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not how many more she had to see." (Oriental Collections, ii., 119.)
The above, however, is no new statement. From Bailly, in the last century, down to Dr. Kenealy, in this one, these facts have been noticed by several writers, but now a connection can be established between
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Continued from previous page]] diameter of that which precedes it -- amounts to but two crores or fifty-four lakhs etc. . . . Whenever any contradictions in different Puranas occur, they have to be ascribed . . . to differences of Kalpas and the like." "The like" ought to read "Occult meaning," which explanation is withheld by the commentator, who wrote for exoteric, sectarian purposes, and was misunderstood by the translator for various other reasons, the least of which is -- ignorance of the esoteric philosophy.
* The Phoenix, connected with the Solar Cycle of 600 years (with ciphers taken out or with more added according to which cycle is meant), the Western cycle of the Greeks and other nations -- is a generic symbol for several kinds of cycles. Fuller details will be given in the section on "Kalpas and Cycles."
** The tense is the "past" because the book is allegorical, and has to veil the truths contained.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 618 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
the Persian oracle and the Nazarene prophet. Says the author of the "Book of God": --
"The Simorgh is in reality the same as the winged Singh of the Hindus, and the Sphinx of the Egyptians. It is said that the former will appear at the end of the world . . . . as a monstrous lion-bird. From these the Rabbins have borrowed their mythos of an enormous Bird, sometimes standing on the Earth, sometimes walking in the ocean . . . while its head props the sky; and with the symbol, they have also adopted the doctrine to which it relates. They teach that there are to be seven successive renewals of the globe, that each reproduced system will last seven thousand years; (?) and that the total duration of the universe will be 49,000 years. This opinion, which involves the doctrine of the pre-existence of each renewed creature, they may either have learned during their Babylonian captivity, or it may have been part of the primeval religion which their priests had preserved from remote times" (p. 176). It shows rather that the initiated Jews borrowed, and their non-initiated successors, the Talmudists, lost the sense, and applied the Seven Rounds, and the forty-nine races, etc., to the wrong end.
Not only "their priests," but those of every other country. The Gnostics, whose various teachings are the many echoes of the one primitive and universal doctrine, put the same numbers, under another form, in the mouth of Jesus in the very occult Pistis Sophia. We say more: even the Christian editor or author of Revelation has preserved this tradition and speaks of the Seven RACES, four of which, with part of the fifth, are gone, and two have to come. It is stated as plainly as could be stated in chapter
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xvii., verses 9 and 10. Thus saith the angel: "And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth. And there are SEVEN Kings, five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come . . . . " Who, acquainted in the least with the symbolical language of old, will fail to discern in the five Kings that have fallen, the four Root-Races that were, and part of the fifth, the one that is; and in the other, that "is not yet come," the sixth and seventh coming root races, as also the sub-races of this, our present race? Another still more forcible allusion to the Seven Rounds and the forty-nine root-races in Leviticus, will be found elsewhere in the Addenda, Part III.
-------
E.
SEVEN IN ASTRONOMY, SCIENCE, AND MAGIC.
Again, number seven is closely connected with the occult significance of the Pleiades, those seven daughters of Atlas, "the six present, the
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 619 THE CYCLE OF THE NAROS.
seventh hidden." In India they are connected with their nursling, the war god, Karttikeya. It is the Pleiades (in Sanskrit, Krittika) who gave the god their name, for Karttikeya is the planet Mars, astronomically. As a god he is the son of Rudra, born without the intervention of a woman. He is a Kumara, a "virgin youth" again, generated in the fire from the Seed of Siva -- the holy spirit -- hence called Agni-bhu. The late Dr. Kenealy believed that, in India, Karttikeya is the secret symbol of the cycle of Naros, composed of 600, 666, and 777 years, according to whether it is solar or lunar, divine or mortal, years that are counted; and the six visible, or the seven actual sisters, the Pleiades, are needed for the completion of this most secret and mysterious of all the astronomical and religious symbols. Therefore, when made to commemorate one particular event, Karttikeya appeared, of old, as a Kumara, an ascetic, with six heads -- one for each century of the Naros. When the symbolism was needed for another event, then, in conjunction with the seven sidereal sisters, Karttikeya is seen accompanied by Kaumara (or Sena) his female aspect. He is then riding on a peacock -- the bird of Wisdom and Occult Knowledge, and the Hindu Phoenix, whose Greek relation with the 600 years of Naros is well-known. A six-rayed star (double triangle) a Swastica, a six and occasionally seven-
pointed crown is on his brow; the peacock's tail represents the sidereal heavens; and the twelve signs of the Zodiac are hidden on his body; for which he is also called Dwadasa Kara," ("the twelve-
handed"), and Dwadasaksha, "twelve-eyed." It is as Sakti-dhara, however, the "Spear-holder," and the conqueror of Taraka, "Taraka-jit," that he is shown most famous.
The years of the Naros, being (in India) counted in two ways -- either "100 years of the gods," (divine years) -- or 100 mortal years -- one can see the tremendous difficulty for the non-initiated in comprehending correctly this cycle, which plays such an important part in St. John's Revelation. It is the truly apocalyptic Cycle; yet in none of the numerous speculations about it have we found anything
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but a few approximate truths, because of its being of various lengths and relating to various pre-
historic events.
It has been urged against the duration claimed by the Babylonians for their divine ages, that Suidas shows the ancients counting, in their chronological computations, days for years. Dr. Sepp in his ingenious plagiarism -- exposed elsewhere -- of the Hindu 432 in thousands and millions of years (the duration of the Yugas) which he dwarfed to 4,320 lunar years before the "birth of Christ" -- as "foreordained" in the sidereal (besides the invisible) heavens, and proved "by the apparition of the Star of Bethlehem" -- appeals to Suidas and his authority. But Suidas had no other warrant for it than his own speculations, and he
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 620 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
was no Initiate. He cites, as a proof, Vulcan, in showing him as having, according to chronological claim, reigned 4,477 years, i.e., 4,477 days, as he thinks, or rendered in years, 12 years, 3 months, and 7 days; he has 5 days in his original -- thus committing an error even in such an easy calculation. (See Suidas, art. [[Heelios]].) True, there are other ancient writers guilty of like fallacious speculations -- Calisthenes, for instance, who assigns to the astronomical observations of the Chaldeans only 1,903 years, whereas Epigenes recognises 720,000 years (Pliny. Histor. Natur. Lib. VII. c. 56.) The whole of these hypotheses made by profane writers are based upon and due to a misunderstanding. The chronology of all the Western peoples, ancient Greeks and Romans, was borrowed from India. Now, it is said in the Tamil edition of Bagavadam that 15 solar days make a Paccham; two paccham (or 30 days) are a month of the mortals, adding that such a month is only one day of the Pitar Devata (Pitris). Again, two of these months constitute a roodoo, three roodoo make an ayanam, and two ayanams a year -- which year of the mortals is but a day of the gods. It is on such misunderstood teachings that some Greeks have imagined that all the initiated priests had transformed days into years!
This mistake of the ancient Greek and Latin writers became pregnant with results in Europe. At the close of the past and the beginning of this century, relying upon the purposely mutilated accounts of Hindu chronology, brought from India by certain too zealous and as unscrupulous missionaries, Bailly, Dupuis, and others built quite a fantastic theory upon the subject. Because the Hindus had made half a revolution of the moon, a measure of time; and because a month composed of only fifteen days -- of which Quint. Curtius speaks (Menses in quinos dies descriperunt dies. Quint. Curt. LVIII., c. 9) -- is found mentioned in Hindu literature, therefore, it is a verified fact that their year was only half a year, when it was not called a day. The Chinese, too, divided their Zodiac into twenty-four parts, hence their year into twenty-four fortnights, but such computation did not, nor does it prevent their having an astronomical year just the same as ours. And they have a period of sixty days -- the Southern Indian Roodoo, to this day in some provinces. Moreover, Diodorus Siculus (Lib. I. § 26, p. 30) calls "thirty days an Egyptian year," or that period during which the moon performs a complete revolution. Pliny and Plutarch both speak of it (Hist. Nat. Lib. VII., c. 48, Vol. III., p. 185, and Life of Numa, § 16); but does it stand to reason that the Egyptians, who knew astronomy as well as any other people did, made the lunar month consist of thirty days, when it is only twenty-eight days with fractions? This lunary period had an occult meaning surely as much as the Ayanam and the roodoo of the Hindus had. The year of two months' duration, and the period of sixty days also,
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 621 VARIOUS CYCLIC CALCULATIONS.
was a universal measure of time in antiquity, as Bailly himself shows in his Traite de l'Astronomie Orientale. The Chinamen, according to their own books, divided their year into two parts, from one equinox to the other (Mem. Acad. Ins. T. XVI., c. 48, Tom. III., p. 183); the Arabs anciently divided the year into six seasons, each composed of two months; in the Chinese astronomical work called Kioo-
tche, it is said that two moons make a measure of time, and six measures a year; and to this day the aborigines of Kamschatka have their years of six months, as they had when visited by Abbe Chappe (Voyage to Siberia, Vol. III., p. 19). But is all this a reason to say that when the Hindu Puranas say "a solar year" they mean one solar day! It is the knowledge of the natural laws that make of seven the root nature-number, so to say, in the manifested world -- at any rate in our present terrestrial life-cycle -
- and the wonderful comprehension of its workings, that unveiled to the ancients so many of the mysteries of nature. It is these laws, again, and their processes on the sidereal, terrestrial, and moral planes, which enabled the old astronomers to calculate correctly the duration of the cycles and their respective effects on the march of events; to record beforehand (prophecy, it is called) the influence which they will have on the course and development of the human races. The Sun, Moon, and planets being the never-erring time measurers, whose potency and periodicity were well known, became thus the great Ruler and rulers of our little system in all its seven domains, or "spheres of action."*
This has been so evident and remarkable, that even many of the modern men of Science, Materialists as well as Mystics, had their attention called to this law. Physicians and theologians, mathematicians and psychologists have drawn the attention of the world repeatedly to this fact of periodicity in the behaviour of "Nature." These numbers are explained in the "Commentaries" in these words.
THE CIRCLE IS NOT THE "ONE" BUT THE ALL.
IN THE HIGHER [heaven] THE IMPENETRABLE RAJAH ["ad Mutant," see Atharva-Veda X., 105], IT [the Circle] BECOMES ONE, BECAUSE [it is] THE INDIVISIBLE, AND THERE CAN BE NO TAU IN IT.
IN THE SECOND [of the three "Rajamsi " (tritiye), or the three "Worlds"] THE ONE BECOMES TWO [male and female]; AND THREE [add the Son or logos]; AND THE SACRED FOUR ["tetractis," or the "Tetragrammaton."]
IN THE THIRD [the lower world or our earth] THE NUMBER BECOMES FOUR, AND THREE, AND TWO. TAKE THE FIRST TWO, AND THOU WILT
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The spheres of action of the combined Forces of Evolution and Karma are (1) the Super-spiritual or noumenal; (2) the Spiritual; (3) the Psychic; (4) the Astro-ethereal; (5) the Sub-astral; (6) the Vital; and (7) the purely physical spheres.
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 622 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
OBTAIN SEVEN, THE SACRED NUMBER OF LIFE; BLEND [the latter] WITH THE MIDDLE RAJAH, AND THOU WILT HAVE NINE, THE SACRED NUMBER OF BEING AND BECOMING."*
When the Western Orientalists have mastered the real meaning of the Rig Vedic divisions of the World -- the two-fold, three-fold, six and seven-fold, and especially the nine-fold division, the mystery of the cyclic divisions applied to heaven and earth, gods and men, will become clearer to them than it is now. For --
"THERE IS A HARMONY OF NUMBERS IN ALL NATURE; in the force of gravity, in the planetary movements, in the laws of heat, light, electricity, and chemical affinity, in the forms of animals and plants, in the perception of the mind. The direction, indeed, of modern natural and physical science, is towards a generalization which shall express the fundamental laws of all, by one simple numerical ratio. We would refer to Professor Whewell's 'Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences,' and to Mr. Hay's researches into the laws of harmonious colouring and form. From these it appears that the number seven is distinguished in the laws regulating the harmonious Perception of forms, colours, and sounds, and probably of taste also, if we could analyse our sensations of this kind with mathematical accuracy." ("Medical Review," July, 1844).
So much so, indeed, that more than one physician has stood aghast at the periodical septenary return of the cycles in the rise and fall of various complaints, and naturalists have felt themselves at an utter loss to explain this law. "The birth, growth, maturity, vital functions . . . . change, diseases, decay and death, of insects, reptiles, fishes, birds, mammals, and even of man, are more or less controlled by a law of completion in weeks," or seven days.** Dr. Laycock (Lancet, 1842-3), writing on the Periodicity of Vital Phenomena, records a "most remarkable illustration and confirmation of the law in insects."***
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* In Hinduism, as understood by the Orientalists from the Atharvaveda, the three rajamsi refer to the three strides of Vishnu; his ascending higher step, being taken in the highest world (A. V., VII., 99, 1, cf. I 155, 5). It is the divo rajah, or the "sky," as they take it. But it is something besides this in Occultism. The sentence pareshu, guhyeshu, vrateshu, cf. I, 155, 3, and IX., 75, 2; or again, verse X., 114, in Atharvaveda -- has yet to be explained.
** H. Grattan Guinness, F.R.G.S., in his "Approaching End of the Age."
*** Having given a number of illustrations from natural history, the doctor adds: "The facts I have briefly glanced at are general facts, and cannot happen day after day in so many millions of animals of every kind, FROM THE LARVA OR OVUM OF A MINUTE INSECT UP TO MAN, at definite periods, from a mere chance or coincidence . . . I think it impossible to come to any less general
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conclusion than this, that in animals, changes occur every three and a half, seven, fourteen, twenty-
one, or twenty-eight days, or at some definite number of weeks" or septenary cycles. Again, the same Dr. Laycock states that: -- "Whatever type the fever may exhibit, there will be a paroxysm on the seventh day . . . the fourteenth will be remarkable as a day of amendment . . . " (either cure or death taking place). "If the fourth (paroxysm) be severe, and the fifth less so, the disease will end at the seventh paroxysm, and . . . change for the better . . . will be seen on the fourteenth day , [[footnote continued on following page]]
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 623 THE SEPTENATE IN PHYSIOLOGY.
To all of which Mr. Grattan Guinness, the author of "The Approaching End of the Age," says very pertinently, as he defends Biblical Chronology, "And man's life . . . is a week, a week of decades. 'The days of our years are threescore years and ten.' Combining the testimony of all these facts, we are bound to admit that there prevails in organic mature a law of septiform periodicity, a law of completion in weeks" (p. 269). Without accepting the conclusions, and especially the premises of the learned Founder of "the East London Institute for Home and Foreign Missions," the writer accepts and welcomes his researches in the occult chronology of the Bible. Just as, while rejecting the theories and hypotheses of modern Science and its generalizations, we bow before its great achievements in the world of the physical, or in all the minor details of material nature.
There is most assuredly an occult "chronological system in Hebrew Scripture" -- the Kabala being its warrant; there is in it "a system of
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Continued from previous page]] namely, about three or four o'clock a.m., when the system is most languid." (See "Approaching End of the Age," by Grattan Guinness, pp. 258 to 269, wherein this is quoted.)
This is pure "soothsaying" by cyclic calculations, and it is connected with Chaldean astrolatry and astrology. Thus materialistic Science -- medicine, the most materialistic of all -- applies our occult laws to diseases, studies natural history with its help, recognizes its presence as a fact in nature, and yet must needs pooh-pooh the same archaic knowledge when claimed by the Occultists. For if the mysterious Septenary Cycle is a law in nature, and it is one, as proven; if it is found controlling the evolution and involution (or death) in the realms of entomology, icthyology and ornithology, as in the Kingdom of the Animal, mammalia and man -- why cannot it be present and acting in Kosmos, in general, in its natural (though occult) divisions of time, races, and mental development? And why, furthermore, should not the most ancient adepts have studied and thoroughly mastered these cyclic laws under all their aspects? Indeed, Dr. Stratton states as a physiological and pathological fact, that "in health the human pulse is more frequent in the morning than in the evening for six days out of seven; and that on the seventh day it is slower." (Ibid. Edinb. Med. and Surg. Journal, Jan. 1843.) Why, then, should not an Occultist show the same in cosmic and terrestrial life in the pulse of the planet and races? Dr. Laycock divides life by three great septenary periods; the first and last, each stretching over 21 years, and the central period or prime of life lasting 28 years, or four times seven.
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He subdivides the first into seven distinct stages, and the other two into three minor periods, and says that "The fundamental unit of the greater periods is one week of seven days, each day being twelve hours"; and that "single and compound multiples of this unit, determine the length of these periods by the same ratio, as multiples of the unit of twelve hours determine the lesser periods. This law binds all periodic vital phenomena together, and links the periods observed in the lowest annulose animals, with those of man himself, the highest of the vertebrate." If Science does this, why should the latter scorn the Occult information, namely, that (speaking Dr. Laycock's language) "one week of the manvantaric (lunar) fortnight, of fourteen days (or seven manus), that fortnight of twelve hours in a day representing seven periods or seven races -- is now passed?" This language of science fits our doctrine admirably. We (mankind) have lived over "a week of seven days, each day being twelve hours," since three and a half races are now gone for ever, the fourth is submerged, and we are now in the Fifth Race.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 624 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
weeks" -- which is based on the archaic Indian system, which may still be found in the old Jyotisha.* And there are in it cycles of "the week of days," of the "week of months," of years, of centuries, and even of millenniums, decamillenniums, and more, or "the week of years of years."** But all this can be found in the archaic doctrine. And if this common source of the chronology in every Scripture, however veiled, is denied in the case of the Bible, then the six days, and a Sabbath, the seventh, can hardly disconnect Genesis from the Puranic Cosmogonies. For the first "Week of Creation" shows the septiformity of its chronology and thus connects it with Brahma's "Seven Creations." The able volume from the pen of Mr. Grattan Guinness, in which he has collected on some 760 pages every proof of that septiform calculation, is good evidence. For if the Bible chronology is, as he says, "regulated by the law of weeks," and if it is septenary, whatever the measures of the creation week and the length of its days; and if, finally, "the Bible system includes weeks on a great variety of scales," then this system is shown to be identical with all the pagan systems. Moreover, the attempt to show that 4,320 years (in lunar months) elapsed between "Creation" and the Nativity, is a clear and unmistakable connection with the 4,320,000 of the Hindu Yugas. Otherwise, why make such efforts to prove that these figures, which are pre-eminently Chaldean and Indo-Aryan, play such a part in the New Testament? We shall prove it now still more forcibly.
Let the impartial critic compare the two accounts -- the Vishnu Purana and the Bible -- and he will find that the "seven creations" of Brahma are at the foundation of the "week" of creation in Genesis i. The two allegories are different, but the systems are all built on the same foundation-stone. The Bible can be understood only by the light of the Kabala. Take the Zohar, the "Book of Concealed Mystery," however now disfigured, and compare. The seven Rishis and the fourteen Manus of the seven Manvantaras -- issue from Brahma's head; they are his "mind-born sons," and it is with them that begins the division of mankind and its races from the Heavenly man, "the Logos" (the manifested), who is Brahma Prajapati. Says (V. 70 in) the "Ha Idra Rabba Qadisha" (the Greater Holy Assembly) of the skull (head)
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
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* See for the length of such cycles or Yugas in Vriddha Garga and other ancient astronomical Sections (Jyotisha). They vary from the cycle of five years -- which Colebrooke calls "the cycle of the Vedas," specified in the institutes of Parasara, "and the basis of calculation for larger cycles" (Miscell. Essays, Vol. I., pp. 106 and 108) -- up to the Mahayuga or the famous cycle of 4,320,000 years.
** The Hebrew word for "week" is Seven; and any length of time divided by Seven would have been a "week" in their day, even 49,000,000 years, as it is seven times seven millions. But their calculation is throughout septiform.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 625 THE HAIRY SYMBOL.
of Macroprosopus, the ancient One* (Sanat, an appellation of Brahma), that in every one of his hairs is a "hidden fountain issuing from the concealed brain." "And it shineth and goeth forth through that hair unto the hair of Microprosopus, and from it (which is the manifest QUATERNARY, the Tetragrammaton) his brain is formed; and thence that brain goeth into THIRTY and TWO paths" (or the triad and the duad, or again 432). And again: (V. 80) "Thirteen curls of hair exist on the one side and on the other of the skull" -- i.e., six on one and six on the other, the thirteenth being also the fourteenth, as it is male-female, "and through them commenceth the division of the hair" (the division of things, Mankind and Races).
"We six are lights which shine forth from a seventh (light)," saith Rabbi Abba; "thou art the seventh light" (the synthesis of us all, he adds, speaking of Tetragrammaton and his seven "companions," whom he calls "the eyes of Tetragrammaton.")
TETRAGRAMMATON is Brahma Prajapati, who assumed four forms, in order to create four kinds of supernal creatures, i.e., made himself fourfold, or the manifest Quaternary (see Vishnu Purana, Book I. ch. V.); and who, after that, is re-born in the seven Rishis, his Manasaputras, "mind-born sons," who became later, 9, 21 and so on, who are all said to be born from various parts of Brahma**
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Brahma creates in the first Kalpa (day one) various "sacrificial animals" pasu -- or the celestial bodies and the Zodiacal signs, and plants which he uses in sacrifices at the opening of Treta Yuga. The esoteric meaning of it shows him proceeding cyclically and creating astral prototypes on the descending spiritual arc and then on the ascending physical arc. The latter is the sub-division of a two-
fold creation, subdivided again into seven descending and seven ascending degrees of spirit falling, and of matter ascending -- the inverse of what takes place (as in a mirror which reflects the right on the left side) in this manvantara of ours. It is the same, esoterically, in the Elohistic Genesis (chap. i.), and in the Jehovistic copy, as in Hindu cosmogony.
** It is very surprising to see theologians and Oriental scholars express indignation at the "depraved taste of the Hindu mystics" who, not content with having invented the "Mind-born" Sons of Brahma, make the Rishis, Manus, and Prajapatis of every kind spring from various parts of the body of their primal Progenitor -- Brahma (see Wilson's footnote in his Vishnu Purana, Vol. I., p. 102). Because
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the average public is unacquainted with the Kabala, the key to, and glossary of, the much veiled Mosaic Books, therefore, the clergy imagines the truth will never out. Let any one turn to the English, Hebrew, or Latin texts of the Kabala, now so ably translated by several scholars, and he will find that the Tetragrammaton, which is the Hebrew IHVH, is also both the "Sephirothal Tree"-- i.e., it contains all the Sephiroth except Kether, the crown -- and the united body of the "Heavenly man" (Adam Kadmon) from whose limbs emanate the Universe and everything in it. Furthermore, he will find that the idea in the Kabalistic Books (the chief of which in the Zohar are the "Books of Concealed Mystery," of the "Greater," and the "Lesser Holy Assembly") is entirely phallic and far more crudely expressed than is the four-fold Brahma in any of the Puranas. (See "Kabala Unveiled, " by Mr. S. L. Mathers, Chap. xxii., concerning the remaining members of Microprosopus).
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 626 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
There are two Tetragrammatons: the Macro and the Microprosopus. The first is the absolute perfect Square, or the TETRACTIS within the Circle, both abstract conceptions, and is therefore called AIN -- the Non-being, i.e., illimitable or absolute Be-ness. But when viewed as Microprosopus, or the "Heavenly man," the manifested Logos, he is the triangle in the square -- the sevenfold cube not the fourfold, or the plane Square. For it is written in the same "Greater Holy Assembly" -- (83): "And concerning this, the children of Israel wished to know in their minds, like as it is written (Exod. xvii. 7.): 'Is the Tetragrammaton in the midst of us, or the Negatively Existent One?'* ( Where did they distinguish between Microprosopus, who is called Tetragrammaton, and between Macroprosopus, who is called AIN, Ain the negatively existent?) "**
Therefore, Tetragrammaton is the THREE made four and the FOUR made three, and is represented on this Earth by his seven "companions," or "Eyes" -- the "Seven eyes of the Lord." Microprosopus is, at best, only a secondary manifested Deity. For, verse 1,152 of the "Greater Holy Assembly" (Kabala) says --
"We have learned that there were ten (companions) who entered into the Sod, ('mysterious assembly or mystery'), and that seven only came forth"*** (i.e., 10 for the unmanifested, 7 for the manifested Universe.)
1,158. "And when Rabbi Shimeon revealed the Arcana there were found none present there save those (seven companions) . . . . 1,159. And Rabbi Shimeon called them the seven eyes of Tetragrammaton, like as it is written, Zach. iii., 9, 'These are the seven eyes (or principles) of Tetragrammaton," ' -- i.e., the four-fold Heavenly man, or pure spirit, is resolved into Septenary man, pure matter and Spirit.
Thus the Tetrad is Microprosopus, and the latter is the male-female Chochmah-Binah, the 2d and 3d Sephiroth. The Tetragrammaton is the very essence of number Seven, in its terrestrial significance. Seven stands between four and nine -- the basis and foundation (astrally) of our physical world and man, in the kingdom of Malkuth.
For Christians and believers, this reference to Zaccharias and
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[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* [[Continued from previous page]] For, this "Tree of Life" is also the "tree of knowledge of good and evil," whose chief mystery is that of human procreation. It is a mistake to regard the Kabala as explaining the mysteries of Kosmos or Nature; it explains and unveils only a few allegories in the Bible, and is more esoteric than is the latter.
* Simplified in the English Bible to: "Is the Lord (! !) among us, or not?" (See Exodus xvii. 7.)
** See Kabala Denudata, by S. Liddell MacGregor Mathers, F.T.S., p. 121.
*** Translators often render the word "companion" (angel, also adept) by "Rabbi, " as the Rishis are called gurus. The "Zohar" is, if possible, more occult than the Books of Moses; to read the "Book of Concealed Mystery" one requires the keys furnished by the genuine "Chaldean Book of Numbers," which is not extant.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 627 THE NUMBER SEVEN IN CHEMISTRY.
especially to the Epistle of Peter (I P. ii. 2-5) ought to be conclusive. In the old symbolism, man, chiefly the inner Spiritual man is called "a stone." Christ is the corner-stone, and Peter refers to all men as "lively" (living) stones. Therefore a "stone with seven eyes" on it can only mean what we say, i.e., a man whose constitution or ("principles,") is septenary.
To demonstrate more clearly the seven in Nature, it may be added that not only does the number seven govern the periodicity of the phenomena of life, but that it is also found dominating the series of chemical elements, and equally paramount in the world of sound and in that of colour as revealed to us by the spectroscope. This number is the factor, sine qua non, in the production of occult astral phenomena.
Thus, if the chemical elements are arranged in groups according to their atomic weights, they will be found to constitute a series of groups of seven; the first, second, etc., members of each group bearing a close analogy in all their properties to the corresponding members of the next group. The following table, copied from Hellenbach's Magie der Zahlen, exhibits this law and fully warrants the conclusion he draws in the following words: "We thus see that chemical variety, so far as we can grasp its inner nature, depends upon numerical relations, and we have further found in this variety a ruling law for which we can assign no cause; we find a law of periodicity governed by the number seven."
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The eighth column in this list is, as it were, the octave of the first, containing elements almost identical in chemical and other properties with those in the first; a phenomenon which accentuates the septenary law of periodicity. For further details the reader is referred to Hellenbach's
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 628 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
work, where it is also shown that this classification is confirmed by the spectroscopic peculiarities of the elements.
It is needless to refer in detail to the number of vibrations constituting the notes of the musical scale; they are strictly analogous to the scale of chemical elements, and also to the scale of colour as unfolded by the spectroscope, although in the latter case we deal with only one octave, while both in music and chemistry we find a series of seven octaves represented theoretically, of which six are fairly complete and in ordinary use in both sciences. Thus, to quote Hellenbach: --
"It has been established that, from the standpoint of phenomenal law, upon which all our knowledge rests, the vibrations of sound and light increase regularly, that they divide themselves into seven columns, and that the successive numbers in each column are closely allied; i.e., that they exhibit a close relationship which not only is expressed in the figures themselves, but also is practically confirmed in chemistry as in music, in the latter of which the ear confirms the verdict of the figures. . . . . . The fact that this periodicity and variety is governed by the number seven is undeniable, and it far surpasses the limits of mere chance, and must be assumed to have an adequate cause, which cause must be discovered."
Verily, then, as Rabbi Abbas said: "We are six lights which shine forth from a seventh (light); thou (Tetragrammaton) art the seventh light (the origin) of us all;" (V. 1,160) and -- "For assuredly there is no stability in those six, save what they derive from the seventh. For ALL THINGS DEPEND FROM
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THE SEVENTH." (V. 1,161. Kabala, "The Greater Holy Assembly.")
The (ancient and modern) Western American Zuni Indians seem to have entertained similar views. Their present-day customs, their traditions and records, all point to the fact that, from time immemorial, their institutions -- political, social and religious -- were (and still are) shaped according to the septenary principle. Thus all their ancient towns and villages were built in clusters of six, around a seventh. It is always a group of seven, or of thirteen, and always the six surround the seventh. Again, their sacerdotal hierarchy is composed of six "Priests of the House" seemingly synthesized in the seventh, who is a woman, the "PRIESTESS MOTHER." Compare this with the "seven great officiating priests" spoken of in Anugita, the name given to the "seven senses," exoterically, and to the seven human principles, esoterically. Whence this identity of symbolism? Shall we still doubt the fact of Arjuna going over to Patala (the Antipodes, America) and there marrying Ulupi, the daughter of the Naga (or rather Nargal) King? But to the Zuni priests.
These receive an annual tribute, to this day, of corn of seven colours. Undistinguished from other Indians during the whole year, on a certain day, they come out (the six priests and one priestess) arrayed in their
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 629 THE SEVEN PRIESTS OF THE ZUNIS.
priestly robes, each of a colour sacred to the particular God whom the priest serves and personifies; each of them representing one of the seven regions, and each receiving corn of the colour corresponding to that region. Thus, the white represents the East, because from the East comes the first Sun-light; the yellow, corresponds to the North, from the colour of the flames produced by the aurora borealis; the red, the South, as from that quarter comes the heat; the blue stands for the West, the colour of the Pacific Ocean, which lies to the West; black is the colour of the nether underground region -- darkness; corn with grains of all colours on one ear represents the colours of the upper region -- of the firmament, with its rosy and yellow clouds, shining stars, etc. The "speckled" corn -- each grain containing all the colours -- is that of the "Priestess-Mother": woman containing in herself the seeds of all races past, present and future; Eve being the mother of all living.
Apart from these was the Sun -- the Great Deity -- whose priest was the spiritual head of the nation. These facts were ascertained by Mr. F. Hamilton Cushing, who, as many are aware, became an Indian Zuni, lived with them, was initiated into their religious mysteries, and has learned more about them than any other man now living.
Seven is also the great magic number. In the occult records the weapon mentioned in the Puranas and the Mahabharata -- the Agneyastra or "fiery weapon" bestowed by Aurva upon his chela Sagara -- is said to be built of seven elements. This weapon -- supposed by some ingenious Orientalists to have been a "rocket" (!) -- is one of the many thorns in the side of our modern Sanskritists. Wilson exercises his penetration over it, on several pages in his Specimens of the Hindu Theatre, and finally fails to explain it. He can make nothing out of the Agneyastra.
"These weapons," he argues, "are of a very unintelligible character. Some of them are wielded as
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missiles; but, in general, they appear to be mystical powers exercised by the individual -- such as those of paralysing an enemy, or locking his senses fast in sleep, or bringing down storm, and rain, and fire, from heaven. ( Vide supra, pp. 427 and 428.) . . . . They assume celestial shapes, endowed with human faculties. . . . . The Ramayana calls them the Sons of Krisaswa" (p. 297).
The Sastra-devatas, "gods of the divine weapons," are no more Agneyastra, the weapon, than the gunners of modern artillery are the cannon they direct. But this simple solution did not seem to strike the eminent Sanskritist. Nevertheless, as he himself says of the armiform progeny of Krisaswa, "the allegorical origin of the (Agneyastra) weapons is, undoubtedly, the more ancient."* It is the fiery javelin of Brahma.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* It is. But Agneyastra are fiery "missile weapons," not "edged" weapons, as there is some difference between Sastra and Astra in Sanskrit.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 630 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
The seven-fold Agneyastra, like the seven senses and the "seven principles," symbolized by the seven priests, are of untold antiquity. How old is the doctrine believed in by Theosophists, the following section will tell.
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Next Section
Contents
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The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 2
Theosophical University Press Online Edition
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 630 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
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F.
THE SEVEN SOULS OF THE EGYPTOLOGISTS.
If one turns to those wells of information, "The Natural Genesis" and the Lectures of Mr. Gerald Massey, the proofs of the antiquity of the doctrine under analysis become positively overwhelming. That the belief of the author differs from ours can hardly invalidate the facts. He views the symbol from a purely natural standpoint, one perhaps a trifle too materialistic, because too much that of an ardent Evolutionist and follower of the modern Darwinian dogmas. Thus he shows that "the student of Bohme's books finds much in them concerning these Seven Fountain Spirits and primary powers, treated as seven properties of nature in the alchemistic and astrological phase of the mediaeval mysteries;"* and adds --
"The followers of Bohme look on such matter as divine revelation of his inspired Seership. They know nothing of the natural genesis, the history and persistence of the Wisdom** of the past (or of the broken links), and are unable to recognise the physical features of the ancient Seven Spirits beneath their modern metaphysical or alchemist mask. A second connecting link between the Theosophy of Bohme and the physical origins of Egyptian thought, is extant in the fragments of Hermes Trismegistus.*** No matter whether these teachings are called Illuminatist, Buddhist, Kabalist, Gnostic, Masonic, or Christian, the elemental types can only be truly known in their beginnings.**** When the prophets or visionary showmen of cloudland come to us claiming original inspiration, and utter something new, we judge of its value by what it is in itself. But if we find they bring us the ancient matter which they cannot account for, and we can, it is natural that we should judge it by the primary significations rather than the latest pretensions.***** It is useless for us to read our
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The Natural Genesis, Vol. I.. pp, 318-319.
** Yet there are some, who may know something of these, even outside the author's lines, wide as they undeniably are.
*** This connecting link, like others, was pointed out by the present writer nine years before the
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appearance of the work from which the above is quoted, namely in Isis Unveiled, a work full of such guiding links between ancient, mediaeval, and modern thought, but, unfortunately, too loosely edited.
**** Ay; but how can the learned writer prove that these "beginnings" were precisely in Egypt, and nowhere else; and only 50,000 years ago?
***** Precisely: and this is just what the Theosophists do. They have never claimed," (original inspiration," not even as mediums, but have always pointed, and do now point to the "primary signification" of the symbols, which they trace to other [[Continued on next page]]
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 631 THE SIDEREAL SEVEN.
later thought into the earliest types of expression, and then say the ancients meant that.* Subtilized interpretations which have become doctrines and dogmas in theosophy have now to be tested by their genesis in physical phenomena, in order that we may explode their false pretensions to supernatural origin or supernatural knowledge.*
But the able author of the "Book of the Beginnings" and of "The Natural Genesis " does -- very fortunately, for us -- quite the reverse. He demonstrates most triumphantly our Esoteric (Buddhist) teachings, by showing them identical with those of Egypt. Let the reader judge from his learned lecture on "The Seven Souls of Man."** Says the author: --
"The first form of the mystical SEVEN was seen to be figured in heaven by the Seven large stars of the great Bear, the constellation assigned by the Egyptians to the Mother of Time, and of the Seven Elemental Powers."
Just so, for the Hindus place in the great Bear their seven primitive Rishis and call this constellation the abode of the Saptarishi, Riksha and Chitra-Sikhandinas. But whether it is only an astronomical myth or a primordial mystery, having a deeper meaning than it bears on its surface, is what their adepts claim to know. We are also told that "the Egyptians divided the face of the sky by night into seven parts. The primary Heaven was seven-fold." So it was with the Aryans. One has but read the Puranas about the beginnings of Brahma, and his "Egg" to see it. Have the Aryans taken the idea from the Egyptians? -- "The earliest forces," proceeds the lecturer, "recognized in nature were reckoned as seven in number. These became seven elementals, devils (?) or later, divinities. Seven properties were assigned to nature, as
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Continued from previous page]] countries, older even than Egypt; significations, moreover, which emanate from a hierarchy (or hierarchies, if preferred) of living wise men, mortals, notwithstanding that Wisdom, who reject every approach to supernaturalism.
* But where is the proof that the ancients did not mean precisely that which the theosophists claim?
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Records exist for what they say, just as other records exist for what Mr. G. Massey says. His interpretations are very correct, but equally one-sided. Surely nature has more than one physical aspect; for astronomy, astrology, and so on, are all on the physical, not the spiritual plane.
** It is to be feared that Mr. Massey has not succeeded. We have our followers as he has his followers, and materialistic Science steps in and takes little account of both his and our speculations!
The fact that this learned Egyptologist does not recognise in the doctrine of the "Seven Souls," as he terms our principles, or "metaphysical concepts," but "the primitive biology or physiology of the Soul," does not invalidate our argument. The lecturer touches on only two keys, those that unlock the astronomical and the physiological mysteries of esotericism, and leaves out the other five. Otherwise he would have promptly understood that what he calls the physiological divisions of the living Soul of man, are regarded by theosophists as also psychological and spiritual.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 632 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
matter, cohesion, fluxion, coagulation, accumulation, station, and division and seven elements or souls to man."
All this was taught in the esoteric doctrine, but it was interpreted and its mysteries unlocked, as already stated, with seven, not two, or at the utmost, three keys; hence the causes and their effects worked in invisible or mystic as well as psychic nature, and were made referable to metaphysics and psychology as much as to physiology. "The principle of sevening" -- as the author says -- "was introduced, and the number seven supplied a sacred type that could be used for manifold purposes"; and it was so used. For "the seven Souls of the Pharaoh are often mentioned in the Egyptian texts. . . . Seven Souls or principles in man were identified by our British Druids. . . . . The Rabbins also ran the number of souls up to seven; so, likewise, do the Karens of India. . . ."
And then, the author tabulates the two teachings -- the Esoteric and the Egyptian, -- and shows that the latter had the same series and in the same order.
Further on, the lecturer formulates these seven (Egyptian) souls, as (1) The Soul of Blood -- the formative ; (2) The Soul of Breath -- "that breathes"; (3) The Shade or Covering Soul -- "that envelopes"; (4) The Soul of Perception -- "that perceives ;" (5) The Soul of Pubescence "that procreates "; (6) The Intellectual Soul -- "that reproduces intellectually"; and (7) The Spiritual Soul --
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"that is perpetuated permanently. "
From the exoteric and physiological standpoint this may be very correct; it becomes less so from the esoteric point of view. To maintain this, does not at all mean that the "Esoteric Buddhists" resolve men into a number of elementary Spirits, as Mr. G. Massey, in the same lecture, accuses them of maintaining. No "Esoteric Buddhist" has ever been guilty of any such absurdity. Nor has it been ever imagined that these shadows "become spiritual beings in another world," or "seven potential spirits or elementaries of another life." What is maintained is simply that every time the immortal Ego incarnates it becomes, as a total, a com-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* This is a great mistake made in the Esoteric enumeration. Manas is the fifth, not the fourth; and Manas corresponds precisely with Seb, the Egyptian fifth principle, for that portion of Manas, which follows the two higher principles, is the ancestral soul, indeed, the bright, immortal thread of the higher Ego, to which clings the Spiritual aroma of all the lives or births.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 633 THE "PRINCIPLES" IN THE EGYPTIAN METAPHYSICS.
pound unit of Matter and Spirit, which together act on seven different planes of being and consciousness. Elsewhere, Mr. G. Massey adds: -- "The seven souls (our "Principles") are often mentioned in the Egyptian texts. The moon god, Taht-Esmun, or the later sun god, expressed the seven nature-powers that were prior to himself, and were summed up in him as his seven souls (we say "principles") . . . . The seven stars in the hand of Christ in the Revelation, have the same significance," etc.
And a still greater one, as these stars represent also the seven keys of the Seven Churches or the SODALIAN MYSTERIES, cabalistically. However, we will not stop to discuss, but add that other Egyptologists have also found out that the septenary constitution of man was a cardinal doctrine with the old Egyptians. In a series of remarkable articles in the "Sphinx" (Munich) Herr Franz Lambert gives incontrovertible proof of his conclusions from the "Book of the Dead" and other Egyptian records. For details the reader must be referred to the articles themselves, but the following diagram, summing up the author's conclusions, is demonstrative evidence of the identity of Egyptian psychology with the septenary division in "Esoteric Buddhism."
On the left hand side the Kabalistic names of the corresponding human principles are placed, and on the right the hieroglyphic names with their renderings as in the diagram of F. Lambert.
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[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* There seems a confusion -- lasting for many centuries -- in the minds of Western Kabalists. They call Ruach (Spirit) what we call Kama-rupa; whereas, with us Ruach would be the "Spiritual Soul" Buddhi, and Nephesh the 4th principle, the Vital, Animal Soul. Eliphas Levi falls into the same error.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 634 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
This is a very fair representation of the number of the "principles" of Occultism, but much confused; and this is what we call the 7 principles in man, and what Mr. Massey calls "Souls," giving the same name to the Ego or the Monad which reincarnates and resurrects, so to speak, at each rebirth, as the Egyptians did, namely -- "the Renewed." But how can Ruach (Spirit) be lodged in Kama-rupa? What does Bohme, the Prince of all the mediaeval Seers, say?
"We find Seven especial properties in nature whereby this only Mother works all things" (which he calls -- fire, light, sound (the upper three) and desire, bitterness, anguish, and substantiality, thus analysing the lower in his own mystic way) . . . "whatever the six forms are spiritually, that the seventh, the body (or substantiality), is essentially." These are the seven forms of the Mother of all Beings from whence all that is in this world is generated,* and again in Aurora xxiv. p. 27 (quoted in Natural Genesis) -- "The Creator hath in the body of this world generated himself as it were creaturely in his qualifying Fountain Spirits, and all the stars are . . . God's powers, and the whole body of the world consisteth in the seven qualifying or Fountain Spirits."
