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Thus it is pretty well established that Christ, the Logos, or the God in Space and the Saviour on Earth, is but one of the echoes of the same antediluvian and sorely misunderstood Wisdom. The history begins by the descent on Earth of the “ Gods ” who incarnate in mankind, and this is the Fall. Whether Brahmâ hurled down on Earth in the allegory by Bhagavant, or Jupiter by Kronos, all are the symbols of the human races. Once landed on, and having touched this planet of dense matter, no snow-white wings of the highest angel can remain immaculate, or the Avatar (or incarnation) be perfect, as every such Avatar is
* Saith Uriel (chap. xxvi. v. 3), in the “ Book of Enoch,” “ all those who have received mercy shall for ever bless God the everlasting King,” who will reign over them.
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the fall of a God into generation. Nowhere is the metaphysical truth more clear, when explained esoterically, or more hidden from the average comprehension of those who instead of appreciating the sublimity of the idea can only degrade, than in the Upanishads, the esoteric glossaries of the Vedas. The Rig-Veda, as Guignault characterized it, “ is the most sublime conception of the great highways of Humanity.” The Vedas are, and will remain for ever, in the esotericism of the Vedanta and the Upanishads, “ the mirror of the eternal Wisdom.”
For over sixteen centuries the new masks, forced on the faces of the old gods, have screened them from public curiosity, but they have finally proved a misfit. Yet the metaphorical Fall, and as metaphorical atonement and crucifixion, led Western Humanity through roads knee-deep in blood. Worse than all, they led it to believe in the dogma of the evil spirit distinct from the spirit of all good, whereas the former lives in all matter and pre-eminently in man. Finally it created the God-slandering dogma of Hell and eternal perdition ; it spread a thick film between the higher intuitions of man and divine verities ; and, most pernicious result of all, it made people remain ignorant of the fact that there were no fiends, no dark demons in the Universe before man’s own appearance on this, and probably on other earths. Henceforth the people were led to accept, as the problematical consolation for this world’s sorrows, the thought of original sin.
The philosophy of that law in Nature, which implants in man as well as in every beast a passionate, inherent, and instinctive desire for freedom and self-guidance, pertains to psychology and cannot be touched on now. To show the feeling in higher Intelligences, to analyse and give a natural reason for it, would necessitate, moreover, an endless philosophical explanation for which there is no room here. Perhaps, the best synthesis of this feeling is found in three lines of Milton’s Paradise Lost. Says the “ Fallen One ” : —
“ Here we may reign secure ; and in my choice, |
Better be man, the crown of terrestrial production and king over its opus operatum, than be lost among the will-less spiritual Hosts in Heaven.
We have said elsewhere that the dogma of the first Fall rested on a few verses in Revelation ; these verses being now shown a plagiarism from Enoch by some scholars. These grew into endless theories and speculations, which gradually acquired the importance of dogma and inspired tradition. Every one wanted to explain the verse about the seven-headed dragon with his ten horns and seven crowns, whose tail
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“ drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth,” and whose place, with that of his angels, “ was found no more in heaven.” What the seven heads of the Dragon (cycle) mean, and its five wicked kings also, may be learned in the Addenda which close Part III. of this Volume.
From Newton to Bossuet speculations were incessantly evolved in Christian brains with regard to these obscure verses. . . . . “ The star that falls, is the heresiarch Theodosius ” . . . . explains Bossuet. “ The clouds of smoke, are the heresies of the Montanists. . . . . The third part of the stars, are the martyrs, and especially the doctors of divinity. . . . .”
Bossuet ought to have known, however, that the events described in Revelation were not original, and may, as shown, be found in other and pagan traditions. There were no scholastics nor Montanists during Vedic times, nor yet far later in China. But Christian theology had to be protected and saved.
This was only natural. But why should truth be sacrificed in order to protect from destruction the lucubrations of Christian theologians ?
The princeps aeris hujus, the “ prince of the air ” of St. Paul, is not the devil, but the effects of the astral light, as Eliphas Lévi correctly explains. The Devil is not “ the God of this period,” as he says, for it is the deity of every age and period, since man appeared on earth, and matter, in its countless forms and states, had to fight for its evanescent existence against other disintegrating Forces.
