1. Behold the beginning of sentient formless life (a).
First, the divine (vehicle) (b), the one from the mother-spirit (Atman); then the Spiritual — (Atma-Buddhi, Spirit-soul)* (c); (again) the three from the one (d), the four from the one (e), and the five (f), from which the three, the five and the seven (g) — these are the three-fold and the four-fold downward; the “mind-born sons of the first Lord (Avalokiteswara)the Shining Seven (the “Builders”).† It is they who are thou, me, him, O Lanoo; they who watch over thee and thy mother, Bhumi (the Earth).
(a) The hierarchy of Creative Powers is divided into seven (or 4 and 3) esoteric, within the twelve great Orders, recorded in the twelve signs of the Zodiac; the seven of the manifesting scale being connected, moreover, with the Seven Planets. All this is subdivided into numberless groups of divine Spiritual, semi-Spiritual, and ethereal Beings.
The Chief Hierarchies among these are hinted at in the great Quaternary, or the “four bodies and the three faculties” of Brahma exoterically, and the Panchasyam, the five Brahmas, or the five Dhyani-Buddhas in the Buddhist system.
The highest group is composed of the divine Flames, so-called, also spoken of as the “Fiery Lions” and the “Lions of Life,” whose esotericism is securely hidden in the Zodiacal sign of Leo. It is the nucleole of the superior divine World (see Commentary in first pages of Addendum). They are the formless Fiery Breaths, identical in one aspect with the upper Sephirothal Triad, which is placed by the Kabalists in the “Archetypal World.”
The same hierarchy, with the same numbers, is found in the Japanese system, in the “Beginnings” as taught by both the Shinto and the Buddhist sects. In this system, Anthropogenesis precedes Cosmogenesis, as the Divine merges into the human, and creates —
* This relates to the Cosmic principles.
† The seven creative Rishis now connected with the constellation of the Great Bear
midway in its descent into matter — the visible Universe. The legendary personages — remarks reverentially Omoie — “having to be understood as the stereotyped embodiment of the higher (secret) doctrine, and its sublime truths.” To state it at full length, however, would occupy too much of our space, but a few words on this old system cannot be out of place. The following is a short synopsis of this Anthropo-Cosmogenesis, and it shows how closely the most separated notions echoed one and the same Archaic teaching.
When all was as yet Chaos (Kon-ton) three spiritual Beings appeared on the stage of future creation: (1) Ame no ani naka nushi no Kami, “Divine Monarch of the Central Heaven”; (2) Taka mi onosubi no Kami, “Exalted, imperial Divine offspring of Heaven and the Earth”; and (3) Kamu mi musubi no Kami, “Offspring of the Gods,” simply.
These were without form or substance (our arupa triad), as neither the celestial nor the terrestrial substance had yet differentiated, “nor had the essence of things been formed.”
In the Zohar — which, as now arranged and re-edited by Moses de Leon, with the help of Syrian and Chaldean Christian Gnostics in the XIIIth century, and corrected and revised still later by many Christian hands, is only a little less exoteric than the Bible itself — this divine “Vehicle” no longer appears as it does in the “Chaldean Book of Numbers.” True enough, Ain-Soph, the Absolute Endless No-thing, uses also the form of the One, the manifested “Heavenly man” (the first cause) as its chariot (Mercabah, in Hebrew; Vahan, in Sanskrit) or vehicle to descend into, and manifest through, in the phenomenal world. But the Kabalists neither make it plain how the Absolute can use anything, or exercise any attribute whatever, since, as the Absolute, it is devoid of attributes; nor do they explain that in reality it is the First Cause (Plato’s Logos) the original and eternal idea, that manifests through Adam Kadmon, the Second Logos, so to speak. In the “Book of Numbers” it is explained that En (or Ain, Aior) is the only self-existent, whereas its “Depth” (Bythos or Buthon of the Gnostics, called Propator) is only periodical. The latter is Brahma as differentiated from Brahma or Parabrahm. It is the Depth, the Source of Light, or Propator, which is the unmanifested Logos or the abstract Idea, and not Ain-Soph, whose ray uses Adam-Kadmon or the manifested Logos (the objective Universe) “male and female” — as a chariot through which to manifest. But in the Zohar we read the following incongruity: “Senior
occultatus est et absconditus; Microprosopus manifestus est, et non manifestus.” (Rosenroth; Liber Mysterii, IV., 1.) This is a fallacy, since Microprosopus or the microcosm, can only exist during its manifestations, and is destroyed during the Maha-Pralayas. Rosenroth’s Kabala is no guide, but very often a puzzle.
(b) As in the Japanese system, in the Egyptian, and every old cosmogony — at this divine flame, The “One,” are lit the three descending groups. Having their potential being in the higher group, they now become distinct and separate Entities. These are called the “Virgins of Life,” the “Great Illusion,” etc., etc., and collectively the “Six-pointed Star.” The latter is the symbol, in almost every religion, of the Logos as the first emanation. It is that of Vishnu in India (the Chakra, or wheel), and the glyph of the Tetragrammaton, the “He of the four letters” or — metaphorically — “the limbs of Microprosopos” in the Kabala, which are ten and six respectively. The later Kabalists however, especially the Christian mystics, have played sad havoc with this magnificent symbol.* For the “ten limbs” of the Heavenly Man are the ten Sephiroth; but the first Heavenly Man is the unmanifested Spirit of the Universe, and ought never to be degraded into Microprosopus — the lesser Face or Countenance, the prototype of man on the terrestrial plane.† Of this, however, later on. The six-pointed Star refers to the six Forces or Powers of Nature, the six planes, principles, etc., etc., all synthesized by the seventh, or the central point in the Star. All these, the upper and lower hierarchies included, emanate from the “Heavenly or Celestial Virgin,”‡ the great mother in all religions, the Androgyne, the
* Indeed, the Microprosopus — who is, philosophically speaking, quite distinct from the unmanifested eternal Logos “one with the Father,” — has been finally brought, by centuries of incessant efforts, of sophistry and paradoxes, to be considered as one with Jehovah, or the one living God (!), whereas Jehovah is no better than Binah, a female Sephiroth. This fact cannot be too frequently impressed upon the reader.
† The Microprosopus is, as just said, the Logos manifested, and of such there are many.
‡ Sephira is the Crown, kether, in the abstract principle only, as a mathematical x (the unknown quantity). On the plane of differentiated nature she is the female counterpart of Adam Kadmon — the first Androgyne. The Kabala teaches that the word “Fiat Lux” (Genesis ch. i.) referred to the formation and evolution of the Sephiroth, and not to light as opposed to darkness. Rabbi Simeon says: “Oh com- [[Footnote continued on next page]]
Sephira-Adam-Kadmon. In its Unity, primordial light is the seventh, or highest, principle, Daivi-prakriti, the light of the unmanifested Logos. But in its differentiation it becomes Fohat, or the “Seven Sons.” The former is symbolised by the Central point in the double-Triangle; the latter by the hexagon itself, or the “six limbs” of the Microprosopus the Seventh being Malkuth, the “Bride” of the Christian Kabalists, or our Earth. Hence the expressions:
“The first after the ‘One’ is divine Fire; the second, Fire and AEther; the third is composed of Fire, AEther and Water; the fourth of Fire, AEther, Water, and Air.”* The One is not concerned with Man-bearing globes, but with the inner invisible Spheres. “The ‘First-Born’ are the Life, the heart and pulse of the Universe; the Second are its Mind or Consciousness,”†
as said in the Commentary.