This is rendering in mystical language our theosophical doctrine. . . But how can we agree with Mr. G. Massey when he states that --
"The Seven Races of men that have been sublimated and made Planetary (?) by Esoteric Buddhism,**
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may be met with in the Bundahish as (1) the earth-men; (2) water-men; (3) breast-eared men; (4) breast-eyed men; (5) one-legged men; (6) bat-winged men; (7) men with tails." . . . Each of these descriptions, allegorical and even perverted in their later form -- is, nevertheless, an echo of the Secret Doctrine teaching. They all refer to the pre-Human evolution of the water-men "terrible and bad" by unaided Nature through millions of years, as previously described. But we deny point blank the assertion made that "these were never real races," and point to the Archaic Stanzas for our answer. It is easy to infer and to say that our "instructors have mistaken these shadows of the Past, for things human and spiritual"; but that "they are neither, and never were either," it is less easy to prove. The assertion must ever remain on a par with the Darwinian claim that man and the ape had a common pithecoid ancestor. What the Lecturer takes for a "mode of expression" and nothing more, in the Egyptian Ritual, we take as having quite another and an important meaning. Here is one instance. Says the Ritual, the "Book of the Dead" --
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Signatura rerum xiv. ps. 10, 15 et seq.
** This is indeed news! It makes us fear that the Lecturer had never read "Esoteric Buddhism" before criticising it, as there are too many such misconceptions in his notices of it.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 635 MAN, THE PARENT OF ALL THE MAMMALS.
"I am the mouse." "I am the hawk." "I am the ape." . . . "I am the crocodile whose Soul Comes FROM MEN." "I am the Soul of the Gods. " Of these last two sentences, one: "whose soul comes from men" -- is explained by the Lecturer, who says parenthetically, "that is, as a type of intelligence," and the other: "I am the Soul of the Gods, " as meaning, "the Horus, or Christ, as the outcome of all."
The occult teaching answers: "It means far more." . . .
It gives first of all a corroboration of the teaching that, while the human monad has passed on globe A and others, in the First Round, through all the three kingdoms -- the mineral, the vegetable, and the animal -- in this our Fourth Round, every mammal has sprung from Man if the semi-ethereal, many-
shaped creature with the human Monad in it, of the first two races, can be regarded as Man. But it must be so called; for, in the esoteric language, it is not the form of flesh, blood, and bones, now referred to as Man, which is in any way the MAN, but the inner divine MONAD with its manifold principles or aspects.
The lecture referred to, however, much as it opposes "Esoteric Buddhism" and its teachings, is an eloquent answer to those who have tried to represent the whole as a newfangled doctrine. And there are many such, in Europe, America, and even India. Yet, between the esotericism of the old Arhats, and that which has now survived in India among the few Brahmins who have seriously studied their Secret Philosophy, the difference does not appear so very great. It seems centred in, and limited to, the question of the order of the evolution of cosmic and other principles, more than anything else. At all events it is no greater divergence than the everlasting question of the filioque dogma, which since the
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XIIth. century has separated the Roman Catholic from the older Greek Eastern Church. Yet, whatever the differences in the forms in which the septenary dogma is presented, the substance is there, and its presence and importance in the Brahminical system may be judged by what one of India's learned metaphysicians and Vedantic scholars says of it: --
"The real esoteric seven-fold classification is one of the most important, if not the most important classification, which has received its arrangement from the mysterious constitution of this eternal type. I may also mention in this connection that the four-fold classification claims the same origin. The light of life, as it were, seems to be refracted by the treble-faced prism of Prakriti, having the three Gunams for its three faces, and divided into seven rays, which develop in course of time the seven principles of this classification. The progress of development presents some points of similarity to the gradual development of the rays of the spectrum. While the four-fold classification is amply
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 636 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
sufficient for all practical purposes, this real seven-fold classification is of great theoretical and scientific importance. It will be necessary to adopt it to explain certain classes of phenomena noticed by occultists; and it is perhaps better fitted to be the basis of a perfect system of psychology. It is not the peculiar property of 'the trans-Himalayan esoteric doctrine.' In fact, it has a closer connection with the Brahminical Logos than with the Buddhist Logos. In order to make my meaning clear I may point out here that the Logos has seven forms. In other words, there are seven kinds of Logoi in the Cosmos. Each of these has become the central figure of one of the seven main branches of the ancient Wisdom-religion. This classification is not the seven-fold classification we have adopted. I make this assertion without the slightest fear of contradiction. The real classification has all the requisites of a scientific classification. It has seven distinct principles, which correspond with seven distinct states of Pragna or consciousness. It bridges the gulf between the objective and subjective, and indicates the mysterious circuit through which ideation passes. The seven principles are allied to seven states of matter, and to seven forms of force. These principles are harmoniously arranged between two poles, which define the limits of human consciousness."*
The above is perfectly correct, save, perhaps, one point. The "sevenfold classification" in the esoteric system has never been claimed (to the writer's knowledge) by any one belonging to it, as "the peculiar property of the Trans-Himalayan esoteric doctrine"; but only as having survived in that old school alone. It is no more the property of the trans, than it is of the cis-Himalayan esoteric doctrine, but is simply the common inheritance of all such schools, left to the sages of the Fifth Root Race by the great Siddhas** of the Fourth. Let us remember that the Atlanteans became the terrible sorcerers, now celebrated in so many of the oldest MSS. of India, only toward their fall, the submersion of their continent having been brought on by it. What is claimed is simply the fact that the wisdom imparted by the "Divine Ones" -- born through the Kriyasakti powers of the Third Race before its Fall and Separation into sexes -- to the adepts of the early Fourth Race, has remained in all its pristine purity in a certain Brotherhood. The said
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
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* The Theosophist, 1887 (Madras).
** According to Svetasvatara-Upanishad (357) the Siddhas are those who are possessed from birth of superhuman powers, as also of "knowledge and indifference to the world." According to the Occult teachings, however, Siddhas are the Nirmanakayas or the "spirits" (in the sense of an individual, or conscious spirit) of great sages from spheres on a higher plane than our own, who voluntarily incarnate in mortal bodies in order to help the human race in its upward progress. Hence their innate knowledge, wisdom and powers.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 637 AN ALLEGORY IN THE ANUGITA.
School or Fraternity being closely connected with a certain island of an inland sea, believed in by both Hindus and Buddhists, but called "mythical" by geographers and Orientalists, the less one talks of it, the wiser he will be. Nor can one accept the said "sevenfold classification" as having "a closer connection with the Brahminical Logos than with the Buddhist Logos," since both are identical, whether the one "Logos" is called Eswara or Avalokiteswara, Brahma or Padmapani. These are, however, very small differences, more fanciful than real, in fact. Brahmanism and Buddhism, both viewed from their orthodox aspects, are as inimical and as irreconcilable as water and oil. Each of these great bodies, however, has a vulnerable place in its constitution. While even in their esoteric interpretation both can agree but to disagree, once that their respective vulnerable points are confronted, every disagreement must fall, for the two will find themselves on common ground. The "heel of Achilles" of orthodox Brahmanism is the Adwaita philosophy, whose followers are called by the pious "Buddhists in disguise"; as that of orthodox Buddhism is Northern mysticism, as represented by the disciples of the philosophies of Aryasanga (the Yogacharya School) and Mahayana, who are twitted in their turn by their correligionists as "Vedantins in disguise." The esoteric philosophy of both these can be but one if carefully analysed and compared, as Gautama Buddha and Sankaracharya are most closely connected, if one believes tradition and certain esoteric teachings. Thus every difference between the two will be found one of form rather than of substance.
A most mystic discourse, full of septenary symbology, may be found in the Anugita.* There the Brahmana narrates the bliss of having crossed beyond the regions of illusion, "in which fancies are the gadflies and mosquitoes, in which grief and joy are cold and heat, in which delusion is the blinding darkness, avarice, the beasts of prey and reptiles, and desire and anger are the obstructors." . . . . The sage describes the entrance into and exit from the forest (a symbol for man's life-time) and also that forest itself:**
"In that forest are seven large trees (the Senses, Mind and Understanding, or Manas and Buddhi included), seven fruits and seven guests; seven hermitages, seven (forms of) concentration, and seven (forms of) initiation. This is the description of the forest. That forest is filled with trees producing splendid flowers and fruits of five colours."
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
*" The Sacred Books of the East," vol. viii. Anugita, p. 284, et seq.
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** I propose to follow here the text and the editor's commentaries, who accepts Arjuna Misra and Nilakantha's dead-letter explanations. Our Orientalists never trouble to think that if a native commentator is a non-initiate, he could not explain correctly, and if an Initiate, would not.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 638 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
"The senses," says the commentator, "are called trees, as being producers of the fruits . . . . pleasures and pains; the guests are the powers of each sense personified -- they receive the fruits above described; the hermitages are the trees, in which the guests take shelter. The seven forms of concentration are the exclusion from the self of the seven functions of the seven senses, etc., already referred to; the seven forms of initiation refer to the initiation into the higher life . . . by repudiating as not one's own the actions of each member out of the group of seven." (See Khandagya, p. 219, and Com.)
The explanation is harmless, if unsatisfactory.
Says the Brahmana continuing his description: --
"That forest is filled with trees producing flowers and fruits of four colours. That forest is filled with trees producing flowers and fruits of three colours, and mixed. That forest is filled with trees producing flowers and fruits of two colours, and of beautiful colours. That forest is filled with trees producing flowers and fruits of one colour and fragrant. That forest is filled (instead of seven) with two large trees producing numerous flowers and fruits of undistinguished colours (mind and understanding -- the two higher senses, or theosophically, 'Manas-Buddhi'). Here is one Fire (Self) here connected with the Brahman* and having a good mind (or true knowledge, according to Arjuna Misra). And there is fuel here, namely, the five senses (or human passions). The Seven (forms of ) emancipation from them are the Seven (forms of ) initiation. The qualities are the fruits. . . . There, the great Sages receive hospitality. And when they have been worshipped and have disappeared, another forest shines forth, in which intelligence is the tree, and emancipation the fruit, and which possesses shade (in the form of) tranquillity, which depends on Knowledge, which has contentment for its water, and the KSHETRAGNA (the "Supreme SELF," says Krishna, in the Bhagavad Gita, p. 102 et seq.) within for the Sun."
Now, all the above is very plain, and no theosophist, even among the least learned, could fail to understand the allegory. And yet, we see great Orientalists making a perfect mess of it in their explanations. The "great sages" who "receive hospitality" are explained as meaning the senses, "which, having worked as unconnected with the self are finally absorbed into it." But one fails to understand, if the senses are "unconnected" with the "Higher Self," in what manner can they be
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The English editor explains here, saying, "I presume devoted to the Brahman." This would be a very
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poor devotion, indeed, in the accomplishment of the gradually emancipating process of Yoga. We venture to say that the "Fire" or Self is the higher real SELF "connected with," that is to say one with Brahma, the One Deity. The "Self" separates itself no longer from the universal Spirit.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 639 THE ALLEGORY EXPLAINED.
"absorbed into it." One would think, on the contrary, that just because the personal senses gravitate and strive to be connected with the impersonal Self, that the latter, which is FIRE, burns the lower five and purifies thereby the higher two, "mind and understanding" or the higher aspects of Manas* and Buddhi. This is quite apparent from the text. The "great sages" disappear after having "been worshipped." Worshipped by whom if they (the presumed senses) are "unconnected with the self"? By MIND, of course; by Manas (in this case merged in the sixth sense) which is not, and cannot be, the Brahman, the SELF, or Kshetragna -- the soul's spiritual sun. Into the latter, in time, Manas itself must be absorbed. It has worshipped "great sages" and given hospitality to terrestrial wisdom: but once that "another forest shone forth" upon it, it is Intelligence (Buddhi, the 7th sense, but 6th principle) which is transformed into the tree -- that tree whose fruit is emancipation -- which finally destroys the very roots of the Aswattha tree, the symbol of life and of its illusive joys and pleasures. And therefore, those who attain to that state of emancipation have, in the words of the above-cited sage, "no fear afterwards." In this state "the end cannot be perceived because it extends on all sides."
"There always dwell seven females there," he goes on to say, carrying out the imagery. These females, who, according to Arjuna Misra, are the Mahat, Ahamkara and five Tanmatras, have always their faces turned downwards, as they are obstacles in the way of spiritual ascension.
" . . . . In that same (Brahman, the 'Self') the Seven perfect Sages, together with their chiefs, abide and again emerge from the same. Glory, brilliance and greatness, enlightenment, victory, perfection and power -- these seven rays follow after this same Sun (Kshetragna, the Higher Self). . . . Those whose wishes are reduced (unselfish). . . . whose sins (passions) are burnt up by restraint, merging the Self in the Self,t**devote themselves to Brahman. Those people who understand the forest of Knowledge (Brahman, or SELF) praise tranquillity. And aspiring to that forest, they are (re-) born so as not to lose courage.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* As Mahat (universal intelligence) is first born, or manifests, as Vishnu, and then, when it falls into matter and develops self-consciousness, it becomes Egoism, Selfishness, so Manas is of a dual nature. It is respectively under the sun and moon, for as Sankaracharya says "The moon is the mind, and the sun the understanding." The sun and moon are the deities of our planetary Macrocosmos, and therefore Sankara adds that "the mind and the understanding are the respective deities of the (human) organs" (vide Brihadaranyaka, pp. 521, et seq.) This is perhaps why Arjuna Misra says that the moon and the Fire (the self, the sun) constitute the universe.
** "The body in the Soul," as Arjuna Misra is credited with saying, or rather the "Soul in the Spirit," and on a still higher plane of development: "the SELF or Atman in the Universal Self."
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 640 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
Such indeed, is this holy forest . . . . and understanding it, they (the Sages) act accordingly, being directed by the KSHETRAGNA. . . . "
No translator among the Western Orientalists has yet perceived in the foregoing allegory anything higher than mysteries connected with sacrificial ritualism, penance, or ascetic ceremonies, and Hatha Yoga. But he who understands symbolical imagery, and hears the voice of SELF WITHIN SELF, will see in this something far higher than mere ritualism, however often he may err in minor details of the philosophy.
And here, we must be allowed a last remark. No true theosophist, from the most ignorant up to the most learned, ought to claim infallibility for anything he may say or write upon occult matters. The chief point is to admit that, in many a way, in the classification of either cosmic or human principles, in addition to mistakes in the order of evolution, and especially on metaphysical questions, those of us who pretend to teach others more ignorant than ourselves -- are all liable to err. Thus mistakes have been made in "Isis Unveiled," in "Esoteric Buddhism," in "Man," in "Magic: White and Black," etc., etc.; and more than one mistake is likely to be found in the present work. This cannot be helped. For a large or even a small work on such abstruse subjects to be entirely exempt from error and blunder, it would have to be written from its first to its last page by a great adept, if not by an Avatar. Then only should we say, "This is verily a work without sin or blemish in it!" But, so long as the artist is imperfect, how can his work be perfect? "Endless is the search for truth!" Let us love it and aspire to it for its own sake, and not for the glory or benefit a minute portion of its revelation may confer on us. For who of us can presume to have the whole truth at his fingers' ends, even upon one minor teaching of Occultism?
Our chief point in the present subject, however, was to show that the Septenary doctrine, or division of the constitution of man, was a very ancient one, and was not invented by us. This has been successfully done, for we are supported in this, consciously and unconsciously, by a number of ancient, mediaeval, and modern writers. What the former said, was well said; what the latter repeated, was generally distorted. An instance: Read the "Pythagorean Fragments," and compare the Septenary man as given by the Rev. G. Oliver, the learned mason, in his "Pythagorean Triangle" (ch. on "Science of Numbers," p. 179).
He speaks as follows: --
"The Theosophic Philosophy counted SEVEN properties (or principles), in Man, viz.: --
(1.) The divine golden Man;
(2.) The inward holy body from fire and light, like pure silver;
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 641 HYPNOTISM IS -- SATANISM.
(3.) The elemental man;
(4.) The mercurial paradisiacal man;
(5.) The martial Soul-like man;
(6.) The passionate man of desires;
(7.) The Solar man; a witness to and inspector of the wonders of the Universe. They had also seven fountain Spirits, or Powers of Nature."
Compare this jumbled account and distribution of Western theosophic philosophy with the latest theosophic explanations by the Eastern School of Theosophy, and then decide which is the more correct. Verily: --
"Wisdom hath builded her house,
She hath hewn out her seven pillars." -- (Prov. ix, 1.)
As to the charge that our School has not adopted the Seven-fold classification of the Brahmins, but has confused it, it is quite unjust. To begin with, the "School" is one thing, its exponents (to Europeans) quite another. The latter have first to learn the A B C of practical Eastern Occultism, before they can be made to understand correctly the tremendously abstruse classification based on the seven distinct states of Pragna (consciousness); and, above all, to realize thoroughly what Pragna is, in the Eastern metaphysics. To give a Western student that classification is to try to make him suppose that he can account for the origin of consciousness, by accounting for the process by which a certain knowledge, through only one of the states of that consciousness, came to him; in other words, it is to make him account for something he knows on this plane, by something he knows nothing about on the other planes; i.e., to lead him from the spiritual and the psychological, direct to the ontological. This is why the primary, old, classification was adopted by the Theosophists, of which classifications there are many.
To busy oneself, after such a tremendous number of independent witnesses and proofs have been brought before the public, with an additional enumeration from theological sources, would be quite useless. The seven capital sins and seven virtues of the Christian scheme are far less philosophical than even the Seven Liberal and the Seven Accursed Sciences -- or the Seven Arts of enchantment of the Gnostics. For one of the latter is now before the public, pregnant with danger in the present as for the future. The modern name for it is HYPNOTISM. In the ignorance of the seven principles, and used by scientific and ignorant materialists, it will soon become SATANISM in the full acceptation of the term.
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Next Section
Contents
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The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky, vol 2, pt 3, ch 1
The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 2
Theosophical University Press Online Edition
[[Vol. 2, Page 643]]
BOOK II. -- PART III.
ADDENDA.
SCIENCE AND THE SECRET
DOCTRINE CONTRASTED.
"The knowledge of this nether world --
Say, friend, what is it, false or true?
The false, what mortal cares to know?
The true, what mortal ever knew?"
[[Vol. 2, Page 644]]
CONTENTS.
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§§ PAGE
I. ARCHAIC OR MODERN ANTHROPOLOGY? ... 645
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II. THE ANCESTORS MANKIND IS OFFERED BY SCIENCE ... 656
Plastidular Souls, and Conscious Nerve-Cells ... 670
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III. THE FOSSIL RELICS OF MAN AND THE ANTHROPOID APE ... 675
Western Evolutionism: the comparative Anatomy of Man and Ape ... 680
Darwinism and the Antiquity of Man: the Anthropoids and their Ancestry ... 685
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IV. ON THE DURATION OF GEOLOGICAL PERIODS, RACE CYCLES, AND THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN ... 690
Modern Scientific Speculations thereon ... 694
On Chains of Planets and their Plurality ... 699
Esoteric Geological Chronology ... 709
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V. ORGANIC EVOLUTION -- CREATIVE CENTRES ... 731
The Origin and Evolution of the Mammalia ... 734
The European Palaeolithic Races ... 738
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VI. GIANTS, CIVILIZATIONS, AND SUBMERGED CONTINENTS TRACED IN HISTORY ... 742
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VII. SCIENTIFIC AND GEOLOGICAL PROOFS OF THE EXISTENCE OF SEVERAL SUBMERGED CONTINENTS ... 778
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 645 THE NEW MASTERS OF PROTESTANTISM.
ADDENDA TO BOOK II.
§ I.
ARCHAIC, OR MODERN ANTHROPOLOGY?
WHENEVER the question of the origin of man is offered seriously to an unbiassed, honest, and earnest man of science, the answer comes invariably: -- "WE DO NOT KNOW." De Quatrefages, in his agnostic attitude, is one of such anthropologists.
This does not imply that the rest of the men of science are neither fair-minded nor honest, as in such case our remark would be questionably discreet. But, it is estimated that 75 per cent. of European Scientists are Evolutionists. Are these representatives of modern thought all guilty of flagrant misrepresentation of the facts? No one says this -- but there are a few very exceptional cases. However, the Scientists in their anti-clerical enthusiasm and despair of any alternative theory to
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Darwinism, except that of "special creation," are unconsciously insincere in "forcing" a hypothesis the elasticity of which is inadequate, and which resents the severe strain to which it is now subjected. Insincerity on the same subject is, however, patent in ecclesiastical circles. Bishop Temple has come forward as a thorough-going supporter of Darwinism in his "Religion and Science." This clerical writer goes so far as to regard Matter -- after receiving its "primal impress" -- as the unaided evolver of all cosmic phenomena. This view only differs from that of Haeckel, in postulating a hypothetical deity at "the back of beyont," a deity which stands entirely aloof from the interplay of forces. Such a metaphysical entity is no more the Theological God than that of Kant. Bishop Temple's truce with Materialistic Science is, in our opinion, impolitic -- apart from the fact that it involves a total rejection of the Biblical cosmogony. In the presence of this display of flunkeyism before the materialism of our "learned" age, we Occultists can but smile. But how about loyalty to the Masters such theological truants profess to serve, Christ, and Christendom at large?
However, we have no desire, for the present, to throw down the gauntlet to the clergy, our business being now with materialistic Science alone. The latter answers to our question, in the person of its best representatives "We do not know;" -- yet the majority of these act as though Omniscience was their heirloom, and they knew all things.
For, indeed, this negative reply has not prevented the majority of Scientists from speculating on that question, each seeking to have his
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 646 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
own special theory accepted to the exclusion of all others. Thus, from Maillet in 1748 down to Haeckel in 1870, theories on the origin of the human Race have differed as much as the personalities of their inventors themselves. Buffon, Bory de St. Vincent, Lamarck, E. G. St. Hilaire, Gaudry, Naudin, Wallace, Darwin, Owen, Haeckel, Filippi, Vogt, Huxley, Agassiz, etc., etc., each evolved a more or less scientific hypothesis of genesis. De Quatrefages arranges them in two principal groups -- one holding to a rapid, and the other to a very gradual transmutation ; the former, favouring a new type (man) produced by a being entirely different; the latter teaching the evolution of man by progressive differentiation.
Strangely enough, it is from the most scientific of these authorities that the most unscientific of all the theories upon the subject of the origin of man has hitherto emanated. This is so evident, that the hour is rapidly approaching when the current teaching about the descent of man from an Ape-like mammal will be regarded with less respect than the formation of Adam out of clay, and of Eve out of Adam's rib. For --
"It is evident, especially after the most fundamental principles of Darwinism, that an organized being cannot be a descendant of another whose development is in an inverse order to his own. . . . Consequently, in accordance with these principles man cannot be considered as the descendant of any simian type whatever."*
Lucae's argument versus the Ape-theory, based on the different flexures of the bones constituting the
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axis of the skull in the cases of Man and the Anthropoids, is fairly discussed by Schmidt ("Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism, " p. 290). He admits that "the ape as he grows becomes more bestial; man . . . more human," and seems, indeed, to hesitate a moment before he passes on: e.g., "This flexure of the cranial axis may, therefore, still be emphasized as a human character, in contradistinction to the apes; the peculiar characteristic of an order can scarcely be elicited from it; and especially as to the doctrine of descent, this circumstance seems in no way decisive." The writer evidently is not a little disquieted at the argument. He assures us that it upsets any possibility of the present apes having been the progenitors of mankind. But does it not also negative the bare possibility of the man and anthropoid having had a common -- though, so far, an absolutely theoretical -- ancestor.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "The Human Species," p. 111, by de Quatrefages. The respective developments of the human and Simian brains are referred to. "In the ape the temporo-spheroidal convolutions, which form the middle lobe, make their appearance and are completed before the anterior convolutions which form the frontal lobe. In man, the frontal convolutions are, on the contrary, the first to appear, and those of the middle lobe are formed later." (Ibid.)
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 647 THE FALLACIES OF MODERN SCIENTISTS.
Even "Natural Selection" itself is with every day more threatened. The deserters from the Darwinian camp are many, and those who were at one time its most ardent disciples are, owing to new discoveries, slowly but steadily preparing to turn over a new leaf. In the "Journal of the Royal Microscopical Society" for October, 1886, one can read as follows: --
"PHYSIOLOGICAL SELECTION. -- Mr. G. J. Romanes finds certain difficulties in regarding natural selection as a theory for the origin of adaptive structures. He proposes to replace it by what he calls physiological selection, or the segregation of the fit. His view is based on the extreme sensitiveness of the reproductive system to small changes in the conditions of life, and he thinks that variations in the direction of greater or less sterility must frequently occur in wild species. If the variation be such that the reproductive system, while showing some degree of sterility with the parent form, continues to be fertile within the limits of the varietal form, the variation would neither be swamped by intercrossing nor die out on account of sterility. When a variation of this kind occurs, the physiological barrier must divide the species into two parts. . . . . The author, in fine, regards mutual sterility, not as one of the effects of specific differentiation, but as the cause of it."*
An attempt is made to show the above to be a complement of, and sequence to, the Darwinian theory. This is a clumsy attempt at best. The public will soon be made to believe that Mr. C. Dixon's "Evolution without Natural Selection " is also Darwinism -- expanded, as the author certainly claims it to be!
But it is like splitting the body of a man into three pieces or various portions of man, and then
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The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky, vol 2, pt 3, ch 1
maintaining that each portion is the identical man as he was before; only -- expanded. Yet the author states on p. 79: -- "Let it be clearly understood that not one single syllable in the foregoing pages has been written antagonistic to Darwin's theory of Natural Selection. All I have done is to explain certain phenomena . . . . the more one studies Darwin's works, the more one is convinced of the truth of his hypothesis." (!!)
And before this, on p. 48, he alludes to: -- "the overwhelming array of facts which Darwin gave in support of his hypothesis, and which triumphantly carried the theory of Natural Selection over all obstacles and objections."
This does not prevent the learned author, however, from upsetting this theory as "triumphantly," and from even openly calling his work
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* To this an editorial remark adds that an "F.J.B.," in the Athenaeum -- (No. 3069, Aug. 21, 1886, pp. 242-3) points out that naturalists have long recognised that there are "morphological" and "physiological" species. The former have their origin in men's minds, the latter in a series of changes sufficient to affect the internal as well as the external organs of a group of allied individuals. The "physiological selection" of morphological species is a confusion of ideas; that of physiological species "a redundancy of terms."
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 648 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
"Evolution without a Natural Selection," or, in so many words, with Darwin's fundamental idea knocked to atoms in it.
As to Natural Selection itself, the utmost misconception prevails among many present-day thinkers who tacitly accept the conclusions of Darwinism. It is, for instance, a mere device of rhetoric to credit "Natural Selection" with the power of originating species. "Natural Selection" is no Entity; but a convenient phrase for describing the mode in which the survival of the fit and the elimination of the unfit among organisms is brought about in the struggle for existence. Every group of organisms tends to multiply beyond the means of subsistence, the constant battle for life -- the "struggle to obtain enough to eat and to escape being eaten" added to the environmental conditions -- necessitating a perpetual weeding out of the unfit. The elite of any stock thus sorted out, propagate the species and transmit their organic characteristics to their descendants. All useful variations are thus perpetuated, and a progressive improvement is effected. But Natural Selection, in the writer's humble opinion, "Selection, as a Power," is in reality a pure myth; especially when resorted to as an explanation of the origin of species. It is merely a representative term expressive of the manner in which "useful variations" are stereotyped when produced. Of itself, "it" can produce nothing, and only operates on the rough material presented to "it." The real question at issue is: what CAUSE -- combined with other secondary causes -- produces the "variations" in the organisms themselves. Many of these secondary causes are purely physical, climatic, dietary, etc., etc. Very well. But beyond the secondary aspects of organic evolution, a deeper principle has to be sought for. The materialist's "spontaneous variations,"
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and "accidental divergencies" are self-contradictory terms in a universe of "Matter, Force and NECESSITY." Mere variability of type, apart from the supervisory presence of a quasi-intelligent impulse, is powerless to account for the stupendous complexities and marvels of the human body for instance. The insufficiency of the Darwinists' mechanical theory has been exposed at length by Dr. Von Hartmann among other purely negative thinkers. It is an abuse of the reader's intelligence to write, as does Haeckel, of blind indifferent cells, "arranging themselves into organs." The esoteric solution of the origin of animal species is given elsewhere.
Those purely secondary causes of differentiation, grouped under the head of sexual selection, natural selection, climate, isolation, etc., etc., mislead the Western Evolutionist and offer no real explanation whatever of the "whence" of the "ancestral types" which served as the starting point for physical development. The truth is that the
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 649 THE OCCULT AND THE MODERN DOCTRINES.
differentiating "causes" known to modern science only come into operation after the physicalization of the primeval animal root-types out of the astral. Darwinism only meets Evolution at its midway point -- that is to say when astral evolution has given place to the play of the ordinary physical forces with which our present senses acquaint us. But even here the Darwinian Theory, even with the "expansions" recently attempted, is inadequate to meet the facts of the case. The underlying physiological variation in species -- one to which all other laws are subordinate and secondary -- is a sub-conscious intelligence pervading matter, ultimately traceable to a REFLECTION of the Divine and Dhyan-
Chohanic wisdom.* A not altogether dissimilar conclusion has been arrived at by so well known a thinker as Ed. von Hartmann, who, despairing of the efficacy of unaided Natural Selection, regards evolution as intelligently guided by the UNCONSCIOUS (the Cosmic Logos of Occultism). But the latter acts only mediately through FOHAT, or Dhyan-Chohanic energy, and not quite in the direct manner which the great pessimist describes.
It is this divergence among men of Science, their mutual, and often their self-contradictions, that gave the writer of the present volumes the courage to bring to light other and older teachings -- if only as hypotheses for future scientific appreciation. Though not in any way very learned in modern sciences, so evident, even to the humble recorder of this archaic clearing, are the said scientific fallacies and gaps, that she determined to touch upon all these, in order to place the two teachings on parallel lines. For Occultism, it is a question of self-defence, and nothing more.
So far, the "Secret Doctrine" has concerned itself with metaphysics, pure and simple. It has now landed on Earth, and finds itself within the domain of physical science and practical anthropology, or those branches of study which materialistic Naturalists claim as their rightful domain, coolly asserting, furthermore, that the higher and more perfect the working of the Soul, the more amenable it is to the analysis and explanations of the zoologist and the physiologist alone. (Haeckel on "Cell-Souls and Soul-Cells.") This stupendous pretension comes from one, who, to prove his pithecoid descent, has not hesitated to include among the ancestors of man the Lemuridae ; which have been promoted by him to the rank of Prosimiae, indeciduate mammals, to which he very incorrectly attributes a decidua
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[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The "principle of perfectibility " of Nageli; von de Baer's "striving towards the purpose"; Braun's "Divine breath as the inward impulse in the evolutionary history of Nature"; Professor Owen's "tendency to perfectibility, etc.," are all veiled manifestations of the universal guiding FOHAT, rich with the Divine and Dhyan-Chohanic thought.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 650 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
and a discoidal placenta.* For this Haeckel was taken severely to task by de Quatrefages, and criticised by his own brother materialists and agnostics, as great, if not greater, authorities than himself, namely, by Virchow and du Bois-Reymond.**
Such opposition notwithstanding, Haeckel's wild theories are, to this day, called scientific and logical by some. The mysterious nature of Consciousness, of Soul, Spirit in Man being now explained as a mere advance on the functions of the protoplasmic molecules of the lively Protista, and the gradual evolution and growth of human mind and "social instincts" toward civilization having to be traced back to their origin in the civilization of ants, bees, and other creatures, the chances left for an impartial hearing of the doctrines of archaic Wisdom, are few indeed. The educated profane is told that "the social instincts of the lower animals have, of late, been regarded as being clearly the origin of morals, even of those of man" (!) and that our divine consciousness, our soul, intellect, and aspirations have "worked their way up from the lower stages of the simple cell-soul" of the gelatinous Bathybius -- (See Haeckel's "Present Position of Evolution " Notes), -- and he seems to believe it. For such men, the metaphysics of Occultism must produce the effect that our grandest orchestral and vocal oratorios produce on the Chinaman: a sound that jars upon their nerves.
Yet, are our esoteric teachings about "angels," the first three pre -animal human Races, and the downfall of the Fourth, on a lower level of fiction and self-delusion than the Haeckelian "plastidular," or the inorganic "molecular Souls of the Protista "? Between the evolution of the spiritual nature of man from the above Amoebian Souls, and the alleged development of his physical frame from the protoplastic dweller in the Ocean slime, there is an abyss which will not be easily crossed by any man in the full possession of his intellectual faculties. Physical evolution, as modern Science teaches it, is a subject for open controversy; spiritual and moral development on the same lines is the insane dream of a crass materialism.
Furthermore, past as well as present daily experience teaches that no truth has ever been accepted by the learned bodies unless it dovetailed
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Vide infra, M. de Quatrefages' expose of Haeckel, in § ii., "The Ancestors Mankind is offered by Science."
** Strictly speaking du Bois-Reymond is an agnostic, and not a materialist. He has protested most
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vehemently against the materialistic doctrine, which affirms mental phenomena to be merely the product of molecular motion. The most accurate physiological knowledge of the structure of the brain leaves us "nothing but matter in motion," he asserts; "we must go further, and admit the utterly incomprehensible nature of the psychical principle which it is impossible to regard as a mere outcome of material causes."
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 651 AN EXCHANGE OF MUTUAL COMPLIMENTS.
with the habitual preconceived ideas of their professors. "The crown of the innovator is a crown of thorns": -- said G. St. Hilaire. It is only that which fits in with popular hobbies and accepted notions that as a general rule gains ground. Hence the triumph of the Haeckelian ideas, notwithstanding their being proclaimed by Virchow, du Bois-Reymond, and others as the "testimonium paupertatis of natural Science."
Diametrically opposed as may be the materialism of the German Evolutionists to the spiritual conceptions of Esoteric philosophy, radically inconsistent as is their accepted anthropological system with the real facts of nature, -- the pseudo-idealistic bias now colouring English thought is almost more pernicious. The pure materialistic doctrine admits of a direct refutation and appeal to the logic of facts. The idealism of the present day, not only contrives to absorb, on the one hand, the basic negations of Atheism, but lands its votaries in a tangle of unreality, which culminates in a practical Nihilism. Argument with such writers is almost out of the question. Idealists, therefore, will be still more antagonistic to the Occult teachings now given than even the Materialists. But as no worse fate can befall the exponents of Esoteric Anthropo-Genesis than being openly called by their foes by their old and time-honoured names of "lunatics" and "ignoramuses," the present archaic theories may be safely added to the many modern speculations, and bide their time for their full or even partial recognition. Only, as the existence itself of these "archaic theories" will probably be denied, we have to give our best proofs and stand by them to the bitter end.
In our race and generation the one "temple in the Universe" is in rare cases -- within us; but our body and mind have been too defiled by both Sin and Science to be outwardly now anything better than a fane of iniquity and error. And here our mutual position -- that of Occultism and Modern Science -- ought to be once for all defined.
We, Theosophists, would willingly bow before such men of learning as the late Prof. Balfour Stewart, Messrs. Crookes, Quatrefages, Wallace, Agassiz, Butlerof, and several others, though we may not agree, from the stand-point of esoteric philosophy, with all they say. But nothing could make us consent to even a show of respect for the opinions of other men of science, such as Haeckel, Carl Vogt, or Ludwig Buchner, in Germany; or even of Mr. Huxley and his co-thinkers in materialism in England -- the colossal erudition of the first named, notwithstanding. Such men are simply the intellectual and moral murderers of future generations; especially Haeckel, whose crass materialism often rises to the height of idiotic naivetes in his reasonings. One has but to read his "Pedigree of Man, and Other Essays" (Aveling 's transl.) to feel a desire, in the words of Job, that his
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 652 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
remembrance should perish from the earth, and that he "shall have no name in the streets." Hear him deriding the idea of the origin of the human race "as a supernatural (?) phenomenon," as one "that could not result from simple mechanical causes, from physical and chemical forces, but requires the direct intervention of a creative personality. . . "
. . . . "Now the central point of Darwin's teaching," . . goes on the creator of the mythical Sozura, "lies in this, that it demonstrates the simplest mechanical causes, purely physico-chemical phenomena of nature, as wholly sufficient to explain the highest and most difficult problems. Darwin puts in the place of a conscious creative force, building and arranging the organic bodies of animals and plants on a designed plan, a series of natural forces working blindly (or we say) without aim, without design. In place of an arbitrary act of operation, we have a necessary law of Evolution . . . . " (So had Manu and Kapila, and, at the same time, guiding, conscious and intelligent Powers). . . "Darwin had very wisely . . . put on one side the question as to the first appearance of life. But very soon that consequence, so full of meaning, so wide reaching, was openly discussed by able and brave scientific men, such as Huxley, Carl Vogt, Ludwig Buchner. A mechanical origin of the earliest living form, was held as the necessary sequence to Darwin's teaching . . and we are at present concerned with a single consequence of the theory, the natural origin of the human race through ALMIGHTY EVOLUTION" (pp. 34, 37).
To which, unabashed by this scientific farrago, Occultism replies: in the course of Evolution, when the physical triumphed over, and nearly crushed under its weight, spiritual and mental evolutions, the great gift of Kriyasakti* remained the heirloom of only a few elect men in every age . . . . Spirit strove vainly to manifest itself in its fulness in purely organic forms (as has been explained in Part I. of this Volume), and the faculty, which had been a natural attribute in the early humanity of the Third Race, became one of the class regarded as simply phenomenal by the Spiritualists and Occultists, and as scientifically impossible by the materialists.
In our modern day the mere assertion that there exists a power which can create human forms -- ready-
made sheaths for the "conscious monads" or Nirmanakayas of past Manvantaras to incarnate within -- is, of course, absurd, ridiculous! That which is regarded as quite natural, on the other hand, is the production of a Frankenstein's monster, plus moral consciousness, religious aspirations, genius, and a feeling of one's own immortal nature within one's self -- by "physico-chemical forces, guided by blind Almighty Evolution" ("Pedigree of Man").
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* For explanation of the term Kriyasakti, see Com. 2 in Stanza 26.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 653 SCIENCE IS SILENT ON EVERY PROBLEM.
As to the origin of that man, not ex-nihilo, cemented by a little red clay, but from a living divine Entity consolidating the astral body with surrounding materials -- this conception is too absurd even to be
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mentioned in the opinion of the materialists. Nevertheless, Occultists and Theosophists are ready to have their claims and theories -- however unscientific and superstitious at first glance -- compared as to their intrinsic value and probability, with those of the modern evolutionists. Hence the esoteric teaching is absolutely opposed to the Darwinian evolution, as applied to man, and partially so with regard to other species.
It would be interesting to obtain a glimpse of the mental representation of Evolution in the Scientific brain of a materialist. What is EVOLUTION? If asked to define the full and complete meaning of the term, neither Huxley nor Haeckel will be able to do it any better than Webster does: "the act of unfolding; the process of growth, development; as the evolution of a flower from a bud, or an animal from the egg." Yet the bud must be traced through its parent-plant to the seed, and the egg to the animal or bird that laid it; or at any rate to the speck of protoplasm from which it expanded and grew. And both the seed and the speck must have the latent potentialities in them for the reproduction and gradual development, the unfolding of the thousand and one forms or phases of evolution, through which they must pass before the flower or the animal are fully developed? Hence, the future plan, if not a DESIGN, must be there. Moreover, that seed has to be traced, and its nature ascertained. Have the Darwinists been successful in this? Or will the Moneron be cast in our teeth? But this atom of the Watery Abysses is not homogeneous matter; and there must be something or somebody that had moulded and cast it into being.
Here Science is once more silent. But since there is no Self-consciousness as yet in either speck, seed, or germ, according to both Materialists and Psychologists of the modern school -- Occultists agreeing in this for once with their natural enemies -- what is it that guides the force or forces so unerringly in this process of evolution? Blind force? As well call blind the brain which evolved in Haeckel his "Pedigree of Man" and other lucubrations. We can easily conceive that the said brain lacks an important centre or two. For, whoever knows anything of the anatomy of the human, or even of any animal, body, and is still an atheist and a materialist, must be "hopelessly insane," according to Lord Herbert, who rightly sees in the frame of man's body and the coherence of its parts, something so strange and paradoxical that he holds it "to be the greatest miracle of nature." Blind forces, "and no design" in anything under the Sun; when no sane man of Science would hesitate to say that, even from the little he knows and has hitherto discovered of the forces at work in Kosmos, he sees very plainly
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 654 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
that every part, every speck and atom are in harmony with their fellow atoms, and these with the whole, each having its distinct mission throughout the life-cycle. But, fortunately, the greatest, the most eminent thinkers and Scientists of the day are now beginning to rise against this "Pedigree," and even Darwin's natural selection theory, though its author had never, probably, contemplated such widely stretched conclusions. The remarkable work of the Russian Scientist N. T. Danilevsky -- "Darwinism, a Critical Investigation of the Theory" -- upsets it completely and without appeal, and so does de Quatrefages in his last work. Our readers are recommended to examine the learned paper by Dr. Bourges -- read by its author, a member of the Paris Anthropological Society at a recent official meeting of the latter -- called "Evolutionary Psychology ; the Evolution of Spirit, etc." in which he reconciles entirely the two teachings -- namely, those of the physical and spiritual evolutions. He
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explains the origin of the variety of organic forms, made to fit their environments with such evident intelligent design, by the existence and the mutual help and interaction of two principles in (manifest) nature, the inner Conscious Principle adapting itself to physical nature and the innate potentialities in the latter. Thus the French Scientist has to return to our old friend -- Archaeus, or the life-Principle -- without naming it, as Dr. Richardson has done in England in his "Nerve-Force," etc. The same idea was recently developed in Germany by Baron Hellenbach, in his remarkable work, "Individuality in the light of Biology and modern Philosophy."
We find the same conclusions arrived at in still another excellent volume of another Russian deep thinker, N. N. Strachof -- who says in his "Fundamental Conceptions of Psychology and Physiology": -- "The most clear, as the most familiar, type of development may be found in our own mental or physical evolution, which has served others as a model to follow . . . . If organisms are entities . . . then it is only just to conclude and assert that the organic life strives to beget psychic life; but it would be still more correct and in accordance with the spirit of these two categories of evolution to say, that the true cause of organic life is the tendency of spirit to manifest in substantial forms, to clothe itself in substantial reality. It is the highest form which contains the complete explanation of the lowest, never the reverse." This is admitting, as Bourges does in the Memoire above quoted, the identity of this mysterious, integrally acting and organizing Principle with the Self-Conscious and Inner Subject, which we call the EGO and the world at large -- the Soul. Thus, gradually, all the best Scientists and Thinkers are approaching the Occultists in their general conclusions.
