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§§ (47) The remnants of the first two races disappear for ever. Groups of the various Atlantean races saved from the Deluge along with the Forefathers of the Fifth. (48) The origins of our present Race, the Fifth. The first divine Dynasties. (49) The earliest glimmerings in History, now pinned to the allegorical chronology of the Bible, and “ universal ” History slavishly following it. — The nature of the first instructors and civilizers of mankind.
- 47. Few (men) remained. Some yellow, some brown and black, and some red, remained. The moon-coloured (of the primitive Divine Stock) were gone for ever (a) . . . .
- 48. The Fifth Race produced from the Holy Stock (remained). It was ruled by Her First Divine Kings.
- 49. The “ Serpents ” who re-descended ; who made peace with the Fifth (Race), who taught and instructed it (b) . . . .
(a) This verse (47) relates to the Fifth Race. History does not begin with it, but living and ever-recurring tradition does. History — or what is called history — does not go further back than the fantastic origins of our fifth sub-race, a “ few thousands ” of years. It is the sub-divisions of this first sub-race of the Fifth Root-Race which are referred to in the sentence, “ Some yellow, some brown and black, and some red, remained.” The “ moon coloured ” (i.e., the First and the Second Races) were gone for ever — ay, without leaving any traces whatever ; and that, so far back as the third “ Deluge ” of the Third Lemurian race, that “ Great Dragon,” whose tail sweeps whole nations out of existence in the twinkling of an eye. And this is the true meaning of the Verse in the Commentary which says :
“ The Great Dragon has respect but for the ‘ Serpents ’ of Wisdom, the Serpents whose holes are now under the triangular stones,” i.e., “ the Pyramids, at the four corners of the world.”
(b) This tells us clearly that which is mentioned more than once elsewhere in the Commentaries ; namely, that the Adepts or “ Wise ” men of the three Races (the Third, Fourth and the Fifth) dwelt in subterranean habitats, generally under some kind of pyramidal structure, if not
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actually under a pyramid. For such “ pyramids ” existed in the four corners of the world and were never the monopoly of the land of the Pharaohs, though until found scattered all over the two Americas, under and over ground, beneath and amidst virgin forests, as in plain and vale, they were supposed to be the exclusive property of Egypt. If the true geometrically correct pyramids are no longer found in European regions, many of the supposed early neolithic caves, of the colossal triangular, pyramidal and conical menhirs in the Morbihan, and Brittany generally ; many of the Danish tumuli and even of the “ giant tombs ” of Sardinia with their inseparable companions, the nuraghi, are so many more or less clumsy copies of the pyramids. Most of these are the works of the first settlers on the newly-born continent and isles of Europe, the — “ some yellow, some brown and black, and some red ” — races that remained after the submersion of the last Atlantean continents and islands (850,000 years ago), with the exception of Plato’s Atlantean island, and before the arrival of the great Aryan races ; while others were built by the earliest immigrants from the East. Those who can hardly accept the antiquity of the human race so far back as the 57,000 years assigned by Dr. Dowler to the skeleton found by him at New Orleans on the banks of the Mississippi, will, of course, reject these facts. But they may find themselves mistaken some day. It is the foolish self-glorification of the Arcadians who styled themselves προσελήνοι — older than the moon — and of the people of Attica, who claimed that they had existed before the sun appeared in heaven, that we may disparage, not their undeniable antiquity. Nor can we laugh at the universal belief that we had giant ancestors. The fact that the bones of the mammoth and mastodon, and, in one case, those of a gigantic salamander, have been mistaken for human bones, does not make away with the difficulty that, of all the mammalians, man is the only one whom science will not allow to have dwarfed down, like all other animal frames, from the giant homo diluvii to the creature between 5 and 6 feet that he is now.
But the “ Serpents of Wisdom ” have preserved their records well, and the history of the human evolution is traced in heaven as it is traced on underground walls. Humanity and the stars are bound together indissolubly, because of the intelligences that rule the latter.
