The Secret Doctrine, page 154
This process of preparation for the Sixth great Race must last throughout the whole sixth and seventh sub-races.1028 But the last remnants of the Fifth Continent will not disappear until some time after the birth of the new Race; when another and new dwelling, the Sixth Continent, will have appeared above the new waters on the face of the Globe, so as to receive the new stranger. To it also will emigrate and there will settle all those who will be fortunate enough to escape the general disaster. When this shall be—as just said—it is not for the writer to know. Only, as Nature no more proceeds by sudden jumps and starts, than man changes suddenly from a child into a mature man, the final cataclysm will be preceded by many smaller submersions and destructions both by wave and volcanic fires. The exultant pulse will beat high in the heart of the race now in the American zone, but there will be no more Americans when the Sixth Race commences; no more, in fact, than Europeans; for they will have now become a new Race, and many new nations. Yet the Fifth will not die, but will survive for a while; overlapping the new Race for many hundred thousands of years to come, it will, as we have just said, become transformed with it more slowly than its new successor—still getting entirely altered in mentality, general physique, and stature. Mankind will not grow again into giant bodies as in the case of the Lemurians and the Atlanteans; because while the evolution of the Fourth Race led the latter down to the very bottom of materiality in its physical development, the present Race is on its ascending arc; and the Sixth will be rapidly growing out of its bonds of matter, and even of flesh.
Thus it is the mankind of the New World, the senior by far of our Old one—a fact men had also forgotten—of Pâtâla (the Antipodes, or the Nether World, as America is called in India), whose mission and Karma it is, to sow the seeds for a forthcoming, grander, and far more glorious Race than any of those we know of at present. The Cycles of Matter will be succeeded by Cycles of Spirituality and a fully developed mind. On the law of parallel history and races, the majority of the future mankind will be composed of glorious Adepts. Humanity is the child of Cyclic Destiny, and not one of its Units can escape its unconscious mission, or get rid of the burden of its coöperative work with Nature. Thus will Mankind, race after race, perform its appointed Cyclic Pilgrimage. Climates will, and have already begun to, change, each Tropical Year after the other dropping one sub-race, but only to beget another higher race on the ascending cycle; while a series of other less favoured groups—the failures of Nature—will, like some individual men, vanish from the human family without even leaving a trace behind.
Such is the course of Nature under the sway of Karmic Law; of Ever-present and Ever-becoming Nature. For, in the words of a Sage, known only to a few Occultists:
The Present is the child of the Past; the Future, the begotten of the Present. And yet, O present moment! knowest thou not that thou hast no parent, nor canst thou have a child; that thou art ever begetting but thyself? Before thou hast even begun to say “I am the progeny of the departed moment, the child of the past,” thou hast become that past itself. Before thou utterest the last syllable, behold! thou art no more the Present but verily that Future. Thus, are the Past, the Present, and the Future the Ever-living Trinity in One—the Mahámâyâ of the Absolute “IS.”
Part II. The Archaic Symbolism Of The World-Religions.
The narratives of the Doctrine are its cloak. The simple look only at the garment—that is, upon the narrative of the Doctrine; more they know not. The instructed, however, see not merely the cloak, but what the cloak covers.—Zohar (iii. 152; Franck, 119).
The Mysteries of the Faith (are) not to be divulged to all.... It is requisite to hide in a mystery the wisdom spoken.—Stromateis (12; Clemens Alexandrinus).
Section I. Esoteric Tenets Corroborated in Every Scripture.
In view of the strangeness of the teachings, and of many a doctrine which from the modern scientific standpoint must seem absurd, some necessary and additional explanations have to be made. The theories contained in the Stanzas of Volume II are even more difficult to assimilate than those which are embodied in Volume I, on Cosmogony. Theology, therefore, has to be questioned here, in Part II, as Science will be in Part III, for since our doctrines differ so widely from the current ideas of both Materialism and Theology, the Occultists must be ever prepared to repel the attacks of either or of both.
The reader can never be too often reminded that, as the abundant quotations from various old Scriptures prove, these teachings are as old as the world; and that the present work is simply an attempt to render, in modern language and in a phraseology with which the scientific and educated student is familiar, archaic Genesis and History as taught in certain Asiatic centres of Esoteric Learning. These must be accepted or rejected on their own merits, fully or partially; but not before they have been carefully compared with the corresponding theological dogmas and the modern scientific theories and speculations.
One feels serious doubt whether, with all its intellectual acuteness, our age is destined to discover in each Western nation even one solitary uninitiated Scholar or Philosopher capable of fully comprehending the spirit of Archaic Philosophy. Nor can either be expected to do so, before the real meaning of the Alpha and the Omega of Eastern Esotericism, the terms Sat and Asat—so freely used in the Rig Veda and elsewhere—is thoroughly assimilated. Without this key to ryan Wisdom, the Cosmogony of the Rishis and the Arhats is in danger of remaining a dead letter to the average Orientalist. Asat is not merely the negation of Sat, nor is it the “not yet existing”; for Sat is in itself neither the “existent,” nor “being.” Sat is the immutable, the ever-present, changeless, and eternal Root, from and through which all proceeds. But it is far more than the potential force in the seed, which propels onward the process of development, or what is now called evolution. It is the ever becoming, though the never manifesting.1029 Sat is born from Asat, and Asat is begotten by Sat—perpetual motion in a circle, truly; yet a circle that can be squared only at the Supreme Initiation, at the threshold of Parinirvâna.
