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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 (Spirits) of the high ; the Lhamayin (those) 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 Isaiah (vi. 2 — 6), those who attend, according to Hebrew Theogony, “ 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
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evolution of life on Earth, there may be another allegorical meaning attached to this Sloka, 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 : —