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590 ←
Such is the name given in Occult phraseology to man. It means, as shown elsewhere, a seven-leaved plant, and the name has a great significance in the Buddhist legends. So it had, also, under disguise, in the Greek myths. The T, or 
(Tau), formed from the figure 7, and the Greek letter Γ (Gamma), was, as stated in the last Section, the symbol of life, 591 ←and of Life Eternal: of earthly life, because Γ (Gamma) is the symbol of the Earth (Gaia)*; and of Life Eternal, because the figure 7 is the symbol of the same life linked with Divine Life, the double glyph expressed in geometrical figures being:
—a Triangle and a Quaternary, the symbol of Septenary Man.
Now, the number six has been regarded in the Ancient Mysteries as an emblem of physical Nature. For six is the representation of the six dimensions of all bodies—the six directions which compose their form, namely, the four directions extending to the four cardinal points, North, South, East, and West, and the two directions of height and thickness that answer to the Zenith and the Nadir. Therefore, while the Senary was applied by the Sages to physical man, the Septenary was for them the symbol of that man plus his immortal Soul.†
J. M. Ragon gives a very good illustration of the “hieroglyphical senary,” as he calls our double equilateral triangle.
The hieroglyphical senary is the symbol of the commingling of the philosophical three fires and three waters, whence results the procreation of the elements of all things.‡
The same idea is found in the Indian double equilateral triangle. For, though it is called in that country the sign of Vishnu, yet in truth it is the symbol of the Triad, or Tri-mûrti. For, even in the exoteric rendering, the lower triangle, 
, with the apex downward, is the symbol of Vishnu, the God of the Moist Principle and Water, Nârâyana being the Moving Principle in the Nârâ, or Waters;§ while the
* Hence the Initiates in Greece called the Tau Γαιήιος, “son of Gaia,” “sprung from Earth,” like Tityos in the Odyssey (vii. 324).
† Ragon, Orthodoxie Maçonnique, etc., pp. 432, 433.
‡ Ibid., p. 433, note.
§ See the Mahâbhârata, e.g., III. 189, 3, where Vishnu says, “I called the name of water Nârâ in ancient times, and am hence called Nârâyana, for that was always the abode I moved in (Ayana).” It is into the Water, or Chaos, the “Moist Principle” of the Greeks and Hermes, that the first seed of the Universe is thrown. “The ‘Spirit of God’ moves on the dark waters of Space”; hence Thales makes of it the primordial element and prior to Fire, which was yet latent in that Spirit.
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triangle, with its apex upward, , is Shiva, the Principle of Fire, symbolized by the triple flame in his hand.* It is these two interlaced triangles, wrongly called “Solomon’s Seal”—which also form the emblem of our 592 ←Society—that produce the Septenary and the Triad at one and the same time, and are the Decad. Whatever way this 
is examined, all the ten numbers are contained therein. For with a point in the middle or centre, 
, it is a sevenfold sign or Septenary; its triangles denote number three, or the Triad; the two triangles show the presence of the Binary; the triangles with the central point common to both yield the Quaternary; the six points are the Senary; and the central point, the Unit; the Quinary being traced by combination, as a compound of two triangles, the even number, and of three sides in each triangle, the first odd number. This is the reason why Pythagoras and the ancients made the number six sacred to Venus, since:
The union of the two sexes, and the spagyrization of matter by triads, are necessary to develop the generative force, that prolific virtue and tendency to reproduction which is inherent in all bodies.†
Belief in “Creators,” or the personified Powers of Nature, is in truth no polytheism, but a philosophical necessity. Like all the other Planets of our system, the Earth has seven Logoi—the emanating Rays of the one “Father-Ray”—the Protogonos, or the Manifested Logos, he who sacrifices his Esse (or “Flesh,” the Universe) that the World may live and every creature therein have conscious being.
Numbers 3 and 4 are respectively male and female, Spirit and Matter, and their union is the emblem of Life Eternal in Spirit on its ascending arc, and in Matter as the ever resurrecting Element—by procreation and reproduction. The spiritual male line is vertical |; the differentiated matter-line is horizontal; the two forming the cross or 
. The 3 is invisible; the 4 is on the plane of objective perception. This is why all the Matter of the Universe, when analyzed to its ultimates by Science, can be reduced to four Elements only—Carbon, Oxygen, Nitrogen, and Hydrogen; and why the three primaries, the noumena of the four, or graduated Spirit or Force, have remained a terra incognita, and mere speculations, mere names, to exact Science. Her servants must believe in and study first the primary causes, before they can hope to fathom the nature, and acquaint themselves with the potentialities, of
* See the bronze statue of Tripurântaka Shiva, “Mahâdeva destroying Tripurâsura,” at the Museum of the India House.