The “ Dragon ” is simply the symbol of the cycle and of the “ Sons of Manvantaric Eternity,” who had descended on earth during a certain epoch of its formative period. The “ clouds of smoke ” are a geological phenomenon. The “ third part of the stars of heaven ” cast down to the earth — refers to the divine Monads, (the Spirits of the Stars in Astrology) that circumambulate our globe ; i.e., the human Egos destined to perform the whole cycle of incarnations. This sentence, qui circumambulat terram, however, is again referred to the Devil in theology, the mythical father of Evil being said to “ fall like lightning.” Unfortunately for this interpretation, the “ Son of Man,” or Christ, is expected, on the personal testimony of Jesus, to descend on earth likewise, “ As the lightning cometh out of the East,” * just in the same shape and under the same symbol as Satan, who is seen “ as lightning to fall from heaven.” † All these metaphors and figures of speech, pre-eminently Oriental in their character, must have their origin searched for in the East. In all the ancient cosmogonies light comes from darkness. In Egypt, as elsewhere, darkness was “ the
* Matthew xxiv. 27.
† Luke x. 18.
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principle of all things.” Hence Pymander, the “ Thought divine,” issues as light from darkness. Behemoth * is the principle of Darkness, or Satan, in Roman Catholic Theology, and yet Job says of him that “ Behemoth is the chief (principle) of the ways of God ” (xl. 19) — “ Principium viarum Domini Behemoth ! ”
Consistency does not seem to be a favourite virtue in any portion of divine Revelation, so-called — not as interpreted by theologians, at any rate.
The Egyptians and the Chaldeans referred the birth of their divine Dynasties to that period when creative Earth was in her last final throes, in giving birth to her prehistoric mountain ranges, which have since disappeared, her seas and her continents. Her face was covered with “ deep Darkness and in that (Secondary) Chaos was the principle of all things ” that developed on the globe later on. And our geologists have ascertained that there was such a terrestrial conflagration in the early geological periods, several hundred millions of years ago. † As to the tradition itself, every country and nation had it, each under its respective national form.
It is not alone Egypt, Greece, Scandinavia or Mexico, that had their Typhon, Python, Loki and its “ falling ” Demon, but China, also. The Celestials have a whole literature upon the subject. In King, it is said that in consequence of a rebellion against Ti of a proud Spirit who said he was Ti himself, seven choirs of celestial spirits were exiled upon earth, which “ brought a change in all nature, heaven itself bending down and uniting with earth.”
And in the “ Y-King,” one reads : “ The flying Dragon, superb and rebellious, suffers now, and his pride is punished ; he thought he would reign in heaven, he reigns only on the earth.”
Again, the Tchoon-Tsieoo says allegorically : “ one night the stars ceased shining in darkness, and deserted it, falling down like rain upon the earth, where they are now hidden.” These stars are the Monads.
Chinese cosmogonies have their “ Lord of the Flame ” and their “ Celestial Virgin,” with little “ Spirits to help and minister to her ; and big Spirits to fight those who are the enemies of other gods.” But all this does not prove that the said allegories are presentments or prophetic writings which all refer to Christian theology.
The best proof one can offer to Christian Theologians that the
* The Protestant Bible defines Behemoth innocently — “ The elephant as some think ” (See marginal note in Job xl. 19) in the authorised versions.
† Astronomy, however, knows nothing of stars that have disappeared unless from visibility, never from existence, since the Science of Astronomy became known. Temporary stars are only variable stars, and it is believed even that the new stars of Kepler and Tycho Brahé may still be seen.
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esoteric meaning in the Bible — in both Testaments — was the assertion of the same idea as in our Archaic teachings — to wit, that the “ Fall of the Angels ” referred simply to the incarnation of angels “ who had broken through the Seven Circles ” — is found in the Zohar. Now the Kabala of Simeon Ben Iochai is the soul and essence of its allegory, as the later Christian Kabala is the “ dark cloaked ” Mosaic Pentateuch. And it says (in the Agrippa MSS.) :
“ The wisdom of the Kabala rests in the science of the equilibrium and Harmony.”
“ Forces that manifest without having been first equilibrized perish in space ” (“ equilibrized ” meaning differentiated).
