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- 7. Displeased they were. Our flesh is not there (they said). This is no fit rupa for our brothers of the fifth. No dwellings for the lives. * Pure waters, not turbid, they must drink (a). Let us dry them (the waters).
(a) Says the Catechism (Commentaries) : —
“ It is from the material Worlds that descend they, who fashion physical man at the new Manvantaras. They are inferior Lha ( Spirits ), possessed of a dual body (an astral within an ethereal form). They are the fashioners and creators of our body of illusion.” . . . .
“ Into the forms projected by the Lha (Pitris) the two letters † (the Monad, called also ‘ the Double Dragon ’) descend from the spheres of expectation. ‡ But they are like a roof with no walls, nor pillars to rest upon.” . . . .
“ Man needs four flames and three fires to become one on Earth, and he requires the essence of the forty-nine fires § to be perfect. It is those who have deserted the Superior Spheres, the Gods of Will, || who complete the Manu of illusion. For the ‘ Double Dragon ’ has no hold upon the mere form. It is like the breeze where there is no tree or branch to receive and harbour it. It cannot affect the form where there is no agent of transmission (Manas, “ Mind ”) and the form knows it not.”
“ In the highest worlds, the three are one, ¶ on Earth ( at first ) the one becomes two. They are like the two (side) lines of a triangle that has lost its bottom line — which is the third fire.” (Catechism Book III., sec. 9.)
Now this requires some explanation before proceeding any further. To do so especially for the benefit of our Aryan Hindu brethren —
* The Monads of the presentments of men of the Third Round, the huge Ape-like forms.
† In the esoteric system the seven principles in man are represented by seven letters. The first two are more sacred than the four letters of the Tetragrammaton.
‡ The intermediate spheres, wherein the Monads, which have not reached Nirvana, are said to slumber in unconscious inactivity between the Manvantaras.
§ Explained elsewhere. The “ Three Fires,” Pavaka, Pavamâna, and Suchi, who had forty-five sons, who, with their three fathers and their Father Agni, constitute the 49 fires. Pavamâna (fire produced by friction) is the parent of the fire of the Asuras ; Suchi (Solar fire) is the parent of the fire of the gods ; and Pavaka (electric fire) is the father of the fire of the Pitris (See Vayu Purâna ). But this is an explanation on the material and the terrestrial plane. The flames are evanescent and only periodical ; the fires — eternal in their triple unity. They correspond to the four lower, and the three higher human principles.
|| The Suras, who become later the A-Suras.
¶ Atma, Buddhi and Manas. In Devachan the higher element of the Manas is needed to make it a state of perception and consciousness for the disembodied Monad.
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whose esoteric interpretations may differ from our own — we shall have to explain to them the foregoing by certain passages in their own exoteric books, namely, the Purânas. In the allegories of the latter, Brahmâ, who is collectively the creative Force of the Universe, is said to be “ at the beginning of the Yugas (cycles). Possessed of the desire and of the power to create, and, impelled by the potencies of what is to be created, again and again does he, at the outset of a Kalpa, put forth a similar creation,” (see Vishnu Purâna, Book I. ch. V., closing Sloka. Also “ Manava Dharma Shastra ” I. 30.) It is now proposed to examine the exoteric account in the Vishnu Purâna, and see how much it may agree or disagree with our occult version.
In the Vishnu Purâna — which is certainly the earliest of all the scriptures of that name — we find, as in all the others, Brahmâ assuming as the male God, for purposes of creation, “ four bodies invested by three qualities.” * It is said : “ In this manner, Maitreya, Jyotsnâ (dawn), Râtri (night), Ahan (day), and Sandhyâ (evening twilight) are the four bodies of Brahmâ ” . . (p. 81, Vol. I., Wilson’s translation). As Parasâra explains it, when Brahmâ wants to create the world anew and construct progeny through his will, in the fourfold condition (or the four orders of beings) termed gods (Dhyan Chohans), Demons † (i.e., more material Devas), Progenitors (Pitris) and men, “ he collects Yoga-like (Yûyujè) his mind.”