† Ragon, ibid., p. 433, note.
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the effects. Thus, while the men of Western learning had, and still have, the four, or Matter, to toy with, the Eastern Occultists and their disciples, the great Alchemists the world over, have the whole septenate to study from.* As those Alche593 ←mists have it:
When the Three and the Four kiss each other, the Quaternary joins its middle nature with that of the Triangle [or Triad, i.e., the face of one of its plane surfaces becoming the middle face of the other], and becomes a Cube; then only does it [the Cube unfolded] become the vehicle and the number of Life, the Father-Mother Seven.
The following diagram will perhaps assist the student to grasp these parallelisms.
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| 7.
6. 5. |
Âtma.
Buddhi. Manas. |
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| 4. | Kâma Rûpa; the principle of animal desire, which burns fiercely during life in Matter, resulting in satiety; it is inseparable from animal existence. | 
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The lightest of all gases; it burns in Oxygen giving off the most intense heat of any substance in combustion, and forming water, the most stable of compounds; Hydrogen enters largely into all organic compounds. |
| 3. | Linga Sharîra; the inert vehicle or form on which the body is moulded; the vehicle of Life. It is dissipated very shortly after the disintegration of the body. |
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An inert gas; the vehicle with which Oxygen is mixed to adapt the latter for animal respiration; it also enters largely into all organic substances. |
| 2. | Prâna; Life, the active power producing all vital phenomena. |
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The supporter of combustion; the life-giving gas, the active chemical agent in all organic life. |
| 1. | The gross matter of the body; the substance formed and moulded over the Linga Sharîra (Chhâyâ) by the action of Prâna. |
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The fuel par excellence; the basis of all organic substances, the (chemical) element which forms the largest variety of compounds. |
* There are learned Brâhmans who have protested against our septenary division. They are right from their own standpoint, as we are right from ours. Leaving the three aspects, or adjunct principles out of calculation, they accept only four Upâdhis, or Bases, including the Ego—the reflected image of the Logos in the Kârana Sharîra—and even “strictly speaking . . . only three Upâdhis.” For purely theoretical metaphysical philosophy, or purposes of meditation, these three may be sufficient, as shown by the Târaka Yoga system; but for practical occult teaching our septenary division is the best and easiest. It is, however, a matter of school and choice.
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Now we are taught that all these earliest forms of organic life also appear in septenary groups of numbers. From minerals or “soft 594 ←stones that hardened,” to use the phraseology of the Stanzas, followed by the “hard plants that softened,” which are the product of the mineral, for “it is from the bosom of the stone that vegetation is born”;* and then to man—all the primitive models in every kingdom of Nature begin by being ethereal, transparent, films. This, of course, takes place only in the first beginning of life. With the next period they consolidate, and at the seventh begin to branch off into species, all except men, the first of the mammalian animals† in the Fourth Round.
Virgil, versed as every ancient poet was, more or less, in Esoteric Philosophy, sang of evolution in the following strains:
Principio cælum ac terras camposque liquentes |
“First came three, or the Triangle.” This expression has a profound meaning in Occultism, and the fact is corroborated, in Mineralogy, Botany, and even in Geology—as has been demonstrated in the Section on “The Chronology of the Brâhmans”—by the compound number seven, the three and the four, being contained in it. Salt in solution proves this. For when its molecules, clustering together, begin to deposit themselves as a solid, the first shape they assume is that of triangles, of small pyramids and cones. It is the figure of Fire, whence the word “Pyramis”; while the second geometrical
* Commentary, Book ix. F. 19.
† Protista are not animals. The reader is asked to bear in mind that when we speak of “animals,” the mammalians alone are meant. Crustacea, fishes, and reptiles are contemporary with, and most have preceded, physical man in this Round. All were bi-sexual, however, before the age of mammalia in the closing portion of the Secondary or Mesozoic ages, yet nearer to the Palæozoic than the Cænozoic ages. Smaller marsupial mammalia are contemporary with the huge reptilian monsters of the Secondary.