But such metaphysically inclined men of Science are out of court and will hardly be listened to. Schiller, in his magnificent poem on
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 655 THE ONE UNPARDONABLE SIN.
the Veil of Isis, makes the mortal youth who dared to lift the impenetrable covering fall down dead after beholding naked Truth in the face of the stern goddess. Have some of our Darwinians, so tenderly united in natural selection and affinity, also gazed at the Saitic Mother bereft of her veils? One might almost suspect it after reading their theories. Their great intellects must have collapsed while gauging too closely the uncovered face of Nature, leaving only the grey matter and ganglia in their brain, to respond to blind physico-chemical forces. At any rate Shakespeare's lines apply admirably to our modem Evolutionist who symbolizes that "proud man," who --
"Dress'd in a little brief authority;
Most ignorant of what he's most assured,
His glassy essence -- like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven,
As make the Angels weep! . . . . "
These have nought to do with the "angels." Their only concern is the human ancestor, the pithecoid Noah who gave birth to three sons -- the tailed Cynocephalus, the tailless Ape, and the "arboreal" Palaeolithic man. On this point, they will not be contradicted. Every doubt expressed is immediately set down as an attempt to cripple scientific inquiry. The insuperable difficulty at the very foundation of
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the evolution theory, namely, that no Darwinian is able to give even an approximate definition of the period at which, and the form in which, the first man appeared, is smoothed down to a trifling impediment, which is "really of no account." Every branch of knowledge is in the same predicament, we are informed. The chemist bases his most abstruse calculations simply "upon a hypothesis of atoms and molecules, of which not one has ever been seen isolated, weighed, or defined. The electrician speaks of magnetic fluids which have never tangibly revealed themselves. No definite origin can be assigned either to molecules or magnetism. Science cannot and does not pretend to any knowledge of the beginnings of law, matter or life, . . ." etc., etc. (Knowledge, January, 1882.)
And, withal, to reject a scientific hypothesis, however absurd, is to commit the one unpardonable sin! We risk it.
-------
Next Section
Contents
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The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 2
Theosophical University Press Online Edition
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 656 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
§ II.
THE ANCESTORS MANKIND IS OFFERED BY SCIENCE.
---------------------
"The question of questions for mankind -- the problem which underlies all others, and is more deeply interesting than any other -- is the ascertainment of the place which man occupies in Nature, and of his relations to the Universe of things." -- HUXLEY.
---------------------
THE world stands divided this day, and hesitates between divine progenitors -- be they Adam and Eve or the lunar Pitris -- and Bathybius Haeckelii, the gelatinous hermit of the briny deep. Having explained the occult theory, it may now be compared with that of the modem Materialism. The reader is invited to choose between the two after having judged them on their respective merits.
We may derive some consolation for the rejection of our divine ancestors, in finding that the Haeckelian speculations receive no better treatment at the hands of strictly exact Science than do our own. Haeckel's phylogenesis is no less laughed at by the foes of his fantastic evolution, by other and greater Scientists, than our primeval races will be. As du Bois-Reymond puts it, we may believe him easily when he says that "ancestral trees of our race sketched in the 'Schopfungs-geschichte' are of about as much value as are the pedigrees of the Homeric heroes in the eyes of the historical critic."
This settled, everyone will see that one hypothesis is as good as another. And as we find that German naturalist (Haeckel) himself confessing that neither geology (in its history of the past) nor the ancestral history of organisms will ever "rise to the position of a real exact Science,"* a large margin is thus left to Occult Science to make its annotations and lodge its protests. The world is left to choose between the teachings of Paracelsus, the "Father of Modern Chemistry," and those of Haeckel, the Father of the mythical Sozura. We demand no more.
Without presuming to take part in the quarrel of such very learned naturalists as du Bois-Reymond and Haeckel a propos of our blood relationship to "those ancestors (of ours) which have led up from the unicellular classes, Vermes, Acrania, Pisces, Amphibia, Reptilia to the Aves" -- one may put in a few words, a question or two, for the information of our readers. Availing ourselves of the opportunity, and bearing
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
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* "Pedigree of Man." -- "The Proofs of Evolution," p. 273.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 657 AN UNVERIFIED CHARGE AGAINST THE ANCIENTS.
in mind Darwin's theories of natural selection, etc., we would ask Science -- with regard to the origin of the human and animal species -- which theory of evolution of the two herewith described is the more scientific, or the more unscientific, if so preferred.
(1). Is it that of an Evolution which starts from the beginning with sexual propagation?
(2). Or that teaching which shows the gradual development of organs; their solidification, and the procreation of each species, at first by simple easy separation from one into two or even several individuals. Then follows a fresh development -- the first step to a species of separate distinct sexes -- the hermaphrodite condition; then again, a kind of Parthenogenesis, "virginal reproduction," when the egg-cells are formed within the body, issuing from it in atomic emanations and becoming matured outside of it; until, finally, after a definite separation into sexes, the human beings begin procreating through sexual connection?
Of these two, the former "theory," -- rather, a "revealed fact" -- is enunciated by all the exoteric Bibles (except the Puranas), preeminently by the Jewish Cosmogony. The last one, is that which is taught by the Occult philosophy, as explained all along.
An answer is found to our question in a volume just published by Mr. S. Laing -- the best lay exponent of Modern Science.* In chapter viii. of his latest work, "A Modern Zoroastrian," the author begins by twitting "all ancient religions and philosophies" for "assuming a male and female principle for their gods." At first sight, he says "the distinction of sex appears as fundamental as that of plant and animal." . . . . "The Spirit of god brooding over Chaos and producing the world," he goes on to complain, "is only a later edition, revised according to monotheistic ideas, of the far older Chaldean legend which describes the creation of Kosmos out of Chaos by the co-operations of great gods, male and female . . " Thus, in the orthodox Christian creed we are taught to repeat "begotten, not made," a phrase which is absolute nonsense, an instance of using words like counterfeit notes, which have no solid value of an idea behind them. For "begotten" is a very definite term which "implies the conjunction of two opposite sexes to produce a new individual."
However we may agree with the learned author as to the inadvisability of using wrong words, and the terrible anthropomorphic and phallic element in the old Scriptures -- especially in the orthodox Christian Bible -- nevertheless, there may be two extenuating circumstances in the case. Firstly, all these "ancient philosophies" and "modern
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Author of "Modern Science and Modern Thought."
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 658 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
religions" are -- as sufficiently shown in these two volumes -- an exoteric veil thrown over the face of esoteric truth; and -- as the direct result of this -- they are allegorical, i.e., mythological in form; but still they are immensely more philosophical in essence than any of the new scientific theories, so-
called. Secondly, from the Orphic theogony down to Ezra's last remodelling of the Pentateuch, every old Scripture having in its origin borrowed its facts from the East, it has been subjected to constant alterations by friend and foe, until of the original version there remained but the name, a dead shell from which the Spirit had been gradually eliminated.
This alone ought to show that no religious work now extant can be understood without the help of the Archaic wisdom, the primitive foundation on which they were all built.
But to return to the direct answer expected from Science to our direct question. It is given by the same author, when, following his train of thought on the unscientific euhemerization of the powers of Nature in ancient creeds, he pronounces a condemnatory verdict upon them in the following terms: --
"Science, however, makes sad havoc with this impression of sexual generation being the original and only mode of reproduction,* and the microscope and dissecting knife of the naturalist introduce us to new and altogether unsuspected (?) worlds of life. . . ."
So little "unsuspected," indeed, that the original a-sexual "modes of reproduction" must have been known -- to the ancient Hindus, at any rate -- Mr. Laing's assertion to the contrary, notwithstanding. In view of the statement in the Vishnu Purana, quoted by us elsewhere, that Daksha "established sexual intercourse as the means of multiplication," only after a series of other "modes," which are all enumerated therein, ( Vol. II., p. 12, Wilson's Transl.), it becomes difficult to deny the fact. This assertion, moreover, is found, note well, in an EXOTERIC work. Then, Mr. S. Laing goes on to tell us that: --
. . . . "By far the larger proportion of living forms, in number . . . . have come into existence, without the aid of sexual propagation." He then instances Haeckel's monera . . . . "multiplying by self-
division." The next stage the author shows in the nucleated cell, "which does exactly the same thing." The following stage is that in "which the organism does not divide into two equal parts, but a small portion of it swells out . . . . and finally parts company and starts on separate existence, which grows to the size of the parent by its inherent faculty of manufacturing fresh protoplasm from surrounding inorganic materials."**
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Vide Part I. of this volume, page 183, Stanza VIII.
** In this, as shown in Part I., Modern Science was again anticipated, far beyond its own speculations in this direction, by Archaic Science.
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 659 VARIOUS MODES OF REPRODUCTION.
This is followed by a many-celled organism which is formed by "germ-buds reduced to spores, or single cells, which are emitted from the parent". . . . when "we are at the threshold of that system of sexual propagation, which has (now) become the rule in all the higher families of animals" . . . . It is when an "organism, having advantages in the struggle for life, established itself permanently" . . . . that special organs developed to meet the altered condition . . . . . when a distinction "would be firmly established of a female organ or ovary containing the egg or primitive cell from which the new being was to be developed." . . . . "This is confirmed by a study of embryology, which shows that in the HUMAN and higher animal species the distinction of sex is not developed until a considerable progress has been made in the growth of the embryo . . . . " In the great majority of plants, and in some lower families of animals . . . the male and female organs are developed within the same being . . . . . a hermaphrodite. Moreover, in the "virginal reproduction -- germ-cells apparently similar in all respects to egg-cells, develop themselves into new individuals without any fructifying element," etc., etc. (pp. 103-107).
Of all which we are as perfectly well aware as of this -- that the above was never applied by the very learned English popularizer of Huxleyo-Haeckelian theories to the genus homo. He limits this to specks of protoplasm, plants, bees, snails, and so on. But if he would be true to the theory of descent, he must be as true to ontogenesis, in which the fundamental biogenetic law, we are told, runs as follows: "the development of the embryo (ontogeny) is a condensed and abbreviated repetition of the evolution of the race (phylogeny). This repetition is the more complete, the more the true original order of evolution (palingenesis) has been retained by continual heredity. On the other hand, this repetition is the less complete, the more by varying adaptations the later spurious development (caenogenesis) has obtained." (Anthrop. 3rd edition, p. 11.)
This shows to us that every living creature and thing on earth, including man, evolved from one common primal form. Physical man must have passed through the same stages of the evolutionary process in the various modes of procreation as other animals have: he must have divided himself; then, hermaphrodite, have given birth parthenogenetically (on the immaculate principle) to his young ones; the next stage would be the oviparous -- at first "without any fructifying element," then "with the help of the fertilitary spore"; and only after the final and definite evolution of both sexes, would he become a distinct "male and female," when reproduction through sexual union would grow into universal law. So far, all this is scientifically proven. There remains but one thing to be ascertained: the plain and comprehensively described
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 660 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
processes of such ante-sexual reproduction. This is done in the Occult books, a slight outline of which was attempted by the writer in Part I. of this Volume.
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Either this, or -- man is a distinct being. Occult philosophy may call him that, because of his distinctly dual nature. Science cannot do so, once that it rejects every interference save mechanical laws, and admits of no principle outside matter. The former -- the archaic Science --allows the human physical frame to have passed through every form, from the lowest to the very highest, its present one, or from the simple to the complex -- to use the accepted terms. But it claims that in this cycle (the fourth), the frame having already existed among the types and models of nature from the preceding Rounds -- that it was quite ready for man from the beginning of this Round.* The Monad had but to step into the astral body of the progenitors, in order that the work of physical consolidation should begin around the shadowy prototype.**
What would Science say to this? It would answer, of course, that as man appeared on earth as the latest of the mammalians, he had no need, no more than those mammals, to pass through the primitive stages of procreation as above described. His mode of procreation was already established on Earth when he appeared. In this case, we may reply: since to this day not the remotest sign of a link between man and the animal has yet been found, then (if the Occultist doctrine is to be repudiated) he must have sprung miraculously in nature, like a fully armed Minerva from Jupiter's brain. And in such case the Bible is right, along with other national "revelations." Hence the scientific scorn, so freely lavished by the author of "A Modern
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Theosophists will remember that, according to Occult teaching, Cyclic pralayas so-called are but obscurations, during which periods Nature, i.e., everything visible and invisible on a resting planet -- remains in statu quo. Nature rests and slumbers, no work of destruction going on on the globe even if no active work is done. All forms, as well as their astral types, remain as they were at the last moment of its activity. The "night" of a planet has hardly any twilight preceding it. It is caught like a huge mammoth by an avalanche, and remains slumbering and frozen till the next dawn of its new day -- a very short one indeed in comparison to the "Day of Brahma."
** This will be pooh-poohed, because it will not be understood by our modern men of science; but every Occultist and theosophist will easily realize the process. There can be no objective form on Earth (nor in the Universe either), without its astral prototype being first formed in Space. From Phidias down to the humblest workman in the ceramic art -- a sculptor has had to create first of all a model in his mind, then sketch it in one and two dimensional lines, and then only can he reproduce it in a three dimensional or objective figure. And if human mind is a living demonstration of such successive stages in the process of evolution -- how can it be otherwise when NATURE'S MIND and creative powers are concerned?
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 661 WHERE ARE THE "MISSING LINKS"?
Zoroastrian" upon ancient philosophies and exoteric creeds, becomes premature and uncalled for. Nor would the sudden discovery of a "missing-link" -- like fossil mend matters at all. For neither one such solitary specimen nor the scientific conclusions thereupon, could insure its being the long-sought-for relic, i.e., that of an undeveloped, still a once speaking MAN. Something more would be required as a
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final proof (vide infra, Note). Besides which, even Genesis takes up man, her Adam of dust, only where the Secret Doctrine leaves her "Sons of God and Wisdom" and picks up the physical man of the THIRD Race. Eve is not "begotten," but is extracted out of Adam on the manner of "Amoeba, A," contracting in the middle and splitting into Amoeba B -- by division. (See p. 103, in "The Modern Zoroastrian.") Nor has human speech developed from the various animal sounds.
Haeckel's theory that "speech arose gradually from a few simple, crude animal sounds . . . ." as such "speech still remains amongst a few races of lower rank" (Darwinian theory in "Pedigree of Man, " p. 22) is altogether unsound, as argued by Professor Max Muller, among others. He contends that no plausible explanation has yet been given as to how the "roots" of language came into existence. A human brain is necessary for human speech. And figures relating to the size of the respective brains of man and ape show how deep is the gulf which separates the two. Vogt says that the brain of the largest ape, the gorilla, measures no more than 30.51 cubic inches; while the average brains of the flat-headed Australian natives -- the lowest now in the human races -- amount to 99.35 cubic inches! Figures are awkward witnesses and cannot lie. Therefore, as truly observed by Dr. F. Pfaff, whose premises are as sound and correct as his biblical conclusions are silly: -- "The brain of the apes most like man, does not amount to quite a third of the brain of the lowest races of men: it is not half the size of the brain of a new-born child." ("The Age and Origin of Man.") From the foregoing it is thus very easy to perceive that in order to prove the Huxley-Haeckelian theories of the descent of man, it is not one, but a great number of "missing links" -- a true ladder of progressive evolutionary steps -- that would have to be first found and then presented by Science to thinking and reasoning humanity, before it would abandon belief in gods and the immortal Soul for the worship of Quadrumanic ancestors. Mere myths are now greeted as "axiomatic truths." Even Alfred Russel Wallace maintains with Haeckel that primitive man was a speechless ape-creature. To this Joly answers: -- "Man never was, in my opinion, this pithecanthropus alalus whose portrait Haeckel has drawn as if he had seen and known him, whose singular and completely hypothetical genealogy he has even given, from the mere mass of living protoplasm to the man endowed with speech and a civilization analo-
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 662 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
gous to that of the Australians and Papuans." ("Man before Metals," p. 320, N. Joly. Inter. Scient. Series.)
Haeckel, among other things, often comes into direct conflict with the Science of languages. In the course of his attack on Evolutionism (1873, "Mr. Darwin's Philosophy of Language"), Prof. Max Muller stigmatized the Darwinian theory as "vulnerable at the beginning and at the end." The fact is, that only the partial truth of many of the secondary "laws" of Darwinism is beyond question -- M. de Quatrefages evidently accepting "Natural Selection," the "struggle for existence" and transformation within species, as proven not once and for ever, but pro. tem. But it may not be amiss, perhaps, to condense the linguistic case against the "Ape ancestor" theory: --
Languages have their phases of growth, etc., like all else in nature. It is almost certain that the great linguistic families pass through three stages.
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(1) All words are roots and merely placed in juxtaposition (Radical languages).
(2) One root defines the other, and becomes merely a determinative element (Agglutinative).
(3) The determinative element (the determinating meaning of which has long lapsed) unites into a whole with the formative element (Inflected).
The problem then is: Whence these ROOTS? Max Muller argues that the existence of these ready-
made materials of speech is a proof that man cannot be the crown of a long organic series. This potentiality of forming roots is the great crux which materialists almost invariably avoid.
Von Hartmann explains it as a manifestation of the "Unconscious," and admits its cogency versus mechanical Atheism. Hartmann is a fair representative of the Metaphysician and Idealist of the present age.
The argument has never been met by the non-pantheistic Evolutionists. To say with Schmidt: "Forsooth are we to halt before the origin of language?" is an avowal of dogmatism and of speedy defeat. (Cf. his "Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism, " p. 304.)
We respect those men of science who, wise in their generation, say: "Prehistoric Past being utterly beyond our powers of direct observation, we are too honest, too devoted to the truth -- or what we regard as truth -- to speculate upon the unknown, giving out our unproven theories along with facts absolutely established in modern Science." . . . . "The borderland of (metaphysical) knowledge is best left to time, which is the best test as to truth" (A Modern Zoroastrian, p. 136).
This is a wise and an honest sentence in the mouth of a materialist. But when a Haeckel, after just saying that "historical events of
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 663 PROOFS OF OUR "NOBLE DESCENT."
past time . . " having "occurred many millions of years ago,* . . . are for ever removed from direct observation," and that neither geology nor phylogeny** can or will "rise to the position of a real exact science," then insists on the development of all organisms -- "from the lowest vertebrate to the highest, from Amphioxus to man" -- we ask for a weightier proof than he can give. Mere "empirical sources of knowledge," so extolled by the author of "Anthropogeny " -- when he has to be satisfied with the qualification for his own views -- are not competent to settle problems lying beyond their domain; nor is it the province of exact science to place any reliance on them.*** If "empirical" -- and Haeckel declares so himself repeatedly -- then they are no better, nor any more reliable, in the sight of exact research, when extended into the remote past, than our Occult teachings of the East, both having to be placed on quite the same level. Nor are his phylogenetic and palingenetic speculations treated in any better way by the real scientists, than are our cyclic repetitions of the evolution of the Great in the minor races, and the original order of evolutions. For the province of exact, real Science, materialistic though it be, is to carefully avoid anything like guess-work, speculation which cannot be verified; in
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short, all suppressio veri and all suggestio falsi. The business of the man of exact Science is to observe, each in his chosen department, the phenomena of nature; to record, tabulate, compare and classify the facts, down to the smallest minutiae which are presented to the observation of the senses with the help of all the exquisite mechanism that modern invention supplies, not by the aid of metaphysical flights of fancy. All that he has a legitimate right to do, is to correct by the assistance of physical instruments the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* It thus appears that in its anxiety to prove our noble descent from the catarrhine "baboon," Haeckel's school has pushed the times of pre-historic man millions of years back. (See "Pedigree of Man, " p. 273.) Occultists, render thanks to science for such corroboration of our claims!
** This seems a poor compliment to pay Geology, which is not a speculative but as exact a science as astronomy -- save, perhaps its too risky chronological speculations. It is mainly a "Descriptive" as opposed to an "Abstract" Science.
*** Such newly-coined words as "perigenesis of plastids ," "plastidule Souls" (!), and others less comely, invented by Haeckel, may be very learned and correct in so far as they may express very graphically the ideas in his own vivid fancy. As a fact, however, they remain for his less imaginative colleagues painfully caenogenetic -- to use his own terminology; i.e., for true Science they are spurious speculations so long as they are derived from "empirical sources." Therefore, when he seeks to prove that "the origin of man from other mammals, and most directly from the catarrhine ape, is a deductive law that follows necessarily from the inductive law of the theory of descent" ("Anthropogeny, " p. 392) -- his no less learned foes (du Bois-Reymond -- for one) have a right to see in this sentence a mere jugglery of words; a "testimonium paupertatis of natural science" -- as he himself complains, calling them, in return, ignoramuses (see "Pedigree of Man," Notes).
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 664 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
defects or illusions of his own coarser vision, auditory powers, and other senses. He has no right to trespass on the grounds of metaphysics and psychology. His duty is to verify and to rectify all the facts that fall under his direct observation; to profit by the experiences and mistakes of the Past in endeavouring to trace the working of a certain concatenation of cause and effects, which, but only by its constant and unvarying repetition, may be called A LAW. This it is which a man of science is expected to do, if he would become a teacher of men and remain true to his original programme of natural or physical sciences. Any side-way path from this royal road becomes speculation.
Instead of keeping to this, what does many a so-called man of science do in these days? He rushes into the domains of pure metaphysics, while deriding it. He delights in rash conclusions and calls it "a deductive law from the inductive law" of a theory based upon and drawn out of the depths of his own consciousness: that consciousness being perverted by, and honeycombed with, one-sided materialism. He attempts to explain the "origin" of things, which are yet embosomed only in his own conceptions. He attacks spiritual beliefs and religious traditions millenniums old, and denounces everything, save
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his own hobbies, as superstition. He suggests theories of the Universe, a Cosmogony developed by blind, mechanical forces of nature alone, far more miraculous and impossible than even one based upon the assumption of fiat lux out of nihil -- and tries to astonish the world by such a wild theory; which, being known to emanate from a scientific brain, is taken on blind faith as very scientific and the outcome of SCIENCE.
Are those the opponents Occultism would dread? Most decidedly not. For such theories are no better treated by real (not empirical) Science than our own. Haeckel, hurt in his vanity by du Bois-Reymond, never tires of complaining publicly of the latter's onslaught on his fantastic theory of descent. Rhapsodizing on "the exceedingly rich storehouse of empirical evidence," he calls those "recognised physiologists" who oppose every speculation of his drawn from the said "storehouse" -- ignorant men. "If many men," he declares -- "and among them even some scientists of repute -- hold that the whole of phylogeny is a castle in the air, and genealogical trees (from monkeys?) are empty plays of phantasy, they only in speaking thus demonstrate their ignorance of that wealth of empirical sources of knowledge to which reference has already been made" ("Pedigree of Man," p. 273).
We open Webster's Dictionary and read the definitions of the word "empirical": "Depending upon experience or observation alone, without due regard to modern science and theory." This applies to the Occultists, Spiritualists, Mystics, etc., etc. Again, "an Empiric -- One who confines himself to applying the results of his own observations" (only)
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 665 MR. HUXLEY APPLIES AN "EXTINGUISHER."
(which is Haeckel's case); "one wanting Science . . . . an ignorant and unlicensed practitioner; a quack; a CHARLATAN."
No Occultist or "magician," has ever been treated to any worse epithets. Yet the Occultist remains on his own metaphysical grounds, and does not endeavour to rank his knowledge, the fruits of his personal observation and experience, among the exact sciences of modern learning. He keeps within his legitimate sphere, where he is master. But what is one to think of a rank materialist, whose duty is clearly traced before him, who uses such an expression as this: --
"The origin of man from other mammals, and most directly from the catarrhine ape, is a deductive law, that follows necessarily from the inductive law of the THEORY OF DESCENT." ("Anthropogeny, " p. 392).
A "theory" is simply a hypothesis, a speculation, and no law. To say otherwise is only one of the many liberties taken now-a-days by scientists. They enunciate an absurdity, and then hide it behind the shield of Science. Any deduction from theoretical speculation is no better than a speculation on a speculation. Now Sir W. Hamilton has already shown that the word theory is now used "in a very loose and improper sense" . . . . "that it is convertible into hypothesis, and hypothesis is commonly used as another term for conjecture, whereas the terms 'theory' and 'theoretical' are properly used in opposition to the term practice and practical."
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But modern Science puts an extinguisher on the latter statement, and mocks at the idea. Materialistic philosophers and Idealists of Europe and America may be agreed with the Evolutionists as to the physical origin of man -- yet it will never become a general truth with the true metaphysician, and the latter defies the materialists to make good their arbitrary assumptions. That the ape-theory theme* of Vogt and Darwin, on which the Huxley-Haeckelians have composed of late such extraordinary variations, is far less scientific -- because clashing with the fundamental laws of that theme itself -- than ours can ever be
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The mental barrier between man and ape, characterized by Huxley as an "enormous gap, a distance practically immeasurable "! ! is, indeed, in itself conclusive. Certainly it constitutes a standing puzzle to the materialist, who relies on the frail reed of "natural selection." The physiological differences between Man and the Apes are in reality -- despite a curious community of certain features -- equally striking. Says Dr. Schweinfurth, one of the most cautious and experienced of naturalists: --
"In modern times there are no animals in creation that have attracted more attention from the scientific student than the great quadrumana (the anthropoids), bearing such a striking resemblance to the human form as to have justified the epithet of anthropomorphic being conferred on them. . . . But all investigation at present only leads human intelligence to a confession of its insufficiency; and nowhere is caution more to be advocated, nowhere is premature judgment more to be deprecated than in the attempt to bridge over the MYSTERIOUS CHASM which separates man and beast." "Heart of Africa " i., 520.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 666 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
shown to be, is very easy of demonstration. Let the reader only turn to the excellent work on "Human Species" by the great French naturalist de Quatrefages, and our statement will at once be verified.
Moreover, between the esoteric teaching concerning the origin of man and Darwin's speculations, no man, unless he is a rank materialist, will hesitate. This is the description given by Mr. Darwin of "the earliest ancestors of man."
"They were without doubt once covered with hair; both sexes having beards; their ears were pointed and capable of movement; and their bodies were provided with a tail, having the proper muscles. Their limbs and bodies were acted on by many muscles which now only occasionally reappear in man, but which are still normally present in the quadrumana. . . . The foot, judging from the condition of the great toe in the foetus, was then prehensile, and our progenitors, no doubt, were arboreal in their habits, frequenting some warm forest-clad land, and the males were provided with canine teeth which served as formidable weapons. . . ."*
Darwin connects him with the type of the tailed catarrhines, "and consequently removes him a stage backward in the scale of evolution. The English naturalist is not satisfied to take his stand upon the
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ground of his own doctrines, and, like Haeckel, on this point places himself in direct variance with one of the fundamental laws which constitute the principal charm of Darwinism . . . " And then the learned French naturalist proceeds to show how this fundamental law is broken. "In fact," he says, "in the theory of Darwin, transmutations do not take place, either by chance or in every direction. They are ruled by certain laws which are due to the organization itself. If an organism is once modified in a given direction, it can undergo secondary or tertiary transmutations, but will still preserve the impress of the original. It is the law of permanent characterization, which alone permits Darwin to explain the filiation of groups, their characteristics, and their numerous relations. It is by virtue of this law that all the descendants of the first mollusc have been molluscs; all the descendants of the first vertebrate have been vertebrates. It is clear that this constitutes one of the foundations of the doctrine. . . . It follows that two beings belonging to two distinct types can be referred to a common ancestor, but the one cannot be the descendant of the other"; (p . 106).
"Now man and ape present a very striking contrast in respect to type. Their organs . . . correspond almost exactly term for term: but these
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* A ridiculous instance of evolutionist contradictions is afforded by Schmidt ("Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism," on page 292). He says, "Man's kinship with the apes is not impugned by the bestial strength of the teeth of the male orang or gorilla." Mr. Darwin, on the contrary, endows this fabulous being with teeth used as weapons!
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 667 A WALKER OR A CLIMBER.
organs are arranged after a very different plan. In man they are so arranged that he is essentially a walker, while in apes they necessitate his being a climber. . . . There is here an anatomical and mechanical distinction. . . . A glance at the page where Huxley has figured side by side a human skeleton and the skeletons of the most highly developed apes is a sufficiently convincing proof."
The consequence of these facts, from the point of view of the logical application of the law of permanent characterizations, is that man cannot be descended from an ancestor who is already characterized as an ape, any more than a catarrhine tailless ape can be descended from a tailed catarrhine. A walking animal cannot be descended from a climbing one.
"Vogt, in placing man among the primates, declares without hesitation that the lowest class of apes have passed the landmark (the common ancestor), from which the different types of this family have originated and diverged." (This ancestor of the apes, occult science sees in the lowest human group during the Atlantean period, as shown before.) . . . "We must, then, place the origin of man beyond the last apes," goes on de Quatrefages, thus corroborating our Doctrine, "if we would adhere to one of the laws most emphatically necessary to the Darwinian theory. We then come to the prosimiae of Haeckel, the loris, indris, etc. But those animals also are climbers; we must go further, therefore, in search of our first direct ancestor. But the genealogy by Haeckel brings us from the latter to the marsupials. . . . From men to the Kangaroo the distance is certainly great. Now neither living nor
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extinct fauna show the intermediate types which ought to serve as landmarks. This difficulty causes but slight embarrassment to Darwin.* We know that he considers the want of information upon similar questions as a proof in his favour. Haeckel doubtless is as little embarrassed. He admits the existence of an absolutely theoretical pithecoid man."
"Thus, since it has been proved that, according to Darwinism itself, the origin of man must be placed beyond the eighteenth stage, and since it becomes, in consequence, necessary to fill up the gap between marsupials and man, will Haeckel admit the existence of four unknown intermediate groups instead of one?" asks de Quatrefages. "Will he complete his genealogy in this manner? It is not for me to answer." ("The Human Species," p. 107-108.)
But see Haeckel's famous genealogy, in "The Pedigree of Man," called by him "Ancestral Series of Man." In the "Second Division"
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* According even to a fellow-thinker, Professor Schmidt, Darwin has evolved "a certainly not flattering, and perhaps in many points an incorrect, portrait of our presumptive ancestors in the dawn of humanity." ("Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism, " p. 284.)
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 668 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
(Eighteenth Stage) he describes "Prosimiae, allied to the Loris (Stenops) and Makis (Lemur) as without marsupial bones and cloaca, but with placenta. " And now turn to de Quatrefages' "The Human Species, " pp. 109, 110, and see his proofs, based on the latest discoveries, to show that "the prosimiae of Haeckel have no decidua and a diffuse placenta." They cannot be the ancestors of the apes even, let alone man, according to a fundamental law of Darwin himself, as the great French Naturalist shows. But this does not dismay the "animal theorists" in the least, for self-contradiction and paradoxes are the very soul of modern Darwinism. Witness -- Mr. Huxley. Having himself shown, with regard to fossil man and the "missing link," that "neither in quaternary ages nor at the present time does any intermediary being fill the gap which separates man from the Troglodyte"; and that to "deny the existence of this gap would be as reprehensible as absurd," the great man of Science denies his own words in actu by supporting with all the weight of his scientific authority that most "absurd" of all theories -- the descent of man from an ape!
"This genealogy," says de Quatrefages, "is wrong throughout, and is founded on a material error." Indeed, Haeckel bases his descent of man on the 17th and 18th stages (See Aveling's "Pedigree of Man, " p. 77), the marsupialia and prosimiae -- (genus Haeckelii?). Applying the latter term to the Lemuridae -- hence making of them animals with a placenta -- he commits a zoological blunder. For after having himself divided mammals according to their anatomical differences into two groups: the indeciduata, which have no decidua (or special membrane uniting the placentae), and the deciduata, those who possess it: he includes the prosimiae in the latter group. Now we have shown elsewhere what other men of science had to say to this. As de Quatrefages says, "The anatomical investigations of . . . Milne Edwards and Grandidier upon these animals . . . place it beyond all doubt that the
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prosimiae of Haeckel have no decidua and a diffuse placenta. They are indeciduata. Far from any possibility of their being the ancestors of the apes, according to the principles laid down by Haeckel himself, they cannot be regarded even as the ancestors of the zonoplacental mammals . . . and ought to be connected with the pachydermata, the edentata, and the cetacea"; (p . 110). And yet Haeckel's inventions pass off with some as exact science!
The above mistake, if indeed, one, is not even hinted at in Haeckel's "Pedigree of Man," translated by Aveling. If the excuse may stand good that at the time the famous "genealogies" were made, "the embryogenesis of the prosimiae was not known," it is familiar now. We shall see whether the next edition of Aveling's translation will have this important error rectified, or if the 17th and 18th stages remain
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 669 A PITHECOID MAN WANTED.
as they are to blind the profane, as one of the real intermediate links. But, as the French naturalist observes -- "their (Darwin's and Haeckel's) process is always the same, considering the unknown as a proof in favour of their theory." (Ibid.)
It comes to this. Grant to man an immortal Spirit and Soul; endow the whole animate and inanimate creation with the monadic principle gradually evolving from the latent and passive into active and positive polarity -- and Haeckel will not have a leg to stand upon, whatever his admirers may say.
But there are important divergences even between Darwin and Haeckel. While the former makes us proceed from the tailed catarrhine, Haeckel traces our hypothetical ancestor to the tailless ape, though, at the same time, he places him in a hypothetical "stage" immediately preceding this: "Menocerca with tails" (19th stage).
Nevertheless, we have one thing in common with the Darwinian school: it is the law of gradual and extremely slow evolution, embracing many million years. The chief quarrel, it appears, is with regard to the nature of the primitive "Ancestor." We shall be told that the Dhyan Chohan, or the "progenitor" of Manu, is a hypothetical being unknown on the physical plane. We reply that it was believed in by the whole of antiquity, and by nine-tenths of the present humanity; whereas not only is the pithecoid man, or "ape-man," a purely hypothetical creature of Haeckel's creation, unknown and untraceable on this earth, but further its genealogy -- as invented by him -- clashes with scientific facts and all the known data of modern discovery in Zoology. It is simply absurd, even as a fiction. As de Quatrefages demonstrates in a few words, Haeckel "admits the existence of an absolutely theoretical pithecoid man" -- a hundred times more difficult to accept than any Deva ancestor. And it is not the only instance in which he proceeds in a similar manner in order to complete his genealogical table; and he admits very naively his inventions himself. Does he not confess the non-existence of his sozura (14th stage) -- a creature entirely unknown to science -- by confessing over his own signature, that -- "The proof of its existence arises from the necessity of an intermediate type between the 13th and the 14th stages"!
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If so, we might maintain with as much scientific right, that the proof of the existence of our three ethereal races, and the three-eyed men of the Third and Fourth Root-Races "arises also from the necessity of an intermediate type" between the animal and the gods. What reason would the Haeckelians have to protest in this special case?
Of course there is a ready answer: "Because we do not grant the presence of the monadic essence." The manifestation of the Logos as individual consciousness in the animal and human creation is not accepted
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 670 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
by exact science, nor does it cover the whole ground, of course. But the failures of science and its arbitrary assumptions are far greater on the whole than* any "extravagant" esoteric doctrine can ever furnish. Even thinkers of the school of Von Hartmann have become tainted with the general epidemic. They accept the Darwinian Anthropology (more or less), though they also postulate the individual Ego as a manifestation of the Unconscious (the Western presentation of the Logos or Primeval Divine Thought). They say the evolution of the physical man is from the animal, but that mind in its various phases is altogether a thing apart from material facts, though organism (as an upadhi) is necessary for ITS manifestation.
-------
PLASTIDULAR SOULS, AND CONSCIOUS NERVE-CELLS.
But one can never see the end of such wonders with Haeckel and his school, whom the Occultists and Theosophists have every right to consider as materialistic tramps trespassing on private metaphysical grounds. Not satisfied with the paternity of Bathybius (Haeckelii), "plastidule souls,"** and "atom-
souls" are now invented by them, on the basis of purely blind mechanical forces of matter. We are informed that "the study of the evolution of soul-life shows that this has worked its way up from the lower stages of the simple cell-soul, through an astonishing series of gradual stages in evolution, up to the soul of man." ("Present Position of Evolution, " p. 266.)
"Astonishing" -- truly, based as this wild speculation is on the Consciousness of the "nerve cells." For as he tells us, "Little as we are in a position, at the present time, to explain fully the nature of consciousness,*** yet the comparative and genetic observation of it clearly shows that it is only a higher and more complex function of the nerve cells. " (Ibid, note 22.)
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Of course the Esoteric system of Fourth Round Evolution is much more complex than the paragraph and quotations referred to categorically assert. It is practically a reversal -- both in embryological inference and succession in time of species -- of the current Western conception.
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** According to Haeckel, there are also cell-souls; "an inorganic molecular soul" without, and a "plastidular soul with (or possessing) memory". What are our esoteric teachings to this? The divine and human soul of the seven principles in man must, of course, pale and give away before such a stupendous revelation!
*** A valuable confession, this. Only it makes the attempt to trace the descent of Consciousness in man as well as of his physical body from Bathybius Haeckelii still more humorous and empirical, in the sense of Webster's second definition.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 671 HAECKEL CREATES SOULS.
Mr. Herbert Spencer's song on Consciousness -- is sung, it seems, and may henceforth be safely stored up in the lumber room of obsolete speculations. Where, however, do Haeckel's "complex functions" of his scientific "nerve-cells" land him? Once more right into the Occult and mystic teachings of the Kabala about the descent of souls as conscious and unconscious atoms; among the Pythagorean MONAD and the monads of Leibnitz -- and the "gods, monads, and atoms" of our esoteric teaching;* into the dead letter of Occult teachings, left to the amateur Kabalists and professors of ceremonial magic. For this is what he says, while explaining his newly-coined terminology: --
"Plastidule-Souls; the plastidules or protoplasmic molecules, the smallest, homogeneous parts of the protoplasm are, on our plastic theory, to be regarded as the active factors of all life-functions. The plastidular soul differs from the inorganic molecular soul in that it possesses memory. " ("Pedigree of Man, " Note, p. 296.)
This he develops in his mirific lecture on the "Perigenesis of the Plastidule, or the wave-motions of living particles." It is an improvement on Darwin's theory of "Pangenesis," and a further approach, a cautious move towards "magic." The former is a conjecture that certain of the actual and identical atoms which had belonged to ancestral bodies "are thus transmitted through their descendants for generation after generation, so that we are literally 'flesh of the flesh' of the primeval creature who has developed into man in the later . . . period" -- explains the author of "The Modern Zoroastrian" (in "Primitive Polarities, " etc.). The latter (Occultism) teaches that -- (a) the life-atoms of our (Prana) life-
principle are never entirely lost when a man dies. That the atoms best impregnated with the life-
principle (an independent, eternal, conscious factor) are partially transmitted from father to son by heredity, and partially are drawn once more together and become the animating principle of the new body in every new incarnation of
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Those who take the opposite view and look upon the existence of the human soul, -- "as a supernatural, a spiritual phenomenon, conditioned by forces altogether different from ordinary physical forces," . . . "mock," he thinks, "in consequence, all explanation that is simply scientific." They have no right it seems, to assert that "psychology is, in part, or in whole, a spiritual science, not a physical one." . . . The new discovery by Haeckel (one taught for thousands of years in all the Eastern religions, however), that the animals have souls, will, and sensation, hence soul-functions, leads him
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to make of psychology the science of the zoologists. The archaic teaching that the "Soul" (the animal and human souls, or Kama and Manas) "has its developmental history" -- is claimed by Haekel as his own discovery and innovation on an "untrodden (?) path"! He (Haeckel) will work out the comparative evolution of the soul in man and in other animals. . . . "The comparative morphology of the soul-organs, and the comparative physiology of the soul-functions, both founded on Evolution, thus become the psychological (really materialistic) problem of the scientific man." (Cell-souls and Soul-cells, p. 137, "Pedigree of Man. ")
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 672 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
the Monads. Because (b), as the individual Soul is ever the same, so are the atoms of the lower principles (body, its astral, or life double, etc.), drawn as they are by affinity and Karmic law always to the same individuality in a series of various bodies, etc., etc.*
To be just, and, to say the least, logical, our modern Haeckelians ought to pass a resolution that henceforth the "Perigenesis of the Plastidule," and like lectures, should be bound up with those on "Esoteric Buddhism," and "The Seven Principles in Man." Thus the public will have a chance, at any rate, of judging after comparison which of the two teachings is the most or the least ABSURD, even from the standpoint of materialistic and exact Science!
Now the Occultists, who trace every atom in the universe, whether an aggregate or single, to One Unity, or Universal Life ; who do not recognize that anything in Nature can be inorganic; who know of no such thing as dead matter -- the Occultists are consistent with their doctrine of Spirit and Soul when speaking of memory in every atom, of will and sensation. But what can a materialist mean by the qualification? The law of biogenesis, in the sense applied to it by the Haeckelians -- "is the result of the ignorance on the part of the man of science of occult physics." We know and speak of "life-
atoms" -- and of "sleeping-atoms" -- because we regard these two forms of energy -- the kinetic and the potential -- as produced by one and the same force or the ONE LIFE, and regard the latter as the source and mover of all. But what is it that furnished with energy, and especially with memory, the "plastidular souls" of Haeckel? The "wave motion of living particles" becomes comprehensible on the theory of a Spiritual ONE LIFE, of a universal Vital principle independent of our matter, and manifesting as atomic energy only on our plane of consciousness. It is that which, individualized in the human cycle, is transmitted from father to son.
Now Haeckel, modifying Darwin's theory, suggests "most plausibly," as the author of the "Modern Zoroastrian" thinks, "that not the identical atoms, but their peculiar motions and mode of aggregation have been thus transmitted" (by heredity).
If Haeckel, or any other Scientist, knew more than any of them does of the nature of the atom, he would not have improved the occasion in this way. For he only states, in a more metaphysical language than Darwin, one and the same thing. The life-principle, or life energy,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
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* (See "Transmigration of the Life Atoms," "Five years of Theosophy, " p. 533-539). The collective aggregation of these atoms forms thus the Anima Mundi of our Solar system, the soul of our little universe, each atom of which is of course a soul, a monad, a little universe endowed with consciousness, hence with memory ( Vol. I., Part III., "Gods, Monads and Atoms.")