Strange to say, he begins by creating demons, who thus take precedence over the angels or gods. This is no incongruity, nor is it due to inconsistency, but has, like all the rest, a profound esoteric meaning, quite clear to one free from Christian theological prejudice. He who bears in mind that the principle Mahat, or Intellect, the “ Universal Mind ” (literally “ the great ”), which esoteric philosophy explains as the “ manifested Omniscience ” — the “ first product ” of Pradhâna (primordial matter) as Vishnu Purâna says, but the first Cosmic aspect of Parabrahm or the esoteric sat, the Universal Soul, ‡ as Occultism
* This has in esotericism a direct bearing upon the seven principles of the manifested Brahmâ, or universe, in the same order as in man. Exoterically, it is only four principles.
† Demons is a very loose word to use, as it applies to a great number of inferior — i.e., more material — Spirits, or minor Gods, who are so termed because they “ war ” with the higher ones ; but they are no devils.
‡ The same order of principles in man : — Atma (Spirit), Buddhi (Soul), its vehicle, as Matter is the Vahan of Spirit, and Manas (mind), the third, or the fifth micro-cosmically. On the plane of personality, Manas is the first.
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teaches — is at the root of Self-Consciousness, will understand the reason why. The so-called “ Demons ” — who are (esoterically) the Self-asserting and (intellectually) active Principle — are the positive poles of creation, so to say ; hence, the first produced. This is in brief the process as narrated allegorically in the Purânas.
“ Having concentrated his mind into itself and the quality of darkness pervading Brahmâ’s assumed body, the Asuras, issuing from his thigh, were first produced ; after which, abandoning this body, it was transformed into night.” (See Part II., § “ The Fallen Angels.”)
Two important points are involved herein : — (a) Primarily in the Rig-Veda, the “ Asuras ” are shown as spiritual divine beings ; their etymology is derived from asu (breath), the “ Breath of God,” and they mean the same as the Supreme Spirit or the Zoroastrian Ahura. It is later on, for purposes of theology and dogma, that they are shown issuing from Brahmâ’s thigh, and that their name began to be derived from a privative, and sura, god (solar deities), or not-a-god, and that they became the enemies of the gods. Every ancient theogony without exception — from the Aryan and the Egyptian down to that of Hesiod — places, in the order of Cosmogonical evolution, Night before the Day ; even Genesis, where “ darkness is upon the face of the deep ” before “ the first day.” The reason for this is that every Cosmogony — except in the Secret Doctrine — begins by the “ Secondary Creation ” so-called : to wit, the manifested Universe, the Genesis of which has to open by a marked differentiation between the eternal Light of Primary Creation, whose mystery must remain for ever “ Darkness ” to the prying finite conception and intellect of the profane, and the Secondary Evolution of manifested visible nature. The Veda contains the whole philosophy of that division without having ever been correctly explained by our Orientalists, because it has never been understood by them.
Continuing to create, Brahmâ assumes another form, that of the Day, and creates from his breath the gods, who are endowed with the quality of goodness (passivity) *. In his next body the quality of great passivity prevailed, which is also (negative) goodness, and from the side of that personage issued the Pitris, the progenitors of men, because, as the text explains, “ Brahmâ thought of himself (during the process) as the father of the world.” † This is Kriya-sakti — the mysterious Yoga power
* Thus, says the Commentary, the saying “ by day the gods are most powerful, and by night the demons,” is purely allegorical.
† This thinking of oneself as this, that, or the other, is the chief factor in the production of every kind of psychic or even physical phenomena. The words “ whosoever shall say to this mountain be thou removed and cast into the sea, and shall not doubt . . . . that thing will come to pass,” are no vain words. Only the word “ faith ” ought to be translated by will. Faith without Will is like a wind-mill without wind — barren of results.
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explained elsewhere. This body of Brahmâ when cast off became the Sandhya (evening twilight), the interval between day and night.
