Blavatsky H.P. - Footnotes to The Tide of Life: Difference between revisions

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<center>[The Path, New York, Vol. III, Nos. 1 & 2, April and May, 1888, pp. 2-8, and 42-48 resp.]</center>

[Charles Johnston, the eminent Sanskritist and Orientalist (married to H.P.B.’s niece, Vera Vladimirovna de Zhelihovsky) writes an article analyzing the inner meaning of the first chapter of Genesis. H.P.B. appends a number of footnotes to various statements by the writer.]<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[Consult the comprehensive biographical sketch of Charles Johnston in the Bio-Bibliographical Index of the present Volume.— Compiler.]}}</ref>

The esoteric teaching accounts for it. The first chapter of Genesis, or the Elohistic version, does not treat of the {{Page aside|238}}creation of man at all. It is what the Hindu Puranas call the Primal creation, while the second chapter is the Secondary creation or that of our globe of man. Adam Kadmon is no man, but the protologos, the collective Sephirothal Tree—the “Heavenly Man,” the vehicle (or Vahan) used by En-Soph to manifest in the phenomenal world (see Zohar); and as the “male and female” Adam is the “Archetypal man,” so the animals mentioned in the first chapter are the sacred animals, or the zodiacal signs, while “Light” refers to the angels so called.

“The great whale” (i, 21) is the Makara of the Hindu Zodiac—translated very queerly as “Capricorn,” whereas it is not even a “Crocodile,” as “Makara” is translated, but a nondescript aquatic monster, the “Leviathan” in Hebrew symbolism, and the vehicle of Vishnu. Whoever may be right in the recent polemical quarrel on Genesis between Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Huxley, it is not Genesis that is guilty of the error imputed. The Elohistic portion of it is charged with the great zoological blunder of placing the evolution of the birds before the reptiles (Vide—Modern Science and Modern Thought, by Mr. S. Laing), and Mr. Gladstone is twitted with supporting it. But one has but to read the Hebrew text to find that verse 20 (chap. i) does speak of reptiles before the birds. And God said, “Let the waters bring forth abundantly the [swimming and creeping, not] moving creatures that hath life, and fowl that may fly,” etc. This ought to settle the quarrel and justify Genesis, for here we find it in a perfect zoological order—first the evolution of grass, then of larger vegetation, then of fish (or mollusks), reptiles, birds, etc., etc. Genesis is a purely symbolical and kabalistic volume. It can neither be understood nor appreciated, if judged on the mistranslations and misinterpretations of its Christian remodellers.

Because Adam is the symbol of the first terrestrial MAN or Humanity.

Genesis being an eastern work, it has to be read in its own language. It is in full agreement, when understood, with the universal cosmogony and evolution of life as given in the Secret Doctrine of the Archaic Ages. The last word of Science is far from being uttered yet. Esoteric philosophy teaches that man was the first living being to appear on earth, all the animal world coming after him. This will be proclaimed absurdly unscientific. But see in Lucifer—The Latest Romance of Science.<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[Reference is made here to H.P.B.’s review of a work by Paul Topinard whose actual title has not been traced. It appeared in Lucifer, Vol. I, September, 1887, pp. 72-74. Vide Vol. VIII, pp. 33-37, of the present Series.—Compiler.]}}</ref>

[The sacred theories of the East teach that man is the result of two converging curves of evolution, the one curve ascending through the vegetable and animal kingdoms and marking the evolution of the physical body, while the other curve descends from a super-physical spiritual race, called by some the “Progenitors” or “Pitris,”. . . . . This curve marks the downward evolution of man’s spiritual nature the development of the soul.]

There is an important point in the teachings of the Secret Doctrine which has been continually neglected. The above described evolution—the spiritual falling into the physical, or from mineral up to man, takes place only during the 1st of the two subsequent Rounds. At the beginning of the fourth “Round” in the middle of which begins the turning point upward—i.e., from the physical up to the spiritual, man is said to appear before anything else on earth, the vegetation which covered the earth belonging to the 3rd Round, and being quite ethereal, transparent. The first man (Humanity) is Ethereal too, for he is but the {{Page aside|241}}shadow (Chhaya) “in the image” of his progenitors, because he is the “astral body” or image of his Pitri (father). This is why in India gods are said to have no shadows. After which and from this primeval race, evolution supplies man with a “coat of skin” from the terrestrial elements and kingdom—mineral, vegetable, and animal.