth, 1675).
The reader has to bear in mind that the Stanzas given treat only of the
Cosmogony of our own planetary System and what is visible around it, after a
Solar Pralaya. The secret teachings with regard to the Evolution of the
Universal Kosmos cannot be given, since they could not be understood by the
highest minds in this age, and there seem to be very few Initiates, even among
the greatest, who are allowed to speculate upon this subject. Moreover the
Teachers say openly that not even the highest Dhyani-Chohans have ever
penetrated the mysteries beyond those boundaries that separate the milliards of
Solar systems from the "Central Sun," as it is called. Therefore, that which is
given, relates only to our visible Kosmos, after a "Night of Brahma."
Before the reader proceeds to the consideration of the Stanzas from the Book of
Dzyan which form the basis of the present work, it is absolutely necessary that
he should be made acquainted with the few fundamental conceptions which underlie
and pervade the entire system of thought to which his attention is invited.
These basic ideas are few in number, and on their clear apprehension depends the
understanding of all that follows; therefore no apology is required for asking
the reader to make himself familiar with them first, before entering on the
perusal of the work itself.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Whatever the views of physical Science upon the subject, Occult Science has
been teaching for ages that A'kasa -- of which Ether is the grossest form -- the
fifth universal Cosmic Principle (to which corresponds and from which proceeds
human Manas) is, cosmically, a radiant, cool, diathermanous plastic matter,
creative in its physical nature, correlative in its grossest aspects and
portions, immutable in its higher principles. In the former condition it is
called the Sub-Root; and in conjunction with radiant heat, it recalls "dead
worlds to life." In its higher aspect it is the Soul of the World; in its lower
-- the DESTROYER.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 14 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
The Secret Doctrine establishes three fundamental propositions: --
(a) An Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless, and Immutable PRINCIPLE on which all
speculation is impossible, since it transcends the power of human conception and
could only be dwarfed by any human expression or similitude. It is beyond the
range and reach of thought -- in the words of Mandukya, "unthinkable and
unspeakable."
To render these ideas clearer to the general reader, let him set out with the
postulate that there is one absolute Reality which antecedes all manifested,
conditioned, being. This Infinite and Eternal Cause -- dimly formulated in the
"Unconscious" and "Unknowable" of current European philosophy -- is the rootless
root of "all that was, is, or ever shall be." It is of course devoid of all
attributes and is essentially without any relation to manifested, finite Being.
It is "Be-ness" rather than Being (in Sanskrit, Sat), and is beyond all thought
or speculation.
This "Be-ness" is symbolised in the Secret Doctrine under two aspects. On the
one hand, absolute abstract Space, representing bare subjectivity, the one thing
which no human mind can either exclude from any conception, or conceive of by
itself. On the other, absolute Abstract Motion representing Unconditioned
Consciousness. Even our Western thinkers have shown that Consciousness is
inconceivable to us apart from change, and motion best symbolises change, its
essential characteristic. This latter aspect of the one Reality, is also
symbolised by the term "The Great Breath," a symbol sufficiently graphic to need
no further elucidation. Thus, then, the first fundamental axiom of the Secret
Doctrine is this metaphysical ONE ABSOLUTE -- BE-NESS -- symbolised by finite
intelligence as the theological Trinity.
It may, however, assist the student if a few further explanations are given
here.
Herbert Spencer has of late so far modified his Agnosticism, as to assert that
the nature of the "First Cause,"* which the Occultist more logically derives
from the "Causeless Cause," the "Eternal," and the "Unknowable," may be
essentially the same as that of the Consciousness which wells up within us: in
short, that the impersonal reality pervading
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
*The "first" presupposes necessarily something which is the "first brought
forth, the first in time, space, and rank" -- and therefore finite and
conditioned. The "first" [[Footnote continued on next page]]
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 15 PROEM.
the Kosmos is the pure noumenon of thought. This advance on his part brings him
very near to the esoteric and Vedantin tenet.*
Parabrahm (the One Reality, the Absolute) is the field of Absolute
Consciousness, i.e., that Essence which is out of all relation to conditioned
existence, and of which conscious existence is a conditioned symbol. But once
that we pass in thought from this (to us) Absolute Negation, duality supervenes
in the contrast of Spirit (or consciousness) and Matter, Subject and Object.
Spirit (or Consciousness) and Matter are, however, to be regarded, not as
independent realities, but as the two facets or aspects of the Absolute
(Parabrahm), which constitute the basis of conditioned Being whether subjective
or objective.
Considering this metaphysical triad as the Root from which proceeds all
manifestation, the great Breath assumes the character of precosmic Ideation. It
is the fons et origo of force and of all individual consciousness, and supplies
the guiding intelligence in the vast scheme of cosmic Evolution. On the other
hand, precosmic root-substance (Mulaprakriti) is that aspect of the Absolute
which underlies all the objective planes of Nature.
Just as pre-Cosmic Ideation is the root of all individual consciousness, so
pre-Cosmic Substance is the substratum of matter in the various grades of its
differentiation.
Hence it will be apparent that the contrast of these two aspects of the Absolute
is essential to the existence of the "Manifested Universe." Apart from Cosmic
Substance, Cosmic Ideation could not manifest as individual consciousness, since
it is only through a vehicle** of matter that consciousness wells up as "I am
I," a physical basis being necessary to focus a ray of the Universal Mind at a
certain stage of complexity. Again, apart from Cosmic Ideation, Cosmic Substance
would remain an empty abstraction, and no emergence of consciousness could
ensue.
The "Manifested Universe," therefore, is pervaded by duality, which is, as it
were, the very essence of its EX-istence as "manifestation."
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] cannot be the absolute, for it is a
manifestation. Therefore, Eastern Occultism calls the Abstract All the
"Causeless One Cause," the "Rootless Root," and limits the "First Cause" to the
Logos, in the sense that Plato gives to this term.
* See Mr. Subba Row's four able lectures on the Bhagavad Gita, "Theosophist,"
February, 1887.
** Called in Sanskrit: "Upadhi."
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 16 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
But just as the opposite poles of subject and object, spirit and matter, are but
aspects of the One Unity in which they are synthesized, so, in the manifested
Universe, there is "that" which links spirit to matter, subject to object.
This something, at present unknown to Western speculation, is called by the
occultists Fohat. It is the "bridge" by which the "Ideas" existing in the
"Divine Thought" are impressed on Cosmic substance as the "laws of Nature."
Fohat is thus the dynamic energy of Cosmic Ideation; or, regarded from the other
side, it is the intelligent medium, the guiding power of all manifestation, the
"Thought Divine" transmitted and made manifest through the Dhyan Chohans,* the
Architects of the visible World. Thus from Spirit, or Cosmic Ideation, comes our
consciousness; from Cosmic Substance the several vehicles in which that
consciousness is individualised and attains to self -- or reflective --
consciousness; while Fohat, in its various manifestations, is the mysterious
link between Mind and Matter, the animating principle electrifying every atom
into life.
The following summary will afford a clearer idea to the reader.
(1.) The ABSOLUTE; the Parabrahm of the Vedantins or the one Reality, SAT, which
is, as Hegel says, both Absolute Being and Non-Being.
(2.) The first manifestation, the impersonal, and, in philosophy, unmanifested
Logos, the precursor of the "manifested." This is the "First Cause," the
"Unconscious" of European Pantheists.
(3.) Spirit-matter, LIFE; the "Spirit of the Universe," the Purusha and
Prakriti, or the second Logos.
(4.) Cosmic Ideation, MAHAT or Intelligence, the Universal World-Soul; the
Cosmic Noumenon of Matter, the basis of the intelligent operations in and of
Nature, also called MAHA-BUDDHI.
The ONE REALITY; its dual aspects in the conditioned Universe.
Further, the Secret Doctrine affirms: --
(b.) The Eternity of the Universe in toto as a boundless plane; periodically
"the playground of numberless Universes incessantly manifesting and
disappearing," called "the manifesting stars," and the "sparks of Eternity."
"The Eternity of the Pilgrim"** is like a wink
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Called by Christian theology: Archangels, Seraphs, etc., etc.
** "Pilgrim" is the appellation given to our Monad (the two in one) during its
cycle of incarnations. It is the only immortal and eternal principle in us,
being an indivisible part of the integral whole -- the Universal Spirit, from
which it emanates, and into which it is absorbed at the end of the cycle. When
it is said to emanate from the one [[Footnote continued on next page]]
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 17 PROEM.
of the Eye of Self-Existence (Book of Dzyan.) "The appearance and disappearance
of Worlds is like a regular tidal ebb of flux and reflux." (See Part II., "Days
and Nights of Brahma.")
This second assertion of the Secret Doctrine is the absolute universality of
that law of periodicity, of flux and reflux, ebb and flow, which physical
science has observed and recorded in all departments of nature. An alternation
such as that of Day and Night, Life and Death, Sleeping and Waking, is a fact so
common, so perfectly universal and without exception, that it is easy to
comprehend that in it we see one of the absolutely fundamental laws of the
universe.
Moreover, the Secret Doctrine teaches: --
(c) The fundamental identity of all Souls with the Universal Over-Soul, the
latter being itself an aspect of the Unknown Root; and the obligatory pilgrimage
for every Soul -- a spark of the former -- through the Cycle of Incarnation (or
"Necessity") in accordance with Cyclic and Karmic law, during the whole term. In
other words, no purely spiritual Buddhi (divine Soul) can have an independent
(conscious) existence before the spark which issued from the pure Essence of the
Universal Sixth principle, -- or the OVER-SOUL, -- has (a) passed through every
elemental form of the phenomenal world of that Manvantara, and (b) acquired
individuality, first by natural impulse, and then by self-induced and
self-devised efforts (checked by its Karma), thus ascending through all the
degrees of intelligence, from the lowest to the highest Manas, from mineral and
plant, up to the holiest archangel (Dhyani-Buddha). The pivotal doctrine of the
Esoteric philosophy admits no privileges or special gifts in man, save those won
by his own Ego through personal effort and merit throughout a long series of
metempsychoses and reincarnations. This is why the Hindus say that the Universe
is Brahma and Brahmâ, for Brahma is in every atom of the universe, the six
principles in Nature being all the outcome -- the variously differentiated
aspects -- of the SEVENTH and ONE, the only reality in the Universe whether
Cosmical or micro-cosmical; and also why the permutations (psychic, spiritual
and physical), on the plane of manifestation and form, of the sixth (Brahmâ the
vehicle of Brahma) are viewed by metaphysical
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] spirit, an awkward and incorrect
expression has to be used, for lack of appropriate words in English. The
Vedantins call it Sutratma (Thread-Soul), but their explanation, too, differs
somewhat from that of the occultists; to explain which difference, however, is
left to the Vedantins themselves.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 18 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
antiphrasis as illusive and Mayavic. For although the root of every atom
individually and of every form collectively, is that seventh principle or the
one Reality, still, in its manifested phenomenal and temporary appearance, it is
no better than an evanescent illusion of our senses. (See, for clearer
definition, Addendum "Gods, Monads and Atoms," and also "Theophania,"
"Bodhisatvas and Reincarnation," etc., etc.)
In its absoluteness, the One Principle under its two aspects (of Parabrahmam and
Mulaprakriti) is sexless, unconditioned and eternal. Its periodical
(manvantaric) emanation -- or primal radiation -- is also One, androgynous and
phenomenally finite. When the radiation radiates in its turn, all its radiations
are also androgynous, to become male and female principles in their lower
aspects. After Pralaya, whether the great or the minor Pralaya (the latter
leaving the worlds in statu quo*), the first that re-awakes to active life is
the plastic A'kasa, Father-Mother, the Spirit and Soul of Ether, or the plane on
the surface of the Circle. Space is called the "Mother" before its Cosmic
activity, and Father-Mother at the first stage of re-awakening. (See Comments,
Stanza II.) In the Kabala it is also Father-Mother-Son. But whereas in the
Eastern doctrine, these are the Seventh Principle of the manifested Universe, or
its "Atma-Buddhi-Manas" (Spirit, Soul, Intelligence), the triad branching off
and dividing into the seven cosmical and seven human principles, in the Western
Kabala of the Christian mystics it is the Triad or Trinity, and with their
occultists, the male-female Jehovah, Jah-Havah. In this lies the whole
difference between the esoteric and the Christian trinities. The Mystics and the
Philosophers, the Eastern and Western Pantheists, synthesize their pregenetic
triad in the pure divine abstraction. The orthodox, anthropomorphize it.
Hiranyagarbha, Hari, and Sankara -- the three hypostases of the manifesting
"Spirit of the Supreme Spirit" (by which title Prithivi -- the Earth -- greets
Vishnu in his first Avatar) -- are the purely metaphysical abstract qualities of
formation, preservation, and destruction, and are the three divine Avasthas
(lit. hypostases) of that which "does
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* It is not the physical organisms that remain in statu quo, least of all their
psychical principles, during the great Cosmic or even Solar pralayas, but only
their Akasic or astral "photographs." But during the minor pralayas, once
over-taken by the "Night," the planets remain intact, though dead, as a huge
animal, caught and embedded in the polar ice, remains the same for ages.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 19 PROEM.
not perish with created things" (or Achyuta, a name of Vishnu); whereas the
orthodox Christian separates his personal creative Deity into the three
personages of the Trinity, and admits of no higher Deity. The latter, in
Occultism, is the abstract Triangle; with the orthodox, the perfect Cube. The
creative god or the aggregate gods are regarded by the Eastern philosopher as
Bhrantidarsanatah -- "false apprehension," something "conceived of, by reason of
erroneous appearances, as a material form," and explained as arising from the
illusive conception of the Egotistic personal and human Soul (lower fifth
principle). It is beautifully expressed in a new translation of Vishnu Purana.
"That Brahma in its totality has essentially the aspect of Prakriti, both
evolved and unevolved (Mulaprakriti), and also the aspect of Spirit and the
aspect of Time. Spirit, O twice born, is the leading aspect of the Supreme
Brahma.* The next is a twofold aspect, -- Prakriti, both evolved and unevolved,
and is the time last." Kronos is shown in the Orphic theogony as being also a
generated god or agent.
At this stage of the re-awakening of the Universe, the sacred symbolism
represents it as a perfect Circle with the (root) point in the Centre. This sign
was universal, therefore we find it in the Kabala also. The Western Kabala,
however, now in the hands of Christian mystics, ignores it altogether, though it
is plainly shown in the Zohar. These sectarians begin at the end, and show as
the symbol of pregenetic Kosmos this sign , calling it "the Union of the Rose
and Cross," the great mystery of occult generation, from whence the name --
Rosicrucians (Rose Cross)!
As may be judged, however, from the most important, as the best known of the
Rosicrucians' symbols, there is one which has never been hitherto understood
even by modern mystics. It is that of the "Pelican" tearing open its breast to
feed its seven little ones -- the real creed of the Brothers of the Rosie-Cross
and a direct outcome from the Eastern
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Thus Spencer, who, nevertheless, like Schopenhauer and von Hartmann, only
reflects an aspect of the old esoteric philosophers, and hence lands his readers
on the bleak shore of Agnostic despair -- reverently formulates the grand
mystery; "that which persists unchanging in quantity, but ever changing in form,
under these sensible appearances which the Universe presents to us, is an
unknown and unknowable power, which we are obliged to recognise as without limit
in Space and without beginning or end in time." It is only daring Theology --
never Science or philosophy -- which seeks to gauge the Infinite and unveil the
Fathomless and Unknowable.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 20 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
Secret Doctrine. Brahma (neuter) is called Kalahansa, meaning, as explained by
Western Orientalists, the Eternal Swan or goose (see Stanza III., Comment. 8),
and so is Brahma, the Creator. A great mistake is thus brought under notice; it
is Brahma (neuter) who ought to be referred to as Hansa-vahana (He who uses the
swan as his Vehicle) and not Brahma the Creator, who is the real Kalahansa,
while Brahma (neuter) is hamsa, and "A-hamsa," as will be explained in the
Commentary. Let it be understood that the terms Brahma and Parabrahmam are not
used here because they belong to our Esoteric nomenclature, but simply because
they are more familiar to the students in the West. Both are the perfect
equivalents of our one, three, and seven vowelled terms, which stand for the ONE
ALL, and the One "All in all."
Such are the basic conceptions on which the Secret Doctrine rests.
It would not be in place here to enter upon any defence or proof of their
inherent reasonableness; nor can I pause to show how they are, in fact,
contained -- though too often under a misleading guise -- in every system of
thought or philosophy worthy of the name.
Once that the reader has gained a clear comprehension of them and realised the
light which they throw on every problem of life, they will need no further
justification in his eyes, because their truth will be to him as evident as the
sun in heaven. I pass on, therefore, to the subject matter of the Stanzas as
given in this volume, adding a skeleton outline of them, in the hope of thereby
rendering the task of the student more easy, by placing before him in a few
words the general conception therein explained.
Stanza I. The history of cosmic evolution, as traced in the Stanzas, is, so to
say, the abstract algebraical formula of that Evolution. Hence the student must
not expect to find there an account of all the stages and transformations which
intervene between the first beginnings of "Universal" evolution and our present
state. To give such an account would be as impossible as it would be
incomprehensible to men who cannot even grasp the nature of the plane of
existence next to that to which, for the moment, their consciousness is limited.
The Stanzas, therefore, give an abstract formula which can be applied, mutatis
mutandis, to all evolution: to that of our tiny earth, to
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 21 PROEM.
that of the chain of planets of which that earth forms one, to the solar
Universe to which that chain belongs, and so on, in an ascending scale, till the
mind reels and is exhausted in the effort.
The seven Stanzas given in this volume represent the seven terms of this
abstract formula. They refer to, and describe the seven great stages of the
evolutionary process, which are spoken of in the Puranas as the "Seven
Creations," and in the Bible as the "Days" of Creation.
---------------------
The First Stanza describes the state of the ONE ALL during Pralaya, before the
first flutter of re-awakening manifestation.
A moment's thought shows that such a state can only be symbolised; to describe
it is impossible. Nor can it be symbolised except in negatives; for, since it is
the state of Absoluteness per se, it can possess none of those specific
attributes which serve us to describe objects in positive terms. Hence that
state can only be suggested by the negatives of all those most abstract
attributes which men feel rather than conceive, as the remotest limits
attainable by their power of conception.
The stage described in Stanza II. is, to a western mind , so nearly identical
with that mentioned in the first Stanza, that to express the idea of its
difference would require a treatise in itself. Hence it must be left to the
intuition and the higher faculties of the reader to grasp, as far as he can, the
meaning of the allegorical phrases used. Indeed it must be remembered that all
these Stanzas appeal to the inner faculties rather than to the ordinary
comprehension of the physical brain.
Stanza III. describes the Re-awakening of the Universe to life after Pralaya. It
depicts the emergence of the "Monads" from thei[[r]] state of absorption within
the ONE; the earliest and highest stage in the formation of "Worlds," the term
Monad being one which may apply equally to the vastest Solar System or the
tiniest atom.
Stanza IV. shows the differentiation of the "Germ" of the Universe
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 22 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
into the septenary hierarchy of conscious Divine Powers, who are the active
manifestations of the One Supreme Energy. They are the framers, shapers, and
ultimately the creators of all the manifested Universe, in the only sense in
which the name "Creator" is intelligible; they inform and guide it; they are the
intelligent Beings who adjust and control evolution, embodying in themselves
those manifestations of the ONE LAW, which we know as "The Laws of Nature."
Generically, they are known as the Dhyan Chohans, though each of the various
groups has its own designation in the Secret Doctrine.
This stage of evolution is spoken of in Hindu mythology as the "Creation" of the
Gods.
In Stanza V. the process of world-formation is described: --- First, diffused
Cosmic Matter, then the fiery "whirlwind," the first stage in the formation of a
nebula. That nebula condenses, and after passing through various
transformations, forms a Solar Universe, a planetary chain, or a single planet,
as the case may be.
The subsequent stages in the formation of a "World" are indicated in Stanza VI.,
which brings the evolution of such a world down to its fourth great period,
corresponding to the period in which we are now living.
Stanza VII. continues the history, tracing the descent of life down to the
appearance of Man; and thus closes the first Book of the Secret Doctrine.
The development of "Man" from his first appearance on this earth in this Round
to the state in which we now find him will form the subject of Book II.
---------------------
NOTE.
The Stanzas which form the thesis of every section are given throughout in their
modern translated version, as it would be worse
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 23 PROEM.
than useless to make the subject still more difficult by introducing the archaic
phraseology of the original, with its puzzling style and words. Extracts are
given from the Chinese Thibetan and Sanskrit translations of the original Senzar
Commentaries and Glosses on the Book of DZYAN -- these being now rendered for
the first time into a European language. It is almost unnecessary to state that
only portions of the seven Stanzas are here given. Were they published complete
they would remain incomprehensible to all save the few higher occultists. Nor is
there any need to assure the reader that, no more than most of the profane, does
the writer, or rather the humble recorder, understand those forbidden passages.
To facilitate the reading, and to avoid the too frequent reference to
foot-notes, it was thought best to blend together texts and glosses, using the
Sanskrit and Tibetan proper names whenever those cannot be avoided, in
preference to giving the originals. The more so as the said terms are all
accepted synonyms, the former only being used between a Master and his chelas
(or disciples).
Thus, were one to translate into English, using only the substantives and
technical terms as employed in one of the Tibetan and Senzar versions, Verse I
would read as follows: --- "Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas
zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan-Kam not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel
Chugnyi not; Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang and Ssa in
Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub
(Parinishpanna), &c., &c.," which would sound like pure Abracadabra.
As this work is written for the instruction of students of Occultism, and not
for the benefit of philologists, we may well avoid such foreign terms wherever
it is possible to do so. The untranslateable terms alone, incomprehensible
unless explained in their meanings, are left, but all such terms are rendered in
their Sanskrit form. Needless to remind the reader that these are, in almost
every case, the late developments of the later language, and pertain to the
Fifth Root-Race. Sanskrit, as now known, was not spoken by the Atlanteans, and
most of the philosophical terms used in the systems of the India of the
post-Mahabharatan period are not found in the Vedas, nor are they to be met with
in the original Stanzas, but only their equivalents. The reader who is not a
Theosophist, is once more invited to regard all that which follows as a fairy
tale, if he likes; at best as one of the yet unproven speculations of
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 24 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
dreamers; and, at the worst, as an additional hypothesis to the many Scientific
hypotheses past, present and future, some exploded, others still lingering. It
is not in any sense worse than are many of the so called Scientific theories;
and it is in every case more philosophical and probable.
In view of the abundant comments and explanations required, the references to
the footnotes are given in the usual way, while the sentences to be commented
upon are marked with figures. Additional matter will be found in the Chapters on
Symbolism forming Part II., as well as in Part III., these being often more full
of information than the text.
*********************
[[Vol. 1, Page 25]]
PART I.
COSMIC EVOLUTION.
---------------------
SEVEN STANZAS TRANSLATED WITH COMMENTARIES
FROM THE
SECRET BOOK OF DZYAN.
[[Vol. 1, Page 26]]
Nor Aught nor Nought existed; yon bright sky
Was not, nor heaven's broad roof outstretched above.
What covered all? what sheltered? what concealed?
Was it the water's fathomless abyss?
There was not death -- yet there was nought immortal,
There was no confine betwixt day and night;
The only One breathed breathless by itself,
Other than It there nothing since has been.
Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled
In gloom profound -- an ocean without light --
The germ that still lay covered in the husk
Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat.
. . . . . . . .
Who knows the secret? who proclaimed it here?
Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang?
The Gods themselves came later into being --
Who knows from whence this great creation sprang?
That, whence all this great creation came,
Whether Its will created or was mute,
The Most High Seer that is in highest heaven,
He knows it -- or perchance even He knows not."
"Gazing into eternity . . .
Ere the foundations of the earth were laid,
. . . . .
Thou wert. And when the subterranean flame
Shall burst its prison and devour the frame . . .
Thou shalt be still as Thou wert before
And knew no change, when time shall be no more.
Oh! endless thought, divine ETERNITY."
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 27 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
COSMIC EVOLUTION.
In Seven Stanzas translated from the Book of Dzyan.
---------------------
STANZA I.
1. THE ETERNAL PARENT WRAPPED IN HER EVER INVISIBLE ROBES HAD SLUMBERED ONCE
AGAIN FOR SEVEN ETERNITIES.
2. TIME WAS NOT, FOR IT LAY ASLEEP IN THE INFINITE BOSOM OF DURATION.
3. UNIVERSAL MIND WAS NOT, FOR THERE WERE NO AH-HI TO CONTAIN IT.
4. THE SEVEN WAYS TO BLISS WERE NOT. THE GREAT CAUSES OF MISERY WERE NOT, FOR
THERE WAS NO ONE TO PRODUCE AND GET ENSNARED BY THEM.
5. DARKNESS ALONE FILLED THE BOUNDLESS ALL, FOR FATHER, MOTHER AND SON WERE ONCE
MORE ONE, AND THE SON HAD NOT AWAKENED YET FOR THE NEW WHEEL, AND HIS PILGRIMAGE
THEREON.
6. THE SEVEN SUBLIME LORDS AND THE SEVEN TRUTHS HAD CEASED TO BE, AND THE
UNIVERSE, THE SON OF NECESSITY, WAS IMMERSED IN PARANISHPANNA, TO BE OUTBREATHED
BY THAT WHICH IS AND YET IS NOT. NAUGHT WAS.
7. THE CAUSES OF EXISTENCE HAD BEEN DONE AWAY WITH; THE VISIBLE THAT WAS, AND
THE INVISIBLE THAT IS, RESTED IN ETERNAL NON-BEING -- THE ONE BEING.
8. ALONE THE ONE FORM OF EXISTENCE STRETCHED BOUNDLESS, INFINITE, CAUSELESS, IN
DREAMLESS SLEEP; AND LIFE PULSATED UNCONSCIOUS IN UNIVERSAL SPACE, THROUGHOUT
THAT ALL-PRESENCE WHICH IS SENSED BY THE OPENED EYE OF THE DANGMA.
9. BUT WHERE WAS THE DANGMA WHEN THE ALAYA OF THE UNIVERSE WAS IN PARAMARTHA AND
THE GREAT WHEEL WAS ANUPADAKA?
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 28 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
STANZA II.
1. . . . WHERE WERE THE BUILDERS, THE LUMINOUS SONS OF MANVANTARIC DAWN? . . .
IN THE UNKNOWN DARKNESS IN THEIR AH-HI PARANISHPANNA. THE PRODUCERS OF FORM FROM
NO-FORM -- THE ROOT OF THE WORLD -- THE DEVAMATRI AND SVABHAVAT, RESTED IN THE
BLISS OF NON-BEING.
2. . . . WHERE WAS SILENCE? WHERE THE EARS TO SENSE IT? NO, THERE WAS NEITHER
SILENCE NOR SOUND; NAUGHT SAVE CEASELESS ETERNAL BREATH, WHICH KNOWS ITSELF NOT.
3. THE HOUR HAD NOT YET STRUCK; THE RAY HAD NOT YET FLASHED INTO THE GERM; THE
MATRIPADMA HAD NOT YET SWOLLEN.
4. HER HEART HAD NOT YET OPENED FOR THE ONE RAY TO ENTER, THENCE TO FALL, AS
THREE INTO FOUR, INTO THE LAP OF MAYA.
5. THE SEVEN SONS WERE NOT YET BORN FROM THE WEB OF LIGHT. DARKNESS ALONE WAS
FATHER-MOTHER, SVABHAVAT; AND SVABHAVAT WAS IN DARKNESS.
6. THESE TWO ARE THE GERM, AND THE GERM IS ONE. THE UNIVERSE WAS STILL CONCEALED
IN THE DIVINE THOUGHT AND THE DIVINE BOSOM. . . .
-------
STANZA III.
1. . . . THE LAST VIBRATION OF THE SEVENTH ETERNITY THRILLS THROUGH INFINITUDE.
THE MOTHER SWELLS, EXPANDING FROM WITHIN WITHOUT, LIKE THE BUD OF THE LOTUS.
2. THE VIBRATION SWEEPS ALONG, TOUCHING WITH ITS SWIFT WING THE WHOLE UNIVERSE
AND THE GERM THAT DWELLETH IN DARKNESS: THE DARKNESS THAT BREATHES OVER THE
SLUMBERING WATERS OF LIFE. . .
3. DARKNESS RADIATES LIGHT, AND LIGHT DROPS ONE SOLITARY RAY INTO THE
MOTHER-DEEP. THE RAY SHOOTS THROUGH THE VIRGIN EGG, THE RAY CAUSES THE ETERNAL
EGG TO THRILL, AND DROP THE NON-ETERNAL GERM, WHICH CONDENSES INTO THE
WORLD-EGG.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 29 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
4. THEN THE THREE FALL INTO THE FOUR. THE RADIANT ESSENCE BECOMES SEVEN INSIDE,
SEVEN OUTSIDE. THE LUMINOUS EGG, WHICH IN ITSELF IS THREE, CURDLES AND SPREADS
IN MILK-WHITE CURDS THROUGHOUT THE DEPTHS OF MOTHER, THE ROOT THAT GROWS IN THE
DEPTHS OF THE OCEAN OF LIFE.
5. THE ROOT REMAINS, THE LIGHT REMAINS, THE CURDS REMAIN, AND STILL OEAOHOO IS
ONE.
6. THE ROOT OF LIFE WAS IN EVERY DROP OF THE OCEAN OF IMMORTALITY, AND THE OCEAN
WAS RADIANT LIGHT, WHICH WAS FIRE, AND HEAT, AND MOTION. DARKNESS VANISHED AND
WAS NO MORE; IT DISAPPEARED IN ITS OWN ESSENCE, THE BODY OF FIRE AND WATER, OR
FATHER AND MOTHER.
7. BEHOLD, OH LANOO! THE RADIANT CHILD OF THE TWO, THE UNPARALLELED REFULGENT
GLORY: BRIGHT SPACE SON OF DARK SPACE, WHICH EMERGES FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE
GREAT DARK WATERS. IT IS OEAOHOO THE YOUNGER, THE * * * HE SHINES FORTH AS THE
SON; HE IS THE BLAZING DIVINE DRAGON OF WISDOM; THE ONE IS FOUR, AND FOUR TAKES
TO ITSELF THREE,** AND THE UNION PRODUCES THE SAPTA, IN WHOM ARE THE SEVEN WHICH
BECOME THE TRIDASA (OR THE HOSTS AND THE MULTITUDES). BEHOLD HIM LIFTING THE
VEIL AND UNFURLING IT FROM EAST TO WEST. HE SHUTS OUT THE ABOVE, AND LEAVES THE
BELOW TO BE SEEN AS THE GREAT ILLUSION. HE MARKS THE PLACES FOR THE SHINING
ONES, AND TURNS THE UPPER INTO A SHORELESS SEA OF FIRE, AND THE ONE MANIFESTED
INTO THE GREAT WATERS.
8. WHERE WAS THE GERM AND WHERE WAS NOW DARKNESS? WHERE IS THE SPIRIT OF THE
FLAME THAT BURNS IN THY LAMP, OH LANOO? THE GERM IS THAT, AND THAT IS LIGHT, THE
WHITE BRILLIANT SON OF THE DARK HIDDEN FATHER.
9. LIGHT IS COLD FLAME, AND FLAME IS FIRE, AND FIRE PRODUCES HEAT, WHICH YIELDS
WATER: THE WATER OF LIFE IN THE GREAT MOTHER.
10. FATHER-MOTHER SPIN A WEB WHOSE UPPER END IS FASTENED TO SPIRIT -- THE LIGHT
OF THE ONE DARKNESS -- AND THE LOWER ONE TO ITS SHADOWY END, MATTER; AND THIS
WEB IS THE UNIVERSE SPUN OUT OF THE TWO SUBSTANCES MADE IN ONE, WHICH IS
SVABHAVAT.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
** In the English translation from the Sanskrit the numbers are given in that
language, Eka, Chatur, etc., etc. It was thought best to give them in English.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 30 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
11. IT EXPANDS WHEN THE BREATH OF FIRE IS UPON IT; IT CONTRACTS WHEN THE BREATH
OF THE MOTHER TOUCHES IT. THEN THE SONS DISSOCIATE AND SCATTER, TO RETURN INTO
THEIR MOTHER'S BOSOM AT THE END OF THE GREAT DAY, AND RE-BECOME ONE WITH HER;
WHEN IT IS COOLING IT BECOMES RADIANT, AND THE SONS EXPAND AND CONTRACT THROUGH
THEIR OWN SELVES AND HEARTS; THEY EMBRACE INFINITUDE.
12. THEN SVABHAVAT SENDS FOHAT TO HARDEN THE ATOMS. EACH IS A PART OF THE WEB.
REFLECTING THE "SELF-EXISTENT LORD" LIKE A MIRROR, EACH BECOMES IN TURN A WORLD.
-------
STANZA IV.
1. . . . LISTEN, YE SONS OF THE EARTH, TO YOUR INSTRUCTORS -- THE SONS OF THE
FIRE. LEARN, THERE IS NEITHER FIRST NOR LAST, FOR ALL IS ONE: NUMBER ISSUED FROM
NO NUMBER.
2. LEARN WHAT WE WHO DESCEND FROM THE PRIMORDIAL SEVEN, WE WHO ARE BORN FROM THE
PRIMORDIAL FLAME, HAVE LEARNT FROM OUR FATHERS. . . .
3. FROM THE EFFULGENCY OF LIGHT -- THE RAY OF THE EVER-DARKNESS -- SPRUNG IN
SPACE THE RE-AWAKENED ENERGIES; THE ONE FROM THE EGG, THE SIX, AND THE FIVE.
THEN THE THREE, THE ONE, THE FOUR, THE ONE, THE FIVE -- THE TWICE SEVEN THE SUM
TOTAL. AND THESE ARE THE ESSENCES, THE FLAMES, THE ELEMENTS, THE BUILDERS, THE
NUMBERS, THE ARUPA, THE RUPA, AND THE FORCE OF DIVINE MAN -- THE SUM TOTAL. AND
FROM THE DIVINE MAN EMANATED THE FORMS, THE SPARKS, THE SACRED ANIMALS, AND THE
MESSENGERS OF THE SACRED FATHERS WITHIN THE HOLY FOUR.
4. THIS WAS THE ARMY OF THE VOICE -- THE DIVINE MOTHER OF THE SEVEN. THE SPARKS
OF THE SEVEN ARE SUBJECT TO, AND THE SERVANTS OF, THE FIRST, THE SECOND, THE
THIRD, THE FOURTH, THE FIFTH, THE SIXTH, AND THE SEVENTH OF THE SEVEN. THESE
"SPARKS" ARE CALLED SPHERES, TRIANGLES, CUBES, LINES, AND MODELLERS; FOR THUS
STANDS THE ETERNAL NIDANA -- THE OEAOHOO, WHICH IS:
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 31 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
5. "DARKNESS" THE BOUNDLESS, OR THE NO-NUMBER, ADI-NIDANA SVABHAVAT: --
I. THE ADI-SANAT, THE NUMBER, FOR HE IS ONE.
II. THE VOICE OF THE LORD SVABHAVAT, THE NUMBERS, FOR HE IS ONE AND NINE.
III. THE "FORMLESS SQUARE."
AND THESE THREE ENCLOSED WITHIN THE ARE THE SACRED FOUR; AND THE TEN ARE THE
ARUPA UNIVERSE. THEN COME THE "SONS," THE SEVEN FIGHTERS, THE ONE, THE EIGHTH
LEFT OUT, AND HIS BREATH WHICH IS THE LIGHT-MAKER.
6. THEN THE SECOND SEVEN, WHO ARE THE LIPIKA, PRODUCED BY THE THREE. THE
REJECTED SON IS ONE. THE "SON-SUNS" ARE COUNTLESS.
-------
STANZA V.
1. THE PRIMORDIAL SEVEN, THE FIRST SEVEN BREATHS OF THE DRAGON OF WISDOM,
PRODUCE IN THEIR TURN FROM THEIR HOLY CIRCUMGYRATING BREATHS THE FIERY
WHIRLWIND.
2. THEY MAKE OF HIM THE MESSENGER OF THEIR WILL. THE DZYU BECOMES FOHAT, THE
SWIFT SON OF THE DIVINE SONS WHOSE SONS ARE THE LIPIKA, RUNS CIRCULAR ERRANDS.
FOHAT IS THE STEED AND THE THOUGHT IS THE RIDER. HE PASSES LIKE LIGHTNING
THROUGH THE FIERY CLOUDS; TAKES THREE, AND FIVE, AND SEVEN STRIDES THROUGH THE
SEVEN REGIONS ABOVE, AND THE SEVEN BELOW. HE LIFTS HIS VOICE, AND CALLS THE
INNUMERABLE SPARKS, AND JOINS THEM.