[[Vol. 2, Page 673]] THE MEANING OF SOUL WITH HAECKEL.
which is omnipresent, eternal, indestructible, is a force and a PRINCIPLE as noumenon, atoms, as phenomenon. It is one and the same thing, and cannot be considered as separate except in materialism.*
Further, Haeckel enunciates concerning the Atom Souls that which, at first sight, appears as occult as a Monad of Leibnitz. "The recent contest as to the nature of atoms, which we must regard as in some form or other the ultimate factors in all physical and chemical processes," he tells us -- "seems to be capable of the easiest settlement, by the conception that these very minute masses possess, as centres of force, a persistent soul, that every atom has sensation and the power of movement."
He does not say a word concerning the fact that this is Leibnitz's theory, and one pre-eminently occult. Nor does he understand the term "Soul" as we do; for, with Haeckel it is simply, along with consciousness, the production of the grey matter of the brain, a thing which, as the "cell-soul, is as indissolubly bound up with the protoplasmic body as is the human soul with the brain and spinal cord." (Ibid.) He rejects the conclusions of Kant, Herbert Spencer, of du Bois-Reymond and Tyndall. The latter expresses the opinion of all the great men of science, as of the greatest thinkers of this and the past ages, in saying that "the passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of Consciousness is unthinkable. Were our minds and senses so . . . illuminated as to enable us to see and feel the very molecules of the brain; were we capable of following all their motions, all their groupings . . . electric discharges . . . we should be as far as ever from the solution of the problem . . . The chasm between the two classes of Phenomena would still remain intellectually impassable." But the complex function of the nerve-cells of the great German EMPIRIC, or, in other words, his Consciousness, will not permit him to follow the conclusions of the greatest thinkers of our globe. He is greater than they. He asserts this, and protests against all. "No one has the right
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* In "The Transmigration of the Life-Atoms," we say, to explain better a position which is but too often misunderstood: -- "It is omnipresent . . . . though (on this plane of manifestation) often in a dormant state -- as in stone. The definition which states that when this indestructible force is disconnected with one set of atoms (molecules ought to have been said) it becomes immediately attracted by others, does not imply that it entirely abandons the first set (because the atoms themselves would then disappear), but only that it transfers its vis viva, or life power -- the energy of motion, to another set. But because it manifests itself in the next set as what is called Kinetic energy, it does not follow that the first set is deprived of it altogether; for it is still in it, as potential energy or life latent," etc., etc. Now what can Haeckel mean by his "not identical atoms but their peculiar motion and mode
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of aggregation," if it is not the same Kinetic energy we have been explaining? He must have read Paracelsus and studied "Five Years of Theosophy," without properly digesting the teachings, before evolving such theories.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 674 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
to hold that in the future we (Haeckel) shall not be able to pass beyond those limits of our knowledge that to day seem impassable"; and he quotes from Darwin's introduction to the "Descent of Man" these words, which he modestly applies to his scientific opponents and himself: "It is always those who know little, and not those who know much, that positively affirm that this or that problem will never be solved by Science."
The world may rest satisfied. That day is not far off when the "thrice great" Haeckel will have shown (to his own satisfaction) that the consciousness of Sir I. Newton was, physiologically speaking, but the reflex action (or minus consciousness) caused by the peri-genesis of the plastidules of our common ancestor and old friend, the Moneron Haeckelii. The fact that the said "Bathybius" has been found out and exposed as a pretender simulating the organic substance it was not; and since, among the children of men, Lot's wife alone (and even this, only after her disagreeable metamorphosis into a salt pillar) could claim the pinch of salt it is, as her forefather -- will not dismay him at all. He will go on asserting, as coolly as he has always done, that it was no more than the peculiar mode and motion of the ghost of the long-vanished atoms of our "Father Bathybius," which, transmitted across aeons of time into the cell-tissue of the grey matter of the brains of every great man, caused Sophocles and AEschylus, as well as Shakespeare, to write their tragedies, Newton, his "Principia," Humboldt, his "Cosmos," etc. etc. It prompted Haeckel to invent Graeco-Latin names three inches long, pretending to mean a good deal, and meaning -- nothing.
Of course we are quite aware that the true, honest evolutionist agrees with us; and that he is the first to say that not only is the geological record imperfect, but that there are enormous gaps in the series of hitherto discovered fossils, which can never be filled. He will tell us, moreover, that "no evolutionist assumes that man is descended from any existing ape or any extinct ape either, " but that man and apes originated probably aeons back, in some common root stock. Still, as de Quatrefages points out, he will claim as an evidence corroborating his (the evolutionist's) claim, even this wealth of absent proofs, saying that "all living forms have not been preserved in the fossil series, the chances of preservation being few and far between," even primitive man "burying or burning his dead" (A. Wilson). This is just what we ourselves claim. It is just as possible that future should have in store for us the discovery of the giant skeleton of an Atlantean, 30ft. high, as the fossil of a pithecoid "missing link": only the former is more probable.
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Next Section
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Contents
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The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 2
Theosophical University Press Online Edition
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 675 DRYOPITHECUS, THE MISSING LINK.
§ III.
THE FOSSIL RELICS OF MAN AND THE
ANTHROPOID APE.
-------
A.
GEOLOGICAL FACTS BEARING ON THE QUESTION OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP.
THE data derived from scientific research as to "primeval man" and the ape lend no countenance to theories deriving the former from the latter. "Where, then, must we look for primeval man?" still queries Mr. Huxley, after having vainly searched for him in the very depths of the quaternary strata. "Was the oldest Homo sapiens Pliocene or Miocene, or yet more ancient? In still older strata do the fossilized bones of an ape more anthropoid, or a man more pithecoid than any yet known, await the researches of some unborn palaeontologist? Time will show . . . ." ("Man's Place in Nature," p. 159).
It will -- undeniably -- and thus vindicate the anthropology of the Occultists. Meanwhile, in his eagerness to vindicate Mr. Darwin's Descent of Man, Mr. Boyd Dawkins believes he has all but found the "missing link" -- in theory. It was due to theologians more than to geologists that, till nearly 1860, man had been considered a relic no older than the Adamic orthodox 6,000 years. As Karma would have it though, it was left to a French Abbe -- l'abbe Bourgeois -- to give this easy-going theory even a worse blow than had been given to it by the discoveries of Boucher de Perthes. Everyone knows that the Abbe discovered and brought to light good evidence that man already existed during the Miocene period; for flints of undeniably human making were excavated from Miocene strata. In the words of the author of "Modern Science and Modern Thought": --
"They must either have been chipped by man, or, as Mr. Boyd Dawkins supposes, by the Dryopithecus or some other anthropoid ape which had a dose of intelligence so much superior to the gorilla, or chimpanzee, as to be able to fabricate tools. But in this case the problem would be solved and the missing link discovered, for such an ape might well have been the ancestor of Palaeolithic man."
Or -- the descendant of Eocene Man, which is a variant offered to the theory. Meanwhile, the Dryopithecus with such fine mental endowments is yet to be discovered. On the other hand, Neolithic and even Palaeolithic man having become an absolute certainty, -- and, as the same author justly observes: "If 100,000,000 years have elapsed since
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 676 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
the earth became sufficiently solidified to support vegetable and animal life, the Tertiary period may have lasted for 5,000,000; or for 10,000,000 years, if the life-sustaining order of things has lasted, as Lyell supposes, for at least 200,000,000 years" -- why should not another theory be tried? Let us carry man, as an hypothesis, to the close of Mesozoic times -- admitting argumenti causa that the (much more recent) higher apes then existed! This would allow ample time to man and the modern apes to have diverged from the mythical "ape more anthropoid," and even for the latter to have degenerated into those that are found mimicking man in using "branches of trees as clubs, and cracking cocoa-nuts with hammer and stones."* Some savage tribes of hillmen in India build their abodes on trees, just as the gorillas build their dens. The question, which of the two, the beast or the man, has become the imitator of the other, is scarcely an open one, even granting Mr. Boyd Dawkins' theory. The fanciful character of his hypothesis, is, however, generally admitted. It is argued that while in the Pliocene and Miocene periods there were true apes and baboons, and man was undeniably contemporaneous with the former of those times -- though as we see orthodox anthropology still hesitates in the teeth of facts to place him in the era of the Dryopithecus, which latter "has been considered by some anatomists as in some respects superior to the chimpanzee or the gorilla" -- yet, in the Eocene there have been no other fossil primates unearthed and no pithecoid stocks found save a few extinct lemurian forms. And we find it also hinted that the Dryopithecus may have been the "missing link," though the brain of the creature no more warrants the theory than does the brain of the modern gorilla. ( Vide also Gaudry's speculations.)
Now we would ask who among the Scientists is ready to prove that there was no man in existence in the early Tertiary period? What is it that prevented his presence? Hardly thirty years ago his existence any farther back than 6, or 7,000 years was indignantly denied. Now he is refused admission into the Eocene age. Next century it may become a question whether man was not contemporary with the "flying Dragons;" the pterodactyl, the plesiosaurus and iguanodon, etc., etc. Let us listen, however, to the echo of Science.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* This the way primitive man must have acted? We do not know of men, not even of savages, in our age, who are known to have imitated the apes who live side by side with them in the forests of America and the islands. We do know of large apes who, tamed and living in houses, will mimic men to the length of donning hats and coats. The writer had personally a chimpanzee who, without being taught, opened a newspaper and pretended to read in it. It is the descending generations, the children, who mimic their parents -- not the reverse.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 677 INSURMOUNTABLE DIFFICULTIES.
"Now wherever anthropoid apes lived, it is clear that, whether as a question of
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anatomical structure, or of climate and surroundings, man, or some creature which was the ancestor of man, might have lived also. Anatomically speaking, apes and monkeys are as much special variations of the mammalian type as man, whom they resemble, bone for bone, and muscle for muscle, and the physical animal man is simply an instance of the quadrumanous type specialised for erect posture and a larger brain* . . . . If he could survive, as we know he did, the adverse conditions and extreme vicissitudes of the Glacial period, there is no reason why he might not have lived in the semi-tropical climate of the Miocene period, when a genial climate extended even to Greenland and Spitzbergen . . . " ("Modern Science and Modern Thought, " p. 152.)
While most of the men of Science, who are uncompromising in their belief in the descent of man from an "extinct anthropoid mammal," will not accept even the bare tenability of any other theory than an ancestor common to man and the Dryopithecus, it is refreshing to find in a work of real scientific value such a margin for compromise. Indeed, it is as wide as it can be made under the circumstances, i.e., without immediate danger of getting knocked off one's feet by the tidal wave of "science-adulation." Believing that the difficulty of accounting "for the development of intellect and morality by evolution is not so great as that presented by the difference as to physical structure** between man and the highest animal," the same author says: --
"But it is not so easy to see how this difference of physical structure arose, and how a being came into existence which had such a brain and hand, and such undeveloped capabilities for an almost unlimited progress. The difficulty is this: the difference in structure between the lowest existing race of man and the highest existing ape is too great to admit of the possibility of one being the direct descendant of the other. The negro in some respects makes a slight approximation towards the Simian type. His skull is narrower, his brain less capacious, his muzzle more projecting, his arm longer than those of the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* It is asked, whether it would change one iota of the scientific truth and fact contained in the above sentence if it were to read: "the ape is simply an instance of the biped type specialized for going on all fours, generally, and a smaller brain." Esoterically speaking, this is the real truth, and not the reverse.
** We cannot follow Mr. Laing here. When avowed Darwinists like Huxley point to "the great gulf which intervenes between the lowest ape and the highest man in intellectual power," the "enormous gulf . . . between them," the "immeasurable and practically infinite divergence of the Human from the Simian stirps" (Man's Place in Nature, pp. 102-3); when even the physical basis of mind -- the brain -- so vastly exceeds in size that of the highest existing apes; when men like Wallace are forced to invoke the agency of extra-terrestrial intelligences in order to explain the rise of such a creature as the Pithecanthropus alalus, or speechless savage of Haeckel, to the level of the large-brained and moral man of to-day -- it is idle to dismiss Evolutionist puzzles so lightly. If the structural evidence is so unconvincing and, taken as a whole, so hostile to Darwinism, the difficulties as to the "how" of the Evolution of the human mind by natural selection are tenfold greater.
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 678 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
average European man. Still he is essentially a man, and separated by a wide gulf from the chimpanzee or the gorilla. Even the idiot or cretin, whose brain is no larger and intelligence no greater than that of the chimpanzee, is an arrested man, not an ape."
"If, therefore, the Darwinian theory holds good in the case of man and ape, we must go back to some common ancestor from whom both may have originated . . . . But to establish this as a fact and not a theory we require to find that ancestral form, or, at any rate, some intermediate forms tending towards it . . . . in other words . . . . the missing link! Now it must be admitted that, hitherto, not only have no such missing links been discovered, but the oldest known human sculls and skeletons which date from the Glacial period, and are probably at least 100,000 years old, show no very decided approximation towards any such pre-human type. On the contrary, one of the oldest types, that of the men of the sepulchral cave of Cro-Magnon,* is that of a fine race, tall in stature, large in brain, and on the whole superior to many of the existing races of mankind. The reply of course is that the time is insufficient, and if man and the ape had a common ancestor, that as a highly developed anthropoid ape, certainly, and man, probably, already existed in the Miocene period, such ancestor must be sought still further back at a distance compared with which the whole Quaternary period sinks into insignificance . . . . It may well make us hesitate before we admit that man . . . is alone an exception. . . . This is more difficult to believe, as the ape family which man (?) so closely resembles . . . . contains numerous branches which graduate into one another, but the extremes of which differ more widely than man does from the highest of the ape series. If a special creation is required for man, must there not have been special creations for the chimpanzee, the gorilla, the orang, and for at least 100 different species of ape and monkeys which are all built on the same lines?" (p. 182, "Modern Science, etc.")
There was a "special creation" for man, and a "special creation" for the ape, his progeny; only on other lines than ever bargained for by Science. Albert Gaudry and others give some weighty reasons why man cannot be regarded as the crown of an ape-stock. When one finds that not only was the "primeval savage" (?) a reality in the Miocene times, but that, as de Mortillet shows, the flint relics he has left behind him were splintered by fire in that remote epoch; when we learn that the Dryopithecus, alone of the anthropoids, appears in those strata, what is the natural inference? That the Darwinians are in a quandary. The very manlike Gibbon is still in the same low grade of development, as it was when it co-
existed with Man at the close of the Glacial Period. It has not appreciably altered since the Pliocene times. Now there is little to choose between the Dryopithecus and the existing anthropoids -- gibbon, gorilla, etc. If, then, the Darwinian theory is all-sufficient, how are we to "explain" the evolution of this
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* A race which MM. de Quatrefages and Hamy regard as a branch of the same stock whence the Canary Island Guanches sprung -- offshoots of the Atlanteans, in short.
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 679 MATERIALISM IS PUZZLED.
ape into Man during the first half of the Miocene? The time is far too short for such a theoretical transformation. The extreme slowness with which variation in species supervenes renders the thing inconceivable -- more especially on the Natural Selection hypothesis. The enormous mental and structural gulf between a savage acquainted with fire and the mode of kindling it, and a brutal anthropoid, is too much to bridge even in idea, during so contracted a period. Let the Evolutionists push back the process into the preceding Eocene, if they prefer to do so; let them even trace both Man and Dryopithecus to a common ancestor; the unpleasant consideration has, nevertheless, to be faced that in Eocene strata the anthropoid fossils are as conspicuous by their absence, as is the fabulous pithecanthropus of Haeckel. Is an exit out of this cul de sac to be found by an appeal to the "unknown," and a reference with Darwin to the "imperfection of the geological record"? So be it; but the same right of appeal must be accorded equally to the Occultists, instead of remaining the monopoly of puzzled materialism. Physical man, we say, existed before the first bed of the Cretaceous rocks was deposited. In the early part of the Tertiary Age, the most brilliant civilization the world has ever known flourished at a period when the Haeckelian man-ape is conceived to have roamed through the primeval forests, and Mr. Grant Allen's putative ancestor to have swung himself from bough to bough with his hairy mates, the degenerated Liliths of the Third Race Adam. Yet there were no anthropoid apes in the brighter days of the civilization of the Fourth Race; but Karma is a mysterious law, and no respecter of persons. The monsters bred in sin and shame by the Atlantean giants, "blurred copies" of their bestial sires, and hence of modern man (Huxley), now mislead and overwhelm with error the speculative Anthropologist of European Science.
Where did the first men live? Some Darwinists say in Western Africa, some in Southern Asia, others, again, believe in an independent origin of human stocks in Asia and America from a Simian ancestry (Vogt). Haeckel, however, advances gaily to the charge. Starting from his "prosimiae" . . . "the ancestor common to all other catarrhini, including man" -- a "link" now, however, disposed of for good by recent anatomical discoveries! -- he endeavours to find a habitat for the primeval Pithecanthropus alalus. "In all probability it (the transformation of animal into man) occurred in Southern Asia, in which region many evidences are forthcoming that here was the original home of the different species of men. Probably Southern Asia itself was not the earliest cradle of the human race, but LEMURIA, a continent that lay to the south of Asia, and sank later on beneath the surface of the Indian Ocean. ( Vide infra, "Scientific and geological proofs of the former existence of several
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 680 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
submerged continents.") "The period during which the evolution of the anthropoid apes into apelike men took place was probably the last part of the tertiary period, the Pliocene Age, and perhaps the Miocene, its forerunner." (Pedigree of Man, p. 73.)
Of the above speculations, the only one of any worth is that referring to Lemuria, which was the cradle of mankind -- of the physical sexual creature who materialized through long aeons out of the ethereal
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hermaphrodites. Only, if it is proved that Easter Island is an actual relic of Lemuria, we must believe that according to Haeckel the "dumb ape-men," just removed from a brutal mammalian monster, built the gigantic portrait-statues, some of which are now in the British Museum. Critics are mistaken in terming Haeckelian doctrines "abominable, revolutionary, immoral" -- though materialism is the legitimate outcome of the ape-ancestor myth -- they are simply too absurd to demand disproof.
-------
B.
WESTERN EVOLUTIONISM: THE COMPARATIVE ANATOMY OF MAN AND
THE ANTHROPOID IN NO WAY A CONFIRMATION OF DARWINISM.
We are told that while every other heresy against modern science may be disregarded, this, our denial of the Darwinian theory as applied to Man, will be the one "unpardonable" sin. The Evolutionists stand firm as rock on the evidence of similarity of structure between the ape and the man. The anatomical evidence, it is urged, is quite overpowering in this case; it is bone for bone, and muscle for muscle, even the brain conformation being very much the same.
Well, what of that? All this was known before King Herod; and the writers of the Ramayana, the poets who sang the prowess and valour of Hanuman, the monkey-God, "whose feats were great and Wisdom never rivalled," must have known as much about his anatomy and brain as does any Haeckel or Huxley in our modern day. Volumes upon volumes were written upon this similarity, in antiquity as in more modern times. Therefore, there is nothing new whatever given to the world or to philosophy, in such volumes as Mivart's "Man and Apes," or Messrs. Fiske and Huxley's defence of Darwinism. But what are those crucial proofs of man's descent from a pithecoid ancestor? If the Darwinian theory is not the true one -- we are told -- if man and ape do not descend from a common ancestor, then we are called upon to explain the reason of: --
(I.) The similarity of structure between the two; the fact that the
[[Vol. 2, Page 681]] HUXLEY CALLS THE DARWINISTS TO ORDER.
higher animal world -- man and beast -- is physically of one type or pattern.
(II.) The presence of rudimentary organs in man, i.e., traces of former organs now atrophied by disuse. Some of these organs, it is asserted, could not have had any scope for employment, except for a semi-
animal, semi-arboreal monster. Why, again, do we find in Man those "rudimentary" organs (as useless as its rudimentary wing is to the Apteryx of Australia), the vermiform appendix of the coecum, the ear muscles,* the "rudimentary tail" (with which children are still sometimes born), etc., etc.?
Such is the war cry; and the cackle of the smaller fry among the Darwinians is louder, if possible, than even that of the scientific Evolutionists themselves!
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Furthermore, the latter themselves -- with their great leader Mr. Huxley, and such eminent zoologists as Mr. Romanes and others -- while defending the Darwinian theory, are the first to confess the almost insuperable difficulties in the way of its final demonstration. And there are as great men of science as the above-named, who deny, most emphatically, the uncalled-for assumption, and loudly denounce the unwarrantable exaggerations on the question of this supposed similarity. It is sufficient to glance at the works of Broca, Gratiolet, of Owen, Pruner-Bey, and finally, at the last great work of de Quatrefages, "Introduction a l'Etude des Races humaines, Questions generales, " to discover the fallacy of the Evolutionists. We may say more: the exaggerations concerning such similarity of structure between man and the anthropomorphous ape have become so glaring and absurd of late, that even Mr. Huxley found himself forced to protest against the too sanguine expectations. It was that great anatomist personally who called the "smaller fry" to order, by declaring in one of his articles that the differences in the structure of the human body and that of the highest anthropomorphous pithecoid, were not only far from being trifling and unimportant, but were, on the contrary, very great and suggestive: "each of the bones of the gorilla has its own specific impress on it that distinguishes it from a similar human bone." Among the existing creatures there is not one single intermediate form that could fill the gap between man and the ape. To ignore that gap, he added, "was as uncalled-for as it was absurd."**
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Professor Owen believes that these muscles -- the attollens, retrahens, and attrahens aurem -- were actively functioning in men of the Stone Age. This may or may not be the case. The question falls under the ordinary "occult" explanation, and involves no postulate of an "animal progenitor" to solve it.
** Quoted in the Review of the "Introduction a l'Etude des Races Humaines, " by de Quatrefages. We have not Mr. Huxley's work at hand to quote from. Or to cite another good authority: -- "We find one of the most man-like apes (gibbon), in the [[Footnote continued on next page]]
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 682 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
Finally, the absurdity of such an unnatural descent of man is so palpable in the face of all the proofs and evidence of the skull of the pithecoid as compared to that of man, that even de Quatrefages resorted unconsciously to our esoteric theory by saying that it is rather the apes that can claim descent from man than vice versa. As proven by Gratiolet, with regard to the cavities of the brain of the anthropoids, in which species that organ develops in an inverse ratio to what would be the case were the corresponding organs in man really the product of the development of the said organs in the apes -- the size of the human skull and its brain, as well as the cavities, increase with the individual development of man. His intellect develops and increases with age, while his facial bones and jaws diminish and straighten, thus being more and more spiritualized: whereas with the ape it is the reverse. In its youth the anthropoid is far more intelligent and good-natured, while with age it becomes duller; and, as its skull recedes and seems to diminish as it grows, its facial bones and jaws develop, the brain being finally crushed, and thrown entirely back, to make with every day more room for the animal type. The organ of thought -- the brain -- recedes and diminishes, entirely conquered and replaced by that of the wild beast -- the jaw apparatus.
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Thus, as wittily remarked in the French work, a gorilla would have a perfect right to address an Evolutionist, claiming its right of descent from himself. It would say to him, "We, anthropoid apes, form a retrogressive departure from the human type, and therefore our development and evolution are expressed by a transition from a human-like to an animal-like structure of organism; but in what way could you, men, descend from us -- how can you form a continuation of our genus? For, to make this possible, your organization would have to differ still more than ours does from the human structure, it would have to approach still closer to that of the beast than ours does; and in such a case justice demands that you should give up to us your place in nature. You are lower than we are, once that you insist on tracing your genealogy from our kind; for the structure of our organization and its development are such that we are unable to generate forms of a higher organization than our own."
This is where the Occult Sciences agree entirely with de Quatre-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] tertiary period, and this species is still in the same low grade, and side by side with it at the end of the Ice-period, man is found in the same high grade as to-
day, the ape not having approximated more nearly to the man, and modern man not having become further removed from the ape than the first (fossil) man . . . these facts contradict a theory of constant progressive development." (Pfaff.) When, according to Vogt, the the average Australian brain = 99.35 cub. inches; that of the gorilla 30.51 cub. in., and that of the chimpanzee only 25.45, the giant gap to be bridged by the advocate of "Natural" Selection becomes apparent.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 683 THE DARWINISTS AND THEIR OPPONENTS.
fages. Owing to the very type of his development man cannot descend from either an ape or an ancestor common to both, but shows his origin from a type far superior to himself. And this type is the "Heavenly man" -- the Dhyan Chohans, or the Pitris so-called, as shown in the first Part of this volume. On the other hand, the pithecoids, the orang-outang, the gorilla, and the chimpanzee can, and, as the Occult Sciences teach, do, descend from the animalized Fourth human Root-Race, being the product of man and an extinct species of mammal -- whose remote ancestors were themselves the product of Lemurian sexstone -- which lived in the Miocene age. The ancestry of this semi-human monster is explained in the Stanzas as originating in the sin of the "Mind-less" races of the middle Third Race period.
When it is borne in mind that all forms which now people the earth, are so many variations on basic types originally thrown off by the MAN of the Third and Fourth Round, such an evolutionist argument as that insisting on the "unity of structural plan" characterising all vertebrates, loses its edge. The basic types referred to were very few in number in comparison with the multitude of organisms to which they ultimately gave rise; but a general unity of type has, nevertheless, been preserved throughout the ages. The economy of Nature does not sanction the co-existence of several utterly opposed "ground plans" of organic evolution on one planet. Once, however, that the general drift of the occult explanation is formulated, inference as to detail may well be left to the intuitive reader.
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Similarly with the important question of the "rudimentary" organs discovered by anatomists in the human organism. Doubtless this line of argument, when wielded by Darwin and Haeckel against their European adversaries, proved of great weight. Anthropologists, who ventured to dispute the derivation of man from an animal ancestry, were sorely puzzled how to deal with the presence of gill-clefts, with the "tail" problem, and so on. Here again Occultism comes to our assistance with the necessary data.
The fact is that, as previously stated, the human type is the repertory of all potential organic forms, and the central point from which these latter radiate. In this postulate we find a true "Evolution " or "Unfolding" -- a sense which cannot be said to belong to the mechanical theory of natural selection. Criticising Darwin's inference from "rudiments," an able writer remarks: "Why is it not just as probably a true hypothesis to suppose that Man was created with the rudimentary sketches in his organization, and that they became useful appendages in the lower animals into which man degenerated, as to suppose that these parts existed in full development in the lower animals out of which man was generated?" ("Creation or Evolution?" Geo. T. Curtis, p. 76.)
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 684 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
Read for "into which Man degenerated," "the prototypes which man shed in the course of his astral developments," and an aspect of the true esoteric solution is before us. But a wider generalization is now to be formulated.
So far as our present Fourth Round terrestrial period is concerned, the mammalian fauna are alone to be regarded as traceable to prototypes shed by Man. The amphibia, birds, reptiles, fishes, etc., are the resultants of the Third Round, astral fossil forms stored up in the auric envelope of the Earth and projected into physical objectivity subsequent to the deposition of the first Laurentian rocks. "Evolution" has to deal with the progressive modifications, which palaeontology shows to have affected the lower animal and vegetable kingdoms in the course of geological time. It does not, and from the nature of things cannot, touch on the subject of the pre-physical types which served as the basis for future differentiation. Tabulate the general laws controlling the development of physical organisms it certainly may, and to a certain extent it has acquitted itself ably of the task.
To return to the immediate subject of discussion. The mammalia, whose first traces are discovered in the marsupials of the Triassic rocks of the Secondary Period, were evolved from purely astral progenitors contemporary with the Second Race. They are thus post-Human, and, consequently, it is easy to account for the general resemblance between their embryonic stages and those of Man, who necessarily embraces in himself and epitomizes in his development the features of the group he originated. This explanation disposes of a portion of the Darwinist brief. "But how to account for the presence of the gill-clefts in the human foetus, which represent the stage through which the branchiae of the fish are developed;* for the pulsating vessel corresponding to the heart of the lower fishes, which constitutes the foetal heart; for the entire analogy presented by the segmentation of the human ovum, the formation of the blastoderm, and the appearance of the 'gastrula' stage, with corresponding stages in lower vertebrate life and even among the sponges; for the various types of lower animal life which the form of the future child shadows forth in the cycle of its growth?" "How comes it to pass
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that stages in the life of fishes, whose ancestors swam" -- aeons before the epoch of the First Root-
Race,
[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "At this period," writes Darwin, "the arteries run in arch-like branches, as if to carry the blood to branchiae which are not present in the higher vertebrata, though the slits on the side of the neck still remain, marking their former (?) position."
It is noteworthy that, though gill-clefts are absolutely useless to all but amphibia and fishes, etc., their appearance is regularly noted in the foetal development of vertebrates. Even children are occasionally born with an opening in the neck corresponding to one of the clefts.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 685 REVERSION FROM THE WRONG END.
-- "in the seas of the Silurian period, as well as stages in that of the later amphibian, reptilian fauna, are mirrored in the 'epitomized history' of human foetal development?"
This plausible objection is met by the reply that the Third Round terrestrial animal forms were just as much referable to types thrown off by Third Round man, as that new importation into our planet's area -
- the mammalian stock -- is to the Fourth Round Humanity of the Second Root-race. The process of human foetal growth epitomizes not only the general characteristics of the Fourth, but of the Third Round terrestrial life. The diapason of type is run through in brief. Occultists are thus at no loss to "account for" the birth of children with an actual caudal appendage, or for the fact that the tail in the human foetus is, at one period, double the length of the nascent legs. The potentiality of every organ useful to animal life is locked up in Man -- the microcosm of the Macrocosm -- and abnormal conditions may not unfrequently result in the strange phenomena which Darwinists regard as "reversion to ancestral features."* Reversion, indeed, but scarcely in the sense contemplated by our present-day empiricists!
-------
C
DARWINISM AND THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN: THE ANTHROPOIDS
AND THEIR ANCESTRY.
The public has been notified by more than one eminent modern geologist and man of science, that "all estimate of geological duration is not merely impossible, but necessarily imperfect; for we are ignorant of the causes, though they must have existed, which quickened or retarded the progress of the sedimentary deposits."** And now another man of Science, as well known (Croll), calculating that the tertiary age began either 15 or 2 1/2 million of years ago -- the former being a more correct calculation, according to Esoteric doctrine, than the latter there -- seems in this case, at least, no very great disagreement. Exact Science, refusing to see in man "a special creation" (to a certain degree the
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Secret Sciences do the same), is at liberty to ignore the first three, or rather two-and-a-half Races -- the Spiritual, the semi-astral, and the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Those who with Haeckel regard the gill-clefts with their attendant phenomena as illustrative of an active function in our amphibian and piscine ancestors (Vide his XII. and XIII. stages), ought to explain why the " Vegetable with leaflets" (Lefevre) represented in foetal growth, does not appear in his 22 stages through which the monera have passed in their ascent to Man. Haeckel does not postulate a vegetable ancestor. The embryological argument is thus a two-edged sword and here cuts its possessor.
** "Physiology," Lefevre, p. 480.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 686 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
semi-human -- of our teachings. But it can hardly do the same in the case of the Third at its closing period, the Fourth, and the Fifth Races, since it already divides mankind into Palaeolithic and Neolithic man.* The geologists of France place man in the mid-miocene age (Gabriel de Mortillet), and some even in the Secondary period, as de Quatrefages suggests; while the English savants do not generally accept such antiquity for their species. But they may know better some day. For "If we consider," says Sir Charles Lyell in "Antiquity of Man," p. 246 --
"the absence or extreme scarcity of human bones and works of art in all strata, whether marine or fresh water, even in those formed in the immediate proximity of land inhabited by millions of human beings, we shall be prepared for the general dearth of human memorials in glacial formations, whether recent, Pleistocene, or of more ancient date. If there were a few wanderers over lands covered with glaciers, or over seas infested with icebergs, and if a few of them left their bones or weapons in moraines or in marine drifts, the chances, after the lapse of thousands of years, of a geologist meeting with one of them must be infinitesimally small."
The men of Science avoid pinning themselves down to any definite statement concerning the age of man, as indeed they hardly could, and thus leave enormous latitude to bolder speculations. Nevertheless, while the majority of the Anthropologists carry back the existence of man only into the period of the post -glacial drift, or what is called the Quaternary period, those of them who, as Evolutionists, trace man to a common origin with that of the monkey, do not show great consistency in their speculations. The Darwinian hypothesis demands, in reality, a far greater antiquity for man, than is even dimly suspected by superficial thinkers. This is proven by the greatest authorities on the question -- Mr. Huxley, for instance. Those, therefore, who accept the Darwinian evolution, ipso facto hold very tenaciously to an antiquity
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
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* We confess to not being able to see any good reasons for Mr. E. Clodd's certain statement in Knowledge. Speaking of the men of Neolithic times, "concerning whom Mr. Grant Allen has given . . . a vivid and accurate sketch," and who are "the direct ancestors of peoples of whom remnants yet lurk in out-of-the-way corners of Europe, where they have been squeezed or stranded," he adds to this: "but the men of Palaeolithic times can be identified with no existing races; they were savages of a more degraded type than any extant; tall, yet barely erect, with short legs and twisted knees, with prognathous, that is, projecting ape-like jaws, and small brains. Whence they come we cannot tell, and their 'grave knoweth no man to this day.' "
Besides the possibility that there may be men who know whence they came and how they perished -- it is not true to say that the Palaeolithic men, or their fossils, are all found with "small brains." The oldest skull of all those hitherto found, the "Neanderthal skull," is of average capacity, and Mr. Huxley was compelled to confess that it was no real approximation whatever to that of the "missing link." There are aboriginal tribes in India whose brains are far smaller and nearer to that of the ape than any hitherto found among the skulls of Palaeolithic man.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 687 GRANT ALLEN'S ILLUSIONS.
of man so very great, indeed, that it falls not so far short of the Occultist's estimate.* The modest thousands of years of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the 100,000 years, to which Anthropology in general limits the age of Humanity, seem quite microscopical when compared with the figures implied in Mr. Huxley's bold speculations. The former, indeed, makes of the original race of men ape-like cave-
dwellers. The great English biologist, in his desire to prove man's pithecoid origin, insists that the transformation of the primordial ape into a human being must have occurred millions of years back. For in criticising the excellent average cranial capacity of the Neanderthal skull, notwithstanding his assertion that it is overlaid with "pithecoid bony walls," coupled with Mr. Grant Allen's assurances that this skull "possesses large bosses on the forehead, strikingly (?) suggestive of those which give the gorilla its peculiarly fierce appearance,"** (Fortnightly Review, 1882,) still Mr. Huxley is forced to admit that, in the said skull, his theory is once more defeated by the "completely human proportions of the accompanying limb-bones, together with the fair development of the Engis skull." In consequence of all this we are notified that those skulls, "clearly indicate that the first traces of the primordial stock whence man has proceeded, need no longer be sought by those who entertain any form of the doctrine of progressive development in the newest Tertiaries; but that they may be looked for in an epoch more distant from the age of the ELEPHAS PRIMIGENIUS than that is from us"*** (Huxley).
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The actual time required for such a theoretical transformation is necessarily enormous. "If," says Professor Pfaff, "in the hundreds of thousands of years which you (the Evolutionists) accept between the rise of palaeolithic man and our own day, a greater distance of man from the brute is not demonstrable, (the most ancient man was just as far removed from the brute as the now living man), what reasonable ground can be advanced for believing that man has been developed from the brute, and has receded further from it by infinitely small gradations." . . . . "The longer the interval of time placed between our times and the so-called palaeolithic men, the more ominous and destructive for the
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theory of the gradual development of man from the animal kingdom is the result stated." Huxley states ("Man's Place in Nature," p. 159) that the most liberal estimates for the antiquity of Man must be still further extended.
** The baselessness of this assertion, as well as that of many other exaggerations of the imaginative Mr. Grant Allen, was ably exposed by the eminent anatomist, Professor R. Owen, in "Longman's Magazine," No. 1. Must it be repeated, moreover, that the Cro-Magnon Palaeolithic type is superior to a very large number of existing races?
*** It thus stands to reason that science would never dream of a pre -tertiary man, and that de Quatrefages' secondary man makes every Academician and "F.R.S." faint with horror because, TO PRESERVE THE APE-THEORY, SCIENCE MUST MAKE MAN POST-SECONDARY. This is just what de Quatrefages has twitted the Darwinists with, adding, that on the whole there were more scientific reasons to trace the ape from man than man from the anthropoid. With this exception science has not one single valid argu- [[Footnote continued on next page]]
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 688 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
An untold antiquity for man is thus, then, the scientific sine qua non in the question of Darwinian Evolution, since the oldest Palaeolithic man shows as yet no appreciable differentiation from his modern descendant. It is only of late that modern Science began to widen with every year the abyss that now separates her from old Science, that of the Plinies and Hippocrateses, none of whom would have derided the archaic teachings with respect to the evolution of the human races and animal species, as the present day Scientist -- geologist or anthropologist -- is sure to do.
Holding, as we do, that the mammalian type was a post-human Fourth Round product, the following diagram -- as the writer understands the teaching -- may make the process clear: --
The unnatural union was invariably fertile, because the then mammalian types were not remote enough from their Root-type* -- Primeval Astral
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
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[[Footnote continued from previous page]] ment to offer against the antiquity of man. But in this case modern Evolution demands far more than the fifteen million years of Croll for the Tertiary period, for two very simple but good reasons: (a) No anthropoid ape has been found before the Miocene period: (b) man's flint relics have been traced to the Pliocene and their presence suspected, if not accepted by all, in the Miocene strata. Again, where is the "missing link" in such case? And how could even a Palaeolithic Savage, a "Man of Canstadt," evolve into thinking men from the brute Dryopithecus of the Miocene in so short a time. One sees now the reason why Darwin rejected the theory that only 60,000,000 years had elapsed since the Cambrian period. "He judges from the small amount of organic changes since the glacial epoch, and adds that the previous 140 million years can hardly be considered as sufficient for the development of the varied forms of life which certainly existed toward the close of the Cambrian period." (Ch. Gould.)
* Let us remember in this connection the esoteric teaching which tells us of Man having had in the Third Round a GIGANTIC APE-LIKE FORM on the astral plane. And similarly at the close of the Third Race in this Round. Thus it accounts for the human features of the apes, especially of the later anthropoids -- apart from the fact that these latter preserve by Heredity a resemblance to their Atlanto-
Lemurian sires.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 689 THE INCUBUS OF ETHNOLOGY.
Man -- to develop the necessary barrier. Medical science records such cases of monsters, bred from human and animal parents, even in our own day. The possibility is, therefore, only one of degree, not of fact. Thus it is that Occultism solves one of the strangest problems presented to the consideration of the anthropologist.
The pendulum of thought oscillates between extremes. Having now finally emancipated herself from the shackles of theology, Science has embraced the opposite fallacy; and in the attempt to interpret Nature on purely materialistic lines, she has built up that most extravagant theory of the ages -- the derivation of man from a ferocious and brutal ape. So rooted has this doctrine, in one form or another, now become, that the most Herculean efforts will be needed to bring about its final rejection. The Darwinian anthropology is the incubus of the ethnologist, a sturdy child of modem Materialism, which has grown up and acquired increasing vigour, as the ineptitude of the theological legend of Man's "creation" became more and more apparent. It has thriven on account of the strange delusion that -- as a scientist of repute puts it -- "All hypotheses and theories with respect to the rise of man can be reduced to two (the Evolutionist and the Biblical exoteric account) . . . There is no other hypothesis conceivable . . . " !! The anthropology of the secret volumes is, however, the best possible answer to such a worthless contention.
The anatomical resemblance between Man and the higher Ape, so frequently cited by Darwinists as pointing to some former ancestor common to both, presents an interesting problem, the proper solution of which is to be sought for in the esoteric explanation of the genesis of the pithecoid stocks. We have given it as far as was useful, by stating that the sexstone of the primeval mindless races resulted in the production of huge man-like monsters -- the offspring of human and animal parents. As time rolled on,
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and the still semi-astral forms consolidated into the physical, the descendants of these creatures were modified by external conditions, until the breed, dwindling in size, culminated in the lower apes of the Miocene period. With these the later Atlanteans renewed the sin of the "Mindless" -- this time with full responsibility. The resultants of their crime were the species of apes now known as Anthropoid.
It may be useful to compare this very simple theory -- and we are willing to offer it even as a hypothesis to the unbelievers -- with the Darwinian scheme, so full of insurmountable obstacles, that no sooner is one of these overcome by a more or less ingenious hypothesis, than ten worse difficulties are forthwith discovered behind the one disposed of.
-------
Next Section
Contents
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The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 2
Theosophical University Press Online Edition
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 690 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
§ IV.
DURATION OF THE GEOLOGICAL PERIODS, RACE CYCLES, AND THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN.
MILLIONS of years have dropped into Lethe, leaving no more recollection in the memory of the profane than the few millenniums of the orthodox Western chronology as to the origin of Man and the history of the primeval races.
All depends on the proofs found for the antiquity of the Human Race. If the still-debated man of the Pliocene or even the Miocene period was the Homo primigenius, then science may be right (argumenti causa) in basing its present anthropology -- as to the date and mode of origin of "Homo sapiens" -- on the Darwinian theory.* But if the skeletons of man should, at any time, be discovered in the Eocene strata, but no fossil ape, thereby proving the existence of man prior to the anthropoid -- then Darwinians will have to exercise their ingenuity in another direction. And it is said in well-informed quarters that the XXth century will be yet in its earliest teens, when such undeniable proof of Man's priority will be forthcoming.
Even now evidence is brought forward that the dates for the foundations of cities, civilizations and various other historical events have been absurdly curtailed. This was done as a peace-offering to Biblical chronology. "No date," writes the well-known Palaeontologist, Ed. Lartet, "is to be found in Genesis, which assigns a time for the birth of primitive humanity"; but chronologists have for fifteen centuries endeavoured to force the Bible facts into agreement with their systems. Thus, no less than one hundred and forty different opinions have been formed about the single date of "Creation"; "and between the extreme variations there is a discrepancy of 3,194 years, in the reckoning of the period between the beginning of the world and the birth of Christ.** Within the last few years, archaeologists have had to throw back by nearly 3,000 years also the beginnings of Babylonian civilization. On the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* It may here be remarked that those Darwinians, who with Mr. Grant Allen, place our "hairy arboreal" ancestors so far back as the Eocene Age, are landed in rather an awkward dilemma. No fossil anthropoid ape -- much less the fabulous common ancestor assigned to Man and the Pithecoid -- appears in Eocene strata. The first presentment of an anthropoid ape is Miocene.
