Blavatsky H.P. - Letter to Skinner, 1887.02.17

A letter from
H.P.Blavatsky to J.R.Skinner

Transcribed from original manuscript

Ostende, Feb. 17 1887.

My dear Mr. Skinner,

Many sincere thanks for your most valuable MSS. I gave it to be bound immediately after part glancing over it, for I desire to study it seriously.

From your long letter, however & what I could gather superficially from the MSS & the “Source of Measures” I feel convinced – nay, I know it – you have discovered a Key to the universal language, you have done more than any living man, since the fathers of the Church have designedly hidden & lost it. But – pardon me, dear Mr. Skinner; do not think me presumptuous or ignorant or one-sided if I tell you that which I can prove. You have discoveredaKey but it is one of the Seven Keys I mention in Isis Unveiled. Of course, when made to face your clear systematic mathematically correct writings – my Isis which I wrote in perfect ignorance even of the English language, of the tune cannot impress such an accurate writer as yourself with any of its statements … The things I give there are facts. And of those Seven Keys to the Esoteric philosophy & the universal language you have discovered one – nay, two – but you seem to scorn entirely its first Key – the one which opens the … metaphysical & abstract portion of the philosophy, the paradigms of all things, the divine spiritual models of its physic, logical & astronomical aspects. For all them are linked together and if you hold only to the later Jewish texts remodeled by the Ezras and Co to fit in with the universal geometrical ideas (the Egyptian among others) you will not unlock the others.

Now I am a perfect ignoramus in mathematics or geometry or a Science, I know only the outward form of symbols (the geometrical & numerical forms I mean), for I have studied Occultism & Esoterism practically & for practical use not theoretically; e. g. when I see a certain symbol of the mineral Kingdom – say – at a glance its relation to the vegetal, animal & human (or psychic) realm. I know what a foetus ( as in the Palenque carvings) relates to; & that every stroke, every figure repeated on a tablet related in its numeration not only to the “lunar” months, periods and divisions – as in its bearings upon the mystery of generation – but also to the Cosmogony, the theogony ( the hierarchy of the “Builders” or the Constructive Dhyan Chohans – the masons of our manvantaric world) who are in their collect work the “Master Mason” or Demiurgos. And I know also to what object in the physical world and what forces in the Noumenal world, each of the 49 weeks of gestation of the primitive man (or child) in “the lunar egg” – corresponds to. It will puzzle you, but it is Eastern esoterism. You take up physiology, female periods, quickening gestation etc. – from the last races of the 4^th Atlantean race. We take it up from the 2^nd and 3^d races, & begin with sexless, then bisexual or hermaphrodite and finally male & female separated – at the beginning of the 4^th Root Race. And if we are opposed we ask how came first man on Earth? The profane stand on two paths of speculation: the theological – (Adam made of earth, a human clay figure into which “God” breathed the breath of life); and – the Darwinian, materialistic – man evoluted to its present form from lower animals: the anthropoid ape & he having one common ancestor.

We answer to the latter – fiddlesticks; it is the pithecoid animal, the gorilla, the orang, the chimpanzee who are the descendents of the Atlantean giants.

But all they will be in my Secret Doctrine & you will judge. For the present I will only say for you – for your information that our Esoteric Science shows the appearance of descent of man thus: – 1^st Root Race, sexless, was composed of the “shadows” – the astral projections evolved from themselves by the “Creators”, the Dhyan Chohans or “lunar” Pitris, the progenitors & ancestors of man in Hindu exoteric religion. 2^nd Race the “Sons of Will-yoga” – so called – hermaphrodites, ethereal, boneless, whose progeny were called the “Sweat-born” because of the process as described, the hermaphrodites oozing out the perspiration which formed into an egg, in which Man like Brahmâ, or the Universe, in his golden Egg gestated under the influence of the moon and was born as reptiles and birds do. Then the 3d Race (the one of the Fall) separated owing to the law of natural Evolution; by beginning to be born as men & women (children) of two sexes instead of hermaphrodites. Then at the end of the 3d Root Race the “giants with soft bones” fell anew by following the example of animals and began mating. Your Adam Kadmon became Jehovah-Cain, & Cain & Abel, & finally Enoch (the Son of Seth) the first race from which there more were born the men of the 4th the Atlantean or the “giants with bones”, the Titans & those of whom the VI^th Ch. Genesis speaks as the “Sons of god”, daughters of man whose progeny were giants & mighty men of old. All this is found in the allegories of the Purânas but is given scientifically or without any fables or additions in the Books of Dzyan or Wisdom of the Esoteric philosophy.