Barth started a reflection on the Rig Veda which was meant for a stern criticism, an unusual, therefore, as was thought, an original, view of this archaic volume. It so happened, however, that, in his criticism, this scholar revealed a truth, without being himself aware of its full importance. He premises by saying that “neither in the language nor in the thought of the Rig Veda” has he “been able to discover that quality of primitive natural simplicity, which so many are fain to see in it.” Barth had Max Müller in his mind's eye when writing this. For the famous Oxford professor has throughout characterized the hymns of the Rig Veda, as the unsophisticated expression of the religious feeling of a pastoral innocent people. “In the Vedic hymns the ideas and myths appear in their simplest and freshest form”—the Sanskrit scholar thinks. Barth is of a different opinion, however.
So divided and personal are the opinions of Sanskritists as to the importance and intrinsic value of the Rig Veda, that these opinions become entirely biassed whichever way they incline. Thus Prof. Max Müller declares that:
Nowhere is the wide distance which separates the ancient poems of India from the most ancient literature of Greece more clearly felt, than when we compare the growing myths of the Veda with the full grown and decayed myths on which the poetry of Homer is founded. The Veda is the real Theogony of the Aryan races, while that of Hesiod is a distorted caricature of the original image.
This is a sweeping assertion, and perhaps rather unjust in its general application. But why not try to account for it? Orientalists cannot do so, for they reject the chronology of the Secret Doctrine, and can hardly admit the fact that between the Rig Vedic hymns and Hesiod's Theogony tens of thousands of years have elapsed. So they fail to see that the Greek myths are no longer the primitive symbolical language of the Initiates, the Disciples of the Gods-Hierophants, the divine ancient “Sacrificers,” and that disfigured by the distance, and encumbered by the exuberant growth of human profane fancy, they now stand like distorted images of stars in running waves. But if Hesiod's Cosmogony and Theogony are to be viewed as caricatures of the original images, how much more so the myths in the Hebrew Genesis, in the sight of those for whom they are no more divine revelation or the word of God, than is Hesiod's Theogony for Mr. Gladstone.
As Barth says:
The poetry it (the Rig Veda) contains appears to me, on the contrary, to be of a singularly refined character and artificially elaborated, full of allusions and reticences, of pretensions (?) to mysticism and theosophic insight; and the manner of its expression is such as reminds one more frequently of the phraseology in use among certain small groups of initiated than the poetic language of a large community.1030
We will not stop to enquire of the critic what he can know of the phraseology in use among the “initiated,” or whether he belongs himself to such a group; for, in the latter case, he would hardly have used such language. But the above shows the remarkable disagreement between scholars even with regard to the external character of the Rig Veda. What, then, can any of the modern Sanskritists know about its internal or esoteric meaning, beyond the correct inference of Barth, that this Scripture has been compiled by Initiates?
The whole of the present work is an endeavour to prove this truth. The ancient Adepts have solved the great problems of Science, however unwilling modern Materialism may be to admit the fact. The mysteries of Life and Death were fathomed by the great master-minds of antiquity; and if they have preserved them in secresy and silence, it is because these problems formed part of the Sacred Mysteries, which must have remained incomprehensible to the vast majority of men then, as they do now. If such teachings are still regarded as chimeras by our opponents in Philosophy, it may be a consolation to Theosophists to learn, on good proof, that the speculations of modern Psychologists—whether serious Idealists, like Mr. Herbert Spencer, or wool-gathering Pseudo-idealists—are far more chimerical. Indeed, instead of resting on the firm foundation of facts in Nature, they are the unhealthy will-o'-the-wisps of materialistic imagination, of the brains that evolved them—and no more. While they deny, we affirm; and our affirmation is corroborated by almost all the Sages of antiquity. Believing in Occultism and a host of invisible Potencies for good reasons, we say, Certus sum, scio quod credidi; to which our critics reply, Credat Judæus Apella. Neither is converted by the other, nor does such result affect even our little planet. E pur se muove!
Nor is there any need of proselytizing. As remarked by the wise Cicero:
Time destroys the speculations of man, but it confirms the judgment of nature.
Let us bide our time. Meanwhile, it is not in the human constitution to witness in silence the destruction of one's Gods, whether they be true or false. And as Theology and Materialism have combined together to destroy the old Gods of antiquity and seek to disfigure every old philosophical conception, it is but just that the lovers of the Old Wisdom should defend their position, by proving that the whole arsenal of the two is, at best, formed of new weapons made out of very old material.
Section II. Adam=Adami.
Names such as Adam-Adami, used by Dr. Chwolsohn in his Nabathean Agriculture and derided by M. Renan, may prove little to the profane. To the Occultist, however, once that the term is found in a work of such immense antiquity as that above cited, it proves a good deal. It proves, for instance, that Adami was a manifold symbol, originating with the ryan people, as the root word shows, and having been taken from them by the Semites and the Turanians—as many other things were.
