The Secret Doctrine, page 110
This is also the “completeness” of phallicism by the Rabbis, its perfect apotheosis, the divine being dragged into the animal, the sublime into the grossness of the terrestrial. Nothing so graphically gross exists in Eastern Occultism, nor in the primitive Kabalah—the Chaldæan Book of Numbers. We have said so already in Isis Unveiled:
We find it rather unwise on the part of Catholic writers to pour out their vials of wrath in such sentences as these: “In a multitude of pagodas, the phallic stone, ever and always assuming, like the Grecian batylos, the brutally indecent form of the lingham ... the Mahâ Deva.” Before casting slurs on a symbol whose profound metaphysical meaning is too much for the modern champions of that religion of sensualism par excellence, Roman Catholicism, to grasp, they are in duty bound to destroy their oldest churches, and change the form of the cupolas of their own temples. The Mahadeo of Elephanta, the Round Tower of Bhagulpore, the minarets of Islam—either rounded or pointed—are the originals of the Campanile column of San Marco, at Venice, of Rochester Cathedral, and of the modern Duomo of Milan. All of these steeples, turrets, domes, and Christian temples, are the reproductions of the primitive idea of the lithos, the upright phallus.185
Nevertheless, and however it may be, the fact that all these Hebrew Elohim, Sparks, and Cherubs are identical with the Devas, Rishis and the Fires and Flames, the Rudras and the forty-nine Agnis of the ancient ryas, is sufficiently proven by and in the Kabalah.
Stanza IV. Creation Of The First Races.
14. Creation of men. 15. They are empty shadows. 16. The Creators are perplexed how to create a thinking man. 17. What is needed for the formation of a perfect Man.
14. The Seven Hosts, the Will-born186 Lords, propelled by the Spirit of Life-Giving,187 separate Men from themselves, each on his own Zone.
They threw off their “Shadows” or Astral Bodies—if such an ethereal being as a “Lunar Spirit” may be supposed to rejoice in an Astral, besides a hardly tangible Body. In another Commentary it is said that the Ancestors breathed out the first man, as Brahmâ is explained to have breathed out the Suras, or Gods, when they became Asuras (from Asu, breath). In a third it is said that they, the newly-created Men, were the “shadows of the Shadows.”
With regard to this sentence—“They were the shadows of the Shadows”—a few more words may be said and a fuller explanation attempted. This first process of the evolution of mankind is far easier to accept than the one which follows it, though one and all such processes will be rejected and doubted even by some Kabalists, especially the Western, who study the present effects, but have neglected to study their primary causes. Nor does the writer feel competent to explain a mode of procreation so difficult of appreciation save for an Eastern Occultist. Therefore it is useless to enter here into details concerning the process, though it is minutely described in the Secret Books, as it would only lead to speaking of facts hitherto unknown to the profane world, and hence to their being misunderstood. An Adam made of the dust of the ground will always be found preferable, by a certain class of students, to one projected out of the ethereal body of his creator; though the former process has never been heard of, while the latter is familiar, as all know, to many Spiritualists in Europe and America, who, of all men, ought to understand it. For who of those who have witnessed the phenomenon of a materializing form oozing out of the pores of a medium or, at other times, out of his left side, can fail to credit the possibility, at least, of such a birth? If there are in the Universe such beings as Angels or Spirits, whose incorporeal essence may constitute an intelligent Entity, notwithstanding the absence of any (to us) solid organism; and if there are those who believe that a God made the first man out of dust, and breathed into him a living Soul—and there are millions upon millions who believe both—what does this doctrine of ours contain that is so impossible? Very soon the day will dawn, when the world will have to choose whether it will accept the miraculous creation of man (and Kosmos too) out of nothing, according to the dead letter of Genesis, or a first man born from a fantastic link—absolutely “missing” so far—the common ancestor of man, and of the “true ape.”188 Between these two fallacies, Occult Philosophy steps in. It teaches that the first human stock was projected by higher and semi-divine Beings out of their own essences. If the latter process is to be considered as abnormal or even inconceivable—because obsolete in Nature at this point of evolution—it is yet proven possible on the authority of certain “spiritualistic” facts. Which, then, we ask of the three hypotheses or theories is the most reasonable and the least absurd? Certainly no one—provided he be not a soul-blind Materialist—can ever object to the Occult Teaching.