This will be regarded as I proclaimed nonsense by both believers in the Jewish Chronology of 7,000 years since the world’s creation, & by geologists & biologists who know only of man as he is now; and dare not assign antiquity to the human race beyond some 100,000 years. But Eastern or Aryan teaches us as based upon zodiacal records that:

(1). From the beginning of Cosmic Evolution up to the Hindu year Tarana – the number of years elapsed is – 1,955,884,687.

(2). The mineral, vegetal & animal (lower) Kingdom up to man have taken to evolution 300, 00, 000 years.

(3). Time from the first appearance of Humanity on our Planetary Chain (See Sinnett’s Esot. Buddhism) equals – 1,644,500,987 years.

(4). The number of years that elapsed since the Vaivasvata Manvantara (or our Aryan Adam, i. e. Man in the present human form after the “Deluge” (which is a Cosmic astronomical & geological cataclysm not simply a flood) – to the present year, is just – 18,618,728 years.

Of other periods we need not speak now. Thus, you see, that assigning 18 or 19 million years or the time for the physiological evolution of man from the ethereal, sexless, bisexual, “man & woman” races there was ample time for him (Man) to become as he is now; and except in size, never to alter much since 859,000 y. ago when the first Atlanteans were swept away & down into the Seas. The geologists & anthropologists may be searching for the missing link till doom’ day, they will not find it except, as said before, giant skeletons, perchance.

Your III degrees of masonry are certainly the only ones, to be taken into consideration. The Jainas have only 3. The Bramins 3 chief & 4 collateral degrees.

And now I will answer all your points.

The 500 words in common (Hebrew & Egyptian) do not surprise me. But that which does is Seiffarth’s idea that Coptic is a derivative of the Hebrew. Pardon me! but the Hebrew is not only a dead language virtually – the Hebrew (I mean the language of Moses which he has got & brought from the Egyptian Sanctuary) exists no more. It is not found in any existing records save, perhaps, with the Kali Jews (the black Jews) of Cochin, who know nothing of the Babylonian capture of the twelve tribes, (knowing only of two, the Juda & Levi tribes, the warriors & the sacerdotal); for they have come to India about 700 B. C. then never moved from their place. They have their laws of Moses – and no Genesis. That language was thoroughly lost during the Captivity and preserved partially only by some Levites. The Ezra Hebrew is a hybrid language already much tinctured with Chaldean. The Hebrew square letters cannot be traced even to the day of Ezras (458 B. C.). That they have been adopted from the Babylonian is quiet true; but that they have received their final form in the first centuries of our era is also true. That these square letters have not existed before that Captivity is shown by the absolute absence of any inscription in those characters among the thousands of different kinds found in the ruins of Chaldea; not even a gem or a medal. Nor have been ever found such in Egypt. Say what Seiffarth may, the square Heb. character & the Hebrew in which the most ancient scrolls are written can not be traced earlier than just before our era.

Pentateuch has never been written as a whole by Moses or his god either. The oral traditions are his. But the many portions of O. T. belong to different epochs & many writers, as you yourself know. These “books” have been lost & found, destroyed & rewritten about a dozen times since Moses, on the confession of the writers themselves… And if we accept Helkiah and his finding “The Book of god”, which was lost for centuries & entirely forgotten, we have to accept Ezra’s (or Ezdra’s) infallible inspiration; and after him of all the other writers when his Books were destroyed by Antiochus & others, etc. etc. The Talmudists had various readings of the Pentateuch most strikingly different from our canonical texts. (See Donaldson, Jolowich, & even Chaldee paraphrast Jonattan Ben Usiel, also the author of “Chronol. Orth.”) If we take into consideration the variations of the Hebrew texts & MSS none of which can boost any great antiquity, the discrepancies between the Hebrew & Samarian texts, the Greek versions; the evidences of different readings furnished by the Talmud, Targumim & other rabbinical authorities; the change of the Hebrew character from the older Phoenician form to the square letters borrowed from the Syrians after Babyl. Captivity, then the Massorah humbug; the distinction between the medial & final letters etc. etc. etc. All this will prove that the present Hebrew text was accommodated to the Septuagint written in Greek at the whim of Ptolomy Philadelphus. And the Septuagint itself? How then? We are told that the ten tribes disappeared during the Babyl. Captivity, 500 B. C., and centuries later Ptol. Phylad. asks the high priest Eleazar, to send him six men from each of the 12 tribes, and the High Priest sends them? To summon from tribes that have disappeared centuries ago is funny. Yet, there is positive proof that Septuagint was made in its measurements and esoterism to conform to the Egyptian astro-cosmic records of the Great Pyramid, just during the reign of Ptolomy, & that, except as said before, a few books (real & genius) of Moses with the Cochin “Black Jews” – the Jewish world had not reserved one single MSS of the Pentateuch earlier than A. D. 300 & 400 of which the earliest MSS now existing (XI^th cent.) may be tolerably correct copies.