Modern symbologists may scoff at this and call it “ fancy,” but “ it is unquestionable that the Deluge has (ever) been associated in the legends of some Eastern peoples not only with the Pyramids, but also with the constellations,” writes Mr. Staniland Wake (“ The Great Pyramid ”). The “ Old Dragon ” is identical with the “ great Flood,” says Mr. Proctor (in “ Knowledge,” Vol. I., p. 243) : “ We know that in the past the constellation of the Dragon was at the pole, or boss, of the celestial sphere. In stellar temples . . . the Dragon would be the
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uppermost or ruling constellation . . . it is singular how closely the constellations . . . correspond in sequence and in range of right ascension with the events recorded respecting the (Biblical) Flood.”
The reasons for this singularity have been made clear in this work. But it shows only that there were several Deluges mixed up in the memories and traditions of the sub-races of the Fifth Race. The first great “ Flood ” was astronomical and cosmical, while several others were terrestrial. Yet, this did not prevent our very learned friend Mr. Gerald Massey — an Initiate truly in the mysteries of the British Museum, still only a Self-initiate — from declaring and insisting that the Atlantean submersion and Deluge were only the anthropomorphized fancies of ignorant people ; and that Atlantis was no better than an astronomical allegory. Nevertheless, the great Zodiacal allegory is based upon historical events, and one can hardly interfere with the other ; and it stands also to reason that every student of Occultism knows what that astronomical and zodiacal allegory means. Smith shows in the Nimrod Epic of the Assyrian tablets the real meaning of it. Its “ twelve cantos ” refer to the annual course of the Sun through the twelve months of the year. Each tablet answers to a special month, and contains a distinct reference to the animal forms in the signs of the Zodiac ” ; the eleventh canto being “ consecrated to Rimmon, the God of storms and of rain, and harmonizes with the eleventh sign of the Zodiac — Aquarius, or the Waterman ” (Nineteenth Century, 1882, p. 236). But even this is preceded in the old records by the pre-astronomical Cosmic flood, which became allegorized and symbolized in the above Zodiacal or Noah’s Flood. But this has nothing to do with Atlantis. The Pyramids are closely connected with the ideas of both the Great Dragon (the constellation), the “ Dragons of Wisdom,” or the great Initiates of the Third and Fourth Races, and the Floods of the Nile, regarded as a divine reminder of the great Atlantic Flood. The astronomical records of Universal History, however, are said to have had their beginnings with the Third Sub-race of the Fourth Root-race or the Atlanteans. When was it ? Occult data show that even since the time of the regular establishment of the Zodiacal calculations in Egypt, the poles have been thrice inverted.
We will presently return once more to this statement. Such symbols as are represented by the Signs of the Zodiac — a fact which offers a handle to materialists upon which to hang their one-sided theories and opinions — have too profound a signification, and their bearing upon our Humanity is too important to suffer dismissal in a few words. Meanwhile, we have to consider the meaning of that other statement which mentions (verse 48) the first divine Kings, who are said to have “ redescended,” guided and instructed our Fifth Race after the last deluge !
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We shall consider this last claim historically in the sections that follow, but must end with a few more details on the subject of “ Serpents.”
The rough commentaries on the Archaic Stanzas have to end here. Further elucidation requires proofs obtained from ancient, mediæval, and modern works that have treated of these subjects. All such evidence has now to be gathered in, collated and brought together in better order, so as to compel the attention of the reader to this wealth of historical proofs. And as the manifold meaning of the weird symbol — so often referred to and suggestive of the “ tempter of man ” in the orthodox light of the church — can never be too strongly insisted upon, it seems more advisable to exhaust the subject by every available proof at this juncture, even at the risk of repetition. The Titans and Kabirs have been invariably made out by our theologians and some pious symbologists as indissolubly connected with the grotesque personage called devil, and every proof to the contrary has been hitherto as invariably rejected and ignored ; therefore, the occultist must neglect nothing which may tend to defeat this conspiracy of slander. It is proposed to divide the subjects involved in these three last verses into several groups, and examine them in this final chapter as carefully and as fully as space permits. A few more details may thus be added to the general evidences of antiquity, on the most disputed tenets of Occultism and the Esoteric Doctrine — the bulk of which will be found in Part II. on Symbology.