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- 8. The Flames came. The Fires with the Sparks; the Night-Fires and the Day-Fires (a). They dried out the turbid dark Waters. With their heat they quenched them. The Lhas* of the High; the Lhamayin† of Below, came (b). They slew the Forms, which were two- and four-faced. They fought the Goat-men, and the Dog-Headed Men, and the Men with fishes’ bodies.
(a) The “Flames” are a Hierarchy of Spirits parallel to, if not identical with, the “burning” fiery Saraph (Seraphim), mentioned by
* Spirits.
† Also Spirits.
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Isaiah,* those who, according to Hebrew Theogony, attend the “Throne of the Almighty.” Melha is the Lord of the “Flames.” When he appears on Earth, he assumes the personality of a Buddha, says a popular legend. He is one of the most ancient and revered Lhas, a Buddhist St. Michael.
(b) The word “Below” must not be taken to mean Infernal Regions, but simply a spiritual, or rather ethereal, Being of a lower grade, because nearer to the Earth, or one step higher than our Terrestrial Sphere; while the Lhas are Spirits of the highest Spheres—whence the name of the capital of Tibet, Lha-ssa.
Besides a statement of a purely physical nature and belonging to the 64 ←evolution of life on Earth, there may be another allegorical meaning attached to this shloka, or indeed, as is taught, several. The “Flames,” or “Fires,” represent Spirit, or the male element, and “Water,” Matter, or the opposite element. And here again we find, in the action of the Spirit slaying the purely material form, a reference to the eternal struggle, on the physical and psychic planes, between Spirit and Matter, besides a scientific cosmic fact. For, as said in the next verse:
* vi. 2-6.