3. HE IS THEIR GUIDING SPIRIT AND LEADER. WHEN HE COMMENCES WORK, HE SEPARATES
THE SPARKS OF THE LOWER KINGDOM THAT FLOAT AND THRILL WITH JOY IN THEIR RADIANT
DWELLINGS, AND FORMS THEREWITH THE GERMS OF WHEELS. HE PLACES THEM IN THE SIX
DIRECTIONS OF SPACE, AND ONE IN THE MIDDLE -- THE CENTRAL WHEEL.
4. FOHAT TRACES SPIRAL LINES TO UNITE THE SIXTH TO THE SEVENTH -- THE CROWN; AN
ARMY OF THE SONS OF LIGHT STANDS AT EACH ANGLE, AND THE LIPIKA IN THE MIDDLE
WHEEL, THEY SAY: THIS IS GOOD, THE
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 32 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
FIRST DIVINE WORLD IS READY, THE FIRST IS NOW THE SECOND. THEN THE "DIVINE
ARUPA" REFLECTS ITSELF IN CHHAYA LOKA, THE FIRST GARMENT OF THE ANUPADAKA.
5. FOHAT TAKES FIVE STRIDES AND BUILDS A WINGED WHEEL AT EACH CORNER OF THE
SQUARE, FOR THE FOUR HOLY ONES AND THEIR ARMIES.
6. THE LIPIKA CIRCUMSCRIBE THE TRIANGLE, THE FIRST ONE, THE CUBE, THE SECOND
ONE, AND THE PENTACLE WITHIN THE EGG. IT IS THE RING CALLED "PASS NOT" FOR THOSE
WHO DESCEND AND ASCEND. ALSO FOR THOSE WHO DURING THE KALPA ARE PROGRESSING
TOWARDS THE GREAT DAY "BE WITH US." THUS WERE FORMED THE RUPA AND THE ARUPA:
FROM ONE LIGHT SEVEN LIGHTS; FROM EACH OF THE SEVEN, SEVEN TIMES SEVEN LIGHTS.
THE WHEELS WATCH THE RING. . . . .
-------
STANZA VI.
1. BY THE POWER OF THE MOTHER OF MERCY AND KNOWLEDGE -- KWAN-YIN -- THE "TRIPLE"
OF KWAN-SHAI-YIN, RESIDING IN KWAN-YIN-TIEN, FOHAT, THE BREATH OF THEIR PROGENY,
THE SON OF THE SONS, HAVING CALLED FORTH, FROM THE LOWER ABYSS, THE ILLUSIVE
FORM OF SIEN-TCHANG AND THE SEVEN ELEMENTS:*
2. THE SWIFT AND RADIANT ONE PRODUCES THE SEVEN LAYA CENTRES, AGAINST WHICH NONE
WILL PREVAIL TO THE GREAT DAY "BE-WITH-US," AND SEATS THE UNIVERSE ON THESE
ETERNAL FOUNDATIONS SURROUNDING TSIEN-TCHAN WITH THE ELEMENTARY GERMS.
3. OF THE SEVEN -- FIRST ONE MANIFESTED, SIX CONCEALED, TWO MANIFESTED, FIVE
CONCEALED; THREE MANIFESTED, FOUR CONCEALED; FOUR PRODUCED, THREE HIDDEN; FOUR
AND ONE TSAN REVEALED, TWO AND ONE HALF CONCEALED; SIX TO BE MANIFESTED, ONE
LAID ASIDE. LASTLY, SEVEN SMALL WHEELS REVOLVING; ONE GIVING BIRTH TO THE OTHER.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Verse 1 of Stanza VI. is of a far later date than the other Stanzas, though
still very ancient. The old text of this verse, having names entirely unknown to
the Orientalists would give no clue to the student.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 33 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
4. HE BUILDS THEM IN THE LIKENESS OF OLDER WHEELS, PLACING THEM ON THE
IMPERISHABLE CENTRES.
HOW DOES FOHAT BUILD THEM? HE COLLECTS THE FIERY DUST. HE MAKES BALLS OF FIRE,
RUNS THROUGH THEM, AND ROUND THEM, INFUSING LIFE THEREINTO THEN' SETS THEM INTO
MOTION; SOME ONE WAY, SOME THE OTHER WAY. THEY ARE COLD, HE MAKES THEM HOT. THEY
ARE DRY, HE MAKES THEM MOIST. THEY SHINE, HE FANS AND COOLS THEM. THUS ACTS
FOHAT FROM ONE TWILIGHT TO THE OTHER, DURING SEVEN ETERNITIES.
5. AT THE FOURTH, THE SONS ARE TOLD TO CREATE THEIR IMAGES. ONE THIRD REFUSES --
TWO OBEY.
THE CURSE IS PRONOUNCED; THEY WILL BE BORN ON THE FOURTH, SUFFER AND CAUSE
SUFFERING; THIS IS THE FIRST WAR.
6. THE OLDER WHEELS ROTATED DOWNWARDS AND UPWARDS. . . . THE MOTHER'S SPAWN
FILLED THE WHOLE. THERE WERE BATTLES FOUGHT BETWEEN THE CREATORS AND THE
DESTROYERS, AND BATTLES FOUGHT FOR SPACE; THE SEED APPEARING AND RE-APPEARING
CONTINUOUSLY.
7. MAKE THY CALCULATIONS, LANOO, IF THOU WOULDEST LEARN THE CORRECT AGE OF THY
SMALL WHEEL. ITS FOURTH SPOKE IS OUR MOTHER. REACH THE FOURTH "FRUIT" OF THE
FOURTH PATH OF KNOWLEDGE THAT LEADS TO NIRVANA, AND THOU SHALT COMPREHEND, FOR
THOU SHALT SEE . . . . .
-------
STANZA VII.
1. BEHOLD THE BEGINNING OF SENTIENT FORMLESS LIFE.
FIRST THE DIVINE, THE ONE FROM THE MOTHER-SPIRIT; THEN THE SPIRITUAL; THE THREE
FROM THE ONE, THE FOUR FROM THE ONE, AND THE FIVE FROM WHICH THE THREE, THE
FIVE, AND THE SEVEN. THESE ARE THE THREE-FOLD, THE FOUR-FOLD DOWNWARD; THE
"MIND-BORN" SONS OF THE FIRST LORD; THE SHINING SEVEN.
IT IS THEY WHO ARE THOU, ME, HIM, OH LANOO. THEY, WHO WATCH OVER THEE, AND THY
MOTHER EARTH.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 34 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
2. THE ONE RAY MULTIPLIES THE SMALLER RAYS. LIFE PRECEDES FORM, AND LIFE
SURVIVES THE LAST ATOM OF FORM. THROUGH THE COUNTLESS RAYS PROCEEDS THE
LIFE-RAY, THE ONE, LIKE A THREAD THROUGH MANY JEWELS.
3. WHEN THE ONE BECOMES TWO, THE THREEFOLD APPEARS, AND THE THREE ARE ONE; AND
IT IS OUR THREAD, OH LANOO, THE HEART OF THE MAN-PLANT CALLED SAPTASARMA.
4. IT IS THE ROOT THAT NEVER DIES; THE THREE-TONGUED FLAME OF THE FOUR WICKS.
THE WICKS ARE THE SPARKS, THAT DRAW FROM THE THREE-TONGUED FLAME SHOT OUT BY THE
SEVEN -- THEIR FLAME -- THE BEAMS AND SPARKS OF ONE MOON REFLECTED IN THE
RUNNING WAVES OF ALL THE RIVERS OF EARTH.
5. THE SPARK HANGS FROM THE FLAME BY THE FINEST THREAD OF FOHAT. IT JOURNEYS
THROUGH THE SEVEN WORLDS OF MAYA. IT STOPS IN THE FIRST, AND IS A METAL AND A
STONE; IT PASSES INTO THE SECOND AND BEHOLD -- A PLANT; THE PLANT WHIRLS THROUGH
SEVEN CHANGES AND BECOMES A SACRED ANIMAL. FROM THE COMBINED ATTRIBUTES OF
THESE, MANU, THE THINKER IS FORMED. WHO FORMS HIM? THE SEVEN LIVES, AND THE ONE
LIFE. WHO COMPLETES HIM? THE FIVE-FOLD LHA. AND WHO PERFECTS THE LAST BODY?
FISH, SIN, AND SOMA. . . . .
6. FROM THE FIRST-BORN THE THREAD BETWEEN THE SILENT WATCHER AND HIS SHADOW
BECOMES MORE STRONG AND RADIANT WITH EVERY CHANGE. THE MORNING SUN-LIGHT HAS
CHANGED INTO NOON-DAY GLORY. . . . .
7. THIS IS THY PRESENT WHEEL, SAID THE FLAME TO THE SPARK. THOU ART MYSELF, MY
IMAGE, AND MY SHADOW. I HAVE CLOTHED MYSELF IN THEE, AND THOU ART MY VAHAN TO
THE DAY, "BE WITH US," WHEN THOU SHALT RE-BECOME MYSELF AND OTHERS, THYSELF AND
ME. THEN THE BUILDERS, HAVING DONNED THEIR FIRST CLOTHING, DESCEND ON RADIANT
EARTH AND REIGN OVER MEN -- WHO ARE THEMSELVES. . . .
Thus ends this portion of the archaic narrative, dark, confused, almost
incomprehensible. An attempt will now be made to throw light into this darkness,
to make sense out of this apparent NON-SENSE.
**********************
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 35 STANZA I.
COMMENTARIES
ON THE SEVEN STANZAS AND THEIR TERMS, ACCORDING TO THEIR
NUMERATION, IN STANZAS AND SLOKAS.
STANZA I.
1. "THE ETERNAL PARENT (Space), WRAPPED IN HER EVER INVISIBLE ROBES, HAD
SLUMBERED ONCE AGAIN FOR SEVEN ETERNITIES (a)."
The "Parent Space" is the eternal, ever present cause of all -- the
incomprehensible DEITY, whose "invisible robes" are the mystic root of all
matter, and of the Universe. Space is the one eternal thing that we can most
easily imagine, immovable in its abstraction and uninfluenced by either the
presence or absence in it of an objective Universe. It is without dimension, in
every sense, and self-existent. Spirit is the first differentiation from THAT,
the causeless cause of both Spirit and Matter. It is, as taught in the esoteric
catechism, neither limitless void, nor conditioned fulness, but both. It was and
ever will be. (See Proem pp. 2 et seq.)
Thus, the "Robes" stand for the noumenon of undifferentiated Cosmic Matter. It
is not matter as we know it, but the spiritual essence of matter, and is
co-eternal and even one with Space in its abstract sense. Root-nature is also
the source of the subtile invisible properties in visible matter. It is the
Soul, so to say, of the ONE infinite Spirit. The Hindus call it Mulaprakriti,
and say that it is the primordial substance, which is the basis of the Upadhi or
vehicle of every phenomenon, whether physical, mental or psychic. It is the
source from which Akasa radiates.
(a) By the Seven "Eternities," aeons or periods are meant. The word "Eternity,"
as understood in Christian theology, has no meaning to the Asiatic ear, except
in its application to the ONE existence; nor is
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 36 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
the term sempiternity, the eternal only in futurity, anything better than a
misnomer.* Such words do not and cannot exist in philosophical metaphysics, and
were unknown till the advent of ecclesiastical Christianity. The Seven
Eternities meant are the seven periods, or a period answering in its duration to
the seven periods, of a Manvantara, and extending throughout a Maha-Kalpa or the
"Great Age" -- 100 years of Brahma -- making a total of 311,040,000,000,000 of
years; each year of Brahma being composed of 360 "days," and of the same number
of "nights" of Brahma (reckoning by the Chandrayana or lunar year); and a "Day
of Brahma" consisting of 4,320,000,000 of mortal years. These "Eternities"
belong to the most secret calculations, in which, in order to arrive at the true
total, every figure must be 7x (7 to the power of x); x varying according to the
nature of the cycle in the subjective or real world; and every figure or number
relating to, or representing all the different cycles from the greatest to the
smallest -- in the objective or unreal world -- must necessarily be multiples of
seven. The key to this cannot be given, for herein lies the mystery of esoteric
calculations, and for the purposes of ordinary calculation it has no sense. "The
number seven," says the Kabala, "is the great number of the Divine Mysteries;"
number ten is that of all human knowledge (Pythagorean decade); 1,000 is the
number ten to the third power, and therefore the number 7,000 is also
symbolical. In the Secret Doctrine the figure and number 4 are the male symbol
only on the highest plane of abstraction; on the plane of matter the 3 is the
masculine and the 4 the female: the upright and the horizontal in the fourth
stage of symbolism, when the symbols became the glyphs of the generative powers
on the physical plane.
-------
STANZA I. -- Continued.
2. TIME WAS NOT, FOR IT LAY ASLEEP IN THE INFINITE BOSOM OF DURATION (a).
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* It is stated in Book II., ch. viii., of Vishnu Purana: "By immortality is
meant existence to the end of the Kalpa;" and Wilson, the translator, remarks in
a footnote: "This, according to the Vedas, is all that is to be understood of
the immortality (or eternity) of the gods; they perish at the end of universal
dissolution (or Pralaya)." And Esoteric philosophy says: They "perish" not, but
are re-absorbed.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 37 TIME AND UNIVERSAL MIND.
(a) Time is only an illusion produced by the succession of our states of
consciousness as we travel through eternal duration, and it does not exist where
no consciousness exists in which the illusion can be produced; but "lies
asleep." The present is only a mathematical line which divides that part of
eternal duration which we call the future, from that part which we call the
past. Nothing on earth has real duration, for nothing remains without change --
or the same -- for the billionth part of a second; and the sensation we have of
the actuality of the division of "time" known as the present, comes from the
blurring of that momentary glimpse, or succession of glimpses, of things that
our senses give us, as those things pass from the region of ideals which we call
the future, to the region of memories that we name the past. In the same way we
experience a sensation of duration in the case of the instantaneous electric
spark, by reason of the blurred and continuing impression on the retina. The
real person or thing does not consist solely of what is seen at any particular
moment, but is composed of the sum of all its various and changing conditions
from its appearance in the material form to its disappearance from the earth. It
is these "sum-totals" that exist from eternity in the "future," and pass by
degrees through matter, to exist for eternity in the "past." No one could say
that a bar of metal dropped into the sea came into existence as it left the air,
and ceased to exist as it entered the water, and that the bar itself consisted
only of that cross-section thereof which at any given moment coincided with the
mathematical plane that separates, and, at the same time, joins, the atmosphere
and the ocean. Even so of persons and things, which, dropping out of the to-be
into the has-been, out of the future into the past -- present momentarily to our
senses a cross-section, as it were, of their total selves, as they pass through
time and space (as matter) on their way from one eternity to another: and these
two constitute that "duration" in which alone anything has true existence, were
our senses but able to cognize it there.
-------
STANZA I. -- Continued.
3. . . . UNIVERSAL MIND WAS NOT, FOR THERE WERE NO AH-HI (celestial beings) TO
CONTAIN (hence to manifest) IT (a).
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 38 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
(a) Mind is a name given to the sum of the states of Consciousness grouped under
Thought, Will, and Feeling. During deep sleep, ideation ceases on the physical
plane, and memory is in abeyance; thus for the time-being "Mind is not," because
the organ, through which the Ego manifests ideation and memory on the material
plane, has temporarily ceased to function. A noumenon can become a phenomenon on
any plane of existence only by manifesting on that plane through an appropriate
basis or vehicle; and during the long night of rest called Pralaya, when all the
existences are dissolved, the "UNIVERSAL MIND" remains as a permanent
possibility of mental action, or as that abstract absolute thought, of which
mind is the concrete relative manifestation. The AH-HI (Dhyan-Chohans) are the
collective hosts of spiritual beings -- the Angelic Hosts of Christianity, the
Elohim and "Messengers" of the Jews -- who are the vehicle for the manifestation
of the divine or universal thought and will. They are the Intelligent Forces
that give to and enact in Nature her "laws," while themselves acting according
to laws imposed upon them in a similar manner by still higher Powers; but they
are not "the personifications" of the powers of Nature, as erroneously thought.
This hierarchy of spiritual Beings, through which the Universal Mind comes into
action, is like an army -- a "Host," truly -- by means of which the fighting
power of a nation manifests itself, and which is composed of army corps,
divisions, brigades, regiments, and so forth, each with its separate
individuality or life, and its limited freedom of action and limited
responsibilities; each contained in a larger individuality, to which its own
interests are subservient, and each containing lesser individualities in itself.
-------
STANZA I. -- Continued.
4. THE SEVEN WAYS TO BLISS (Moksha* or Nirvana) WERE NOT (a). THE GREAT CAUSES
OF MISERY (Nidana** and Maya) WERE NOT, FOR THERE WAS NO ONE TO PRODUCE AND GET
ENSNARED BY THEM (b).
(a) There are seven "Paths" or "Ways" to the bliss of Non-Exist-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
*Nippang in China; Neibban in Burmah; or Moksha in India.
** The "12" Nidanas (in Tibetan Ten-brel chug-nyi) the chief causes of
existence, effects generated by a concatenation of causes produced (see Comment.
II).
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 39 THE CAUSES OF BEING.
ence, which is absolute Being, Existence, and Consciousness. They were not,
because the Universe was, so far, empty, and existed only in the Divine Thought.
For it is . . .
(b) The twelve Nidanas or causes of being. Each is the effect of its antecedent
cause, and a cause, in its turn, to its successor; the sum total of the Nidanas
being based on the four truths, a doctrine especially characteristic of the
Hinayana System.* They belong to the theory of the stream of catenated law which
produces merit and demerit, and finally brings Karma into full sway. It is based
upon the great truth that re-incarnation is to be dreaded, as existence in this
world only entails upon man suffering, misery and pain; Death itself being
unable to deliver man from it, since death is merely the door through which he
passes to another life on earth after a little rest on its threshold --
Devachan. The Hinayana System, or School of the "Little Vehicle," is of very
ancient growth; while the Mahayana is of a later period, having originated after
the death of Buddha. Yet the tenets of the latter are as old as the hills that
have contained such schools from time immemorial, and the Hinayana and Mahayana
Schools (the latter, that of the "Great Vehicle") both teach the same doctrine
in reality. Yana, or Vehicle (in Sanskrit, Vahan) is a mystic expression, both
"vehicles" inculcating that man may escape the sufferings of rebirths and even
the false bliss of Devachan, by obtaining Wisdom and Knowledge, which alone can
dispel the Fruits of Illusion and Ignorance.
Maya or illusion is an element which enters into all finite things, for
everything that exists has only a relative, not an absolute, reality, since the
appearance which the hidden noumenon assumes for any observer depends upon his
power of cognition. To the untrained eye of the savage, a painting is at first
an unmeaning confusion of streaks and daubs of color, while an educated eye sees
instantly a face or a landscape. Nothing is permanent except the one hidden
absolute existence which contains in itself the noumena of all realities. The
existences belonging to every plane of being, up to the highest Dhyan-Chohans,
are, in degree, of the nature of shadows cast by a magic lantern on a colourless
screen; but all things are relatively real, for the cogniser is also a
reflection, and the things cognised are therefore as real to him as himself.
Whatever reality things possess must be looked for in them
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See Wassilief on Buddhism, pp. 97-950.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 40 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
before or after they have passed like a flash through the material world; but we
cannot cognise any such existence directly, so long as we have sense-instruments
which bring only material existence into the field of our consciousness.
Whatever plane our consciousness may be acting in, both we and the things
belonging to that plane are, for the time being, our only realities. As we rise
in the scale of development we perceive that during the stages through which we
have passed we mistook shadows for realities, and the upward progress of the Ego
is a series of progressive awakenings, each advance bringing with it the idea
that now, at last, we have reached "reality;" but only when we shall have
reached the absolute Consciousness, and blended our own with it, shall we be
free from the delusions produced by Maya.
-------
STANZA I. -- Continued.
5. DARKNESS ALONE FILLED THE BOUNDLESS ALL (a), FOR FATHER, MOTHER AND SON WERE
ONCE MORE ONE, AND THE SON HAD NOT AWAKENED YET FOR THE NEW WHEEL* AND HIS
PILGRIMAGE THEREON (b).
(a) "Darkness is Father-Mother: light their son," says an old Eastern proverb.
Light is inconceivable except as coming from some source which is the cause of
it; and as, in the instance of primordial light, that source is unknown, though
as strongly demanded by reason and logic, therefore it is called "Darkness" by
us, from an intellectual point of view. As to borrowed or secondary light,
whatever its source, it can be but of a temporary mayavic character. Darkness,
then, is the eternal
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* That which is called "wheel" is the symbolical expression for a world or
globe, which shows that the ancients were aware that our Earth was a revolving
globe, not a motionless square as some Christian Fathers taught. The "Great
Wheel" is the whole duration of our Cycle of being, or Maha Kalpa, i.e., the
whole revolution of our special chain of seven planets or Spheres from beginning
to end; the "Small Wheels" meaning the Rounds, of which there are also Seven.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 41 WHAT IS DARKNESS IN PHILOSOPHY?
matrix in which the sources of light appear and disappear. Nothing is added to
darkness to make of it light, or to light to make it darkness, on this our
plane. They are interchangeable, and scientifically light is but a mode of
darkness and vice versa. Yet both are phenomena of the same noumenon -- which is
absolute darkness to the scientific mind, and but a gray twilight to the
perception of the average mystic, though to that of the spiritual eye of the
Initiate it is absolute light. How far we discern the light that shines in
darkness depends upon our powers of vision. What is light to us is darkness to
certain insects, and the eye of the clairvoyant sees illumination where the
normal eye perceives only blackness. When the whole universe was plunged in
sleep -- had returned to its one primordial element -- there was neither centre
of luminosity, nor eye to perceive light, and darkness necessarily filled the
boundless all.
(b) The Father-Mother are the male and female principles in root-nature, the
opposite poles that manifest in all things on every plane of Kosmos, or Spirit
and Substance, in a less allegorical aspect, the resultant of which is the
Universe, or the Son. They are "once more One" when in "The Night of Brahma,"
during Pralaya, all in the objective Universe has returned to its one primal and
eternal cause, to reappear at the following Dawn -- as it does periodically.
"Karana" -- eternal cause -- was alone. To put it more plainly: Karana is alone
during the "Nights of Brahma." The previous objective Universe has dissolved
into its one primal and eternal cause, and is, so to say, held in solution in
space, to differentiate again and crystallize out anew at the following
Manvantaric dawn, which is the commencement of a new "Day" or new activity of
Brahma -- the symbol of the Universe. In esoteric parlance, Brahma is
Father-Mother-Son, or Spirit, Soul and Body at once; each personage being
symbolical of an attribute, and each attribute or quality being a graduated
efflux of Divine Breath in its cyclic differentiation, involutionary and
evolutionary. In the cosmicophysical sense, it is the Universe, the planetary
chain and the earth; in the purely spiritual, the Unknown Deity, Planetary
Spirit, and Man -- the Son of the two, the creature of Spirit and Matter, and a
manifestation of them in his periodical appearances on Earth during the
"wheels," or the Manvantaras. -- (See Part II. §: "Days and Nights of Brahma.")
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 42 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
STANZA I. -- Continued.
6. THE SEVEN SUBLIME LORDS AND THE SEVEN TRUTHS HAD CEASED TO BE (a), AND THE
UNIVERSE, THE SON OF NECESSITY, WAS IMMERSED IN PARANISHPANNA (b) (absolute
perfection, Paranirvana, which is Yong-Grub) TO BE OUT-BREATHED BY THAT WHICH IS
AND YET IS NOT. NAUGHT WAS (c).
(a) The seven sublime lords are the Seven Creative Spirits, the Dhyan-Chohans,
who correspond to the Hebrew Elohim. It is the same hierarchy of Archangels to
which St. Michael, St. Gabriel, and others belong, in the Christian theogony.
Only while St. Michael, for instance, is allowed in dogmatic Latin theology to
watch over all the promontories and gulfs, in the Esoteric System, the Dhyanis
watch successively over one of the Rounds and the great Root-races of our
planetary chain. They are, moreover, said to send their Bhodisatvas, the human
correspondents of the Dhyani-Buddhas (of whom vide infra) during every Round and
Race. Out of the Seven Truths and Revelations, or rather revealed secrets, four
only have been handed to us, as we are still in the Fourth Round, and the world
also has only had four Buddhas, so far. This is a very complicated question, and
will receive more ample treatment later on.
So far "There are only Four Truths, and Four Vedas" -- say the Hindus and
Buddhists. For a similar reason Irenaeus insisted on the necessity of Four
Gospels. But as every new Root-race at the head of a Round must have its
revelation and revealers, the next Round will bring the Fifth, the following the
Sixth, and so on.
(b) "Paranishpanna" is the absolute perfection to which all existences attain at
the close of a great period of activity, or Maha-Manvantara, and in which they
rest during the succeeding period of repose. In Tibetan it is called Yong-Grub.
Up to the day of the Yogacharya school the true nature of Paranirvana was taught
publicly, but since then it has become entirely esoteric; hence so many
contradictory interpretations of it. It is only a true Idealist who can
understand it. Everything has to be viewed as ideal, with the exception of
Paranirvana, by him who would comprehend that state, and acquire a knowledge of
how Non Ego, Voidness, and Darkness are Three in One and alone Self-existent and
perfect. It is absolute, however, only in a relative
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 43 MOTIONS, THE "GREAT BREATH."
sense, for it must give room to still further absolute perfection, according to
a higher standard of excellence in the following period of activity -- just as a
perfect flower must cease to be a perfect flower and die, in order to grow into
a perfect fruit, -- if a somewhat Irish mode of expression may be permitted.
The Secret Doctrine teaches the progressive development of everything, worlds as
well as atoms; and this stupendous development has neither conceivable beginning
nor imaginable end. Our "Universe" is only one of an infinite number of
Universes, all of them "Sons of Necessity," because links in the great Cosmic
chain of Universes, each one standing in the relation of an effect as regards
its predecessor, and being a cause as regards its successor.
The appearance and disappearance of the Universe are pictured as an outbreathing
and inbreathing of "the Great Breath," which is eternal, and which, being
Motion, is one of the three aspects of the Absolute -- Abstract Space and
Duration being the other two. When the "Great Breath" is projected, it is called
the Divine Breath, and is regarded as the breathing of the Unknowable Deity --
the One Existence -- which breathes out a thought, as it were, which becomes the
Kosmos. (See "Isis Unveiled.") So also is it when the Divine Breath is inspired
again the Universe disappears into the bosom of "the Great Mother," who then
sleeps "wrapped in her invisible robes."
(c) By "that which is and yet is not" is meant the Great Breath itself, which we
can only speak of as absolute existence, but cannot picture to our imagination
as any form of existence that we can distinguish from Non-existence. The three
periods -- the Present, the Past, and the Future -- are in the esoteric
philosophy a compound time; for the three are a composite number only in
relation to the phenomenal plane, but in the realm of noumena have no abstract
validity. As said in the Scriptures: "The Past time is the Present time, as also
the Future, which, though it has not come into existence, still is"; according
to a precept in the Prasanga Madhyamika teaching, whose dogmas have been known
ever since it broke away from the purely esoteric schools.* Our ideas, in short,
on duration and time are all derived from our
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See Dzungarian "Mani Kumbum," the "Book of the 10,000 Precepts." Also consult
Wassilief's "Der Buddhismus," pp. 327 and 357, etc.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 44 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
sensations according to the laws of Association. Inextricably bound up with the
relativity of human knowledge, they nevertheless can have no existence except in
the experience of the individual ego, and perish when its evolutionary march
dispels the Maya of phenomenal existence. What is Time, for instance, but the
panoramic succession of our states of consciousness? In the words of a Master,
"I feel irritated at having to use these three clumsy words -- Past, Present,
and Future -- miserable concepts of the objective phases of the subjective
whole, they are about as ill-adapted for the purpose as an axe for fine
carving." One has to acquire Paramartha lest one should become too easy a prey
to Samvriti -- is a philosophical axiom.*
-------
STANZA I. -- Continued.
7. THE CAUSES OF EXISTENCE HAD BEEN DONE AWAY WITH (a); THE VISIBLE THAT WAS,
AND THE INVISIBLE THAT IS, RESTED IN ETERNAL NON-BEING, THE ONE BEING (b).
(a) "The Causes of Existence" mean not only the physical causes known to
science, but the metaphysical causes, the chief of which is the desire to exist,
an outcome of Nidana and Maya. This desire for a sentient life shows itself in
everything, from an atom to a sun, and is a reflection of the Divine Thought
propelled into objective existence, into a law that the Universe should exist.
According to esoteric teaching, the real cause of that supposed desire, and of
all existence, remains for ever hidden, and its first emanations are the most
complete abstractions mind can conceive. These abstractions must of necessity be
postulated as the cause of the material Universe which presents itself to the
senses and intellect; and they underlie the secondary and subordinate powers of
Nature, which, anthropomorphized, have been worshipped as God and gods by the
common herd of every age. It is impossible to conceive anything without a cause;
the attempt to do so makes the mind a blank.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* In clearer words: "One has to acquire true Self-Consciousness in order to
understand Samvriti, or the 'origin of delusion.'" Paramartha is the synonym of
the Sanskrit term Svasam-vedana, or "the reflection which analyses itself."
There is a difference in the interpretation of the meaning of "Paramartha"
between the Yogacharyas and the Madhyamikas, neither of whom, however, explain
the real and true esoteric sense of the expression. See further, sloka No. 9.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 45 BEING AND NON-BEING.
This is virtually the condition to which the mind must come at last when we try
to trace back the chain of causes and effects, but both science and religion
jump to this condition of blankness much more quickly than is necessary; for
they ignore the metaphysical abstractions which are the only conceivable cause
of physical concretions. These abstractions become more and more concrete as
they approach our plane of existence, until finally they phenomenalise in the
form of the material Universe, by a process of conversion of metaphysics into
physics, analogous to that by which steam can be condensed into water, and the
water frozen into ice.
(b) The idea of Eternal Non-Being, which is the One Being, will appear a paradox
to anyone who does not remember that we limit our ideas of being to our present
consciousness of existence; making it a specific, instead of a generic term. An
unborn infant, could it think in our acceptation of that term, would necessarily
limit its conception of being, in a similar manner, to the intrauterine life
which alone it knows; and were it to endeavour to express to its consciousness
the idea of life after birth (death to it), it would, in the absence of data to
go upon, and of faculties to comprehend such data, probably express that life as
"Non-Being which is Real Being." In our case the One Being is the noumenon of
all the noumena which we know must underlie phenomena, and give them whatever
shadow of reality they possess, but which we have not the senses or the
intellect to cognize at present. The impalpable atoms of gold scattered through
the substance of a ton of auriferous quartz may be imperceptible to the naked
eye of the miner, yet he knows that they are not only present there but that
they alone give his quartz any appreciable value; and this relation of the gold
to the quartz may faintly shadow forth that of the noumenon to the phenomenon.
But the miner knows what the gold will look like when extracted from the quartz,
whereas the common mortal can form no conception of the reality of things
separated from the Maya which veils them, and in which they are hidden. Alone
the Initiate, rich with the lore acquired by numberless generations of his
predecessors, directs the "Eye of Dangma" toward the essence of things in which
no Maya can have any influence. It is here that the teachings of esoteric
philosophy in relation to the Nidanas and the Four Truths become of the greatest
importance; but they are secret.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 46 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
STANZA I. -- Continued.
8. ALONE, THE ONE FORM OF EXISTENCE STRETCHED BOUNDLESS, INFINITE, CAUSELESS, IN
DREAMLESS SLEEP (a); AND LIFE PULSATED UNCONSCIOUS IN UNIVERSAL SPACE,
THROUGHOUT THAT ALL-PRESENCE WHICH IS SENSED BY THE "OPENED EYE"* OF THE DANGMA
(b).**
(a) The tendency of modern thought is to recur to the archaic idea of a
homogeneous basis for apparently widely different things -- heterogeneity
developed from homogeneity. Biologists are now searching for their homogeneous
protoplasm and chemists for their protyle, while science is looking for the
force of which electricity, magnetism, heat, and so forth, are the
differentiations. The Secret Doctrine carries this idea into the region of
metaphysics and postulates a "One Form of Existence" as the basis and source of
all things. But perhaps the phrase, the "One Form of Existence," is not
altogether correct. The Sanskrit word is Prabhavapyaya, "the place, or rather
plane, whence emerges the origination, and into which is the resolution of all
things," says a commentator. It is not the "Mother of the World," as translated
by Wilson (see Book I., Vishnu Purana); for Jagad Yoni (as shown by FitzEdward
Hall) is scarcely so much "the Mother of the World" or "the Womb of the World"
as the "Material Cause of the Universe." The Puranic Commentators explain it by
Karana -- "Cause" -- but the Esoteric philosophy, by the ideal spirit of that
cause. It is, in its secondary stage, the Svabhavat of the Buddhist philosopher,
the eternal cause and effect, omnipresent yet abstract, the self-existent
plastic Essence and the root of all things, viewed in the same dual light as the
Vedantin views his Parabrahm and Mulaprakriti, the one under two aspects. It
seems indeed extraordinary to find great scholars speculating on the possibility
of the Vedanta, and the Uttara-Mimansa especially, having been "evoked by the
teachings of the Buddhists,"
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* In India it is called "The Eye of Siva," but beyond the great range it is
known as "Dangma's opened eye" in esoteric phraseology.
** Dangma means a purified soul, one who has become a Jivanmukta, the highest
adept, or rather a Mahatma so-called. His "opened eye" is the inner spiritual
eye of the seer, and the faculty which manifests through it is not clairvoyance
as ordinarily understood, i.e., the power of seeing at a distance, but rather
the faculty of spiritual intuition, through which direct and certain knowledge
is obtainable. This faculty is intimately connected with the "third eye," which
mythological tradition ascribes to certain races of men. Fuller explanations
will be found in Book II.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 47 THE EYE OF DANGMA.
whereas, it is on the contrary Buddhism (of Gautama, the Buddha) that was
"evoked" and entirely upreared on the tenets of the Secret Doctrine, of which a
partial sketch is here attempted, and on which, also, the Upanishads are made to
rest.* The above, according to the teachings of Sri Sankaracharya,** is
undeniable.
(b) Dreamless sleep is one of the seven states of consciousness known in
Oriental esotericism. In each of these states a different portion of the mind
comes into action; or as a Vedantin would express it, the individual is
conscious in a different plane of his being. The term "dreamless sleep," in this
case is applied allegorically to the Universe to express a condition somewhat
analogous to that state of consciousness in man, which, not being remembered in
a waking state, seems a blank, just as the sleep of the mesmerised subject seems
to him an unconscious blank when he returns to his normal condition, although he
has been talking and acting as a conscious individual would.
-------
STANZA I. -- Continued.
9. BUT WHERE WAS THE DANGMA WHEN THE ALAYA OF THE UNIVERSE (Soul as the basis of
all, Anima Mundi) WAS IN PARAMARTHA (a) (Absolute Being and Consciousness which
are Absolute Non-Being and Unconsciousness) AND THE GREAT WHEEL WAS ANUPADAKA
(b)?
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* And yet, one, claiming authority, namely, Sir Monier Williams, Boden Professor
of Sanskrit at Oxford, has just denied this fact. This is what he taught his
audience, on June the 4th, 1888, in his annual address before the Victoria
Institute of Great Britain: "Originally, Buddhism set its face against all
solitary asceticism . . . to attain sublime heights of knowledge. It had no
occult, no esoteric system of doctrine . . . withheld from ordinary men" (!!)
And, again: " . . . When Gautama Buddha began his career, the later and lower
form of Yoga seems to have been little known." And then, contradicting himself,
the learned lecturer forthwith informs his audience that "We learn from
Lalita-Vistara that various forms of bodily torture, self-maceration, and
austerity were common in Gautama's time." (!!) But the lecturer seems quite
unaware that this kind of torture and self-maceration is precisely the lower
form of Yoga, Hatha Yoga, which was "little known" and yet so "common" in
Gautama's time.
** It is even argued that all the Six Darsanas (Schools of philosophy) show
traces of Buddha's influence, being either taken from Buddhism or due to Greek
teaching! (See Weber, Max Muller, etc.) We labour under the impression that
Colebrooke, "the highest authority" in such matters, had long ago settled the
question by showing, that "the Hindus were in this instance the teachers, not
the learners."
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 48 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
(a) Here we have before us the subject of centuries of scholastic disputations.
The two terms "Alaya" and "Paramartha" have been the causes of dividing schools
and splitting the truth into more different aspects than any other mystic terms.
Alaya is literally the "Soul of the World" or Anima Mundi, the "Over-Soul" of
Emerson, and according to esoteric teaching it changes periodically its nature.