Now, as shown, we gather from the latter that man was not “created” the complete being he is now, however imperfect he still remains. There was a spiritual, a psychic, an intellectual, and an animal evolution, from the highest to the lowest, as well as a physical development—from the simple and homogeneous, up to the more complex and heterogeneous; though not quite on the lines traced for us by the modern Evolutionists. This double evolution in two contrary directions, required various ages, of divers natures and degrees of spirituality and intellectuality, to fabricate the being now known as man. Furthermore, the one absolute, ever acting and never erring law, which proceeds on the same lines from one Eternity (or Manvantara) to the other—ever furnishing an ascending scale for the manifested, or that which we call the great Illusion (Mahâ-Mâyâ), but plunging Spirit deeper and deeper into materiality on the one hand, and then redeeming it through flesh and liberating it—this law, we say, uses for these purposes the Beings from other and higher planes, men, or Minds (Manus), in accordance with their Karmic exigencies.
At this juncture, the reader is again asked to turn to the Indian Philosophy and Religion. The Esotericism of both is at one with our Secret Doctrine, however much the form may differ and vary.
On The Identity And Differences Of The Incarnating Powers.
The Progenitors of Man, called in India Fathers, Pitaras, or Pitris, are the “Creators” of our bodies and lower principles. They are ourselves, as the first personalities, and we are they. Primeval man would be “the bone of their bone and the flesh of their flesh,” if they had bones and flesh. As stated, they were “Lunar Beings.”
The endowers of man with his conscious, immortal Ego, are the “Solar Angels”—whether so regarded metaphorically or literally. The mysteries of the Conscious Ego or Human Soul are great. The Esoteric name of these Solar Angels is, literally, the “Lords” (Nâth) of “persevering ceaseless devotion” (Pranidhâna). Therefore they of the Fifth Principle (Manas) seem to be connected with, or to have originated the system of the Yogîs who make of Pranidhâna their fifth observance.189 It has already been explained why the Trans-Himâlayan Occultists regard them as evidently identical with those who in India are termed Kumâras, Agnishvâttas, and the Barhishads.
How precise and true is Plato's expression, how profound and philosophical his remark on the (Human) Soul or Ego, when he defined it as “a compound of the same and the other.” And yet how little this hint has been understood, since the world took it to mean that the Soul was the Breath of God, of Jehovah. It is “the same and the other,” as the great Initiate-Philosopher said; for the Ego—the “Higher Self” when merged with and in the Divine Monad—is Man, and yet the same as the “other”; the Angel in him incarnated is the same with the Universal Mahat. The great classical writers and philosophers felt this truth, when saying that:
There must be something within us which produces our thoughts. Something very subtle; it is a breath; it is fire; it is ether; it is quintessence; it is a slender likeness; it is an intellection; it is a number; it is harmony.190
All these are the Mânasas and Râjasas; the Kumâras, Asuras, and other Rulers and Pitris, who incarnated in the Third Race, and in this and various other ways endowed mankind with Mind.
There are Seven Classes of Pitris, as shown below, three Incorporeal and four Corporeal; and two kinds, the Agnishvâtta and the Barhishad. And we may add that, as there are two kinds of Pitris, so there is a double and a triple set of Barhishad and Agnishvâtta. The former, having given birth to their Astral Doubles, are reborn as Sons of Atri, and are the “Pitris of the Demons,” or Corporeal Beings, on the authority of Manu;191 while the Agnishvâtta are reborn as Sons of Marîchi, a Son of Brahmâ, and are the “Pitris of the Gods.”192
The Vâyu Purâna declares the Seven Orders of Pitris to have been originally the first Gods, the Vairâjas, whom Brahmâ, with the eye of Yoga, beheld in the eternal spheres, and who are the gods of the gods.... The Matsya ... adds, that the Gods worshipped them.193
The Harivamsha distinguishes the Vairâjas as one class of the Pitris only,194 a statement corroborated in the Secret Teachings, which, however, identify the Vairâjas with the elder Agnishvâttas195 and the Râjasas, or bhûtarajasas, who are Incorporeal without even an Astral Phantom. Vishnu is said, in most of the MSS., to have incarnated in and through them.