Why wonder then that the Pyramid measurements dovetail so well with the measurements found in the Bible, of the ark of the Convent, Solomon’s temple etc.? To begin with Moses was an Egyptian Initiate; then sorry & angry as were the Jews at the desecration of their Holy Books by the Seventy writers (See Josephus) yet, when their lostEzra scrolls come to disappear in their turn & were entirely lost, they were too glad to have copies even from the entirely Egyptionized & Greecofied Septuaginta for lack of any other. But this would lead me too far; I could write volumes on it. I send anyone who could contradict then statements to Dr. Prideaux, Dean of Norwich (Sacred Connection, Book 5), to Dr. Horne and his Introduction to the Old Testament, to their confession and admissions of additions, alterations,interpretations,borrowing etc. the whole being excused & justified on the plea that the various writers acted under the order of the Holy Ghost!! That they were divinely inspired!!! Esoterism you find now in Hebrew Chaldaic texts is the esoterism of Egypt & Chaldea, not the genuine & original esoterism of the Hebrews, a small little tribe that derived its traditions (a portion of Egypto-Mosaic Wisdom certainly) and accommodated texts of its sacred Scrolls to the earlier doctrines of Chaldea and Egypt, while denouncing the pagan. The real Hebrew, i. e. the sacerdotal language of the Levites & Moses – was the language of the priests of Egypt but under another name Neter-Khari, or the “divine language”, the sister ofDevanagari, the “divine Speech” or the language of the gods of the Aryan Hindus, of the Senzar in old Devanagari characters, of the Initiates of Central Asia. The Hebrew of existing scrolls is a later dialect, an invented variation that every Chaldee would understand. That the Hebrew of the descendants of Hever, that language that came beyond Ephrates & was yet spoken even in the days of Jeremiah 600 B. C. was not the Chaldaic or the Syriac as some persons now claim is well proven by Bishop Walton’s happy suggestion, who shows it in his Prolegomena III, 13, by drawing attention to verse 15 Chap. V of Jeremiah where the Chaldeans and Assyreans whom God threatens to bring against Judea are called an ancient nation, a strong nation whose language people of Israel knoweth not? neither do they understand their speech.

This proof is unanswerable.

Now do I deny the presence of Esoterism & of the universal language, the one lip of the 4^th Race – in the Old Testament? Never. I say it is there. And as you have shown it is also in New T. and this proves that the Initiates who wrote the Synopties & St. John – were of the same school of initiates as the Essenes, the Egyptians, the Greeks, especially as St. Paul was. That the history of Jesus is not his life or biography, not even the history of three or four years of his life, but simply the allegorical rendering of years of probation, Initiation, trials & final glorification of the Initiate of any country whether to be called Visva Karma, Apollonius of Tyana, Osiris, Wittoba or Sallivana, or Jesus. What I say, again, is, that while the Jews & the early Christians, remodeled or made their Scripture to fit in with the original archaic tradition & the universal astro-cosmic Initiation by adapting it only to the astronomical & purely physiological materialistic myths – they left the metaphysical, cosmic and theological portions of it untouched; for, pretending to monotheism they would avoid the purely pagan, philosophical views of the Universe. They have done this in most ingenious & clever way imaginable, & have succeeded thereby to blind long series of generations into the idea that they (the Jews) were the “chosen people” of Jehovah & Christians an improvement on that chosen people. But, I say it again – they have, neither of them, given anything new or original whatever, in the real esoteric meaning – not to the Hindus, at any rate, now the only people on Earth who have preserved the original Archaic doctrines.