“ Thus perished the first Kings (the Divine Dynasties) of the ancient world, the self-produced Princes of giants. They fell like rootless trees, and were seen no more : for they were the Shadow of the Shadow ” ; to wit, the chhaya of the Shadowy Pitris. (Vide about the “ Kings of Edom.”)
“ But those that came after them, who shooting down like falling stars were enshrined in the shadows — prevailed and to this day ” : Dhyanis, who by incarnating in those “ empty shadows,” inaugurated the era of mankind.
Every sentence in the ancient cosmogonies, unfolds to him who can read between the lines the identity of the ideas, though under different garbs.
The first lesson taught in Esoteric philosophy is, that the incognizable Cause does not put forth evolution, whether consciously or unconsciously, but only exhibits periodically different aspects of itself to the perception of finite Minds. Now the collective Mind — the Universal — composed of various and numberless Hosts of Creative Powers, however infinite in manifested Time, is still finite when contrasted with the unborn and undecaying Space in its supreme essential aspect. That which is finite cannot be perfect. Therefore there are inferior Beings among those Hosts, but there never were any devils or “ disobedient Angels,” for the simple reason that they are all governed by Law. The Asuras who incarnated (call them by any other name), followed in this a law as implacable as any other. They had manifested prior to the Pitris, and as time (in Space) proceeds in Cycles, their turn had come — hence the numerous allegories ( Vide “ Demon est Deus inversus,” Part II., Vol. I.). The name of Asura was first given by the Brahmans indiscriminately to those who opposed their mummeries and sacrifices, as the great Asura called “ Asurendra ” did. It is to those ages, probably, that the origin of the idea of the demon, as opposer and adversary, has to be traced.
The Hebrew Elohim, called in the translations “ God,” and who create “ light,” are identical with the Aryan Asuras. They are also
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referred to as the “ Sons of Darkness ” as a philosophical and logical contrast to light immutable and eternal. The earliest Zoroastrians did not believe in Evil or Darkness being co-eternal with Good or Light, and they give the same interpretation. Ahriman is the manifested shadow of Ahura-mazda (Asura-mazda), himself issued from Zeruana Akerne “ boundless (circle of) Time ” or the Unknown Cause. “ Its glory,” they say of the latter, “ is too exalted, its light too resplendent for either human intellect or mortal eye to grasp and see.” Its primal emanation is eternal light, which, from having been previously concealed in Darkness was called to manifest itself and thus was formed Ormazd, the “ King of Life.” He is the “ first-born ” in boundless time, but, like his own antitype (preexisting Spiritual idea), has lived within darkness from all eternity. The six Amshaspends (seven with himself, chief of all), the primitive Spiritual Angels and Men are collectively his Logos. The Zoroastrian Amshaspends create the world in six days or periods also, and rest on the Seventh ; whereas that Seventh is the first period or “ day,” in esoteric philosophy, (Primary creation in the Aryan cosmogony). It is that intermediate Æon which is the Prologue to creation, and which stands on the borderland between the uncreated eternal Causation and the produced finite effects ; a state of nascent activity and energy as the first aspect of the eternal immutable Quiescence. In Genesis, on which no metaphysical energy has been spent, but only an extraordinary acuteness and ingenuity to veil the esoteric Truth, “ Creation ” begins at the third stage of manifestation. “ God ” or the Elohim are the “ Seven Regents ” of Pymander. They are identical with all the other Creators.
But even in Genesis that period is hinted at by the abruptness of the picture, and the “ darkness ” that was on the face of the deep. The Alahim are shown to “ create ” — that is to say, to build or to produce the two or “ double heaven ” (not Heaven and Earth) ; which means, in so many words, that they separated the upper manifested (angelic) heaven, or plane of consciousness, from the lower or terrestrial plane ; the (to us) eternal and immutable Æons from those periods that are in space, time and duration ; Heaven from Earth, the unknown from the known — to the profane. Such is the meaning of the sentence in Pymander, which says that : “ Thought, the divine, which is Light and Life (Zeruana Akerne) produced through its Word, or first aspect,” the other, operating Thought, which being the god of Spirit and Fire, constructed seven Regents enclosing within their circle the world of Senses, named “ fatal destiny.” The latter refers to Karma ; the “ seven circles ” are the seven planets and planes, as also the seven invisible Spirits, in the angelic spheres, whose visible symbols are the seven planets, * the
* Another proof, if any were needed, that the ancient Initiates knew of more than seven planets is to be found in the Vishnu Purâna, Book II., ch. xii., where, describing
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seven Rishis of the great Bear and other glyphs. As said of the Adityas by Roth : “ they are neither sun, nor moon, nor stars, nor dawn, but the eternal sustainers of this luminous life which exists as it were behind all these phenomena.”