(c) The second Order of Celestial Beings, those of Fire and AEther (corresponding to Spirit and Soul, or the Atma-Buddhi) whose names are legion, are still formless, but more definitely “substantial.” They are the first differentiation in the Secondary Evolution or “Creation” — a misleading word. As the name shows, they are the prototypes of the incarnating Jivas or Monads, and are composed of the Fiery Spirit of Life. It is through these that passes, like a pure solar beam, the ray which is furnished by them with its future vehicle, the Divine Soul, Buddhi. These are directly concerned with the Hosts of the higher world of our system. From these twofold Units emanate the threefold.
In the cosmogony of Japan, when, out of the chaotic mass, an egglike nucleus appears, having within itself the germ and potency of all the universal as well as of all terrestrial life, it is the “three-fold” just named, which differentiates. “The male aethereal” (Yo) principle
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] panions, companions, man as an emanation was both man and woman, Adam Kadmon verily, and this is the sense of the words ‘Let there be Light, and it was Light.’ And this is the two-fold man.” (Auszuge aus dem Zohar, pp. 13-15.)
* See next footnote. These elements of Fire, Air, etc., are not our compound elements.
† This “Consciousness” has no relation to our consciousness. The consciousness of the “One manifested,” if not absolute, is still unconditioned. Mahat (the Universal Mind) is the first production of the Brahma-Creator, but also of the Pradhana (undifferentiated matter).
ascends and the female grosser or more material principle (In) is precipitated into the Universe of substance, when a separation occurs between the celestial and the terrestrial. From this the female, the mother, the first rudimentary objective being is born. It is ethereal, without form or sex, and yet it is from this and the mother that the Seven Divine Spirits are born, from whom will emanate the seven creations, just as in the Codex Nazaraeus from Karabtanos and the Mother Spiritus the seven evilly disposed (material) spirits are born. It would be too long to give here the Japanese names, but once translated they stand in this order: —
(1.) The “Invisible Celibate,” which is the creative logos of the non-creating “father,” or the creative potentiality of the latter made manifest.
(2.) “The Spirit (or the God) of the rayless depths” (of Chaos); which becomes differentiated matter, or the world-stuff; also the mineral realm.
(3.) “The Spirit of the Vegetable Kingdom,” of the “Abundant Vegetation.”
(4.) This one is of dual nature, being at the same time “The Spirit of the Earth” and “the Spirit of the Sands,” the former containing the potentiality of the male element, the latter that of the female element, the two forming a combined nature.
These two were one; yet unconscious of being two.
In this duality were contained (a) the male, dark and muscular Being, Isu no gai no Kami; and (b) Eku gai no Kami, the female, fair and weaker or more delicate Being. Then, the: —
(5th and 6th.) Spirits who were androgynous or dual-sexed, and, finally: —
(7.) The Seventh Spirit, the last emanated from the “mother,” appears as the first divine human form distinctly male and female. It was the seventh creation, as in the Puranas, wherein man is the seventh creation of Brahma.
These, Tsanagi-Tsanami, descended into the Universe by the celestial Bridge (the milky way), and “Tsanagi, perceiving far below a chaotic mass of cloud and water, thrust his jewelled spear into the depths, and dry land appeared.” Then the two separated to explore Onokoro, the newly-created island-world; etc., etc. (Omoie).
Such are the Japanese exoteric fables, the rind that conceals the kernel of the same one truth of the Secret Doctrine. Turning back to the esoteric explanations in every cosmogony: —
(d) The Third order corresponds to the Atma-Buddhi-Manas: Spirit, Soul and Intellect, and is called the “Triads.”
(e) The Fourth are substantial Entities. This is the highest group among the Rupas (Atomic Forms*). It is the nursery of the human, conscious, spiritual Souls. They are called the “Imperishable Jivas,” and constitute, through the order below their own, the first group of the first septenary† host — the great mystery of human conscious and
* It is worthy of notice that, while rejecting as a superstition of Occultism, and religion too, the theory of substantial and invisible Beings called Angels, Elementals, etc. — without, of course, having ever looked into the philosophy of these incorporeal Entities, or thought over them — modern chemistry, owing to observation and discovery, should have unconsciously been forced to adopt and recognize the same ratio of progression and order in the evolution of chemical atoms as Occultism does, both for its Dhyanis and Atoms — analogy being its first law. As seen above, the very first group of the Rupa Angels is quaternary, an element being added to each in descending order. So are the atoms, adopting the phraseology of chemistry, monatomic, diatomic, and tetratomic, progressing downwards. Let it be remembered that Fire, Water, and Air, or the “Elements of primary Creation” so-called, are not the compound Elements they are on Earth, but noumenal homogeneous Elements — the Spirits thereof. Then follow the septenary groups or hosts. Placed on parallel lines in a diagram with Atoms, the Natures of those Beings would be seen to correspond in their downward scale of progression to composite elements in a mathematically identical manner, as to analogy. This refers, of course, only to diagrams made by the Occultists; for were the scale of Angelic Beings to be placed on a parallel line with the scale of the chemical atoms of Science — from the hypothetical Helium down to Uranium — they would of course be found to differ. For these have, as correspondents on the Astral plane, only the four lowest orders — the higher three principles in the atom, or rather molecule or chemical element, being perceptible only to the initiated Dangma’s eye. But then, if Chemistry desired to find itself on the right path, it would have to correct its tabular arrangement by that of the Occultists — which it may refuse to do. In Esoteric Philosophy, every physical particle corresponds to and depends on its higher noumenon — the Being to whose essence it belongs; and above as below, the Spiritual evolves from the Divine, the psycho-mental from the Spiritual — tainted from its lower plane by the astral — the whole animate and (seemingly) inanimate Nature evolving on parallel lines, and drawing its attributes from above as well as from below.
† The number seven does not imply only seven Entities, but seven groups or Hosts, as explained before. The highest group, the Asuras born in Brahma’s first body — [[Footnote continued on next page]]
intellectual Being. For the latter are the field wherein lies concealed in its privation the germ that will fall into generation. That germ will become the spiritual potency in the physical cell that guides the development of the embryo, and which is the cause of the hereditary transmission of faculties and all the inherent qualities in man. The Darwinian theory, however, of the transmission of acquired faculties, is neither taught nor accepted in Occultism. Evolution, in it, proceeds on quite other lines; the physical, according to esoteric teaching, evolving gradually from the spiritual, mental, and psychic. This inner soul of the physical cell — this “spiritual plasm” that dominates the germinal plasm — is the key that must open one day the gates of the terra incognita of the Biologist, now called the dark mystery of Embryology. (See text and note infra.)