This takes nothing away from your independent discovery, which is of great importance to the world. Its greatest merit is for the Western World, since you have put it so clearly, in such scientific mathematical language – hence made your discovery & proofs inattackable. But all you say is known to Eastern occultism and you may find more than one thing in Isis, vague & hazy & put in my flapdoodle pigeon English 4, still the spirit of it is there, but you have created a tangible, objective body for that which in my work may be regarded as a shadowy phantom of imagination. But if you add Eastern philosophy to your own independent research you will have to give up your ideas of the holiness of the Hebrew scrolls about which you are so enthusiastic. The Jews have never & at no time been monotheists – not as the word is understood in the West; though they may have been as some Hindu sects now who choose s favorite god among the Devas and make the rest subservient to that creature. The early Jews were Pantheists as we are, & the later – humbugs. The gentiles were too philosophical to create unto themselves one, personal, anthropomorphic god & call him infinite while showing his relation to men & things – finite; to call him absolute, yet to make him concerned with conditioned subjects; Noumenal Perfect Eternal – yet subject to passions. All this is an absurdity in logic as in philosophy. You may consider me an atheist. I say I am not. I believe in a Boundless, Eternal Infinite Abstract Principle (abstract to any limited understanding); in a Causeless Cause, a Rootless Root of all that exists – your Circle, in short, as you defined it & which no man can know. You call its diameter the One, so do we – but what you think of or how you define it finally is not yet clear to me. But in Part I of my S. D. I give the various circles, differentiating from the first race to the last. It is ⵔ – precosmic aspect; ⨀ – at the dawn of Manvantara; ⊖ – the first manifested Cosmis plane; Mother-Chaos or Nature appearing across the infinite Circle at its reawakening. Then and when the 1^st Race of mankind (collective Adam) was projected on the seven zones of the Earth by the Progenitors or Pitris, from within themselves – it became (or ⧍ ∣ □ − ☆ within & around the circle). Because the 7 hosts of the “Septenary” had, by dedoubling themselves, so to say, become 14. These 7 septenary groups are called the 49 Fires of life of Being – the divine Spirit of the Earth. You will find the same idea in Divine Pymander of Hermes Trismegistus in his “7 governors” & Nature building or forming Seven there simultaneously on the Seven Centres of the Universe. Then – the 2^d Race has the “egg-evolving” & bisexual Race following the Sexless which, had evolved in its turn, the Second Race by dedoubling as their progenitors did – only more physical though still boneless. This egg-business is hinted at by the Greek mythos of Leda & the Swan& their progeny Castor & Pollux. Then, the 3^d Race has in its beginning ⑧, the glyph of the androgyne & ends by ⦶the phallic & yoni separation. Where I get “my authority from”? From the Book of Dzyan (Wisdom)& Masters in whom you have hitherto declared to believe, only, perhaps because They are living & mortal men. I am curious to know what you make of the Svastika within the circle which became the “sacred Sign” with the Atlanteans & by being transformed into 卐 (minus its circle) thus became the first phallic sign of the accursed materialistic Race – the Fouth, & of our own – the Fifth. I make of it the Hebrew (?) א aleph – the Bull (the male aspect of the Hindu Cow). Tell me if you believe me right or wrong.

These are the most archaic signs & glyphs. From this point 卐– henceforward, I leave you full sway. You have studied thoroughly & comprehend sexual symbols to perfection, better than I do, for I am not for physiological but for the metaphysical.

Thus, when you speak to me about the Egyptian Mouth (Mout) as connected with Jehovah & a causative of generation, I say – you are right. In Egypt the Theban triad was composed of Ammon, Mout (or Mouth), their Son Khonsoo – the Deus Lunus, the “Moon god”. But Mout means “Mother” (See Champollion, Mospero, Mariette etc. etc. Of course she is also the Moon in one aspect, as every “mother goddess” of Egypt, as Isis, Hottor, Diana etc. etc. She was, however, less the wife than the mother of Ammon, who was called “ his mother’s husband” (the root idea of Christianity, if you please, Jesus if identical with god or the Holy Spirit, being also “his mother’s husband”; , being also “his mother’s husband”; & his grandmother Ann’s husband too, agreeably with R. Catholic interpretation making Mary born without sin). The Moon was everywhere (except India) the holy of Holies, the Navis, the divine Vessel holding in it the seed of Being; & always male & female – the emblem of occult practical Wisdom, or Sorcery in contradiction to abstract divine Occultism. So it was with the Chaldeans. (See Nabathean agriculture – Qu-tamy taught by the Moon & Saturn). Soma – (the Hindu Moon) is male. He seduces Târa, the wife of Brihaspati (planet Jupiter) the guru of the gods & has an illegitimated Son by her – Budha (physical-brain Wisdom, do not confuse it with Buddha) & Soma esoterically is causative of generation, the fructifier of & the symbol of the embryological cell, containing the seed. Jehovah may well be connected with female Mouth since in Zohar he is Binah the female Sephiroth of the first triad. This you know of course better than I do. This is why perhaps Adam (the phallus, too) is said in Maimonides (More Nevochim) to have been regarded as the “prophet of the Moon” by some Semitic nations. By the way the world has never known much, I believe, of Maimonides. Khonsoo was also called Iohtef – in his aspect of Thot Lunus or “he who operates Salvation” – when he wears on his brow the head of an ibis ending with the lunar disc & is crowned with the diadem called Iohtef. There is a bronze statue of his in Boulag (№ 2068) of the Seropeum period. The phallic gods were always more lunar than Solar. And the fact that Khonsoo; or rather Ammon, Mout, Khonsoo – are of the Theban period not of the Memphian – show its for later origin when phallicism became the root & soul of every symbol.>