In the Raivata Manvantara, again, Hari, best of gods, was born of Sambhûti, as the divine Mânasa—originating with the deities called Râjasas.196
Sambhûti was a daughter of Daksha, and wife of Marîchi, the father of the Agnishvâtta, who, along with the Râjasas, are ever associated with Mânasas. As remarked by a far more able Sanskritist than Wilson, Mr. Fitzedward Hall:
Mânasa is no inappropriate name for a deity associated with the Râjasas. We appear to have in it mânasam—the same as manas—with the change of termination required to express male personification.197
All the Sons of Virâja are Mânasa, says Nîlakantha. And Virâja is Brahmâ, and, therefore, the Incorporeal Pitris are called Vairâjas from being the Sons of Virâja, says Vayu Purâna.
We could multiply our proofs ad infinitum, but it is useless. The wise will understand our meaning, the unwise are not required to. There are thirty-three crores, or three hundred and thirty millions, of Gods in India. But, as remarked by the learned lecturer on the Bhagavad Gîtâ:
They may be all devas, but are by no means all “gods,” in the high spiritual sense one attributes to the term.
This is an unfortunate blunder generally committed by Europeans. Deva is a kind of spiritual being, and because the same word is used in ordinary parlance to mean god, it by no means follows that we have and worship thirty-three crores of gods. These beings, as may be naturally inferred, have a certain affinity with one of the three component Upâdhis (basic principles) into which we have divided man.198
The names of the deities of a certain mystic class change with every Manvantara. Thus the twelve Great Gods, Jayas, created by Brahmâ to assist him in the work of creation in the very beginning of the Kalpa, and who, lost in Samâdhi, neglected to create—whereupon they were cursed to be repeatedly born in each Manvantara till the seventh—are respectively called Ajitas, Tushitas, Satyas, Haris, Vaikunthas, Sâdhyas, and Adityas:199 they are Tushitas, in the second Kalpa, and dityas in this Vaivasvata Period,200 besides other names for each age. But they are identical with the Mânasas or Râjasas, and these with our incarnating Dhyân Chohans.
Yes; besides those Beings, who, like the Yakshas, Gandharvas, Kinnaras, etc., taken in their individualities, inhabit the Astral Plane, there are real Devas, and to these classes belong the Adityas, the Vairâjas, the Kumâras, the Asuras, and all those high celestial Beings whom Occult teaching calls Manasvin, the Wise, foremost of all, and who would have made all men the self-conscious spiritually intellectual Beings they will be, had they not been “cursed” to fall into generation, and to be reborn themselves as mortals for their neglect of duty.
15. Seven times seven Shadows201 of Future Men202 (a) were203born, each of his own Colour204 and Kind (b). Each205 inferior to his Father.206 The Fathers, the Boneless, could give no Life to Beings with Bones. Their Progeny were Bhûta,207with neither Form nor Mind. Therefore they are called the Chhâyâ208 Race(c).
(a) Manu, as already remarked, comes from the root man, to think, hence a “thinker.” It is from this Sanskrit word very likely that sprung the Latin mens, Mind, the Egyptian Menes, the “Master-Mind,” the Pythagorean monas, or conscious “thinking unit,” mind also, and even our manas or mind, the fifth principle in man. Hence these Shadows are called Amânasa, “Mindless.”
With the Brâhmans, the Pitris are very sacred, because they are the Progenitors,209 or Ancestors of men—the first Manushyas on this Earth—and offerings are made to them by the Brâhman when a son is born unto him. They are more honoured and their ritual is more important than the worship of the Gods.210
May we not now search for a philosophical meaning in this dual group of Progenitors?
The Pitris being divided into seven Classes, we have here the mystic number again. Nearly all the Purânas agree that three of these are Arûpa, formless, while four are Corporeal; the former being intellectual and spiritual, the latter material and devoid of intellect. Esoterically, it is the Asuras who form the first three Classes of Pitris—“born in the Body of Night”—whereas the other four were produced from the “Body of Twilight.” Their Fathers, the Gods, were doomed to be born fools on Earth, according to the Vâyu Purâna. The legends are purposely mixed up and made very hazy: the Pitris being in one the Sons of the Gods, and, in another, those of Brahmâ; while a third makes them instructors of their own Fathers. It is the Hosts of the four material Classes who create men simultaneously on the seven Zones.