Alaya, though eternal and changeless in its inner essence on the planes which
are unreachable by either men or Cosmic Gods (Dhyani Buddhas), alters during the
active life-period with respect to the lower planes, ours included. During that
time not only the Dhyani-Buddhas are one with Alaya in Soul and Essence, but
even the man strong in the Yoga (mystic meditation) "is able to merge his soul
with it" (Aryasanga, the Bumapa school). This is not Nirvana, but a condition
next to it. Hence the disagreement. Thus, while the Yogacharyas (of the Mahayana
school) say that Alaya is the personification of the Voidness, and yet Alaya
(Nyingpo and Tsang in Tibetan) is the basis of every visible and invisible
thing, and that, though it is eternal and immutable in its essence, it reflects
itself in every object of the Universe "like the moon in clear tranquil water";
other schools dispute the statement. The same for Paramartha: the Yogacharyas
interpret the term as that which is also dependent upon other things
(paratantra); and the Madhyamikas say that Paramartha is limited to
Paranishpanna or absolute perfection; i.e., in the exposition of these "two
truths" (out of four), the former believe and maintain that (on this plane, at
any rate) there exists only Samvritisatya or relative truth; and the latter
teach the existence of Paramarthasatya, the "absolute truth."* "No Arhat, oh
mendicants, can reach absolute knowledge before he becomes one with Paranirvana.
Parikalpita and Paratantra are his two great enemies" (Aphorisms of the
Bodhisattvas). Parikalpita (in Tibetan Kun-ttag) is error, made by those unable
to realize the emptiness and illusionary nature of all; who believe something to
exist which does not -- e.g., the Non-Ego. And
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
*"Paramartha" is self-consciousness in Sanskrit, Svasamvedana, or the
"self-analysing reflection" -- from two words, parama (above everything) and
artha (comprehension), Satya meaning absolute true being, or Esse. In Tibetan
Paramarthasatya is Dondampaidenpa. The opposite of this absolute reality, or
actuality, is Samvritisatya -- the relative truth only -- "Samvriti" meaning
"false conception" and being the origin of illusion, Maya; in Tibetan
Kundzabchi-denpa, "illusion-creating appearance."
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 49 ALAYA, THE UNIVERSAL SOUL.
Paratantra is that, whatever it is, which exists only through a dependent or
causal connexion, and which has to disappear as soon as the cause from which it
proceeds is removed -- e.g., the light of a wick. Destroy or extinguish it, and
light disappears.
Esoteric philosophy teaches that everything lives and is conscious, but not that
all life and consciousness are similar to those of human or even animal beings.
Life we look upon as "the one form of existence," manifesting in what is called
matter; or, as in man, what, incorrectly separating them, we name Spirit, Soul
and Matter. Matter is the vehicle for the manifestation of soul on this plane of
existence, and soul is the vehicle on a higher plane for the manifestation of
spirit, and these three are a trinity synthesized by Life, which pervades them
all. The idea of universal life is one of those ancient conceptions which are
returning to the human mind in this century, as a consequence of its liberation
from anthropomorphic theology. Science, it is true, contents itself with tracing
or postulating the signs of universal life, and has not yet been bold enough
even to whisper "Anima Mundi!" The idea of "crystalline life," now familiar to
science, would have been scouted half a century ago. Botanists are now searching
for the nerves of plants; not that they suppose that plants can feel or think as
animals do, but because they believe that some structure, bearing the same
relation functionally to plant life that nerves bear to animal life, is
necessary to explain vegetable growth and nutrition. It hardly seems possible
that science can disguise from itself much longer, by the mere use of terms such
as "force" and "energy," the fact that things that have life are living things,
whether they be atoms or planets.
But what is the belief of the inner esoteric Schools? the reader may ask. What
are the doctrines taught on this subject by the Esoteric "Buddhists"? With them
"Alaya" has a double and even a triple meaning. In the Yogacharya system of the
contemplative Mahayana school, Alaya is both the Universal Soul (Anima Mundi)
and the Self of a progressed adept. "He who is strong in the Yoga can introduce
at will his Alaya by means of meditation into the true Nature of Existence." The
"Alaya has an absolute eternal existence," says Aryasanga -- the rival of
Nagarjuna.* In one sense it is Pradhana; which
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Aryasanga was a pre-Christian Adept and founder of a Buddhist esoteric school,
though Csoma di Koros places him, for some reasons of his own, in the seventh
century [[Footnote continued on next page]]
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 50 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
is explained in Vishnu Purana as: "that which is the unevolved cause, is
emphatically called by the most eminent sages Pradhana, original base, which is
subtile Prakriti, viz., that which is eternal, and which at once is (or
comprehends) what is and what is not, or is mere process." "Prakriti," however,
is an incorrect word, and Alaya would explain it better; for Prakriti is not the
"uncognizable Brahma."* It is a mistake of those who know nothing of the
Universality of the Occult doctrines from the very cradle of the human races,
and especially so of those scholars who reject the very idea of a "primordial
revelation," to teach that the Anima Mundi, the One Life or "Universal Soul,"
was made known only by Anaxagoras, or during his age. This philosopher brought
the teaching forward simply to oppose the too materialistic conceptions on
Cosmogony of Democritus, based on his exoteric theory of blindly driven atoms.
Anaxagoras of Clazomene was not its inventor but only its propagator, as also
was Plato. That which he called Mundane Intelligence, the nous ([[nous]]), the
principle that according to his views is absolutely separated and free from
matter and acts on design,** was called Motion, the ONE LIFE, or Jivatma, ages
before the year 500 B.C. in India. Only the Aryan philosophers never endowed the
principle, which with them is infinite, with the finite "attribute" of
"thinking."
This leads the reader naturally to the "Supreme Spirit" of Hegel and the German
Transcendentalists as a contrast that it may be useful to point out. The schools
of Schelling and Fichte have diverged widely from the primitive archaic
conception of an ABSOLUTE principle, and have mirrored only an aspect of the
basic idea of the Vedanta. Even the "Absoluter Geist" shadowed forth by von
Hartman in his pessimistic philosophy of the Unconscious, while it is, perhaps,
the closest approximation made by European speculation to the Hindu Adwaitee
Doctrines, similarly falls far short of the reality.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] A.D. There was another Aryasanga, who
lived during the first centuries of our era and the Hungarian scholar most
probably confuses the two.
* "The indiscreet cause which is uniform, and both cause and effect, and which
those who are acquainted with first principles call Pradhana and Prakriti, is
the incognizable Brahma who was before all" (Vayu Purana); i.e., Brahma does not
put forth evolution itself or create, but only exhibits various aspects of
itself, one of which is Prakriti, an aspect of Pradhana.
** Finite Self-consciousness, I mean. For how can the absolute attain it
otherwise than as simply an aspect, the highest of which known to us is human
consciousness?
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 51 CAN THE FINITE CONCEIVE THE INFINITE?
According to Hegel, the "Unconscious" would never have undertaken the vast and
laborious task of evolving the Universe, except in the hope of attaining clear
Self-consciousness. In this connection it is to be borne in mind that in
designating Spirit, which the European Pantheists use as equivalent to
Parabrahm, as unconscious, they do not attach to that expression of "Spirit" --
one employed in the absence of a better to symbolise a profound mystery -- the
connotation it usually bears.
The "Absolute Consciousness," they tell us, "behind" phenomena, which is only
termed unconsciousness in the absence of any element of personality, transcends
human conception. Man, unable to form one concept except in terms of empirical
phenomena, is powerless from the very constitution of his being to raise the
veil that shrouds the majesty of the Absolute. Only the liberated Spirit is able
to faintly realise the nature of the source whence it sprung and whither it must
eventually return. . . . As the highest Dhyan Chohan, however, can but bow in
ignorance before the awful mystery of Absolute Being; and since, even in that
culmination of conscious existence -- "the merging of the individual in the
universal consciousness" -- to use a phrase of Fichte's -- the Finite cannot
conceive the Infinite, nor can it apply to it its own standard of mental
experiences, how can it be said that the "Unconscious" and the Absolute can have
even an instinctive impulse or hope of attaining clear self-consciousness?* A
Vedantin would never admit this Hegelian idea; and the Occultist would say that
it applies perfectly to the awakened MAHAT, the Universal Mind already projected
into the phenomenal world as the first aspect of the changeless ABSOLUTE, but
never to the latter. "Spirit and Matter, or Purusha and Prakriti are but the two
primeval aspects of the One and Secondless," we are taught.
The matter-moving Nous, the animating Soul, immanent in every atom, manifested
in man, latent in the stone, has different degrees of power; and this
pantheistic idea of a general Spirit-Soul pervading all Nature is the oldest of
all the philosophical notions. Nor was the Archaeus a discovery of Paracelsus
nor of his pupil Van Helmont; for it is again the same Archaeus or
"Father-Ether," -- the manifested basis
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See Schwegler's "Handbook of the History of Philosophy" in Sterling's
translation, p. 28.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 52 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
and source of the innumerable phenomena of life -- localised. The whole series
of the numberless speculations of this kind are but variations on this theme,
the key-note of which was struck in this primeval Revelation. (See Part II.,
"Primordial Substance.")
(b) The term Anupadaka, "parentless," or without progenitors, is a mystical
designation having several meanings in the philosophy. By this name celestial
beings, the Dhyan-Chohans or Dhyani-Buddhas, are generally meant. But as these
correspond mystically to the human Buddhas and Bodhisattwas, known as the
"Manushi (or human) Buddhas," the latter are also designated "Anupadaka," once
that their whole personality is merged in their compound sixth and seventh
principles -- or Atma-Buddhi, and that they have become the "diamond-souled"
(Vajra-sattvas),* the full Mahatmas. The "Concealed Lord" (Sangbai Dag-po), "the
one merged with the absolute," can have no parents since he is Self-existent,
and one with the Universal Spirit (Svayambhu),** the Svabhavat in the highest
aspect. The mystery in the hierarchy of the Anupadaka is great, its apex being
the universal Spirit-Soul, and the lower rung the Manushi-Buddha; and even every
Soul-endowed man is an Anupadaka in a latent state. Hence, when speaking of the
Universe in its formless, eternal, or absolute condition, before it was
fashioned by the "Builders" -- the expression, "the Universe was Anupadaka."
(See Part II., "Primordial Substance.")
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Vajra -- diamond-holder. In Tibetan Dorjesempa; sempa meaning the soul, its
adamantine quality referring to its indestructibility in the hereafter. The
explanation with regard to the "Anupadaka" given in the Kala Chakra, the first
in the Gyu(t) division of the Kanjur, is half esoteric. It has misled the
Orientalists into erroneous speculations with respect to the Dhyani-Buddhas and
their earthly correspondencies, the Manushi-Buddhas. The real tenet is hinted at
in a subsequent Volume, (see "The Mystery about Buddha"), and will be more fully
explained in its proper place.
** To quote Hegel again, who with Schelling practically accepted the Pantheistic
conception of periodical Avatars (special incarnations of the World-Spirit in
Man, as seen in the case of all the great religious reformers) . . . . "the
essence of man is spirit . . . . only by stripping himself of his finiteness and
surrendering himself to pure self-consciousness does he attain the truth.
Christ-man, as man in whom the Unity of God-man (identity of the individual with
the Universal consciousness as taught by the Vedantins and some Adwaitees)
appeared, has, in his death and history generally, himself presented the eternal
history of Spirit -- a history which every man has to accomplish in himself, in
order to exist as Spirit." -- Philosophy of History. Sibree's English
translation, p. 340.
***********************
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 53 THE STATE OF PARANIRVANA.
STANZA II.
COMMENTARY.
1. . . . . WHERE WERE THE BUILDERS, THE LUMINOUS SONS OF MANVANTARIC DAWN (a)? .
. . . IN THE UNKNOWN DARKNESS IN THEIR AH-HI (Chohanic, Dhyani-Buddhic)
PARANISHPANNA, THE PRODUCERS OF FORM (rupa) FROM NO-FORM (arupa), THE ROOT OF
THE WORLD -- THE DEVAMATRI* AND SVABHAVAT, RESTED IN THE BLISS OF NON-BEING (b).
(a) The "Builders," the "Sons of Manvantaric Dawn," are the real creators of the
Universe; and in this doctrine, which deals only with our Planetary System,
they, as the architects of the latter, are also called the "Watchers" of the
Seven Spheres, which exoterically are the Seven planets, and esoterically the
seven earths or spheres (planets) of our chain also. The opening sentence of
Stanza I., when mentioning "Seven Eternities," is made to apply both to the
Maha-Kalpa or "the (great) Age of Brahma," as well as to the Solar pralaya and
subsequent resurrection of our Planetary System on a higher plane. There are
many kinds of pralaya (dissolution of a thing visible), as will be shown
elsewhere.
(b) Paranishpanna, remember, is the summum bonum, the Absolute, hence the same
as Paranirvana. Besides being the final state it is that condition of
subjectivity which has no relation to anything but the one absolute truth
(Para-marthasatya) on its plane. It is that state which leads one to appreciate
correctly the full meaning of Non-Being, which, as explained, is absolute Being.
Sooner or later, all that now seemingly exists, will be in reality and actually
in the state of Paranishpanna. But there is a great difference between conscious
and unconscious "being." The condition of Paranishpanna, without Paramartha, the
Self-analys-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
"Mother of the Gods," Aditi, or Cosmic Space. In the Zohar, she is called
Sephira the Mother of the Sephiroth, and Shekinah in her primordial form, in
abscondito.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 54 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
ing consciousness (Svasamvedana), is no bliss, but simply extinction (for Seven
Eternities). Thus, an iron ball placed under the scorching rays of the sun will
get heated through, but will not feel or appreciate the warmth, while a man
will. It is only "with a mind clear and undarkened by personality, and an
assimilation of the merit of manifold existences devoted to being in its
collectivity (the whole living and sentient Universe)," that one gets rid of
personal existence, merging into, becoming one with, the Absolute,* and
continuing in full possession of Paramartha.
-------
STANZA II. -- Continued.
2. . . . . WHERE WAS SILENCE? WHERE WERE THE EARS TO SENSE IT? NO! THERE WAS
NEITHER SILENCE, NOR SOUND (a). NAUGHT SAVE CEASELESS, ETERNAL BREATH (Motion)
WHICH KNOWS ITSELF NOT (b).
(a) The idea that things can cease to exist and still BE, is a fundamental one
in Eastern psychology. Under this apparent contradiction in terms, there rests a
fact of Nature to realise which in the mind, rather than to argue about words,
is the important thing. A familiar instance of a similar paradox is afforded by
chemical combination. The question whether Hydrogen and Oxygen cease to exist,
when they combine to form water, is still a moot one, some arguing that since
they are found again when the water is decomposed they must be there all the
while; others contending that as they actually turn into something totally
different they must cease to exist as themselves for the time being; but neither
side is able to form the faintest conception of the real condition of a thing,
which has become something else and yet has not ceased to be itself. Existence
as water may be said to be, for Oxygen and Hydrogen, a state of Non-being which
is "more real being" than their existence as gases; and it may faintly symbolise
the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Hence Non-being is "ABSOLUTE Being," in esoteric philosophy. In the tenets of
the latter even Adi-Budha (first or primeval wisdom) is, while manifested, in
one sense an illusion, Maya, since all the gods, including Brahma, have to die
at the end of the "Age of Brahma"; the abstraction called Parabrahm alone --
whether we call it Ensoph, or Herbert Spencer's Unknowable -- being "the One
Absolute" Reality. The One secondless Existence is ADWAITA, "Without a Second,"
and all the rest is Maya, teaches the Adwaita philosophy.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 55 THE ABSOLUTE KNOWS ITSELF NOT.
condition of the Universe when it goes to sleep, or ceases to be, during the
"Nights of Brahma" -- to awaken or reappear again, when the dawn of the new
Manvantara recalls it to what we call existence.
(b) The "Breath" of the One Existence is used in its application only to the
spiritual aspect of Cosmogony by Archaic esotericism; otherwise, it is replaced
by its equivalent in the material plane -- Motion. The One Eternal Element, or
element-containing Vehicle, is Space, dimensionless in every sense; co-existent
with which are -- endless duration, primordial (hence indestructible) matter,
and motion -- absolute "perpetual motion" which is the "breath" of the "One"
Element. This breath, as seen, can never cease, not even during the Pralayic
eternities. (See "Chaos, Theos, Kosmos," in Part II.)
But the "Breath of the One Existence" does not, all the same, apply to the One
Causeless Cause or the "All Be-ness" (in contradistinction to All-Being, which
is Brahma, or the Universe). Brahma (or Hari) the four-faced god who, after
lifting the Earth out of the waters, "accomplished the Creation," is held to be
only the instrumental, and not, as clearly implied, the ideal Cause. No
Orientalist, so far, seems to have thoroughly comprehended the real sense of the
verses in the Purana, that treat of "creation."
Therein Brahma is the cause of the potencies that are to be generated
subsequently for the work of "creation." When a translator says, "And from him
proceed the potencies to be created, after they had become the real cause": "and
from IT proceed the potencies that will create as they become the real cause"
(on the material plane) would perhaps be more correct? Save that one (causeless)
ideal cause there is no other to which the universe can be referred. "Worthiest
of ascetics! through its potency -- i.e., through the potency of that cause --
every created thing comes by its inherent or proper nature." If, in the Vedanta
and Nyaya, nimitta is the efficient cause, as contrasted with upadana, the
material cause, (and in the Sankhya, pradhana implies the functions of both); in
the Esoteric philosophy, which reconciles all these systems, and the nearest
exponent of which is the Vedanta as expounded by the Advaita Vedantists, none
but the upadana can be speculated upon; that which is in the minds of the
Vaishnavas (the Vasishta-dvaita) as the ideal in contradistinction to the real
-- or Parabrahm and Isvara -- can find no room in published speculations, since
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 56 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
that ideal even is a misnomer, when applied to that of which no human reason,
even that of an adept, can conceive.
To know itself or oneself, necessitates consciousness and perception (both
limited faculties in relation to any subject except Parabrahm), to be cognized.
Hence the "Eternal Breath which knows itself not." Infinity cannot comprehend
Finiteness. The Boundless can have no relation to the bounded and the
conditioned. In the occult teachings, the Unknown and the Unknowable MOVER, or
the Self-Existing, is the absolute divine Essence. And thus being Absolute
Consciousness, and Absolute Motion -- to the limited senses of those who
describe this indescribable -- it is unconsciousness and immoveableness.
Concrete consciousness cannot be predicated of abstract Consciousness, any more
than the quality wet can be predicated of water -- wetness being its own
attribute and the cause of the wet quality in other things. Consciousness
implies limitations and qualifications; something to be conscious of, and
someone to be conscious of it. But Absolute Consciousness contains the cognizer,
the thing cognized and the cognition, all three in itself and all three one. No
man is conscious of more than that portion of his knowledge that happens to have
been recalled to his mind at any particular time, yet such is the poverty of
language that we have no term to distinguish the knowledge not actively thought
of, from knowledge we are unable to recall to memory. To forget is synonymous
with not to remember. How much greater must be the difficulty of finding terms
to describe, and to distinguish between, abstract metaphysical facts or
differences. It must not be forgotten, also, that we give names to things
according to the appearances they assume for ourselves. We call absolute
consciousness "unconsciousness," because it seems to us that it must necessarily
be so, just as we call the Absolute, "Darkness," because to our finite
understanding it appears quite impenetrable, yet we recognize fully that our
perception of such things does not do them justice. We involuntarily distinguish
in our minds, for instance, between unconscious absolute consciousness, and
unconsciousness, by secretly endowing the former with some indefinite quality
that corresponds, on a higher plane than our thoughts can reach, with what we
know as consciousness in ourselves. But this is not any kind of consciousness
that we can manage to distinguish from what appears to us as unconsciousness.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 57 THE GERM OF LIFE.
STANZA II. -- Continued.
3. THE HOUR HAD NOT YET STRUCK; THE RAY HAD NOT YET FLASHED INTO THE GERM (a);
THE MATRI-PADMA (mother lotus) HAD NOT YET SWOLLEN (b).*
(a) The ray of the "Ever Darkness" becomes, as it is emitted, a ray of effulgent
light or life, and flashes into the "Germ" -- the point in the Mundane Egg,
represented by matter in its abstract sense. But the term "Point" must not be
understood as applying to any particular point in Space, for a germ exists in
the centre of every atom, and these collectively form "the Germ;" or rather, as
no atom can be made visible to our physical eye, the collectivity of these (if
the term can be applied to something which is boundless and infinite) forms the
noumenon of eternal and indestructible matter.
(b) One of the symbolical figures for the Dual creative power in Nature (matter
and force on the material plane) is Padma, the water-lily of India. The Lotus is
the product of heat (fire) and water (vapour or Ether); fire standing in every
philosophical and religious system as a representation of the Spirit of Deity,**
the active, male, generative principle; and Ether, or the Soul of matter, the
light of the fire, for the passive female principle from which everything in
this Universe emanated. Hence, Ether or Water is the Mother, and Fire is the
Father. Sir W. Jones (and before him archaic botany) showed that the seeds of
the Lotus contain -- even before they germinate -- perfectly formed leaves, the
miniature shape of what one day, as perfect plants, they will become: nature
thus giving us a specimen of the preformation of its production . . . the seed
of all phanerogamous plants bearing proper flowers containing an embryo plantlet
ready formed.*** (See Part II., "The Lotus Flower as an Universal Symbol.") This
explains the sentence "The Mother had not yet swollen" -- the form being usually
sacrificed to the inner or root idea in Archaic symbology.
The Lotus, or Padma, is, moreover, a very ancient and favourite
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* An unpoetical term, yet still very graphic. (See foot-note to Stanza III.)
** Even in Christianity. (See Part II., "Primordial Substance and Divine
Thought.")
*** Gross, "The Heathen Religion," p. 195.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 58 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
simile for the Kosmos itself, and also for man. The popular reasons given are,
firstly, the fact just mentioned, that the Lotus-seed contains within itself a
perfect miniature of the future plant, which typifies the fact that the
spiritual prototypes of all things exist in the immaterial world before those
things become materialised on Earth. Secondly, the fact that the Lotus plant
grows up through the water, having its root in the Ilus, or mud, and spreading
its flower in the air above. The Lotus thus typifies the life of man and also
that of the Kosmos; for the Secret Doctrine teaches that the elements of both
are the same, and that both are developing in the same direction. The root of
the Lotus sunk in the mud represents material life, the stalk passing up through
the water typifies existence in the astral world, and the flower floating on the
water and opening to the sky is emblematical of spiritual being.
STANZA II. -- Continued.
4. HER HEART HAD NOT YET OPENED FOR THE ONE RAY TO ENTER, THENCE TO FALL AS
THREE INTO FOUR IN THE LAP OF MAYA (a).
(a) The Primordial Substance had not yet passed out of its precosmic latency
into differentiated objectivity, or even become the (to man, so far,) invisible
Protyle of Science. But, as the hour strikes and it becomes receptive of the
Fohatic impress of the Divine Thought (the Logos, or the male aspect of the
Anima Mundi, Alaya) -- its heart opens. It differentiates, and the THREE
(Father, Mother, Son) are transformed into four. Herein lies the origin of the
double mystery of the Trinity and the immaculate Conception. The first and
Fundamental dogma of Occultism is Universal Unity (or Homogeneity) under three
aspects. This led to a possible conception of Deity, which as an absolute unity
must remain forever incomprehensible to finite intellects. "If thou wouldest
believe in the Power which acts within the root of a plant, or imagine the root
concealed under the soil, thou hast to think of its stalk or trunk and of its
leaves and flowers. Thou canst not imagine that Power independently of these
objects. Life can be known only by the Tree of Life. . . ." (Precepts for Yoga).
The idea of Absolute Unity
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 59 ASTRAL LIGHT IS NOT THE ANIMA MUNDI.
would be broken entirely in our conception, had we not something concrete before
our eyes to contain that Unity. And the deity being absolute, must be
omnipresent, hence not an atom but contains IT within itself. The roots, the
trunk and its many branches are three distinct objects, yet they are one tree.
Say the Kabalists: "The Deity is one, because It is infinite. It is triple,
because it is ever manifesting." This manifestation is triple in its aspects,
for it requires, as Aristotle has it, three principles for every natural body to
become objective: privation, form, and matter.* Privation meant in the mind of
the great philosopher that which the Occultists call the prototypes impressed in
the Astral Light -- the lowest plane and world of Anima Mundi. The union of
these three principles depends upon a fourth -- the LIFE which radiates from the
summits of the Unreachable, to become an universally diffused Essence on the
manifested planes of Existence. And this QUATERNARY (Father, Mother, Son, as a
UNITY, and a quaternary, as a living manifestation) has been the means of
leading to the very archaic Idea of Immaculate Conception, now finally
crystallized into a dogma of the Christian Church, which carnalized this
metaphysical idea beyond any common sense. For one has but to read the Kabala
and study its numerical methods of interpretation to find the origin of that
dogma. It is purely astronomical, mathematical, and pre-eminently metaphysical:
the Male element in Nature (personified by the male deities and Logoi -- Viraj,
or Brahma; Horus, or Osiris, etc., etc.) is born through, not from, an
immaculate source, personified by the "Mother"; because that Male having a
Mother cannot have a "Father" -- the abstract Deity being sexless, and not even
a Being but Be-ness, or Life itself. Let us render this in the mathematical
language of the author of "The Source of Measures." Speaking of the "Measure of
a Man" and his numerical (Kabalistic) value, he writes that in Genesis, ch. iv.,
v. 1, "It is called the 'Man even Jehovah'
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* A Vedantin of the Visishtadwaita philosophy would say that, though the only
independent Reality, Parabrahmam is inseparable from his trinity. That He is
three, "Parabrahmam, Chit, and Achit," the last two being dependent realities
unable to exist separately; or, to make it clearer, Parabrahmam is the SUBSTANCE
-- changeless, eternal, and incognizable -- and Chit (Atma), and Achit (Anatma)
are its qualities, as form and colour are the qualities of any object. The two
are the garment, or body, or rather attribute (Sarira) of Parabrahmam. But an
Occultist would find much to say against this claim, and so would the Adwaitee
Vedantin.
[[Vol. 1, Page 60]] THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
Measure, and this is obtained in this way, viz.: 113 x 5 = 565, and the value
565 can be placed under the form of expression 56.5 x 10 = 565. Here the
Man-number 113 becomes a factor of 56.5 x 10, and the (Kabalistic) reading of
this last numbered expression is Jod, He, Vau, He, or Jehovah. . . . The
expansion of 565 into 56.5 x 10 is purposed to show the emanation of the male
(Jod) from the female (Eva) principle; or, so to speak, the birth of a male
element from an immaculate source, in other words, an immaculate conception."
Thus is repeated on Earth the mystery enacted, according to the Seers, on the
divine plane. The "Son" of the immaculate Celestial Virgin (or the
undifferentiated cosmic protyle, Matter in its infinitude) is born again on
Earth as the Son of the terrestrial Eve -- our mother Earth, and becomes
Humanity as a total -- past, present, and future -- for Jehovah or Jod-he-vau-he
is androgyne, or both male and female. Above, the Son is the whole KOSMOS;
below, he is MANKIND. The triad or triangle becomes Tetraktis, the Sacred
Pythagorean number, the perfect Square, and a 6-faced cube on Earth. The
Macroprosopus (the Great Face) is now Microprosopus (the lesser face); or, as
the Kabalists have it, the "Ancient of Days," descending on Adam Kadmon whom he
uses as his vehicle to manifest through, gets transformed into Tetragrammaton.
It is now in the "Lap of Maya," the Great Illusion, and between itself and the
Reality has the Astral Light, the great Deceiver of man's limited senses, unless
Knowledge through Paramarthasatya comes to the rescue.
-------
STANZA II. -- Continued.
5. THE SEVEN (Sons) WERE NOT YET BORN FROM THE WEB OF LIGHT. DARKNESS ALONE WAS
FATHER-MOTHER, SVABHAVAT, AND SVABHAVAT WAS IN DARKNESS (a).
(a) The Secret Doctrine, in the Stanzas given here, occupies itself chiefly, if
not entirely, with our Solar System, and especially with our planetary chain.
The "Seven Sons," therefore, are the creators of the latter. This teaching will
be explained more fully hereafter. (See Part II., "Theogony of the Creative
Gods.")
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 61 DIVINE THOUGHT, DIVINE THINKERS.
Svabhavat, the "Plastic Essence" that fills the Universe, is the root of all
things. Svabhavat is, so to say, the Buddhistic concrete aspect of the
abstraction called in Hindu philosophy Mulaprakriti. It is the body of the Soul,
and that which Ether would be to Akasa, the latter being the informing principle
of the former. Chinese mystics have made of it the synonym of "being." In the
Ekasloka-Shastra of Nagarjuna (the Lung-shu of China) called by the Chinese the
Yih-shu-lu-kia-lun, it is said that the original word of Yeu is "Being" or
"Subhava," "the Substance giving substance to itself," also explained by him as
meaning " without action and with action," "the nature which has no nature of
its own." Subhava, from which Svabhavat, is composed of two words: Su "fair,"
"handsome," "good"; Sva, "self"; and bhava, "being" or "states of being."
-------
STANZA II. -- Continued.
6. THESE TWO ARE THE GERM, AND THE GERM IS -- ONE. THE UNIVERSE WAS STILL
CONCEALED IN THE DIVINE THOUGHT AND THE DIVINE BOSOM.
The "Divine Thought" does not imply the idea of a Divine thinker. The Universe,
not only past, present, and future -- which is a human and finite idea expressed
by finite thought -- but in its totality, the Sat (an untranslateable term), the
absolute being, with the Past and Future crystallized in an eternal Present, is
that Thought itself reflected in a secondary or manifest cause. Brahma (neuter)
as the Mysterium Magnum of Paracelsus is an absolute mystery to the human mind.
Brahma, the male-female, its aspect and anthropomorphic reflection, is
conceivable to the perceptions of blind faith, though rejected by human
intellect when it attains its majority. (See Part II., "Primordial Substance and
Divine Thought.")
Hence the statement that during the prologue, so to say, of the drama of
Creation, or the beginning of cosmic evolution, the Universe or the "Son" lies
still concealed "in the Divine Thought," which had not yet penetrated "into the
Divine Bosom." This idea, note well, is at the root, and forms the origin of all
the allegories about the "Sons of God" born of immaculate virgins.
*********************
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 62 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
STANZA III.
COMMENTARY.
1. THE LAST VIBRATION OF THE SEVENTH ETERNITY THRILLS THROUGH INFINITUDE (a).
THE MOTHER SWELLS, EXPANDING FROM WITHIN WITHOUT LIKE THE BUD OF THE LOTUS (b).
(a) The seemingly paradoxical use of the sentence "Seventh Eternity," thus
dividing the indivisible, is sanctified in esoteric philosophy. The latter
divides boundless duration into unconditionally eternal and universal Time and a
conditioned one (Khandakala). One is the abstraction or noumenon of infinite
time (Kala); the other its phenomenon appearing periodically, as the effect of
Mahat (the Universal Intelligence limited by Manvantaric duration). With some
schools, Mahat is "the first-born" of Pradhana (undifferentiated substance, or
the periodical aspect of Mulaprakriti, the root of Nature), which (Pradhana) is
called Maya, the Illusion. In this respect, I believe, esoteric teaching differs
from the Vedantin doctrines of both the Adwaita and the Visishtadwaita schools.
For it says that, while Mulaprakriti, the noumenon, is self-existing and without
any origin -- is, in short, parentless, Anupadaka (as one with Brahmam) --
Prakriti, its phenomenon, is periodical and no better than a phantasm of the
former, so Mahat, with the Occultists, the first-born of Gnana (or gnosis)
knowledge, wisdom or the Logos -- is a phantasm reflected from the Absolute
NIRGUNA (Parabrahm, the one reality, "devoid of attributes and qualities"; see
Upanishads); while with some Vedantins Mahat is a manifestation of Prakriti, or
Matter.
(b) Therefore, the "last vibration of the Seventh Eternity" was "fore-ordained"
-- by no God in particular, but occurred in virtue of the eternal and changeless
LAW which causes the great periods of Activity and Rest, called so graphically,
and at the same time so poetically, the "Days and Nights of Brahma." The
expansion "from within without" of the Mother, called elsewhere the "Waters of
Space," "Universal Matrix," etc., does not allude to an expansion from a small
centre or focus, but, without reference to size or limitation or area, means the
development of limitless subjectivity into as limitless objectivity. "The ever
(to us) invisible and immaterial Substance present in eternity, threw its
periodical shadow from its own plane into the lap
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 63 THE UNIVERSE, A FLITTING SHADOW.
of Maya." It implies that this expansion, not being an increase in size -- for
infinite extension admits of no enlargement -- was a change of condition. It
"expanded like the bud of the Lotus"; for the Lotus plant exists not only as a
miniature embryo in its seed (a physical characteristic), but its prototype is
present in an ideal form in the Astral Light from "Dawn" to "Night" during the
Manvantaric period, like everything else, as a matter of fact, in this objective
Universe; from man down to mite, from giant trees down to the tiniest blades of
grass.
All this, teaches the hidden Science, is but the temporary reflection, the
shadow of the eternal ideal prototype in Divine Thought -- the word "Eternal,"
note well again, standing here only in the sense of "AEon," as lasting
throughout the seemingly interminable, but still limited cycle of activity,
called by us Manvantara. For what is the real esoteric meaning of Manvantara, or
rather a Manu-Antara? It means, esoterically, "between two Manus," of whom there
are fourteen in every "Day of Brahma," such a "Day" consisting of 1,000
aggregates of four ages, or 1,000 "Great Ages," Mahayugas. Let us now analyse
the word or name Manu. Orientalists and their Dictionaries tell us that the term
"Manu" is from the root Man, "to think"; hence "the thinking man." But,
esoterically, every Manu, as an anthropomorphized patron of his special cycle
(or Round), is but the personified idea of the "Thought Divine" (as the Hermetic
"Pymander"); each of the Manus, therefore, being the special god, the creator
and fashioner of all that appears during his own respective cycle of being or
Manvantara. Fohat runs the Manus' (or Dhyan-Chohans') errands, and causes the
ideal prototypes to expand from within without -- viz., to cross gradually, on a
descending scale, all the planes from the noumenon to the lowest phenomenon, to
bloom finally on the last into full objectivity -- the acme of illusion, or the
grossest matter.
-------
STANZA III. -- continued.
2. THE VIBRATION SWEEPS ALONG, TOUCHING WITH ITS SWIFT WING (simultaneously) THE
WHOLE UNIVERSE, AND THE GERM THAT DWELLETH IN DARKNESS: THE DARKNESS THAT
BREATHES (moves) OVER THE SLUMBERING WATERS OF LIFE (a).
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 64 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
(a) The Pythagorean Monad is also said to dwell in solitude and darkness like
the "germ." The idea of the "breath" of Darkness moving over "the slumbering
Waters of life," which is primordial matter with the latent Spirit in it,
recalls the first chapter of Genesis. Its original is the Brahminical Narayana
(the mover on the Waters), who is the personification of the eternal Breath of
the unconscious All (or Parabrahm) of the Eastern Occultists. The Waters of
Life, or Chaos -- the female principle in symbolism -- are the vacuum (to our
mental sight) in which lie the latent Spirit and Matter. This it was that made
Democritus assert, after his instructor Leucippus, that the primordial
principles of all were atoms and a vacuum, in the sense of space, but not of
empty space, as "Nature abhors a vacuum" according to the Peripatetics, and
every ancient philosopher.
In all Cosmogonies "Water" plays the same important part. It is the base and
source of material existence. Scientists, mistaking the word for the thing,
understood by water the definite chemical combination of oxygen and hydrogen,
thus giving a specific meaning to a term used by Occultists in a generic sense,
and which is used in Cosmogony with a metaphysical and mystical meaning. Ice is
not water, neither is steam, although all three have precisely the same chemical
composition.
-------
STANZA III. -- Continued.
2.[[3.]] "DARKNESS" RADIATES LIGHT, AND LIGHT DROPS ONE SOLITARY RAY INTO THE
WATERS, INTO THE MOTHER DEEP. THE RAY SHOOTS THROUGH THE VIRGIN-EGG; THE RAY
CAUSES THE ETERNAL EGG TO THRILL, AND DROP THE NON-ETERNAL (periodical) GERM,
WHICH CONDENSES INTO THE WORLD EGG (a).