The identity between the “Holy of Holies” of the Egyptians as the King’s Chamber & Sarcophagus, mistaken by Proff. Smyth for a granary-bin (!!) at first – & of the Hebrews, is due again to the universality of the symbol. Only while with the Aryans (the passage through the Golden Cow when an Initiate became dwija – or “twice born” or a Brahmin), & with the Egyptians , after the three night and three days in the Sarcophagus, when the candidate became after resurrecting or emerging from it a Hierophant, was born anew – has quite another meaning. At any rate the meaning has been ever cosmical and purely spiritual with the Aryans and the early Egyptians; whereas the Jews have dragged it down entirely into matter. The “Golden Cow” into which the Aryan stoops to this day , as you show in your instance & enters it through the breast part to reemerge through the “natural parts” on the other side – denotes a separation from the terrestrial matter & a spiritual birth, or regeneration; for after then he becomes a Yogi renouncing all, or an ascetic; this has nothing phallic in it; but the Jews alluded in that symbol simply & coarsely to the physiological, sexual act. Their god was the phallus & the act divine & the pit of Sin was their “Holy of Holies”. This is why I say that they adopted one of the meanings – the latest, the phallic use which shows their late origin & that their religion evoluted as one of the last – after all the others – Christianity being the only one later than Judaism, if we leave exoteric Mussulman religion out of the question; for in truth it is not a religion but a Jewish sect with a prophet hooked unto it.

Now I have no right to give out the Secrets of Brahmanism. But if Subba Row consents to it I will show in the S. D. that this passage through the “Golden Cow” or Spiritual abstract Nature – the Mother goddess which purifies – is by ages & ages older than the Jewish symbol. That the early Israelites took it from Chaldea which had it from the Brahmins who lived and had a school of Sanskrit in Babylonia ages before the said Captivity. (See what Colonel Von Kennedy says.) That the Jews were Indian Tchandalles “brick-makers” and the cunning workmen, which, on account, of their filthy habits were driven out of India 6 & 7 000 years ago – just about the time of their Creation & Genesis – is sure. Esoteric books can trace them step by step from various parts of India to Iran, on the shores of the Euphrates & toward Babylonia & Chaldea. In the Institutes of Manu they are mentioned only as the lowest of the low. In the Cronicles of Sankarachârya & the Adwaites, especially in the Tablets of Agastya, The King & The Saint, – they are shown migrating finally West, between 3 & 4 000 B. C. They had their castes of priestly Hierarchy – the latter being called A-brâhma (non-Brahmin) in the esoteric writings of the Temples. Just a coincidence, or what, that Abram, becomes Abraham & means a-brahm, non-brahmin (low caste) in Sanskrit? Baron Bunsen proved beyond doubt or cavil that between Abraham’s time & Moses, there is a period of between 3,000 & 4,000 years – just the time when their Adam, & their history begins! Philologists & Ethnologists may speak & speculate till they are blue in the face; we know better. We know that Zoroastrians or modern Parsis, the Armenians and the Jews are all of one primitive stock, whether the one call themselves Aryan & the other Semites. The latter are or may be Semites through their Shem, but surely not the Arabs, older by thousand & thousands years than the Jews & who knew not of Shem before. The Jews transformed the Assyrian Shamas into Noah & Sons. The old Books teach that the Jews are a hybrid race (as Dr. Wilder rightly thought) of Hamiti (Caucosian) & Aryan Hindu races. They were outcastes, & had lived long enough in India among the Aryans to learn esoteric Wisdom.