Now, with regard to the seven Classes of Pitris, each of which is again divided into seven, a word to students and a query to the profane. That Class of the “Fire Dhyânîs,” which we identify on undeniable grounds with the Agnishvâttas, is called in our school the “Heart” of the Dhyân-Chohanic Body, and is said to have incarnated in the Third Race of men and made them perfect. The Esoteric Mystagogy speaks of the mysterious relation existing between the hebdomadic essence or substance of this angelic Heart and that of man, whose every physical organ, and psychic, and spiritual function, is a reflection, so to say, a copy on the terrestrial plane, of the model or prototype above. Why, it is asked, should there be such a strange repetition of the number seven in the anatomical structure of man? Why should the heart have four lower cavities and three higher divisions, answering so strangely to the septenary division of the human principles, separated into two groups, the higher and the lower; and why should the same division be found in the various classes of Pitris, and especially our Fire Dhyânîs? For, as already stated, these Beings fall into four Corporeal, or grosser, and three Incorporeal, or subtler, “Principles,” or call them by any other name you please. Why do the seven nervous plexuses of the body radiate seven rays? Why are there these seven plexuses, and why seven distinct layers in the human skin?
Says the Commentary:
Having projected their Shadows and made men of one Element (Ether), the Progenitors reäscend to Mahâ-Loka, whence they descend periodically, when the World is renewed, to give birth to new Men.
The Subtle Bodies remain without understanding (Manas) until the advent of the Suras (Gods) now called Asuras (Not-Gods).
“Not-Gods,” for the Brâhmans, perhaps, but the highest “Breaths,” for the Occultist; since those Progenitors (Pitaras), the formless and the intellectual, refuse to build man, but endow him with Mind; the four corporeal Classes creating only his body.
This is very plainly shown in various texts of the Rig Veda—the highest authority for a Hindû of any sect whatever. Therein Asura means “spiritual, divine,” and the word is used as a synonym for Supreme Spirit, and the term Asura, in the sense of a “God,” is applied to Varuna and Indra and preëminently to Agni—the three having been in days of old the three highest Gods, before Brâhmanical Theo-Mythology distorted the true meaning of almost everything in the Archaic Scriptures. But, as the key is now lost, the Asuras are hardly mentioned.
In the Zend Avesta the same is found. In the Mazdean, or Magian, religion, Asura is the Lord Asura Vishvavedas, the “all-knowing” or “omniscient Lord”; and Asura Mazdhâ, becoming later Ahura Mazdhâ, is, as Benfey shows, “the Lord who bestows Intelligence”—Asura Medhâ and Ahura Mazdâo.211 Elsewhere in this work it is shown, on equally good authority, that the Indo-Iranian Asura was always regarded as sevenfold. This fact, combined with the name Mazdhâ, as above, which makes of the sevenfold Asura the “Lord,” or “Lords” collectively “who bestow Intelligence,” connects the Amshaspands with the Asuras and with our incarnating Dhyân Chohans, as well as with the Elohim, and the seven informing Gods of Egypt, Chaldæa, and every other country.
Why these “Gods” refused to create men is not, as stated in exoteric accounts, because their pride was too great to share the celestial power of their essence with the Children of Earth, but for reasons already suggested. However, allegory has indulged in endless fancies and Theology has taken advantage thereof in every country, to make out its case against these First-born, or the Logoi, and to impress it as a truth on the minds of the ignorant and credulous.212
The Christian system is not the only one which has degraded these Gods into Demons. Zoroastrianism and even Brâhmanism have profited thereby to obtain hold over the people's mind. Even in Chaldæan exotericism, Beings who refuse to create, and are said to oppose thereby the Demiurgus, are also denounced as Spirits of Darkness. The Suras, who win their intellectual independence, fight the Suras, who are devoid thereof and are shown as passing their lives in profitless ceremonial worship based on blind faith—a hint now ignored by the orthodox Brâhmans—and forthwith the former become A-Suras. The First- and Mind-born Sons of the Deity refuse to create progeny, and are cursed by Brahmâ to be born as men. They are hurled down to Earth, which, later on, is transformed, in theological dogma, into the Infernal Regions. Ahriman destroys the Bull created by Ormazd—which is the emblem of terrestrial illusive life, the “germ of sorrow”—and, forgetting that the perishing finite seed must die, in order that the plant of immortality, the plant of spiritual, eternal life, should sprout and live, Ahriman is proclaimed the enemy, the opposing power, the Devil. Typhon cuts Osiris into fourteen pieces, in order to prevent him peopling the world and thus creating misery; and Typhon becomes, in the exoteric, theological teaching, the Power of Darkness. But all this is the exoteric shell. It is the worshippers of the latter who attribute to disobedience and rebellion the effort and self-sacrifice of those who would help men to their original status of divinity through self-conscious efforts; and it is these worshippers of form who have made Demons of the Angels of Light.