** Ed. Lartet, "Nouvelles Recherches sur la co-existence de l'homme et des Grands Mammiferes Fossils de la derniere periode Geologique." Annales des Soc. Nat., t. XV., p. 256.
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 691 PROFESSOR SAYCE SKETCHES OUT CHRONOLOGY.
foundation cylinder deposited by Nabonidus, the Babylonian king, conquered by Cyrus -- are found the records of the former, in which he speaks of his discovery of the foundation stone that belonged to the original temple built by Naram-Sin, son of Sargon, of Accadia, the conqueror of Babylonia, who, says Nabonidus, lived 3,200 years before his own time."
We have shown in Isis that those who based history on the Jewish Chronology (a race which had none of its own and rejected the Western till the XIIth century) would lose themselves, for the Jewish account could only be followed through Kabalistic computation, and with a key to it in the hand. . . We had characterised the late George Smith's chronology of the Chaldeans and Assyrians, made by him to fit in with that of Moses, as quite fantastic. And now, in this respect at least, later Assyriologists have corroborated our denial. For, whereas G. Smith makes Sargon I. (the prototype of Moses in his legend) reign in the city of Akkad about 1600 B.C. -- probably out of a latent respect for Moses, whom the Bible makes to flourish 1571 B.C. -- we now learn from the first of the six Hibbert lectures delivered by Professor A. H. Sayce, of Oxford, in 1887, that: "Old views of the early annals of Babylonia and its religions have been much modified by recent discovery. The first Semitic Empire, it is now agreed, was that of Sargon of Accad, who established a great library, patronized literature, and extended his conquests across the sea into Cyprus. It is now known that he reigned as early as B.C. 3750." "The Accadian monuments found by the French at Tel-loh must be even older, reaching back to about B.C. 4,000," in other words, to the fourth year of the World's creation agreeably with Bible chronology, and when Adam was in his swaddling clothes. Perchance, in a few years more, the 4,000 years may be further extended. The well-known Oxford lecturer remarked during his disquisitions upon "The origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by the Babylonian Religion " that: "The difficulties of systematically tracing the origin and history of the Babylonian Religion were considerable. The sources of our knowledge of the subject were almost wholly monumental, very little help being obtainable from classical or Oriental writers. Indeed, it was an undeniable fact that the Babylonian priesthood intentionally swaddled up the study of the religious texts in coils of almost insuperable difficulty." That they have confused the dates, and especially the order of events "intentionally," is undeniable, and for a very good reason: their writings and records were all esoteric. The Babylonian priests did no more than the Priests of other ancient nations. Their records were meant only for the Initiates and their disciples, and it is only the latter who were furnished with the keys to the true meaning. But Professor
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 692 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
Sayce's remarks are promising. For he explains the difficulty by saying that as -- "the Nineveh library contained mostly copies of older Babylonian texts, and the copyists pitched upon such tablets only as were of special interest to the Assyrian conquerors, belonging to a comparatively late epoch, this added much to the greatest of all our difficulties -- namely, our being so often left in the dark as to the age of our documentary evidence, and the precise worth of our materials for history." Thus one has a right to infer that some still fresher discovery may lead to a new necessity for pushing the Babylonian
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dates so far beyond the year 4,000 B.C., as to make them pre-Kosmic in the judgment of every Bible worshipper.
How much more would paleontology have learned had not millions of works been destroyed! We talk of the Alexandrian literary lore, which has been thrice destroyed, namely, by Julius Caesar B.C. 48, in A.D. 390, and lastly in the year 640, A.D., by the general of Kaliph Omar. What is this in comparison with the works and records destroyed in the primitive Atlantean Libraries, wherein records are said to have been traced on the tanned skins of gigantic antediluvian monsters? Or again the destruction of the countless Chinese books by command of the founder of the Imperial Tsin dynasty, Tsin Shi Hwang-ti, in 213 B.C.? Surely the brick-clay tablets of the Imperial Babylonian Library, and the priceless treasures of the Chinese collections could have never contained such information as one of the aforesaid "Atlantean" skins would have furnished to the ignorant world.
But even with the extremely meagre data at hand, Science has been able to see the necessity of throwing back nearly every Babylonian date, and has done so quite generously. We learn from Professor Sayce that even the archaic statues at Tel-loh, in Lower Babylonia, have suddenly been assigned a date contemporary with the fourth dynasty in Egypt. Unfortunately, dynasties and Pyramids have the fate of geological periods; their dates are arbitrary, and depend on the respective whims of the men of science. Archaeologists know now, it is said, that the afore-mentioned statues are fashioned out of green diorite, that can only be got in the Peninsula of Sinai; and "they accord in the style of art, and in the standard of measurement employed, with the similar diorite statues of the pyramid builders of the third and fourth Egyptian dynasties. . . . . Moreover, the only possible period for a Babylonian occupation of the Sinaitic quarries must be placed shortly after the close of the epoch at which the pyramids were built; and thus only can we understand how the name of Sinai could have been derived from that of Sin, the primitive Babylonian moon-god." This is very logical, but what is the date fixed for these "dynasties"? Sanchoniathon's and Manetho's Synchronistic tables and their figures have been rejected, or whatever
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 693 NO AGREEMENT BETWEEN SCIENTISTS.
remained of these after holy Eusebius' handling of them; and still we have to remain satisfied with the four or five thousand years B.C. so liberally allotted to Egypt. At all events one point is gained. There is, at last, a city on the face of the earth which is allowed, at least, 6,000 years, and it is Eridu. Geology has found it out. According to Professor Sayce again, --
"They are now also able to obtain time for the silting up of the head of the Persian Gulf, which demands a lapse of between 5,000 and 6,000 years since the period when Eridu, now twenty-five miles inland, was the seaport at the mouth of the Euphrates, and the seat of Babylonian commerce with Southern Arabia and India. More than all, the new chronology gives time for the long series of eclipses recorded in the great astronomical work called 'The Observations of Bel'; and we are also enabled to understand the otherwise perplexing change in the position of the vernal equinox, which has occurred since our present zodiacal signs were named by the Earliest Babylonian astronomers. When the Accadian calendar was arranged and the Accadian months were named, the
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sun at the vernal equinox was not, as now, in Pisces, or even in Aries, but in Taurus. The rate of the precession of the equinoxes being known, we learn that at the vernal equinox the sun was in Taurus from about 4,700 years B.C., and we thus obtain astronomical limits of date which cannot be impugned."*
It may make our position plainer if we state at once that we use Sir C. Lyell's nomenclature for the ages and periods, and that when we talk of the Secondary and Tertiary age, of the Eocene, Miocene and Pliocene periods -- this is simply to make our facts more comprehensible. Since these ages and periods have not yet been allowed fixed and determined durations, 2 1/2 and 15 million years being assigned at different times to one and the same age (the Tertiary) -- and since no two geologists and naturalists seem to agree on this point -- Esoteric teachings may remain quite indifferent to whether man is shown to appear in the Secondary or the Tertiary age. If the latter age may be allowed even so much as 15 million years' duration -- well and good; for the Occult doctrine, jealously guarding its real and correct figures as far as concerns the First, Second, and two-thirds of the Third Root-Race -- gives clear information upon one point only -- the age of "Vaivasvata Manu's humanity." ( Vide Part I., Vol. II., "Chronology of the Brahmins.")
Another definite statement is this: It is during the so-called Eocene period that the continent to which the Fourth Race belonged, and on which it lived and perished, showed the first symptoms of sinking. And it was in the Miocene age, that it was finally destroyed -- save the little island mentioned by Plato. It is these points that have to be checked by the scientific data.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* From a Report of the "Hibbert Lectures, 1887. Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion, and Illustrated by the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians." By A. H. Sayce. (London: Williams and Norgate.)
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 694 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
A.
MODERN SCIENTIFIC SPECULATIONS ABOUT THE AGES OF THE GLOBE,
ANIMAL EVOLUTION, AND MAN.
May we not be permitted to throw a glance at the works of Specialists? The work on "Comparative Geology: the World-Life," by Prof. A. Winchell, furnishes us with curious data. Here we find an opponent of the Nebular theory, a reverend gentleman, smiting with all the force of the hammer of his odium theologicum on the rather contradictory hypothesis of the great stars of Science, in the matter of sidereal and cosmical phenomena based on their respective relations to terrestrial durations. The "too imaginative physicists and naturalists" do not fare very easily under this shower of their own speculative figures when placed side by side, and cut rather a sorry figure. Thus he shows: --
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"Sir William Thomson, on the basis of the observed principles of cooling, concludes that no more than ten million years (elsewhere he makes it 100,000,000) can have elapsed since the temperature of the Earth was sufficiently reduced to sustain vegetable life.* Helmholz calculates that twenty million years would suffice for the original nebula to condense to the present dimensions of the sun. Prof. S. Newcomb requires only ten millions to attain a temperature of 212 [[degrees]] Fahr.** Croll estimates seventy million years for the diffusion of the heat, etc.*** Bischof calculates that 350 million years would be required for the earth to cool from a temperature of 2,000 [[degrees]] to 200 [[degrees]] Centigrade. Read, basing his estimate on observed rates of denudation, demands 500 million years since sedimentation began in Europe.**** Lyell ventured a rough guess of 240 million years; Darwin thought 300 million years demanded by the organic transformations which his theory contemplates, and Huxley is disposed to demand a 1,000 millions" (!!).
To this Prof. Winchell observes that "some biologists . . . . seem to close their eyes tight and leap at one bound into the abyss of millions of years, of which they have no more adequate estimate than of infinity."***** Then he proceeds to give what he takes to be more correct geological figures: a few will suffice.
According to Sir W. Thomson "the whole incrusted age of the world is 80,000,000 years"; and agreeably with Prof. Houghton's calculations of a minimum limit for the time since the elevation of
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Nat. Philos. App. D., Trans. Royal Soc., Edin.
** "Popular Astronomy," p. 509.
*** "Climate and Time," p. 335.
**** Read. Address, "Liverpool Geolog. Society, 1876."
***** "World-Life," p. 180.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 695 MATERIALISTS AT LOGGER-HEADS.
Europe and Asia, three hypothetical ages for three possible and different modes of upheaval are given: varying from the modest figures of 640,730 years, through 4,170,000 years to the tremendous figures of 27,491,000 years!!
This is enough, as one can see, to cover our claims for the four continents and even the figures of the Brahmins.
Further calculations, the details of which the reader may find in Prof. Winchell's work,* bring Houghton to an approximation of the sedimentary age of the globe -- 11,700,000 years. These figures
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are found too small by the author, who forthwith extends them to 37,000,000 years.
Again, according to Croll,** 2,500,000 years "represents the time since the beginning of the Tertiary age" in one work; and according to another modification of his view, 15,000,000 only have elapsed since the beginning of the Eocene period;*** which, being the first of the three Tertiary periods, leaves the student suspended between 2 1/2 and 15 millions. But if one has to hold to the former moderate figures, then the whole incrusted age of the world would be 131,600,000 years.****
As the last glacial period extended from 240,000 to 80,000 years ago (Prof. Croll's view), therefore, man must have appeared on earth from 100 to 120,000 years ago. But, as says Prof. Winchell, with reference to the antiquity of the Mediterranean race, "it is generally believed to have made its appearance during the later decline of the continental glaciers." Yet, he adds, this "does not concern, however, the antiquity of the Black and Brown races, since there are numerous evidences of their existence in more southern regions, in times remotely pre-glacial" (p. 379).
As a specimen of geological certainty and agreement, these figures also may be added. Three authorities -- Messrs. T. Belt, F.G.S.; J. Croll, F.R.S.; and Robert Hunt, F.R.S., -- in estimating the time that has elapsed since the Glacial epoch, give absolutely different figures, namely: --
Mr. Belt ... 20,000 years.
Mr. J. Croll ... 240,000 "
Mr. R. Hunt ... 80,000 "
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "World-Life," pp. 367-8.
** "Climate and Time."
*** Quoted in Mr. Ch. Gould's "Mythical Monsters," p. 84.
**** According to Bischof, 1,004,177 years -- according to Chevandier's calculations 672,788 years -- were required for the so-called coal formation. "The tertiary strata, about 1,000 feet in thickness, required for their development about 350,000 years." See "Force and Matter," Buchner, J. F. Collingwood's edition.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 696 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
(But see "The Ice-Age Climate and Time," Popular Science Review, Vol. xiv., p. 242.)
No wonder if Mr. Pengelly confesses that "it is at present and perhaps always will be IMPOSSIBLE to reduce, even approximately, geological time into years or even into millenniums" ( Vide supra, foot-
note). A wise word of advice from the Occultists to the gentlemen geologists: they ought to imitate the
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cautious example of Masons. As chronology, they say, cannot measure the era of the creation, therefore, their "Antient and Primitive Rite" uses 000,000,000 as the nearest approach to reality.
The same uncertainty, contradictions and disagreement reign on all other subjects.
The scientific authorities on the Descent of Man are again, for all practical purposes, a delusion and a snare. There are many anti-Darwinists in the British Association, and "Natural Selection" begins to lose ground. Though at one time the saviour, which seemed to rescue the learned theorists from a final intellectual collapse into the abyss of fruitless hypothesis, it begins to be distrusted. Even Mr. Huxley is showing signs of truancy to "Selection," and thinks "natural selection not the sole factor": --
"We greatly suspect that she (Nature) does make considerable jumps in the way of variation now and then, and that these saltations give rise to some of the gaps which appear to exist in the series of known forms" (Review of Kolliker's Criticisms).
Again, in "Fallacies of Darwinism," (p. 160), C. R. Bree, M.D., argues in this wise in considering the fatal gaps in Mr. Darwin's theory: --
"It must be again called to mind that the intermediate forms must have been vast in numbers. . . . . Mr. St. George Mivart believes that change in evolution may occur more quickly than is generally believed; but Mr. Darwin sticks manfully to his belief, and again tells us 'natura non facit saltum' " -- wherein the Occultists are at one with Mr. Darwin.
Esoteric teaching fully corroborates the idea of nature's slowness and dignified progression. "Planetary impulses" are all periodical. Yet this Darwinian theory, correct as it is in minor particulars, agrees no more with Occultism than with Mr. Wallace, who, in his "Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection," shows pretty conclusively that something more than "natural selection" was requisite to produce physical man.
Let us, meanwhile, examine the scientific objections to this scientific theory, and see what they are.
Mr. St. George Mivart is found arguing that --
. . . . ". . . . it will be a moderate computation to allow 25,000,000 for the deposition of the strata down to and including the Upper Silurian. If,
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 697 MIVART'S BILLIONS OF YEARS.
then, the evolutionary work done during this deposition only represents a hundredth part of the sum total, we shall require 2,500,000,000 years for the complete development of the whole animal Kingdom to its present state. Even one quarter of this, however, would far exceed the time which physics and astronomy seem able to allow for the completion of this process. Finally, a difficulty exists as to the reason of the absence of
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rich fossiliferous deposits in the oldest strata -- if life was then as abundant and varied, as on the Darwinian theory it must have been. Mr. Darwin himself admits 'the case at present must remain inexplicable'; and this may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views entertained in his own work. . . . .
"Thus, then, we find a wonderful (and on Darwinian principles all but inexplicable) absence of minutely transitional forms. All the most marked groups . . . . . appear at once upon the scene. Even the horse, the animal whose pedigree has been probably best preserved, affords no conclusive evidence of specific origin by infinitesimal fortuitous variations; while some forms, as the labyrinthodonts and trilobites, which seemed to exhibit gradual change, are shown by further investigation to do nothing of the sort. . . . All these difficulties are avoided if we admit that new forms of animal life of all degrees of complexity appear from time to time with comparative suddenness, being evolved according to laws in part depending on surrounding conditions, in part internal -
- similar to the way in which crystals (and perhaps from recent researches the lowest forms of life) build themselves up according to the internal laws of their component substance and in harmony and correspondence with all environing influences and conditions." ("Genesis of Species," p. 142.)
"The internal laws of their component substance." These are wise words, and the admission of the possibility, a prudent one. But how can these internal laws be ever recognized, if Occult teaching is discarded? As a friend writes, while drawing our attention to the above speculations: "In other words, the doctrine of Planetary Life-Impulses must be admitted. Otherwise, why are species now stereotyped, and why do even domesticated breeds of pigeons and many animals relapse into their ancestral types when left to themselves?" But the teaching about planetary life-impulses has to be clearly defined and as clearly understood if present confusion would not be made still more perplexing. All these difficulties would vanish as the shadows of night disappear before the light of the rising Sun, if the following esoteric axioms were admitted: (a) the enormous antiquity (and the existence) of our planetary chain; (b) the actuality of the Seven Rounds; (c) the separation of human races (outside the purely anthropological division) into Seven distinct Root-Races, of which our present European Humanity is the fifth ; (d) the antiquity of Man in this (Fourth) Round; and finally (e) that as these Races evolve from ethereality to materiality, and from the latter back again into relative physical tenuity of texture, so every living (so-called) organic species of animals with vegetation included, changes with every new Root-Race. Were this admitted, if even only
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 698 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
along with other, and surely, on maturer consideration, no less absurd, suppositions, if Occult theories have to be considered "absurd" at present, then every difficulty would be made away with. Surely, Science ought to try and be more logical than it now is, as it can hardly maintain the theory of man's descent from an anthropoidal ancestor, and deny in the same breath any reasonable antiquity to that man! Once Mr. Huxley talks of "the vast intellectual chasm between the man and ape," and "the present enormous gulf between the two,"* and if he admits the necessity of extending Scientific allowances for the age of man on earth for such slow and progressive development, then all those men
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of Science, who are of his way of thinking, at any rate, ought to come to some approximate figures, at least, and agree upon the probable duration of those Pliocene, Miocene, and Eocene periods of which so much is said, and about which nothing definite is known -- if they dare not venture beyond. But no two scientists seem to agree. Every period seems to be a mystery in its duration, and a thorn in the side of the geologists; and, as just shown, they are unable to harmonize their conclusions even with regard to the comparatively recent geological formations. Thus, no reliance can be placed on their figures when they do give any, for with them it is all either millions or simply thousands of years!
That which is said may be strengthened by the confessions made by themselves and the synopsis of it, found in that "Circle of Sciences," the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which shows the mean accepted in the geological and anthropological riddles. In that work the cream of the most authoritative opinions is skimmed off; nevertheless, we find in it the refusal to assign any definite chronological date, even to such, comparatively speaking, late epochs as the Neolithic era, though, for a wonder, an age is established for the beginnings of certain geological periods; at any rate of some few, the duration of which could hardly be shortened any more, without an immediate conflict with facts.
Thus, it is surmised in the great Encyclopaedia (Vol. X., art. "Geology," p. 227), that "100 million years have passed . . . . . since the solidification of our Earth, when the earliest form of life appeared upon it.**"
But it seems quite as hopeless to try to convert the modern Geologists and Ethnologists as it is to make Darwinian Naturalists perceive their mistakes. About the Aryan Root-Race and its origins,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Man's Place in Nature," p. 102, note.
** "100,000,000 of years is probably amply sufficient for all the requirements of Geology," says the text. In France, some savants do not find it nearly "sufficient." Le Couturier claims for the same 350 million years; Buffon was satisfied with 34 millions -- but there are those in the more modern schools who will not be content under 500 million years.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 699 THE ADEPT-ASTRONOMER.
Science knows as little as of the men from other planets. With the exception of Flammarion and a few mystics among astronomers, even the habitableness of other planets is mostly denied. Yet such great adept astronomers were the Scientists of the earliest races of the Aryan stock, that they seem to have known far more about the races of Mars and Venus than the modern Anthropologist knows of those of the early stages of the Earth.
Let us leave modern Science aside for a moment and turn to ancient knowledge. As we are assured by Archaic Scientists that all such geological cataclysms -- from the upheaval of oceans, deluges, and shifting of continents, down to the present year's cyclones, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic
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eruptions, tidal waves, and even the extraordinary weather and seeming shifting of seasons which perplexes all European and American meteorologists -- are due to, and depend on the moon and planets; aye, that even modest and neglected constellations have the greatest influence on the meteorological and cosmical changes, over, and within our earth, let us give one moment's attention to our sidereal despots and rulers of our globe and men. Modern Science denies any such influence; archaic Science affirms it. We may see what both say with regard to this question.
-------
B.
ON CHAINS OF PLANETS AND THEIR PLURALITY.
Did the Ancients know of worlds besides their own? What are the data of the Occultists in affirming that every globe is a septenary chain of worlds -- of which only one member is visible -- and that these are, were, or will be, "man-bearing," just as every visible star or planet is? What do they mean by "a moral and physical influence" of the sidereal worlds on our globes?
Such are the questions often put to us, and they have to be considered from every aspect. To the first of the two queries the answer is: -- We believe it because the first law in nature is uniformity in diversity, and the second -- analogy. "As above, so below." That time is gone by for ever, when, although our pious ancestors believed that our earth was in the centre of the universe, the church and her arrogant servants could insist that we should regard as a blasphemy the supposition that any other planet could be inhabited. Adam and Eve, the Serpent, and the Original Sin followed by atonement through blood, have been too long in the way, and thus was universal truth sacrificed to the insane conceit of us little men.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 700 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
Now what are the proofs thereof? Except inferential evidence and logical reasoning, there are none for the profane. To the Occultists, who believe in the knowledge acquired by countless generations of Seers and Initiates, the data offered in the Secret Books are all-sufficient. The general public needs other proofs, however. There are some Kabalists and even some Eastern Occultists, who, failing to find uniform evidence upon this point in all the mystic works of the nations, hesitate to accept the teaching. Even such "uniform evidence" will be forthcoming presently. Meanwhile, we may approach the subject from its general aspect, and see whether belief in it is so very absurd, as some scientists along with other Nicodemuses would have it. Unconsciously, perhaps, in thinking of a plurality of inhabited " Worlds," we imagine them to be like the globe we inhabit and peopled by beings more or less resembling ourselves. And in so doing we are only following a natural instinct. Indeed, so long as the enquiry is confined to the life-history of this globe we can speculate on this question with some profit, and ask ourselves what were the " Worlds" spoken of in all the ancient scriptures of Humanity, with some hope of at least asking an intelligible question. But how do we know (a) what kind of Beings inhabit the globes in general; and (b) whether those who rule planets superior to our own, do
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not exercise the same influence on our earth consciously, that we may exercise unconsciously -- say on the small planets (planetoids or asteroids) in the long run, by our cutting the Earth to pieces, opening canals, and thereby entirely changing our climates. Of course, like Caesar's wife, the planetoids cannot be affected by our suspicion. They are too far, etc., etc. Believing in esoteric astronomy, however, we are not so sure of that.
But when, extending our speculations beyond our planetary chain, we try to cross the limits of the solar system, then indeed we act as do presumptuous fools. For -- while accepting the old Hermetic axiom: "As above, so below" -- we may well believe that as Nature on Earth displays the most careful economy, utilizing every vile and waste thing in her marvellous transformations, and withal never repeating herself -- we may justly conclude that there is no other globe in all her infinite systems so closely resembling this earth that the ordinary powers should be able to imagine and reproduce its semblance and containment.*
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* We are taught that the highest Dhyan Chohans, or Planetary Spirits (beyond the cognizance of the law of analogy), are in ignorance of what lies beyond the visible planetary systems, since their essence cannot assimilate itself to that of worlds beyond our solar system. When they reach a higher stage of evolution these other universes will be open to them; meanwhile they have complete knowledge of all the worlds within and beneath the limits of our solar system.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 701 STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
And indeed we find in the romances as in all the so-called scientific fictions and spiritistic revelations from moon, stars, and planets, merely fresh combinations or modifications of the men and things, the passions and forms of life with which we are familiar, when even on the other planets of our own system nature and life are entirely different from ours. Swedenborg was pre-eminent in inculcating such an erroneous belief.
But even more. The ordinary man has no experience of any state of consciousness other than that to which the physical senses link him. Men dream; they sleep the profound sleep which is too deep for dreams to impress the physical brain; and in these states there must still be consciousness. How, then, while these mysteries remain unexplored, can we hope to speculate with profit on the nature of globes which, in the economy of nature, must needs belong to states of consciousness other and quite different from any which man experiences here?
And this is true to the letter. For even great adepts (those initiated of course), trained seers though they are, can claim thorough acquaintance with the nature and appearance of planets and their inhabitants belonging to our solar system only. They know that almost all the planetary worlds are inhabited, but can have access to -- even in spirit -- only those of our system; and they are also aware how difficult it is, even for them, to put themselves into full rapport even with the planes of consciousness within our system, but differing from the states of consciousness possible on this globe; i.e., on the three planes of the chain of spheres beyond our earth. Such knowledge and intercourse are possible to them
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because they have learned how to penetrate to planes of consciousness which are closed to the perceptions of ordinary men; but were they to communicate their knowledge, the world would be no wiser, because it lacks that experience of other forms of perception which alone could enable them to grasp what was told them.
Still the fact remains that most of the planets, as the stars beyond our system, are inhabited, a fact which has been admitted by the men of science themselves. Laplace and Herschell believed it, though they wisely abstained from imprudent speculation; and the same conclusion has been worked out and supported with an array of scientific considerations by C. Flammarion, the well-known French Astronomer. The arguments he brings forward are strictly scientific, and such as to appeal even to a materialistic mind, which would remain unmoved by such thoughts as those of Sir David Brewster, the famous physicist, who writes: --
"Those 'barren spirits' or 'base souls,' as the poet calls them, who might be led to believe that the Earth is the only inhabited body in the universe, would have no difficulty in conceiving the earth also to
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 702 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
have been destitute of inhabitants. What is more, if such minds were acquainted with the deductions of geology, they would admit that it was uninhabited for myriads of years; and here we come to the impossible conclusion that during these myriads of years there was not a single intelligent creature in the vast domains of the Universal King, and that before the protozoic formations there existed neither plant nor animal in all the infinity of space"!*
Flammarion shows, in addition, that all the conditions of life -- even as we know it -- are present on some at least of the planets, and points to the fact that these conditions must be much more favourable on them than they are on our Earth.
Thus scientific reasoning, as well as observed facts, concur with the statements of the seer and the innate voice in man's own heart in declaring that life -- intelligent, conscious life -- must exist on other worlds than ours.
But this is the limit beyond which the ordinary faculties of man cannot carry him. Many are the romances and tales, some purely fanciful, others bristling with scientific knowledge, which have attempted to imagine and describe life on other globes. But one and all, they give but some distorted copy of the drama of life around us. It is either, with Voltaire, the men of our own race under a microscope, or, with de Bergerac, a graceful play of fancy and satire; but we always find that at bottom the new world is but the one we ourselves live in. So strong is this tendency that even great natural, though non-initiated seers, when untrained, fall a victim to it; witness Swedenborg, who goes so far as to dress the inhabitants of Mercury, whom he meets with in the spirit-world, in clothes such as are worn in Europe.
Commenting on this tendency, Flammarion in his work "Sur la Pluralite des Mondes habites," says: --
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"It seems as if in the eyes of those authors who have written on this subject, the Earth were the type of the Universe, and the Man of Earth, the type of the inhabitants of the heavens. It is, on the contrary, much more probable, that, since the nature of other planets is essentially varied, and the surroundings and conditions of existence essentially different, while the forces which preside over the creation of beings and the substances which enter into their mutual constitution are essentially distinct, it would follow that our mode of existence cannot be regarded as in any way applicable to other globes.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Since no single atom in the entire Kosmos is without life and consciousness, how much more then its mighty globes? -- though they remain sealed books to us men who can hardly enter even into the consciousness of the forms of life nearest us?
We do not know ourselves, then how can we, if we have never been trained to it and initiated, fancy that we can penetrate the consciousness of the smallest of the animals around us?
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 703 WORLDS MENTIONED IN THE BIBLE.
Those who have written on this subject have allowed themselves to be dominated by terrestrial ideas, and fell therefore into error." ("Pluralite des Mondes, " p. 439.)
But Flammarion himself falls into the very error which he here condemns, for he tacitly takes the conditions of life on earth as the standard by which to determine the degree to which other planets are adapted for habitation by "other Humanities."
Let us, however, leave these profitless and empty speculations, which, though they seem to fill our hearts with a glow of enthusiasm and to enlarge our mental and spiritual grasp, do but in reality cause a factitious stimulation, and blind us more and more to our ignorance not only of the world we inhabit, but even of the infinitude contained within ourselves.
When, therefore, we find in the Bibles of Humanity "other worlds" spoken of, we may safely conclude that they not only refer to other states of our planetary chain and Earth, but also to other inhabited globes -- stars and planets; withal, that the latter were never speculated upon. The whole of antiquity believed in the Universality of life. But no really initiated seer of any civilized nation has ever taught that life on other stars could be judged by the standard of terrestrial life. That which is generally meant by "earths" and worlds, relates (a) to the "rebirths" of our globe after each manvantara and a long period of "obscuration"; and (b) to the periodical and entire changes of the Earth's surface, when Continents disappear, to make room for Oceans, and Oceans and Seas are violently displaced and sent rolling to the poles, to cede their emplacements to new Continents.
We may begin with the Bible -- the youngest of the World-Scriptures. In Ecclesiastes, chap. i., we read these words of the King-Initiate: -- "One generation passeth away and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth for ever," and again, "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be;
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and that which is done, is that which shall be done, and there is no new thing under the sun." Under these words it is not easy to see the reference to the successive cataclysms by which the Races of mankind are swept away, or, going further back, to the various transitions of the globe during the process of its formation. But if we are told that this refers only to our world as we now see it, -- then we shall refer the reader to the New Testament, where St. Paul speaks (in Hebrews i.) of the Son (the manifested Power) whom (God) hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds (plural.)*
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* This relates to the Logos of every Cosmogony. The unknown Light -- with which he is said to be co-
eternal and coeval -- is reflected in the "First-Born," the Protogonos ; [[Footnote continued on next page]]
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 704 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
This "Power" is Hokhmah or (Chochmah) the Wisdom and the Word. We shall probably be told that by this term "worlds," the stars, heavenly bodies, etc., were meant. But apart from the fact that "stars" were not known as "worlds" to the ignorant editors of the Epistles, if even they must have been known to Paul, who was an Initiate ("a Master-Builder"), we can quote on this point an eminent theologian, Cardinal Wiseman. In Vol. I, p. 309, of his work treating of the indefinite period of the six days -- or shall we say "too definite" -- period of the six days of creation and the 6,000 years, he confesses that we are in total darkness upon the meaning of that statement of St. Paul, unless we are permitted to suppose that allusion is made in it, i.e., the period which elapsed between the first and second verses of chapter i. of Genesis -- to those primitive revolutions, i.e., the destructions and the re-productions (of the world) indicated in chapter i. of Ecclesiastes ; or, to accept, with so many others, and in its literal sense, the passage (Hebrews i. 1,) that speaks of the creation of worlds -- in plural. . . . . It is very singular, he adds, that all the cosmogonies should agree to suggest the same idea, and preserve the tradition of a first series of revolutions, owing to which the world was destroyed and again renewed.
Had the Cardinal studied the Zohar his doubts would have changed to certitude. Thus saith Idra Suta (in the "Zohar," iii., 292, c.): "There were old worlds which perished as soon as they came into existence; worlds with and without form called Scintillas -- for they were like the sparks under the Smith's hammer, flying in all directions. Some were the primordial worlds which could not continue long, because the 'aged' -- his name be sanctified -- had not as yet assumed his form,* the workman was not yet the 'Heavenly man.' "** Again in the Midrash, written long before the Kabala of Simeon Ben Iochai, Rabbi Abahu explains: -- "The Holy One, blessed be his name, has successively formed and destroyed sundry worlds before this one*** . . . Now this refers both to the first races (the "Kings of Edom") and to the worlds destroyed."**** "Destroyed" means here what we call
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] and the Demiurgos or the Universal Mind directs his
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Divine Thought into the Chaos that under the fashioning of minor gods will be divided into the seven oceans -- Sapta samudras. It is Purusha, Ahura Mazda, Osiris, etc., and finally the gnostic Christos, who is in the Kabala, Hokhmah or Wisdom the "Word."
* The form of Tikkun or the Protogonos, the "first-born," i.e., the universal form and idea, had not yet been mirrored in Chaos.
** The "Heavenly man" is Adam Kadmon -- the synthesis of the Sephiroth, as "Manu Swayambhuva" is the synthesis of the Prajapatis.
*** Bereshith Rabba, Parsha IX.
**** This refers to the three Rounds that preceded our fourth Round.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 705 WHO ARE THE KINGS OF EDOM?
"obscurations." This becomes evident when one reads further on the explanation given: -- "Still when it is said that they (the worlds) perished, it is only meant thereby that they (their humanities) lacked the true form, till the human (our) form came into being, in which all things are comprised and which contains all forms. . . . * -- it does not mean death, but only denotes a sinking down from their status . . ." (that of worlds in activity).**
When, therefore, we read of the destruction of the worlds, this word has many meanings, which are very clear in several of the Commentaries on the Zohar and Kabalistic treatises. As said elsewhere, it means not only the destruction of many worlds which have ended their life-career, but also that of the several continents which have disappeared, as also their decline and geographical change of place.
The mysterious "Kings of Edom" are sometimes referred to as the "Worlds" that had been destroyed; but it is a "cloak." The Kings who reigned in Edom before there reigned a King in Israel, or the "Edomite Kings," could never symbolize the "prior worlds," but only the "attempts at men" on this globe: the "pre-Adamite races," of which the Zohar speaks, and which we explain as the First Root-
Race. For, as, speaking of the six Earths (the six "limbs" of Microprosopus) it is said that the Seventh (our Earth) came not into the computation when the Six were created (the six spheres above our globe in the terrestrial chain), so the first seven Kings of Edom are left out of calculation in Genesis. By the law of analogy and permutation, in the "Chaldean Book of Numbers," as also in the "Books of Knowledge" and of "Wisdom," the "seven primordial worlds" mean also the "seven primordial" races (sub-races of the First Root-Race of the Shadows); and, again, the Kings of Edom are the sons of "Esau the father of the Edomites" (Gen. xxxvi. 43); i.e., Esau represents in the Bible the race which stands between the Fourth and the Fifth, the Atlantean and the Aryan. "Two nations are in thy womb," saith the Lord to Rebekah; and Esau was red and hairy. From verse 24 to 34, ch. xxv. of Genesis contains the allegorical history of the birth of the Fifth Race.
"And the Kings of ancient days died and their chiefs (crowns) were found no more," says Siphrah
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Dzenioutha (3). . . . "The Head of a nation that has not been formed at the beginning in the likeness of the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* This sentence contains a dual sense and a profound mystery in the occult sciences the secret of which if, and when, known -- confers tremendous powers on the Adept to change his visible form.
** Idra Suta, Zohar, iii. 136, c. "A sinking down from their status" -- is plain; from active worlds they have fallen into a temporary obscuration -- they rest, and hence are entirely changed.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 706 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
White Head: its people is not from this Form," states the Zohar (iii.). . . . "Before it (the White Head, the Fifth Race or Ancient of the Ancients) arranged itself in its (own, or present) Form . . . all worlds have been destroyed; therefore it is written: And Bela, the Son of Beor, reigned in Edom" (Gen. xxxvi.). Here the "worlds" stand for races. "And he (such or another King of Edom) died, and another reigned in his stead" (ibid 31 et seq.).
No Kabalist who has hitherto treated of the symbolism and allegory hidden under these "Kings of Edom" seems to have perceived more than one aspect of it. They are neither the "worlds that were destroyed," nor the "Kings that died" -- alone; but both, and much more, to treat of which there is no space at present. Therefore, leaving the mystic parables of the Zohar, we will return to the hard facts of materialistic science; first, however, citing a few from the long list of great thinkers who have believed in the plurality of inhabited worlds in general, and in worlds that preceded our own. These are, the great mathematicians Leibnitz and Bernouilli, Isaac Newton himself, as can be read in his "Optics"; Buffon, the naturalist; Condillac, the sceptic; Bailly, Lavater, Bernardin de St. Pierre, and, as a contrast to the two last named -- suspected at least of mysticism -- Diderot and most of the writers of the Encyclopaedia. Following these come Kant, the founder of modern philosophy; the poet philosophers, Goethe, Krause, Schelling; and many astronomers, from Bode, Fergusson and Herschell to Lalande and Laplace, with their many disciples in more recent years.
A brilliant list of honoured names indeed; but the facts of physical astronomy speak even more strongly in favour of the presence of life, even organised life, on other planets. Thus in four meteorites which fell respectively at Alais in France, the Cape of Good Hope, in Hungary, and again in France, there was found, on analysis, graphite, a form of carbon known to be invariably associated with organic life on this earth of ours. And that the presence of this carbon is not due to any action occurring within our atmosphere is shown by the fact that carbon has been found in the very centre of a meteorite; while in one which fell at Argueil, in the south of France, in 1857, there was found water and turf, the latter being always formed by the decomposition of vegetable substances.
And further, examining the astronomical conditions of the other planets, it is easy to show that several are far better adapted for the development of life and intelligence -- even under the conditions with which men are acquainted -- than is our earth. For instance, on the planet Jupiter the seasons, instead
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of varying between wide limits as do ours, change by almost imperceptible degrees, and last twelve times
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 707 WHAT FLAMMARION TELLS US.
as long as ours. Owing to the inclination of its axis the seasons on Jupiter are due almost entirely to the eccentricity of its orbit, and hence change slowly and regularly. We shall be told, that no life is possible on Jupiter, as it is in an incandescent state. But not all astronomers agree with this. For instance what we say, is said by M. Flammarion: and he ought to know.
On the other hand Venus would be less adapted for human life such as exists on earth, since its seasons are more extreme and its changes of temperature more sudden; though it is curious that the duration of the day is nearly the same on the four inner planets, Mercury, Venus, the Earth and Mars.
On Mercury, the Sun's heat and light are seven times what they are on the Earth, and astronomy teaches that it is enveloped in a very dense atmosphere. And as we see that life appears more active on earth in proportion to the light and heat of the sun, it would seem more than probable that its intensity is far, far greater on Mercury than here.
Venus, like Mercury, has a very dense atmosphere, as also has Mars and the snows which cover their poles, the clouds which hide their surface, the geographical configuration of their seas and continents, the variations of seasons and climates, are all closely analogous -- at least to the eye of the physical astronomer. But such facts and the considerations to which they give rise, have reference only to the possibility of the existence on these planets of human life as known on earth. That some forms of life such as we know are possible on these planets, has been long since abundantly demonstrated, and it seems perfectly useless to go into detailed questions of the physiology, etc., etc., of these hypothetical inhabitants, since after all the reader can arrive only at an imaginary extension of his familiar surroundings. It is better to rest content with the three conclusions which M. C. Flammarion, whom we have so largely quoted, formulates as rigorous and exact deductions from the known facts and laws of science.
I. The various forces which were active in the beginning of evolution gave birth to a great variety of beings on the several worlds; both in the organic and inorganic kingdoms.
II. The animated beings were constituted from the first according to forms and organisms in correlation with the physiological state of each inhabited globe.
III. The humanities of other worlds differ from us, as much in their inner organization as in their external physical type.
Finally the reader who may be disposed to question the validity of these conclusions as being opposed to the Bible, may be referred to an Appendix in M. Flammarion's work dealing in detail with this question; since in a work like the present it seems unnecessary to point out the
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 708 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
logical absurdity of those churchmen, who deny the plurality of worlds on such grounds.
In this connection we may well recall those days when the burning zeal of the Primitive Church opposed the doctrine of the earth's rotundity, on the ground that the nations at the Antipodes would be outside the pale of salvation; and again how long it took for a nascent science to break down the idea of a solid firmament, in whose grooves the stars moved for the special edification of terrestrial humanity.
The theory of the earth's rotation was met by a like opposition -- even to the martyrdom of its discoverers -- because, besides depriving our orb of its dignified central position in space, this theory produced an appalling confusion of ideas as to the Ascension -- the terms "up" and "down" being proved to be merely relative, thus complicating not a little the question of the precise locality of heaven.*
According to the best modern calculations, there are no less than 500,000,000 of stars of various magnitudes, within the range of the best telescopes. As to the distances between them, they are incalculable. Is, then, our microscopical Earth -- a "grain of sand on an infinite sea-shore" -- the only centre of intelligent life? Our own Sun, itself 1,300 times larger than our planet, sinks into insignificance beside that giant Sun -- Sirius, -- and the latter in its turn is dwarfed by other luminaries in infinite Space. The self-centred conception of Jehovah as the special guardian of a small and obscure semi-nomadic tribe, is tolerable beside that which confines sentient existence to our microscopical globe. The primary reasons were without doubt: (1) Astronomical ignorance on the part of the early Christians, coupled with an exaggerated appreciation of man's own importance -- a crude form of selfishness; and (2) the dread that, if the hypothesis of millions of other inhabited globes was accepted, the crushing rejoinder would ensue -- "Was there then a Revelation to each world?" involving the idea of the Son of God eternally "going the rounds" as it were. Happily it is now unnecessary to waste time and energy in proving the possibility of the existence of such worlds. All intelligent persons admit it. That which now remains to be demonstrated is, that if it is once proven that there are inhabited worlds besides our own with humanities entirely different from each other as from our own -- as maintained in the Occult
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* In that learned and witty work, "God and his Book," by the redoubtable "Saladin" of Agnostic repute, the amusing calculation that, if Christ had ascended with the rapidity of a cannon ball, he would not have reached even Sirius yet, reminds one vividly of the past. It raises, perhaps, a not ill-
founded suspicion that even our age of scientific enlightenment may be as grossly absurd in its materialistic negations, as the men of the middle ages were absurd and materialistic in their religious affirmations.
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 709 SCIENCE AND OCCULTISM MAY YET AGREE.
Sciences -- then the evolution of the preceding races is half proved. For where is that physicist or geologist who is prepared to maintain that the Earth has not changed scores of times, in the millions of years which have elapsed in the course of its existence; and changing its "skin," as it is called in Occultism, that the Earth has not had each time her special humanities adapted to such atmospheric and climatic conditions as were entailed. And if so, why should not our preceding four and entirely different mankinds have existed and thrived before our Adamic (Fifth Root) Race?