(a) The solitary ray dropping into the mother deep may be taken as meaning
Divine Thought or Intelligence, impregnating chaos. This, however, occurs on the
plane of metaphysical abstraction, or rather the plane whereon that which we
call a metaphysical abstraction is a reality. The Virgin-egg being in one sense
abstract Egg-ness, or the power of becoming developed through fecundation, is
eternal and for ever the same. And just as the fecundation of an egg takes place
before it is dropped; so the non-eternal periodical germ which becomes later in
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 65 NATURE'S SYMBOLS.
symbolism the mundane egg, contains in itself, when it emerges from the said
symbol, "the promise and potency" of all the Universe. Though the idea per se
is, of course, an abstraction, a symbolical mode of expression, it is a symbol
truly, as it suggests the idea of infinity as an endless circle. It brings
before the mind's eye the picture of Kosmos emerging from and in boundless
space, a Universe as shoreless in magnitude if not as endless in its objective
manifestation. The simile of an egg also expresses the fact taught in Occultism
that the primordial form of everything manifested, from atom to globe, from man
to angel, is spheroidal, the sphere having been with all nations the emblem of
eternity and infinity -- a serpent swallowing its tail. To realize the meaning,
however, the sphere must be thought of as seen from its centre. The field of
vision or of thought is like a sphere whose radii proceed from one's self in
every direction, and extend out into space, opening up boundless vistas all
around. It is the symbolical circle of Pascal and the Kabalists, "whose centre
is everywhere and circumference nowhere," a conception which enters into the
compound idea of this emblem.
The "Mundane Egg" is, perhaps, one of the most universally adopted symbols,
highly suggestive as it is, equally in the spiritual, physiological, and
cosmological sense. Therefore, it is found in every world-theogony, where it is
largely associated with the serpent symbol; the latter being everywhere, in
philosophy as in religious symbolism, an emblem of eternity, infinitude,
regeneration, and rejuvenation, as well as of wisdom. (See Part II. "Tree and
Serpent and Crocodile Worship.") The mystery of apparent self-generation and
evolution through its own creative power repeating in miniature the process of
Cosmic evolution in the egg, both being due to heat and moisture under the
efflux of the unseen creative spirit, justified fully the selection of this
graphic symbol. The "Virgin Egg" is the microcosmic symbol of the macrocosmic
prototype -- the "Virgin Mother" -- Chaos or the Primeval Deep. The male Creator
(under whatever name) springs forth from the Virgin female, the immaculate root
fructified by the Ray. Who, if versed in astronomy and natural sciences, can
fail to see its suggestiveness? Cosmos as receptive Nature is an Egg fructified
-- yet left immaculate; once regarded as boundless, it could have no other
representation than a spheroid. The Golden Egg was surrounded by seven natural
elements (ether, fire, air, water), "four ready, three secret." It may be found
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 66 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
stated in Vishnu Purana, where elements are translated "Envelopes" and a secret
one is added: "Aham-kara" (see Wilson's Vishnu Purana, Book I., p. 40). The
original text has no "Aham-kara;" it mentions seven Elements without specifying
the last three (see Part II. on "The Mundane Egg").
-------
STANZA III. -- Continued.
4. (Then) THE THREE (triangle) FALL INTO THE FOUR (quaternary). THE RADIANT
ESSENCE BECOMES SEVEN INSIDE, SEVEN OUTSIDE (a). THE LUMINOUS EGG
(Hiranyagarbha), WHICH IN ITSELF IS THREE (the triple hypostases of Brahma, or
Vishnu, the three "Avasthas"), CURDLES AND SPREADS IN MILK-WHITE CURDS
THROUGHOUT THE DEPTHS OF MOTHER, THE ROOT THAT GROWS IN THE OCEAN OF LIFE (b).
The use of geometrical figures and the frequent allusions to figures in all
ancient scriptures (see Puranas, Egyptian papyri, the "Book of the Dead" and
even the Bible) must be explained. In the "Book of Dzyan," as in the Kabala,
there are two kinds of numerals to be studied -- the figures, often simple
blinds, and the Sacred Numbers, the values of which are all known to the
Occultists through Initiation. The former is but a conventional glyph, the
latter is the basic symbol of all. That is to say, that one is purely physical,
the other purely metaphysical, the two standing in relation to each other as
matter stands to spirit -- the extreme poles of the ONE Substance.
As Balzac, the unconscious Occultist of French literature, says somewhere, the
Number is to Mind the same as it is to matter: "an incomprehensible agent;"
(perhaps so to the profane, never to the Initiated mind). Number is, as the
great writer thought, an Entity, and, at the same time, a Breath emanating from
what he called God and what we call the ALL; the breath which alone could
organize the physical Kosmos, "where naught obtains its form but through the
Deity, which is an effect of Number." It is instructive to quote Balzac's words
upon this subject: --
"The smallest as the most immense creations, are they not to be distinguished
from each other by their quantities, their qualities, their dimensions, their
forces and attributes, all begotten by the NUMBER? The infinitude of the
Numbers is a fact proven to our mind, but of which no proof can be physically
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 67 THE POWER OF NUMBERS.
given. The mathematician will tell us that the infinitude of the numbers
exists but is not to be demonstrated. God is a Number endowed with motion,
which is felt but not demonstrated. As Unity, it begins the Numbers, with
which it has nothing in common. . . . . The existence of the Number depends on
Unity, which, without a single Number, begets them all. . . . . What! unable
either to measure the first abstraction yielded to you by the Deity, or to get
hold of it, you still hope to subject to your measurements the mystery of the
Secret Sciences which emanate from that Deity? . . . . And what would you
feel, were I to plunge you into the abysses of MOTION, the Force which
organizes the Number? What would you think, were I to add that Motion and
Number* are begotten by the WORD, the Supreme Reason of the Seers and
Prophets, who, in days of old, sensed the mighty Breath of God, a witness to
which is the Apocalypse?"
(b) "The radiant essence curdled and spread throughout the depths" of Space.
From an astronomical point of view this is easy of explanation: it is the "milky
way," the world-stuff, or primordial matter in its first form. It is more
difficult, however, to explain it in a few words or even lines, from the
standpoint of Occult Science and Symbolism, as it is the most complicated of
glyphs. Herein are enshrined more than a dozen symbols. To begin with, the whole
pantheon of mysterious objects,** every one of them having some definite Occult
meaning, extracted from the allegorical "churning of the ocean" by the Hindu
gods. Besides Amrita, the water of life or immortality, "Surabhi" the "cow of
plenty," called "the fountain of milk and curds," was extracted from this "Sea
of Milk." Hence the universal adoration of the cow and bull, one the productive,
the other the generative power in Nature: symbols connected with both the Solar
and the Cosmic deities. The specific properties, for occult purposes, of the
"fourteen precious things," being explained only at the fourth Initiation,
cannot be given here; but the following may be remarked. In the "Satapatha
Brahmana" it is stated that the churning of the "Ocean of Milk" took place in
the Satya Yug, the first age which immediately followed the "Deluge." As,
however, neither the Rig-Veda nor
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Number, truly; but never MOTION. It is Motion which begets the Logos, the
Word, in occultism.
** The "Fourteen precious things." The narrative or allegory is found in the
Satapatha Brahmana and others. The Japanese Secret Science of the Buddhist
Mystics, the Yamabooshi, has "seven precious things." We will speak of them,
hereafter.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 68 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
Manu -- both preceding Vaivasvata's "deluge," that of the bulk of the Fourth
Race -- mention this deluge, it is evident that it is not the "great" deluge,
nor that which carried away Atlantis, nor even the deluge of Noah, which is
meant here. This "churning" relates to a period before the earth's formation,
and is in direct connection with that other universal legend, the various and
contradictory versions of which culminated in the Christian dogma of the "War in
Heaven," and the fall of the Angels (see Book II., also Revelations chap. xii.).
The Brahmanas, reproached by the Orientalists with their versions on the same
subjects, often clashing with each other, are pre-eminently occult works, hence
used purposely as blinds. They were allowed to survive for public use and
property only because they were and are absolutely unintelligible to the masses.
Otherwise they would have disappeared from circulation as long ago as the days
of Akbar.
-------
STANZA III. -- Continued.
5. THE ROOT REMAINS, THE LIGHT REMAINS, THE CURDS REMAIN, AND STILL OEAOHOO (a)
IS ONE (b).
(a) OEAOHOO is rendered "Father-Mother of the Gods" in the Commentaries, or the
SIX IN ONE, or the septenary root from which all proceeds. All depends upon the
accent given to these seven vowels, which may be pronounced as one, three, or
even seven syllables by adding an e after the letter "o." This mystic name is
given out, because without a thorough mastery of the triple pronunciation it
remains for ever ineffectual.
(b) This refers to the Non-Separateness of all that lives and has its being,
whether in active or passive state. In one sense, Oeaohoo is the "Rootless Root
of All"; hence, one with Parabrahmam; in another sense it is a name for the
manifested ONE LIFE, the Eternal living Unity. The "Root" means, as already
explained, pure knowledge (Sattva),*
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The original for Understanding is Sattva, which Sankara (acharya) renders
antahkarana. "Refined," he says, "by sacrifices and other sanctifying
operations." In the Katha, at p. 148, Sattva is said by Sankara to mean buddhi
-- a common use of the word. ("The BHAGAVATGITA with The Sanatsugatiya and The
Anugita," trans- [[Footnote continued on next page]]
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 69 THE BLOSSOM OF THE ROOT OF LIFE.
eternal (Nitya) unconditioned reality or SAT (Satya), whether we call it
Parabrahmam or Mulaprakriti, for these are the two aspects of the ONE. The
"Light" is the same Omnipresent Spiritual Ray, which has entered and now
fecundated the Divine Egg, and calls cosmic matter to begin its long series of
differentiations. The curds are the first differentiation, and probably refer
also to that cosmic matter which is supposed to be the origin of the "Milky Way"
-- the matter we know. This "matter," which, according to the revelation
received from the primeval Dhyani-Buddhas, is, during the periodical sleep of
the Universe, of the ultimate tenuity conceivable to the eye of the perfect
Bodhisatva -- this matter, radical and cool, becomes, at the first reawakening
of cosmic motion, scattered through Space; appearing, when seen from the Earth,
in clusters and lumps, like curds in thin milk. These are the seeds of the
future worlds, the "Star-stuff."
-------
STANZA III. -- Continued.
6. THE ROOT OF LIFE WAS IN EVERY DROP OF THE OCEAN OF IMMORTALITY (Amrita)* AND
THE OCEAN WAS RADIANT LIGHT, WHICH WAS FIRE AND HEAT AND MOTION. DARKNESS
VANISHED AND WAS NO MORE.** IT DISAPPEARED IN ITS OWN ESSENCE, THE BODY OF FIRE
AND WATER, OF FATHER AND MOTHER (a).
(a) The essence of darkness being absolute light, Darkness is taken as the
appropriate allegorical representation of the condition of the Universe during
Pralaya, or the term of absolute rest, or non-being, as it appears to our finite
minds. The "fire," "heat," and "motion" here spoken of, are, of course, not the
fire, heat, and motion of physical science, but the underlying abstractions, the
noumena, or the soul, of the essence of these material manifestations -- the
"things in themselves," which, as modern science confesses, entirely elude the
instru-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] lated by Kashinath Trimbak Telang,
M.A.; edited by Max Muller.) Whatever meaning various schools may give the term,
Sattva is the name given among Occult students of the Aryasanga School to the
dual Monad or Atma-buddhi, and Atma-buddhi on this plane corresponds to
Parabrahm and Mulaprakriti on the higher plane.
* Amrita is "immortality."
** See Commentary No. 1 to this Stanza.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 70 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
ments of the laboratory, and which even the mind cannot grasp, although it can
equally little avoid the conclusion that these underlying essences of things
must exist. Fire and Water, or Father* and Mother, may be taken here to mean the
divine Ray and Chaos. "Chaos, from this union with Spirit obtaining sense, shone
with pleasure, and thus was produced the Protogonos (the first-born light),"
says a fragment of Hermas. Damascius calls it Dis in "Theogony" -- "The disposer
of all things." (See Cory's "Ancient Fragments," p. 314.)
According to the Rosicrucian tenets, as handled and explained by the profane for
once correctly, if only partially, so "Light and Darkness are identical in
themselves, being only divisible in the human mind"; and according to Robert
Fludd, "Darkness adopted illumination in order to make itself visible" (On
Rosenkranz). According to the tenets of Eastern Occultism, DARKNESS is the one
true actuality, the basis and the root of light, without which the latter could
never manifest itself, nor even exist. Light is matter, and DARKNESS pure
Spirit. Darkness, in its radical, metaphysical basis, is subjective and absolute
light; while the latter in all its seeming effulgence and glory, is merely a
mass of shadows, as it can never be eternal, and is simply an illusion, or Maya.
Even in the mind-baffling and science-harassing Genesis, light is created out of
darkness "and darkness was upon the face of the deep" (ch. i. v. 2.) -- and not
vice versa. "In him (in darkness) was life; and the life was the light of men"
(John i. 4). A day may come when the eyes of men will be opened; and then they
may comprehend better than they do now, that verse in the Gospel of John that
says "And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehendeth it not."
They will see then that the word "darkness" does not apply to man's spiritual
eyesight, but indeed to "Darkness," the absolute, that comprehendeth not (cannot
cognize) transient light, however transcendent to human eyes. Demon est Deus
inversus. The devil is now called Darkness by the Church, whereas, in the Bible
he is called the "Son of God" (see Job), the bright star of the early morning,
Lucifer (see Isaiah). There is a whole philosophy of dogmatic craft in the
reason why the first Archangel, who sprang from the depths of Chaos, was called
Lux (Lucifer), the "Luminous Son of the Morning," or man-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See "Kwan-Shai-Yin." The real name from the text cannot be given.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 71 LIGHT EMERGES FROM DARKNESS.
vantaric Dawn. He was transformed by the Church into Lucifer or Satan, because
he is higher and older than Jehovah, and had to be sacrificed to the new dogma.
(See Book II.)
---------
STANZA III. -- Continued.
7. BEHOLD, OH LANOO!** THE RADIANT CHILD OF THE TWO, THE UNPARALLELED REFULGENT
GLORY, BRIGHT SPACE, SON OF DARK SPACE, WHO EMERGES FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE GREAT
DARK WATERS. IT IS OEAOHOO, THE YOUNGER, THE * * * (whom thou knowest now as
Kwan-Shai-Yin. -- Comment) (a). HE SHINES FORTH AS THE SUN. HE IS THE BLAZING
DIVINE DRAGON OF WISDOM. THE EKA IS CHATUR (four), AND CHATUR TAKES TO ITSELF
THREE, AND THE UNION PRODUCES THE SAPTA (seven) IN WHOM ARE THE SEVEN WHICH
BECOME THE TRIDASA*** (the thrice ten) THE HOSTS AND THE MULTITUDES (b). BEHOLD
HIM LIFTING THE VEIL, AND UNFURLING IT FROM EAST TO WEST. HE SHUTS OUT THE ABOVE
AND LEAVES THE BELOW TO BE SEEN AS THE GREAT ILLUSION. HE MARKS THE PLACES FOR
THE SHINING ONES (stars) AND TURNS THE UPPER (space) INTO A SHORELESS SEA OF
FIRE, AND THE ONE MANIFESTED (element) INTO THE GREAT WATERS (c).
"Bright Space, son of dark Space," corresponds to the Ray dropped at the first
thrill of the new "Dawn" into the great Cosmic depths, from which it re-emerges
differentiated as Oeaohoo the younger, (the "new LIFE"), to become, to the end
of the life-cycle, the germ of all things. He is "the Incorporeal man who
contains in himself the divine Idea," -- the generator of Light and Life, to use
an expression of Philo Judaeus. He is called the "Blazing Dragon of Wisdom,"
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
** Lanoo is a student, a chela who studies practical Esotericism.
*** "Tri-dasa," or three times ten (30), alludes to the Vedic deities, in round
numbers, or more accurately 33 -- a sacred number. They are the 12 Adityas, the
8 Vasus, the 11 Rudras, and 2 Aswins -- the twin sons of the Sun and the Sky.
This is the root-number of the Hindu Pantheon, which enumerates 33 crores or
over three hundred millions of gods and goddesses.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 72 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
because, firstly, he is that which the Greek philosophers called the Logos, the
Verbum of the Thought Divine; and secondly, because in Esoteric philosophy this
first manifestation, being the synthesis or the aggregate of Universal Wisdom,
Oeaohoo, "the Son of the Son," contains in himself the Seven Creative Hosts (The
Sephiroth), and is thus the essence of manifested Wisdom. "He who bathes in the
light of Oeaohoo will never be deceived by the veil of Maya."
Kwan-Shai-Yin is identical with, and an equivalent of the Sanskrit
Avalokiteshwara, and as such he is an androgynous deity, like the Tetragrammaton
and all the Logoi* of antiquity. It is only by some sects in China that he is
anthropomorphized and represented with female attributes,** when, under his
female aspect, he becomes Kwan-Yin, the goddess of mercy, called the "Divine
Voice."*** The latter is the patron deity of Thibet and of the island of Puto in
China, where both deities have a number of monasteries.**** (See Part II.
Kwan-Shai-Yin and Kwan-yin.)
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Hence all the higher gods of antiquity are all "Sons of the Mother" before
they become those of the "Father." The Logoi, like Jupiter or Zeus, Son of
Kronos-Saturn, "Infinite Time" (or Kala), in their origin were represented as
male-female. Zeus is said to be the "beautiful Virgin," and Venus is made
bearded. Apollo is originally bisexual, so is Brahma-Vach in Manu and the
Puranas. Osiris is interchangeable with Isis, and Horus is of both sexes.
Finally St. John's vision in Revelation, that of the Logos, who is now connected
with Jesus -- is hermaphrodite, for he is described as having female breasts. So
is the Tetragrammaton = Jehovah. But there are two Avalokiteshwaras in
Esotericism; the first and the second Logos.
** No religious symbol can escape profanation and even derision in our days of
politics and Science. In Southern India the writer has seen a converted native
making pujah with offerings before a statue of Jesus clad in woman's clothes and
with a ring in his nose. When asking the meaning of the masquerade we were
answered that it was Jesu-Maria blended in one, and that it was done by the
permission of the Padri, as the zealous convert had no money to purchase two
statues or "idols" as they, very properly, were called by a witness -- another
but a non-converted Hindu. Blasphemous this will appear to a dogmatic Christian,
but the Theosophist and the Occultist must award the palm of logic to the
converted Hindu. The esoteric Christos in the gnosis is, of course, sexless, but
in exoteric theology he is male and female.
*** The Gnostic Sophia, "Wisdom" who is "the Mother" of the Ogdoad (Aditi, in a
certain sense, with her eight sons), is the Holy Ghost and the Creator of all,
as in the ancient systems. The "father" is a far later invention. The earliest
manifested Logos was female everywhere -- the mother of the seven planetary
powers.
**** See "Chinese Buddhism," by the Rev. J. C. Edkins, who always gives correct
facts, although his conclusions are very frequently erroneous.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 73 THE DRAGON AND THE LOGOI.
(b) "The "Dragon of Wisdom" is the One, the "Eka" (Sanskrit) or Saka. It is
curious that Jehovah's name in Hebrew should also be One, Echod. "His name is
Echod": say the Rabbins. The philologists ought to decide which of the two is
derived from the other -- linguistically and symbolically: surely, not the
Sanskrit? The "One" and the Dragon are expressions used by the ancients in
connection with their respective Logoi. Jehovah -- esoterically (as Elohim) --
is also the Serpent or Dragon that tempted Eve, and the "Dragon" is an old glyph
for "Astral Light" (Primordial Principle), "which is the Wisdom of Chaos."
Archaic philosophy, recognizing neither Good nor Evil as a fundamental or
independent power, but starting from the Absolute ALL (Universal Perfection
eternally), traced both through the course of natural evolution to pure Light
condensing gradually into form, hence becoming Matter or Evil. It was left with
the early and ignorant Christian fathers to degrade the philosophical and highly
scientific idea of this emblem (the Dragon) into the absurd superstition called
the "Devil." They took it from the later Zoroastrians, who saw devils or the
Evil in the Hindu Devas, and the word Evil thus became by a double transmutation
D'Evil in every tongue (Diabolos, Diable, Diavolo, Teufel). But the Pagans have
always shown a philosophical discrimination in their symbols. The primitive
symbol of the serpent symbolised divine Wisdom and Perfection, and had always
stood for psychical Regeneration and Immortality. Hence -- Hermes, calling the
serpent the most spiritual of all beings; Moses, initiated in the wisdom of
Hermes, following suit in Genesis; the Gnostic's Serpent with the seven vowels
over its head, being the emblem of the seven hierarchies of the Septenary or
Planetary Creators. Hence, also, the Hindu serpent Sesha or Ananta, "the
Infinite," a name of Vishnu, whose first Vahan or vehicle on the primordial
waters is this serpent.* Yet they all made a difference between the good and the
bad Serpent (the Astral Light of
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Like the logoi and the Hierarchies of Powers, however, the "Serpents" have to
be distinguished one from the other. Sesha or Ananta, "the couch of Vishnu," is
an allegorical abstraction, symbolizing infinite Time in Space, which contains
the germ and throws off periodically the efflorescence of this germ, the
manifested Universe; whereas, the gnostic Ophis contained the same triple
symbolism in its seven vowels as the One, Three and Seven-syllabled Oeaohoo of
the Archaic doctrine; i.e., the One Unmanifested Logos, the Second manifested,
the triangle concreting into the Quaternary or Tetragrammaton, and the rays of
the latter on the material plane.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 74 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
the Kabalists) -- between the former, the embodiment of divine Wisdom in the
region of the Spiritual, and the latter, Evil, on the plane of matter.* Jesus
accepted the serpent as a synonym of Wisdom, and this formed part of his
teaching: "Be ye wise as serpents," he says. "In the beginning, before Mother
became Father-Mother, the fiery Dragon moved in the infinitudes alone" (Book of
Sarparajni.) The Aitareya Brahmana calls the Earth Sarparajni, "the Serpent
Queen," and "the Mother of all that moves." Before our globe became egg-shaped
(and the Universe also) "a long trail of Cosmic dust (or fire mist) moved and
writhed like a serpent in Space." The "Spirit of God moving on Chaos" was
symbolized by every nation in the shape of a fiery serpent breathing fire and
light upon the primordial waters, until it had incubated cosmic matter and made
it assume the annular shape of a serpent with its tail in its mouth -- which
symbolises not only Eternity and Infinitude, but also the globular shape of all
the bodies formed within the Universe from that fiery mist. The Universe, as
well as the Earth and Man, cast off periodically, serpent-like, their old skins,
to assume new ones after a time of rest. The serpent is, surely, a not less
graceful or a more unpoetical image than the caterpillar and chrysalis from
which springs the butterfly, the Greek emblem of Psyche, the human soul. The
"Dragon" was also the symbol of the Logos with the Egyptians, as with the
Gnostics. In the "Book of Hermes," Pymander, the oldest and the most spiritual
of the Logoi of the Western Continent, appears to Hermes in the shape of a Fiery
Dragon of "Light, Fire, and Flame." Pymander, the "Thought Divine" personified,
says: The Light is me, I am the Nous (the mind or Manu), I am thy God, and I am
far older than the human principle which escapes from the shadow ("Darkness," or
the concealed Deity). I am the germ of thought, the resplendent Word, the Son of
God. All that thus sees and hears in thee is the Verbum of the Master, it is the
Thought (Mahat) which is God, the Father.**
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
*The Astral Light, or the AEther, of the ancient pagans (for the name of Astral
Light is quite modern) is Spirit . . . . Matter. Beginning with the pure
spiritual plane, it becomes grosser as it descends until it becomes the Maya or
the tempting and deceitful serpent on our plane.
** By "God, the Father," the seventh principle in Man and Kosmos are here
unmistakeably meant, this principle being inseparable in its Esse and Nature
from the seventh Cosmic principle. In one sense it is the Logos of the Greeks
and the Avalokiteswara of the esoteric Buddhists.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 75 NOUMENAL AND PHENOMENAL LIGHT.
The celestial Ocean, the 'Ether . . . . is the Breath of the Father, the
life-giving principle, the Mother, the Holy Spirit, for these are not separated,
and their union is LIFE."
Here we find the unmistakeable echo of the Archaic Secret Doctrine, as now
expounded. Only the latter does not place at the head and Evolution of Life "the
Father," who comes third and is the "Son of the Mother," but the "Eternal and
Ceaseless Breath of the ALL." The Mahat (Understanding, Universal Mind, Thought,
etc.), before it manifests itself as Brahma or Siva, appears as Vishnu, says
Sankhya Sara (p. 16); hence Mahat has several aspects, just as the logos has.
Mahat is called the Lord, in the Primary Creation, and is, in this sense,
Universal Cognition or Thought Divine; but, "That Mahat which was first produced
is (afterwards) called Ego-ism, when it is born as "I," that is said to be the
second Creation" (Anugita, ch. xxvi.). And the translator (an able and learned
Brahmin, not a European Orientalist) explains in a foot-note (6), "i.e., when
Mahat develops into the feeling of Self-Consciousness -- I -- then it assumes
the name of Egoism," which, translated into our esoteric phraseology, means when
Mahat is transformed into the human Manas (or even that of the finite gods), and
becomes Aham-ship. Why it is called the Mahat of the Second creation (or the
ninth, that of the Kumara in Vishnu Purana) will be explained in Book II. The
"Sea of Fire" is then the Super-Astral (i.e., noumenal) Light, the first
radiation from the Root, the Mulaprakriti, the undifferentiated Cosmic
Substance, which becomes Astral Matter. It is also called the "Fiery Serpent,"
as above described. If the student bears in mind that there is but One Universal
Element, which is infinite, unborn, and undying, and that all the rest -- as in
the world of phenomena -- are but so many various differentiated aspects and
transformations (correlations, they are now called) of that One, from Cosmical
down to microcosmical effects, from super-human down to human and sub-human
beings, the totality, in short, of objective existence -- then the first and
chief difficulty will disappear and Occult Cosmology may be mastered.* All the
Kabalists and Occultists, Eastern and Western, recognise (a)
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* In the Egyptian as in the Indian theogony there was a concealed deity, the
ONE, and the creative, androgynous god. Thus Shoo is the god of creation and
Osiris is, in his original primary form, the "god whose name is unknown." (See
Mariette's Abydos II., p. 63, and Vol. III., pp. 413, 414, No. 1122.)
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 76 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
the identity of "Father-Mother" with primordial AEther or Akasa, (Astral
Light)*; and (b) its homogeneity before the evolution of the "Son," cosmically
Fohat, for it is Cosmic Electricity. "Fohat hardens and scatters the seven
brothers" (Book III. Dzyan); which means that the primordial Electric Entity --
for the Eastern Occultists insist that Electricity is an Entity -- electrifies
into life, and separates primordial stuff or pregenetic matter into atoms,
themselves the source of all life and consciousness. "There exists an universal
agent unique of all forms and of life, that is called Od,** Ob, and Aour, active
and passive, positive and negative, like day and night: it is the first light in
Creation" (Eliphas Levi's Kabala): --- the first Light of the primordial Elohim
-- the Adam, "male and female" -- or (scientifically) ELECTRICITY AND LIFE.
(c) The ancients represented it by a serpent, for "Fohat hisses as he glides
hither and thither" (in zigzags). The Kabala figures it with the Hebrew letter
Teth , whose symbol is the serpent which played such a prominent part in the
Mysteries. Its universal value is nine, for it is the ninth letter of the
alphabet and the ninth door of the fifty portals or gateways that lead to the
concealed mysteries of being. It is the magical agent par excellence, and
designates in Hermetic philosophy "Life infused into primordial matter," the
essence that composes all things, and the spirit that determines their form. But
there are two secret Hermetical operations, one spiritual, the other
material-correlative, and for ever united. "Thou shalt separate the earth from
the fire, the subtile from the solid . . . that which ascends from earth to
heaven and descends again from heaven to earth. It (the subtile light), is the
strong force of every force, for it conquers every subtile thing and penetrates
into every solid. Thus was the world formed" (Hermes).
It was not Zeno alone, the founder of the Stoics, who taught that the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See next note.
** Od is the pure life-giving Light, or magnetic fluid; Ob the messenger of
death used by the sorcerers, the nefarious evil fluid; Aour is the synthesis of
the two, Astral Light proper. Can the Philologists tell why Od -- a term used by
Reichenbach to denominate the vital fluid -- is also a Tibetan word meaning
light, brightness, radiancy? It equally means "Sky" in an occult sense. Whence
the root of the word? But Akasa is not quite Ether, but far higher than that, as
will be shown.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 77 DEITY IN SPACE AND TIME.
Universe evolves, when its primary substance is transformed from the state of
fire into that of air, then into water, etc. Heracleitus of Ephesus maintained
that the one principle that underlies all phenomena in Nature is fire. The
intelligence that moves the Universe is fire, and fires is intelligence. And
while Anaximenes said the same of air, and Thales of Miletus (600 years B.C.) of
water, the Esoteric Doctrine reconciles all those philosophers by showing that
though each was right the system of none was complete.
-------
STANZA III. -- Continued.
8. WHERE WAS THE GERM, AND WHERE WAS NOW DARKNESS? WHERE IS THE SPIRIT OF THE
FLAME THAT BURNS IN THY LAMP, OH LANOO? THE GERM IS THAT, AND THAT IS LIGHT; THE
WHITE BRILLIANT SON OF THE DARK HIDDEN FATHER (a).
(a) The answer to the first question, suggested by the second, which is the
reply of the teacher to the pupil, contains in a single phrase one of the most
essential truths of occult philosophy. It indicates the existence of things
imperceptible to our physical senses which are of far greater importance, more
real and more permanent, than those that appeal to these senses themselves.
Before the Lanoo can hope to understand the transcendentally metaphysical
problem contained in the first question he must be able to answer the second,
while the very answer he gives to the second will furnish him with the clue to
the correct reply to the first.
In the Sanscrit Commentary on this Stanza, the terms used for the concealed and
the unrevealed Principle are many. In the earliest MSS. of Indian literature
this Unrevealed, Abstract Deity has no name. It is called generally "That" (Tad
in Sanskrit), and means all that is, was, and will be, or that can be so
received by the human mind.
Among such appellations, given, of course, only in esoteric philosophy, as the
"Unfathomable Darkness," the "Whirlwind," etc. -- it is also called the "It of
the Kalahansa, the Kala-ham-sa," and even the "Kali Hamsa," (Black swan). Here
the m and the n are convertible, and
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 78 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
both sound like the nasal French an or am, or, again, en or em (Ennui, Embarras,
etc.) As in the Hebrew Bible, many a mysterious sacred name in Sanscrit conveys
to the profane ear no more than some ordinary, and often vulgar word, because it
is concealed anagrammatically or otherwise. This word of Hansa or esoterically
"hamsa" is just such a case. Hamsa is equal to a-ham-sa, three words meaning "I
am he" (in English), while divided in still another way it will read "So-ham,"
"he (is) I" -- Soham being equal to Sah, "he," and aham, "I," or "I am he." In
this alone is contained the universal mystery, the doctrine of the identity of
man's essence with god-essence, for him who understands the language of wisdom.
Hence the glyph of, and the allegory about, Kalahansa (or hamsa), and the name
given to Brahma neuter (later on, to the male Brahma) of "Hansa-Vahana," he who
uses the Hansa as his vehicle." The same word may be read "Kalaham-sa" or "I am
I" in the eternity of Time, answering to the Biblical, or rather Zoroastrian "I
am that I am." The same doctrine is found in the Kabala, as witness the
following extract from an unpublished MS. by Mr. S. Liddell McGregor Mathers,
the learned Kabalist: "The three pronouns , Hoa, Atah, Ani; He, Thou, I; are
used to symbolize the ideas of Macroprosopus and Microprosopus in the Hebrew
Qabalah. Hoa, "He," is applied to the hidden and concealed Macroprosopus; Atah,
"Thou," to Microprosopus; and Ani, "I," to the latter when He is represented as
speaking. (See Lesser Holy Assembly, 204 et seq.) It is to be noted that each of
these names consists of three letters, of which the letter Aleph , A, forms the
conclusion of the first word Hoa, and the commencement of Atah and Ani, as if it
were the connecting link between them. But is the symbol of the Unity and
consequently of the unvarying Idea of the Divine operating through all these.
But behind the in the name Hoa are the letters and , the symbols of the
numbers Six and Five, the Male and the Female, the Hexagram and the Pentagram.
And the numbers of these three words, Hoa Atah Ani, are 12, 406, and 61, which
are resumed in the key numbers of 3, 10, and 7, by the Qabalah of the Nine
Chambers, which is a form of the exegetical rule of Temura."
It is useless to attempt to explain the mystery in full. Materialists and the
men of modern Science will never understand it, since, in order
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 79 PRIMEVAL RADIATIONS FROM THE UNITY.
to obtain clear perception of it, one has first of all to admit the postulate of
a universally diffused, omnipresent, eternal Deity in Nature; secondly, to have
fathomed the mystery of electricity in its true essence; and thirdly, to credit
man with being the septenary symbol, on the terrestrial plane, of the One Great
UNIT (the Logos), which is Itself the Seven-vowelled sign, the Breath
crystallized into the WORD.* He who believes in all this, has also to believe in
the multiple combination of the seven planets of Occultism and of the Kabala,
with the twelve zodiacal signs; to attribute, as we do, to each planet and to
each constellation an influence which, in the words of Ely Star (a French
Occultist), "is proper to it, beneficent or maleficent, and this, after the
planetary Spirit which rules it, who, in his turn, is capable of influencing men
and things which are found in harmony with him and with which he has any
affinity." For these reasons, and since few believe in the foregoing, all that
can now be given is that in both cases the symbol of Hansa (whether "I," "He,"
Goose or Swan) is an important symbol, representing, for instance, Divine
Wisdom, Wisdom in darkness beyond the reach of men. For all exoteric purposes,
Hansa, as every Hindu knows, is a fabulous bird, which, when given milk mixed
with water for its food (in the allegory) separated the two, drinking the milk
and leaving the water; thus showing inherent wisdom -- milk standing
symbolically for spirit, and water for matter.
That this allegory is very ancient and dates from the very earliest archaic
period, is shown by the mention (in Bhagavata Purana) of a certain caste named
"Hamsa" or "Hansa," which was the "one caste" par excellence; when far back in
the mists of a forgotten past there was among the Hindus only "One Veda, One
Deity, One Caste." There is also a range in the Himalayas, described in the old
books as being situated north of Mount Meru, called "Hamsa," and connected with
episodes pertaining to the history of religious mysteries and initiations. As to
the name of Kala-Hansa being the supposed vehicle of Brahma-Prajapati, in the
exoteric texts and translations of the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* This is again similar to the doctrine of Fichte and German Pantheists. The
former reveres Jesus as the great teacher who inculcated the unity of the spirit
of man with the God-Spirit (the Adwaita doctrine) or universal Principle. It is
difficult to find a single speculation in Western metaphysics which has not been
anticipated by Archaic Eastern philosophy. From Kant to Herbert Spencer, it is
all a more or less distorted echo of the Dwaita, Adwaita, and Vedantic doctrines
generally.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 80 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
Orientalists, it is quite a mistake. Brahma, the neuter, is called by them
Kala-Hansa and Brahma, the male, Hansa-Vahana, because forsooth "his vehicle or
Vahan is a swan or goose" (vide "the Hindu Classical Dictionary.") This is a
purely exoteric gloss. Esoterically and logically, if Brahma, the infinite, is
all that is described by the Orientalists, namely, agreeably with the Vedantic
texts, an abstract deity in no way characterised by the description of any human
attributes, and it is still maintained that he or it is called Kala-Hansa --
then how can it ever become the Vahan of Brahma, the manifested finite god? It
is quite the reverse. The "Swan or goose" (Hansa) is the symbol of that male or
temporary deity, as he, the emanation of the primordial Ray, is made to serve as
a Vahan or vehicle for that divine Ray, which otherwise could not manifest
itself in the Universe, being, antiphrastically, itself an emanation of
"Darkness" -- for our human intellect, at any rate. It is Brahma, then, who is
Kala-Hansa, and the Ray, the Hansa-Vahana.
As to the strange symbol chosen, it is equally suggestive; the true mystic
significance being the idea of a universal matrix, figured by the primordial
waters of the "deep," or the opening for the reception, and subsequently for the
issue, of that one ray (the Logos), which contains in itself the other seven
procreative rays or powers (the logoi or builders). Hence the choice by the
Rosecroix of the aquatic fowl -- whether swan or pelican,* with seven young ones
for a symbol, modified and adapted to the religion of every country. En-Soph is
called the "Fiery Soul of the Pelican" in the Book of Numbers.** (See Part II.