It is they — the “ Seven Hosts ” — who, having “ considered in their Father (divine Thought) the plan of the operator,” as says Pymander, desired to operate (or build the world with its creatures) likewise ; for, having been born “ within the sphere of operation ” — the manifesting Universe — such is the Manvantaric Law. And now comes the second portion of the passage, or rather of two passages merged into one to conceal the full meaning. Those who were born within the sphere of operation were “ the brothers who loved him well.” The latter — the “ him ” — were the primordial angels : the Asuras, the Ahriman, the Elohim — or “ Sons of God,” of whom Satan was one — all those spiritual beings who were called the “ Angels of Darkness,” because that darkness is absolute light, a fact now neglected if not entirely forgotten in theology. Nevertheless, the spirituality of those much abused “ Sons of Light ” which is Darkness, must be evidently as great in comparison with that of the Angels next in order, as the ethereality of the latter would be, when contrasted with the density of the human body. The former are the “ First-born ” ; therefore so near to the confines of pure quiescent Spirit as to be merely the “ privations ” — in the Aristotelian sense — the ferouers or the ideal types of those who followed, They could not create material, corporeal things ; and, therefore, were said in process of time to have refused to create, as commanded by “ God ” — otherwise, to have rebelled.
Perchance, this is justified on that principle of the Scientific theory which teaches us about light and sound and the effect of two waves of equal length meeting. “ If the two sounds be of the same intensity, their coincidence produces a sound four times the intensity of either, while their interference produces absolute silence.”
Explaining some of the “ heresies ” of his day, Justin Martyr shows the identity of all the world religions at their starting points. The first beginning opens invariably with the unknown and passive deity, from which emanates a certain active power or virtue, the Mystery that is sometimes called Wisdom, sometimes the Son, very often God, Angel, Lord, and Logos. * The latter is sometimes applied to the very first emanation, but in several systems it proceeds from the first androgyne or double ray produced at the beginning by the unseen. Philo depicts this wisdom as male and female. But though its first manifestation
the chariots attached to Dhruva (the pole star), Parasâra speaks of “ the chariots of the nine planets,” which are attached by aërial cords.
* Justin : “ Cum. Trypho,” p. 284.
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had a beginning, for it proceeded from Oulom * (Aiôn, time), the highest of the Æons when emitted from the Father, it had remained with him before all creations, for it is part of him. † Therefore, Philo Judæus calls Adam Kadmon “ mind ” (the Ennoia of Bythos in the Gnostic system). “ The mind, let it be named Adam.” ‡
As the old Magian books explain it, the whole event becomes clear. A thing can only exist through its opposite — Hegel teaches us, and only a little philosophy and spirituality are needed to comprehend the origin of the later dogma, which is so truly satanic and infernal in its cold and cruel wickedness. The Magians accounted for the origin of evil in their exoteric teachings in this way. “ Light can produce nothing but light, and can never be the origin of evil ” ; how then was the evil produced, since there was nothing co-equal or like the Light in its production ? Light, say they, produced several Beings, all of them spiritual, luminous, and powerful. But a Great one (the “ Great Asura,” Ahriman, Lucifer, etc., etc.) had an evil thought, contrary to the Light. He doubted, and by that doubt he became dark.
This is a little nearer to the truth, but still wide of the mark. There was no “ evil thought ” that originated the opposing Power, but simply thought per se ; something which, being cogitative, and containing design and purpose, is therefore finite, and must thus find itself naturally in opposition to pure quiescence, the as natural state of absolute Spirituality and Perfection. It was simply the law of Evolution that asserted itself ; the progress of mental unfolding, differentiated from spirit, involved and entangled already with matter, into which it is irresistibly drawn. Ideas, in their very nature and essence, as conceptions bearing relation to objects, whether true or imaginary, are opposed to absolute thought, that unknowable all of whose mysterious operations Mr. Spencer predicates that nothing can be said, but that “ it has no kinship of nature with Evolution ” (Principles of Psychology, § 474) — which it certainly has not.