Finally Brahmâ assumed his last form pervaded by the quality of foulness, “ and from this men, in whom foulness and passion predominate, were produced.” This body when cast off became the dawn, or morning twilight — the twilight of Humanity. Here Brahmâ stands esoterically for the Pitris. He is collectively the Pitar, “ father.”
The true esoteric meaning of this allegory must now be explained. Brahmâ here symbolizes personally the collective creators of the World and Men — the universe with all its numberless productions of things movable and (seemingly) immovable. * He is collectively the Prajâpatis, the Lords of Being ; and the four bodies typify the four classes of creative powers or Dhyan Chohans, described in the Commentary directly following Stanza VII. in Book I. The whole philosophy of the so-called “ Creation ” of the good and evil in this world and of the whole cycle of Manvantaric results therefrom, hangs on the correct comprehension of these Four bodies of Brahmâ.
The reader will now be prepared to understand the real, the esoteric significance of what follows. Moreover there is an important point to be cleared up. Christian theology having arbitrarily settled and agreed that Satan with his Fallen Angels belonged to the earliest creation, Satan being the first-created, the wisest and most beautiful of God’s Archangels, the word was given, the key-note struck. Henceforth all the pagan scriptures were made to yield the same meaning, and all were shown to be demoniacal, and it was and is claimed that truth and fact belong to, and commence only with, Christianity. Even the Orientalists and Mythologists, some of them no Christians at all but “ infidels,” or men of science, entered unconsciously to themselves, and by the mere force of association of ideas and habit, into the theological groove. Purely Brahmanical considerations, based on greed of power and ambition, allowed the masses to remain in ignorance of great truths ; and the same causes led the Initiates among the early Christians to remain silent, while those who had never known the truth disfigured the order of things, judging of the hierarchy of “ Angels ” by their exoteric form. Thus as the Asuras had become the rebellious inferior gods fighting the higher ones in popular creeds, so the highest archangel, in truth the Agathodæmon, the eldest benevolent Logos, became with theology the “ Adversary ” or Satan. But is this warranted by the correct interpretat ion of any old Scripture ? The answer is, most certainly not. As the Mazdean Scriptures of the
* The same idea is found in the first four chapters of Genesis, with their “ Lord ” and “ God,” which are the Elohim and the Androgynous Eloha.
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Zend-Avesta, the Vendidad and others correct and expose the later cunning shuffling of the gods in the Hindu Pantheon, and restore through Ahura the Asuras to their legitimate place in theogony, so the recent discoveries of the Chaldean tablets vindicate the good name of the first divine Emanations. This is easily proved. Christian Angelology is directly and solely derived from that of the Pharisees, who brought their tenets from Babylonia. The Sadducees, the real guardians of the Laws of Moses, knew not of, and rejected, any angels, opposing even the immortality of the human Soul (not impersonal Spirit). In the Bible the only “ Angels ” spoken of are the “ Sons of God ” mentioned in Genesis vi. (who are now regarded as the Nephilim, the Fallen Angels), and several angels in human form, the “ Messengers ” of the Jewish God, whose own rank needs a closer analysis than heretofore given. (Vide Supra, Stanza I., sub-sections 2, 3, et seq., where it is shown that the early Akkadians called Ea, Wisdom, that which was disfigured by the later Chaldees and Semites into Tismat, Tisalat and the Thallath of Berosus, the female Sea Dragon, now Satan.) Truly — “ How art thou fallen (by the hand of man), O bright star and son of the morning ” !
Now what do the Babylonian accounts of “ Creation,” as found on the Assyrian fragments of tiles, tell us ; those very accounts upon which the Pharisees built their angelology ? But compare Mr. G. Smith’s “ Assyrian Discoveries,” p. 398, and his “ Chaldean Account of Genesis,” p. 107. The “ Tablet with the story of the Seven Wicked Gods or Spirits,” has the following account — we print the important passages in italics : —
- 1. In the first days the evil Gods,
- 2. the angels, who were in rebellion, who in the lower part of heaven
- 3. had been created,
- 4. they caused their evil work
- 5. devising with wicked heads etc.