‡ Æneid, vi. 725-729. “First [Divine] Spirit within sustains the heavens, the earth and watery plains, the moon’s orb and shining stars and the [Eternal] Mind diffused through all the parts [of Nature], actuates the whole stupendous frame and mingles with the vast body [of the Universe]. Thence proceed the race of men and beasts, the vital principles of the flying kind and the monsters which the Ocean breeds under its smooth crystal plane.” “All proceeds from Ether and from its seven natures”—said the Alchemists. Science knows these only in their superficial effects.
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figure in manifested Nature is a Square or a Cube, 4 and 6; for, as Enfield says, “the particles of earth being cubical, those of fire are pyramidal”—truly. The pyramidal shape is that assumed by the pines—the most primitive tree after the fern period. Thus the two opposites in cosmic Nature—fire and water, heat and cold—begin their metrographical manifestations, one by a trimetric, the other by a hexagonal system. For the stellate crystals of snow, viewed under a microscope, are all and each of them a double or a treble six-pointed star, with a central nucleus, like a miniature star within the larger one. Says Mr. Darwin—showing that 595 ←the inhabitants of the sea-shore are greatly affected by the tides:
The most ancient progenitors in the kingdom of the Vertebrata . . . apparently consisted of a group of marine animals. . . . Animals living either about the mean high-water mark, or about the mean low-water mark, pass through a complete cycle of tidal changes in a fortnight. . . . Now it is a mysterious fact that in the higher and now terrestrial Vertebrata . . . many normal and abnormal processes have one or more weeks [septenates] as their periods . . . such as gestation of mammals, the duration of fevers.*
The eggs of the pigeon are hatched in two weeks [or 14 days]; those of the fowl in three; those of the duck in four; those of the goose in five; and those of the ostrich in seven.†
This number is closely connected with the Moon, whose Occult influence is ever manifesting itself in septenary periods. It is the Moon which is the guide of the Occult side of terrestrial Nature, while the Sun is the regulator and factor of manifested life. This truth has ever been evident to the Seers and the Adepts. Jakob Böhme, by insisting on the fundamental doctrine of the seven properties of everlasting Mother Nature, proved himself thereby a great Occultist.
But to return to the consideration of the septenary in ancient religious symbolism. To the metrological key of the symbolism of the Hebrews, which reveals numerically the geometrical relations of the Circle (All-Deity) to the Square, Cube, Triangle, and all the integral emanations of the divine area, may be added the theogonic key. This key explains that Noah, the Deluge-Patriarch, is in one aspect the permutation of the Deity (the Universal Creative Law), for the purpose
* Compare Descent of Man, p. 164.
† Bartlett’s Land and Water.
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of the formation of our Earth, its population, and the propagation of life on it, in general.
Now bearing in mind the septenary division in divine Hierarchies, as in cosmic and human constitutions, the student will readily understand that Jah-Noah is at the head of, and is the synthesis of the lower cosmic Quaternary. The upper Sephirothal Triad, —of which Jehovah-Binah (Intelligence) is the left, female, angle—emanates the Quaternary, . The latter, symbolizing by itself the Heavenly Man, the sexless Adam Kadmon, viewed as Nature in the abstract, becomes a septenate again by emanating from itself the additional three principles, the lower terrestrial or manifested physical Nature, Matter and our Earth—the seventh being Malkuth, the “Bride of the Heavenly Man”—thus forming, with the higher Triad, or Kether, the Crown, the full number of the Sephirothal Tree—the 10, the Total in Unity, or the Universe. Apart from the higher Triad, the lower creative Sephiroth are seven.
The above is not directly to our point, though it is a necessary 596 ←reminder to facilitate the comprehension of what follows. The question at issue is to show that Jah-Noah, or the Jehovah of the Hebrew Bible, the alleged Creator of our Earth, of man and all upon it, is:
(a) The lowest Septenary, the Creative Elohim—in his cosmic aspect.
(b) The Tetragrammaton or the Adam Kadmon, the “Heavenly Man” of the four letters—in his theogonic and kabalistic aspects.
(c) The Noah—identical with the Hindû Shishta, the human Seed, left for the peopling of the Earth from a previous creation, or Manvantara, as expressed in the Purânas, or the pre-diluvian period as rendered allegorically in the Bible—in his cosmic character.