"The Hidden Deity and its Symbols and Glyphs.") Appearing with every Manvantara
as Narayan, or Swayambhuva (the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Whether the genus of the bird be cygnus, anser, or pelecanus, it is no matter,
as it is an aquatic bird floating or moving on the waters like the Spirit, and
then issuing from those waters to give birth to other beings. The true
significance of the symbol of the Eighteenth Degree of the Rose-Croix is
precisely this, though poetised later on into the motherly feeling of the
Pelican rending its bosom to feed its seven little ones with its blood.
** The reason why Moses forbids eating the pelican and swan, classing the two
among the unclean fowls, and permits eating "bald locusts, beetles, and the
grasshopper after his kind" (Leviticus xi. and Deuteronomy xiv.) is a purely
physiological one, and has to do with mystic symbology only in so far as the
word "unclean," like every other word, ought not to be read and understood
literally, as it is esoteric like all the [[Footnote continued on next page]]
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 81 PRIMEVAL DIFFERENTIATIONS.
Self-Existent), and penetrating into the Mundane Egg, it emerges from it at the
end of the divine incubation as Brahma or Prajapati, a progenitor of the future
Universe into which he expands. He is Purusha (spirit), but he is also Prakriti
(matter). Therefore it is only after separating himself into two halves --
Brahma-vach (the female) and Brahma-Viraj (the male), that the Prajapati becomes
the male Brahma.
-------
STANZA III. -- Continued.
9. LIGHT IS COLD FLAME, AND FLAME IS FIRE, AND THE FIRE PRODUCES HEAT, WHICH
YIELDS WATER, THE WATER OF LIFE IN THE GREAT MOTHER (Chaos) (a).
(a) It must be remembered that the words "Light," "Fire," and "Flame" used in
the Stanzas have been adopted by the translators thereof from the vocabulary of
the old "Fire philosophers,"** in order to render better the meaning of the
archaic terms and symbols employed in the original. Otherwise they would have
remained entirely unintelligible to a European reader. But to a student of the
Occult the terms used will be sufficiently clear.
All these -- "Light," "Flame," "Hot," "Cold," "Fire," "Heat," "Water," and the
"water of life" are all, on our plane, the progeny; or as a modern physicist
would say, the correlations of ELECTRICITY. Mighty word, and a still mightier
symbol! Sacred generator of a no less sacred progeny; of fire -- the creator,
the preserver and the destroyer; of light -- the essence of our divine
ancestors; of flame -- the Soul of things. Electricity, the ONE Life at the
upper rung of Being, and Astral Fluid, the Athanor of the Alchemists, at its
lowest; GOD and DEVIL, GOOD and EVIL. . . .
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] rest, and may as well mean "holy" as
not. It is a blind, very suggestive in connection with certain superstitions --
e.g., that of the Russian people who will not use the pigeon for food; not
because it is "unclean," but because the "Holy Ghost" is credited with having
appeared under the form of a Dove.
** Not the Mediaeval Alchemists, but the Magi and Fire-Worshippers, from whom
the Rosicrucians or the Philosophers per ignem, the successors of the theurgists
borrowed all their ideas concerning Fire, as a mystic and divine element.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 82 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
Now, why is Light called in the Stanzas "cold flame"? Because in the order of
Cosmic evolution (as taught by the Occultist), the energy that actuates matter
after its first formation into atoms is generated on our plane by Cosmic heat;
and because Kosmos, in the sense of dissociated matter, was not, before that
period. The first primordial matter, eternal and coeval with Space, "which has
neither a beginning nor an end," is "neither hot nor cold, but is of its own
special nature," says the Commentary (Book II). Heat and cold are relative
qualities and pertain to the realms of the manifested worlds, which all proceed
from the manifested Hyle, which, in its absolutely latent aspect, is referred to
as the "cold Virgin," and when awakened to life, as the "Mother." The ancient
Western Cosmogonic myths state that at first there was but cold mist which was
the Father, and the prolific slime (the Mother, Ilus or Hyle), from which crept
forth the Mundane snake-matter, (Isis, vol. i., p. 146). Primordial matter,
then, before it emerges from the plane of the never-manifesting, and awakens to
the thrill of action under the impulse of Fohat, is but "a cool Radiance,
colourless, formless, tasteless, and devoid of every quality and aspect." Even
such are her first-born, the "four sons," who "are One, and become Seven," --
the entities, by whose qualifications and names the ancient Eastern Occultists
called the four of the seven primal "centres of Forces," or atoms, that develop
later into the great Cosmic "Elements," now divided into the seventy or so
sub-elements, known to science. The four primal natures of the first Dhyan
Chohans, are the so-called (for want of better terms) "Akasic," "Ethereal,"
"Watery," and "Fiery," answering, in the terminology of practical occultism, to
scientific definitions of gases, which, to convey a clear idea to both
Occultists and laymen, must be defined as Parahydrogenic,* Paraoxygenic,
Oxyhydrogenic, and Ozonic, or perhaps Nitr-ozonic; the latter forces or gases
(in Occultism, supersensuous, yet atomic substances) being the most effective
and active when energising on the plane of more grossly differentiated matter.**
These are both electro-positive and electro-negative.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
*[[Para]], "beyond," outside.
** Each of these and many more are probably the missing links of chemistry. They
are known by other names in Alchemy and to the Occultists who practise in
phenomenal powers. It is by combining and recombining in a certain way (or
dissociating) the "Elements" by means of astral fire that the greatest phenomena
are produced.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 83 THE WEB OF BEING.
STANZA III. -- Continued.
10. FATHER-MOTHER SPIN A WEB WHOSE UPPER END IS FASTENED TO SPIRIT (Purusha),
THE LIGHT OF THE ONE DARKNESS, AND THE LOWER ONE TO MATTER (Prakriti) ITS (the
Spirit's) SHADOWY END; AND THIS WEB IS THE UNIVERSE SPUN OUT OF THE TWO
SUBSTANCES MADE IN ONE, WHICH IS SWABHAVAT (a).
(a) In the Mandukya (Mundaka) Upanishad it is written, "As a spider throws out
and retracts its web, as herbs spring up in the ground . . . so is the Universe
derived from the undecaying one" (I. 1. 7). Brahma, as "the germ of unknown
Darkness," is the material from which all evolves and develops "as the web from
the spider, as foam from the water," etc. This is only graphic and true, if
Brahma the "Creator" is, as a term, derived from the root brih, to increase or
expand. Brahma "expands" and becomes the Universe woven out of his own
substance.
The same idea has been beautifully expressed by Goethe, who says:
"Thus at the roaring loom of Time I ply,
And weave for God the garment thou see'st Him by."
-------
STANZA III. -- Continued.
`. IT (the Web) EXPANDS WHEN THE BREATH OF FIRE (the Father) IS UPON IT; IT
CONTRACTS WHEN THE BREATH OF THE MOTHER (the root of Matter) TOUCHES IT. THEN
THE SONS (the Elements with their respective Powers, or Intelligences)
DISSOCIATE AND SCATTER, TO RETURN INTO THEIR MOTHER'S BOSOM AT THE END OF THE
"GREAT DAY" AND REBECOME ONE WITH HER (a). WHEN IT (the Web) IS COOLING, IT
BECOMES RADIANT, ITS SONS EXPAND AND CONTRACT THROUGH THEIR OWN SELVES AND
HEARTS; THEY EMBRACE INFINITUDE. (b)
The expanding of the Universe under the breath of FIRE is very suggestive in the
light of the "Fire mist" period of which modern science speaks so much, and
knows in reality so little.
Great heat breaks up the compound elements and resolves the
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 84 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
heavenly bodies into their primeval one element, explains the commentary. "Once
disintegrated into its primal constituent by getting within the attraction and
reach of a focus, or centre of heat (energy), of which many are carried about to
and fro in space, a body, whether alive or dead, will be vapourised and held in
"the bosom of the Mother" until Fohat, gathering a few of the clusters of Cosmic
matter (nebulae) will, by giving it an impulse, set it in motion anew, develop
the required heat, and then leave it to follow its own new growth.
The expanding and contracting of the Web -- i.e., the world stuff or atoms --
expresses here the pulsatory movement; for it is the regular contraction and
expansion of the infinite and shoreless Ocean of that which we may call the
noumenon of matter emanated by Swabhavat, which causes the universal vibration
of atoms. But it is also suggestive of something else. It shows that the
ancients were acquainted with that which is now the puzzle of many scientists
and especially of astronomers: the cause of the first ignition of matter or the
world-stuff, the paradox of the heat produced by the refrigerative contraction
and other such Cosmic riddles. For it points unmistakeably to a knowledge by the
ancients of such phenomena. "There is heat internal and heat external in every
atom," say the manuscript Commentaries, to which the writer has had access; "the
breath of the Father (or Spirit) and the breath (or heat) of the Mother
(matter);" and they give explanations which show that the modern theory of the
extinction of the solar fires by loss of heat through radiation, is erroneous.
The assumption is false even on the Scientists' own admission. For as Professor
Newcomb points out (Popular Astronomy, pp. 506-508), "by losing heat, a gaseous
body contracts, and the heat generated by the contraction exceeds that which it
had to lose in order to produce the contraction." This paradox, that a body gets
hotter as the shrinking produced by its getting colder is greater, led to long
disputes. The surplus of heat, it was argued, was lost by radiation, and to
assume that the temperature is not lowered pari passu with a decrease of volume
under a constant pressure, is to set at nought the law of Charles (Nebular
Theory, Winchell). Contraction develops heat, it is true; but contraction (from
cooling) is incapable of developing the whole amount of heat at any time
existing in the mass, or even of maintaining a body at a constant temperature,
etc. Professor Winchell tries to reconcile the paradox -- only a seeming one in
fact, as
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 85 CONSCIOUS ELECTRICITY.
Homer Lanes proved, -- by suggesting "something besides heat." "May it not be,"
he asks, "simply a repulsion among the molecules, which varies according to some
law of the distance?" But even this will be found irreconcileable, unless this
"something besides heat" is ticketed "Causeless Heat," the "Breath of Fire," the
all-creative Force Plus ABSOLUTE INTELLIGENCE, which physical science is not
likely to accept.
However it may be, the reading of this Stanza shows it, notwithstanding its
archaic phraseology, to be more scientific than even modern science.
-------
STANZA III. -- Continued.
12. THEN SVABHAVAT SENDS FOHAT TO HARDEN THE ATOMS. EACH (of these) IS A PART OF
THE WEB (Universe). REFLECTING THE "SELF-EXISTENT LORD" (Primeval Light) LIKE A
MIRROR, EACH BECOMES IN TURN A WORLD.* . . .
"Fohat hardens the atoms"; i.e., by infusing energy into them: he scatters the
atoms or primordial matter. "He scatters himself while scattering matter into
atoms" (MSS. Commentaries.)
It is through Fohat that the ideas of the Universal Mind are impressed upon
matter. Some faint idea of the nature of Fohat may be gathered from the
appellation "Cosmic Electricity" sometimes applied to it; but to the commonly
known properties of electricity must, in this case, be added others, including
intelligence. It is of interest to note that modern science has come to the
conclusion, that all cerebration and brain-activity are attended by electrical
phenomena. (For further details as to "Fohat" See Stanza V. and Comments.")
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* This is said in the sense that the flame from a fire is endless, and that the
lights of the whole Universe could be lit at one simple rush-light without
diminishing its flame.
*******************
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 86 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
STANZA IV.
COMMENTARY.
1. LISTEN, YE SONS OF THE EARTH, TO YOUR INSTRUCTORS -- THE SONS OF THE FIRE
(a). LEARN THERE IS NEITHER FIRST NOR LAST; FOR ALL IS ONE NUMBER, ISSUED FROM
NO NUMBER (b).
(a) These terms, the "Sons of the Fire," the "Sons of the Fire-Mist," and the
like, require explanation. They are connected with a great primordial and
universal mystery, and it is not easy to make it clear. There is a passage in
the Bhagavatgita (ch. viii.) wherein Krishna, speaking symbolically and
esoterically, says: "I will state the times (conditions) . . . at which devotees
departing (from this life) do so never to return (be reborn), or to return (to
incarnate again). The Fire, the Flame, the day, the bright (lucky) fortnight,
the six months of the Northern solstice, departing (dying) in these, those who
know the Brahman (Yogis) go to the Brahman. Smoke, night, the dark (unlucky)
fortnight, the six months of the Southern solstice, (dying) in these, the
devotee goes to the lunar light (or mansion the astral light also) and returns
(is reborn). These two paths, bright and dark, are said to be eternal in this
world (or great kalpa, 'Age'). By the one a man goes never to come back, by the
other he returns." Now these names, "Fire," "Flame," "Day," the "bright
fortnight," etc., as "Smoke," "Night," and so on, leading only to the end of the
lunar path are incomprehensible without a knowledge of Esotericism. These are
all names of various deities which preside over the Cosmo-psychic Powers. We
often speak of the Hierarchy of "Flames" (see Book II.) of the "Sons of Fire,"
etc. Sankaracharya the greatest of the Esoteric masters of India, says that fire
means a deity which presides over Time (kala). The able translator of
Bhagavatgita, Kashinath Trimbak Telang, M.A., of Bombay, confesses he has "no
clear notion of the meaning of these verses" (p. 81, footnote). It seems quite
clear, on the contrary, to him who knows the occult doctrine. With these verses
the mystic sense of the solar and lunar symbols are connected: the Pitris are
lunar deities and our ancestors, because they created the physical man.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 87 THE SEVEN MYSTIC SENSES.
The Agnishwatha, the Kumara (the seven mystic sages), are solar deities, though
the former are Pitris also; and these are the "fashioners of the Inner Man."
(See Book II.) They are: --
"The Sons of Fire" -- because they are the first Beings (in the Secret Doctrine
they are called "Minds"), evolved from Primordial Fire. "The Lord is a consuming
Fire" (Deuteronomy iv. 24); "The Lord (Christos) shall be revealed with his
mighty angels in flaming fire" (2 Thessal. i. 7, 8). The Holy Ghost descended on
the Apostles like "cloven tongues of fire," (Acts ii. v. 3); Vishnu will return
on Kalki, the White Horse, as the last Avatar amid fire and flames; and Sosiosh
will be brought down equally on a White Horse in a "tornado of fire." "And I saw
heaven open and behold a white horse, and he that sat upon him . . . . is called
the Word of God," (Rev. xix. 13) amid flaming Fire. Fire is AEther in its purest
form, and hence is not regarded as matter, but it is the unity of Aether -- the
second manifested deity -- in its universality. But there are two "Fires" and a
distinction is made between them in the Occult teachings. The first, or the
purely Formless and invisible Fire concealed in the Central Spiritual Sun, is
spoken of as "triple" (metaphysically); while the Fire of the manifested Kosmos
is Septenary, throughout both the Universe and our Solar System. "The fire or
knowledge burns up all action on the plane of illusion," says the commentary.
"Therefore, those who have acquired it and are emancipated, are called 'Fires.'
" Speaking of the seven senses symbolised as Hotris, priests, the Brahmana says
in Anugita: "Thus these seven (senses, smell and taste, and colour, and sound,
etc., etc.) are the causes of emancipation;" and the commentator adds: "It is
from these seven from which the Self is to be emancipated. 'I' (am here devoid
of qualities) must mean the Self, not the Brahmana who speaks." ("Sacred Books
of the East," ed. by Max Muller, Vol. VIII., 278.)
(b) The expression "All is One Number, issued from No Number" relates again to
that universal and philosophical tenet just explained in Stanza III. (Comm. 4).
That which is absolute is of course No Number; but in its later significance it
has an application in Space as in Time. It means that not only every increment
of time is part of a larger increment, up to the most indefinitely prolonged
duration conceivable by the human intellect, but also that no manifested thing
can
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 88 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
be thought of except as part of a larger whole: the total aggregate being the
One manifested Universe that issues from the unmanifested or Absolute -- called
Non-Being or "No-Number," to distinguish it from BEING or "the One Number."
-------
STANZA IV. -- Continued.
(2) LEARN WHAT WE, WHO DESCEND FROM THE PRIMORDIAL SEVEN, WE, WHO ARE BORN FROM
THE PRIMORDIAL FLAME, HAVE LEARNED FROM OUR FATHERS (a).
(a) This is explained in Book II., and this name, "Primordial Flame,"
corroborates what is said in the first paragraph of the preceding commentary on
Stanza IV.
The distinction between the "Primordial" and the subsequent seven Builders is
this: The former are the Ray and direct emanation of the first "Sacred Four,"
the Tetraktis, that is, the eternally Self-Existent One (Eternal in Essence note
well, not in manifestation, and distinct from the universal ONE). Latent, during
Pralaya, and active, during Manvantara, the "Primordial" proceed from
"Father-Mother" (Spirit-Hyle, or Ilus); whereas the other manifested Quaternary
and the Seven proceed from the Mother alone. It is the latter who is the
immaculate Virgin-Mother, who is overshadowed, not impregnated, by the Universal
MYSTERY -- when she emerges from her state of Laya or undifferentiated
condition. In reality, they are, of course, all one; but their aspects on the
various planes of being are different. (See Part II., "Theogony of the Creative
Gods.")
The first "Primordial" are the highest Beings on the Scale of Existence. They
are the Archangels of Christianity, those who refuse -- as Michael did in the
latter system, and as did the eldest "Mind-born sons" of Brahma (Veddhas) -- to
create or rather to multiply.
-------
STANZA IV. -- Continued.
3. FROM THE EFFULGENCY OF LIGHT -- THE RAY OF THE EVER-DARKNESS -- SPRUNG IN
SPACE THE RE-AWAKENED ENERGIES (Dhyan Chohans): THE ONE FROM THE EGG, THE SIX
AND THE FIVE (a); THEN THE THREE, THE ONE,
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 89 THE VEHICLE OF THE UNIVERSE.
THE FOUR, THE ONE, THE FIVE -- THE TWICE SEVEN, THE SUM TOTAL (b). AND THESE
ARE: THE ESSENCES, THE FLAMES, THE ELEMENTS, THE BUILDERS, THE NUMBERS, THE
ARUPA (formless), THE RUPA (with bodies), AND THE FORCE OR DIVINE MAN -- THE SUM
TOTAL. AND FROM THE DIVINE MAN EMANATED THE FORMS, THE SPARKS, THE SACRED
ANIMALS, AND THE MESSENGERS OF THE SACRED FATHERS (the Pitris) WITHIN THE HOLY
FOUR.*
(a) This relates to the sacred Science of the Numerals: so sacred, indeed, and
so important in the study of Occultism that the subject can hardly be skimmed,
even in such a large work as the present. It is on the Hierarchies and correct
numbers of these Beings invisible (to us) except upon very rare occasions, that
the mystery of the whole Universe is built. The Kumaras, for instance, are
called the "Four" though in reality seven in number, because Sanaka, Sananda,
Sanatana and Sanat-Kumara are the chief Vaidhatra (their patronymic name), as
they spring from the "four-fold mystery." To make the whole clearer we have to
turn for our illustrations to tenets more familiar to some of our readers,
namely, the Brahminical.
According to Manu, Hiranyagarbha is Brahma the first male formed by the
undiscernible Causeless CAUSE in a "Golden Egg resplendent as the Sun," as
states the Hindu Classical Dictionary. "Hiranyagarbha" means the golden, or
rather the "Effulgent Womb" or Egg. The meaning tallies awkwardly with the
epithet of "male." Surely the esoteric meaning of the sentence is clear enough.
In the Rig Veda it is said: -- "THAT, the one Lord of all beings . . . . the one
animating principle of gods and man," arose, in the beginning, in the Golden
Womb, Hiranyagarbha -- which is the Mundane Egg or sphere of our Universe. That
Being is surely androgynous, and the allegory of Brahma separating into two and
recreating in one of his halves (the female Vach) himself as Viraj, is a proof
of it.
"The One from the Egg, the Six and the Five," give the number 1065, the value of
the first-born (later on the male and female Brahma-Prajapati), who answers to
the numbers 7, and 14, and 21 respectively. The Prajapati are, like the
Sephiroth, only seven, including the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The 4, represented in the Occult numerals by the Tetraktis, the Sacred or
Perfect Square, is a Sacred Number with the mystics of every nation and race. It
has one and the same significance in Brahmanism, Buddhism, the Kabala and in the
Egyptian, Chaldean and other numerical systems.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 90 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
synthetic Sephira of the triad from which they spring. Thus from Hiranyagarbha
or Prajapati, the triune (primeval Vedic Trimurti, Agni, Vayu, and Surya),
emanate the other seven, or again ten, if we separate the first three which
exist in one, and one in three, all, moreover, being comprehended within that
one "supreme" Parama, called Guhya or " secret," and Sarvatma, the "Super-Soul."
"The seven Lords of Being lie concealed in Sarvatma like thoughts in one brain."
So are the Sephiroth. It is either seven when counting from the upper Triad
headed by Kether, or ten -- exoterically. In the Mahabharata the Prajapati are
21 in number, or ten, six, and five (1065), thrice seven.*
(b) "The Three, the One, the Four, the One, the Five" (in their totality --
twice seven) represent 31415 -- the numerical hierarchy of the Dhyan-Chohans of
various orders, and of the inner or circumscribed world.** When placed on the
boundary of the great circle of "Pass not" (see Stanza V.), called also the
Dhyanipasa, the "rope of the Angels," the "rope" that hedges off the phenomenal
from the noumenal Kosmos, (not falling within the range of our present objective
consciousness); this number, when not enlarged by permutation and expansion, is
ever 31415 anagrammatically and Kabalistically, being both the number of the
circle and the mystic Svastica, the twice seven once more; for whatever way the
two sets of figures are counted, when added separately, one figure after
another, whether crossways, from right or from left, they will always yield
fourteen. Mathematically they represent the well-known calculation, namely, that
the ratio of the diameter to the circumference of a circle is as 1 to 3.1415, or
the value of the (pi), as this ratio is called -- the symbol being always used
in
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* In the Kabala the same numbers are a value of Jehovah, viz., 1065, since the
numerical values of the three letters which compose his name -- Jod, Vau and
twice He -- are respectively 10 ( ), 6 ( ) and 5 ( ); or again thrice seven, 21.
"Ten is the Mother of the Soul, for Life and Light are therein united," says
Hermes. "For number one is born of the Spirit and the number ten from matter
(chaos, feminine); the unity has made the ten, the ten the unity" (Book of the
Keys). By the means of the Temura, the anagrammatical method of the Kabala, and
the knowledge of 1065 (21), a universal science may be obtained regarding Kosmos
and its mysteries" (Rabbi Yogel). The Rabbis regard the numbers 10, 6, and 5 as
the most sacred of all.
** The reader may be told that an American Kabalist has now discovered the same
number for the Elohim. It came to the Jews from Chaldaea. See "Hebrew Metrology"
in the Masonic Review, July, 1885, McMillan Lodge, No. 141.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 91 THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTIONS.
mathematical formulae to express it. This set of figures must have the same
meaning, since the 1 : 314,159, and then again 1 : 3 : 1,415,927 are worked out
in the secret calculations to express the various cycles and ages of the "first
born," or 311,040,000,000,000 with fractions, and yield the same 13,415 by a
process we are not concerned with at present. And it may be shown that Mr.
Ralston Skinner, author of The Source of Measures, reads the Hebrew word Alhim
in the same number values, by omitting, as said, the ciphers and by permutation
-- 13,514: since (a) is 1 : (l) is 3 (or 30); (h) is 5; (i) 1 for 10; and
(m) is 4 (40), and anagrammatically -- 31,415 as explained by him.
Thus, while in the metaphysical world, the circle with the one central Point in
it has no number, and is called Anupadaka (parentless and numberless) -- viz.,
it can fall under no calculation, -- in the manifested world the mundane Egg or
Circle is circumscribed within the groups called the Line, the Triangle, the
Pentacle, the second Line and the Cube (or 13514); and when the Point having
generated a Line, thus becomes a diameter which stands for the androgynous
Logos, then the figures become 31415, or a triangle, a line, a cube, the second
line, and a pentacle. "When the Son separates from the Mother he becomes the
Father," the diameter standing for Nature, or the feminine principle. Therefore
it is said: "In the world of being, the one Point fructifies the Line -- the
Virgin Matrix of Kosmos (the egg-shaped zero) -- and the immaculate Mother gives
birth to the form that combines all forms." Prajapati is called the first
procreating male, and "his Mother's husband."* This gives the key-note to all
the later divine sons from immaculate mothers. It is greatly corroborated by the
significant fact that Anna (the name of the Mother of the Virgin Mary) now
represented by the Roman Catholic church as having given birth to her daughter
in an immaculate way ("Mary conceived without sin"), is derived from the
Chaldean Ana, heaven, or Astral Light, Anima Mundi; whence Anaitia, Devi-durga,
the wife of Siva, is also called Annapurna,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* We find the same expression in Egypt. Mout signifies, for one thing, "Mother,"
and shows the character assigned to her in the triad of that country. "She was
no less the mother than the wife of Ammon, one of the principle titles of the
god being "the husband of his mother." The goddess Mout, or Mut, is addressed as
"our lady," the "queen of Heaven" and of "the Earth," thus "sharing these titles
with the other mother goddesses, Isis, Hathor, etc." (Maspero).
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 92 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
and Kanya, the Virgin; "Uma-Kanya" being her esoteric name, and meaning the
"Virgin of light," Astral Light in one of its multitudinous aspects.
(c) The Devas, Pitris, Rishis; the Suras and the Asuras; the Daityas and
Adityas; the Danavas and Gandharvas, etc., etc., have all their synonyms in our
Secret Doctrine, as well as in the Kabala and the Hebrew Angelology; but it is
useless to give their ancient names, as it would only create confusion. Many of
these may be also found now, even in the Christian hierarchy of divine and
celestial powers. All those Thrones and Dominions, Virtues and Principalities,
Cherubs, Seraphs and demons, the various denizens of the Sidereal World, are the
modern copies of archaic prototypes. The very symbolism in their names, when
transliterated and arranged in Greek and Latin, are sufficient to show it, as
will be proved in several cases further on.
The "Sacred Animals" are found in the Bible as well as in the Kabala, and they
have their meaning (a very profound one, too) on the page of the origins of
Life. In the Sepher Jezirah it is stated that "God engraved in the Holy Four the
throne of his glory, the Ophanim (Wheels or the World-Spheres), the Seraphim,*
the Sacred Animals, and the ministering angels, and from these three (the Air,
Water, and Fire or Ether) he formed his habitation." Thus was the world made
"through three Seraphim -- Sepher, Saphar, and Sipur," or "through Number,
Numbers, and Numbered." With the astronomical key these "Sacred Animals" become
the signs of the Zodiac.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* This is the literal translation from the IXth and Xth Sections: "Ten numbers
without what? One: the spirit of the living God . . . . who liveth in
eternities! Voice and Spirit and Word, and this is the Holy Spirit. Two: Spirit
out of Spirit. He designed and hewed therewith twenty-two letters of foundation,
three Mothers and seven double and Twelve single, and one spirit out of them.
Three: Water out of spirit; he designed and hewed with them the barren and the
void, mud and earth. He designed them as a flowerbed, hewed them as a wall,
covered them as a paving. Four: Fire out of water. He designed and hewed
therewith the throne of glory and the wheels, and the seraphim and the holy
animals and the ministering angels, and of the three He founded his dwelling, as
it is said, He makes his angels spirits and his servants fiery flames!" Which
words "founded his dwelling" show clearly that in the Kabala, as in India, the
Deity was considered as the Universe, and was not, in his origin, the
extra-cosmic God he is now.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 93 THE POTENCY OF SPEECH AND SOUND.
STANZA IV. -- Continued.
4. THIS WAS THE ARMY OF THE VOICE -- THE DIVINE SEPTENARY. THE SPARKS OF THE
SEVEN ARE SUBJECT TO, AND THE SERVANTS OF, THE FIRST, SECOND, THIRD, FOURTH,
FIFTH, SIXTH, AND THE SEVENTH OF THE SEVEN (a). THESE ("sparks") ARE CALLED
SPHERES, TRIANGLES, CUBES, LINES, AND MODELLERS; FOR THUS STANDS THE ETERNAL
NIDANA -- THE OI-HA-HOU (the Permutation of Oeaohoo) (b).*
(a) This Sloka gives again a brief analysis of the Hierarchies of the Dhyan
Chohans, called Devas (gods) in India, or the conscious intelligent powers in
Nature. To this Hierarchy correspond the actual types into which humanity may be
divided; for humanity, as a whole, is in reality a materialized though as yet
imperfect expression thereof. The "army of the Voice" is a term closely
connected with the mystery of Sound and Speech, as an effect and corollary of
the cause -- Divine Thought. As beautifully expressed by P. Christian, the
learned author of "The History of Magic" and of "L'Homme Rouge des Tuileries,"
the word spoken by, as well as the name of, every individual largely determine
his future fate. Why? Because --
-- "When our Soul (mind) creates or evokes a thought, the representative sign
of that thought is self-engraved upon the astral fluid, which is the
receptacle and, so to say, the mirror of all the manifestations of being.
"The sign expresses the thing: the thing is the (hidden or occult) virtue of
the sign.
"To pronounce a word is to evoke a thought, and make it present: the magnetic
potency of the human speech is the commencement of every manifestation in the
Occult World. To utter a Name is not only to define a Being (an Entity), but
to place it under and condemn it through the emission of the Word (Verbum), to
the influence of one or more Occult potencies. Things are, for every one of
us, that which it (the Word) makes them while naming them. The Word (Verbum)
or the speech of every man is, quite unconsciously to himself, a BLESSING or a
CURSE; this is why our present ignorance about the properties or attributes of
the IDEA as well as about the attributes and properties of MATTER, is often
fatal to us.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The literal signification of the word is, among the Eastern Occultists of the
North, a circular wind, whirlwind; but in this instance, it is a term to denote
the ceaseless and eternal Cosmic Motion; or rather the Force that moves it,
which Force is tacitly accepted as the Deity but never named. It is the eternal
Karana, the ever-acting Cause.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 94 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
"Yes, names (and words) are either BENEFICENT or MALEFICENT; they are, in a
certain sense, either venomous or health-giving, according to the hidden
influences attached by Supreme Wisdom to their elements, that is to say, to
the LETTERS which compose them, and the NUMBERS correlative to these letters."
This is strictly true as an esoteric teaching accepted by all the Eastern
Schools of Occultism. In the Sanskrit, as also in the Hebrew and all other
alphabets, every letter has its occult meaning and its rationale; it is a cause
and an effect of a preceding cause and a combination of these very often
produces the most magical effect. The vowels, especially, contain the most
occult and formidable potencies. The Mantras (esoterically, magical rather than
religious) are chanted by the Brahmins and so are the Vedas and other
Scriptures.
The "Army of the Voice," is the prototype of the "Host of the Logos," or the
"WORD" of the Sepher Jezirah, called in the Secret Doctrine "the One Number
issued from No-Number" -- the One Eternal Principle. The esoteric theogony
begins with the One, manifested, therefore not eternal in its presence and
being, if eternal in its essence; the number of the numbers and numbered -- the
latter proceeding from the Voice, the feminine Vach, Satarupa "of the hundred
forms," or Nature. It is from this number 10, or creative nature, the Mother
(the occult cypher, or "nought," ever procreating and multiplying in union with
the Unit "I," one, or the Spirit of Life), that the whole Universe proceeded.
In the Anugita a conversation is given (ch. vi., 15) between a Brahmana and his
wife, on the origin of Speech and its occult properties.* The wife asks how
Speech came into existence, and which was prior to the other, Speech or Mind.
The Brahmana tells her that the Apana (inspirational breath) becoming lord,
changes that intelligence, which does not understand Speech or Words, into the
state of Apana, and thus opens the mind. Thereupon he tells her a story, a
dialogue between Speech and Mind. "Both went to the Self of Being (i.e., to the
individual Higher Self, as Nilakantha thinks, to Prajapati, according to the
commentator Arjuna Misra), and asked him to destroy their doubts and decide
which of them preceded and was superior to the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Anugita forms part of the Asvamedha Parvan of the "Mahabharata." The
translator of the Bhagavatgita, edited by Max Muller, regards it as a
continuation of the Bhagavatgita. Its original is one of the oldest Upanishads.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 95 SPEECH AND MIND.
other. To this the lord said: 'Mind is Superior.' But Speech answered the Self
of Being, by saying: 'I verily yield (you) your desires,' meaning that by speech
he acquired what he desired. Thereupon again, the Self told her that there are
two minds, the 'movable' and the 'immovable.' 'The immovable is with me,' he
said, 'the movable is in your dominion' (i.e. of Speech) on the plane of matter.
To that you are superior. But inasmuch, O beautiful one, as you came personally
to speak to me (in the way you did, i.e. proudly), therefore, O, Sarasvati! you
shall never speak after (hard) exhalation." "The goddess Speech" (Sarasvati, a
later form or aspect of Vach, the goddess also of secret learning or Esoteric
Wisdom), "verily, dwelt always between the Prana and the Apana. But O noble one!
going with the Apana wind (vital air), though impelled, without the Prana
(expirational breath), she ran up to Prajapati (Brahma), saying, 'Be pleased, O
venerable sir!' Then the Prana appeared again, nourishing Speech. And,
therefore, Speech never speaks after (hard or inspirational) exhalation. It is
always noisy or noiseless. Of these two, the noiseless is the superior to the
noisy (Speech) . . . . The (speech) which is produced in the body by means of
the Prana, and which then goes (is transformed) into Apana, and then becoming
assimilated with the Udana (physical organs of Speech) . . . then finally dwells
in the Samana ('at the navel in the form of sound, as the material cause of all
words,' says Arjuna Misra). So Speech formerly spoke. Hence the mind is
distinguished by reason of its being immovable, and the Goddess (Speech) by
reason of her being movable."
This allegory is at the root of the Occult law, which prescribes silence upon
the knowledge of certain secret and invisible things perceptible only to the
spiritual mind (the 6th sense), and which cannot be expressed by "noisy" or
uttered speech. This chapter of Anugita explains, says Arjuna Misra, Pranayama,
or regulation of the breath in Yoga practices. This mode, however, without the
previous acquisition of, or at least full understanding of the two higher
senses, of which there are seven, as will be shown, pertains rather to the lower
Yoga. The Hatha so called was and still is discountenanced by the Arhats. It is
injurious to the health and alone can never develop into Raj Yoga. This story is
quoted to show how inseparably connected are, in the metaphysics of old,
intelligent beings, or rather "Intelligences," with every sense or
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 96 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
function whether physical or mental. The Occult claim that there are seven
senses in man, as in nature, as there are seven states of consciousness, is
corroborated in the same work, chapter vii., on Pratyahara (the restraint and
regulation of the senses, Pranayama being that of the "vital winds" or breath).
The Brahmana speaks in it "of the institution of the seven sacrificial Priests
(Hotris). He says: "The nose and the eyes, and the tongue, and the skin and the
ear as the fifth (or smell, sight, taste, touch and hearing), mind and
understanding are the seven sacrificial priests separately stationed"; and which
"dwelling in a minute space (still) do not perceive each other" on this sensuous
plane, none of them except mind. For mind says: "The nose smells not without me,
the eye does not take in colour, etc., etc. I am the eternal chief among all
elements (i.e., senses). Without me, the senses never shine, like an empty
dwelling, or like fires the flames of which are extinct. Without me, all beings,
like fuel half dried and half moist, fail to apprehend qualities or objects even
with the senses exerting themselves."*
This, of course, with regard only to mind on the sensuous plane. Spiritual mind
(the upper portion or aspect of the impersonal MANAS) takes no cognisance of the
senses in physical man. How well the ancients were acquainted with the
correlation of forces and all the recently discovered phenomena of mental and
physical faculties and functions, with many more mysteries also -- may be found
in reading chapters vii. and viii. of this (in philosophy and mystic learning)
priceless work. See the quarrel of the senses about their respective superiority
and their taking the Brahman, the lord of all creatures, for their arbiter. "You
are all greatest and not greatest," or superior to objects, as A. Misra says,
none being independent of the other. "You are all possessed of one another's
qualities. All are greatest in their own spheres and all support one another.
There is one unmoving (life-wind or breath, the 'Yoga inhalation,' so called,
which is the breath of the One or Higher SELF). That is the (or my) own Self,
accumulated in numerous (forms)."
This Breath, Voice, Self or "Wind" (pneuma?) is the Synthesis of the Seven
Senses, noumenally all minor deities and esoterically -- the septenary and the
"Army of the VOICE."
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* This shows the modern metaphysicians, added to all past and present Haegels,
Berkeleys, Schopenhauers, Hartmanns, Herbert Spencers, and even the modern
Hylo-Idealists to boot, no better than the pale copyists of hoary antiquity.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 97 NATURE, THE PERPETUAL MOTION.