Thus we are shown, as plainly as can be, on a fragment which remained unbroken, so that there can be no dubious reading, that the “ rebellious angels ” had been created in the lower part of heaven, i.e., that they belonged and do belong to a material plane of evolution, although as it is not the plane of which we are made cognizant through our senses, it remains generally invisible to us, and is thus regarded as subjective. Were the Gnostics so wrong, after this, in affirming that this our visible world, and especially the Earth, had been created by lower angels, the inferior Elohim, of which, as they taught, the God of Israel was one. These Gnostics were nearer in time to the records of the Archaic Secret Doctrine, and therefore ought to be allowed to have known better than non-initiated Christians, who took upon themselves, hundreds of years
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later, to remodel and correct what was said. But let us see what the same Tablet says further on : —
7. There were seven of them (the wicked gods) . . . . (then follows the description of these, the fourth being a “ serpent,” the phallic symbol of the fourth Race in human Evolution).
15. The seven of them, messengers of the God Anu, their king.
Now Anu belongs to the Chaldean trinity, and is identical with Sin, the “ Moon,” in one aspect. And the Moon in the Hebrew Kabala is the Argha of the seed of all material life, and is still more closely connected, kabalistically, with Jehovah, who is double-sexed as Anu is. They are both represented in Esotericism and viewed from a dual aspect : male or spiritual, female or material, or Spirit and Matter, the two antagonistic principles. Hence the “ Messengers of Anu,” (who is Sin, the “ Moon,”) are shown, in verses 28 to 41, as being finally overpowered by the same Sin with the help of Bel (the Sun) and Ishtar (Venus). This is regarded as a contradiction by the Assyriologists, but is simply metaphysics in the esoteric teaching.
There is more than one interpretation, for there are seven keys to the mystery of the Fall. Moreover there are two “ Falls ” in Theology : the rebellion of the Archangels and their “ Fall,” and the “ Fall ” of Adam and Eve. Thus the lower as well as the higher Hierarchies are charged with a supposed crime. The word “ supposed ” is the true and correct term, for in both cases it is founded on misconception. Both are considered in Occultism as Karmic effects, and both belong to the law of Evolution : intellectual and spiritual on the one hand, physical and psychic on the other. The “ Fall ” is a universal allegory. It sets forth at one end of the ladder of Evolution the “ rebellion,” i.e., the action of differentiating intellection or consciousness on its various planes, seeking union with matter ; and at the other, the lower end, the rebellion of matter against Spirit, or of action against spiritual inertia. And here lies the germ of an error which has had such disastrous effects on the intelligence of civilized societies for over 1,800 years. In the original allegory it is matter — hence the more material angels — which was regarded as the conqueror of Spirit, or the Archangels who “ fell ” on this plane. “ They of the flaming sword (or animal passions) had put to flight the Spirits of Darkness.” Yet it is the latter who fought for the supremacy of the conscious and divine spirituality on Earth and failed, succumbing to the power of matter. But in theological dogma we see the reverse. It is Michael, “ who is like unto God,” the representative of Jehovah, who is the leader of the celestial hosts — as Lucifer, in Milton’s fancy, is of the infernal hosts — who has the best of Satan. It is true that the nature of
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Michael depends upon that of his Creator and Master. Who the latter is, one may find out by carefully studying the allegory of the “ War in Heaven ” with the astronomical key. As shown by Bentley, the “ War of the Titans against the gods ” in Hesiod, and also the war of the Asuras (or the Târakâmaya) against the devas in Purânic legend, are identical in all save the names. The aspects of the stars show (Bentley taking the year 945 B.C. as the nearest date for such conjunction) that “ all the planets, except Saturn, were on the same side of the heavens as the Sun and Moon,” and hence were his opponents. And yet it is Saturn, or the Jewish “ Moon-god,” who is shown as prevailing, both by Hesiod and Moses, neither of whom was understood. Thus it was that the real meaning became distorted.