With regard to Vishnu Matsya (Fish) avatar & its identity with the Chaldean Oannes the Chaldean Man-Fish, please, See Vol. II Isis Unv. p. 254. Dr. Buck must have it. Jacolliot is a French humbug in many a thing; but if you turn to the Theosophist August 1881 p. 238 you will find there Antiquity of the Vedas by Krishna Shastri Godbola, a good astronomer & mathematician who proves undeniably that the Vedas could not have existed less than 25,000 years. If you never read the article, read it, for it is all purely mathematical & astronomical & will interest you. It runs, I believe, serially through six or seven numbers of the Theosophist. By the way in your “Source of measures” there is a misprint. It is Aryabhatta & not A>rgabhatta on p. 86. You must excuse my sincerity; but Bently whom you quote as an authority, is (or was rather) a great humbug. I can prove to you his malice & mistaken words (?).

You say: “Your Brahma Prajapâti has the same phallic significance as Jehovah. Of course he has, & I never said Brahmâ was anything else. But then Brahmâ (male) is not Brahma (neutral) or Parabrahma. Brahmâ’s name is not found in the Rig-Veda, nor in any their Veda, but is a later name, from Brih to expand, to grow & increase, hence – phallic Brahmâ splits himself into two parts, male & female – or Vâch, & in Vâch the Aryan Eve the Mother of all this lives, he creates Virâj, who is the father of all men & living beings. Esoterically it is precisely the same as Jehovah or Adam Kadmon separating himself & becoming Adam Eve & then creating in Eve Cain or himself Jehovah, “even Jehovah”; but this has reference to the beginning of the 4^th Race, as I said before. A proof of it is that: as Brahmâ’s name is not in the Vedas, so their male symbol (in the human sense) has no more temples or worship in India. He is rejected & spurned. In his place remains the lingham for more suggestive & grand – as the symbol of Nature’s Spirit which vivifying all Nature, yoni, – than the pillar of Jacob – a purely human phallus. The “Three steps” are the three steps, or strides of Vishnu. Vishnu is one & Vishnu is three & on Earth he is 5 & 7. Vishnu is from the root vish “to pervade”, and been described as striding thro the Seven regions of the Universe in three steps. As a fire symbol they mean flame, lighting of the Sun; astronomically rising, noon & setting of the Sun. Anthropologically the three evoluting races of humanity after which Vishnu takes 5 & 7 strides – i. e. it becomes 3 & 4. The male & female symbols, phallic. Since I wrote to you last I had permission to write upon such subjects which I have not dare to touch before in my letters. And now I can tell you, that if you only get at the Hindu Zodiac, its twelve signs due you but know Sanskrit – they will reveal to you the whole evolution of Kosmos, – for they do represent this mystery, surely. Only one has to be initiated in the Secret reading of the Mantras & their rhythmical melody, and of the Tantra Shastras (works on incantation & Magic). “Ahrens found musical notes in the Hebrew of the sacred scrolls”. Why Aryan Hindu reading of the Vedas & the Brahamanas is impossible (as for comprehension & effects go) without such musical notes. Hebrew has 22 letters and Sanskrit about 70 and as many vowels (16) signs and their points of accentuation all – & each a musical note. One who knows Aryan music could notate the whole Vedas & make of it another Volume of Archaic Scripture ohne worte or the “Songs without words” of German musicians. Then again, the Hebrew has 22 letters & 22 numerals (throwing out the cipher). Sanskrit has thrice that number for consonants, and 16 numerical combinations for the vowels & heaven knows how many more for the signs. Then there are 7 synonyms for every word in the ancient books with their meaning besides the one used exoterically.

There you have to find out the numerical value of all the letters of a certain word & the same value of each syllable in that word – which value is different.

Then you must permute these different syllables & examine the new combinations. And if the values & the letters correspond – then you have the right meaning.

Now you have undeniably found out the real meaning of the cube, triangle etc. etc. of the 4 & the 3; & that it refers to male & female & the number of generation. This is on the terrestrial plane. Now take the perfect cube with the Sanskrit Aryas. You will find that besides their meaning which exists only in exoterism they represent it with the 4^th sign of the Zodiac the Karkataka (Cancer); because when the syllables are transmuted according to Mantra Shastra into their corresponding numerals, the musical notes, become the four measured sounds, the lines eliminated therefore are ∣∣∣∣ – and that the word answering to it is Pa=ra-brah-ma-dha-ra-ka or the seven resolved back into four Mâtras – or the four states of mentality – waking, dreaming, deep sleeping & death; four states of human life also – childhood, adolescence, maturity and old age; & so on & so on. This permutation alone of 3, 4, 7 and back again from the four states of Brahmâ to one aspect of Brahma (neutral) could fill a whole volume.