(f) The Fifth group is a very mysterious one, as it is connected with the Microcosmic Pentagon, the five-pointed star representing man. In India and Egypt these Dhyanis were connected with the Crocodile, and their abode is in Capricornus. These are convertible terms in Indian astrology, as this (tenth) sign of the Zodiac is called Makara, loosely translated “crocodile.” The word itself is occultly interpreted in various ways, as will be shown further on. In Egypt the defunct man — whose symbol is the pentagram or the five-pointed star, the points of which represent the limbs of a man — was shown emblematically transformed into a crocodile: Sebakh or Sevekh “or seventh,” as Mr. Gerald Massey says, showing it as having been the type of intelligence, is a dragon in reality, not a crocodile. He is the “Dragon of Wisdom” or Manas, the “Human Soul,” Mind, the Intelligent principle, called in our esoteric philosophy the “Fifth” principle.
Says the defunct “Osirified” in ch. lxxxviii., “Book of the Dead,” or the Ritual, under the glyph of a mummiform god with a crocodile’s head: —
(1) “I am the god (crocodile) presiding at the fear . . . at the arrival of his Soul among men. I am the god-crocodile brought for destruction” (an allusion to the destruction of divine spiritual purity
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] which turned into “Night” — are septenary, i.e., divided like the Pitris into seven classes, three of which are arupa (bodiless) and four with bodies. (See Vishnu Purana, Book I.) They are in fact more truly our Pitris (ancestors) than the Pitris who projected the first physical men. (See Book II.)
when man acquires the knowledge of good and evil; also to the “fallen” gods, or angels of every theogony).
(2) “I am the fish of the great Horus (as Makara is the “crocodile,” the vehicle of Varuna). I am merged in Sekten.”
This last sentence gives the corroboration of, and repeats the doctrine of, esoteric Buddhism, for it alludes directly to the fifth principle (Manas), or the most spiritual part of its essence rather, which merges into, is absorbed by, and made one with Atma-Buddhi after the death of man. For Se-khen is the residence or loka of the god Khem (Horus-Osiris, or Father and Son), hence the “Devachan” of Atma-Buddhi. In the Ritual of the Dead the defunct is shown entering into Sekhem with Horus-Thot and “emerging from it as pure spirit” (lxiv., 29). Thus the defunct says (v. 130): “I see the forms of (myself, as various) men transforming eternally . . . I know this (chapter). He who knows it . . . takes all kinds of living forms.” . . .
And in verse 35, addressing in magic formula that which is called, in Egyptian esotericism, the “ancestral heart,” or the re-incarnating principle, the permanent Ego, the defunct says: —
“Oh my heart, my ancestral heart necessary for my transformations, . . . . . . do not separate thyself from me before the guardian of the Scales. Thou art my personality within my breast, divine companion watching over my fleshes (bodies). . . . . . .”
It is in Sekhem that lies concealed “the Mysterious Face,” or the real man concealed under the false personality, the triple-crocodile of Egypt, the symbol of the higher Trinity or human Triad, Atma, Buddhi and Manas.* In all the ancient papyri the crocodile is called Sebek (Seventh), while the water is the fifth principle esoterically; and, as already stated, Mr. Gerald Massey shows that the crocodile was “the Seventh Soul, the supreme one of seven — the Seer unseen.” Even exoterically Sekhem is the residence of the god Khem, and Khem is Horus avenging the death of his father Osiris, hence punishing the Sins of man when he becomes a disembodied Soul. Thus the defunct
* One of the explanations of the real though hidden meaning of this Egyptian religious glyph is easy. The crocodile is the first to await and meet the devouring fires of the morning sun, and very soon came to personify the solar heat. When the sun arose, it was like the arrival on earth and among men “of the divine soul which informs the Gods.” Hence the strange symbolism. The mummy donned the head of a crocodile to show that it was a soul arriving from the earth.
“Osirified” became the god Khem, who “gleans the field of Aanroo,” i.e., he gleans either his reward or punishment, as that field is the celestial locality (Devachan) where the defunct is given wheat, the food of divine justice. The fifth group of the celestial Beings is supposed to contain in itself the dual attributes of both the spiritual and physical aspects of the Universe; the two poles, so to say, of Mahat the Universal Intelligence, and the dual nature of man, the spiritual and the physical. Hence its number Five, multiplied and made into ten, connecting it with Makara, the 10th sign of Zodiac.
(g) The sixth and seventh groups partake of the lower qualities of the Quaternary. They are conscious, ethereal Entities, as invisible as Ether, which are shot out like the boughs of a tree from the first central group of the four, and shoot out in their turn numberless side groups, the lower of which are the Nature-Spirits, or Elementals of countless kinds and varieties; from the formless and unsubstantial — the ideal thoughts of their creators — down to the Atomic, though, to human perception, invisible organisms. The latter are considered as the “Spirits of Atoms” for they are the first remove (backwards) from the physical Atom — sentient, if not intelligent creatures. They are all subject to Karma, and have to work it out through every cycle. For, as the doctrine teaches, there are no such privileged beings in the universe, whether in our or in other systems, in the outer or the inner worlds,* as the angels of the Western Religion and the Judean. A Dhyan Chohan has to become one; he cannot be born or appear suddenly on the plane of life as a full-blown angel. The Celestial Hierarchy of the present Manvantara will find itself transferred in the next cycle of life into higher, superior worlds, and will make room for a new hierarchy, composed of the elect ones of our mankind. Being is an endless cycle within the one absolute eternity, wherein move numberless inner cycles finite and conditioned. Gods, created as such, would evince no personal merit in being gods. Such a class of beings, perfect only by virtue of the special immaculate nature inherent in them, in the face of suffering and struggling humanity, and even of the lower creation, would be the
* A world when called “a higher world” is not higher by reason of its location, but because it is superior in quality or essence. Yet such a world is generally understood by the profane as “Heaven,” and located above our heads.
symbol of an eternal injustice quite Satanic in character, an ever present crime. It is an anomaly and an impossibility in Nature. Therefore the “Four” and the “Three” have to incarnate as all other beings have. This sixth group, moreover, remains almost inseparable from man, who draws from it all but his highest and lowest principles, or his spirit and body, the five middle human principles being the very essence of those Dhyanis.* Alone, the Divine Ray (the Atman) proceeds directly from the One. When asked how that can be? How is it possible to conceive that those “gods,” or angels, can be at the same time their own emanations and their personal selves? Is it in the same sense in the material world, where the son is (in one way) his father, being his blood, the bone of his bone and the flesh of his flesh? To this the teachers answer “Verily it is so.” But one has to go deep into the mystery of being before one can fully comprehend this truth.
———————
2. The one ray multiplies the smaller rays. Life precedes form, and life survives the last atom (of Form, Sthula-sarira, external body). Through the countless rays the life-ray, the one, like a thread through many beads (pearls) (a).