Before closing our debates, however, we have to examine the so-called organic evolution more closely. Let us search well and see whether it is quite impossible to make our Occult data and chronology agree up to a certain point with those of Science.
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Next Section
Contents
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The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 2
Theosophical University Press Online Edition
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 709 SCIENCE AND OCCULTISM MAY YET AGREE.
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C.
SUPPLEMENTARY REMARKS ON ESOTERIC GEOLOGICAL CHRONOLOGY.
It seems, however, possible to calculate the approximate duration of the geological periods from the combined data of Science and Occultism now before us. Geology is, of course, able to determine almost with certainty one thing -- the thickness of the several deposits. Now, it also stands to reason that the time required for the deposition of any stratum on a sea-bottom must bear a strict proportion to the thickness of the mass thus formed. Doubtless the rate of erosion of land and the sorting out of matter on to ocean beds has varied from age to age, and cataclysmic changes of various kinds break the "uniformity" of ordinary geological processes. Provided, however, we have some definite numerical basis on which to work, our task is rendered less difficult than it might at first sight appear to be. Making due allowance for variations in the rate of deposit, Professor Lefevre gives us the relative figures which sum up geological time. He does not attempt to calculate the lapse of years since the first bed of the Laurentian rocks was deposited, but postulating that time as = X, he presents us with the relative proportions in which the various periods stand to it. Let us premise our estimate by stating that, roughly speaking, the Primordial rocks are 70,000 ft., the Primary 42,000 ft., the Secondary 15,000 ft., the Tertiary 5,000 ft., and the Quaternary some 500 ft. in thickness: --
"Dividing into an hundred parts the time, whatever its actual length, that has passed since the dawn of life on this earth (lower Laurentian strata), we shall be led to attribute to the primordial age more than half of the whole duration, say 53.5; to the Primary 32.2; to the
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 710 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
Secondary 11.5; to the Tertiary 2.3; to the Quaternary 0.5 or one-half per cent." ("Philosophy," p. 481.)
Now, as it is certain, on occult data, that the time which has elapsed since the first sedimentary deposits = 320,000,000 years, we are able to infer that the: --
ROUGH APPROXIMATIONS.
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Primordial lasted 171,200,000 years.
Laurentian
Cambrian
Silurian
Primary lasted 103,040,000 years
Devonian
Coal
Permian
Secondary lasted 36,800,000 years
Triassic
Jurassic
Cretaceous
Tertiary lasted 7,360,000 years (probably in excess)
Eocene
Miocene
Pliocene
Quaternary lasted 1,600,000 years (probably in excess).
Such estimates harmonise with the statements of Esoteric Ethnology in almost every particular. The Tertiary Atlantean part-cycle, from the "apex of glory" of that Race in the early Eocene to the great mid-Miocene cataclysm, would appear to have lasted some 3 1/2 to four million years. If the duration of the Quaternary is not rather (as seems likely) overestimated, the sinking of Ruta and Daitya would be post-Tertiary. It is probable that the results here given allow somewhat too long a period to both the Tertiary and Quaternary, as the Third Race goes very far back into the Secondary Age. Nevertheless, the figures are most suggestive.
But the argument from geological evidence being only in favour of 100,000,000 years, let us compare our claims and teachings with those of exact science.
Mr. Edward Clodd,* in reviewing M. de Mortillet's work "Materiaux pour l'Histoire de Homme, " which places man in the mid-Miocene period,** remarks that "it would be in defiance of all that the doctrine of evolu-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Knowledge, March 31, 1882.
** And who yet, in another work, "La Prehistorique Antiquite de l'Homme, " some twenty years ago, generously allowed only 230,000 years to our mankind. Since we learn now that he places man "in the mid-Miocene period," we must say that the much respected Professor of Prehistoric Anthropology (in Paris) is somewhat contradictory and inconsistent, if not naif in his views.
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 711 SECEDERS FROM DARWINISM.
tion teaches, and moreover, win no support from believers in special creation and the fixity of species, to seek for so highly specialized a mammalian as man at an early stage in the life-history of the globe." To this, one could answer: (a) the doctrine of evolution, as inaugurated by Darwin and developed by later evolutionists, is not only the reverse of infallible, but it is repudiated by several great men of science, e.g., de Quatrefages, in France, and Dr. Weismann, an ex-evolutionist in Germany, and many others, the ranks of the anti-Darwinists growing stronger with every year;* and (b) truth to be worthy of its name, and remain truth and fact, hardly needs to beg for support from any class or sect. For were it to win support from believers in special creation, it would never gain the favour of the evolutionists, and vice versa. Truth must rest upon its own firm foundations of facts, and take its chances for recognition, when every prejudice in the way is disposed of. Though the question has been already fully considered in its main aspects, it is, nevertheless, advisable to combat every so-called "scientific" objection as we go along, when making what are regarded as heretical and "anti-scientific" statements.
Let us briefly glance at the divergences between orthodox and esoteric science, on the question of the age of the globe and of man. With the two respective synchronistic tables before him, the reader will be enabled to see at a glance the importance of these divergences; and to perceive, at the same time, that it is not impossible -- nay, it is most likely -- that further discoveries in geology and the finding of fossil remains of man will force science to confess that it is esoteric philosophy which is right after all, or, at any rate, nearer to the truth.
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PARALLELISM OF LIFE.
[[First Column]]
SCIENTIFIC HYPOTHESES.
Science divides the period of the globe's history, since the beginning of life on earth (or the Azoic age), into five main divisions or periods, according to Haeckel.**
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[[Second Column]]
ESOTERIC THEORY.
Leaving the classification of the geological periods to Western Science, esoteric philosophy divides only the life-periods on the globe. In the present Manvantara the actual period is separated into seven Kalpas and seven great human races. Its first Kalpa, answering to the "Primordial Epoch," is the age of
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the --
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[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The root and basic idea of the origin and transformation of species -- the heredity (of acquired faculties) seems to have found lately very serious opponents in Germany. Du Bois-Reymond and Dr. Pffuger, the physiologists, besides other men of science as eminent as any, find insuperable difficulties and even impossibilities in the doctrine.
** History of Creation, p. 20.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 712 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
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PRIMORDIAL EPOCH (Laurentian System, Cambrian System, Silurian System)
The Primordial Epoch is, science tells us, by no means devoid of vegetable and animal life. In the Laurentian deposits are found specimens of the Eozoon Canadense -- a chambered shell. In the Silurian are discovered sea-weeds (algae), molluscs, crustacea, and lower marine organisms, also the first trace of fishes. The primordial Epoch shows algae, molluscs, crustacea, polyps, and marine organisms, etc., etc. Science teaches, therefore, that marine life was present from the very beginnings of time, leaving us, however, to speculate for ourselves as to how life appeared on earth. If it rejects the Biblical "Creation" (as we do), why does it not give us another, approximately plausible hypothesis?
PRIMARY (Devonian***, Coal, Permian)
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[[Second Column continued from previous page]]
"PRIMEVAL"* (Deva or Divine men, the "Creators" and Progenitors.**)
The Esoteric Philosophy agrees with the statement made by science (see parallel column), demurring, however, in one particular. The 300,000,000 years of vegetable life (see "Brahminical Chronology") preceded the "Divine Men," or Progenitors. Also, no teaching denies that there were traces of life within the Earth besides the Eozoon Canadense in the Primordial Epoch. Only, whereas the said vegetation belonged to this Round, the zoological relics now found in the Laurentian, Cambrian, and Silurian systems, so called, are the relics of the Third Round. At first astral like the rest, they consolidated and materialized pari passu with the NEW vegetation.
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"PRIMARY" -- Divine Progenitors, SECONDARY GROUPS, and the 2 1/2 races. "Fern-forests, Sigillaria, Coniferae, fishes, first trace of reptiles." Thus saith modern science; the esoteric doctrine repeats that which was said above. These are all relics of the preceding Round.**** Once, however, the prototypes are projected out of the astral envelope of the earth, an indefinite amount of modification ensues.
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[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The same names are retained as those given by science, to make the parallels clearer. Our terms are quite different.
** Let the student remember that the Doctrine teaches that there are seven degrees of Devas or "Progenitors," or seven classes, from the most perfect to the less exalted.
*** It may be said that we are inconsistent in not introducing into this table a [[Footnote continued on next page]]
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 713 THE TWO SCIENCES CONTRASTED.
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SECONDARY (Triassic. Jurassic. Chalk or Cretaceous.)
This is the age of Reptiles, of the gigantic Megalosauri, Ichthyosauri, Plesiosauri, etc., etc. Science denies the presence of man in that period. If so, it has to explain how men came to know of these monsters and describe them before the age of Cuvier? The old annals of China, India, Egypt, and even of Judea are full of them, as demonstrated elsewhere. In this period also appear the first (marsupial) mammals***** -- Insectivorous, carnivorous, phytophagous; and (as Prof. Owen thinks) an herbivorous hoofed mammal.
Science does not admit the appearance of man before the close of the
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[[Second Column continued from previous page]]
SECONDARY -- According to every calculation the Third Race had already made its appearance, as during the Triassic there were already a few mammals, and it must have separated.
This, then, is the age of the Third Race, in which the origins of the early Fourth may be perhaps also
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discoverable. We are, however, here left entirely to conjecture, as no definite data are yet given out by the Initiates.
The analogy is but a poor one, still it may be argued that, as the early Mammalia and pre-mammalia are shown in their evolution merging from one kind into a higher one, anatomically, so are the human races in their procreative processes. A parallel might certainly be found between the Monotremata, the Didelphia (or Marsupialia) and the placental Mammals, divided in their turn into three orders******
[[Second Column continued on next page]]
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] Primary-Age Man. The parallelism of Races and geological periods here adopted, is, so far as the origin of 1st and 2nd are concerned, purely tentative, no direct information being available. Having previously discussed the question of a possible Race in the Carboniferous Age, it is needless to renew the debate.
**** During the interim from one Round to another, the globe and everything on it remains in statu quo. Remember, Vegetation began in its ethereal form before what is called the Primordial, running through the Primary, and condensing in it, and reaching its full physical life in the Secondary.
***** Geologists tell us that "in the secondary epoch, the only mammals which have been (hitherto) discovered in Europe are the fossil remains of a small marsupial or pouch-bearer." (Knowledge, March 31, 1882, p 464.) Surely the marsupial or didelphis (the only surviving animal of the family of those who were on earth during the presence on it of androgyne man) cannot be the only animal that was then on earth? Its presence speaks loudly for that of other (though unknown) mammals, besides the monotremes and marsupials, and thus shows the appellation of "mammalian age" given only to the Tertiary period to be misleading and erroneous; as it allows one to infer that there were no mammals, but reptiles, birds, amphibians, and fishes alone in the Mesozoic times -- the Secondary.
****** These Placentalia of the third sub-class are divided, it appears, into Villiplacentalia (placenta composed of many separate scattered tufts), the Zonoplacentalia (girdle-shaped placenta), and the discoplacentaIia (or discoid). Haeckel sees in the Marsupialia Didelphia, one of the connecting links genealogically between man and the Moneron!!
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 714 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
[[First Column continued from previous page]]
Tertiary period.* Why? Because man has to be shown younger than the higher mammals. But Esoteric philosophy teaches us the reverse. And as science is quite unable to come to anything like an approximate conclusion as to the age of man, or even the geological periods, therefore, even accepted only as a hypothesis, the occult teaching is more logical and reasonable.
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No man is yet allowed to have lived during this period: --
***Tertiary -- Eocene. Miocene. Pliocene.
Says Mr. E. Clodd, in Knowledge : -- "Although the placental mammals and the order of Primates to which man is related, appear in Tertiary times and the climate, tropical in the Eocene age, warm in the Miocene and temperate in the Pliocene, was favourable to his presence, the proofs of his existence in Europe before the close of the Tertiary epoch . . . . are not generally accepted here."
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[[Second Column continued from previous page]]
like the First, Second, and Third Root-Races of men.** But this would require more space than can be now allotted to the subject.
Tertiary age -- The Third race has now almost utterly disappeared, carried away by the fearful geological cataclysms of the Secondary age, leaving behind it but a few hybrid races.
The Fourth, born millions of years before**** the said cataclysm took place, perishes during the Miocene period,****** when the Fifth (our Aryan race) had one million years of independent existence. (See "Esoteric Buddhism, " pp. 53-55. Fourth Ed.) How much older it is from its origin -- who knows? As the "Historical" Period has begun, with the Indian Aryans, with their Vedas, for their multitudes,****** and far earlier in the Esoteric Records, it is useless to establish here any parallels.
[[Second Column continued on next page]]
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Those who feel inclined to sneer at that doctrine of Esoteric Ethnology, which pre-supposes the existence of Man in the Secondary Age, will do well to note the fact that one of the most distinguished anthropologists of the day, M. de Quatrefages, seriously argues in that direction. He writes: "There is nothing impossible in the supposition that he (Man) may have appeared on the globe with the first representatives of the type to which he belongs in virtue of his organism." This statement approximates most closely to our fundamental assertion that man preceded the other mammalia.
Professor Lefevre admits that the "labours of Boucher de Perthes, Lartet, Christy, Bourgeois, Desnoyers, Broca, de Mortillet, Hamy, Gaudry, Capellini, and a hundred others, have overcome all doubts and clearly established the progressive development of the human organism and industries from the Miocene epoch of the Tertiary age. " ("Philosophy," p. 499, chapter on Organic Evolution.) Why does he reject the possibility of a Secondary-Age man? Simply because he is involved in the meshes of the Darwinian Anthropology!! "The origin of man is bound up with that of the higher mammals;" he appeared "only with the last types of his class"!! This is not [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 715 THE SUFFICIENCY OF THE "ANIMALISTS."
Geology has now divided the periods and placed man in the --
[[First Column continued from previous page]]
Quaternary (Palaeolithic man. Neolithic man, and Historical Period.)
[[Second Column continued from previous page]]
If the Quaternary period is allowed 1,500,000 years, then only does our Fifth Race belong to it.
[[End of Columns]]
Yet, mirabile dictu! -- while the non-cannibal Paleolithic man, who must have certainly antedated cannibal Neolithic man by hundreds of thousands of years******* is shown to be a remarkable artist, neolithic
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] argument, but dogmatism. Theory can never excommunicate fact ! Must everything give place to the mere working-hypotheses of Western Evolutionists? Surely not.
** This inclusion of the First Race in the Secondary is necessarily only a provisional working-
hypothesis -- the actual chronology of the First, Second, and Early Third Races being closely veiled by the Initiates. For all that can be said on the subject, the First Root-Race may have been Pre-Secondary, as is, indeed, taught. ( Vide supra.)
*** The above parallels stand good only if Professor Croll's earlier calculations are adopted, namely, of 15,000,000 years since the beginning of the Eocene period (see Charles Gould's "Mythical Monsters," p. 84), not those in his "Climate and Time," which allow only 2 1/2 million years', or at the utmost three million years' duration to the Tertiary age. This, however, would make the whole duration of the incrusted age of the world only 131,600,000 years according to Professor Winchell, whereas in the Esoteric doctrine, sedimentation began in this Round approximately over 320 million years ago. Yet his calculations do not clash much with ours with regard to the epochs of glacial periods in the Tertiary age, which is called in our Esoteric books the age of the "Pigmies." With regard to the 320 millions of years assigned to sedimentation, it must be noted that even a greater time elapsed during the preparation of this globe for the Fourth Round previous to stratification.
**** Though we apply the term "truly human," only to the Fourth Atlantean Root-Race, yet the Third Race is almost human in its latest portion, since it is during its fifth sub-race that mankind separated sexually, and that the first man was born according to the now normal process. This "first man"
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answers in the Bible (Genesis) to Enos or Henoch, son of Seth (ch. iv.).
***** Geology records the former existence of a universal ocean, sheets of marine sediments uniformly present everywhere testifying to it; but, it is not even the epoch referred to in the allegory of Vaivasvata Manu. The latter is a Deva-Man (or Manu) saving in an ark (the female principle) the germs of humanity, and also the seven Rishis -- who stand here as the symbols for the seven human principles -- of which allegory we have spoken elsewhere. The "Universal Deluge" is the watery abyss of the Primordial Principle of Berosus. (See Stanzas from 2 to 8 in Part I.). How, if Croll allowed fifteen million years to have elapsed since the Eocene period (which we state on the authority of a Geologist, Mr. Ch. Gould) only 60 millions are assigned by him "since the beginning of the Cambrian period, in the Primordial Age " -- passes comprehension. The Secondary strata are twice the thickness of the Tertiary, and Geology thus shows the Secondary age alone to be of twice the length of the Tertiary. Shall we then accept only 15 million years for both the Primary and the Primordial? No wonder Darwin rejected the calculation.
****** We hope that we have furnished all the Scientific data for it elsewhere.
******* It is conceded by Geology to be "beyond doubt that a considerable period must have supervened after the departure of Palaeolithic man and before the arrival of his Neolithic successor." (See James Geikie's "Prehistoric Europe," and Ch. Gould's "Mythical Monsters," p. 98).
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 716 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
man is made out almost an abject savage, his lake dwellings notwithstanding.* For see what a learned geologist, Mr. Charles Gould, tells the reader in his "Mythical Monsters": --
"Palaeolithic men were unacquainted with pottery and the art of weaving, and apparently had no domesticated animals or system of cultivation; but the Neolithic lake-dwellers of Switzerland had looms, pottery, cereals, sheep, horses," etc., etc.
Yet, though "Implements of horn, bone, and wood were in common use among both races . . . those of the older are frequently distinguished by their being sculptured with great ability, or ornamented with life-like engravings of the various animals living at the period; whereas there appears to have been a marked absence of any similar artistic ability** on the part of Neolithic man." Let us give the reasons for it.
(1) The oldest fossil man, the primitive cave-men of the old Palaeolithic period, and of the Pre-glacial period (of whatever length, and however far back), is always the same genus man, and there are no fossil remains proving for him "what the Hipparion and Anchitherium have proved for the genus horse -- that is, gradual progressive specialization from a simple ancestral type to more complex existing forms" ("Modern Science, " p. 181).
(2) As to the so-called Palaeolithic hatchet . . . "when placed side by side with the rudest forms of
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stone hatchets actually used by the Australian and other savages, it is difficult to detect any difference" (Ibid, p. 112). This goes to prove that there have been savages at all times; and the inference would be that there might have been civilized people in those days as well, cultured nations contemporary with those rude savages. We see such a thing in Egypt 7,000 years ago.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Resembling in a manner the pile-villages of Northern Borneo.
** "The most clever sculptor of modern times would probably not succeed very much better, if his graver were a splinter of flint and stone and bone were the materials to be engraved"!! (Prof. Boyd Dawkins' "Cave-Hunting," p. 344.) It is needless after such a concession to further insist on Huxley's, Schmidt's, Laing's, and others' statements to the effect that Palaeolithic man cannot be considered to lead us back in any way to a pithecoid human race; thus demolishing the fantasies of many superficial evolutionists. The relic of artistic merit here re-appearing in the Chipped-Stone-Age men, is traceable to their Atlantean ancestry. Neolithic man was a fore-runner of the great Aryan invasion, and immigrated from quite another quarter -- Asia, and in a measure Northern Africa. (The tribes peopling the latter towards the North-West, were certainly of an Atlantean origin -- dating back hundreds of thousands of years before the Neolithic Period in Europe, -- but they had so diverged from the parent type as to present no longer any marked characteristic peculiar to it.) As to the contrast between Neolithic and Palaeolithic Man, it is a remarkable fact that, as Carl Vogt remarks, the former was a cannibal, the much earlier man of the Mammoth era not. Human manners and customs do not seem to improve with time, then? Not in this instance at any rate.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 717 ONE SALVATION FOR SCIENCE.
(3) An obstacle which is the direct consequence of the two preceding: Man, if no older than the Palaeolithic period, could not possibly have had the actual time to get transformed from the "missing link" into what he is known to have been even during that remote geological time, i.e., even a finer specimen than many of the now existing races.
The above lends itself naturally to the following syllogism: (1) The primitive man (known to Science) was, in some respects, even a finer man of his genus than he is now. (2) The earliest monkey known, the lemur, was less anthropoid than the modern pithecoid species. (3) Conclusion : even though a missing link were found, the balance of evidence would remain more in favour of the ape being a degenerated man made dumb by some fortuitous circumstances,* than tending to show that man descends from a pithecoid ancestor. The theory cuts both ways.
On the other hand, if the existence of Atlantis is accepted, and the statement is believed that in the Eocene Age "even in its very first part, the great cycle of the fourth race men, the Atlanteans had already reached its highest point . . . ." (Esoteric Buddhism, p. 64) then some of the present difficulties of science might be easily made to disappear. The rude workmanship of the Palaeolithic tools proves nothing against the idea that, side by side with their makers, there lived nations highly civilized. We are told that "only a very small portion of the earth's surface has been explored, and of this a very
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small portion consists of ancient land surfaces or fresh water formations, where alone we can expect to meet with traces of the higher forms of animal life," . . . and that "even these have been so imperfectly explored, that where we now meet with thousands and tens of thousands of undoubted human remains lying almost under our feet, it is only within the last thirty years that their existence has even been suspected" (p. 98). It is very suggestive also that along with the rude haches of the lowest savage, explorers meet with specimens of workmanship of such artistic merit as could hardly be found, or expected, in a modern peasant belonging to any European country -- unless in exceptional cases. The "portrait" of the "Reindeer feeding," from the Thayngin grotto in Switzerland, and those of the man running, with two horse's heads sketched close to him -- a work of the Reindeer period, i.e., at least 50,000 years ago -- are pronounced by Mr. Laing not only exceedingly well done, but, especially the reindeer feeding, as one that "would do credit to any modern animal painter "
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* On the data furnished by modern science, physiology, and natural selection, and without resorting to any miraculous creation, two negro human specimens of the lowest intelligence -- say idiots born dumb -- might by breeding produce a dumb Pastrana species, which would start a new modified race, and thus produce in the course of geological time the regular anthropoid ape.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 718 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
-- by no means exaggerated praise, as anyone may see ( Vide infra). Now, since side by side with the modern Esquimaux, who also have a tendency, like their Palaeolithic ancestors of the Reindeer period, the rude and savage human species, to be constantly drawing with the point of their knives sketches of animals, scenes of the chase, etc., we have our greatest painters of Europe, why could not the same have happened in those days? Compared with the specimens of Egyptian drawing and sketching -- "7,000 years ago" -- the "earliest portraits" of men, horses' heads, and reindeer, made 50,000 years ago, are certainly superior. Nevertheless, the Egyptians of those periods are known to have been a highly civilized nation, whereas the Palaeolithic men are called savages of the lower type. This is a small matter seemingly, yet extremely suggestive as showing that every new geological discovery is made to fit in with current theories, instead of the reverse. Yes; Mr. Huxley is right in saying, "Time will show." It will, and must vindicate Occultism.
Meanwhile, the most uncompromising materialists are driven by necessity into the most occult-like admissions. Strange to say, it is the most materialistic -- those of the German school -- who, with regard to physical development, come the nearest to the teachings of the Occultists. Thus, Professor Baumgartner, who believes that "the germs for the higher animals could only be the eggs of the lower animals"; who thinks that "besides the advance of the vegetable and animal world in development, there occurred in that period the formation of new original germs," which formed the basis of new metamorphoses, etc. -- thinks also that "the first men who proceeded from the germs of animals beneath them, lived first in a larva state."
Just so, in a larva state, we say, too; only from no "animal" germ, and that "larva" was the soulless astral form of the pre-physical Races. And we believe, as the German professor does, with several
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other men of Science in Europe now, that the human races "have not descended from one pair, but appeared immediately in numerous races"; (Anfange zu einer Physiologischen Schopfungs-geschichte der Pflanzen und Thierwelt, 1885). Therefore, when we read "Force and Matter," and find that Emperor of Materialists, Buchner, repeating after Manu and Hermes, that "the plant passes imperceptibly into the animal, and the animal into man" (p. 85), we need only add "and man into a spirit," to complete the Kabalistic axiom. The more so, since on page 82 of the same work we read the following admission: . . . "Produced in the way of spontaneous generation . . . it is by the aid of intense natural forces and endless periods of time (that) there has progressively arisen that rich and infinitely modified organic world by which we are at present surrounded." . . . And (page 84) "Spontaneous generation played, no doubt,
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 719 BETWEEN TWO VOIDS.
a more important part in the primeval epoch than at present; nor can it be denied that in this way beings of a higher organization were produced than now,"* for this is the claim of Occultism.
The whole difference lies in this: Modern Science places her materialistic theory of primordial germs on earth, and the last germ of life on this globe, of man, and everything else, between two voids. Whence the first germ, if both spontaneous generation and the interference of external forces, are absolutely rejected now? Germs of organic life, we are told, by Sir W. Thomson, came to our earth in some meteor? This helps in no way and only shifts the difficulty from this earth to the supposed meteor.
These are our agreements and disagreements with Science. About the endless periods we are, of course, at one even with materialistic speculation; for we believe in Evolution, though on different lines. Professor Huxley very wisely says: "If any form of progressive development is correct, we must extend by long epochs the most liberal estimate that has yet been made of the antiquity of man." But when we are told that this man is a product of the natural forces inherent in matter, force, according to modern views, being but a quality of matter, a "mode of motion," etc.; and when we find Sir W. Thomson repeating in 1885 what was asserted by Buchner and his school thirty years ago, we fear all our reverence for real Science is vanishing into thin air! One can hardly help thinking that materialism is, in certain cases, a disease. For when men of Science, in the face of the magnetic phenomena and the attraction of iron particles through insulating substances, like glass, maintain that the said attraction is due to "molecular motion," or to the "rotation of the molecules of the magnet," then, whether the teaching comes from a "credulous" Theosophist innocent of any notion of physics, or from an eminent man of Science, it is equally ridiculous. The individual who asserts such a theory in the teeth of fact, is only one more proof that "When people have not a niche in their minds in which to shoot facts, so much the worse for the facts."
As present the dispute between the spontaneous generationists and their opponents is at rest, having ended in the provisional victory of the latter. But even they are forced to admit, as Buchner did, and Messrs. Tyndall and Huxley still do -- that spontaneous generation must have occurred once, under "special thermal conditions." Virchow refuses even to argue the question; it must have taken place sometime in the history of our planet: and there's an end of it. This seems to look more natural than Sir
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W. Thomson's hypothesis just quoted, that the germs of organic life fell on our earth in some meteor; or that other
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Force and Matter," by Dr. Louis Buchner, translated and edited by J. Frederick Collingwood, F.R.S., F.G.S., 1864.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 720 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
scientific hypothesis coupled to the recently adopted belief that there exists no "Vital principle" whatever, but only vital phenomena, which can all be traced to the molecular forces of the original protoplasm. But this does not help Science to solve the still greater problem -- the origin and the descent of Man, for here is a still worse plaint and lamentation.
"While we can trace the skeletons of Eocene mammals through several directions of specialization in succeeding Tertiary times, man presents the phenomenon of an unspecialized skeleton which cannot fairly be connected with any of these lines." ("Origin of the World," p. 39, by Sir W. Dawson, LL.D., F.R.S.)
The secret could be soon told, not only from the esoteric but even from the standpoint of every religion the world over, without mentioning the Occultists. The "specialized skeleton" is sought for in the wrong place, where it can never be found. It is expected to be discovered in the physical remains of man, in some pithecoid "missing link," with a skull larger than that of the ape's, and with a cranial capacity smaller than in man, instead of looking for that specialization in the super-physical essence of his inner astral constitution, which can hardly be excavated from any geological strata! Such a tenacious, hopeful clinging to a self-degrading theory is the most wonderful feature of the day.
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REINDEER ENGRAVED ON ANTLER BY PALAEOLITHIC MAN. (After Geikie .)
Meanwhile, this is a specimen of an engraving made by a Palaeolithic "savage": Palaeolithic meaning the "earlier Stone-age" man, one supposed to have been as savage and brutal as the brutes he lived with.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 721 THE PALAEOLITHIC LANDSEER.
Leaving the modern South Sea Islander, or even any Asiatic race, aside, we defy any grown-up schoolboy, or even a European youth, one who has never studied drawing, to execute such an engraving or even a pencil sketch. Here we have the true artistic raccourci, and correct lights and shadows without any plane model before the artist, who copied direct from nature, thus exhibiting a knowledge of anatomy and proportion. The artist who engraved this reindeer belonged, we are asked to believe, to the primitive "semi-animal" savages (contemporaneous with the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros), whom some over-zealous Evolutionists once sought to picture to us as distinct approximations to the type of their hypothetical "pithecoid man"!
This engraved antler proves as eloquently as any fact can that the evolution of the races has ever proceeded in a series of rises and falls, that man, perhaps, is as old as incrustated Earth, and -- if we can call his Divine ancestor "Man" -- far older still.
Even de Mortillet himself seems to experience a vague distrust of the conclusions of modern archaeologists, when he writes: -- "The prehistoric is a new science, far, very far, from having said its last word." ("Prehist. Antiq. of Man, " 1883.) According to Lyell, one of the highest authorities on the subject, and the "Father" of Geology: -- "The expectation of always meeting with a lower type of human skull, the older the formation in which it occurs, is based on the theory of progressive
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development, and it may prove to be sound; nevertheless we must remember that as yet we have no distinct geological evidence that the appearance of what are called the inferior races of mankind has always preceded in chronological order that of the higher races." ("Antiq. of Man, " p. 25.) Nor has such evidence been found to this day. Science is thus offering for sale the skin of a bear, which has hitherto never been seen by mortal eye!
This concession of Lyell's reads most suggestively with the subjoined utterance of Professor Max Muller, whose attack on the Darwinian Anthropology from the standpoint of LANGUAGE has, by the way, never been satisfactorily answered: --
"What do we know of savage tribes beyond the last chapter of their history?" (Cf. this with the esoteric view of the Australians, Bushmen, as well as of Palaeolithic European man, the Atlantean offshoots retaining a relic of a lost culture, which throve when the parent Root-Race was in its prime.) "Do we ever get an insight into their antecedents. . . . How have they come to be what they are? . . . . Their language proves, indeed, that these so-called heathens, with their complicated systems of mythology, their artificial customs, their unintelligible whims and savageries, are not the creatures of to-day or yesterday. Unless we admit a special creation for these savages, they must be as old as the Hindus, the Greeks and Romans (far older). . . .
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 722 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
They may have passed through ever so many vicissitudes, and what we consider as primitive, may be, for all we know, a RELAPSE INTO SAVAGERY or a corruption of something that was more rational and intelligible in former stages." ("India," 1883, F. Max Muller.)
"The primeval savage is a familiar term in modern literature," remarks Professor Rawlinson, "but there is no evidence that the primeval savage ever existed. Rather all the evidence looks the other way." ("Antiq. of Man Historically Considered. ") In his "Origin of Nations," pp. 10-11, he rightly adds: "The mythical traditions of almost all nations place at the beginning of human history a time of happiness and perfection, a 'golden age' which has no features of savagery or barbarism, but many of civilization and refinement." How is the modern evolutionist to meet this consensus of evidence?
We repeat the question asked in "Isis Unveiled": "Does the finding of the remains in the cave of Devon prove that there were no contemporary races then who were highly civilized? When the present population of the earth have disappeared, and some archaeologist belonging to the 'coming race' of the distant future shall excavate the domestic implements of one of our Indian or Andaman Island tribes, will he be justified in concluding that mankind in the nineteenth century was 'just emerging from the Stone Age'?"
Another strange inconsistency in scientific knowledge is that Neolithic man is shown as being far more of a primitive savage than the Palaeolithic one. Either Lubbock's "Pre-historic Man," or Evans' "Ancient Stone Implements" must be at fault, or -- both. For this is what we learn from these works and others: --
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(1) As we pass from Neolithic to Palaeolithic Man, the stone implements become, from gracefully shaped and polished instruments, rude lumbering makeshifts. Pottery, etc., disappear as we descend the scale. And yet the latter could engrave such a reindeer!
(2) Palaeolithic Man lived in caves which he shared with hyaenas and lions also,* whereas Neolithic man dwelt in lake-villages and buildings.
Every one who has followed even superficially the geological discoveries of our day, knows that a gradual improvement in workmanship is found, from the clumsy chipping and rude chopping of the early Palaeolithic haches, to the relatively graceful stone celts of that part of the Neolithic period immediately preceding the use of metals. But this is in Europe, a few portions only of which were barely rising from the waters in the days
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* In such a case Palaeolithic man must have been endowed in his day with thrice Herculean force and magic invulnerability, or else the lion was as weak as a lamb at that period, for both to share the same dwelling. We may as well be asked to believe next that it is that lion or hyaena which has engraved the deer on the antler, as be told that this bit of workmanship was done by a savage of such a kind.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 723 ENTRAPPED BY THE REINDEER.
of the highest Atlantean civilizations. There were rude savages and highly civilized people then, as there are now. If 50,000 years hence, pigmy Bushmen are exhumed from some African cavern together with far earlier pigmy elephants, such as were found in the cave deposits of Malta by Milne Edwards, will that be a reason to maintain that in our age all men and all elephants were pigmies? Or if the weapons of the Veddhas of Ceylon are found, will our descendants be justified in setting us all down as Palaeolithic savages? All the articles which geologists now excavate in Europe can certainly never date earlier than from the close of the Eocene age, since the lands of Europe were not even above water before that period. Nor can what we have said be in the least invalidated by theorists telling us that these quaint sketches of animals and men by Palaeolithic man, were executed only toward the close of the Reindeer period -- for this explanation would be a very lame one indeed, in view of the geologists' ignorance of even the approximate duration of periods.
The Esoteric Doctrine teaches distinctly the dogma of the risings and falls of civilization; and now we learn that: "It is a remarkable fact that cannibalism seems to have become more frequent as man advanced in civilization, and that while its traces are frequent in Neolithic times they . . . . altogether disappear in the age of the mammoth and the reindeer." ("Mod. Science and Mod. Thought, " p. 164.)
Another evidence of the cyclic law and the truth of our teachings. Esoteric history teaches that idols and their worship died out with the Fourth Race, until the survivors of the hybrid races of the latter (Chinamen, African negroes, &c.) gradually brought the worship back. The Vedas countenance no idols; all the modern Hindu writings do.
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"In the early Egyptian tombs, and in the remains of the pre-historic cities excavated by Dr. Schliemann, images of owl and ox-headed goddesses, and other symbolical figures, or idols, are found in abundance. But when we ascend into Neolithic times, such idols are no longer found . . . . the only ones which may be said with some certainty to have been idols are one or two discovered by M. de Braye in some artificial caves of the Neolithic period . . . which appear to be intended for female figures of life size" . . . . (p. 199 Ibid.)
And these may have been simply statues. Anyhow, all this is one among the many proofs of the cyclic rise and fall of civilization and religion. The fact that no traces of human relics or skeletons are so far found beyond post-tertiary or "Quaternary" times -- though Abbe Bourgeois' flints may serve as a warning* -- seems to point to the truth of another esoteric statement,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* More than twenty specimens of fossil monkeys have been found in one locality alone, in Miocene strata (Pikermi, near Athens). If man was not then, the period is [[Footnote continued on next page]]
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 724 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
which runs thus: "Seek for the remains of thy forefathers in the high places. The vales have grown into mountains and the mountains have crumbled to the bottom of the seas." . . . Fourth Race mankind, thinned after the last cataclysm by two-thirds of its population, instead of settling on the new continents and islands that reappeared while their predecessors formed the floors of new Oceans -- deserted that which is now Europe and parts of Asia and Africa for the summits of gigantic mountains, the seas that surrounded some of the latter having since "retreated" and made room for the table lands of Central Asia.
The most interesting example of this progressive march is perhaps afforded by the celebrated Kent's Cavern at Torquay. In that strange recess, excavated by water out of the Devonian limestone, we find a most curious record preserved for us in the geological memoirs of the earth. Under the blocks of limestone, which heaped the floor of the cavern, were discovered, embedded in a deposit of black earth, many implements of the Neolithic period of fairly excellent workmanship, with a few fragments of pottery -- possibly traceable to the era of the Roman colonization. There is no trace of Palaeolithic man here. No flints or traces of the extinct animals of the Quaternary period. When, however, we penetrate still deeper through the dense layer of stalagmite beneath the mould into the red earth, which, of course, itself once formed the pavement of the retreat, things assume a very different aspect. Not one implement fit to bear comparison with the finely-chipped weapons found in the overlying stratum is to be seen; only a host of the rude and lumbering little hatchets (with which the monstrous giants of the animal world were subdued and killed by little man, we have to think?) and scrapers of the Palaeolithic age, mixed up confusedly with the bones of species now either extinct or emigrated, driven away by change of climate. It is the artificer of these ugly little hatchets, you see, who sculptured the reindeer over the brook, on the antler as shown above. In all cases we meet with the same evidence that, from historic to Neolithic and from Neolithic to Palaeolithic man, things slope downwards on an inclined plane from the rudiments of civilization to the most abject barbarism -- in
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Europe again. We are made also to face the "mammoth age" -- the extreme or earliest division of the Palaeolithic age -- in which the great rudeness of implements reaches its maximum, and the brutal (?) appearance of contemporary skulls, such as the Neanderthal, point to a very low type of Humanity. But they may sometimes point also to something besides; to a race of men quite distinct from our (Fifth Race) Humanity.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] too short for him to have been transformed -- stretch it as you may. And if he was, and if no monkey is found earlier, what follows?
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 725 STRANGE CONFESSIONS OF SCIENCE.
As said by an anthropologist in "Modern Thought " (art. "The Genesis of Man"): "The theory, scientifically based or not, of Peyrere may be considered to be equivalent to that which divided man in two species. Broca, Virey, and a number of the French anthropologists have recognised that the lower race of man, comprising the Australian, Tasmanian, and Negro race, excluding the Kaffirs and the Northern Africans, should be placed apart. The fact that in this species, or rather sub-species, the third lower molars are usually larger than the second, and the squamosal and frontal bones are generally united by suture, places the Homo Afer on the level of being as good a distinct species as many of the kinds of finches. I shall abstain on the present occasion from mentioning the facts of hybridity, whereon the late Professor Broca has so exhaustively commented. The history, in the past ages of the world, of this race is peculiar. It has never originated a system of architecture or a religion of its own" (Dr. C. Carter Blake). It is peculiar, indeed, as we have shown in the case of the Tasmanians. However it may be, fossil man in Europe can neither prove nor disprove the antiquity of man on this Earth nor the age of his earliest civilizations.
It is time the Occultists should disregard any attempts to laugh at them, scorning the heavy guns of the satire of the men of science as much as the pop-guns of the profane, since it is impossible, so far, to obtain either proof or disproof, while their theories can stand the test better than the hypotheses of the Scientists at any rate. As to the proof for the antiquity which they claim for man, they have, moreover, Darwin himself and Lyell. The latter confesses that they (the naturalists) "have already obtained evidence of the existence of man at so remote a period that there has been time for many conspicuous mammalia, once his contemporaries, to die out, and this even before the era of the earliest historical records."* This is a statement made by one of England's great authorities upon the question. The two sentences that follow are as suggestive, and may well be remembered by the students of Occultism, for with all others he says: "In spite of the long lapse of prehistoric ages during which he (Man) must have flourished on Earth, there is no proof of any perceptible change in his bodily structure. If, therefore, he ever diverged from some unreasoning brute ancestor, we must suppose him to have existed at a far more distant epoch, possibly on some continents or islands now submerged beneath the Ocean."
Thus lost continents are officially suspected. That worlds (also Races) are periodically destroyed by fire (volcanoes and earthquakes) and water, in turn, and renewed, is a doctrine as old as man. Manu, Hermes, the Chaldees, all antiquity believed in this. Twice already
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[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Antiquity of Man, " p. 530.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 726 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
has the face of the globe been changed by fire, and twice by water, since man appeared on it. As land needs rest and renovation, new forces, and a change for its soil, so does water. Thence arises a periodical redistribution of land and water, change of climates, etc., all brought on by geological revolution, and ending in a final change in the axis. Astronomers may pooh-pooh the idea of a periodical change in the behaviour of the globe's axis, and smile at the conversation given in the Book of Enoch between Noah and his "grandfather" Enoch; the allegory is, nevertheless, a geological and an astronomical fact: there is a secular change in the inclination of the earth's axis, and its appointed time is recorded in one of the great Secret Cycles. As in many other questions, Science is gradually moving toward our way of thinking. Dr. Henry Woodward, F.R.S., F.G.S., writes in the Popular Science Review (New Series in Vol. I. p. 115), Art.: "Evidences of the Age of Ice." . . . . "If it be necessary to call in extramundane causes to explain the great increase of ice at this glacial period, I would prefer the theory propounded by Dr. Robert Hooke in 1688; since, by Sir Richard Phillips and others; and lastly by Mr. Thomas Belt, C.E., F.G.S.; namely, a slight increase in the present obliquity of the ecliptic, a proposal in perfect accord with other known astronomical facts, and the introduction of which is essential to our cosmical condition as a unit in the great solar system."
The following, quoted from a Lecture by W. Pengelly, F.R.S., F.G.S., delivered in March, 1885, on "The extinct Lake of Bovey Tracey" shows the hesitation, in the face of every evidence in favour of Atlantis, to accept the fact. It is a quotation in the body of the Lecture: --
"Evergreen Figs, Laurels, Palms, and Ferns having gigantic rhizomes have their existing congeners in a sub-tropical climate, such, it cannot be doubted, as prevailed in Devonshire in Miocene times, and are thus calculated to suggest caution when the present climate of any district is regarded as normal.
"When, moreover, Miocene plants are found in Disco Island, on the west coast of Greenland, lying between 69[[degrees]] 20' and 70[[degrees]] 30' N. lat.; when we learn that among them were two species found also at Bovey (Sequoia couttsiae, Quercus Lyelli); when, to quote Professor Heer, we find that "the 'splendid evergreen' (Magnolia Inglefieldi) 'ripened its fruits so far north as on the parallel of 70 [[degrees]] ' " (Phil. Trans. clix., 457, 1869); when also the number, variety, and luxuriance of the Greenland Miocene plants are found to have been such that, had land continued so far, some of them would in all probability have flourished at the Pole itself, the problem of changes of climate is brought prominently into view, but only to be dismissed apparently with the feeling that the time for its solution has not yet arrived.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 727 NO "MISSING LINK" ANYWHERE.