But whether a Quaternary (Tetragrammaton) or a Triad, the biblical Creative God is not the Universal 10, unless blended with Ain Suph (as Brahmâ with Parabrahman), but a septenary, one of the many septenaries of the Universal Septenate. In the explanation of the question now in hand, his position and status as Noah may best be shown by placing the 3, , and 4, , on parallel lines with the cosmic and human principles. For the latter, the old familiar classification is made use of. Thus:
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| Human Aspects, or Principles. | |
Cosmic Aspects, or Principles. | ||
1. Universal Spirit (Âtma). 2. Spiritual Soul (Buddhi). 3. Human Soul, Mind (Manas). |
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1. The Unmanifested Logos. 2. Universal Latent Ideation.* 3. Universal (or Cosmic) Active† Intelligence. | |
4. Animal Soul (Kâma Rûpa). 5. Astral Body (Linga Sharîra). 6. Life Essence (Prâna). 7. Body (Sthûla Sharîra). |
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4. Cosmic (Chaotic) Energy. 5. Astral Ideation, reflecting terrestrial things. 6. Life Essence or Energy. 7. The Earth. |
As an additional demonstration of the statement, let the reader turn to kabalistic works.
“Ararat = the mount of descent = הר-י-רד, Hor-Jared. Hatho mentions it out of composition by Arath = ארת. Editor 597 ←of Moses Cherenensis says: ‘By this, they say, is signified the first place of descent (of the ark).’ ” (Bryant’s Anal., vol. iv. pp. 5, 6, 15.) Under “Berge,” mountain, Nork says of Ararat: “אררט, for ארת (i.e., Ararat for Arath) earth, Aramaic reduplication.” Here it is seen that
* The Adwaitin Vedântic Philosophy classifies this as the highest Trinity, or rather the Trinitarian aspect of Chinmâtra (Parabrahman); explained by them as the “Bare Potentiality of Prajñâ,” the power or the capacity that gives rise to perception; Chidâkâsham, the infinite field or plane of Universal Consciousness; and Asat (Mûlaprakriti), or Undifferentiated Matter. (See “Personal and Impersonal God” in Five Years of Theosophy, p. 203.)
† Differentiated Matter existing in the Solar System—let us refrain from touching the whole Kosmos—in seven different conditions, and Prajñâ, or the capacity of perception, existing likewise in seven different aspects corresponding to the seven conditions of Matter, there must necessarily be seven states of consciousness in man; and according to the greater or smaller development of these states, the systems of religions and philosophies were schemed out.
‡ Represented as the jealous, angry, turbulent and ever-active God, revengeful, and kind only to his “chosen people” when propitiated by them.
§ Noah and his three Sons are the collective symbol of this Quaternary in many and various applications, Ham being the Chaotic principle.
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Nork and Hatho make use of the same equivalent, in Arath, ארת, with the meaning of earth.*
Noah thus symbolizing both the Root-Manu and the Seed-Manu, or the Power which developed the Planetary Chain, and our Earth, and the Seed-Race, the Fifth, which was saved while the last sub-races of the Fourth, Vaivasvata Manu, perished, the number seven will be seen to recur at every step. It is Noah who, as Jehovah’s permutation, represents the septenary Host of the Elohim, and is thus the Father or Creator (the Preserver) of all animal life. Hence the verses of Genesis: 598 ←“Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male [3], and the female [4]; of fowls also of the air by sevens,”† etc., followed by all the sevening of days and the rest.
* Source of Measures, p. 65. The author explains: “Note that in Hebrew, Jared, the father of Enoch, is construed to be ‘the mount of descent,’ and it is said to be the same with Ararat, on which the cubical structure of Noah, or foundation measure, rested. Jared, in Hebrew, is י־רד. The root derivations are the same with those of Ararat, of acre, of earth. The Hebrew י־רד is literally, in British, Y R D; hence, in Jared, is to be found literally, our English word yard (and also י־רד, for Jah, or Jehovah, is rod). It is noteworthy that the son of Jared, viz., Enoch, lived 365 years; and it is said of him, by rabbinical commentators, that the year period of 365 days was discovered by him, thus bringing, again, time and distance values together, i.e., year time descended, by coördination, through the yard, or Jared, who thus was its father, in or through Enoch; and truly enough, 1296 = yard (or Jared) × 4 = 5,184, the characteristic value of the solar day, in thirds, which, as stated, may be styled the parent, numerically, of the solar year” (ibid.). This, however, by the astronomical and numerical kabalistic methods. Esoterically, Jared is the Third Race and Enoch the Fourth—but as he is taken away alive he symbolizes also the Elect saved in the Fourth, while Noah is the Fifth from the beginning—the family saved from the Waters, eternally and physically.
† vii. 2, 3.