(a) This sloka expresses the conception — a purely Vedantic one, as already explained elsewhere — of a life-thread, Sutratma, running through successive generations. How, then, can this be explained? By resorting to a simile, to a familiar illustration, though necessarily imperfect, as all our available analogies must be. Before resorting to it, however, I would ask whether it seems unnatural, least of all “supernatural,” to any one of us, when we consider that process known as the growth and development of a foetus into a healthy baby weighing several pounds — evolves from what? From the segmentation of an infinitesimally small ovum and a spermatozoon; and afterwards we see that baby develop into a six-foot man! This refers to the atomic and physical
* Paracelsus calls them the Flagae; the Christians, the “Guardian Angels;” the Occultist, the “Ancestors, the Pitris;” they are the sixfold Dhyan Chohans, having the six spiritual Elements in the composition of their bodies — in fact, men, minus the physical body.
expansion from the microscopically small into something very large, from the — to the naked eye — unseen, into the visible and objective. Science has provided for all this; and, I dare say, her theories, embryological, biological, and physiological, are correct enough so far as exact observation of the material goes. Nevertheless, the two chief difficulties of the science of embryology — namely, what are the forces at work in the formation of the foetus, and the cause of “hereditary transmission” of likeness, physical, moral or mental — have never been properly answered; nor will they ever be solved till the day when scientists condescend to accept the Occult theories.* But if this physical pheno-
* The materialists and the evolutionists of the Darwinian school would be ill-advised to accept the newly worked-out theories of Professor Weissmann, the author of Beitrage zur Descendenzlehre, with regard to one of the two mysteries of Embryology, as above specified, which he seems to have solved — as he thinks. For, when it is solved, Science will have stepped over into the domain of the truly occult, and stepped for ever out of the realm of transformation, as taught by Darwin. The two are irreconcileable, from the standpoint of materialism. Regarded from that of the Occultists, it solves all these mysteries. Those who are not acquainted with the new discovery of Professor Weissman — at one time a fervent Darwinist — ought to hasten to repair the deficiency. The German Embryologist-philosopher shows — thus stepping over the heads of the Greek Hippocrates and Aristotle, right back into the teachings of the old Aryans — one infinitesimal cell, out of millions of others at work in the formation of an organism, determining alone and unaided, by means of constant segmentation and multiplication, the correct image of the future man (or animal) in its physical, mental, and psychic characteristics. It is that cell which impresses on the face and form of the new individual the features of the parents or of some distant ancestor; it is that cell again which transmits to him the intellectual and mental idiosyncracies of his sires, and so on. This Plasm is the immortal portion of our bodies — simply through the process of successive assimilations. Darwin’s theory, viewing the embryological cell as an essence or the extract from all other cells, is set aside; it is incapable of accounting for hereditary transmission. There are but two ways of explaining the mystery of heredity; either the substance of the germinal cell is endowed with the faculty of crossing the whole cycle of transformations that lead to the construction of a separate organism and then to the reproduction of identical germinal cells; or, those germinal cells do not have their genesis at all in the body of the individual, but proceed directly from the ancestral germinal cell passed from father to son through long generations. It is the latter hypothesis that Weissmann accepted and has worked upon; and it is to this cell that he traces the immortal portion of man. So far, so good; and when this almost correct theory is accepted, how will Biologists explain the first appearance of this everlasting cell? Unless man “grew” like the “immortal Topsy,” and was not born at all, but fell from the clouds, how was that embryological cell born in him?
menon astonishes no one, except in so far as it puzzles the Embryologists, why should our intellectual and inner growth, the evolution of the human-spiritual to the Divine-Spiritual, be regarded as, or seem, more impossible than the other? Now to the simile.
Complete the physical plasm, mentioned in the last foot-note, the “Germinal Cell” of man with all its material potentialities, with the “spiritual plasm,” so to say, or the fluid that contains the five lower principles of the six-principled Dhyan — and you have the secret, if you are spiritual enough to understand it.
“When the seed of the animal man is cast into the soil of the animal woman, that seed cannot germinate unless it has been fructified by the five virtues (the fluid of, or the emanation from the principles) of the six-fold Heavenly man. Wherefore the Microcosm is represented as a Pentagon, within the Hexagon Star, the “Macrocosm.” (“[[Anthropos]],”) a work on Occult Embryology, Book I.). Then: “The functions of Jiva on this Earth are of a five-fold character. In the mineral atom it is connected with the lowest principles of the Spirits of the Earth (the six-fold Dhyanis); in the vegetable particle, with their second — the Prana (life); in the animal, with all these plus the third and the fourth; in man, the germ must receive the fruition of all the five. Otherwise he will be born no higher than an animal”; namely, a congenital idiot. Thus in man alone the Jiva is complete. As to his seventh principle, it is but one of the Beams of the Universal Sun. Each rational creature receives only the temporary loan of that which has to return to its source; while his physical body is shaped by the lowest terrestrial lives, through physical, chemical, and physiological evolution. “The Blessed Ones have nought to do with the purgations of matter.” (Kabala, Chaldean Book of Numbers).
It comes to this: Mankind in its first prototypal, shadowy form, is the offspring of the Elohim of Life (or Pitris); in its qualitative and physical aspect it is the direct progeny of the “Ancestors,” the lowest Dhyanis, or Spirits of the Earth; for its moral, psychic, and spiritual nature, it is indebted to a group of divine Beings, the name and characteristics of which will be given in Book II. Collectively, men are the handiwork of hosts of various spirits; distributively, the tabernacles of those hosts; and occasionally and singly, the vehicles of some of them. In our present all-material Fifth Race, the earthly Spirit of the
Fourth is still strong in us; but we are approaching the time when the pendulum of evolution will direct its swing decidedly upwards, bringing Humanity back on a parallel line with the primitive third Root-Race in Spirituality. During its childhood, mankind was composed wholly of that Angelic Host, who were the indwelling Spirits that animated the monstrous and gigantic tabernacles of clay of the Fourth Race built by (as they are now also) and composed of countless myriads of lives.* This sentence will be explained later on in the present Commentary. The “tabernacles” have improved in texture and symmetry of form, growing and developing with the globe that bore them; but the physical improvement took place at the expense of the spiritual inner man and nature. The three middle principles in earth and man became with every race more material; the Soul stepping back to make room for the physical intellect; the essence of elements becoming the material and composite elements now known.