I believe that the years or age of Jesus had besides the connection you give to the sign of the Zodiac, which of course is correct, also to the cycle of 33 years & 33 crores in India & I will tell you why. The Hindus count 33 crores of gods or 333 millions of deities – the personified qualities of the one Parabrahma the Absolute. Now there were many attempts to prove the birth of Christ as prophesied since the world’s creation astronomically – attempts made by Kepler & by Dr. Sepp, or also in the early days of Christianity. Repeating Kepler‘s idea Dr. Sepp says that “it was written in the stars (the signs of the Zodiac) that the Messiach would appear in the lunar year of the world 4320 during that memorable year when the whole angelic choir ( of the planet) would be singing his jubilee.”

Now this seems a very innocent hallucination of a Christian fanatic if it has not been from the first a very malicious & cunning appropriation of a pagan mystic cycle: the Chaldees claimed 432, 000, for their divine Dynasties by the Saroses; and the Hindus have 4320, 000 as the duration of their Mahayuga. What could there be easier then than to avail themselves of the pagan figures & show the gentiles exaggerating & lying, and the Jewish chronology made triumphantly reducing the figures to their utmost simplicity. Well, if they did not scruple to make of the Hindu 4320, 000 years cycle 4320 years from the world’s creation why could they not avail themselves of the figures 33 likewise for the years of the Saviour? What you show is astronomically and mathematically correct.

See what you could do of this:

Thus I see a difference in our beliefs will amount to this you believe in a Creative Power Unified, a god. We believe in an absolute Unity as Noumenon, & in Creators as its aspects, or Heavenly Men, who have evolved Humanity phenomenally. I see you are a kind of transcendental theist. We are Pantheists on this plane & believers in one incognizable ALL. You seem to reject the Elohim, as Entities independent of the abstraction & call them “a constant coefficient”. Well we do so also, but we say that this “constant coefficient” is the known & living quantity put before the unknown quantity, the X.

(Please, excuse me if I put it stupidly for I say again I am jackass in mathematics & unable to put my thought in figures & symbols on your plane.) But you understand my meaning. You are a great mathematician & I pay you no compliment at all in saying that I thoroughly & sincerely regard you as an (Occult) genius, some reincarnation of an Archimedes or of a Euclides; and it breaks my heart to think that with such genius as yours will not go beyond the Hebrew scrolls. If I could pass you what I know & add that knowledge to your mathematics I would die happy; for I would leave then Esoteric philosophy & the Theos. Soc. in good hands. I know you will not be pleased with this letter. But what can I do? Notwithstanding my reputation I am unable to flatter & lie &have the bad habit of saying what I think to every man, woman or child that I find on my way….

Tibetan rosaries? Well, every Hindu rosary has 108 beads answering to the 1008 names of Vishnu (or Siva or any other god). I am writing to India for some rosaries for you. Dr. Buck ought to write to Olcott to see to that & he will do it quicker, in such case. I had loads of such charm & amulets, but left all at Adyar. What would you make of this – I have drawn it crooked, but you may have an idea. It is a bronze “Holy of Holies” from Tibet with a wheel-prayer on it. Round the letter or the figure, are flames which I have made to look like unkempt curls. Have you any idea of what it may be?

Now do let me have your photograph & I will see what I can do. But remember I am very sick & my living or being still alive is simply cheating Nature for the benefit of the theosophists. I might be dead two or three years ago.

I see I have made a mess of your π business; I did not mean, by what I saw, that the π (pi) value could be any other in India or China exoterically or esoterically, as well say that in Esoterism 2×2 make 5. What I meant that I do not know whether they use in India the same formula; meaning that perhaps they express it in some other way. You say yourself that Aryabhatta gave it designedly wrongly – as far as I could understand what you said; for bless my Soul it gives me a dead aches to try & read your figures & rows of cipher & dots – with my intuitional eye, since I am incapable in making correctly a simple addition of a few figures, that I take them generally on faith.