Adam-Adami is a generic compound name as old as language is. The Secret Doctrine teaches that Ad-i was the name given by the ryans to the first speaking race of mankind, in this Round. Hence the terms Adonim and Adonai (the ancient plural form of the word Adon), which the Jews applied to their Jehovah and Angels, who were simply the first spiritual and ethereal sons of the Earth, and the God Adonis, who in his many variations stood for the “First Lord.” Adam is the Sanskrit di-Nâth, also meaning First Lord, as d-Îshvara, or any Ad (the First) prefixed to an adjective or substantive. The reason for this is that such truths were a common inheritance. It was a revelation received by the first mankind before that time which, in biblical phraseology, is called “the period of one lip and word,” or speech; knowledge expanded by man's own intuition later on, still later hidden from profanation under an adequate symbology. The author of the Qabbalah, according to the philosophical writings of Ibn Gebirol, shows the Israelites using Ad-onaï (A Do Na Y), “Lord,” instead of Eh'yeh, “I am,” and YHVH, and adds that, while Adonaï is rendered “Lord” in the Bible,
The lowest designation, or the Deity in Nature, the more general term Elohim, is translated God.1031
A curious work was translated in 1860 or thereabout, by the Orientalist Chwolsohn, and presented to ever-incredulous and flippant Europe under the innocent title of Nabathean Agriculture. In the opinion of the translator that archaic volume is a complete initiation into the mysteries of the Pre-Adamite nations, on the authority of undeniably authentic documents. It is an invaluable compendium, the full epitome of the doctrines, arts and sciences, not only of the Chaldæans, but also of the Assyrians and Canaanites of the pre-historic ages.1032 These Nabatheans—as some critics thought—were simply the Sabæans, or Chaldæan star-worshippers. The work is a retranslation from the Arabic, into which language it was at first translated from the Chaldæan.
Masoudi, the Arabian historian, speaks of these Nabatheans, and explains their origin in this wise:
After the Deluge (?) the nations established themselves in various countries. Among these were the Nabatheans, who founded the city of Babylon, and were those descendants of Ham who settled in the same province under the leadership of Nimrod, the son of Cush, who was the son of Ham and great-grandson of Noah. This took place at the time when Nimrod received the governorship of Babylonia as the delegate of Dzahhak named Biourasp.1033
The translator, Chwolsohn, finds that the assertions of this historian are in perfect accord with those of Moses in Genesis; while more irreverent critics might express the opinion that for this very reason their truth should be suspected. It is useless, however, to argue the point, which is of no value in the present question. The weather-beaten, long-since-buried problem, and the difficulty of accounting, on any logical ground, for the phenomenal derivation of millions of people of various races, of many civilized nations and tribes, from three couples—Noah's sons and their wives—in 346 years1034 after the Deluge, may be left to the Karma of the author of Genesis, whether he is called Moses or Ezra. That which is interesting in the work under notice, however, are its contents, the doctrines enunciated in it, which are again, if read Esoterically, almost all of them identical with the Secret Teachings.
Quatremère suggested that this book might have been simply a copy made under Nebuchadnezzar II from some Hamitic treatise, “infinitely more ancient,” while the author maintains, on internal and external evidence, that its Chaldæan original was written out from the oral discourses and teachings of a wealthy Babylonian landowner, named Qû-tâmy, who had used for those lectures still more ancient materials. The first Arabic translation is placed by Chwolsohn so far back as the thirteenth century b.c. On the first page of this “revelation,” the author, or amanuensis, Qû-tâmy, declares that “the doctrines propounded therein, were originally told by Saturn ... to the Moon, who communicated them to her idol,” and the idol revealed them to her devotee, the writer—the Adept Scribe of that work—Qû-tâmy.
The details given by the God for the benefit and instruction of mortals, show periods of incalculable duration and a series of numberless kingdoms and Dynasties that preceded the appearance on Earth of Adami (the “red-earth”). These periods, as might have been expected, have roused the defenders of the chronology of the biblical dead-letter meaning almost to fury. De Rougemont was the first to make a levée-in-arms against the translator. He reproaches him with sacrificing Moses to anonymous authors.1035 Berosus, he urges, however great were his chronological errors, was at least in perfect accord with the prophet with regard to the first men, since he speaks of Alorus-Adam, of Xisuthrus-Noah, and of Belus-Nimrod, etc. Therefore, he adds, the work must be an apocryphon to be ranged with its contemporaries—the Fourth Book of Esdras, the Book of Enoch, the Sibylline Oracles, and the Book of Hermes—every one of these dating no further back than two or three centuries B.C. Ewald came down still harder on Chwolsohn, and finally M. Renan, who in the Revue Germanique1036 asks him to show reason why his Nabathean Agriculture should not be the fraudulent work of some Jew of the third or fourth century of our era? It can hardly be otherwise—argues the romancer of the Vie de Jésus, since, in this in-folio on Astrology and Sorcery:
