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- 1. The Lha (a) which turns the fourth (Globe, or our Earth) is servant to the Lha(s) of the seven (the planetary Spirits) (b), they who revolve, driving their chariots around their Lord, the one eye (Loka-Chakshub) of our world. His breath gives life to the seven ( gives light to the planets). It gave life to the first (c). “ They are all dragons of Wisdom,” adds the Commentary (d).
(a) Lha is the ancient word in trans-Himalayan regions for “ Spirit,” any celestial or superhuman Being, and it covers the whole series of heavenly hierarchies, from Archangel, or Dhyani, down to an angel of darkness, or terrestrial Spirit.
(b) This expression shows in plain language that the Spirit-Guardian of our globe, which is the fourth in the chain, is subordinate to the chief Spirit (or God) of the Seven Planetary Genii or Spirits. As already explained, the ancients had, in their Kyriel of gods, seven chief Mystery-gods, whose chief was, exoterically, the visible Sun, or the eighth, and, esoterically, the second Logos, the Demiurge. The seven (who have now become the “ Seven Eyes of the Lord ” in the Christian religion) were the regents of the seven chief planets ; but these were not
* All the words and sentences placed in brackets in the Stanzas and Commentaries are the writer’s. In some places they may be incomplete and even inadequate from the Hindu standpoint ; but in the meaning attached to them in Trans-Himalayan Esotericism they are correct. In every case the writer takes any blame upon herself. Having never claimed personal infallibility, that which is given on her own authority may leave much to be desired, in the very abstruse cases where too deep metaphysic is involved. The teaching is offered as it is understood ; and as there are seven keys of interpretation to every symbol and allegory, that which may not fit a meaning, say from the psychological or astronomical aspect, will be found quite correct from the physical or metaphysical.
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reckoned according to the enumeration devised later by people who had forgotten, or who had an inadequate notion of, the real Mysteries, and included neither the sun, the moon, nor the earth. The sun was the chief, exoterically, of the twelve great gods, or zodiacal constellations ; and, esoterically, the Messiah, the Christos (the subject anointed by the Great Breath, or the One) surrounded by his twelve subordinate powers, also subordinate, in turn, to each of the seven “ Mystery-gods ” of the planets.
“ The seven higher make the Seven Lhas create the world,” states a Commentary ; which means that our Earth, leaving aside the rest, was created or fashioned by terrestrial spirits, the “ Regents ” being simply the supervisors. This is the first germ, the seed of that which grew later into the Tree of Astrology and Astrolatry. The Higher ones were the Kosmocratores, the fabricators of our solar system. This is borne out by all the ancient Cosmogonies : that of Hermes, of the Chaldees, of the Aryans, of the Egyptians, and even of the Jews. Heaven’s belt, the signs of the Zodiac (the Sacred animals), are as much the Bne’ Alhim (Sons of the Gods or the Elohim) as the Spirits of the Earth ; but they are prior to them. Soma and Sin, Isis and Diana, are all lunar gods or goddesses, called the fathers and mothers of our Earth, which is subordinate to them. But these, in their turn, are subordinate to their “ Fathers ” and “ Mothers ” — the latter interchangeable and varying with each nation — the gods and their planets, such as Jupiter, Saturn Bel, Brihaspati, etc.
(c) “ His breath gave life to the seven,” refers as much to the sun, who gives life to the Planets, as to the “ High One,” the Spiritual Sun, who gives life to the whole Kosmos. The astronomical and astrological keys opening the gate leading to the mysteries of Theogony can be found only in the later glossaries, which accompany the Stanzas.
In the apocalyptic Slokas of the Archaic Records, the language is as symbolical, if less mythical, than in the Purânas. Without the help of the later commentaries, compiled by generations of adepts, it would be impossible to understand the meaning correctly. In the ancient Cosmogonies, the visible and the invisible worlds are the double links of one and the same chain. As the invisible Logos, with its seven hierarchies (represented or personified each by its chief angel or rector), form one power, the inner and the invisible ; so, in the world of Forms, the Sun and the seven chief Planets constitute the visible and active potency ; the latter “ Hierarchy ” being, so to speak, the visible and objective Logos of the invisible and (except in the lowest grades) ever-subjective angels.
Thus — to anticipate a little by way of illustration — every Race in its
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evolution is said to be born under the direct influence of one of the Planets : Race the first receiving its breath of life from the Sun, as will be seen later on ; while the third humanity — those who fell into generation, or from androgynes became separate entities, one male and the other female — are said to be under the direct influence of Venus, “ the little sun in which the solar orb stores his light.”
The summation of the Stanzas in Book I. showed the genesis * of Gods and men taking rise in, and from, one and the same Point, which is the One Universal, Immutable, Eternal, and absolute Unity. In its primary manifested aspect we have seen it become : (1) in the sphere of objectivity and Physics, Primordial Substance and Force (centripetal and centrifugal, positive and negative, male and female, etc., etc.) ; (2) in the world of Metaphysics, the Spirit of the Universe, or Cosmic Ideation, called by some the Logos.
This Logos is the apex of the Pythagorean triangle. When the triangle is complete it becomes the Tetraktis, or the Triangle in the Square, and is the dual symbol of the four-lettered Tetragrammaton in the manifested Kosmos, and of its radical triple ray in the unmanifested, or its noumenon.
Put more metaphysically, the classification given here of Cosmic Ultimates, is more one of convenience than of absolute philosophical accuracy. At the commencement of a great Manvantara, Parabrahm manifests as Mulaprakriti and then as the Logos. This Logos is equivalent to the “ Unconscious Universal Mind,” etc., of Western Pantheists. It constitutes the Basis of the subject-side of manifested Being, and is the source of all manifestations of individual consciousness. Mulaprakriti or Primordial Cosmic Substance, is the foundation of the object-side of things — the basis of all objective evolution and Cosmogenesis. Force, then, does not emerge with Primordial Substance from Parabrahmic Latency. It is the transformation into energy of the supra-conscious thought of the Logos, infused, so to speak, into the objectivation of the latter out of potential latency in the One Reality. Hence spring the wondrous laws of matter : hence the “ primal impress ” so vainly discussed by Bishop Temple. Force thus is not synchronous with the first objectivation of Mulaprakriti. But as, apart from it, the latter is absolutely and necessarily inert — a mere abstraction — it is unnecessary to weave too fine a cobweb of subtleties as to the order of succession of
* According to Dr. A. Wilder’s learned definition, Genesis, γένεσις, is not generation, but “ a coming out of the eternal into the Kosmos and Time ” : “ a coming from esse into exsistere,” or “ from Be-ness into ‘ being ’ ” — as a Theosophist would say.
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the Cosmic Ultimates. Force succeeds Mulaprakriti ; but, minus Force, Mulaprakriti is for all practical intents and purposes non-existent. *
The “ Heavenly Man ” (Tetragrammaton) who is the Protogonos, Tikkoun, the firstborn from the passive deity and the first manifestation of that deity’s shadow, is the universal form and idea, which engenders the manifested Logos, Adam Kadmon, or the four-lettered symbol, in the Kabala, of the Universe itself, also called the second Logos. The second springs from the first and develops the third triangle (see the Sephirothal Tree) ; from the last of which (the lower host of Angels) men are generated. It is with this third aspect that we shall deal at present.
The reader must bear in mind that there is a great difference between the Logos and the Demiurgos, for one is Spirit and the other is Soul ; or as Dr. Wilder has it : “ Dianoia and Logos are synonymous, Nous being superior and closely in affinity with Τὸ ἄγαθον, one being the superior apprehending, the other the comprehending — one noetic and the other phrenic.”
Moreover, Man was regarded in several systems as the third Logos. The esoteric meaning of the word Logos (speech or word, Verbum) is the rendering in objective expression, as in a photograph, of the concealed thought. The Logos is the mirror reflecting divine mind, and the Universe is the mirror of the Logos, though the latter is the esse of that Universe. As the Logos reflects all in the Universe of Pleroma, so man reflects in himself all that he sees and finds in his Universe, the Earth. It is the three Heads of the Kabala : “ Unum intra alterum, et alterum super alterum ” (Zohar, Idra Suta, sec. VII). “ Every Universe (world or planet) has its own Logos,” says the doctrine. The Sun was always called by the Egyptians “ the eye of Osiris,” and was himself the Logos, the first-begotten, or light made manifest to the world, “ which is the Mind and divine intellect of the Concealed.” It is only by the sevenfold Ray of this light that we can become cognizant of the Logos through the Demiurge, regarding the latter as the creator of our planet and everything pertaining to it, and the former as the guiding Force of that “ Creator ” — good and bad at the same time, the origin of good and the origin of evil. This “ Creator ” is neither good nor bad per se, but its differentiated aspects in nature make it assume one or the other character. With the invisible and the unknown Universes disseminated through space, none of the sun-gods had anything to do. The idea is expressed very clearly in the “ Books of Hermes,” and in every ancient folk lore. It is symbolised generally by the Dragon and the Serpent — the Dragon of Good and the Serpent of Evil, represented on Earth by
* For a clearer explanation of the origins, as contained in the esotericism of the Bhagavad Gita, see the Notes thereon published in the “ Theosophist ” for February, March and June, 1887, Madras.
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the right and the left-hand Magic. In the epic poem of Finland, the Kalewala, * the origin of the Serpent of Evil is given : it is born from the “ spittle of Suoyatar . . . . and endowed with a living Soul by the Principle of Evil,” Hisi. A strife is described between the two, the “ thing of Evil ” (the Serpent or Sorcerer), and Ahti, the Dragon ; Magic Lemminkainen.” The latter is one of the seven sons of Ilmatar, the virgin “ daughter of the air,” she “ who fell from heaven into the sea,” before Creation, i.e., Spirit transformed into the matter of sensuous life. There is a world of meaning and Occult thought in these few lines, admirably rendered by Dr. J. M. Crawford, of Cincinnati. The hero Lemminkainen, the good magician,
“ Hews the wall with might of magic, |
(d) In China the men of Fohi (or the “ Heavenly Man ”) are called the twelve Tien-Hoang, the twelve hierarchies of Dhyanis or Angels, with human Faces, and Dragon bodies ; the dragon standing for divine Wisdom or Spirit † ; and they create men by incarnating themselves in
* J. W. Alden, New York.
† It has been repeatedly stated that the Serpent ıs the symbol of wisdom and of Occult knowledge. “ The Serpent has been connected with the god of wisdom from the earliest times of which we have any historical notice,” writes Staniland Wake. “ This animal was the especial symbol of Thot or Taut . . . and of all those gods, such as Hermes (?) and Seth who can be connected with him. This is also the primitive Chaldean triad Hea or Hoa.” According to Sir Henry Rawlinson, the most important titles of this deity refer to “ his functions as the source of all knowledge and science.” Not only is he “ the intelligent fish,” but his name may be read as signifying both “ life ” and a serpent (an initiated adept), and he may be considered as “ figured by the great serpent which occupies so conspicuous a place among the symbols of the gods on the black stones recording Babylonian benefactions.” Esculapius, Serapis, Pluto, Knoum and Kneph, are all deities with the attributes of the serpent. Says Dupuis, “ They are all healers, givers of health, spiritual and physical, and of enlightenment.” The crown formed of an asp, the Thermuthis, belongs to Isis, goddess of Life and Healing. The Upanishads have a treatise on the Science of Serpents — in other words, the Science of Occult knowledge ; and the Nagas of the exoteric Buddhist are not “ the fabulous creatures of the nature of serpents . . . beings superior to men and the protectors of the
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seven figures of clay — earth and water — made in the shape of those Tien-hoang, a third allegory ; (compare the “ Symbols of the Bonzes ”). The twelve Æsers of the Scandinavian Eddas do the same. In the Secret Catechism of the Druses of Syria — a legend which is repeated word for word by the oldest tribes about and around the Euphrates — men were created by the “ Sons of God ” descending on Earth, where, after culling seven Mandragoras, they animated these roots, which became forthwith men. *
All these allegories point to one and the same origin — to the dual and the triple nature of man ; dual, as male and female ; triple — as being of spiritual and psychic essence within, and of a material fabric without.