Man is not, nor could he ever be, the complete product of the “Lord God”; but he is the child of the Elohim, so arbitrarily changed into the singular masculine gender. The first Dhyanis, commissioned to “create” man in their image, could only throw off their shadows, like a delicate model for the Nature Spirits of matter to work upon. (See Book II.) Man is, beyond any doubt, formed physically out of the dust of the Earth, but his creators and fashioners were many. Nor can it be said that the “Lord God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,” unless that God is identified with the “One Life,” Omnipresent though invisible, and unless the same operation is attributed to “God” on behalf of every living Soul —or Nephesch, which is the vital Soul, not the divine Spirit or Ruach, which ensures to man alone a divine degree of immortality, that no animal, as such, could ever attain in this cycle of incarnation. It is the inadequate distinctions made by the Jews, and now by our Western metaphysicians, who, not knowing of, and being unable to understand, hence to accept, more than a triune man — Spirit, Soul,
* Science, dimly perceiving the truth, may find Bacteria and other infinitesimals in the human body, and see in them but occasional and abnormal visitors to which diseases are attributed. Occultism — which discerns a life in every atom and molecule, whether in a mineral or human body, in air, fire or water — affirms that our whole body is built of such lives, the smallest bacteria under the microscope being to them in comparative size like an elephant to the tiniest infusoria.
Body — thus confuse the “breath of life” with immortal Spirit.* This applies also directly to the Protestant theologians, who, in translating verse 8 of Ch. III. in the Fourth Gospel, have entirely perverted the meaning. Indeed the verse is made to say “The wind bloweth where it listeth,” instead of “the Spirit goeth where it willeth,” as in the original and also in the translation of the Greek Eastern Church.
Thus the philosophy of psychic, spiritual, and mental relations with man’s physical functions is in almost inextricable confusion. Neither the old Aryan, nor the Egyptian psychology are now properly understood. Nor can they be assimilated without accepting the esoteric septenary, or, at any rate, the Vedantic quinquepartite division of the human inner principles. Failing which, it will be for ever impossible to understand the metaphysical and purely psychic and even physiological relations between the Dhyan-Chohans, or Angels, on the one plane, and humanity on the other. No Eastern (Aryan) esoteric works are so far published, but we possess the Egyptian papyri which speak clearly
* The learned and very philosophical author of “New Aspects of Life” would impress upon his reader that the Nephesh chaiah (living soul), according to the Hebrews, “proceeded from, or was produced by, the infusion of the Spirit or Breath of Life into the quickening body of man, and was to supersede and take the place of that spirit in the thus constituted self, so that the spirit passed into, was lost sight of, and disappeared in the living Soul.” The human body, he thinks, ought to be viewed as a matrix in which, and from which, the Soul (which he seems to place higher than the spirit) is developed — considered functionally and from the standpoint of activity, the Soul stands undeniably higher in this finite and conditioned world of Maya — the Soul, he says, “is ultimately produced from the animated body of man.” Thus the author identifies “Spirit” (Atma) simply with “the breath of life.” The Eastern Occultists will demur to this statement, for it is based on the erroneous conception that Prana and Atma or Jivatma are one and the same thing. The author supports the argument by showing that with the ancient Hebrews, Greeks and even Latins, Ruach, Pneuma and Spiritus — with the Jews undeniably, and with the Greeks and Romans very probably — meant Wind; the Greek word Anemos (wind) and the Latin Anima “Soul” having a suspicious relation.
This is very far fetched. A legitimate battle-field for deciding this question is hardly to be found, since Mr. Pratt seems to be a practical, matter-of-fact metaphysician, a kind of Kabalist-Positivist, and the Eastern metaphysicians, especially the Vedantins, are all Idealists. The Occultists are also of the extreme esoteric Vedantin school, and they call the One Life (Parabrahm), the Great Breath and the Whirlwind; but they disconnect the seventh principle entirely from matter or any relation to, or connection with it.
of the seven principles or the “Seven Souls of Man.”* The Book of the Dead gives a complete list of the “transformations” that every defunct undergoes, while divesting himself, one by one, of all those principles — materialised for the sake of clearness into ethereal entities or bodies. We must, moreover, remind those who try to prove that the ancient Egyptians knew nothing of and did not teach Reincarnation, that the “Soul” (the Ego or Self) of the defunct is said to be living in Eternity: it is immortal, “co-eval with, and disappearing with the Solar boat,” i.e., for the cycle of necessity. This “Soul” emerges from the Tiaou (the realm of the cause of life) and joins the living on Earth by day, to return to Tiaou every night. This expresses the periodical existences of the Ego. (Book of the Dead, cvxliii.)
The shadow, the astral form, is annihilated, “devoured by the Uraeus” (cxlix., 51), the Manes will be annihilated; the two twins (the 4th and 5th principles) will be scattered; but the Soul-bird, “the divine Swallow — and the Uraeus of Flame” (Manas and Atma-Buddhi) will live in the eternity, for they are their mother’s husbands.†
Like alone produces like. The Earth gives Man his body, the gods (Dhyanis) his five inner principles, the psychic Shadow, of which those gods are often the animating principle. Spirit (Atman) is one — and indiscrete. It is not in the Tiaou.
For what is the Tiaou? The frequent allusion to it in the “Book of the Dead” contains a mystery. Tiaou is the path of the Night Sun, the inferior hemisphere, or the infernal region of the Egyptians, placed by them on the concealed side of the moon. The human being, in their
* Vide in Part II., Book II., “The Seven Souls of Man,” the divisions made respectively by Messrs. Gerald Massey and Franz Lambert.
† Another suggestive analogy between the Aryan or Brahmanical and the Egyptian esotericism. The former call the Pitris “the lunar ancestors” of men; and the Egyptians made of the Moon-God, Taht-Esmun, the first human ancestor. This “moon-god” “expressed the Seven nature-powers that were prior to himself, and were summed up in him as his seven souls, of which he was the manifestor as the eighth one (hence the eighth sphere). The seven rays of the Chaldean Heptakis or Iao, on the Gnostic stones indicate the same septenary of souls.” . . . “The first form of the mystical seven was seen to be figured in heaven, by the seven large stars of the Great Bear, the constellation assigned by the Egyptians to the Mother of Time, and of the seven elemental powers.” (See The Seven Souls, etc.) As well known to every Hindu, this same constellation represents in India the Seven Rishis, and as such is called Riksha, and Chitra-Sikhandinas.
esotericism, came out from the moon (a triple mystery — astronomical, physiological, and psychical at once); he crossed the whole cycle of existence and then returned to his birth-place before issuing from it again. Thus the defunct is shown arriving in the West, receiving his judgment before Osiris, resurrecting as the god Horus, and circling round the sidereal heavens, which is an allegorical assimilation to Ra, the Sun; then having crossed the Noot (the celestial abyss), returning once more to Tiaou: an assimilation to Osiris, who, as the God of life and reproduction, inhabits the moon. Plutarch (Isis and Osiris, ch. xliii.) shows the Egyptians celebrating a festival called “The Ingress of Osiris into the moon.” In chapter xli. life is promised after death; and the renovation of life is placed under the patronage of Osiris-Lunus, because the moon was the symbol of life-renewals or reincarnations, owing to its growth, waning, dying, and reappearance every month. In the Dankmoe, (iv. 5) it is said: — “Oh, Osiris-Lunus! That renews to thee thy renewal.” And Safekh says to Seti I. (Mariette’s Abydos, plate 51), “Thou renewest thyself as the god Lunus when a babe.” It is still better explained in a Louvre papyrus (P. Pierret, “Etudes Egyptologiques”): “Couplings and conceptions abound when he (Osiris-Lunus) is seen in heaven on that day.” Says Osiris: “Oh, sole radiant beam of the moon! I issue from the circulating multitudes (of stars) . . . . . . Open me the Tiaou, for Osiris N. I will issue by day to do what I have to do amongst the living” (“Book of the Dead,” ch. ii.), — i.e., to produce conceptions.
Osiris was “God manifest in generation,” because the ancients knew, far better than the moderns, the real occult influences of the lunar body upon the mysteries of conception.* Later on, when the moon became connected with female goddesses† — with Diana, Isis, Artemis,
* In the oldest systems we find the Moon always male. Thus Soma is, with the Hindus, a kind of sidereal Don Juan, a “King,” and the father, albeit illegitimate, of Buddha — Wisdom, which relates to Occult Knowledge, a wisdom gathered through a thorough acquaintance with lunar mysteries including those of sexual generation. (See “Holy of Holies.”)
† If instead of being taught in Sunday Schools useless lessons from the Bible, the armies of the ragged and the poor were taught Astrology — so far, at any rate, as the occult properties of the Moon and its hidden influences on generation are concerned, then there would be little need to fear increase of the population nor to resort to the questionable literature of the Malthusians for its arrest. For it is the Moon and her [[Footnote continued on next page]]
Juno, etc., that connection was due to a thorough knowledge of physiology and female nature, physical as much as psychic. But, primarily, the Sun and Moon were the only visible and, so to say, tangible [by their effects] psychic and physiological deities — the Father and the Son, while Space and air in general, or that expanse of Heaven called Noot by the Egyptians, was the concealed Spirit or Breath of the two. These “Father and Son” were interchangeable in their functions and worked harmoniously together in their effects upon terrestrial nature and humanity; hence they were regarded as one, though two in personified Entities. They were both males, and both had their distinct and also collaborative work in the causative generation of Humanity. So much from the astronomical and cosmic standpoints viewed and expressed in symbolical language — which became in our last races theological and dogmatic. But behind this veil of Cosmic and Astrological symbols, there were the Occult mysteries of Anthropography and the primeval genesis of man. And in this, no knowledge of symbols — or even the key to the post-diluvian symbolical language of the Jews — will, or can help, save only with reference to that which was laid down in national scriptures for exoteric uses; the sum of which, however cleverly veiled, was only the smallest portion of the real primitive history of each people, often relating, moreover, — as in the Hebrew Scriptures — merely to the terrestrial human, not divine life of that nation. That psychic and spiritual element belonged to mystery and initiation. There were things never recorded in scrolls, but, as in Central Asia, on rocks and in subterranean crypts.
Nevertheless, there was a time when the whole world was “of one lip and of one knowledge,” and Man knew more of his origin than he does now, and thus knew that the Sun and Moon, however large a part they do play in the constitution, growth and development of the human body, were not the direct causative agents of his appearance on Earth;
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] conjunctions that regulate conceptions, and every astrologer in India knows it. During the previous and the present races, at least at the beginning of this one, those who indulged in marital relations during certain lunar phases that made those relations sterile were regarded as sorcerers and sinners. But even now those sins of old, based on the Occult knowledge and the abuse of it, would appear preferable to the crimes of to-day, which are perpetrated because of the complete ignorance of, and disbelief in all such occult influences.
these agents being, in truth, the living and intelligent Powers which the Occultists call Dhyan Chohans.
As to this, a very learned admirer of the Jewish Esotericism tells us that “the Kabala says expressly that Elohim is a ‘general abstraction’; what we call in mathematics ‘a constant co-efficient’ or a ‘general function’ entering into all construction, not particular; that is, by the general ratio 1 to 31415, (the astro-Dhyanic and) Elohistic figures.” To this the Eastern Occultist replies: Quite so, it is an abstraction to our physical senses. To our spiritual perceptions, however, and to our inner spiritual eye, the Elohim or Dhyanis are no more an abstraction than our soul and spirit are to us. Reject the one and you reject the other — since that which is the surviving Entity in us is partly the direct emanation from, and partly those celestial Entities themselves. One thing is sure; the Jews were perfectly acquainted with sorcery and various maleficent forces; but, with the exception of some of their great prophets and seers like Daniel and Ezekiel (Enoch belonging to a far distant race and not to any nation but to all, as a generic character), they knew little of, nor would they deal with, the real divine Occultism, their national character being averse to anything which had no direct bearing upon their own ethnical, tribal, and individual benefits — witness their own prophets, and the curses thundered by them against the “stiff-necked race.” But even the Kabala plainly shows the direct relation between the Sephiroth, or Elohim, and men.
Therefore, when it is proved to us that the Kabalistic identification of Jehovah with Binah, a female Sephiroth, has still another, a sub-occult meaning in it, then and then only the Occultist will be ready to pass the palm of perfection to the Kabalist. Until then, it is asserted that, as Jehovah is in the abstract sense of a “one living God,” a single number, a metaphysical figment, and a reality only when put in his proper place as an emanation and a Sephiroth — we have a right to maintain that the Zohar (as witnessed by the Book of Numbers, at any rate), gave out originally, before the Christian Kabalists had disfigured it, and still gives out the same doctrine that we do; i.e., it makes Man emanate, not from one Celestial Man, but from a Septenary group of Celestial men or Angels, just as in “Pymander, the Thought Divine.”
(3) When the one becomes two — the “three-fold” appears (a). The three are (linked into) one; and it is our thread, O Lanoo, the heart of the man-plant, called Saptaparna (b).
(a) “When the one becomes two, the three-fold appears”: to wit, when the One Eternal drops its reflection into the region of Manifestation, that reflection, “the Ray,” differentiates the “Water of Space”; or, in the words of the “Book of the Dead”; “Chaos ceases, through the effulgence of the Ray of Primordial light dissipating total darkness by the help of the great magic power of the word of the (Central) Sun.” Chaos becomes male-female, and Water, incubated through Light, and the “three-fold being issues as its First-born.” “Osiris-Ptah (or ra) creates his own limbs (like Brahma) by creating the gods destined to personify his phases” during the Cycle (xvii., 4). The Egyptian Ra, issuing from the deep, is the Divine Universal Soul in its manifested aspect, and so is Narayana, the Purusha, “concealed in Akasa and present in Ether.”