(b) Next we see Cosmic matter scattering and forming itself into elements;
grouped into the mystic four within the fifth element -- Ether, the lining of
Akasa, the Anima Mundi or Mother of Kosmos. "Dots, Lines, Triangles, Cubes,
Circles" and finally "Spheres" -- why or how? Because, says the Commentary, such
is the first law of Nature, and because Nature geometrizes universally in all
her manifestations. There is an inherent law -- not only in the primordial, but
also in the manifested matter of our phenomenal plane -- by which Nature
correlates her geometrical forms, and later, also, her compound elements; and in
which there is no place for accident or chance. It is a fundamental law in
Occultism, that there is no rest or cessation of motion in Nature.* That which
seems rest is only the change of one form into another; the change of substance
going hand in hand with that of form -- as we are taught in Occult physics,
which thus seem to have anticipated the discovery of the "Conservation of
matter" by a considerable time. Says the ancient Commentary** to Stanza IV.: --
"The Mother is the fiery Fish of Life. She scatters her spawn and the Breath
(Motion) heats and quickens it. The grains (of spawn) are soon attracted to each
other and form the curds in the Ocean (of Space). The larger lumps coalesce and
receive new spawn -- in fiery dots, triangles and cubes, which ripen, and at the
appointed time some of the lumps detach themselves and assume spheroidal form, a
process which they effect only when not interfered with by the others. After
which, law No. * * * comes into operation. Motion (the Breath) becomes the
whirlwind and sets them into rotation."***
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* It is the knowledge of this law that permits and helps the Arhat to perform
his Siddhis, or various phenomena, such as disintegration of matter, the
transport of objects from one place to another.
** These are ancient Commentaries attached with modern Glossaries to the
Stanzas, as the Commentaries in their symbolical language are usually as
difficult to understand as the Stanzas themselves.
*** In a polemical scientific work, "The Modern Genesis," the author, the Rev.
W. B. Slaughter, criticising the position assumed by the astronomers, asks: --
"It is to be regretted that the advocates of this (nebular) theory have not
entered more largely into the discussion of it (the beginning of rotation). No
one condescends to give us the rationale of it. How does the process of cooling
and contracting the mass impart to it a rotatory motion?" The question is amply
treated in the Addendum. It is not materialistic science that can ever solve it.
"Motion is eternal in the unmanifested, and periodical in the manifest," says an
Occult teaching. It is "when heat caused [[Footnote continued on next page]]
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 98 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
STANZA IV. -- Continued.
5. . . . . . WHICH IS: ----
"DARKNESS," THE BOUNDLESS OR THE NO-NUMBER, ADI-NIDANA SVABHAVAT: THE (for x,
unknown quantity):
I. THE ADI-SANAT, THE NUMBER, FOR HE IS ONE (a).
II. THE VOICE OF THE WORD, SVABHAVAT, THE NUMBERS, FOR HE IS ONE AND NINE.*
III. THE "FORMLESS SQUARE." (Arupa.) (b).
AND THESE THREE ENCLOSED WITHIN THE (boundless circle), ARE THE SACRED FOUR,
AND THE TEN ARE THE ARUPA (subjective, formless) UNIVERSE (c); THEN COME THE
"SONS," THE SEVEN FIGHTERS, THE ONE, THE EIGHTH LEFT OUT, AND HIS BREATH WHICH
IS THE LIGHT-MAKER (Bhaskara) (d).
(a) "Adi-Sanat," translated literally is the First or "primeval" ancient, which
name identifies the Kabalistic "Ancient of Days" and the "Holy Aged" (Sephira
and Adam Kadmon) with Brahma the Creator, called also Sanat among his other
names and titles.
Svabhavat is the mystic Essence, the plastic root of physical Nature --
"Numbers" when manifested; the Number, in its Unity of Substance, on the highest
plane. The name is of Buddhist use and a Synonym for the four-fold Anima Mundi,
the Kabalistic "Archetypal World," from whence proceed the "Creative, Formative,
and the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] by the descent of FLAME into
primordial matter causes its particles to move, which motion becomes Whirlwind."
A drop of liquid assumes a spheroidal form owing to its atoms moving around
themselves in their ultimate, unresolvable, and noumenal essence; unresolvable
for physical science, at any rate.
* Which makes ten, or the perfect number applied to the "Creator," the name
given to the totality of the Creators blended by the Monotheists into One, as
the "Elohim," Adam Kadmon or Sephira -- the Crown -- are the androgyne synthesis
of the 10 Sephiroth, who stand for the symbol of the manifested Universe in the
popularised Kabala. The esoteric Kabalists, however, following the Eastern
Occultists, divide the upper Sephirothal triangle from the rest (or Sephira,
Chochmah and Binah), which leaves seven Sephiroth. As for Svabhavat, the
Orientalists explain the term as meaning the Universal plastic matter diffused
through Space, with, perhaps, half an eye to the Ether of Science. But the
Occultists identify it with "FATHER-MOTHER" on the mystic plane. (Vide supra.)
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 99 THE OGDOAD AND HEPTAD.
Material Worlds"; the Scintillae or Sparks, -- the various other worlds
contained in the last three. The Worlds are all subject to Rulers or Regents --
Rishis and Pitris with the Hindus, Angels with the Jews and Christians, Gods,
with the Ancients in general.
(b) This means that the "Boundless Circle" (Zero) becomes a figure or number,
only when one of the nine figures precedes it, and thus manifests its value and
potency, the Word or Logos in union with VOICE and Spirit* (the expression and
source of Consciousness) standing for the nine figures and thus forming, with
the Cypher, the Decade which contains in itself all the Universe. The triad
forms within the circle the Tetraktis or Sacred Four, the Square within the
Circle being the most potent of all the magical figures.
(c) The "One Rejected" is the Sun of our system. The exoteric version may be
found in the oldest Sanskrit Scriptures. In the Rig Veda, Aditi, "The Boundless"
or infinite Space, translated by Mr. Max Muller, "the visible infinite, visible
by the naked eye (!!); the endless expanse beyond the Earth, beyond the clouds,
beyond the sky," is the equivalent of "Mother-Space" coeval with "Darkness." She
is very properly called "The Mother of the Gods," DEVA-MATRI, as it is from her
Cosmic matrix that all the heavenly bodies of our system were born -- Sun and
Planets. Thus she is described, allegorically, in this wise: "Eight Sons were
born from the body of Aditi; she approached the gods with seven, but cast away
the eighth, Martanda," our sun. The seven sons called the Aditya are, cosmically
or astronomically, the seven planets; and the Sun being excluded from their
number shows plainly that the Hindus may have known, and in fact knew of a
seventh planet, without calling it Uranus.** But esoterically and theologically,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "In union with the Spirit and the Voice," referring to the Abstract Thought
and concrete Voice, or the manifestation thereof, the effect of the Cause. Adam
Kadmon or Tetragrammaton is the Logos in the Kabala; therefore this triad
answers in the latter to the highest triangle of Kether, Chochmah and Binah, the
last a female potency and at the same time the male Jehovah, as partaking of the
nature of Chochmah, or the male Wisdom.
** The Secret Doctrine teaches that the Sun is a central Star and not a planet.
Yet the Ancients knew of and worshipped seven great gods, excluding the Sun and
Earth. Which was that "Mystery God" they set apart? Of course not Uranus,
discovered only by Herschel in 1781. But could it not be known by another name?
Says the [[Footnote continued on next page]]
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 100 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
so to say, the Adityas are, in their primitive most ancient meanings, the eight,
and the twelve great gods of the Hindu Pantheon. "The Seven allow the mortals to
see their dwellings, but show themselves only to the Arhats," says an old
proverb, "their dwellings" standing here for planets. The ancient Commentary
gives an allegory and explains it: --
"Eight houses were built by Mother. Eight houses for her Eight Divine sons; four
large and four small ones. Eight brilliant suns, according to their age and
merits. Bal-ilu (Martanda) was not satisfied, though his house was the largest.
He began (to work) as the huge elephants do. He breathed (drew in) into his
stomach the vital airs of his brothers. He sought to devour them. The larger
four were far away; far, on the margin of their kingdom.* They were not robbed
(affected), and laughed. Do your worst, Sir, you cannot reach us, they said. But
the smaller wept. They complained to the Mother. She exiled Bal-i-lu to the
centre of her Kingdom, from whence he could not move. (Since then) he (only)
watches and threatens. He pursues them, turning slowly around himself, they
turning swiftly from him, and he following from afar the direction in which his
brothers move on the path that encircles their houses.** From that day he feeds
on the sweat of the Mother's body. He fills himself with her breath and refuse.
Therefore, she rejected him."
Thus the "rejected Son" being our Sun, evidently, as shown above, the "Sun-Sons"
refer not only to our planets but to the heavenly bodies in general. Himself
only a reflection of the Central Spiritual Sun, Surya is the prototype of all
those bodies that evolved after him. In the Vedas he is called Loka-Chakshuh,
"the Eye of the World" (our
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] author of "Maconnerie Occulte": --
"Occult Sciences having discovered through astronomical calculations that the
number of the planets must be seven, the ancients were led to introduce the Sun
into the scale of the celestial harmonies, and make him occupy the vacant place.
Thus, every time they perceived an influence that pertained to none of the six
planets known, they attributed it to the Sun. The error only seems important,
but was not so in practical results, if the ancient astrologers replaced Uranus
by the Sun, which is a central Star relatively motionless, turning only on its
axis and regulating time and measure; and which cannot be turned aside from its
true functions." . . . . . . The nomenclature of the days of the week is thus
faulty. "The Sun-Day ought to be Uranus-day (Urani dies, Urandi)," adds the
learned writer, Ragon.
* Planetary System.
** "The Sun rotates on his axis always in the same direction in which the
planets revolve in their respective orbits," astronomy teaches us.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 101 FIRE, THE GREAT SYMBOL OF DEITY.
planetary world), and he is one of the three chief deities. He is called
indifferently the Son of Dyaus and of Aditi, because no distinction is made with
reference to, or scope allowed for, the esoteric meaning. Thus he is depicted as
drawn by seven horses, and by one horse with seven heads; the former referring
to his seven planets, the latter to their one common origin from the One Cosmic
Element. This "One Element" is called figuratively "FIRE." The Vedas
(Aitareya-Brahmana of Haug also; p. i) teach "that the fire verily is all the
deities." (Narada in Anugita).
The meaning of the allegory is plain, for we have both the Dzyan Commentary and
modern science to explain it, though the two differ in more than one particular.
The Occult Doctrine rejects the hypothesis born out of the Nebular Theory, that
the (seven) great planets have evolved from the Sun's central mass, not of this
our visible Sun, at any rate. The first condensation of Cosmic matter of course
took place about a central nucleus, its parent Sun; but our sun, it is taught,
merely detached itself earlier than all the others, as the rotating mass
contracted, and is their elder, bigger brother therefore, not their father. The
eight Adityas, "the gods," are all formed from the eternal substance (Cometary
matter* -- the Mother) or the "World-Stuff " which is both the fifth and the
sixth COSMIC Principle, the Upadhi or basis of the Universal Soul, just as in
man, the Microcosm, Manas** is the Upadhi of Buddhi.***
(d) There is a whole poem on the pregenetic battles fought by the growing
planets before the final formation of Kosmos, thus accounting for the seemingly
disturbed position of the systems of several planets, the plane of the
satellites of some (of Neptune and Uranus, for instance, of which the ancients
knew nothing, it is said) being tilted over, thus giving them an appearance of
retrograde motion. These planets are called the warriors, the Architects, and
are accepted by the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* This Essence of Cometary matter, Occult Science teaches, is totally different
from any of the chemical or physical characteristics with which modern science
is acquainted. It is homogeneous in its primitive form beyond the Solar Systems,
and differentiates entirely once it crosses the boundaries of our Earth's
region, vitiated by the atmospheres of the planets and the already compound
matter of the interplanetary stuff, heterogeneous only in our manifested world.
** Manas -- the Mind-Principle, or the human Soul.
*** Buddhi -- the divine Soul.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 102 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
Roman Church as the leaders of the heavenly Hosts, thus showing the same
traditions. Having evolved from Cosmic Space, and before the final formation of
the primaries and the annulation of the planetary nebula, the Sun, we are
taught, drew into the depths of its mass all the Cosmic vitality he could,
threatening to engulf his weaker "brothers" before the law of attraction and
repulsion was finally adjusted; after which he began feeding on "The Mother's
refuse and sweat"; in other words, on those portions of Ether (the "breath of
the Universal Soul") of the existence and constitution of which science is as
yet absolutely ignorant. A theory of this kind having been propounded by Sir
William Grove (see "Correlation of the Physical Forces," 1843, p. 81; and
"Address to the British Association, 1866"), who theorized that the systems "are
gradually changing by atmospheric additions or subtractions, or by accretions
and diminutions arising from nebular substances" . . . and again that "the Sun
may condense gaseous matter as it travels in Space and so heat may be produced"
-- the archaic teaching seems scientific enough, even in this age.* Mr. W.
Mattieu Williams suggested that the diffused matter or Ether which is the
recipient of the heat radiations of the Universe is thereby drawn into the
depths of the solar mass. Expelling thence the previously condensed and
thermally exhausted Ether, it becomes compressed and gives up its heat, to be in
turn itself driven out in a rarified and cooled state, to absorb a fresh supply
of heat, which he supposes to be in this way taken up by the Ether, and again
concentrated and redistributed by the Suns of the Universe.**
This is about as close an approximation to the Occult teachings as Science ever
imagined; for Occultism explains it by "the dead breath" given back by Martanda
and his feeding on the "sweat and refuse" of "Mother Space." What could affect
Neptune,*** Saturn and Jupiter,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Very similar ideas in Mr. W. Mattieu Williams' "The Fuel of the Sun;" in Dr.
C. William Siemens' "On the Conservation of Solar Energy" (Nature, XXV., p.
440-444, March 9, 1882); and also in Dr. P. Martin Duncan's "Address of the
President of the Geological Society," London, May, 1877.
** See "Comparative Geology," by Alexander Winchell, LL.D., p. 56.
*** When we speak of Neptune it is not as an Occultist but as a European. The
true Eastern Occultist will maintain that, whereas there are many yet
undiscovered planets in our system, Neptune does not belong to it, his apparent
connection with our sun and the influence of the latter upon Neptune
notwithstanding. This connection is mayavic, imaginary, they say.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 103 THE STELLAR "SONS OF LIGHT."
but little, would have killed such comparatively small "Houses" as Mercury,
Venus and Mars. As Uranus was not known before the end of the eighteenth
century, the name of the fourth planet mentioned in the allegory must remain to
us, so far, a mystery.
The "Breath" of all the "seven" is said to be Bhaskara (light-making), because
they (the planets) were all comets and suns in their origin. They evolve into
Manvantaric life from primaeval Chaos (now the noumenon of irresolvable nebulae)
by aggregation and accumulation of the primary differentiations of the eternal
matter, according to the beautiful expression in the Commentary, "Thus the Sons
of Light clothed themselves in the fabric of Darkness." They are called
allegorically "the Heavenly Snails," on account of their (to us) formless
INTELLIGENCES inhabiting unseen their starry and planetary homes, and, so to
speak, carrying them as the snails do along with themselves in their revolution.
The doctrine of a common origin for all the heavenly bodies and planets, was, as
we see, inculcated by the Archaic astronomers, before Kepler, Newton, Leibnitz,
Kant, Herschel and Laplace. Heat (the Breath), attraction and repulsion -- the
three great factors of Motion -- are the conditions under which all the members
of all this primitive family are born, developed, and die, to be reborn after a
"Night of Brahma," during which eternal matter relapses periodically into its
primary undifferentiated state. The most attenuated gases can give no idea of
its nature to the modern physicist. Centres of Forces at first, the invisible
sparks of primordial atoms differentiate into molecules, and become Suns --
passing gradually into objectivity gaseous, radiant, cosmic, the one "Whirlwind"
(or motion) finally giving the impulse to the form, and the initial motion,
regulated and sustained by the never-resting Breaths -- the Dhyan Chohans.
-------
STANZA IV. -- Continued.
6. . . . . THEN THE SECOND SEVEN, WHO ARE THE LIPIKA, PRODUCED BY THE THREE
(Word, Voice, and Spirit). THE REJECTED SON IS ONE, THE "SON-SUNS" ARE
COUNTLESS.
The Lipi-ka, from the word lipi, "writing," means literally the
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 104 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
"Scribes."* Mystically, these Divine Beings are connected with Karma, the Law of
Retribution, for they are the Recorders or Annalists who impress on the (to us)
invisible tablets of the Astral Light, "the great picture-gallery of eternity"
-- a faithful record of every act, and even thought, of man, of all that was,
is, or ever will be, in the phenomenal Universe. As said in "Isis," this divine
and unseen canvas is the BOOK OF LIFE. As it is the Lipika who project into
objectivity from the passive Universal Mind the ideal plan of the universe, upon
which the "Builders" reconstruct the Kosmos after every Pralaya, it is they who
stand parallel to the Seven Angels of the Presence, whom the Christians
recognise in the Seven "Planetary Spirits" or the "Spirits of the Stars;" for
thus it is they who are the direct amanuenses of the Eternal Ideation -- or, as
called by Plato, the "Divine Thought." The Eternal Record is no fantastic dream,
for we meet with the same records in the world of gross matter. "A shadow never
falls upon a wall without leaving thereupon a permanent trace which might be
made visible by resorting to proper processes," says Dr. Draper. . . . "The
portraits of our friends or landscape-views may be hidden on the sensitive
surface from the eye, but they are ready to make their appearance as soon as
proper developers are resorted to. A spectre is concealed on a silver or a
glassy surface, until, by our necromancy, we make it come forth into the visible
world. Upon the walls of our most private apartments, where we think the eye of
intrusion is altogether shut out, and our retirement can never be profaned,
there exist the vestiges of all our acts, silhouettes of whatever we have
done."** Drs. Jevons and Babbage believe that every thought, displacing the
particles of the brain and setting them in motion, scatters them throughout the
Universe, and they think that "each particle of the existing matter must be a
register of all that has happened." (Principles of Science, Vol. II. p. 455.)
Thus the ancient doctrine has begun to acquire rights of citizenship in the
speculations of the scientific world.
The forty "Assessors" who stand in the region of Amenti as the accusers of the
Soul before Osiris, belong to the same class of deities as the Lipika, and might
stand paralleled, were not the Egyptian gods so
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
*These are the four "Immortals" which are mentioned in Atharva Veda as the
"Watchers" or Guardians of the four quarters of the sky (see ch. lxxvi., 1-4, et
seq.).
** "Conflict between Religion and Science." -- Draper, pp. 132 and 133.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 105 THE DIVINE RECORDERS.
little understood in their esoteric meaning. The Hindu Chitra-Gupta who reads
out the account of every Soul's life from his register, called Agra-Sandhani;
the "Assessors" who read theirs from the heart of the defunct, which becomes an
open book before (whether) Yama, Minos, Osiris, or Karma -- are all so many
copies of, and variants from the Lipika, and their Astral Records. Nevertheless,
the Lipi-ka are not deities connected with Death, but with Life Eternal.
Connected as the Lipika are with the destiny of every man and the birth of every
child, whose life is already traced in the Astral Light not fatalistically, but
only because the future, like the PAST, is ever alive in the PRESENT -- they may
also be said to exercise an influence on the Science of Horoscopy. We must admit
the truth of the latter whether we will or not. For, as observed by one of the
modern adepts of Astrology, "Now that photography has revealed to us the
chemical influence of the Sidereal system, by fixing on the sensitized plate of
the apparatus milliards of stars and planets that had hitherto baffled the
efforts of the most powerful telescopes to discover them, it becomes easier to
understand how our solar system can, at the birth of a child, influence his
brain -- virgin of any impression -- in a definite manner and according to the
presence on the zenith of such or another zodiacal constellation."*
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
** Les Mysteres de l'Horoscope, p. XI.
************************
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 106 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
STANZA V.
1. THE PRIMORDIAL SEVEN, THE FIRST SEVEN BREATHS OF THE DRAGON OF WISDOM,
PRODUCE IN THEIR TURN FROM THEIR HOLY CIRCUMGYRATING BREATHS THE FIERY WHIRLWIND
(a).
COMMENTARY.
(a) This is, perhaps, the most difficult of all the Stanzas to explain. Its
language is comprehensible only to him who is thoroughly versed in Eastern
allegory and its purposely obscure phraseology. The question will surely be
asked, "Do the Occultists believe in all these 'Builders,' 'Lipika,' and 'Sons
of Light' as Entities, or are they merely imageries?" To this the answer is
given as plainly: "After due allowance for the imagery of personified Powers, we
must admit the existence of these Entities, if we would not reject the existence
of spiritual humanity within physical mankind. For the hosts of these Sons of
Light and 'Mind-born Sons' of the first manifested Ray of the UNKNOWN ALL, are
the very root of spiritual man." Unless we want to believe the unphilosophical
dogma of a specially created soul for every human birth -- a fresh supply of
these pouring in daily, since "Adam" -- we have to admit the occult teachings.
This will be explained in its place. Let us see, now, what may be the occult
meaning of this Stanza.
The Doctrine teaches that, in order to become a divine, fully conscious god, --
aye, even the highest -- the Spiritual primeval INTELLIGENCES must pass through
the human stage. And when we say human, this does not apply merely to our
terrestrial humanity, but to the mortals that inhabit any world, i.e., to those
Intelligences that have reached the appropriate equilibrium between matter and
spirit, as we have now, since the middle point of the Fourth Root Race of the
Fourth Round was passed. Each Entity must have won for itself the right of
becoming divine, through self-experience. Hegel, the great German thinker, must
have known or sensed intuitionally this truth when saying, as he did, that the
Unconscious evolved the Universe only "in the hope of attaining clear
self-consciousness," of becoming, in other words, MAN; for this is also the
secret meaning of the usual Puranic phrase about
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 107 NO MAN -- NO GOD.
Brahma being constantly "moved by the desire to create." This explains also the
hidden Kabalistic meaning of the saying: "The Breath becomes a stone; the stone,
a plant; the plant, an animal; the animal, a man; the man, a spirit; and the
spirit, a god." The Mind-born Sons, the Rishis, the Builders, etc., were all men
-- of whatever forms and shapes -- in other worlds and the preceding
Manvantaras.
This subject, being so very mystical, is therefore the most difficult to explain
in all its details and bearings; since the whole mystery of evolutionary
creation is contained in it. A sentence or two in it vividly recalls to mind
similar ones in the Kabala and the phraseology of the King Psalmist (civ.), as
both, when speaking of God, show him making the wind his messenger and his
"ministers a flaming fire." But in the Esoteric doctrine it is used
figuratively. The "fiery Wind" is the incandescent Cosmic dust which only
follows magnetically, as the iron filings follow the magnet, the directing
thought of the "Creative Forces." Yet, this cosmic dust is something more; for
every atom in the Universe has the potentiality of self-consciousness in it, and
is, like the Monads of Leibnitz, a Universe in itself, and for itself. It is an
atom and an angel.
In this connection it should be noted that one of the luminaries of the modern
Evolutionist School, Mr. A. R. Wallace, when discussing the inadequacy of
"natural selection" as the sole factor in the development of physical man,
practically concedes the whole point here discussed. He holds that the evolution
of man was directed and furthered by superior Intelligences, whose agency is a
necessary factor in the scheme of Nature. But once the operation of these
Intelligences is admitted in one place, it is only a logical deduction to extend
it still further. No hard and fast line can be drawn.
-------
STANZA V. -- Continued.
2. THEY MAKE OF HIM THE MESSENGER OF THEIR WILL (a). THE DZYU BECOMES FOHAT; THE
SWIFT SON OF THE DIVINE SONS, WHOSE SONS ARE THE LIPIKA,* RUNS CIRCULAR ERRANDS.
HE IS THE STEED, AND
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The difference between the "Builders," the Planetary Spirits, and the Lipika
must not be lost sight of. (See Nos. 5 and 6 of this Commentary.)
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 108 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
THE THOUGHT IS THE RIDER (i.e., he is under the influence of their guiding
thought). HE PASSES LIKE LIGHTNING THROUGH THE FIERY CLOUDS (cosmic mists) (b);
TAKES THREE, AND FIVE, AND SEVEN STRIDES THROUGH THE SEVEN REGIONS ABOVE AND THE
SEVEN BELOW (the world to be). HE LIFTS HIS VOICE, AND CALLS THE INNUMERABLE
SPARKS (atoms) AND JOINS THEM TOGETHER (c).
(a) This shows the "Primordial Seven" using for their Vahan (vehicle, or the
manifested subject which becomes the symbol of the Power directing it), Fohat,
called in consequence, the "Messenger of their will" -- the fiery whirlwind.
"Dzyu becomes Fohat" -- the expression itself shows it. Dzyu is the one real
(magical) knowledge, or Occult Wisdom; which, dealing with eternal truths and
primal causes, becomes almost omnipotence when applied in the right direction.
Its antithesis is Dzyu-mi, that which deals with illusions and false appearances
only, as in our exoteric modern sciences. In this case, Dzyu is the expression
of the collective Wisdom of the Dhyani-Buddhas.
(b) As the reader is supposed not to be acquainted with the Dhyani-Buddhas, it
is as well to say at once that, according to the Orientalists, there are five
Dhyanis who are the "celestial" Buddhas, of whom the human Buddhas are the
manifestations in the world of form and matter. Esoterically, however, the
Dhyani-Buddhas are seven, of whom five only have hitherto manifested,* and two
are to come in the sixth and seventh Root-races. They are, so to speak, the
eternal prototypes of the Buddhas who appear on this earth, each of whom has his
particular divine prototype. So, for instance, Amitabha is the Dhyani-Buddha of
Gautama Sakyamuni, manifesting through him whenever this great Soul incarnates
on earth as He did in Tzon-kha-pa.** As the synthesis of the seven
Dhyani-Buddhas, Avalokiteswara was the first Buddha (the Logos), so Amitabha is
the inner "God" of Gautama, who, in China, is called Amita(-Buddha). They are,
as Mr. Rhys Davids
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See A. P. Sinnett's "Esoteric Buddhism," 5th annotated edition, pp. 171-173.
** The first and greatest Reformer who founded the "Yellow-Caps," Gyalugpas. He
was born in the year 1355 A.D. in Amdo, and was the Avatar of Amitabha, the
celestial name of Gautama Buddha.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 109 THEOGONY OF THE CREATORS.
correctly states, "the glorious counterparts in the mystic world, free from the
debasing conditions of this material life" of every earthly mortal Buddha -- the
liberated Manushi-Buddhas appointed to govern the Earth in this Round. They are
the "Buddhas of Contemplation," and are all Anupadaka (parentless), i.e.,
self-born of divine essence. The exoteric teaching which says that every
Dhyani-Buddha has the faculty of creating from himself, an equally celestial son
-- a Dhyani-Bodhisattva -- who, after the decease of the Manushi (human) Buddha,
has to carry out the work of the latter, rests on the fact that owing to the
highest initiation performed by one overshadowed by the "Spirit of Buddha" --
(who is credited by the Orientalists with having created the five
Dhyani-Buddhas!), -- a candidate becomes virtually a Bodhisattva, created such
by the High Initiator.
(c) Fohat, being one of the most, if not the most important character in
esoteric Cosmogony, should be minutely described. As in the oldest Grecian
Cosmogony, differing widely from the later mythology, Eros is the third person
in the primeval trinity: Chaos, Gaea, Eros: answering to the Kabalistic En-Soph
(for Chaos is SPACE, [[Chaino]], "void") the Boundless ALL, Shekinah and the
Ancient of Days, or the Holy Ghost; so Fohat is one thing in the yet
unmanifested Universe and another in the phenomenal and Cosmic World. In the
latter, he is that Occult, electric, vital power, which, under the Will of the
Creative Logos, unites and brings together all forms, giving them the first
impulse which becomes in time law. But in the unmanifested Universe, Fohat is no
more this, than Eros is the later brilliant winged Cupid, or LOVE. Fohat has
naught to do with Kosmos yet, since Kosmos is not born, and the gods still sleep
in the bosom of "Father-Mother." He is an abstract philosophical idea. He
produces nothing yet by himself; he is simply that potential creative power in
virtue of whose action the NOUMENON of all future phenomena divides, so to
speak, but to reunite in a mystic supersensuous act, and emit the creative ray.
When the "Divine Son" breaks forth, then Fohat becomes the propelling force, the
active Power which causes the ONE to become TWO and THREE -- on the Cosmic plane
of manifestation. The triple One differentiates into the many, and then Fohat is
transformed into that force which brings together the elemental atoms and makes
them aggregate and combine. We find an echo of this primeval teaching
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 110 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
in early Greek mythology. Erebos and Nux are born out of Chaos, and, under the
action of Eros, give birth in their turn to Ether and Hemera, the light of the
superior and the light of the inferior or terrestrial regions. Darkness
generates light. See in the Puranas Brahma's "Will" or desire to create; and in
the Phoenician Cosmogony of Sanchoniathon the doctrine that Desire, [[pothos]],
is the principle of creation.
Fohat is closely related to the "ONE LIFE." From the Unknown One, the Infinite
TOTALITY, the manifested ONE, or the periodical, Manvantaric Deity, emanates;
and this is the Universal Mind, which, separated from its Fountain-Source, is
the Demiurgos or the creative Logos of the Western Kabalists, and the four-faced
Brahma of the Hindu religion. In its totality, viewed from the standpoint of
manifested Divine Thought in the esoteric doctrine, it represents the Hosts of
the higher creative Dhyan Chohans. Simultaneously with the evolution of the
Universal Mind, the concealed Wisdom of Adi-Buddha -- the One Supreme and
eternal -- manifests itself as Avalokiteshwara (or manifested Iswara), which is
the Osiris of the Egyptians, the Ahura-Mazda of the Zoroastrians, the Heavenly
Man of the Hermetic philosopher, the Logos of the Platonists, and the Atman of
the Vedantins.* By the action of the manifested Wisdom, or Mahat, represented by
these innumerable centres of spiritual Energy in the Kosmos, the reflection of
the Universal Mind, which is Cosmic Ideation and the intellectual Force
accompanying such ideation, becomes objectively the Fohat of the Buddhist
esoteric philosopher. Fohat, running along the seven principles of AKASA, acts
upon manifested substance or the One Element, as declared above, and by
differentiating it into various centres of Energy, sets in motion the law of
Cosmic Evolution, which, in obedience to the Ideation of the Universal Mind,
brings into existence all the various states of being in the manifested Solar
System.
The Solar System, brought into existence by these agencies, consists of Seven
Principles, like everything else within these centres. Such is the teaching of
the trans-Himalayan Esotericism. Every philosophy, however, has its own way of
dividing these principles.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Mr. Subba Row seems to identify him with, and to call him, the LOGOS. (See his
four lectures on the "Bhagavadgita" in the Theosophist.)
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 111 THE PROTEAN SPIRIT-SUBSTANCE.
Fohat, then, is the personified electric vital power, the transcendental binding
Unity of all Cosmic Energies, on the unseen as on the manifested planes, the
action of which resembles -- on an immense scale -- that of a living Force
created by WILL, in those phenomena where the seemingly subjective acts on the
seemingly objective and propels it to action. Fohat is not only the living
Symbol and Container of that Force, but is looked upon by the Occultists as an
Entity -- the forces he acts upon being cosmic, human and terrestrial, and
exercising their influence on all those planes respectively. On the earthly
plane his influence is felt in the magnetic and active force generated by the
strong desire of the magnetizer. On the Cosmic, it is present in the
constructive power that carries out, in the formation of things -- from the
planetary system down to the glow-worm and simple daisy -- the plan in the mind
of nature, or in the Divine Thought, with regard to the development and growth
of that special thing. He is, metaphysically, the objectivised thought of the
gods; the "Word made flesh," on a lower scale, and the messenger of Cosmic and
human ideations: the active force in Universal Life. In his secondary aspect,
Fohat is the Solar Energy, the electric vital fluid,* and the preserving fourth
[[Footnote(s)]]
* In 1882 the President of the Theosophical Society, Col. Olcott, was taken to
task for asserting in one of his lectures that Electricity is matter. Such,
nevertheless, is the teaching of the Occult Doctrine. "Force," "Energy," may be
a better name for it, so long as European Science knows so little about its true
nature; yet matter it is, as much as Ether is matter, since it is as atomic,
though several removes from the latter. It seems ridiculous to argue that
because a thing is imponderable to Science, therefore it cannot be called
matter. Electricity is "immaterial" in the sense that its molecules are not
subject to perception and experiment; yet it may be -- and Occultism says it is
-- atomic; therefore it is matter. But even supposing it were unscientific to
speak of it in such terms, once Electricity is called in Science a source of
Energy, Energy simply, and a Force -- where is that Force or that Energy which
can be thought of without thinking of matter? Maxwell, a mathematician and one
of the greatest authorities upon Electricity and its phenomena, said, years ago,
that Electricity was matter, not motion merely. "If we accept the hypothesis
that the elementary substances are composed of atoms we cannot avoid concluding
that electricity also, positive as well as negative, is divided into definite
elementary portions, which behave like atoms of electricity." (Helmholtz,
Faraday Lecture, 1881). We will go further than that, and assert that
Electricity is not only Substance but that it is an emanation from an Entity,
which is neither God nor Devil, but one of the numberless Entities that rule and
guide our world according to the eternal Law of KARMA. (See the Addendum to this
Book.)
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 112 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
principle, the animal Soul of Nature, so to say, or -- Electricity. In India,
Fohat is connected with Vishnu and Surya in the early character of the (first)
God; for Vishnu is not a high god in the Rig Veda. The name Vishnu is from the
root vish, "to pervade," and Fohat is called the "Pervader" and the
Manufacturer, because he shapes the atoms from crude material.* In the sacred
texts of the Rig Veda, Vishnu, also, is "a manifestation of the Solar Energy,"
and he is described as striding through the Seven regions of the Universe in
three steps, the Vedic God having little in common with the Vishnu of later
times. Therefore the two are identical in this particular feature, and one is
the copy of the other.
The "three and seven" strides refer to the Seven spheres inhabited by man, of
the esoteric Doctrine, as well as to the Seven regions of the Earth.
Notwithstanding the frequent objections made by would-be Orientalists, the Seven
Worlds or spheres of our planetary chain are distinctly referred to in the
exoteric Hindu scriptures. But how strangely all these numbers are connected
with like numbers in other Cosmogonies and with their symbols, can be seen from
comparisons and parallelisms made by students of old religions. The "three
strides of Vishnu" through the "seven regions of the Universe," of the Rig Veda,
have been variously explained by commentators as meaning "fire, lightning and
the Sun" cosmically; and as having been taken in the Earth, the atmosphere, and
the sky; also as the "three steps" of the dwarf (Vishnu's incarnation), though
more philosophically -- and in the astronomical sense, very correctly -- they
are explained by Aurnavabha as being the various positions of the sun, rising,
noon, and setting. Esoteric philosophy alone explains it clearly, and the Zohar
laid it down very philosophically and comprehensively. It is said and plainly
demonstrated therein that in the beginning the Elohim (Elhim) were called Echod,
"one," or the "Deity is one in many," a very simple idea in a pantheistic
conception (in its philosophical sense, of course). Then came the change,
"Jehovah is Elohim," thus unifying the multiplicity and taking the first step
towards Monotheism. Now to the query, "How is Jehovah Elohim?" the answer is,
"By three Steps" from below.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* It is well known that sand, when placed on a metal plate in vibration assumes
a series of regular curved figures of various descriptions. Can Science give a
complete explanation of this fact?
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 113 THE CORRELATION OF THE GODS.
The meaning is plain.* They are all symbols, and emblematic, mutually and
correlatively, of Spirit, Soul and Body (MAN); of the circle transformed into
Spirit, the Soul of the World, and its body (or Earth). Stepping out of the
Circle of Infinity, that no man comprehendeth, Ain-Soph (the Kabalistic synonym
for Parabrahm, for the Zeroana Akerne, of the Mazdeans, or for any other
"UNKNOWABLE") becomes "One" -- the ECHOD, the EKA, the AHU -- then he (or it) is
transformed by evolution into the One in many, the Dhyani-Buddhas or the Elohim,
or again the Amshaspends, his third Step being taken into generation of the
flesh, or "Man." And from man, or Jah-Hova, "male female," the inner divine
entity becomes, on the metaphysical plane, once more the Elohim.
The Kabalistic idea is identical with the Esotericism of the Archaic period.