Now, you ask me not to mention your name or mention it the least I can. I quote considerably from the “Source of Measures”. How can I quote and let out your name? Or how can I quote without quotation marks? You say otherwise make what you like with your MSS and letters. How can I if you won’t let me give you credit for what you say? I would like very much to discuss a few points. & I did so in my appendixes simply saying “a Kabalist”, “a great mathematician”, or “a correspondent”, “a friend” etc. etc. But I am a Dutchman if people will not recognize Mr. Ronald Skinner from his style. Of course I would never think of commenting upon your private beliefs expressed in letters or even in your MSS, nor will I speak of you as a Mason; for you may be as humble as a Master Mason as you like, or may have never raised your Hiram Abif, the widow’ son, with words at low breath and other relevant & irrelevant gestures – you know more than all Masonic Lodges put together. And I guess if even poor I gave you the strong grip of Lion’s paw of the tribe of Judas you would see & find that even I may know something more than your Pikes & Princes of Wales – bless their dear innocent souls. Your interpretation of 543 & the reverse of the name of Moses משה is curious. It is the first time I heard it, & it exonerates the writers of the verse of Exodus from a great & ridiculous degradation of their supposed god only believe me, dear Mr. Skinner, that “my” Brahmâ, the first born, ‘is sacr”, Brahma is something more & better than this, wherever turn your Jehovah either way, make him male, female or bisexual he will never be better in the Jewish Scripture than a phallic number, a sacr and n’cabvah blended together. This is just why we worship no more Brahmâ (single male) than his seven, nine, ten & 21 Prajâpates, Rishis, Dhyan Chohans – call them what you like – his plural aspects in short. But they exist nevertheless. We honour these aspects, but would no more think of praying to them, or ministering or propitiating them, than the “face of Moses” on the Moon. We recognize them, that’s all, & occasionally – we feel them. They can help us; but only when the Karma permits them to; since they are as much under the inalterable & immutable law of Karma; as we are ourselves. They – all of them – have been, are, or will be men. No highest Molachim become such unless they won their epaulettes & spurs on the battle field of life and terrestrial probation. Masters will be Dhyan Chohans some day in Eternity & so will you be & I & dear Dr. Buck; only I hope that neither of us will be disgraced with orthodox wings, find ourselves reduced to sit on our tonsils, in the absence of something better to sit upon, nor shall we play on golden harps.

Nor don’t be angry with me for what I said of the Jews. I don’t like them for the harm they have done the world, their grasping, selfish, hideous egotism. They “the chosen people”!! Oh, shadow of Lord Buddha. One thing is very suggestive. The most commercial, money-making grasping nation the world over – the English have chosen the fittest deity they could ever have – a member; the phallic god, answering marvelously at the sometime their immoral hypocrite character, their beastly sexuality and cant. I am going to tell it to them in no many words in my S.D.

You have an admirer through me, one who worships you – Reverend Dr. A. Ayton of Banbury, Vicarage deacon. He is a great Kabalist & I had him get your Source of Measures.

Now if you can make out the shrine I attempted to draw with the curly flames around I will send it to you – only how. But if you can make nothing of it what’s the use, unless you keep it as an amulet & a talisman from your humble servant. Only never open it, if you please; besides if you do you would spoil it – & find nothing in it. There is only some Akasa in it.

Say, why did you labour under the impression that I was lying about Masters? Can one lie about living men? And why should I have invented them or still support the “invention” since for 12 years & especially for the last three, I am made a martyr for the truths I told? Ah, no woman in her right senses, no a man either, would go willingly into such hell, as I have, and persisted in having Spiritualists, Christians, Materialists, Scientists & the whole world, with two thirds of our own Theosophists to boot – against me, if I had not been forced by my oath & vows to do so. I have lost friends, country, money & health to serve only as manure for the fields of future Theosophy. And now that I am alone, abandoned by nearly all, when I am begged & implored by our Hindu Theosophists to return to India – that Olcott needs me badly, I can’t do so – because the Angl. Indian gov-t has taken it into its wise head that I am a Russian spy!!!

I have but to say a word, to bamboozle the world with the confession that our Masters are “Spirits”, not living men; & I will have the millions of Spiritualists turn in my favor. I have but to be a hypocrite and pander to Christians recognizing & leaving their Jehovah quiet & Jesus alone – as a god. & I will make friends of the whole Christian world. The Roman Catholics offer me this day any amount of money I like – if even without believing I turn a Roman Catholic. Shall I listen to them? Better starve & be hung in India than to lie in anything in this world of lies.

May you be happy. Ever yours gratefully.

H. P. Blavatsky

Footnotes

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