The Zohar gives it very suggestively. When the “ Holy One ” (the Logos) desired to create man, he called the highest host of Angels and said to them what he wanted, but they doubted the wisdom of this desire and answered : “ Man will not continue one night in his glory ” — for
* A division indicative of time.
† Sanchoniathon calls time the oldest Æon, Protogonos, the “ first-born.”
‡ Philo Judæus : “ Cain and his Birth,” p. xvii.
§ It is suggestive of that spirit of paradoxical negation so conspicuous in our day, that while the evolution hypothesis has won its rights of citizenship in science as taught by Darwin and Hæckel, yet both the eternity of the Universe and the pre-existence of a universal consciousness, are rejected by the modern psychologists. “ Should the Idealist be right, the doctrine of evolution is a dream,” says Mr. Herbert Spencer. (See foot note, pp. 1 and 2, Book II.)
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which they were burnt (annihilated ?), by the “ Holy ” Lord. Then he called another, lower Host, and said the same. And they contradicted the “ Holy One ” : “ What is the good of Man ? ” they argued. Still Elohim created man, and when man sinned there came the hosts of Uzza and Azael, and twitted God : “ Here is the Son of Man that thou hast made,” they said. “ Behold, he sinned ! ” Then the Holy One replied : “ If you had been among them (men) you would have been worse than they.” And he threw them from their exalted position in Heaven even down on the Earth ; and “ they were changed (into men) and sinned after the women of the earth ;” (Zohar, 9, b.). This is quite plain. No mention is made in Genesis of these “ Sons of God ” (chap. vi.) having been punished for it. The only reference to it in the Bible is in Jude (6). “ And the angels which kept not their first estate but left their habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.” And this means simply that the “ Angels,” doomed to incarnation, are in the chains of flesh and matter, under the darkness of ignorance, till the “ Great Day,” which will come as always after the seventh round, after the expiration of the “ Week,” on the Seventh Sabbath, or in the post-Manvantaric Nirvana.
How truly esoteric and consonant with the Secret Doctrine is “ Pymander the Thought Divine ” of Hermes, may be inferred from its original and primitive translations in Latin and Greek only. On the other hand how disfigured it has been later on by Christians in Europe, is seen from the remarks and unconscious confessions made by de St. Marc, in his Preface and letter to the Bishop of Ayre, in 1578. Therein, the whole cycle of transformations from a Pantheistic and Egyptian into a mystic Roman Catholic treatise is given, and we see how Pymander has become what it is now. Still, even in St. Marc’s translation, traces are found of the real Pymander — the “ Universal Thought ” or “ Mind.” This is the verbatim translation from the old French translation, the original being given in the foot-note * in its quaint old French : —
“ Seven men (principles) were generated in Man.” “ The nature of the harmony of the Seven of the Father and of the Spirit. Nature . . . .
* “ Section 16 (chap. i.), Mercure Trismegiste — Pimandre . . . . ” “ Oh, ma pensée, que s’ensuit il ? car je désire grandement ce propos. Pimandre dict, ceci est un mystère celé, jusques à ce jour d’hui. Car nature, soit mestant avec l’hôme, a produit le miracle très merveilleux, aiant celluy qui ie t’ay dict, la nature de l’harmonie des sept du père, et de l’esprit. Nature ne s’arresta pas là, mais incontinent a produict sept hômes, selon les natures des sept gouverneurs en puissance des deux sexes et esleuez. . . . La génération de ces sept s’est donnée en ceste manière ”
And a gap is made in the translation, which can be filled partially by resorting to the Latin text of Apuleius. The commentator, the Bishop, says : “ Nature produced in him (man) seven men ” (seven principles).
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produced seven men in accordance with the seven natures of the Seven Spirits ” “ having in them, potentially, the two sexes.”
Metaphysically, the Father and the Son are the “ Universal Mind ” and the “ periodical Universe ” ; the “ Angel ” and the “ Man.” It is the Son and the Father at one and the same time ; in Pymander, the active idea and the passive thought that generates it ; the radical key-note in Nature which gives birth to the seven notes — the septenary scale of the creative Forces, and to the seven prismatic aspects of colour, all born from the one white ray, or Light — itself generated in darkness.