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"It seems to be admitted on all hands that the Miocene plants of Europe have their nearest and most numerous existing analogues in North America, and hence arises the question; How was the migration from one area to the other effected? Was there, as some have believed, an Atlantis? -- a continent, or an archipelago of large islands, occupying the area of the North Atlantic. There is perhaps nothing unphilosophical in this hypothesis; for since, as geologists state, 'the Alps have acquired 4,000, and even in some places more than 10,000 feet of their present altitude since the commencement of the Eocene period' (Lyell's Principles, 11th ed., p. 256, 1872), a Post-Miocene (?) depression might have carried the hypothetical Atlantis into almost abysmal depths. But an Atlantis is apparently unnecessary and uncalled for. According to Professor Oliver, 'A close and very peculiar analogy subsists between the Flora of Tertiary Central Europe and the recent Floras of the American States and of the Japanese region; an analogy much closer and more intimate than is to be traced between the Tertiary and Recent Floras of Europe. We find the Tertiary element of the Old World to be intensified towards its extreme eastern margin. . . . This accession of the Tertiary element is rather gradual and not abruptly assumed in the Japan islands only. Although it there attains a maximum, we may trace it from the Mediterranean, Levant, Caucasus, and Persia . . . then along the Himalaya and through China. . . . We learn also that during the Tertiary epoch, counterparts of Central European Miocene genera certainly grew in North-West America. . . . We note further that the present Atlantic Islands' Flora affords no substantial evidence of a former direct communication with the mainland of the New World. . . . The consideration of these facts leads me to the opinion that botanical evidence does not favour the hypothesis of an Atlantis. On the other hand, it strongly favours the view that at some period of the Tertiary epoch North-Eastern Asia was united to North-western America, perhaps by the line where the Aleutian chain of islands now extends.' " (Nat. Hist. Rev. ii. 164, 1862.) See, however, "Scientific and Geological Proofs of the Reality of Several Submerged Continents."
But nothing short of a pithecoid man, will ever satisfy the luckless searchers after the thrice hypothetical "missing link." Yet, if beneath the vast floors of the Atlantic, from the Teneriffe Pic to Gibraltar, the ancient emplacement of the lost Atlantis, all the submarine strata were to be broken up miles deep, no such skull as would satisfy the Darwinists would be found. As Dr. C. R. Bree remarks ("Fallacies of Darwinism "), no missing links between man and ape having been discovered in various gravels and formations above the tertiaries, if they had gone down with the continents now covered with the sea, they
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 728 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
might still be found "in those beds of contemporary geological strata which have not gone down to the bottom of the sea." Yet they are as fatally absent from the latter as from the former. Were not preconceptions to fasten vampire-like on man's mind, the author of "Antiquity of Man " would have found a clue to the difficulty in that same work of his, by going ten pages back (530) and reading over a quotation of his own from Professor G. Rolleston's work. This physiologist, he says, suggests that as there is considerable plasticity in the human frame, not only in youth and during growth, but even in the adult, we ought not always to take for granted, as some advocates of the development theory seem to do, that each advance in physical power depends on an improvement in bodily structure, for why may not the soul, or the higher intellectual and moral faculties play the first instead of the second part
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in a progressive scheme.
This hypothesis is made in relation to Evolution not being entirely due to "natural selection"; but it applies as well to our case in hand. For we, too, claim that it is the "Soul," or the inner man, that descends on Earth first, the psychic astral, the mould on which physical man is gradually built -- his Spirit, intellectual and moral faculties awakening later on as that physical stature grows and develops.
"Thus incorporeal Spirits to smaller forms reduced their shapes immense," . . . and became the men of the Third and the Fourth Races. Still later, ages after, appeared the men of our Fifth Race, reduced from the still gigantic (in our modern sense) stature of their primeval ancestors, to about half of that size at present.
Man is certainly no special creation, and he is the product of Nature's gradual perfective work, like any other living unit on this Earth. But this is only with regard to the human tabernacle. That which lives and thinks in man and survives that frame, the masterpiece of evolution -- is the "Eternal Pilgrim," the Protean differentiation in space and time of the One Absolute "unknowable."
In his "Antiquity of Man," Sir C. Lyell quotes -- perhaps in rather a mocking spirit -- what Hallam says (in Vol. iv., p. 162) in his "Introduction to the Literature of Europe ": --
"If man was made in the image of God, he was also made in the image of an ape. The framework of the body of him who has weighed the stars and made the lightning his slave, approaches to that of a speechless brute who wanders in the forest of Sumatra. Thus standing on the frontier land between animal and angelic natures, what wonder that he should partake of both?"
An Occultist would have put it otherwise. He would say that man was indeed made in the image of a type projected by his progenitor, the creating Angel-Force, or Dhyan Chohan; while the wanderer of the forest of Sumatra was made in the image of man, since the frame-
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 729 PALAEOLITHIC MAN, A CALIGRAPH!
work of the ape, we say again, is the revival, the resuscitation by abnormal means of the actual form of the Third-Round, and of the Fourth-Round Man as well, later on. Nothing is lost in nature, not an atom: this latter is at least certain on scientific data. Analogy would appear to demand that form should be equally endowed with permanency.
And yet what do we find: --
"It is significant," says Sir W. Dawson, F.R.S., "that Professor Huxley in his lectures in New York, while resting his case as to the lower animals, mainly on the supposed genealogy of the horse, which has often been shown to amount to no certain evidence, avoided altogether the discussion of the origin of men from the apes, now obviously
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complicated with so many difficulties that both Wallace and Mivart are staggered by them. Professor Thomas in his recent lectures ('Nature,' 1876), admits that there is no lower man known than the Australian, and that there is no known link of connection with the monkeys; and that Haeckel has to admit that the penultimate link in his phylogeny, the ape-like man, is absolutely unknown ('History of Creation.') . . . . The so-
called 'tallies' found with the bones of Palaeocosmic men in European caves, and illustrated in the admirable works of Christy and Lartet, show that the rudiments even of writings were already in possession of the oldest race of men known to archaeology or geology." (See Wilson's "Prehistoric Man, " op. cit., vol. ii., p. 54. "Origin of the World," p. 393.)
Again in Dr. C. R. Bree's "Fallacies of Darwinism, " on page 160, we read: --
"Mr. Darwin justly says that the difference physically and, more especially mentally, between the lowest form of man and the highest anthropomorphous ape, is enormous. Therefore, the time -- which in Darwinian evolution must be almost inconceivably slow -
- must have been enormous also during man's development from the monkey.* The chance, therefore, of some of these variations being found in the different gravels or fresh-water formations above the tertiaries, must be very great. And yet not one single variation, not one single specimen of a being between a monkey and a man has ever been found. Neither in the gravel, nor the drift-clay, nor the fresh-water beds, nor in the tertiaries below them has there ever been discovered the remains of any member of the missing families between the monkey and the man, as assumed to have existed by Mr. Darwin. Have they gone down with the depression of the earth's surface and are they now covered with the sea? If so, it is beyond all probability that they should not, also be found in those beds of contemporary geological strata which have not gone down to the bottom of the sea; still more improbable that some portions should not be dredged from the ocean bed like the remains of the mammoth and the rhinoceros which are also found in fresh-water beds and gravels and drift! . . . . . . the celebrated Neanderthal skull, about which so much has been said, belongs confessedly to this remote epoch (bronze and stone ages), and yet presents, although it may have been the skull of an idiot, immense differences from the highest known anthropomorphous ape."
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* And how much more "enormous" if we reverse the subjects and say during the monkey's development from the Third Race Man.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 730 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
Our globe being convulsed each time that it reawakens for a new period of activity, like a field which has to be ploughed and furrowed before fresh seed for its new crop is thrown into it -- it does seem quite hopeless that fossils belonging to its previous Rounds should be found in the beds of either its oldest or its latest geological strata. Every new Manvantara brings along with it the renovation of
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forms, types and species; every type of the preceding organic forms -- vegetable, animal and human -- changes and is perfected in the next, even to the mineral, which has received in this Round its final opacity and hardness; its softer portions having formed the present vegetation; the astral relics of previous vegetation and fauna having been utilized in the formation of the lower animals, and determining the structure of the primeval Root-Types of the highest mammalia. And, finally, the form of the gigantic Ape-Man of the former Round has been reproduced in this one by human sexstone and transfigured into the parent form in the modern Anthropoid.
This doctrine, even imperfectly delineated as it is under our inefficient pen, is assuredly more logical, more consistent with facts, and far more probable than many "scientific" theories; that, for instance, of the first organic germ descending on a meteor to our Earth -- like Ain Soph on his Vehicle, Adam Kadmon. Only, the latter descent is allegorical, as every one knows, and the Kabalists have never offered this figure of speech for acceptance in its dead-letter garb. But the germ on the meteor theory, as coming from such high scientific quarters, is an eligible candidate for axiomatic truth and law, a theory people are in honour bound to accept, if they would be on a right level with modern Science. What the next theory necessitated by the materialistic premises will be -- no one can tell. Meanwhile, the present theories, as any one can see, clash together far more discordantly among themselves than even those of the Occultists outside the sacred precincts of learning. For what is there, next in order, now that exact Science has made even of the Life-principle an empty word, a meaningless term; and now insists that life is an effect due to the molecular action of the primordial protoplasm! The new doctrine of the Darwinists may be defined and summarized in a few words, in which Mr. Herbert Spencer has defined "special creation" . . . "it is worthless. Worthless, by its derivation; worthless, in its intrinsic incoherence; worthless, as absolutely without evidence; worthless, as not supplying an intellectual need; worthless, as not satisfying a moral want. We must, therefore, consider it as counting for nothing in opposition to any other hypothesis respecting the origin of organic beings." (Principles of Biology, Vol. I., p. 345.)
Next Section
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The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 2
Theosophical University Press Online Edition
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 731 STILL GREATER DIFFICULTIES.
§ V.
ORGANIC EVOLUTION AND CREATIVE CENTRES.
IT is argued that the Universal Evolution, otherwise, the gradual development of species in all the kingdoms of nature, works by uniform laws. This is admitted, and the law enforced far more strictly in Esoteric than in modern Science. But we are told also, that it is equally a law that "development works from the less to the more perfect, and from the simpler to the more complicated, by incessant changes, small in themselves, but constantly accumulating in the required direction." It is from the infinitesimally small that the comparatively gigantic species are produced.
Esoteric Science agrees with it, but adds that this law applies only to what is known to it as the Primary Creation -- the evolution of worlds from primordial atoms, and the pre-primordial ATOM, at the first differentiation of the former; and that during the period of cyclic evolution in space and time, this law is limited and works only in the lower kingdoms. It did so work during the first geological periods, from simple to complex, on the rough material surviving from the relics of the Third Round, which relics are projected into objectivity when terrestrial activity recommences.
No more than Science, does esoteric philosophy admit design or "special creation." It rejects every claim to the "miraculous," and accepts nothing outside the uniform and immutable laws of Nature. But it teaches a cyclic law, a double stream of force (or spirit) and of matter, which, starting from the neutral centre of Being, develops in its cyclic progress and incessant transformations. The primitive germ from which all vertebrate life has developed throughout the ages, being distinct from the primitive germ from which the vegetable and the animal life have evolved, there are side laws whose work is determined by the conditions in which the materials to be worked upon are found by them, and of which Science -- physiology and anthropology especially -- seems to be little aware. Its votaries speak of that "primitive germ," and maintain that it is shown beyond any doubt that the "design" and the "designer," if there be any, in the case of man, with the wonderful structure of his limbs, and his hand especially, "must be placed very much farther back, and (the design) is, in fact, involved in the primitive germ," from which not only all vertebrate life, but, "probably all life, animal and vegetable, have been slowly developed" (p . 94 of "Modern Science and Modern Thought ").
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 732 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
This is as true of the "primitive germ" as it is false that that "germ" is only "very much farther back" than man is; for it is at an immeasurable and inconceivable distance (in time, though not in space)
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from the origin even of our Solar system. As the Hindu philosophy very justly teaches, the "Aniyamsam Aniyasam, " can be known only through false notions. It is the "many" that proceed from the ONE -- the living spiritual germs or centres of forces -- each in a septenary form, which first generate, and then give the PRIMARY IMPULSE to the law of evolution and gradual slow development.
Limiting the teaching strictly to this, our earth, it may be shown that, as the ethereal forms of the first Men are first projected on seven zones by seven Dhyan-Chohanic centres of Force, so there are centres of creative power for every ROOT or parent species of the host of forms of vegetable and animal life. This is, again, no "special creation," nor is there any "Design," except in the general "ground-plan" worked out by the universal law. But there are certainly "designers," though these are neither omnipotent nor omniscient in the absolute sense of the term. They are simply Builders, or Masons, working under the impulse given them by the ever-to-be-unknown (on our plane) Master Mason -- the ONE LIFE and Law. Belonging to this sphere, they have no hand in, or possibility of working on any other, during the present Manvantara, at any rate. That they work in cycles and on a strictly geometrical and mathematical scale of progression, is what the extinct animal species amply demonstrate; that they act by design in the details of minor lives (of side animal issues, etc.) is what natural history has sufficient evidence for. In the creation of new species, departing sometimes very widely from the Parent stock, as in the great variety of the genus Felis -- like the lynx, the tiger, the cat, etc. -- it is the "designers" who direct the new evolution by adding to, or depriving the species of certain appendages, either needed or becoming useless in the new environments. Thus, when we say that Nature provides for every animal and plant, whether large or small, we speak correctly. For, it is those terrestrial spirits of Nature, who form the aggregated Nature; which, if it fails occasionally in its design, is neither to be considered blind, nor to be taxed with the failure; since, belonging to a differentiated sum of qualities and attributes, it is in virtue of that alone conditioned and imperfect.
Were there no such thing as evolutionary cycles, an eternal spiral progress into matter with a proportionate obscuration of spirit -- though the two are one -- followed by an inverse ascent into spirit and the defeat of matter -- active and passive by turn -- how explain the discoveries of zoology and geology? How is it that, on the dictum of authoritative science, one can trace the animal life from the mollusc up
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 733 THE "TO BE OR NOT TO BE" OF SCIENCE.
to the great Sea Dragon, from the smallest land-worm up again to the gigantic animals of the Tertiary Period; and that the latter were once crossed is shown by the fact of all those species decreasing, dwindling down and being dwarfed. If the seeming process of development working from the less to the more perfect, and from the simpler to the more complex, were a universal law indeed, instead of being a very imperfect generalization of a mere secondary nature in the great Cosmic process, and if there were no such cycles as those claimed, then the Mesozoic fauna and flora ought to change places with the latest Neolithic. It is the Plesiosauri and the Ichthyosauri that we ought to find developing from the present sea and river reptiles, instead of giving place to their dwarfed modern analogies. It is, again, our old friend, the good-tempered elephant, that would be the fossil antediluvian ancestor, and the mammoth of the Pliocene age who would be in the menagerie; the megalonyx and the gigantic
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megatherium would be found instead of the lazy sloth in the forests of South America, in which the colossal ferns of the carboniferous periods would take the place of moss and present trees -- dwarfs, even the giants of California, in comparison with the Titan-trees of past geological periods. Surely the organisms of the megasthenian world of the Tertiary and the Mesozoic Ages must have been more complex and perfect than those of the microsthenian plants and animals of the present age? The Dryopithecus, for instance, is found more perfect anatomically, more fit for a greater development of brain power, than the modern gorilla or gibbon? How is this, then? Are we to believe that the constitution of all those colossal land and sea-dragons, of the gigantic flying reptiles, was not far more developed and complex than the anatomy of the lizards, turtles, crocodiles, and even of the whales -- in short, all those animals we are acquainted with?
Let us admit, however, for argument's sake, that all those cycles, races, septenary forms of evolution and the tutti quanti of esoteric teaching, are no better than a delusion and a snare. Let us agree with Science and say that man, instead of being an imprisoned "Spirit," and his vehicle, the shell or body, a gradually perfected and now complete mechanism for material and terrestrial uses, as claimed by the Occultists -- is simply a more developed animal, whose primal form emerged from one and the same primitive germ on this earth, as the flying dragon and the gnat, the whale and the amoeba, the crocodile and the frog, etc., etc. In this case, he must have passed through the identical developments and through the same process of growth as all the other mammals? If man is an animal, and nothing more, a highly intellectual ex-brute, he should be privileged, at least, and allowed to have been a gigantic mammal of his kind, a
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 734 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
meganthropos in his day. It is just this, that esoteric science shows as having taken place in the first three rounds, and in this, as in most other things, it is more logical and consistent than modern science. It classifies the human body with the brute creation, and maintains it in the path of animal evolution, from first to last, while science leaves man a parentless orphan born of sires unknown, an "unspecialized skeleton" truly! And this mistake is due to a stubborn rejection of the doctrine of cycles.
-------
A.
THE ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF THE MAMMALIA: SCIENCE AND THE
ESOTERIC PHYLOGENY.
Having dealt almost exclusively with the question of the origin of Man in the foregoing criticism of Western Evolutionism, it may not be amiss to define the position of the Occultists with regard to the differentiation of species. The pre-human fauna and flora have been already generally dealt with in the Commentary on the Stanzas, and the truth of much of modern biological speculation admitted, e.g.,
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the derivation of birds from reptiles, the partial truth of "natural selection," and the transformation theory generally. It now remains to clear up the mystery of the origin of those first mammalian fauna which M. de Quatrefages so brilliantly endeavours to prove as contemporary with the Homo primigenius of the Secondary Age.
The somewhat complicated problem relating to the "Origin of Species," -- more especially of the varied groups of fossil or existing mammalian fauna -- will be rendered less obscure by the aid of a diagram. It will then be apparent to what extent the "Factors of Organic Evolution," relied upon by Western biologists,* are to be considered as
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The Darwinian theory has been so strained, that even Huxley was forced at one time to deprecate its occasional degeneration into "fanaticism." Oscar Schmidt presents a good instance of a thinker who unconsciously exaggerates the worth of an hypothesis. He admits ("The Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism," p. 158), that "natural selection" "is in some cases . . . inadequate, . . . in others . . . not requisite, as the solution of the formation of species is found in other natural conditions." He also asserts the "intermediate grades are . . . wanting, which would entitle us to infer with certainty the direct transition from unplacental to placental mammals" (p. 271); that "we are referred entirely to conjecture and inference for the origin of the mammals" (p. 268); and the repeated failures of the framers of "hypothetical pedigrees," more especially of Haeckel. Nevertheless he asserts on p. 194, that "what we have gained by the Doctrine of Descent based on the theory of selection is the KNOWLEDGE of the connection of organisms as 'consanguineous beings.' " Knowledge in the face of the above-cited concessions, is, then, the synonym for conjecture and theory only?
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 735 CONJECTURES ARE NOT FACTS.
adequate to meet the facts. The line of demarcation between etherospiritual, astral and physical evolution must be drawn. Perhaps, if Darwinians deigned to consider the possibility of the second process, they would no longer have to lament the fact that "we are referred to conjecture and inference for the origin of the Mammals"!! (The Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism, p. 268, by Professor O. Schmidt.) At present the admitted chasm between the systems of reproduction of the oviparous vertebrates and mammalia, constitutes a hopeless crux to those thinkers who, with the Evolutionists, seek to link all existing organic forms in a continuous line of descent.
Let us take -- exempli gratia -- the case of the ungulate mammals. "In no other division," it is said, "do we possess such abundant fossil material." So much progress has been made in this direction, that in some instances the intermediate links between the modern and Eocene ungulates have been unearthed; a notable example being that of the complete proof of the derivation of the present one-toed horse from the three-toed Anchitherium of the old Tertiary. This standard of comparison between Western Biology and the Eastern doctrine could not, therefore, be improved upon. The pedigree here utilized, as embodying the views of scientists in general, is that of Schmidt based on the exhaustive researches of Rutimeyer. Its approximate accuracy -- from the standpoint of evolutionism -- leaves little to be desired: --
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UNGULATE MAMMALS.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 736 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
The midway point of evolution. Science comes to a standstill. "The root to which these two families lead back IS UNKNOWN" (Schmidt).
No. I. represents the realm explored by Western Evolutionists, the area in which climatic influences, "natural selection," and all the other physical causes of organic differentiation are present. Biology and palaeontology find their province here in investigating the many physical agencies which contribute so largely, as shown by Darwin, Spencer and others, to the segregation of species. But even in this domain the sub-conscious workings of the Dhyan-Chohanic wisdom are at the root of all the "ceaseless striving towards perfection," though its influence is vastly modified by those purely material causes which de Quatrefages terms the "milieux" and Spencer the "Environment."
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The "midway point of evolution" is that stage where the astral prototypes definitely begin to pass into the physical, and thus become subject to the differentiating agencies now operative around us. Physical causation supervenes immediately on the assumption of "coats of skin" -- i.e., the physiological equipment in general. The forms of Men and mammalia previous to the separation of sexes* are woven out of astral matter, and possess a structure utterly unlike that of the physical organisms, which eat, drink, digest, etc., etc., etc. The known physiological contrivances in organisms were almost entirely evolved subsequently to the incipient physicalization of the 7 Root-Types out of the astral -- during the "midway halt" between the two planes of existence. Hardly had the "ground-
plan" of evolution been limned out in these ancestral types, than the influence of the accessory terrestrial laws, familiar to us, supervened, resulting in the whole crop of mammalian species. AEons of slow differentiation were, however, required to effect this end.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Bear in mind, please, that though the animals -- mammalians included -- have all been evolved after and partially from man's cast-off tissues, still, as a far lower being, the mammalian animal became placental and separated far earlier than man.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 737 THE UNITY OF TYPE.
No. II. represents the domain of the purely astral prototypes previous to their descent into (gross) matter. Astral matter, it must be noted, is fourth state matter, having, like our gross matter, its own "protyle." There are several "protyles" in Nature, corresponding to the various planes of matter. The two sub-physical elemental kingdoms, the plane of mind (manas, the fifth state matter), as also that of Buddhi (sixth state matter), are each and all evolved from one of the six "protyles" which constitute the basis of the Object-Universe. The three "states," so-called of our terrestrial matter, known as the "solid," "liquid," and "gaseous," are only, in strict accuracy, SUB-states. As to the former reality of the descent into the physical, which culminated in physiological man and animal, we have a palpable testimony in the fact of the so-called spiritualistic "materializations."
In all these instances a complete temporary mergence of the astral into the physical takes place. The evolution of physiological Man out of the astral races of early Lemurian age -- the Jurassic age of Geology -- is exactly paralleled by the "materialization" of "spirits" (?) in the seance-room. In the case of Professor Crookes' "Katie King," the presence of a physiological mechanism -- heart, lungs, etc. -- was indubitably demonstrated!!
This, in a way, is the ARCHETYPE of Goethe. Listen to his words: "Thus much we should have gained . . . all the nine perfect organic beings . . . (are) formed according to an archetype which merely fluctuates more or less in its very persistent parts and, moreover, day by day, completes and transforms itself by means of reproduction." This is a seemingly imperfect foreshadowing of the occult fact of the differentiation of species from the primal astral root-types. Whatever the whole posse comitatus of "natural selection," etc., etc., may effect, the fundamental unity of structural plan remains practically unaffected by all subsequent modifications. The "Unity of Type" common, in a sense, to all the animal and human kingdoms, is not, as Spencer and others appear to hold, a proof of
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the consanguineity of all organic forms, but a witness to the essential unity of the "ground-plan" Nature has followed in fashioning her creatures.
To sum up the case, we may again avail ourselves of a tabulation of the actual factors concerned in the differentiation of species. The stages of the process itself need no further comment here, being the basic principles underlying organic development, than to enter on the domain of the biological specialist.
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 738 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
FACTORS CONCERNED IN THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE.
BASIC ASTRAL PROTOTYPES PASS INTO THE PHYSICAL.
-------
B.
THE EUROPEAN, PALAEOLITHIC RACES. -- WHENCE, AND HOW
DISTRIBUTED.
IS Science against those who maintain that down to the Quaternary period the distribution of the human races was widely different from what it is now? Is Science against those who, further, maintain that the fossil men found in Europe -- although having almost reached a plane of sameness and unity from the fundamental physiological and anthropological aspects which continues till this day -- still differ, sometimes greatly, from the type of the now existing populations. The late Littre confesses it in an article published by him on the Memoir called Antiquites Celtiques et Antediluviennes by Boucher de Perthes (1849) -- in the Revue des Deux Mondes (March 1,1859). He says in it (a) that in these periods when the Mammoths, exhumed with the hatchets in Picardy, lived in the latter region, there must have been an eternal spring reigning over all the terrestrial globe*; nature was the contrary of
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what it is now -- thus leaving an enormous margin for the antiquity of
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Scientists now admit that Europe enjoyed in the Miocene times a warm, in the Pliocene or later Tertiary, a temperate climate. Littre's contention as to the balmy spring of the Quaternary -- to which deposits M. de Perthes' discoveries of flint implements are traceable (since when the Somme has worn down its valley many scores of feet) -- must be accepted with much reservation. The Somme-valley relics are post-glacial, and possibly point to the immigration of savages during one of the more temperate periods intervening between minor ages of Ice.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 739 AFRICA IN EUROPE.
those "periods " and then adds: (b) "Spring, professor of the Faculty of Medicine at Liege, found in a grotto near Namur, in the mountain of Chauvaux, numerous human bones 'of a race quite distinct from ours.' "
Skulls exhumed in Austria offered a great analogy with those of African negro races, according to Littre, while others, discovered on the shores of the Danube and the Rhine, resembled the skulls of the Caribs and those of the ancient inhabitants of Peru and Chili. Still, the Deluge, whether Biblical or Atlantean, was denied. But further geological discoveries having made Gaudry write conclusively: "Our forefathers were positively contemporaneous with the rhinoceros tichorrhinus, the hippopotamus major"; and add that the soil called diluvial in geology "was formed partially at least after man's apparition on earth" -- Littre pronounced himself finally. He then showed the necessity, before "the resurrection of so many old witnesses," of rehandling all the origins, all the durations, and added that there was AN AGE hitherto unknown to study "either at the dawn of the actual epoch or, as I believe, at the beginning of the epoch which preceded it."
The types of the skulls found in Europe are of two kinds, as is well known: the orthognathous and the prognathous, or the Caucasian and the negro types; such as are now found only in the African and the lower savage tribes. Professor Heer -- who argues that the facts of Botany necessitate the hypothesis of an Atlantis -- has shown that the plants of the Neolithic lake-villagers are mainly of African origin. How did the latter come to be in Europe if there was no former point of union between Africa and Europe? How many thousand years ago did the seventeen men live whose skeletons were exhumed in the Department of the Haute Garonne, in a squatting posture near the remains of a coal fire, with some amulets and broken crockery around them, and in company with the bear spelaeus, the Elephas primigenius, the aurochs (regarded by Cuvier as a distinct species), the Megaceros hibernicus -- all antediluvian mammals? Certainly at a most distant epoch, but not one which carries us further back than the Quaternary. A much greater antiquity for Man has yet to be proved. Dr. James Hunt, the late President of the Anthropological Society, makes it 9,000,000 years. This man of science, at any rate, makes some approach to our esoteric computation, if we leave the first two semi-human, ethereal races, and the early Third Race out of the computation.
The question, however, arises -- who were these Palaeolithic men of the European quaternary epoch?
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Were they aboriginal, or the outcome of some immigration dating back into the unknown past? The latter is the only tenable hypothesis, as all scientists agree in eliminating Europe from the category of possible "cradles of mankind." Whence, then, radiated the various successive streams of "primitive" men?
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 740 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
The earliest Palaeolithic men in Europe -- about whose origin Ethnology is silent, and whose very characteristics are but imperfectly known, though expatiated on as "ape-like" by imaginative writers such as Mr. Grant Allen -- were of pure Atlantean and "Africo"-Atlantean stocks.* (It must be borne in mind that by this time the Atlantis continent itself was a dream of the past.) Europe in the quaternary epoch was very different from the Europe of to-day, being then only in process of formation. It was united to N. Africa -- or rather what is now N. Africa -- by a neck of land running across the present Straits of Gibraltar -- N. Africa thus constituting a species of extension of Spain, while a broad sea washed the great basin of the Sahara. Of the great Atlantis, the main bulk of which sank in the Miocene, there remained only Ruta and Daitya and a stray island or so. The Atlantean connections of the forefathers** of the Palaeolithic cave-men are evidenced by the upturning of fossil skulls (in Europe) reverting closely to the West Indian Carib and ancient Peruvian type -- a mystery indeed to all those who refuse to sanction the "hypothesis" of a former Atlantic continent to bridge the ocean (Cf. "Scientific and geological proofs of the reality of several submerged continents"). What are we also to make of the fact that while de Quatrefages points to that "magnificent race," the TALL Cro-
Magnon cave-men and the Guanches of the Canary Islands as representatives of one type -- Virchow also allies the Basques with the latter in a similar way? Professor Retzius independently proves the relationship of the aboriginal American dolichocephalous tribes and these same Guanches. The several links in the chain of evidence are securely joined together. Legions of similar facts could be adduced. As to the African tribes -- themselves diverging offshoots of Atlanteans modified by climate and conditions -- they crossed into Europe over the peninsula which made the Mediterranean an inland sea. Fine races were many of these European cave-men; the Cro-Magnon, for instance. But, as was to be expected, progress is almost non-existent through the whole of the vast period allotted
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Whence they (the old cave-men) came, we cannot tell" (Grant Allen).
"The palaeolithic hunters of the Somme Valley did not originate in that inhospitable climate, but moved into Europe from some more genial region -- (Dr. Southall "Epoch of the Mammoth" p. 315).
** The pure Atlantean stocks -- of which the tall quaternary cave-men were, in part, the direct descendants -- immigrated into Europe long prior to the Glacial Period; in fact as far back as the Pliocene and Miocene times in the Tertiary. The worked Miocene flints of Thenay, and the traces of Pliocene man discovered by Professor Capellini in Italy, are witnesses to the fact. These colonists were portions of the once glorious race, whose cycle from the Eocene downwards had been running down the scale.
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 741 A TARDY ADMISSION.
by Science to the Chipped Stone-Age.* The cyclic impulse downwards weighs heavily on the stocks thus transplanted -- the incubus of the Atlantean Karma is upon them. Finally, Palaeolithic man makes room for his successor -- and disappears almost entirely from the scene. Professor Lefevre asks in this connection: --
"Has the Polished succeeded the Chipped Stone-Age by an imperceptible transition, or was it due to an invasion of brachycephalous Celts? But whether, again, the deterioration produced in the populations of La Vezere was the result of violent crossings, or of a general retreat northwards in the wake of the reindeer, is of little moment to us." He continues: --
"Meantime the bed of the ocean has been upheaved, Europe is now fully formed, her flora and fauna fixed. With the taming of the dog begins the pastoral life. We enter on those polished stone and bronze periods, which succeed each other at irregular intervals, which even overlap one another in the midst of ethnical fusions and migrations. . . . The primitive European populations are interrupted in their special evolution and, without perishing, become absorbed in other races, engulfed . . . by successive waves of migration overflowing from Africa, possibly from a lost Atlantis [?? far too late by aeons of years] and from prolific Asia . . . all FORERUNNERS OF THE GREAT ARYAN INVASION" (Fifth Race).
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The artistic skill displayed by the old cave-men renders the hypothesis which regards them as approximations to the "pithecanthropus alalus" -- that very mythical Haeckelian monster -- an absurdity requiring no Huxley or Schmidt to expose it. We see in their skill in engraving a gleam of Atlantean culture atavistically re-appearing. It will be remembered that Donnelly regards modern European as a renaissance of Atlantean civilization. ("Atlantis," pp. 237-264.)
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Next Section
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The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 2
Theosophical University Press Online Edition
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 742 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
§ VI.
GIANTS, CIVILIZATIONS, AND SUBMERGED
CONTINENTS TRACED IN HISTORY.
WHEN statements such as are comprised in the above heading are brought forward, the writer is, of course, expected to furnish historical instead of legendary evidence in support of such claims. Is this possible? Yes; for evidence of this nature is plentiful, and has simply to be collected and brought together to become overwhelming in the eyes of the unprejudiced.
Once the sagacious student gets hold of the guiding thread he may find it out for himself. We give facts and show land-marks: let the wayfarer follow them. What is given here is amply sufficient for THIS Century.
In a letter to Voltaire, Bailly finds it quite natural that the sympathies of the "grand old invalid of Ferney" should be attracted to the "representatives of knowledge and wisdom, the Brahmans of India." He then adds a curious statement. "But," he says, "your Brahmans are very young in comparison with their ancient instructors."*
Bailly, who knew nought of the esoteric teachings, nor of Lemuria, believed, nevertheless, unreservedly in the lost Atlantis, and also in several pre-historic and civilized nations which had disappeared without leaving any undeniable trace. He had studied the ancient classics and traditions extensively, and he saw that the arts and sciences known to those we now call the "ancients," were "not the achievements of any of the now or even then existing nations, nor of any of the historical peoples of Asia." And that, notwithstanding the learning of the Hindoos, their undeniable priority in the antiquity of their race had to be referred to a people or a race still more ancient and more learned than were even the Brahmans themselves.**
Voltaire, the greatest sceptic of his day, the materialist par excellence, shared Bailly's belief. He thought it quite likely "that long before the empires of China and India, there had been nations cultured, learned, and powerful, which a deluge of barbarians overpowered and thus replunged into their primitive state of ignorance and savagery, or what they call the state of pure nature." ("Lettres sur l'Atlantide, " p. 15).***
[[Footnote(s)]] -----------------------------------------------
* Lettres sur l'Atlantide.
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The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky, vol 2, pt 3, ch 6
** Histoire de l'Astronomie Ancienne, p. 25, et seq.
*** This conjecture is but a half-guess. There were such "deluges of barbarians" in the Fifth Race. With regard to the Fourth, it was a bond fide deluge of water which swept it away. Neither Voltaire nor Bailly, however, knew anything of the Secret Doctrine of the East.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 743 A MYSTERIOUS NATION.
That which with Voltaire was the shrewd conjecture of a great intellect, was with Bailly "a question of historical facts." For "I make great case of ancient traditions preserved through a long series of generations," he wrote. (Ibid.) It was possible, he thought, that a foreign nation should, after instructing another nation, so disappear that it should leave no traces behind. When asked how it could have happened that this ancient, or rather archaic, nation should not have left at least some recollection in the human mind, he answered that Time was a pitiless devourer of facts and events. But, the history of the Past was never entirely lost, for the Sages of old Egypt had preserved it, and "it is so preserved to this day elsewhere." "You do not know which was the best and most handsome generation of men which has ever lived on this earth," said the priests of Sais to Solon, according to Plato. "Only a weak seed of it, of which you (Greeks) are the descendants,* is all that remains." "Their books," they added, "preserved the records of a great nation, which emerging from the Atlantic sea had invaded Europe and Asia (Timaeus). The Greeks were but the dwarfed and weak remnant of that once glorious nation. . . ."**
What was this nation? The secret doctrine teaches that it was the latest, seventh sub-race of the Atlanteans, already swallowed up in one of the early sub-races of the Aryan stock, one that had been gradually spreading over the continent and islands of Europe, as soon as they had begun to emerge from the seas. Descending from the high plateaux of Asia, where the two Races had sought refuge in the days of the agony of Atlantis, it had been slowly settling and colonizing the freshly emerged lands. The emigrant sub-race had rapidly increased and multiplied on that virgin soil; had divided into many families, which in their turn divided into nations. Egypt and Greece, the Phoenicians, and the Northern stocks, had thus proceeded from that one sub-race. Thousands of years later, other races -- the remnants of the Atlanteans -- "yellow and red, brown and black," began to invade the new continent. There were wars in which the new comers were defeated; and they fled, some to Africa, others to remote countries. Some of these lands became in course of time -- owing to new geological convulsions -- islands. Being thus forcibly
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* For a full discussion of the relations between the old Greeks and Romans, and the Atlantean colonists, cf. "Five Years of Theosophy."
** The story about Atlantis and all the traditions thereon were told, as all know, by Plato in his "Timaeus and Critias." Plato, when a child, had it from his grand-sire Critias, aged ninety, who in his youth had been told of it by Solon, his father Dropidas' friend -- Solon, one of the Grecian Seven
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Sages. No more reliable source could be found, we believe.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 744 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
separated from the continents, the result was that the undeveloped tribes and families of the Atlantean stock fell gradually into a still more abject and savage condition.
Did not the Spaniards in the Cibola expeditions meet with WHITE savage chiefs; and has not the presence of African negro types in Europe in the pre-historic ages been now ascertained? It is this presence of a type associated with that of the negro, and also with that of the Mongolian, which is the stumbling-block of anthropology. The individual who lived at an incalculably distant period at La Naulette, in Belgium ( Vide Dr. Carter Blake's paper "On the Naudette Jaw," Anthrop. Review, Sept., 1867), is an example. "The caves on the banks of the Lesse, in South-Eastern Belgium," says this Anthropologist, "afford evidence of what is, perhaps, the lowest man, as shown by the Naulette jaw. Such man, however, had amulets of stone, perforated for the purpose of ornament; these are made of a psammite now found in the basin of the Gironde."
Thus Belgian man was extremely ancient. That man who was antecedent to the great flood of waters -- which covered the highlands of Belgium with a deposit of lehm or upland gravel 30 metres above the level of the present rivers -- must have combined the characters of the Turanian and the negro. The Canstadt, or La Naulette, man, may have been black, and had nothing to do with the Aryan type whose remains are contemporary with those of the cave bear at Engis. The denizens of the Aquitaine bone-
caves belong to a far later period of history, and may not be as ancient as the former.
If the statement is objected to on the ground that Science does not deny the presence of man on earth from an enormous antiquity, though that antiquity cannot be determined, since that presence is conditioned by the duration of geological periods, the age of which is not ascertained; if it is argued that the Scientists object most decidedly to the claim that man preceded the animals, for instance; or that civilization dates from the earliest Eocene period, or, again, that there have ever existed giants, three-eyed and four-armed and four-legged men, androgynes, etc., then the objectors are asked in their turn, "How do you know? What proof have you besides your personal hypotheses, each of which may be upset any day by new discoveries?" And these future discoveries are sure to prove that, whatever this earlier type of man known to Anthropologists was in complexion, he was in no respect apish. The Canstadt man, the Engis man alike possessed essentially human attributes. ( Vide de Quatrefages and Hamy. "Cranes des Races Humaines.") People have looked for the missing link at the wrong end of the chain; and the Neander valley man has long since been dismissed to the "limbo of all hasty blunders" (Ibid.). Disraeli divided man into the associates of the
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 745 REMARKABLE "COINCIDENCES."
apes and the angels. Reasons are given in the text in favour of an "angelic theory," -- as Christians would say -- at least as applicable to some of the races of men. At all events, if man exists only since
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the Miocene period, even then, humanity as a whole could not be composed of the abject savages of the Palaeolithic age, as they are now represented by the Scientists. All they say is mere arbitrary speculative guess-work, invented by them to answer to and fit in with their own fanciful theories.
We speak of events hundreds of thousands years old, nay, even millions -- if man dates from the geological periods* -- not of any of those events which happened during the few thousand years of the pre-historic margin allowed by timid and ever-cautious history. Yet there are men of science who are almost of our way of thinking. From the brave confession of the Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg, who says that: -- "Traditions, whose traces recur in Mexico, in Central America, in Peru, and in Bolivia, suggest the idea that man existed in these different countries at the time of the gigantic upheaval of the Andes, and that he has retained the memory of it" -- down to the latest palaeontologists and anthropologists, the majority of scientific men is in favour of just such an antiquity. Apropos of Peru, has any satisfactory attempt been made to determine the ethnological affinities and characteristics of the race which reared those Cyclopean erections, the ruins of which display the relics of a great civilization? At Cuelap, for instance, such are found, consisting "of a wall of wrought stones, 3,600 feet long, 560 broad, and 150 feet high, constituting a solid mass with a level summit. On this mass was another, 600 feet long, 500 broad, and 150 feet high, making an aggregate height of 300 feet. In it were rooms and cells." (Cf., the mass of evidence collected by Donnelly to prove the Peruvian colony an offshoot of the Atlanteans.) A most suggestive fact is the startling resemblance between the architecture of these colossal buildings and that of the archaic European nations. Mr. Fergusson regards the analogies between the ruins of "Inca" civilization and the Cyclopean remains of the Pelasgians in Italy and Greece as a coincidence "the most remarkable in the history of architecture." "It is difficult to resist the conclusion that there may be some relation between them." The "relation" is simply explained by the derivation of the stocks,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Haeckel's "Man-ape" of the Miocene period is the dream of a monomaniac, which de Quatrefages (see his "Human Species, " pp. 105-113) has cleverly disposed of. It is not clear why the world should accept the lucubrations of a psychophobic materialist, (to accept whose theory necessitates the acceptance on faith of various animals unknown to Science or Nature -- like the Sozura, for instance, that amphibian which has never existed anywhere outside Haeckel's imagination), rather than the traditions of antiquity.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 746 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
who devised these erections, from a common centre in an Atlantic continent. The acceptance of the latter can alone assist us to approach a solution of this and similar problems in almost every branch of modern science.
Dr. Lartet, treating upon the subject, settles the question by declaring that: -- "The truth, so long contested, of the co-existence of man with the great extinct species (Elephas primigenius, Rhinoceros tichorrhinus, Hyaena spelaea, Ursus spelaeus, etc., etc.), appears to me to be henceforth unassailable and definitely conquered by science." ("Cavernes de Perigord," p. 35.)
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It is shown elsewhere that such is also de Quatrefages' opinion. "Man has in all probability seen Miocene times* and consequently the entire Pliocene epoch," he says, and there are reasons for believing that "his traces will be found further back still, . . . ." he adds ("The Human Species, " p. 152.)