This is the metaphysical explanation, and refers to the very beginning of Evolution, or, as we should rather say, of Theogony. The meaning of the Stanza when explained from another standpoint in its reference to the mystery of man and his origin, is still more difficult to comprehend. In order to form a clear conception of what is meant by the One becoming two, and then being transformed into the “three-fold,” the student has to make himself thoroughly acquainted with what we call “Rounds.” If he refers to “Esoteric Buddhism” — the first attempt to sketch out an approximate outline of archaic Cosmogony — he will find that by a “Round” is meant the serial evolution of nascent material nature, of the seven globes of our chain* with their mineral,
* Several inimical critics are anxious to prove that no seven principles of man nor septenary constitution of our chain were taught in our earlier volume, “Isis Unveiled.” Though in that work the doctrine could only be hinted at, there are many passages, nevertheless, in which the septenary constitution of both man and chain is openly mentioned. Speaking of the Elohim in Vol. II., page 420, it is said: “They remain over the seventh heaven (or spiritual world), for it is they who, according to the Kabalists, formed in succession the six material worlds, or rather, attempts at worlds that preceded our own, which, they say, is the seventh.” Our globe is, of course, upon the diagram representing the “chain,” the seventh and the lowest; though, [[Footnote continued on next page]]
vegetable, and animal kingdoms (man being there included in the latter and standing at the head of it) during the whole period of a life-cycle. The latter would be called by the Brahmins “a Day of Brahma.” It is, in short, one revolution of the “Wheel” (our planetary chain), which is composed of seven globes (or seven separate “Wheels,” in another sense this time). When evolution has run downward into matter, from planet A to planet G, or Z, as the Western students call it, it is one Round. In the middle of the Fourth revolution, which is our present “Round”: “Evolution has reached its acme of physical development, crowned its work with the perfect physical man, and, from this point, begins its work spirit-ward.” All this needs little repetition, as it is well explained in “Esoteric Buddhism.” That which was hardly touched upon, and of which the little that was said has misled many, is the origin of man, and it is upon this that a little more light may now be thrown, just enough to make the Stanza more comprehensible, as the process will be fully explained only in its legitimate place, in Book II.
Now every “Round” (on the descending scale) is but a repetition in a more concrete form of the Round which preceded it, as every globe — down to our fourth sphere (the actual earth) — is a grosser and more material copy of the more shadowy sphere which precedes it in their successive order, on the three higher planes. (See diagram in Stanza VI. Comm. 6). On its way upwards on the ascending arc, Evolution spiritualises and etherealises, so to speak, the general nature of all, bringing it on to a level with the plane on which the twin globe on the opposite side is placed; the result being, that when the seventh globe is reached (in whatever Round) the nature of everything that is evolving returns to the condition it was in at its starting point — plus, every time, a new and superior degree in the states of consciousness. Thus it becomes clear that the “origin of man,” so-called, on this our present
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] as the evolution on these globes is cyclic, it is the fourth in descending the arc of matter. And again, on page 367, Vol. II., it is written: “In the Egyptian notions, as in those of all other faiths founded on philosophy, man was not merely . . . an union of soul and body; he was a trinity when spirit was added to it; and besides that doctrine made him consist of body, astral form, or shadow, the animal soul, the higher soul, and terrestrial intelligence and a sixth principle, etc., etc. — the seventh — Spirit.” So clearly are these principles mentioned, that even in the Index, one finds on page 683: — “Six principles of man” — the seventh being the synthesis of the six, and not a principle but a ray of the Absolute All — in strict truth.
Round, or life-cycle on this planet, must occupy the same place in the same order — save details based on local conditions and time — as in the preceding Round. Again, it must be explained and remembered that, as the work of each Round is said to be apportioned to a different group of so-called “Creators” or “Architects,” so is that of every globe; i.e., it is under the supervision and guidance of special “Builders” and “Watchers” — the various Dhyan-Chohans.
The group of the hierarchy which is commissioned to “create”* men is a special group, then; yet it evolved shadowy man in this cycle just as a higher and still more spiritual group evolved him in the Third Round. But as it is the Sixth — on the downward scale of Spirituality — the last and seventh being the terrestrial Spirits (elementals) which gradually form, build, and condense his physical body — this Sixth group evolves no more than the future man’s shadowy form, a filmy, hardly visible transparent copy of themselves. It becomes the task of the fifth Hierarchy — the mysterious beings that preside over the constellation Capricornus, Makara, or “Crocodile” in India as in Egypt — to inform the empty and ethereal animal form and make of it the Rational Man. This is one of those subjects upon which very little may be said to the general public. It is a mystery, truly, but only to him who is prepared to reject the existence of intellectual and conscious spiritual Beings in the Universe, limiting full Consciousness to man alone, and that only as a “function of the Brain.” Many are those among the Spiritual Entities, who have incarnated bodily in man, since the beginning of his appearance, and who, for all that, still exist as independently as they did before, in the infinitudes of Space. . . .
To put it more clearly: the invisible Entity may be bodily present on earth without abandoning, however, its status and functions in the supersensuous regions. If this needs explanation, we can do no better than remind the reader of like cases in Spiritualism, though such cases are very rare, at least as regards the nature of the Entity incarnating,†
* Creation is an incorrect word to use, as no religion, not even the sect of the Visishta Adwaitees in India — one which anthropomorphises even Parabrahmam — believes in creation out of nihil as Christians and Jews do, but in evolution out of preexisting materials.
† The so-called “Spirits” that may occasionally possess themselves of the bodies of mediums are not the Monads or Higher Principles of disembodied personalities. Such a “Spirit” can only be either an Elementary, or — a Nirmanakaya.
or taking temporary possession of a medium. Just as certain persons — men and women, reverting to parallel cases among living persons — whether by virtue of a peculiar organization, or through the power of acquired mystic knowledge, can be seen in their “double” in one place, while the body is many miles away; so the same thing can occur in the case of superior Beings.
Man, philosophically considered, is, in his outward form, simply an animal, hardly more perfect than his pithecoid-like ancestor of the third round. He is a living body, not a living being, since the realisation of existence, the “Ego-Sum,” necessitates self-consciousness, and an animal can only have direct consciousness, or instinct. This was so well understood by the Ancients that the Kabalist even made of soul and body two lives, independent of each other.* The soul, whose body vehicle is the Astral, ethero-substantial envelope, could die and man be still living on earth — i.e., the soul could free itself from and quit the tabernacle for various reasons — such as insanity, spiritual and physical depravity, etc.† Therefore, that which living men (Initiates)
* On p. 340-351 (Genesis of the Soul) in the “New Aspects of Life,” the Author states the Kabalistic teaching: “They held that, functionally, Spirit and Matter of corresponding opacity and density tended to coalesce; and that the resultant created Spirits, in the disembodied state, were constituted on a scale in which the differing opacities and transparencies of Elemental or uncreated Spirit were reproduced. And that these Spirits in the disembodied state attracted, appropriated, digested and assimilated Elemental Spirit and Elemental Matter whose condition was conformed to their own.” “They therefore taught that there was a wide difference in the condition of created Spirits; and that in the intimate association between the Spirit-world and the world of Matter, the more opaque Spirits in the disembodied state were drawn towards the more dense parts of the material world, and therefore tended towards the centre of the Earth, where they found the conditions most suited to their state; while the more transparent Spirits passed into the surrounding aura of the planet, the most rarified finding their home in its satellite.”
This relates exclusively to our Elementary Spirits, and has naught to do with either the Planetary, Sidereal, Cosmic or Inter-Etheric Intelligent Forces or “Angels” as they are termed by the Roman Church. The Jewish Kabalists, especially the practical Occultists who dealt with ceremonial magic, busied themselves solely with the spirits of the Planets and the “Elementals” so-called. Therefore this covers only a portion of the Esoteric Teaching.
† The possibility of the “Soul” (i.e., the eternal Spiritual Ego) dwelling in the unseen worlds, while its body goes on living on Earth, is a pre-eminently occult doctrine, especially in Chinese and Buddhist philosophy. See “Isis Unveiled,” vol. i., [[Footnote continued on next page]]
can do, the Dhyanis, who have no physical body to hamper them, can do still better. This was the belief of the Antediluvians, and it is fast becoming that of modern intellectual society, in Spiritualism, besides the Greek and Roman Churches, which teach the ubiquity of their angels. The Zoroastrians regarded their Amshaspends as dual entities (Ferouers), applying this duality — in esoteric philosophy, at any rate — to all the spiritual and invisible denizens of the numberless worlds in space which are visible to our eye. In a note of Damascius (sixth century) on the Chaldean oracles, we have a triple evidence of the universality of this doctrine, for he says: “In these oracles the seven Cosmocratores of the world, (‘The World-Pillars,’) mentioned likewise by St. Paul, are double — one set being commissioned to rule the superior worlds, the spiritual and the sidereal, and the other to guide and watch over the worlds of matter.” Such is also the opinion of Jamblichus, who makes an evident distinction between the archangels and the “Archontes.” (See “De Mysteriis,” sec. ii., ch. 3.) The above may be applied, of course, to the distinction made between the degrees or orders of spiritual beings, and it is in this sense that the Roman Catholic Church tries to interpret and teach the difference; for while the archangels are in her teaching divine and holy, their doubles are denounced by her as devils.* But the word “ferouer” is not to be understood in this sense, for it means simply the reverse or the opposite side of some attribute or quality. Thus when the Occultist says that the “Demon is the lining of God” (evil, the reverse of the medal), he does not mean two separate
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] p. 602, for an illustration. Many are the Soulless men among us, for the occurrence is found to take place in wicked materialists as well as in persons “who advance in holiness and never turn back.” (See ibid and also “Isis,” vol. ii., p. 369.)
* This identity between the Spirit and its material “double” (in man it is the reverse) explains still better the confusion, alluded to already in this work, made in the names and individualities, as well as the numbers, of the Rishis and the Prajapatis; especially between those of the Satyayuga and the Mahabharatan period. It also throws additional light on what the Secret Doctrine teaches with regard to the Root and the Seed Manus (see Book ii. “On the primitive Manus of humanity”). Not only those progenitors of our mankind, but every human being, we are taught, has its prototype in the Spiritual Spheres; which prototype is the highest essence of his seventh principle. Thus the seven Manus become 14, the Root Manu being the Prime Cause, and the “Seed-Manu” its effect; and when the latter reach from Satyayuga (the first stage) to the heroic period, these Manus or Rishis become 21 in number.
actualities, but the two aspects or facets of the same Unity. Now the best man living would appear, side by side with an Archangel — as described in Theology — a fiend. Hence a certain reason to depreciate a lower “double,” immersed far deeper in matter than its original. But there is still as little cause to regard them as devils, and this is precisely what the Roman Catholics maintain against all reason and logic.
(b) The concluding sentence of this sloka shows how archaic is the belief and the doctrine that man is seven-fold in his constitution. The thread of being which animates man and passes through all his personalities, or rebirths on this Earth (an allusion to Sutratma), the thread on which moreover all his “Spirits” are strung — is spun from the essence of the “threefold,” the “fourfold” and the “fivefold”; which contain all the preceding. Panchasikha, agreeably to Bhagavata Purana (V. XX. 25-28), is one of the seven Kumaras who go to Sveta-Dvipa to worship Vishnu. We shall see further on, what connection there is between the “celibate” and chaste sons of Brahma, who refuse “to multiply,” and terrestrial mortals. Meanwhile it is evident that “the Man-Plant,” Saptaparna, thus refers to the seven principles, and man is compared to the seven-leaved plant of this name* so sacred among Buddhists.
For further details as to Saptaparna and the importance of the number seven in occultism, as well as in symbology, the reader is referred to Part II., Book II., on Symbolism: Sections on “Saptaparna,” “The Septenary in the Vedas,” etc. etc.
* The Egyptian allegory in the “Book of the Dead” already mentioned, the hymn that relates to the reward “of the Soul,” is as suggestive of our Septenary Doctrine as it is poetical. The deceased is allotted a piece of land in the field of Aanroo, wherein the Manes, the deified shades of the dead, glean, as the harvest they have sown by their actions in life, the corn seven cubits high, which grows in a territory divided into 14 and 7 portions. This corn is the food on which they live and prosper, or that will kill them, in Amenti, the realm of which the Aanroo field is a domain. For, as said in the hymn, (see chap. xxxii. 9) the deceased is either destroyed therein, or becomes pure spirit for the Eternity, in consequence of the “Seven times seventy-seven lives” passed or to be passed on Earth. The idea of the corn reaped as the “fruit of our actions” is very graphic.
4. It is the root that never dies, the three-tongued flame of the four wicks* (a) . . . The wicks are the sparks, that draw from the three-tongued flame (their upper triad) shot out by the seven, their flame; the beams and sparks of one moon reflected in the running waves of all the rivers of the earth (“Bhumi, “or “Prithivi”)† (b).
(a) The “Three-tongued flame” that never dies is the immortal spiritual triad — the Atma-Buddhi and Manas — the fruition of the latter assimilated by the first two after every terrestrial life. The “four wicks” that go out and are extinguished, are the four lower principles, including the body.
“I am the three-wicked Flame and my wicks are immortal,” says the defunct. “I enter into the domain of Sekhem (the God whose arm sows the seed of action produced by the disembodied soul) and I enter the region of the Flames who have destroyed their adversaries,” i.e., got rid of the sin-creating “four wicks.” (See chap. i., vii., “Book of the Dead,” and the “Mysteries of Ro-stan.”)
(b) Just as milliards of bright sparks dance on the waters of an ocean above which one and the same moon is shining, so our evanescent personalities — the illusive envelopes of the immortal monad-ego — twinkle and dance on the waves of Maya. They last and appear, as the thousands of sparks produced by the moon-beams, only so long as the Queen of the Night radiates her lustre on the running waters of life: the period of a Manvantara; and then they disappear, the beams — symbols of our eternal Spiritual Egos — alone surviving, re-merged in, and being, as they were before, one with the Mother-Source.
* The three-tongued flame of the four wicks corresponds to the four unities and the three Binaries of the Sephirothal tree (see Commentary on Stanza VI.).
† Useless to repeat again that the terms given here are Sanskrit translations; for the original terms, unknown and unheard of in Europe, would only puzzle the reader more, and serve no useful purpose.