This esotericism is the common property of all, and belongs neither to the Aryan
5th Race, nor to any of its numerous Sub-races. It cannot be claimed by the
Turanians, so-called, the Egyptians, Chinese, Chaldeans, nor any of the Seven
divisions of the Fifth Root Race, but really belongs to the Third and Fourth
Root Races, whose descendants we find in the Seed of the Fifth, the earliest
Aryans. The Circle was with every nation the symbol of the Unknown -- "Boundless
Space," the abstract garb of an ever present abstraction -- the Incognisable
Deity. It represents limitless Time in Eternity. The Zeroana Akerne is also the
"Boundless Circle of the Unknown Time," from which Circle issues the radiant
light -- the Universal SUN, or Ormazd** -- and the latter
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The numbers 3, 5, and 7 are prominent in speculative masonry, as shown in
"Isis." A mason writes: -- "There are the 3, 5, and 7 steps to show a circular
walk. The three faces of 3, 3; 5, 3; and 7, 3; etc., etc. Sometimes it comes in
this form -- 753/2 = 376.5 and 7635/2 = 3817.5 and the ratio of 20612/6561 feet
for cubit measure gives the Great Pyramid measures," etc., etc. Three, five and
seven are mystical numbers, and the last and the first are as greatly honoured
by Masons as by the Parsis -- the triangle being a symbol of Deity everywhere.
(See the Masonic Cyclopedia, and "Pythagorean Triangle," Oliver.) As a matter of
course, doctors of divinity (Cassel, for instance) show the Zohar explaining and
supporting the Christian trinity (!). It is the latter, however, that had its
origin from the of the Heathen, in the Archaic Occultism and Symbology. The
three strides relate metaphysically to the descent of Spirit into matter, of the
Logos falling as a ray into the Spirit, then into the Soul, and finally into the
human physical form of man, in which it becomes LIFE.
** Ormazd is the Logos, the "First Born" and the Sun.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 114 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
is identical with Kronos, in his AEolian form, that of a Circle. For the circle
is Sar, and Saros, or cycle, and was the Babylonian god whose circular horizon
was the visible symbol of the invisible, while the sun was the ONE Circle from
which proceeded the Cosmic orbs, and of which he was considered the leader.
Zero-ana, is the Chakra or circle of Vishnu, the mysterious emblem which is,
according to the definition of a mystic, "a curve of such a nature that as to
any, the least possible part thereof, if the curve be protracted either way it
will proceed and finally re-enter upon itself, and form one and the same curve
-- or that which we call the circle." No better definition could thus be given
of the natural symbol and the evident nature of Deity, which having its
circumference everywhere (the boundless) has, therefore, its central point also
everywhere; in other words, is in every point of the Universe. The invisible
Deity is thus also the Dhyan Chohans, or the Rishis, the primitive seven, and
the nine, without, and ten, including, their synthetical unit; from which IT
steps into Man. Returning to the Commentary (4) of Stanza IV. the reader will
understand why, while the trans-Himalayan Chakra has inscribed within it | |
(triangle, first line, cube second line, and a pentacle with a dot in the centre
thus: , and some other variations), the Kabalistic circle of the Elohim reveals,
when the letters of the word (Alhim or Elohim) are numerically read, the famous
numerals 13514, or by anagram 31415 -- the astronomical (pi) number, or the
hidden meaning of Dhyani-Buddhas, of the Gebers, the Geborim, the Kabeiri, and
the Elohim, all signifying "great men," "Titans," "Heavenly Men," and, on earth,
"the giants."
The Seven was a Sacred Number with every nation; but none applied it to more
physiologically materialistic uses than the Hebrews. With these it was
pre-eminently the generative number and 9 the male causative one, forming as
shown by the Kabalists the or otz -- "the Tree of the Garden of Eden,"* the
"double hermaphrodite rod" of the fourth race. Whereas with the Hindus and
Aryans generally, the significance was manifold, and related almost entirely to
purely metaphysical
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* This was the symbol of the "Holy of Holies," the 3 and the 4 of sexual
separation. Nearly every one of the 22 Hebrew letters are merely phallic
symbols. Of the two letters -- as shown above -- one, the ayin, is a negative
female letter, symbolically an eye; the other a male letter, tza, a fish-hook or
a dart.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 115 MANIFESTED SYMBOLS.
and astronomical truths.* Their Rishis and gods, their Demons and Heroes, have
historical and ethical meanings, and the Aryans never made their religion rest
solely on physiological symbols, as the old Hebrews have done. This is found in
the exoteric Hindu Scriptures. That these accounts are blinds is shown by their
contradicting each other, a different construction being found in almost every
Purana and epic poem. Read esoterically -- they will all yield the same meaning.
Thus one account enumerates Seven worlds, exclusive of the nether worlds, also
seven in number; these fourteen upper and nether worlds have
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* We are told by a Kabalist, who in a work not yet published contrasts the
Kabala and Zohar with Aryan Esotericism, that "The Hebrew clear, short, terse
and exact modes far and beyond measure surpass the toddling word-talk of the
Hindus -- just as by parallelisms the Psalmist says, 'My mouth speaks with my
tongue, I know not thy numbers' (lxxi., 15). . . . The Hindu Glyph shows by its
insufficiency in the large admixture of adventitious sides the same borrowed
plumage that the Greeks (the lying Greeks) had, and that Masonry has: which in
the rough monosyllabic (and apparent) poverty of the Hebrew, shows the latter to
have come down from a far more remote antiquity than any of these, and to have
been the source (!?), or nearer the old original source than any of them." This
is entirely erroneous. Our learned brother and correspondent judges apparently
the Hindu religious systems by their Shastras and Puranas, probably the latter,
and in their modern translation moreover, which is disfigured out of all
recognition, by the Orientalists. It is to their philosophical systems that one
has to turn, to their esoteric teaching, if he would make a point of comparison.
No doubt the symbology of the Pentateuch and even of the New Testament, comes
from the same source. But surely the Pyramid of Cheops, whose measurements are
all found repeated by Professor Piazzi Smythe in Solomon's alleged and mythical
temple, is not of a later date than the Mosaic books? Hence, if there is any
such great identity as claimed, it must be due to servile copying on the part of
the Jews, not on that of the Egyptians. The Jewish glyphs -- and even their
language, the Hebrew -- are not original. They are borrowed from the Egyptians,
from whom Moses got his Wisdom; from the Coptic, the probable kinsman, if not
parent, of the old Phoenician and from the Hyksos, their (alleged) ancestors, as
Josephus shows in his "Against Apion," I., 25. Aye; but who are the Hyksos
shepherds? And who the Egyptians? History knows nothing of the question, and
speculates and theorizes out of the depths of the respective consciousnesses of
her historians. (See Isis Unveiled, vol. II., p. 430-438.) "Khamism, or old
Coptic," says Bunsen, "is from Western Asia, and contains some germ of the
Semitic, thus bearing witness to the primitive cognate unity of the Aryan and
Semitic races"; and he places the great events in Egypt 9,000 years B.C. The
fact is that in archaic Esotericism and Aryan thought we find a grand
philosophy, whereas in the Hebrew records we find only the most surprising
ingenuity in inventing apotheoses for phallic worship and sexual theogony.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 116 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
nothing to do with the classification of the septenary chain and belong to the
purely aethereal, invisible worlds. These will be noticed elsewhere. Suffice for
the present to show that they are purposely referred to as though they belonged
to the chain. "Another enumeration calls the Seven worlds -- earth, sky, heaven,
middle region, place of birth, mansion of the blest, and abode of truth; placing
the 'Sons of Brahma' in the sixth division, and stating the fifth, or Jana Loka,
to be that where animals destroyed in the general conflagration are born again."
(see Hindu Classical Dictionary.) Some real esoteric teaching is given in the
"Symbolism." He who is prepared for it will understand the hidden meaning.
-------
STANZA V. -- Continued.
3. HE IS THEIR GUIDING SPIRIT AND LEADER. WHEN HE COMMENCES WORK, HE SEPARATES
THE SPARKS OF THE LOWER KINGDOM (mineral atoms) THAT FLOAT AND THRILL WITH JOY
IN THEIR RADIANT DWELLINGS (gaseous clouds), AND FORMS THEREWITH THE GERMS OF
WHEELS. HE PLACES THEM IN THE SIX DIRECTIONS OF SPACE AND ONE IN THE MIDDLE --
THE CENTRAL WHEEL (a).
(a) "Wheels," as already explained, are the centres of force, around which
primordial Cosmic matter expands, and, passing through all the six stages of
consolidation, becomes spheroidal and ends by being transformed into globes or
spheres. It is one of the fundamental dogmas of Esoteric Cosmogony, that during
the Kalpas (or aeons) of life, MOTION, which, during the periods of Rest
"pulsates and thrills through every slumbering atom"* (Commentary on Dzyan),
assumes an evergrowing
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
*It may be asked, as also the writer has not failed to ask, "Who is there to
ascertain the difference in that motion, since all nature is reduced to its
primal essence, and there can be no one -- not even one of the Dhyani-Chohans,
who are all in Nirvana -- to see it?" The answer to this is: "Everything in
Nature has to be judged by analogy. Though the highest Deities (Archangels or
Dhyani-Buddhas) are unable to penetrate the mysteries too far beyond our
planetary system and the visible Kosmos, yet there were great seers and prophets
in olden times who were enabled to perceive the mystery of Breath and Motion
retrospectively, when the systems of worlds were at rest and plunged in their
periodic sleep."
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 117 THE ANTIQUITY OF PHYSICAL SCIENCES.
tendency, from the first awakening of Kosmos to a new "Day," to circular
movement. The "Deity becomes a WHIRLWIND." They are also called Rotae -- the
moving wheels of the celestial orbs participating in the world's creation --
when the meaning refers to the animating principle of the stars and planets; for
in the Kabala, they are represented by the Ophanim, the Angels of the Spheres
and stars, of which they are the informing Souls. (See Kabala Denudata, "De
Anima," p. 113.)
This law of vortical movement in primordial matter, is one of the oldest
conceptions of Greek philosophy, whose first historical Sages were nearly all
Initiates of the Mysteries. The Greeks had it from the Egyptians, and the latter
from the Chaldeans, who had been the pupils of Brahmins of the esoteric school.
Leucippus, and Democritus of Abdera -- the pupil of the Magi -- taught that this
gyratory movement of the atoms and spheres existed from eternity.* Hicetas,
Heraclides, Ecphantus, Pythagoras, and all his pupils, taught the rotation of
the earth; and Aryabhata of India, Aristarchus, Seleucus, and Archimedes
calculated its revolution as scientifically as the astronomers do now; while the
theory of the Elemental Vortices was known to Anaxagoras, and maintained by him
500 years B.C., or nearly 2,000 before it was taken up by Galileo, Descartes,
Swedenborg, and finally, with slight modifications, by Sir W. Thomson. (See his
"Vortical Atoms.") All such knowledge, if justice be only done to it, is an echo
of the archaic doctrine, an attempt to explain which is now being made. How men
of the last few centuries have come to the same ideas and conclusions that were
taught as axiomatic truths in the secrecy of the Adyta dozens of
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
*"The doctrine of the rotation of the earth about an axis is taught by the
Pythagorean Hicetas, probably as early as 500 B.C. It was also taught by his
pupil Ecphantus, and by Heraclides, a pupil of Plato. The immobility of the Sun
and the orbital rotation of the earth were shown by Aristarchus of Samos as
early as 281 B.C. to be suppositions accordant with facts of observation. The
Heliocentric theory was taught about 150 B.C., by Seleucus of Seleucia on the
Tigris. -- [It was taught 500 B.C. by Pythagoras. -- H. P. B.] It is said also
that Archimedes, in a work entitled Psammites, inculcated the Heliocentric
theory. The sphericity of the earth was distinctly taught by Aristotle, who
appealed for proof to the figure of the Earth's shadow on the moon in eclipses
(Aristotle, De Coelo, lib. II, cap. XIV.). The same idea was defended by Pliny
(Nat. Hist., II., 65). These views seem to have been lost from knowledge for
more than a thousand years. . . ." (Comparative Geology, Part IV., "Pre-Kantian
Speculation," p. 551, by Alex. Winchell, LL.D.).
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 118 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
millenniums ago, is a question that is treated separately. Some were led to it
by the natural progress in physical science and by independent observation;
others -- such as Copernicus, Swedenborg, and a few more -- their great learning
notwithstanding, owed their knowledge far more to intuitive than to acquired
ideas, developed in the usual way by a course of study.* (See "A Mystery about
Buddha.")
By the "Six directions of Space" is here meant the "Double Triangle," the
junction and blending together of pure Spirit and Matter, of the Arupa and the
Rupa, of which the Triangles are a Symbol. This double Triangle is a sign of
Vishnu, as it is Solomon's seal, and the Sri-Antara of the Brahmins.
-------
STANZA V. -- (Continued.)
4. FOHAT TRACES SPIRAL LINES TO UNITE THE SIX TO THE SEVENTH -- THE CROWN (a);
AN ARMY OF THE SONS OF LIGHT STANDS AT EACH ANGLE (and) THE LIPIKA -- IN THE
MIDDLE WHEEL. THEY (the Lipika) SAY, "THIS IS GOOD" (b). THE FIRST DIVINE WORLD
IS READY, THE FIRST (is now), THE SECOND (world), THEN THE "DIVINE ARUPA" (the
formless Universe
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* That Swedenborg, who could not possibly have known anything of the esoteric
ideas of Buddhism, came independently near the Occult teaching in his general
conceptions, is shown by his essay on the Vortical Theory. In Clissold's
translation of it, quoted by Prof. Winchell, we find the following resume: --
"The first Cause is the Infinite or Unlimited. This gives existence to the First
Finite or Limited." (The Logos in His manifestation and the Universe.) "That
which produces a limit is analogous to motion. (See first Stanza, supra.) The
limit produced is a point, the Essence of which is Motion; but being without
parts, this Essence is not actual Motion, but only a connatus to it." (In our
Doctrine it is not a "connatus," but a change from eternal vibration in the
unmanifested, to Vortical Motion in the phenomenal or manifested World). . .
"From this first proceed Extension, Space, Figure, and Succession, or Time. As
in Geometry a point generates a line, a line a surface, and a surface a solid,
so here the connatus of a point tends towards lines, surfaces and solids. In
other words, the Universe is contained in ovo in the first natural point . . .
the Motion toward which the connatus tends, is circular, since the circle is the
most perfect of all figures . . . The most perfect figure of a Motion . . . must
be the perpetually circular, that is to say, it must proceed from the centre to
the periphery and from the periphery to the centre." (Quoted from Principia
Rerum Naturalia.) This is Occultism pure and simple.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 119 THE EVOLUTION OF THE PRINCIPLES.
of Thought) REFLECTS ITSELF IN CHHAYALOKA (the shadowy world of primal form, or
the intellectual) THE FIRST GARMENT OF (the) ANUPADAKA (c).
(a) This tracing of "Spiral lines" refers to the evolution of man's as well as
Nature's principles; an evolution which takes place gradually (as will be seen
in Book II., on "The origin of the Human Races"), as does everything else in
nature. The Sixth principle in Man (Buddhi, the Divine Soul) though a mere
breath, in our conceptions, is still something material when compared with
divine "Spirit" (Atma) of which it is the carrier or vehicle. Fohat, in his
capacity of DIVINE LOVE (Eros), the electric Power of affinity and sympathy, is
shown allegorically as trying to bring the pure Spirit, the Ray inseparable from
the ONE absolute, into union with the Soul, the two constituting in Man the
MONAD, and in Nature the first link between the ever unconditioned and the
manifested. "The first is now the second" (world) -- of the Lipikas -- has
reference to the same.
(b) The "Army" at each angle is the Host of angelic Beings (Dhyan-Chohans)
appointed to guide and watch over each respective region from the beginning to
the end of Manvantara. They are the "Mystic Watchers" of the Christian Kabalists
and Alchemists, and relate, symbolically as well as cosmogonically, to the
numerical system of the Universe. The numbers with which these celestial Beings
are connected are extremely difficult to explain, as each number refers to
several groups of distinct ideas, according to the particular group of "Angels"
which it is intended to represent. Herein lies the nodus in the study of
symbology, with which, unable to untie by disentangling it, so many scholars
have preferred dealing as Alexander dealt with the Gordian knot; hence erroneous
conceptions and teachings, as a direct result.
The "First is the Second," because the "First" cannot really be numbered or
regarded as the First, as that is the realm of noumena in its primary
manifestation: the threshold to the World of Truth, or SAT, through which the
direct energy that radiates from the ONE REALITY -- the Nameless Deity --
reaches us. Here again, the untranslateable term SAT (Be-ness) is likely to lead
into an erroneous conception, since that which is manifested cannot be SAT, but
is something phenomenal, not everlasting, nor, in truth, even sempiternal. It is
coeval and
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 120 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
coexistent with the One Life, "Secondless," but as a manifestation it is still a
Maya -- like the rest. This "World of Truth" can be described only in the words
of the Commentary as "A bright star dropped from the heart of Eternity; the
beacon of hope on whose Seven Rays hang the Seven Worlds of Being." Truly so;
since those are the Seven Lights whose reflections are the human immortal Monads
-- the Atma, or the irradiating Spirit of every creature of the human family.
First, this septenary Light; then: --
(c) The "Divine World" -- the countless Lights lit at the primeval Light -- the
Buddhis, or formless divine Souls, of the last Arupa (formless) world; the "Sum
Total," in the mysterious language of the old Stanza. In the Catechism, the
Master is made to ask the pupil: --
"Lift thy head, oh Lanoo; dost thou see one, or countless lights above thee,
burning in the dark midnight sky?"
"I sense one Flame, oh Gurudeva, I see countless undetached sparks shining in
it."
"Thou sayest well. And now look around and into thyself. That light which burns
inside thee, dost thou feel it different in anywise from the light that shines
in thy Brother-men?"
"It is in no way different, though the prisoner is held in bondage by Karma, and
though its outer garments delude the ignorant into saying, 'Thy Soul and My
Soul.' "
The radical unity of the ultimate essence of each constituent part of compounds
in Nature -- from Star to mineral Atom, from the highest Dhyan Chohan to the
smallest infusoria, in the fullest acceptation of the term, and whether applied
to the spiritual, intellectual, or physical worlds -- this is the one
fundamental law in Occult Science. "The Deity is boundless and infinite
expansion," says an Occult axiom; and hence, as remarked, the name of Brahma.*
There is a deep philosophy underlying the earliest worship in the world, that of
the Sun and of Fire. Of all the Elements known to physical science, Fire is the
one that has ever eluded definite analysis. It is confidently asserted that
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* In the Rig Veda we find the names Brahmanaspati and Brihaspati alternating and
equivalent to each other. Also see "Brihad Upanishad"; Brihaspati is a deity
called "the Father of the gods."
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 121 THE MYSTERY OF THE FIRE.
Air is a mixture containing the gases Oxygen and Nitrogen. We view the Universe
and the Earth as matter composed of definite chemical molecules. We speak of the
primitive ten Earths, endowing each with a Greek or Latin name. We say that
water is, chemically, a compound of Oxygen and Hydrogen. But what is FIRE? It is
the effect of combustion, we are gravely answered. It is heat and light and
motion, and a correlation of physical and chemical forces in general. And this
scientific definition is philosophically supplemented by the theological one in
Webster's Dictionary, which explains fire as "the instrument of punishment, or
the punishment of the impenitent in another state" -- the "state," by the bye,
being supposed to be spiritual; but, alas! the presence of fire would seem to be
a convincing proof of its material nature. Yet, speaking of the illusion of
regarding phenomena as simple, because they are familiar, Professor Bain says
(Logic. Part II.): "Very familiar facts seem to stand in no need of explanation
themselves and to be the means of explaining whatever can be assimilated to
them. Thus, the boiling and evaporation of a liquid is supposed to be a very
simple phenomenon requiring no explanation, and a satisfactory explanation of
rarer phenomena. That water should dry up is, to the uninstructed mind, a thing
wholly intelligible; whereas to the man acquainted with physical science the
liquid state is anomalous and inexplicable. The lighting of a fire by a flame is
a GREAT SCIENTIFIC DIFFICULTY, yet few people think so" (p. 125).
What says the esoteric teaching with regard to fire? "Fire," it says, "is the
most perfect and unadulterated reflection, in Heaven as on Earth, of the ONE
FLAME. It is Life and Death, the origin and the end of every material thing. It
is divine 'SUBSTANCE.' " Thus, not only the FIRE-WORSHIPPER, the Parsee, but
even the wandering savage tribes of America, which proclaim themselves "born of
fire," show more science in their creeds and truth in their superstitions, than
all the speculations of modern physics and learning. The Christian who says:
"God is a living Fire," and speaks of the Pentecostal "Tongues of Fire" and of
the "burning bush" of Moses, is as much a fire-worshipper as any other
"heathen." The Rosicrucians, among all the mystics and Kabalists, were those who
defined Fire in the right and most correct way. Procure a sixpenny lamp, keep it
only supplied with oil, and you will be able to light at its flame the lamps,
candles,
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 122 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
and fires of the whole globe without diminishing that flame. If the Deity, the
radical One, is eternal and an infinite substance ("the Lord thy God is a
consuming fire") and never consumed, then it does not seem reasonable that the
Occult teaching should be held as unphilosophical when it says: "Thus were the
Arupa and Rupa worlds formed: from ONE light seven lights; from each of the
seven, seven times seven," etc., etc.
-------
STANZA V. -- Continued.
5. FOHAT TAKES FIVE STRIDES (having already taken the first three) (a), AND
BUILDS A WINGED WHEEL AT EACH CORNER OF THE SQUARE FOR THE FOUR HOLY ONES . . .
. . AND THEIR ARMIES (hosts) (b).
(a) The "strides," as already explained (see Commentary on Stanza IV.), refer to
both the Cosmic and the Human principles -- the latter of which consist, in the
exoteric division, of three (Spirit, Soul, and Body), and, in the esoteric
calculation, of seven principles -- three rays of the Essence and four aspects.*
Those who have studied Mr. Sinnett's "Esoteric Buddhism" can easily grasp the
nomenclature. There are two esoteric schools -- or rather one school, divided
into two parts -- one for the inner Lanoos, the other for the outer or semi-lay
chelas beyond the Himalayas; the first teaching a septenary, the other a
six-fold division of human principles.
From a Cosmic point of view, Fohat taking "five strides" refers here to the five
upper planes of Consciousness and Being, the sixth and the seventh (counting
downwards) being the astral and the terrestrial, or the two lower planes.
(b) "Four winged wheels at each corner . . . . . for the four holy ones and
their armies (hosts)" . . . . . These are the "four Maharajahs" or great Kings
of the Dhyan-Chohans, the Devas who preside, each over one of the four cardinal
points. They are the Regents or Angels who rule over the Cosmical Forces of
North, South,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The four aspects are the body, its life or vitality, and the "Double" of the
body, the triad which disappears with the death of the person, and the Kama-rupa
which disintegrates in Kama-loka.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 123 THE SECRET OF THE ELEMENTS.
East and West, Forces having each a distinct occult property. These BEINGS are
also connected with Karma, as the latter needs physical and material agents to
carry out her decrees, such as the four kinds of winds, for instance,
professedly admitted by Science to have their respective evil and beneficent
influences upon the health of Mankind and every living thing. There is occult
philosophy in that Roman Catholic doctrine which traces the various public
calamities, such as epidemics of disease, and wars, and so on, to the invisible
"Messengers" from North and West. "The glory of God comes from the way of the
East" says Ezekiel; while Jeremiah, Isaiah, and the Psalmist assure their
readers that all the evil under the Sun comes from the North and the West --
which proposition, when applied to the Jewish nation, sounds like an undeniable
prophecy for themselves. And this accounts also for St. Ambrose (On Amos, ch.
iv.) declaring that it is precisely for that reason that "we curse the
North-Wind, and that during the ceremony of baptism we begin by turning towards
the West (Sidereal), to renounce the better him who inhabits it; after which we
turn to the East."
Belief in the "Four Maharajahs" -- the Regents of the Four cardinal points --
was universal and is now that of Christians,* who call them, after St.
Augustine, "Angelic Virtues," and "Spirits" when enumerated by themselves, and
"Devils" when named by Pagans. But where is the difference between the Pagans
and the Christians in this cause? Following Plato, Aristotle explained that the
term [[stoicheia]] was understood only as meaning the incorporeal principles
placed at each of the four great divisions of our Cosmical world to supervise
them. Thus, no more than the Christians did, do they adore and worship the
Elements and the cardinal (imaginary) points, but the "gods" that ruled these
respectively. For the Church there are two kinds of Sidereal beings, the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Says the scholarly Vossius, in his Theol. Cir. I. VII.: "Though St. Augustine
has said that every visible thing in this world had an angelic virtue as an
overseer near it, it is not individuals but entire species of things that must
be understood, each such species having indeed its particular angel to watch it.
He is at one in this with all the philosophers . . . For us these angels are
spirits separated from the objects . . . whereas for the philosophers (pagan)
they were gods." Considering the Ritual established by the Roman Catholic Church
for "Spirits of the Stars," the latter look suspiciously like "Gods," and were
no more honoured and prayed to by the ancient and modern pagan rabble than they
are now at Rome by the highly cultured Catholic Christians.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 124 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
Angels and the Devils. For the Kabalist and Occultist there is but one; and
neither of them makes any difference between "the Rectors of Light" and the
Cosmocratores, or "Rectores tenebrarum harum," whom the Roman Church imagines
and discovers in a "Rector of Light" as soon as he is called by another name
than the one she addresses him by. It is not the "Rector" or "Maharajah" who
punishes or rewards, with or without "God's" permission or order, but man
himself -- his deeds or Karma, attracting individually and collectively (as in
the case of whole nations sometimes), every kind of evil and calamity. We
produce CAUSES, and these awaken the corresponding powers in the sidereal world;
which powers are magnetically and irresistibly attracted to -- and react upon --
those who produced these causes; whether such persons are practically the
evil-doers, or simply Thinkers who brood mischief. Thought is matter,* we are
taught by modern Science; and "every particle of the existing matter must be a
register of all that has happened," as in their "Principles of Science" Messrs.
Jevons and Babbage tell the profane. Modern Science is drawn more every day into
the maelstrom of Occultism; unconsciously, no doubt, still very sensibly. The
two main theories of science -- re the relations between Mind and Matter -- are
Monism and Materialism. These two cover the whole ground of negative psychology
with the exception of the quasi-occult views of the pantheistic German
schools.**
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Not of course in the sense of the German Materialist Moleschott, who assures
us that "Thought is the movement of matter," a statement of almost unequalled
absurdity. Mental states and bodily states are utterly contrasted as such. But
that does not affect the position that every thought, in addition to its
physical accompaniment (brain-change), exhibits an objective -- though to us
supersensuously objective -- aspect on the astral plane. (See "The Occult
World," pp. 89, 90.)
** The views of our present-day scientific thinkers as to the relations between
mind and matter may be reduced to two hypotheses. These show that both views
equally exclude the possibility of an independent Soul, distinct from the
physical brain through which it functions. They are: --
(1.) MATERIALISM, the theory which regards mental phenomena as the product of
molecular change in the brain; i.e., as the outcome of a transformation of
motion into feeling (!). The cruder school once went so far as to identify mind
with a "peculiar mode of motion" (!!), but this view is now happily regarded as
absurd by most of the men of science themselves.
(2.) MONISM, or the Single Substance Doctrine, is the more subtle form of
negative psychology, which one of its advocates, Professor Bain, ably terms
"guarded [[Footnote continued on next page]]
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 125 THE REAL MEANING OF THE TABERNACLE.
In the Egyptian temples, according to Clemens Alexandrinus, an immense curtain
separated the tabernacle from the place for the congregation. The Jews had the
same. In both, the curtain was drawn over five pillars (the Pentacle)
symbolising our five senses and five Root-races esoterically, while the four
colours of the curtain represented the four cardinal points and the four
terrestrial elements. The whole was an allegorical symbol. It is through the
four high Rulers over the four points and Elements that our five senses may
become cognisant of the hidden truths of Nature; and not at all, as Clemens
would have it, that it is the elements per se that furnished the Pagans with
divine Knowledge or the knowledge of God.* While the Egyptian emblem was
spiritual, that of the Jews was purely materialistic, and, indeed, honoured only
the blind Elements and the imaginary "Points." For what was the meaning of the
square tabernacle raised by Moses in the wilderness, if it had not the same
cosmical significance? "Thou shalt make an hanging . . . of blue, purple, and
scarlet" and "five pillars of shittim wood for the hanging . . . four brazen
rings in the four corners thereof . . . boards of fine wood for the four sides,
North, South, West, and East . . . of the Tabernacle . . . with Cherubims of
cunning work." (Exodus, ch. xxvi., xxvii.) The Tabernacle and the square
courtyard, Cherubim and all, were precisely the same as those in the Egyptian
temples. The square form of the Tabernacle meant just the same thing as it still
means, to this day, in the exoteric worship of the Chinese and Tibetans -- the
four cardinal points signifying that which the four sides of the pyramids,
obelisks, and other such square erections mean. Josephus takes care to explain
the whole thing. He declares that the Tabernacle pillars are the same
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] Materialism." This doctrine, which
commands a very wide assent, counting among its upholders such men as Lewis,
Spencer, Ferrier, and others, while positing thought and mental phenomena
generally as radically contrasted with matter, regards both as equal to the two
sides, or aspects, of one and the same substance in some of its conditions.
Thought as thought, they say, is utterly contrasted with material phenomena, but
it must be also regarded as only "the subjective side of nervous motion"
whatever our learned men may mean by this.
* Thus the sentence, "Natura Elementorum obtinet revelationem Dei," (In
Clemens's Stromata, R. IV., para. 6), is applicable to both or neither. Consult
the Zends, vol II., p. 228, and Plutarch De Iside, as compared by Layard,
Academie des Inscriptions, 1854, Vol. XV.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 126 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
as those raised at Tyre to the four Elements, which were placed on pedestals
whose four angles faced the four cardinal points: adding that "the angles of the
pedestals had equally the four figures of the Zodiac" on them, which represented
the same orientation (Antiquities I., VIII., ch. xxii.).
The idea may be traced in the Zoroastrian caves, in the rock-cut temples of
India, as in all the sacred square buildings of antiquity that have survived to
this day. This is shown definitely by Layard, who finds the four cardinal
points, and the four primitive elements, in the religion of every country, under
the shape of square obelisks, the four sides of the pyramids, etc., etc. Of
these elements and their points the four Maharajahs were the regents and the
directors.
If the student would know more of them, he has but to compare the Vision of
Ezekiel (chap. i.) with what is known of Chinese Buddhism (even in its exoteric
teachings); and examine the outward shape of these "Great Kings." In the opinion
of the Rev. Joseph Edkins, they are "the Devas who preside each over one of the
four continents into which the Hindus divide the world."* Each leads an army of
spiritual beings to protect mankind and Buddhism. With the exception of
favouritism towards Buddhism, the four celestial beings are precisely this. They
are the protectors of mankind and also the Agents of Karma on Earth, whereas the
Lipika are concerned with Humanity's hereafter. At the same time they are the
four living creatures "who have the likeness of a man" of Ezekiel's visions,
called by the translators of the Bible, "Cherubim," "Seraphim," etc.; and by the
Occultists, "the winged Globes," the "Fiery Wheels," and in the Hindu Pantheon
by a number of different names. All these Gandharvas, the "Sweet Songsters," the
Asuras, Kinnaras, and Nagas, are the allegorical descriptions of the "four
Maharajahs." The Seraphim are the fiery Serpents of Heaven which we find in a
passage describing Mount Meru as: "the exalted mass of glory, the venerable
haunt of gods and heavenly choristers . . . . not to be reached by sinful men .
. . . because guarded by Serpents." They are called the Avengers, and the
"Winged Wheels."
Their mission and character being explained, let us see what the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
*The Hindus happen to divide the world into seven continents, exoterically as
esoterically; and their four cosmic Devas are eight, presiding over the eight
points of the compass and not the Continents. (Compare "Chinese Buddhism," p.
216.)
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 127 THE DRAGONS OF SECRET WISDOM.
Christian Bible-interpreters say of the Cherubim: -- "The word signifies in
Hebrew, fullness of knowledge; these angels are so called from their exquisite
Knowledge, and were therefore used for the punishment of men who affected divine
Knowledge." (Interpreted by Cruden in his Concordance, from Genesis iii., 24.)
Very well; and vague as the information is, it shows that the Cherub placed at
the gate of the garden of Eden after the "Fall," suggested to the venerable
Interpreters the idea of punishment connected with forbidden Science or divine
Knowledge -- one that generally leads to another "Fall," that of the gods, or
"God," in man's estimation. But as the good old Cruden knew nought of Karma, he
may be forgiven. Yet the allegory is suggestive. From Meru, the abode of gods,
to Eden, the distance is very small, and from the Hindu Serpents to the Ophite
Cherubim, the third out of the seven of which was the Dragon, the separation is
still smaller, for both watched the entrance to the realm of Secret Knowledge.
But Ezekiel plainly describes the four Cosmic Angels: "I looked, and behold, a
whirlwind, a cloud and fire infolding it . . . also out of the midst thereof
came the likeness of four living creatures . . . they had the likeness of a man.
And every one had four faces and four wings . . . the face of a man, and the
face of a lion, the face of an ox, and the face of an eagle . . . " ("Man" was
here substituted for "Dragon." Compare the "Ophite Spirits."*) . . . "Now as I
beheld the living creatures behold one wheel upon the Earth with his four faces
. . . as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel . . . for the support of the
living creature was in the wheel . . . their appearance was like coals of fire .
. ." etc. (Ezekiel, ch. i.)
There are three chief groups of Builders and as many of the Planetary Spirits
and the Lipika, each group being again divided into Seven sub-groups. It is
impossible, even in such a large work as this, to enter into a minute
examination of even the three principal groups, as it would demand an extra
volume. The "Builders" are the representatives of the first "Mind-Born"
Entities, therefore of the primeval Rishi-Prajapati: also of the Seven great
Gods of Egypt, of which Osiris is the chief: of the Seven Amshaspends of the
Zoroastrians, with
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The Angels recognised by the Roman Catholic Church who correspond to these
"Faces" were with the Ophites: -- Dragon -- Raphael; Lion -- Michael; Bull, or
ox -- Uriel; and Eagle -- Gabriel. The four keep company with the four
Evangelists, and preface the Gospels.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 128 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
Ormazd at their head: or the "Seven Spirits of the Face": the Seven Sephiroth
separated from the first Triad, etc., etc.*
They build or rather rebuild every "System" after the "Night." The Second group
of the Builders is the Architect of our planetary chain exclusively; and the
third, the progenitor of our Humanity -- the Macrocosmic prototype of the
microcosm.
The Planetary Spirits are the informing spirits of the Stars in general, and of
the Planets especially. They rule the destinies of men who are all born under
one or other of their constellations; the second and third groups pertaining to
other systems have the same functions, and all rule various departments in
Nature. In the Hindu exoteric Pantheon they are the guardian deities who preside
over the eight points of the compass -- the four cardinal and the four
intermediate points -- and are called Loka-Palas, "Supporters or guardians of
the World" (in our visible Kosmos), of which Indra (East), Yama (South), Varuna
(West), and Kuvera (North) are the chief; their elephants and their spouses
pertaining of course to fancy and afterthought, though all of them have an
occult significance.
The Lipika (a description of whom is given in the Commentary on Stanza IV. No.
6) are the Spirits of the Universe, whereas the Builders are only our own
planetary deities. The former belong to the most occult portion of Cosmogenesis,
which cannot be given here. Whether the Adepts (even the highest) know this
angelic order in the completeness of its triple degrees, or only the lower one
connected with the records of our world, is something which the writer is
unprepared to say, and she would incline rather to the latter supposition. Of
its highest grade one thing only is taught: the Lipika are connected with Karma
-- being its direct Recorders.**
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The Jews, save the Kabalists, having no names for East, West, South, and
North, expressed the idea by words signifying before, behind, right and left,
and very often confounded the terms exoterically, thus making the blinds in the
Bible more confused and difficult to interpret. Add to this the fact that out of
the forty-seven translators of King James I. of England's Bible "only three
understood Hebrew, and of these two died before the Psalms were translated"
(Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia), and one may easily understand what reliance can be
placed on the English version of the Bible. In this work the Douay Roman
Catholic version is generally followed.
** The Symbol for Sacred and Secret Knowledge was universally in antiquity, a
Tree, by which a Scripture or a Record was also meant. Hence the word Lipika,
the [[Footnote continued on next page]]
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 129 THE LIPIKA.
STANZA V. -- Continued.
6. THE LIPIKA CIRCUMSCRIBE THE TRIANGLE, THE FIRST ONE (the vertical line or the
figure 1.), THE CUBE, THE SECOND ONE, AND THE PENTACLE WITHIN THE EGG (circle)
(a). IT IS THE RING CALLED "PASS NOT," FOR THOSE WHO DESCEND AND ASCEND (as also
for those) WHO, DURING THE KALPA, ARE PROGRESSING TOWARD THE GREAT DAY "BE WITH
US" (b). . . . THUS WERE FORMED THE ARUPA AND THE RUPA (the Formless World and
the World of Forms); FROM ONE LIGHT SEVEN LIGHTS; FROM EACH OF THE SEVEN SEVEN
TIMES SEVEN LIGHTS. THE "WHEELS" WATCH THE RING.
The Stanza proceeds with a minute classification of the Orders of Angelic
Hierarchy. From the group of Four and Seven emanates the "mind-born" group of
Ten, of Twelve, of Twenty-one, etc., all these divided again into sub-groups of
septenaries, novenaries, duodecimals, and so on, until the mind is lost in this
endless enumeration of celestial hosts and Beings, each having its distinct task
in the ruling of the visible Kosmos during its existence.
(a) The esoteric meaning of the first sentence of the Sloka is, that those who
have been called Lipikas, the Recorders of the Karmic ledger, make an impassible
barrier between the personal EGO and the impersonal SELF, the Noumenon and
Parent-Source of the former. Hence the allegory. They circumscribe the
manifested world of matter within the RING "Pass-Not." This world is the symbol
(objective) of the ONE divided into the many, on the planes of Illusion, of Adi
(the "First") or of Eka (the "One"); and this One is the collective aggregate,
or totality, of the principal Creators or Architects of this visible universe.
In Hebrew Occultism their name is both Achath, feminine, "One," and Achod, "One"
again, but masculine. The monotheists have taken (and are still taking)
advantage of the profound esotericism of the Kabala to apply the name by which
the One Supreme Essence is known to ITS manifestation, the Sephiroth-Elohim, and
call it Jehovah. But this is
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] "writers" or scribes; the "Dragons,"
symbols of wisdom, who guard the Trees of Knowledge; the "golden" apple Tree of
the Hesperides; the "Luxuriant Trees" and vegetation of Mount Meru guarded by a
Serpent. Juno giving to Jupiter, on her marriage with him, a Tree with golden
fruit is another form of Eve offering Adam the apple from the Tree of Knowledge.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 130 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
quite arbitrary and against all reason and logic, as the term Elohim is a plural
noun, identical with the plural word Chiim, often compounded with the Elohim.*
Moreover, in Occult metaphysics there are, properly speaking, two "ONES" -- the
One on the unreachable plane of Absoluteness and Infinity, on which no
speculation is possible, and the Second "One" on the plane of Emanations. The
former can neither emanate nor be divided, as it is eternal, absolute, and
immutable. The Second, being, so to speak, the reflection of the first One (for
it is the Logos, or Iswara, in the Universe of Illusion), can do all this.** It
emanates from itself -- as the upper Sephirothal Triad emanates the lower seven
Sephiroth -- the seven Rays or Dhyan Chohans; in other words, the Homogeneous
becomes the Heterogeneous, the "Protyle" differentiates into the Elements. But
these, unless they return into their primal Element, can never cross beyond the
Laya, or zero-point.
Hence the allegory. The Lipika separate the world (or plane) of pure spirit from
that of Matter. Those who "descend and ascend" -- the incarnating Monads, and
men striving towards purification and "ascending," but still not having quite
reached the goal -- may cross the "circle of the Pass-Not," only on the day
"Be-With-Us"; that day when man, freeing himself from the trammels of ignorance,
and recog-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The sentence in the Sepher Jezirah and elsewhere: "Achath-Ruach-Elohim-Chiim"
denotes the Elohim as androgynous at best, the feminine element almost
predominating, as it would read: "ONE is She the Spirit of the Elohim of Life."
As said above, Echath (or Achath) is feminine, and Echod (or Achod) masculine,
both meaning ONE.
** This metaphysical tenet can hardly be better described than Mr. Subba Row's
in "Bhagavadgita" lectures: "Mulaprakriti (the veil of Parabrahmam) acts as the
one energy through the Logos (or 'Eswara'). Now Parabrahmam, is the one essence
from which starts into existence a centre of energy, which I shall for the
present call the Logos. . . . It is called the Verbum . . . by the Christians,
and it is the divine Christos who is eternal in the bosom of his father. It is
called Avalokiteshwara by the Buddhists. . . . In almost every doctrine, they
have formulated the existence of a centre of spiritual energy which is unborn
and eternal, and which exists in the bosom of Parabrahmam at the time of
Pralaya, and starts as a centre of conscious energy at the time of Cosmic
activity. . . ." For, as the lecturer premised by saying, Parabraham is not this
or that, it is not even consciousness, as it cannot be related to matter or
anything conditioned. It is not Ego nor is it Non-ego, not even Atma, but verily
the one source of all manifestations and modes of existence.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 131 THE SIDEREAL BOOK OF LIFE.
nising fully the non-separateness of the Ego within his personality --
erroneously regarded as his own -- from the UNIVERSAL EGO (Anima Supra-Mundi),
merges thereby into the One Essence to become not only one "with us" (the
manifested universal lives which are "ONE" LIFE), but that very life itself.
Astronomically, the "Ring PASS-NOT" that the Lipika trace around the Triangle,
the First One, the Cube, the Second One, and the Pentacle to circumscribe these
figures, is thus shown to contain the symbol of 31415 again, or the coefficient
constantly used in mathematical tables (the value of , pi), the geometrical
figures standing here for numerical figures. According to the general
philosophical teachings, this ring is beyond the region of what are called
nebulae in astronomy. But this is as erroneous a conception as that of the
topography and the descriptions, given in Puranic and other exoteric Scriptures,
about the 1008 worlds of the Devaloka worlds and firmaments. There are worlds,
of course, in the esoteric as well as in the profane scientific teachings, at
such incalculable distances that the light of the nearest of them which has just
reached our modern Chaldees, had left its luminary long before the day on which
the words "Let there be Light" were pronounced; but these are no worlds on the
Devaloka plane, but in our Kosmos.
The chemist goes to the laya or zero point of the plane of matter with which he
deals, and then stops short. The physicist or the astronomer counts by billions
of miles beyond the nebulae, and then they also stop short; the semi-initiated
Occultist will represent this laya-point to himself as existing on some plane
which, if not physical, is still conceivable to the human intellect. But the
full Initiate knows that the ring "Pass-Not" is neither a locality nor can it be
measured by distance, but that it exists in the absoluteness of infinity. In
this "Infinity" of the full Initiate there is neither height, breadth nor
thickness, but all is fathomless profundity, reaching down from the physical to
the "para-para-metaphysical." In using the word "down," essential depth --
"nowhere and everywhere" -- is meant, not depth of physical matter.
If one searches carefully through the exoteric and grossly anthropomorphic
allegories of popular religions, even in these the doctrine embodied in the
circle of "Pass-Not" thus guarded by the Lipika, may be dimly perceived. Thus
one finds it even in the teachings of
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 132 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
the Vedantin sect of the Visishtadwaita, the most tenaciously anthropomorphic in
all India. For we read of the released soul that: --
After reaching Moksha (a state of bliss meaning "release from Bandha" or
bondage), bliss is enjoyed by it in a place called PARAMAPADHA, which place is
not material, but made of Suddasatwa (the essence, of which the body of Iswara
-- "the Lord" -- is formed). There, Muktas or Jivatmas (Monads) who have
attained Moksha, are never again subject to the qualities of either matter or
Karma. "But if they choose, for the sake of doing good to the world, they may
incarnate on Earth."* The way to Paramapadha, or the immaterial worlds, from
this world, is called Devayana. When a person has attained Moksha and the body
dies: --
"The Jiva (Soul) goes with Sukshma Sarira** from the heart of the body, to the
Brahmarandra in the crown of the head, traversing Sushumna, a nerve connecting
the heart with the Brahmarandra. The Jiva breaks through the Brahmarandra and
goes to the region of the Sun (Suryamandala) through the solar Rays. Then it
goes, through a dark spot in the Sun, to Paramapadha. The Jiva is directed on
its way by the Supreme Wisdom acquired by Yoga.*** The Jiva thus proceeds to
Paramapadha by the aid of Athivahikas (bearers in transit), known by the names
of Archi-Ahas . . . Aditya, Prajapati, etc. The Archis here mentioned are
certain pure Souls, etc., etc." (Visishtadwaita Catechism, by Pundit
Bhashyacharya, F.T.S.)
No Spirit except the "Recorders" (Lipika) has ever crossed its forbidden line,
nor will any do so until the day of the next Pralaya, for it is the boundary
that separates the finite -- however infinite in man's sight -- from the truly
INFINITE. The Spirits referred to, therefore, as those who "ascend and descend"
are the "Hosts" of what we loosely call "celestial Beings." But they are, in
fact, nothing of the kind.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* These voluntary re-incarnations are referred to in our Doctrine as
Nirmanakayas (the surviving spiritual principles of men).
** Sukshma-sarira, "dream-like" illusive body, with which are clothed the
inferior Dhyanis of the celestial Hierarchy.
*** Compare this esoteric tenet with the Gnostic doctrine found in
"Pistis-Sophia" (Knowledge = Wisdom), in which treatise Sophia Achamoth is shown
lost in the waters of Chaos (matter), on her way to Supreme Light, and Christos
delivering and helping her on the right Path. Note well, "Christos" with the
Gnostics meant the impersonal principal, the Atman of the Universe, and the Atma
within every man's soul -- not Jesus; though in the old Coptic MSS. in the
British Museum "Christos" is almost constantly replaced by "Jesus."
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 133 THE GOD OF MAN AND THE GOD OF THE ANT.
They are Entities of the higher worlds in the hierarchy of Being, so
immeasurably high that, to us, they must appear as Gods, and collectively --
GOD. But so we, mortal men, must appear to the ant, which reasons on the scale
of its special capacities. The ant may also, for all we know, see the avenging
finger of a personal God in the hand of the urchin who, in one moment, under the
impulse of mischief, destroys its anthill, the labour of many weeks -- long
years in the chronology of insects. The ant, feeling it acutely, and attributing
the undeserved calamity to a combination of Providence and sin, may also, like
man, see in it the result of the sin of its first parent. Who knows and who can
affirm or deny? The refusal to admit in the whole Solar system of any other
reasonable and intellectual beings on the human plane, than ourselves, is the
greatest conceit of our age. All that science has a right to affirm, is that
there are no invisible Intelligences living under the same conditions as we do.
It cannot deny point-blank the possibility of there being worlds within worlds,
under totally different conditions to those that constitute the nature of our
world; nor can it deny that there may be a certain limited communication*
between some of those worlds and our own. To the highest, we are taught, belong
the seven orders of the purely divine Spirits; to the six lower ones belong
hierarchies that can occasionally be seen and heard by men, and who do
communicate with their progeny of the Earth; which progeny is indissolubly
linked with them, each principle in man having its direct source in the nature
of those great Beings, who furnish us with the respective invisible elements in
us. Physical Science is welcome to speculate upon the physiological mechanism of
living beings, and to continue her fruitless efforts in trying to resolve our
feelings, our sensations, mental and spiritual, into functions of their
inorganic vehicles. Nevertheless, all that will ever be accomplished in this
direction has already been done, and Science will go no farther.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The greatest philosopher of European birth, Imanuel Kant, assures us that such
a communication is in no way improbable. "I confess I am much disposed to assert
the existence of Immaterial natures in the world, and to place my own soul in
the class of these beings. It will hereafter, I know not where, or when, yet be
proved that the human soul stands even in this life in indissoluble connection
with all immaterial natures in the spirit-world, that it reciprocally acts upon
these and receives impressions from them." (Traume eines Geistersehers, quoted
by C. C. Massey, in his preface to Von Hartmann's "Spiritismus.")
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 134 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
She is before a dead wall, on the face of which she traces, as she imagines,
great physiological and psychic discoveries, but every one of which will be
shown later on to be no better than the cobwebs spun by her scientific fancies
and illusions. The tissues of our objective framework alone are subservient to
the analysis and researches of physiological science.* The six higher principles
in them will evade for ever the hand that is guided by an animus that purposely
ignores and rejects the Occult Sciences.
The "Great Day of BE-WITH-US," then, is an expression the only merit of which
lies in its literal translation. Its significance is not so easily revealed to a
public, unacquainted with the mystic tenets of Occultism, or rather of Esoteric
Wisdom or "Budhism." It is an expression peculiar to the latter, and as hazy for
the profane as that of the Egyptians who called the same the "Day of
COME-TO-US,"** which
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* E.g., all that modern physiological research in connection with psychological
problems has, and owing to the nature of things, could have shown, is, that
every thought, sensation, and emotion is attended with a re-marshalling of the
molecules of certain nerves. The inference drawn by scientists of the type of
Buchner, Vogt, and others, that thought is molecular motion, necessitates a
complete abstraction being made of the fact of our subjective consciousness.
** See "Le Livre des Morts," by Paul Pierret; "Le Jour de 'Viens a nous' . . .
c'est le jour ou Osiris a dit au Soleil: Viens! Je le vois rencontrant le Soleil
dans l'Amenti." (Chap. xvii., p. 61.) The Sun here stands for the Logos (or
Christos, or Horus) as central Essence synthetically, and as a diffused essence
of radiated Entities, different in substance, but not in essence. As expressed
by the Bhagavadgita lecturer, "it must not be supposed that the Logos is but a
single centre of energy manifested from Parabrahmam; there are innumerable other
centres . . . and their number is almost infinite in the bosom of Parabrahmam."
Hence the expressions, "The Day of Come to us" and "The Day of Be with us," etc.
Just as the square is the Symbol of the Four sacred Forces or Powers --
Tetraktis -- so the Circle shows the boundary within the Infinity that no man
can cross, even in spirit, nor Deva nor Dhyan Chohan. The Spirits of those who
"descend and ascend" during the course of cyclic evolution shall cross the
"iron-bound world" only on the day of their approach to the threshold of
Paranirvana. If they reach it -- they will rest in the bosom of Parabrahmam, or
the "Unknown Darkness," which shall then become for all of them Light -- during
the whole period of Mahapralaya, the "Great NIGHT," namely, 311,040,000,000,000
years of absorption in Brahm. The day of "Be-With-Us" is this period of rest or
Paranirvana. See also for other data on this peculiar expression, the day of
"Come-To-Us," The Funerary Ritual of the Egyptians, by Viscount de Rouge. It
corresponds to the Day of the Last Judgment of the Christians, which has been
sorely materialised by their religion.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 135 THE SOUL'S PILGRIMAGE.
is identical with the former, though the verb "be" in this sense, might be still
better replaced with either of the two words "Remain" or "Rest-with-us," as it
refers to that long period of REST which is called Paranirvana. As in the
exoteric interpretation of the Egyptian rites the soul of every defunct person
-- from the Hierophant down to the sacred bull Apis -- became an Osiris, was
Osirified, though the Secret Doctrine had always taught, that the real
Osirification was the lot of every Monad only after 3,000 cycles of Existences;
so in the present case. The "Monad," born of the nature and the very Essence of
the "Seven" (its highest principle becoming immediately enshrined in the Seventh
Cosmic Element), has to perform its septenary gyration throughout the Cycle of
Being and forms, from the highest to the lowest; and then again from man to God.
At the threshold of Paranirvana it reassumes its primeval Essence and becomes
the Absolute once more.
**********************
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 136 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
STANZA VI.
1. BY THE POWER OF THE MOTHER OF MERCY AND KNOWLEDGE (a), KWAN-YIN,* THE
"TRIPLE" OF KWAN-SHAI-YIN, RESIDING IN KWAN-YIN-TIEN (b), FOHAT, THE BREATH OF
THEIR PROGENY, THE SON OF THE SONS, HAVING CALLED FORTH FROM THE LOWER ABYSS
(chaos) THE ILLUSIVE FORM OF SIEN-TCHAN (our Universe) AND THE SEVEN ELEMENTS:
--
(a.) The Mother of Mercy and Knowledge is called "the triple" of Kwan-Shai-Yin
because in her correlations, metaphysical and cosmical, she is the "Mother, the
Wife and the Daughter" of the Logos, just as in the later theological
translations she became "the Father, Son and (the female) Holy Ghost" -- the
Sakti or Energy -- the Essence of the three. Thus in the Esotericism of the
Vedantins, Daiviprakriti, the Light manifested through Eswara, the Logos,** is
at one and the same time the Mother and also the Daughter of the Logos or Verbum
of Parabrahmam; while in that of the trans-Himalayan teachings it is -- in the
hierarchy of allegorical and metaphysical theogony -- "the MOTHER" or abstract,
ideal matter, Mulaprakriti, the Root of Nature; -- from the metaphysical
standpoint, a correlation of Adi-Bhuta, manifested in the Logos,
Avalokiteshwara; -- and from the purely occult and
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* This stanza is translated from the Chinese text, and the names, as the
equivalents of the original terms, are preserved. The real esoteric nomenclature
cannot be given, as it would only confuse the reader. The Brahmanical doctrine
has no equivalent to these. Vach seems, in many an aspect, to approach the
Chinese Kwan-yin, but there is no regular worship of Vach under this name in
India, as there is of Kwan-Yin in China. No exoteric religious system has ever
adopted a female Creator, and thus woman was regarded and treated, from the
first dawn of popular religions, as inferior to man. It is only in China and
Egypt that Kwan-Yin and Isis were placed on a par with the male gods.
Esotericism ignores both sexes. Its highest Deity is sexless as it is formless,
neither Father nor Mother; and its first manifested beings, celestial and
terrestrial alike, become only gradually androgynous and finally separate into
distinct sexes.
** The "Theosophist" of February, 1887, p. 305, first lecture on the
Bhagavadgita.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 137 THE MYSTERY OF THE FEMALE LOGOS.
Cosmical, Fohat,* the "Son of the Son," the androgynous energy resulting from
this "Light of the Logos," and which manifests in the plane of the objective
Universe as the hidden, as much as the revealed, Electricity -- which is LIFE.
(b) Kwan-Yin-Tien means the "melodious heaven of Sound," the abode of Kwan-Yin,
or the "Divine Voice" literally. This "Voice" is a synonym of the Verbum or the
Word: "Speech," as the expression of thought. Thus may be traced the connection
with, and even the origin of the Hebrew Bath-Kol, the "daughter of the Divine
Voice," or Verbum, or the male and female Logos, the "Heavenly Man" or Adam
Kadmon, who is at the same time Sephira. The latter was surely anticipated by
the Hindu Vach, the goddess of Speech, or of the Word. For Vach -- the daughter
and the female portion, as is stated, of Brahma, one "generated by the gods" --
is, in company with Kwan-Yin, with Isis (also the daughter, wife and sister of
Osiris) and other goddesses, the female Logos, so to speak, the goddess of the
active forces in Nature, the Word, Voice or Sound, and Speech. If Kwan-Yin is
the "melodious Voice," so is Vach; "the melodious cow who milked forth
sustenance and water" (the female principle) -- "who yields us nourishment and
sustenance," as Mother-Nature. She is associated in the work of creation with
the Prajapati. She is male and female ad libitum, as Eve is with Adam. And she
is a form of Aditi -- the principle higher than Ether -- in Akasa, the synthesis
of all the forces in Nature; thus Vach and Kwan-Yin are both the magic potency
of Occult sound in Nature and Ether -- which "Voice" calls forth Sien-Tchan, the
illusive form of the Universe out of Chaos and the Seven Elements.
Thus in Manu Brahma (the Logos also) is shown dividing his body into two parts,
male and female, and creating in the latter, who is Vach, Viraj, who is himself,
or Brahma again -- it is in this way a learned Vedantin Occultist speaks of that
"goddess," explaining the reason why Eswara (or Brahma) is called Verbum or
Logos; why in fact it is called Sabda Brahmam: --
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Says the lecturer on p. 306: "Evolution is commenced by the intellectual
energy of the Logos, not merely on account of the potentialities locked up in
Mulaprakriti. This light of the Logos is the link . . . between objective matter
and the subjective thought of Eswara (or Logos). It is called in several
Buddhist books Fohat. It is the one instrument with which the Logos works."
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 138 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
"The explanation I am going to give you will appear thoroughly mystical; but if
mystical, it has a tremendous significance when properly understood. Our old
writers said that Vach is of four kinds (see Rig Veda and the Upanishads).
Vaikhari-Vach is what we utter. Every kind of Vaikhari-Vach exists in its
Madhyama, further in its Pasyanti, and ultimately in its Para form.* The reason
why this Pranava is called Vach is this, that the four principles of the great
Kosmos correspond to these four forms of Vach. Now the whole manifested solar
System exists in its Sukshma form in the light or energy of the Logos, because
its energy is caught up and transferred to Cosmic matter. . . . The whole Kosmos
in its objective form is Vaikhari-Vach, the light of the Logos is the Madhyama
form, and the Logos itself the Pasyanti form, and Parabrahm the Para form or
aspect of that Vach. It is by the light of this explanation that we must try to
understand certain statements made by various philosophers to the effect that
the manifested Kosmos is the Verbum manifested as Kosmos" (see Lecture on the
Bhagavadgita, referred to above).
-------
STANZA VI. -- (Continued.)
2. THE SWIFT AND THE RADIANT ONE PRODUCES THE SEVEN Layu** (a) CENTRES, AGAINST
WHICH NONE WILL PREVAIL TO THE GREAT DAY "BE WITH US" -- AND SEATS THE UNIVERSE
ON THESE ETERNAL FOUNDATIONS, SURROUNDING SIEN-TCHAN WITH THE ELEMENTARY GERMS
(b).
(a.) The seven Layu centres are the seven Zero points, using the term Zero in
the same sense that Chemists do, to indicate a point at which, in Esotericism,
the scale of reckoning of differentiation begins. From the Centres -- beyond
which Esoteric philosophy allows us to perceive the dim metaphysical outlines of
the "Seven Sons" of Life and Light, the Seven Logoi of the Hermetic and all
other philosophers -- begins
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Madhya is said of something whose commencement and end are unknown, and Para
means infinite. These expressions all relate to infinitude and to division of
time.
** From the Sanskrit Laya, the point of matter where every differentiation has
ceased.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 139 FROM NO-NUMBER TO NUMBER SEVEN.
the differentiation of the elements which enter into the constitution of our
Solar System. It has often been asked what was the exact definition of Fohat and
his powers and functions, as he seems to exercise those of a Personal God as
understood in the popular religions. The answer has just been given in the
comment on Stanza V. As well said in the Bhagavadgita Lectures, "The whole
Kosmos must necessarily exist in the One Source of energy from which this light
(Fohat) emanates." Whether we count the principles in Kosmos and man as seven or
only as four, the forces of, and in, physical Nature are Seven; and it is stated
by the same authority that "Pragna, or the capacity of perception, exists in
seven different aspects corresponding to the seven conditions of matter"
(Personal and impersonal God). For, "just as a human being is composed of seven
principles, differentiated matter in the Solar System exists in seven different
conditions" (ibid). So does Fohat.* He is One and Seven, and on the Cosmic plane
is behind all such manifestations as light, heat, sound, adhesion, etc., etc.,
and is the "spirit" of ELECTRICITY, which is the LIFE of the Universe. As an
abstraction, we call it the ONE LIFE; as an objective and evident Reality, we
speak of a septenary scale of manifestation, which begins at the upper rung with
the One Unknowable CAUSALITY, and ends as Omnipresent Mind and Life immanent in
every atom of Matter. Thus, while science speaks of its evolution through brute
matter, blind force, and senseless motion, the Occultists point to intelligent
LAW and sentient LIFE, and add that Fohat is the guiding Spirit of all this. Yet
he is no personal god at all, but the emanation of those other Powers behind him
whom the Christians call the "Messengers" of their God (who is in reality only
the Elohim, or rather one of the Seven Creators called Elohim), and we, the
"Messenger of the primordial Sons of Life and Light."
(b.) The "Elementary Germs" with which he fills Sien-Tchan (the "Universe") from
Tien-Sin (the "Heaven of Mind," literally, or that which is absolute) are the
Atoms of Science and the Monads of Leibnitz.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Fohat" has several meanings. (See Stanza V., Commentary et infra). He is
called the "Builder of the Builders," the Force that he personifies having
formed our Septenary chain.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 140 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
STANZA VI. -- Continued.
3. OF THE SEVEN (elements) -- FIRST ONE MANIFESTED, SIX CONCEALED; TWO
MANIFESTED -- FIVE CONCEALED; THREE MANIFESTED -- FOUR CONCEALED; FOUR PRODUCED
-- THREE HIDDEN; FOUR AND ONE TSAN (fraction) REVEALED -- TWO AND ONE HALF
CONCEALED; SIX TO BE MANIFESTED -- ONE LAID ASIDE (a). LASTLY, SEVEN SMALL
WHEELS REVOLVING; ONE GIVING BIRTH TO THE OTHER (b).
(a.) Although these Stanzas refer to the whole Universe after a Mahapralaya
(universal destruction), yet this sentence, as any student of Occultism may see,
refers also by analogy to the evolution and final formation of the primitive
(though compound) Seven Elements on our Earth. Of these, four elements are now
fully manifested, while the fifth -- Ether -- is only partially so, as we are
hardly in the second half of the Fourth Round, and consequently the fifth
Element will manifest fully only in the Fifth Round. The Worlds, including our
own, were of course, as germs, primarily evolved from the ONE Element in its
second stage ("Father-Mother," the differentiated World's Soul, not what is
termed the "Over-Soul" by Emerson), whether we call it, with modern Science,
Cosmic dust and Fire Mist, or with Occultism -- Akasa, Jivatma, divine Astral
Light, or the "Soul of the World." But this first stage of Evolution was in due
course of time followed by the next. No world, as no heavenly body, could be
constructed on the objective plane, had not the Elements been sufficiently
differentiated already from their primeval Ilus, resting in Laya. The latter
term is a synonym of Nirvana. It is, in fact, the Nirvanic dissociation of all
substances, merged after a life-cycle into the latency of their primary
conditions. It is the luminous but bodiless shadow of the matter that was, the
realm of negativeness -- wherein lie latent during their period of rest the
active Forces of the Universe. Now, speaking of Elements, it is made the
standing reproach of the Ancients, that they "supposed their Elements simple and
undecomposable."* Once more this is an unwarrantable state-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The shades of our pre-historical ancestors might return the compliment to
modern physicists, now that new discoveries in chemistry have led Mr. Crookes,
F.R.S., to admit that Science is yet a thousand leagues from the knowledge of
the compound nature of the simplest molecule. From him we learn that such a
thing as a really simple [[Footnote continued on next page]]
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 141 WERE THE ANCIENTS IGNORANT OF THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES?
ment; as, at any rate, their initiated philosophers can hardly come under such
an imputation, since it is they who have invented allegories and religious myths
from the beginning. Had they been ignorant of the Heterogeneity of their
Elements they would have had no personifications of Fire, Air, Water, Earth, and
AEther; their Cosmic gods and goddesses would never have been blessed with such
posterity, with so many sons and daughters, elements born from and within each
respective Element. Alchemy and occult phenomena would have been a delusion and
a snare, even in theory, had the Ancients been ignorant of the potentialities
and correlative functions and attributes of every element that enters into the
composition of Air, Water, Earth, and even Fire -- the latter a terra incognita
to this day to modern Science, which is obliged to call it Motion, evolution of
light and heat, state of ignition, -- defining it by its outward aspects in
short, and remaining ignorant of its nature. But that which
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] molecule entirely homogeneous is terra
incognita in chemistry. "Where are we to draw the line?" he asks; "is there no
way out of this perplexity? Must we either make the elementary examinations so
stiff that only 60 or 70 candidates can pass, or must we open the examination
doors so wide that the number of admissions is limited only by the number of
applicants?" And then the learned gentleman gives striking instances. He says:
"Take the case of yttrium. It has its definite atomic weight, it behaved in
every respect as a simple body, an element, to which we might indeed add, but
from which we could not take away. Yet this yttrium, this supposed homogeneous
whole, on being submitted to a certain method of fractionation, is resolved into
portions not absolutely identical among themselves, and exhibiting a gradation
of properties. Or take the case of didymium. Here was a body betraying all the
recognised characters of an element. It had been separated with much difficulty
from other bodies which approximated closely to it in their properties, and
during this crucial process it had undergone very severe treatment and very
close scrutiny. But then came another chemist, who, treating this assumed
homogeneous body by a peculiar process of fractionation, resolved it into the
two bodies praseodymium and neodymium, between which certain distinctions are
perceptible. Further, we even now have no certainty that neodymium and
praseodymium are simple bodies. On the contrary, they likewise exhibit symptoms
of splitting up. Now, if one supposed element on proper treatment is thus found
to comprise dissimilar molecules, we are surely warranted in asking whether
similar results might not be obtained in other elements, perhaps in all
elements, if treated in the right way. We may even ask where the process of
sorting-out is to stop -- a process which of course pre-supposes variations
between the individual molecules of each species. And in these successive
separations we naturally find bodies approaching more and more closely to each
other." (Presidential address before the Royal Society of Chemists, March,
1888.)
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 142 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
modern Science seems to fail to perceive is that, differentiated as may have
been those simple chemical atoms -- which archaic philosophy called "the
creators of their respective Parents," fathers, brothers, husbands of their
mothers, and those mothers the daughters of their own sons, like Aditi and
Daksha, for example -- differentiated as these elements were in the beginning,
still, they were not the compound bodies known to science, as they are now.
Neither Water, Air, Earth (synonym for solids generally) existed in their
present form, representing the three states of matter alone recognised by
Science; for all these are the productions already recombined by the atmospheres
of globes completely formed -- even to fire -- so that in the first periods of
the earth's formation they were something quite sui generis. Now that the
conditions and laws ruling our solar system are fully developed; and that the
atmosphere of our earth, as of every other globe, has become, so to say, a
crucible of its own, Occult Science teaches that there is a perpetual exchange
taking place in space of molecules, or of atoms rather, correlating, and thus
changing their combining equivalents on every planet. Some men of Science, and
those among the greatest physicists and chemists, begin to suspect this fact,
which has been known for ages to the Occultists. The spectroscope only shows the
probable similarity (on external evidence) of terrestrial and sidereal
substance; it is unable to go any farther, or to show whether atoms gravitate
towards one another in the same way and under the same conditions as they are
supposed to do on our planet, physically and chemically. The scale of
temperature, from the highest degree to the lowest that can be conceived of, may
be imagined to be one and the same in and for the whole Universe; nevertheless,
its properties, other than those of dissociation and reassociation, differ on
every planet; and thus atoms enter into new forms of existence, undreamt of, and
incognizable to, physical Science. As already expressed in "Five Years of
Theosophy," the essence of Cometary matter, for instance, "is totally different
from any of the chemical or physical characteristics with which the greatest
chemists and physicists of the earth are acquainted" (p. 242). And even that
matter, during rapid passage through our atmosphere, undergoes a certain change
in its nature. Thus not alone the elements of our planets, but even those of all
its sisters in the Solar System, differ as widely from each other in their
combinations, as from the Cosmic elements beyond our
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 143 THE SLEEP OF THE ETERNAL MOTHER.
Solar limits.* Therefore, they cannot be taken as a standard for comparison with
the same in other worlds.** Enshrined in their virgin, pristine state within the
bosom of the Eternal Mother, every atom born beyond the threshold of her realm
is doomed to incessant differentiation. "The Mother sleeps, yet is ever
breathing." And every breath sends out into the plane of manifestation her
Protean products, which, carried on by the wave of the efflux, are scattered by
Fohat, and driven toward and beyond this or another planetary atmosphere. Once
caught by the latter, the atom is lost; its pristine purity is gone for ever,
unless Fate dissociates it by leading it to "a current of EFFLUX" (an occult
term meaning quite a different process from that which the ordinary term
implies); when it may be carried once more to the borderland where it had
perished, and taking its flight, not into Space above but into Space within, it
will be brought under a state of differential equilibrium and happily
re-absorbed. Were a truly learned Occultist-alchemist to write the "Life and
Adventures of an Atom" he would secure thereby the eternal scorn of the modern
chemist, perchance also his subsequent
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* This is again corroborated by the same man of science in the same lecture, who
quotes Clerk Maxwell, saying "that the elements are not absolutely homogeneous."
He writes: "It is difficult to conceive of selection and elimination of
intermediate varieties, for where can these eliminated molecules have gone to,
if, as we have reason to believe, the hydrogen, &c. of the fixed stars is
composed of molecules identical in all respects with our own." And he adds: "In
the first place we may call in question this absolute molecular identity, since
we have hitherto had no means for coming to a conclusion save the means
furnished by the spectroscope, while it is admitted that, for accurately
comparing and discriminating the spectra of two bodies, they should be examined
under identical states of temperature, pressure, and all other physical
conditions. We have certainly seen, in the spectrum of the sun, rays which we
have not been able to identify."
** "Each world has its Fohat, who is omnipresent in his own sphere of action.
But there are as many Fohats as there are worlds, each varying in power and
degree of manifestations. The individual Fohats make one Universal, Collective
Fohat -- the aspect-Entity of the one absolute Non-Entity, which is absolute
Be-Ness, 'SAT.' "Millions and billions of worlds are produced at every
Manvantara" -- it is said. Therefore there must be many Fohats, whom we consider
as conscious and intelligent Forces. This, no doubt, to the disgust of
scientific minds. Nevertheless the Occultists, who have good reasons for it,
consider all the forces of Nature as veritable, though supersensuous, states of
Matter; and as possible objects of perception to Beings endowed with the
requisite senses.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 144 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
gratitude.* However it may be, "The Breath of the Father-Mother issues cold and
radiant and gets hot and corrupt, to cool once more, and be purified in the
eternal bosom of inner Space," says the Commentary. Man absorbs cold pure air on
the mountain-top, and throws it out impure, hot and transformed. Thus -- the
higher atmosphere being the mouth, and the lower one the lungs of every globe --
the man of our planet breathes only the refuse of "Mother"; therefore, "he is
doomed to die on it."**
(b) The process referred to as "the small wheels giving birth, one to the
other," takes place in the sixth region from above, and on the plane of the most
material world of all in the manifested Kosmos -- our terrestrial plane. These
"Seven Wheels" are our planetary chain (see Commentary Nos. 5 and 6). By
"Wheels" the various spheres and centres of forces are generally meant; but in
this case they refer to our septenary ring.
-------
STANZA VI. -- Continued.
4. HE BUILDS THEM IN THE LIKENESS OF OLDER WHEELS (worlds), PLACING THEM ON THE
IMPERISHABLE CENTRES (a).
HOW DOES FOHAT BUILD THEM? HE COLLECTS THE FIERY DUST. HE MAKES BALLS OF FIRE,
RUNS THROUGH THEM AND ROUND THEM, INFUSING LIFE THEREINTO; THEN SETS THEM INTO
MOTION, SOME ONE, SOME THE OTHER WAY. THEY ARE COLD -- HE MAKES THEM HOT. THEY
ARE DRY -- HE MAKES THEM MOIST. THEY SHINE -- HE FANS AND COOLS THEM (b).
THUS ACTS FOHAT FROM ONE Twilight TO THE OTHER DURING SEVEN ETERNITIES.***
(a) The Worlds are built "in the likeness of older Wheels" -- i.e., those that
existed in preceding Manvantaras and went into Pralaya,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Indeed, if such an imaginary Chemist happened to be intuitional, and would for
a moment step out of the habitual groove of strictly "Exact Science," as the
Alchemists of old did, he might be repaid for his audacity.
** He who would allotropise sluggish oxygen into Ozone to a measure of
alchemical activity, reducing it to its pure essence (for which there are
means), would discover thereby a substitute for an "Elixir of Life" and prepare
it for practical use.
*** A period of 311,040,000,000,000 years, according to Brahminical
calculations.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 145 THE COSMIC PLANE, AN ILLUSION.
because the LAW for the birth, growth, and decay of everything in Kosmos, from
the Sun to the glow-worm in the grass, is ONE. It is an everlasting work of
perfection with every new appearance, but the Substance-Matter and Forces are
all one and the same. But this LAW acts on every planet through minor and
varying laws. The "imperishable Laya Centres" have a great importance, and their
meaning must be fully understood if we would have a clear conception of the
Archaic Cosmogony, whose theories have now passed into Occultism. At present,
one thing may be stated. The worlds are built neither upon, nor over, nor in the
Laya centres, the zero-point being a condition, not any mathematical point.
(b) Bear in mind that Fohat, the constructive Force of Cosmic Electricity, is
said, metaphorically, to have sprung like Rudra from Brahma "from the brain of
the Father and the bosom of the Mother," and then to have metamorphosed himself
into a male and a female, i.e., polarity, into positive and negative
electricity. He has seven sons who are his brothers; and Fohat is forced to be
born time after time whenever any two of his son-brothers indulge in too close
contact -- whether an embrace or a fight. To avoid this, he binds together and
unites those of unlike nature and separates those of similar temperaments. This,
of course, relates, as any one can see, to el | |