Egypt is far older than Europe as now traced on the map. Atlanto-Aryan tribes began to settle on it, when the British Islands** and France were not even in existence. It is well known that "the tongue of the AEgyptian Sea," or the Delta of lower Egypt, became firm land very gradually, and followed the highlands of Abyssinia; unlike the latter, which arose suddenly, comparatively speaking, it was very slowly formed, through long ages, from successive layers of sea slime and mud, deposited annually by the soil brought down by a large river, the present Nile. Yet even the Delta as a firm and fertile land, has been inhabited for more than 100,000 years. Later tribes, with still more Aryan blood in them than their predecessors, arrived from the East, and conquered it from a people whose very name is lost to posterity, except in Secret works. It is this natural barrier of slime, which sucked in slowly and surely every boat that approached these inhospitable shores, that was, till within a few thousand of years B.C., the best safeguard of the later Egyptians, who had managed to reach it through Arabia, Abyssinia, and Nubia, led on by Manu Vina in the day of Visvamitra. (See in "Isis Unveiled, " vol. 1, p. 627, what Kulluka Bhatta says.)
So evident does the antiquity of man become with every day that even the Church is preparing an honourable surrender and retreat. The learned Abbe Fabre, professor at the Sorbonne, has categorically declared
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The ingenious author of "Atlantis, the Ante-diluvian World," in discussing the origin of various Grecian and Roman institutions, expresses his conviction that "the roots of the institutions of to-day reach back to the Miocene Age." Ay, and further yet, as already stated.
** As we know them, however. For not only does Geology prove that the British islands have been four times submerged and re-elevated, but that the straits between them and Europe were dry land at a remote former epoch.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 747 THE SEVEN SABBATHS.
that pre-historic palaeontology and archaeology may, without any harm to the Scriptures, discover in the tertiary beds . . . . . the traces of pre-adamite man as much as they like. "Since it disregards all creations anterior to the last deluge but one, (that which produced the diluvium, according to the Abbe), Bible revelation leaves us free to admit the existence of man in the grey diluvium, in Pliocene, and even Eocene strata. On the other hand, however, geologists are not all agreed in regarding the men who inhabited the globe in these primitive ages as our ancestors.*
The day when the Church will find that its only salvation lies in the occult interpretation of the Bible, may not be so far off as some imagine. Already many an abbe and ecclesiastic has become an ardent
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Kabalist, and as many appear publicly in the arena, breaking a lance with Theosophists and Occultists in support of the metaphysical interpretation of the Bible. But they commence, unfortunately for them, from the wrong end. They are advised, before they begin to speculate upon the metaphysical in their Scriptures, to study and master that which relates to the purely physical -- e.g., its geological and ethnological hints. For such allusions to the Septenary constitution of the Earth and Man, to the seven Rounds and Races, abound in the New as in the Old Testaments, and are as visible as the sun in the heavens to him who reads both symbolically. What do the laws in chapter xxiii., v. 15, of Leviticus apply to? What is the philosophy of reason for all such hebdomadic offerings and symbolical calculations as: "ye shall count . . . . from the morrow after the Sabbath . . . . that ye brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven Sabbaths shall be completed" (15), "And ye shall offer with the bread seven lambs without blemish" (18), etc. etc. We shall be contradicted, no doubt, when we say that all these "wave" and "peace" offerings were in commemoration of the Seven "Sabbaths" of the mysteries, which Sabbaths are seven pralayas, between seven manvantaras, or what we call Rounds -- for "Sabbath" is an elastic word, meaning a period of Rest of whatever nature, as explained elsewhere (Part II, "Sections on the Septenary.") And if this is not sufficiently conclusive, then we may turn to the verse which follows (16), and which adds, "even unto the morrow after the seventh Sabbath shall ye number fifty days" (forty-nine, 7 x 7, stages of activity, and forty-nine stages of rest, on the seven globes of the chain, and then
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Les origines de la terre et de l'homme," p. 454. To this, Professor N. Joly, of Toulouse, who quotes the Abbe in his "Man before Metals, " expresses the hope that M. Fabre will permit him "to differ from him on this last point," p. 186. So do the Occultists; for though they claim a vast difference in the physiology and outward appearance of the five races so far evolved, still they maintain that the present human species has descended from one and the same primitive stock, evolved from the "divine men" -- our common ancestors and progenitors.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 748 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
comes the rest of Sabbath, the fiftieth ); after which "ye shall offer a new meat offering unto the Lord," i.e., ye shall make an offering of your flesh or "coats of skin," and, divesting yourselves of your bodies, ye shall remain pure spirits. This law of offering, degraded and materialized with ages, was an institution that dated from the earliest Atlanteans; it came to the Hebrews via the "Chaldees," who were the "wise men" of a caste, not of a nation, a community of great adepts come from their "Serpent-
holes," and who had settled in Babylonia ages before. And if this interpretation from Leviticus (full of the disfigured laws of Manu) is found too far-fetched, then turn to Revelation. Whatever interpretation profane mystics may give to the famous Chapter xvii., with its riddle of the woman in purple and scarlet; whether Protestants nod at the Roman Catholics, when reading "MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH," or Roman Catholics glare at the Protestants, the Occultists pronounce, in their impartiality, that these words have applied from the first to all and every exoteric Churchianity, that which was the "ceremonial magic" of old, with its terrible effects, and is now the harmless (because distorted) farce of ritualistic worship. The "mystery" of the woman and of the beast, are the symbols of soul-killing Churchianity and of
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SUPERSTITION. "The beast that was, and is not, and yet is." "And here is the Mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains (seven continents and seven races) on which the woman sitteth," the symbol of all the exoteric, barbarous, idolatrous faiths which have covered that symbol "with the blood of the saints and the blood of the martyrs" who protested and do protest. "And there are seven Kings (seven races); five are fallen (our fifth race included), and one is (the fifth continues), and the other (the sixth and the seventh races) is not yet come. . . . And when he (the race "King") cometh, he must continue a short space" (v. 10). There are many such Apocalyptic allusions, but the student has to find them out for himself. These five Kings were mentioned before.
If the Bible combines with archaeology and geology to show that human civilization has passed through three more or less distinct stages, in Europe at least; and if man, both in America and Europe, as much as in Asia, dates from geological epochs -- why should not the statements of the Secret Doctrine be taken into consideration? Is it more philosophical or logical and scientific too, to disbelieve, with Mr. Albert Gaudry, in Miocene man, while believing that the famous Thenay flints* "were carved by the Dryopithecus monkey "; or, with the Occultist, that the anthro-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "The flints of Thenay bear unmistakable trace of the work of human hands." (G. de Mortillet, "Promenades au Musee de St. Germain, " p. 76.)
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 749 THE APE LATER THAN MAN.
pomorphous monkey came ages after man? For if it is once conceded, and even scientifically demonstrated, that "there was not in the middle of the Miocene epoch a single species of mammal identical with species now extant" (Albert Gaudry "Les Enchainements du monde animal dans les temps geologiques" p. 240); and that man was then just as he is now; only taller, and more athletic than we are,* -- then where is the difficulty? That they could hardly be the descendants of monkeys, which are themselves not traced before the Miocene epoch,** is, on the other hand, testified to by several eminent naturalists.
"Thus, in the savage of quaternary ages who had to fight against the mammoth with stone weapons, we find all those craniological characters generally considered as the sign of great intellectual development" (de Quatrefages, "The Human Species, p. 312.)
Unless man emerged spontaneously, endowed with all his intellect and wisdom, from his brainless catarrhine ancestor, he could not have acquired such brain within the limits of the Miocene period, if we are to believe the learned Abbe Bourgeois ( Vide infra, footnote**).
As to the matter of giants, though the tallest man hitherto found in Europe among fossils is the "Mentone man" (6 ft. 8 in.), others may yet be excavated. Nilsson, quoted by Lubbock, states that "in a tomb of the neolithic age . . . . a skeleton of extraordinary size was found in 1807," and that it was attributed to a king of Scotland, Albus McGaldus.
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And if in our own day we occasionally find men and women from 7 ft. to even 9 ft. and 11 ft. high, this only proves -- on the law of atavism, or the reappearance of ancestral features of character -- that there was a time when 9 ft. and 10 ft. was the average height of humanity, even in our latest Indo-
European race.
But as the subject was sufficiently treated elsewhere, we may pass on to the Lemurians and the Atlanteans, and see what the old Greeks knew of these early races and what the moderns know now.
The great nation mentioned by the Egyptian priests, from which descended the forefathers of the Greeks of the age of Troy, and which, as averred, had been destroyed by the Atlantic race, was then, as we see, assuredly no race of Palaeolithic savages. Nevertheless, already in the days of Plato, with the exception of priests and Initiates, no one seems
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Speaking of the reindeer hunters of Perigord, Joly says of them that "they were of great height, athletic, with a strongly built skeleton . . ." etc. ("Man before Metals, " p. 353).
** "On the shores of the lake of Beauce," says the Abbe Bourgeois, "man lived in the midst of a fauna which completely disappeared (Aceratherium, Tapir, Mastodon). With the fluviatile sands of Orleanais came the anthropomorphous monkey (pliopithecus antiquus); therefore, later than man." (See Comptes Rendus of the "Prehistoric Congress " of 1867 at Paris.)
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 750 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
to have preserved any distinct recollection of the preceding races. The earliest Egyptians had been separated from the latest Atlanteans for ages upon ages; they were themselves descended from an alien race, and had settled in Egypt some 400,000 years before,* but their Initiates had preserved all the records. Even so late as the time of Herodotus, they had still in their possession the statues of 341 kings who had reigned over their little Atlanto-Aryan Sub-race ( Vide about the latter "Esoteric Buddhism, " p. 66, Fifth Edition.) If one allows only twenty years as an average figure for the reign of each King, the duration of the Egyptian Empire has to be pushed back, from the day of Herodotus, about 17,000 years.
Bunsen allowed the great Pyramid an antiquity of 20,000 years. More modern archaeologists will not give it more than 5,000, or at the utmost 6,000 years; and generously concede to Thebes with its hundred gates, 7,000 years from the date of its foundation. And yet there are records which show Egyptian priests -- Initiates -- journeying in a North-Westerly direction, by land, via what became later the Straits of Gibraltar; turning North and travelling through the future Phoenician settlements of Southern Gaul; then still further North, until reaching Carnac (Morbihan) they turned to the West again and arrived, still travelling by land, on the North-Western promontory of the New Continent.**
What was the object of their long journey? And how far back must we place the date of such visits? The archaic records show the Initiates of the Second Sub-race of the Aryan family moving from one
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land to the other for the purpose of supervising the building of menhirs and dolmens, of colossal Zodiacs in stone, and places of sepulchre to serve as receptables for the ashes of generations to come. When was it? The fact of their crossing from France to Great Britain by land may give an idea of the date when such a journey could have been performed on terra firma.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "In making soundings in the stony soil of the Nile Valley two baked bricks were discovered, one at the depth of 20, the other at 25 yards. If we estimate the thickness of the annual deposit formed by the river at 8 inches per century (more careful calculations have shown no more than from three to five per century), we must assign to the first of these bricks 12,000 years, and to the second 14,000 years. By means of analogous calculations, Burmeister supposes 72,000 years to have elapsed since the first appearance of man on the soil of Egypt, and Draper attributes to the European man, who witnessed the last glacial epoch, an antiquity of more than 250,000 years." ("Man before Metals," p. 183.) Egyptian Zodiacs show more than 75,000 years of observation! (See further.) Note well also that Burmeister speaks only of the Delta population.
** Or on what are now the British Islands, which were not yet detached from the main continent in those days. "The ancient inhabitant of Picardy could pass into Great Britain without crossing the Channel. The British Isles were united to Gaul by an isthmus which has since been submerged." ("Man before Metals," p. 184.)
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 751 DARWINIANS REJECT THE TRUTH.
It was --
"When the level of the Baltic and of the North Sea was 400 feet higher than it is now; when the valley of the Somme was not hollowed to the depth it has now attained; when Sicily was joined to Africa, Barbary to Spain," when "Carthage, the Pyramids of Egypt, the palaces of Uxmal and Palenque were not in existence, and the bold navigators of Tyre and Sidon, who at a later date were to undertake their perilous voyages along the coasts of Africa, were yet unborn. What we know with certainty is that European man was contemporaneous with the extinct species of the quaternary epoch . . . . that he witnessed the upheaval of the Alps* and the extension of the glaciers, in a word that he lived for thousands of years before the dawn of the remotest historical traditions . . . . It is even possible that man was the contemporary of extinct mammalia of species yet more ancient . . . . of the Elephas meridionalis of the sands of St. Prest . . . and the Elephas antiquus, assumed to be prior to the elephas primigenius, since their bones are found in company with carved flints in several English caves, associated with those of the Rhinoceros hemitaechus and even of the Machairodus latidens, which is of still earlier date . . . . M. E. Lartet is of opinion that there is nothing really impossible in the existence of man as early as the Tertiary period."**
If "there is nothing impossible" scientifically in the idea, and it may be admitted that man lived already
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as early as the Tertiary period, then it is just as well to remind the reader that Mr. Croll places the beginning of that period 2,500,000 years back (See Croll's "Climate and Time"); but there was a time when he assigned to it 15,000,000 years.
And if all this may be said of European man, how great is the antiquity of the Lemuro-Atlantean and of the Atlanto-Aryan man? Every educated person who follows the progress of Science, knows how all vestiges of man during the Tertiary period are received. The calumnies that were poured on Desnoyers in 1863, when he made known to the Institute of France that he had made a discovery "in the undisturbed pliocene sands of St. Prest near Chartres, proving the co-existence of man and the Elephas meridionalis" -- were equal to the occasion. The later discovery (in 1867) by the Abbe Bourgeois, that man lived in the Miocene epoch, and the reception it was given at the Pre-historic Con-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* He witnessed and remembered it too, as "the final disappearance of the largest continent of Atlantis was an event coincident with the elevation of the Alps," a master writes (See Esoteric Buddhism p. 70). Pari passu, as one portion of the dry land of our hemisphere disappeared, some land of the new continent emerged from the seas. It is on this colossal cataclysm, which lasted during a period of 150,000 years, that traditions of all the "Deluges" are built, the Jews building their version on an event which took place later in "Poseidonis."
** The Antiquity of the Human Race in "Men before Metals," by M. Joly, Professor at the Science Faculty of Toulouse, p. 184.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 752 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
gress held at Brussels in 1872, proves that the average man of Science will never see but that which he wants to see.*
The modern archeologist, though speculating ad infinitum upon the dolmens and their builders, knows, in fact, nothing of them or their origin. Yet, these weird, and often colossal monuments of unhewn stones -- which consist generally of four or seven gigantic blocks placed together -- are strewn over Asia, Europe, America, and Africa, in groups or rows. Stones of enormous size are found placed horizontally and variously upon two, three, four, and as in Poitou, upon six and seven blocks. People name them "devil's altars," druidic stones, and giant tombs. The stones of Carnac in the Morbihan, Brittany -- nearly a mile in length and numbering 11,000 ranged in eleven rows -- are twin sisters of those at Stonehenge. The Conical menhir of Loch-Maria-ker in Morbihan, measures twenty yards in length and nearly two yards across. The Menhir of Champ Dolent (near St. Malo) rises thirty feet above the ground, and is fifteen feet in depth below. Such dolmens and prehistoric monuments are met with in almost every latitude. They are found in the Mediterranean basin; in Denmark (among the local tumuli from twenty-seven to thirty-five feet in height); in Shetland, and in Sweden, where they are called ganggriften (or tombs with corridors); in Germany, where they are known as the giant tombs (Hunengraben); in Spain (see the dolmen of Antiguera near Malaga), and Africa; in Palestine and Algeria; in Sardinia (see the Nuraghi and Sepolture dei giganti, or tombs of giants); in Malabar, in
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India, where they are called the tombs of the Daityas (giants) and of the Rakshasas, the men-demons of Lanka ; in Russia and Siberia, where they are known as the Koorgan ; in Peru and Bolivia, where they are termed the chulpas or burial places, etc., etc., etc.
There is no country from which they are absent. Who built them? Why are they all connected with Serpents and Dragons, with Alligators and Crocodiles? Because remains of "palaeolithic man" were, it is thought, found in some of them, and because in the funeral mounds of America bodies of later races were discovered with the usual paraphernalia of bone necklaces, weapons, stone and copper urns, etc., hence they are declared ancient tombs. But surely the two famous mounds -- one in the Mississippi valley and the other in Ohio -- known respectively as "the Alligator Mound" and "the Great Serpent
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The scientific "jury" disagreed, as usual; while de Quatrefages, de Mortillet, Worsaae, Engelhardt, Waldemar, Schmidt, Capellini, Hamy, and Cartailhac, saw upon the flints the traces of human handiwork, Steenstrup, Virchow and Desor refused to do so. Still the majority, if we except some English Scientists, are for Bourgeois.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 753 STILL MORE ASTOUNDING CONTRADICTIONS.
Mound," were never meant for tombs* ( Vide infra). Yet one is told authoritatively that the Mounds, and the Mound or Dolmen Builders, are all "Pelasgic" in Europe, antecedent to the Incas, in America, yet of "not extremely distant times." They are built by "no race of Dolmen Builders," which never existed (opinion of De Mortillet, Bastian, and Westropp) save in the earlier archeological fancy. Finally Virchow's opinion of the giant tombs of Germany is now accepted as an axiom: -- "The tombs alone are gigantic, and not the bones they contain" -- says that German biologist; and archaeology has but to bow and submit to the decision.**
That no gigantic skeletons have been hitherto found in the "tombs" is yet no reason to say there never were the remains of giants in them. Cremation was universal till a comparatively recent period -- some 80, or 100,000 years ago. The real giants, moreover, were nearly all drowned with Atlantis. Nevertheless, the classics, as shown elsewhere, often speak of giant skeletons still excavated in their day. Besides this, human fossils may be counted on the fingers, as yet. No skeleton ever yet found is older than between 50, or 60,000 years,*** and man's size was reduced from 15 to 10 or 12 feet, ever since the third sub-race of the Aryan stock, which sub-race -- born and developed in Europe and Asia Minor under new climates and conditions -- had become European. Since then, as said, it has steadily been decreasing. It is truer therefore to say, that the tombs alone are archaic, and not necessarily the bodies of men occasionally found in them; and that those tombs, since they are gigantic, must have contained giants,**** or rather the ashes of generations of giants.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* We take the following description from a scientific work. "The first of these animals (the alligator) designed with considerable skill, is no less than 250 ft. long. . . . . The interior is formed of a heap of
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stones, over which the form has been moulded in fine stiff clay. The great serpent is represented with open mouth, in the act of swallowing an egg of which the diameter is 100 ft. in the thickest part; the body of the animal is wound in graceful curves and the tail is rolled into a spiral. The entire length of the animal is 1,100 ft. This work is unique . . . . and there is nothing on the old continent which offers any analogy to it." Except its symbolism, however, of the Serpent -- the cycle of Time -- swallowing Kosmos, the egg.
** It might be better, perhaps, for FACT had we more Specialists in Science and fewer "authorities" on universal questions. One never heard that Humboldt gave authoritative and final decisions in the matter of polypi, or the nature of an excrescence.
*** 57,000 years is the date assigned by Dr. Dowler to the remains of the human skeleton, found buried beneath four ancient forests at New Orleans on the banks of the Mississippi river.
**** Murray says of the Mediterranean barbarians that they marvelled at the prowess of the Atlanteans. "Their physical strength was extraordinary (witness indeed their cyclopean buildings), the earth shaking sometimes under their tread. Whatever they did, was done speedily. . . . . . They were wise and communicated their wisdom to men" (Mythology p. 4).
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Nor were all such cyclopean structures intended for sepulchres. It is with the so-called Druidical remains, such as Carnac in Brittany and Stonehenge in Great Britain, that the travelling Initiates above alluded to had to do. And these gigantic monuments are all symbolic records of the World's history. They are not Druidical, but universal. Nor did the Druids build them, for they were only the heirs to the cyclopean lore left to them by generations of mighty builders and -- "magicians," both good and bad.
It will always be a subject of regret that history, rejecting a priori the actual existence of giants, has preserved us so little of the records of antiquity concerning them. Yet in nearly every mythology -- which after all is ancient history -- the giants play an important part. In the old Norse mythology, the giants, Skrymir and his brethren, against whom the sons of the gods fought, were potent factors in the histories of deities and men. The modern exegesis, that makes these giants to be the brethren of the dwarfs, and reduces the combats of the gods to the history of the development of the Aryan race, will only receive credence amongst the believers in the Aryan theory, as expounded by Max Muller. Granting that the Turanian races were typified by the dwarfs (Dwergar), and that a dark, round-headed, and dwarfish race was driven northward by the fair-faced Scandinavians, or AEsir, the gods being like unto men, there still exists neither in history nor any other scientific work any anthropological proof whatever of the existence in time or space of a race of giants. Yet that such exist, relatively and de facto side by side with dwarfs, Schweinfurth can testify. The Nyam-Nyam of Africa are regular dwarfs, while their next neighbours (several tribes of comparatively fair-complexioned Africans) are giants when confronted with the Nyam-Nyams, and very tall even among Europeans, for their women are all above 6 1/2 feet high. ( Vide Schweinfurth's latest works.)
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In Cornwall and in ancient Britain the traditions of these giants are, on the other hand, excessively common; they are said to live even down to the time of King Arthur. All this shows that giants lived to a later date amongst the Celtic than among the Teutonic peoples.
If we turn to the New World, we have traditions of a race of giants at Tarija on the eastern slopes of the Andes and in Ecuador, who combated gods and men. These old beliefs, which term certain localities "Los campos de los gigantes " -- "the fields of giants," are always concomitant with the existence of pliocene mammalia and the occurrence of pliocene raised beaches. "All the giants are not under Mount Ossa," and it would be poor anthropology indeed that would restrict the traditions of giants to Greek and Bible mythologies. Slavonian countries, Russia especially, teem with legends about the bogaterey (mighty giants)
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 755 RACES OF GIANTS.
of old; and their folklore, most of which has served for the foundation of national histories, their oldest songs, and their most archaic traditions, speak of the giants of old. Thus we may safely reject the modern theory that would make of the Titans mere symbols standing for cosmic forces. They were real living men, whether twenty or only twelve feet high. Even the Homeric heroes, who, of course, belonged to a far more recent period in the history of the races, appear to have wielded weapons of a size and weight beyond the strength of the strongest men of modern times.
"Not twice ten men the mighty bulk could raise,
Such men as live in these degenerate days."
If the fossil footprints from Carson, Indiana, U.S.A., are human, they indicate gigantic men. Of their genuineness there can remain no doubt. It is to be deplored that the modem and scientific evidence for gigantic men should rest on footprints alone. Over and over again, the skeletons of hypothetical giants have been identified with those of elephants and mastodons. But all such blunders before the days of geology, and even the traveller's tales of Sir John Mandeville, who says that he saw giants 56 feet high, in India, only show that belief in the existence of giants has never, at any time, died out of the thoughts of men.
That which is known and accepted is, that several races of gigantic men have existed and left distinct traces. In the journal of the Anthropological Institute (Vol. 1871, art. by Dr. C. Carter Blake) such a race is shown as having existed at Palmyra and possibly in Midian, exhibiting cranial forms quite different from those of the Jews. It is not improbable that another such race existed in Samaria, and that the mysterious people who built the stone circles in Galilee, hewed neolithic flints in the Jordan valley and preserved an ancient Semitic language quite distinct from the square Hebrew character -- was of a very large stature. The English translations of the Bible can never be relied upon, even in their modern revised forms. They tell us of the Nephilim translating the word by "giants," and further adding that they were "hairy" men, probably the large and powerful prototypes of the later satyrs so eloquently described by the patristic fancy; some of the Church Fathers assuring their admirers and followers that they had themselves seen these "Satyrs" -- some alive, others pickled and preserved. The
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word "giants" being once adopted as a synonym of Nephilim, the commentators have since identified them with the sons of Anak. The filibusters who seized on the Promised Land, found a pre-existing population far exceeding their own in stature, and called it a race of giants. But the races of really gigantic men had disappeared ages before the birth of Moses. This tall people existed in Canaan, and
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even in Bashan, and may have had representatives in the Nabatheans of Midian. They were of far greater stature than the undersized Jews. Four thousand years ago their cranial conformation and large stature separated them from the children of Heber. Forty thousand years ago their ancestors may have been of still more gigantic size, and four hundred thousand years earlier they must have been in proportion to men in our days as the Brobdingnagians were to the Lilliputians. The Atlanteans of the middle period were called the Great Dragons, and the first symbol of their tribal deities, when the "gods" and the Divine Dynasties had forsaken them, was that of a giant Serpent.
The mystery veiling the origin and the religion of the Druids, is as great as that of their supposed fanes is to the modern Symbologist, but not to the initiated Occultists. Their priests were the descendants of the last Atlanteans, and what is known of them is sufficient to allow the inference that they were eastern priests akin to the Chaldeans and Indians, though little more. It may be inferred that they symbolized their deity as the Hindus do their Vishnu, as the Egyptians did their Mystery God, and as the builders of the Ohio Great-Serpent mound worshipped theirs -- namely under the form of the "mighty Serpent," the emblem of the eternal deity TIME (the Hindu Kala). Pliny called them the "Magi of the Gauls and Britons." But they were more than that. The author of "Indian Antiquities " finds much affinity between the Druids and the Brahmins of India. Dr. Borlase points to a close analogy between them and the Magi of Persia*; others will see an identity between them and the Orphic priesthood of Thrace: simply because they were connected, in their esoteric teachings, with the universal Wisdom Religion, and thus presented affinities with the exoteric worship of all.
Like the Hindus, the Greeks and Romans (we speak of the Initiates), the Chaldees and the Egyptians, the Druids believed in the doctrine of a succession of worlds, as also in that of seven "creations" (of new continents) and transformations of the face of the earth, and in a seven-fold night and day for each earth or globe (See "Esoteric Buddhism "). Wherever the Serpent with the egg is found, there this tenet was surely present. Their Dracontia are a proof of it. This belief was so universal that, if we seek for it in the esotericism of various religions, we shall discover it in all. We shall find it among the Aryan Hindus and Mazdeans, the Greeks, the Latins, and even among the old Jews and early Christians, whose modern stocks
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* But the Magi of Persia were never Persians -- not even Chaldeans. They came from a far-off land, the Orientalists being of opinion that the said land was Media. This may be so, but from what part of Media? To this we receive no answer.
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 757 PAGANISM AND CHRISTIANITY AGREE.
hardly comprehend now that which they read in their Scriptures. See what Seneca says in Epistle 9, and Quaest. Nat. III., c., ult.: "The world being melted and having re-entered the bosom of Jupiter, this god continues for some time to remain absorbed in himself and concealed, wholly immersed in contemplation. After which a new world springs from him. . . . An innocent race of men and animals are produced anew . . . etc." Then again when speaking of periodical mundane dissolution involving universal death, he (Seneca) says that "when the laws of nature shall be buried in ruin, and the last day of the world shall come, the southern pole shall crush, as it falls, all the regions of Africa, and the North pole shall overwhelm all the countries beneath its axis. The affrighted sun shall be deprived of its light; the palace of heaven falling to decay shall produce at once both life and death, and some kind of dissolution shall equally seize upon all deities, who thus shall return into their original chaos" (Quoted in "Book of God, " p. 160.)
One might imagine oneself reading the Puranic account by Parasara of the great Pralaya. It is nearly the same thing, idea for idea. Has Christianity nothing of the kind? It has, we say. Let the reader open any English Bible and read chapter iii. of the Second Epistle of Peter, from verse iii. till the xivth, and he will find there the same ideas. . . . "There shall come in the last days scoffers . . . saying, 'where is the promise of his coming? . . . . Since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.' For, they are ignorant . . . . that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished. But the heavens and the earth that are now, are reserved unto the fire . . . . wherein the heavens . . . . shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat . . . . we nevertheless look for new heavens and new earth, etc., etc." If the interpreters chose to see in this a reference to creation, the deluge, and the promised coming of Christ, when they will live in a new Jerusalem in heaven, this is no fault of "Peter." What the writer of the Epistles meant was the destruction of this Fifth Race of ours by subterranean fires and inundations, and the appearance of new continents for the Sixth Root-Race. For the writers of these Epistles were all learned in symbology if not in the sciences.
It was mentioned elsewhere that the belief in the septenary constitution of our "chain" was the oldest tenet of the early Iranians, who got it from the first Zarathustra. It is time to prove it to those Parsis who have lost the key to the meaning of their Scriptures. In the Avesta the earth is considered septempartite and tripartite at one and the same time. This is regarded by Dr. Geiger, as an incongruity, for the following reasons, which he calls discrepancies: the Avesta speaks
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of the three-thirds of the earth because the Rig-Veda mentions "three earths." . . . . "Three strata or layers, one lying above the other, are said to be meant by this."* But he is quite mistaken, as are all exoteric profane translators. The Avesta has not borrowed the idea from the Rig-Veda, but simply repeats the esoteric teaching. The "three strata or layers" do not refer to our globe alone, but to three layers of the globes of our terrestrial chain -- two by two, on each plane, one on the descending, the
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other on the ascending arc. Thus, with reference to the six spheres or globes above our earth, the seventh and the fourth, it is septempartite, while with regard to the planes over our plane -- it is tripartite. This meaning is carried out and corroborated by the text in the Avesta and Vendidad, and even by the speculations -- a most laborious and unsatisfactory guess-work -- of the translators and commentators. It thus follows that the division of the "earth," or rather the earth's chain, into seven Karshvars is not in contradiction with the three "zones," if this word is read "planes." As Geiger remarks, this septenary division is very old -- the oldest of all -- since the Gathas already speak of the "septempartite earth." (Bumi haptaiti, Yasna, xxxii., 3.) For, "according to the Parsee Scriptures, the seven Karshvars are to be considered as completely disconnected parts of the earth," which they surely are. For, "between them there flows the Ocean, so that it is impossible, as stated in several passages, to pass from one Karshvar to another."** The "Ocean" is space, of course, for the latter was called "Waters of Space" before it was known as Ether. Moreover, the word Karshvar is consistently rendered by Dwipa, and especially Qaniratha by Jambudwipa ("Neriosengh, the translator of the Yasna.")*** But this fact is not taken into account by the Orientalists, and therefore we find even such a learned Zoroastrian and Parsi by birth as the translator of Dr. Geiger's work passing unnoticed and without a word of comment sundry remarks of the former on the "incongruities" of this kind abounding in the Mazdean Scriptures. One of such "incongruities" and "coincidences" concerns the similarity of the Zoroastrian with the Indian tenet with regard to the seven Dwipas (islands, or continents, rather) as met with in the Puranas, namely: "The Dwipas form concentric rings, which, separated by the ocean, surround Jambu Dvipa, which is situated in the centre" (p. 130, vol. I.), and, "according to the Iranian view, the Karshvar Qaniratha is likewise situated in the centre of the rest . . . . each of them (the other six Karshvars) is a
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* p. 129, "Civilization of the Eastern Iranians in Ancient Times."
** Cf., e.g., Vol. I., 4, of the Pahlavi Translation; Bdh. xxi., 2-3.
*** Footnote by Darab Dastur Peshotan Sanjana, B.A., the translator of Dr. Wilhelm Geiger's work on the "Civilization of the Eastern Iranians."
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 759 THE MAZDEAN VIEW OF THE SEVEN EARTHS.
peculiar individual space, and so they group themselves round (above) Qaniratha" (Ibid. p. 131). Now Qaniratha is not, as believed by Geiger and his translator, "the country inhabited by the Iranian tribes," and the other names do not mean "the adjacent territories of foreign nations in the North, South, West, and East" (p. 132), but our globe or Earth. For that which is meant by the sentence which follows the last quoted, namely, that "two Vorubarshti and Voru-Zarshti lie in the North; two, Vidadhafshu and Tradadhafshu, in the South; Savahi and Arzahi in the East and West," is simply the very graphic and accurate description of the "chain" of our planet, the Earth, represented in the book of Dzyan (11) thus:
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The Mazdean names given above have only to be replaced by those used in the Secret Doctrine to become an orthodox tenet. The "Earth" (our World), therefore, is "tripartite," because the chain of the worlds is situated on three different planes above our globe; and it is septempartite because of the seven globes or spheres which compose the chain. Hence the further meaning given in Vendidad XIX. 39, showing that "Qaniratha alone is combined with imat, 'this' (earth), while all other Karshvares are combined with the word 'avat,' 'that' or those -- upper earths." Nothing could be plainer.
The same may be said of the modern comprehension of all other ancient beliefs.
The Druids understood the meaning of the Sun in Taurus, therefore, when, while all the fires were extinguished on the 1st of November, their sacred and inextinguishable fires alone remained to illumine the horizon, like those of the Magi and the modern Zoroastrians. And like the early Fifth Race and later Chaldees, the Greeks, and again like the Christians, who do the same to this day, without suspecting the real meaning, they greeted the Morning Star -- the beautiful Venus-Lucifer.*
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Dr. Kenealy quotes, in his "Book of God," Vallancey, who says "I had not been a week landed in Ireland from Gibraltar, where I had studied Hebrew and Chaldaic under Jews of various countries, when I heard a peasant girl say to boor standing by her "Teach an Maddin Nag" (Behold the morning star), pointing to the planet Venus, the Maddena Nag of the Chaldeans."
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Strabo speaks of an island near to Britannia, "where Ceres and Persephone were worshipped with the same rites as in Samothrace (lib. iv.) and this island was Sacred Ierna," where a perpetual fire was lit. The Druids believed in the rebirth of man, not as Lucian explains: "that the same spirit shall animate a new body, not here, but in a different world," but in a series of re-incarnations in this same world; for as Diodorus says, they declared that the souls of men, after determinate periods, would pass into other bodies.*
These tenets came to the Fifth Race Aryans from their predecessors of the Fourth Race, the Atlanteans. They had piously preserved the teachings, which told them how their parent Root-Race, becoming with every generation more arrogant, owing to the acquisition of superhuman powers, had been
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gradually gliding toward its end. Those records reminded them of the giant intellect of the preceding races as well as of their giant size. One finds the repetition of those records in every age of history, in almost every old fragment which has descended to us from antiquity.
AElian preserved an extract from Theophrastus written during the days of Alexander the Great. It is a dialogue between Midas, the Phrygian, and Silenus. The former is told of a continent that had existed in times of old, so immense, that Asia, Europe and Africa seemed like poor islands compared with it. It was the last to produce animals and plants of gigantic magnitudes. There, said Silenus, men grew to double the size of the tallest man in his (the narrator's) time, and they lived to twice as old an age. They had wealthy cities with temples, and one of such (cities) held more than a million of inhabitants in it, gold and silver being found there in great abundance. . . .
Grote's suggestion that Atlantis was but a myth arisen from a mirage -- clouds on a dazzling sky taking the appearance of islands on a golden sea -- is too disingenuous to be even noticed.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* There was a time when the whole world, the totality of mankind, had one religion, and when they were of "one lip." "All the religions of the Earth were at first One and emanated from one centre," says Faber very truly.
[[This page continued in next section]]
Next Section
Contents
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The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 2
Theosophical University Press Online Edition
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[[This page continued from previous section]]
A.
SOME STATEMENTS ABOUT THE SACRED ISLANDS AND CONTINENTS
IN THE CLASSICS, EXPLAINED ESOTERICALLY.
All that which precedes was known to Plato, and to many others. But as no Initiate had the right to divulge and declare all he knew, posterity got only hints. Aiming more to instruct as a moralist than as a geographer and ethnologist or historian, the Greek philosopher merged the history of Atlantis, which covered several million years, into one
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 761 WHO, OR WHAT WILL BE DENIED NEXT?
event which he located on one comparatively small island 3000 stadia long by 2000 wide; (or about 350 miles by 200, which is about the size of Ireland), whereas the priests spoke of Atlantis as a continent vast as "all Asia and Lybia" put together. But, however altered in its general aspect, Plato's narrative bears the impress of truth upon it.* It was not he who invented it, at any rate, since Homer, who preceded him by many centuries, also speaks of the Atlantes (who are our Atlanteans) and of their island in his Odyssey. Therefore the tradition was older than the bard of Ulysses. The Atlantes and the Atlantides of mythology are based upon the Atlantes and the Atlantides of history. Both Sanchoniathon and Diodorus have preserved the histories of those heroes and heroines, however much these accounts may have become mixed up with the mythical element.
In our own day we witness the stupendous fact that such comparatively recent personages as Shakespeare and William Tell are all but denied, an attempt being made to show one to be a nom de plume, and the other a person who never existed. What wonder then, that the two powerful races -- the Lemurians and the Atlanteans -- have been merged into and identified, in time, with a few half mythical peoples, who all bore the same patronymic?
Herodotus speaks of the Atlantes -- a people of Western Africa which gave its name to Mount Atlas; who were vegetarians, and "whose sleep was never disturbed by dreams"; and who, moreover, "daily cursed the sun at his rising and at his setting because his excessive heat scorched and tormented them."
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These statements are based upon moral and psychic facts and not on physiological disturbance. The story of Atlas (Vide supra) gives the key to it. If the Atlanteans never had their sleep disturbed by dreams, it is because that particular tradition is concerned with the earliest Atlanteans, whose physical frame and brain were not yet sufficiently consolidated, in the physiological sense, to permit the nervous centres to act during sleep. With regard to that other statement -- namely, that
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Plato's veracity has been so unwarrantably impeached by even such friendly critics as Professor Jowett, when the "story of Atlantis" is discussed, that it seems well to cite the testimony of a specialist on the subject. It is sufficient to place mere literary cavillers in a very ridiculous position: --
"If our knowledge of Atlantis was more thorough, it would no doubt appear that in every instance wherein the people of Europe accord with the people of America, they were both in accord with the people of Atlantis. . . . . It will be seen that in every case where Plato gives us information in this respect as to Atlantis, we find this agreement to exist. It existed in architecture, sculpture, navigation, engraving, writing, an established priesthood, the mode of worship, agriculture, and the construction of roads and canals; and it is reasonable to suppose that the same correspondence extended down to all the minor details." (Donnelly, "Atlantis," p. 194.)
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they daily "cursed the Sun" -- this again has nothing to do with the heat, but with the moral degeneration that grew with the race. It is explained in our Commentaries. "They (the sixth sub-race of the Atlanteans) used magic incantations even against the Sun" -- failing in which, they cursed it. The sorcerers of Thessaly were credited with the power of calling down the moon, as Greek history assures us. The Atlanteans of the later period were renowned for their magic powers and wickedness, their ambition and defiance of the gods. Thence the same traditions taking form in the Bible about the antediluvian giants and the Tower of Babel, found also in the "Book of Enoch."
Diodorus records another fact or two: the Atlanteans boasted of possessing the land in which all the gods had received their birth; as also of having had Uranus for their first King, he being also the first to teach them astronomy. Very little more than this has come down to us from Antiquity.
The myth of Atlas is an allegory easily understood. Atlas is the old continents of Lemuria and Atlantis, combined and personified in one symbol. The poets attribute to Atlas, as to Proteus, a superior wisdom and an universal knowledge, and especially a thorough acquaintance with the depths of the ocean: because both continents bore races instructed by divine masters, and because both were transferred to the bottom of the seas, where they now slumber until their next reappearance above the waters. Atlas is the son of an ocean nymph, and his daughter is Calypso -- "the watery deep," (See Hesiod's Theogony, 507-509, and Odyssey 1, 51): Atlantis has been submerged beneath the waters of the ocean, and its progeny is now sleeping its eternal sleep on the ocean floors. The Odyssey makes of him the guardian and the "sustainer" of the huge pillars that separate the heavens from the earth (1, 52-53). He is their "supporter." And as both Lemuria, destroyed by submarine fires, and Atlantis, submerged by the
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waves, perished in the ocean deeps,* Atlas is said to have been compelled to leave the surface of the earth, and join his brother Iapetos in the depths of Tartarus. Sir Theodore Martin is right in interpreting this allegory as meaning, Atlas "standing on the solid floor of the inferior hemisphere of the universe and thus carrying at the same time the disc of the earth and the celestial vault -- the solid envelope of the superior hemisphere" . . . (Memoires de l'Academie des
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Christians ought not to object to this doctrine of the periodical destruction of continents by fire and water; for St. Peter speaks of the earth "standing out of the water, and in the water, which earth, being overflowed, perished, but is now reserved unto fire"; (See also the "Lives of Alchemystical Philosophers, " p. 4, London, 1815).
[[Vol. 2, Page]]763 THE HEIRLOOM OF ATLANTIS.
Inscriptions, p. 176). For Atlas is Atlantis which supports the new continents and their horizons on its "shoulders."
Decharme, in his Mythologie de la Grece Antique, expresses a doubt as to the correctness of Pierron's translation of the Homeric word [[echei]] by sustinet, as it is not possible to see "how Atlas can support or bear at once several pillars situated in various localities." If Atlas were an individual it would be an awkward translation. But, as he personifies a continent in the west said to support heaven and earth at once (AEschylus, "Prometheus Vinctus, " 351, 429, etc.) -- i.e., the feet of the giant tread the earth while his shoulders support the celestial vault, an allusion to the gigantic peaks of the Lemurian and Atlantean continents -- the epithet "supporter" becomes very correct. The term "conservator" for the Greek word [[echei]], which Decharme, following Sir Theodore Martin, understands as meaning [[phulassei ]] and [[epimeleitai]], does not render the same sense.
The conception was certainly due to the gigantic mountain chain running along the terrestrial border (or disc). These mountain peaks plunged their roots into the very bottom of the seas, while they raised their heads heavenward, their summits being lost in the clouds. The ancient continents had more mountains than valleys on them. Atlas, and the Teneriffe Peak, now two of the dwarfed relics of the two lost continents, were thrice as lofty during the day of Lemuria and twice as high in that of Atlantis. Thus, the Lybians called Mount Atlas "the pillar of Heaven," according to Herodotus (IV ., 184), and Pindar qualified the later AEtna as "the celestial pillar" (Pyth. 1, 20; Decharme, 315). Atlas was an inaccessible island peak in the days of Lemuria, when the African continent had not yet been raised. It is the sole Western relic which survives, independent, of the continent on which the Third Race was born, developed and fell ,* for Australia is now part of the Eastern continent. Proud Atlas, according to esoteric tradition, having sunk one third of its size into the waters, its two parts remained as an heirloom of Atlantis.
This again was known to the priests of Egypt and to Plato himself, the solemn oath of secrecy, which extended even to the mysteries of Neo-Platonism, alone preventing the whole truth from being told.** So
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[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* This does not mean that Atlas is the locality where it fell, for this took place in Northern and Central Asia; but that Atlas formed part of the continent.
** Had not Diocletian burned the esoteric works of the Egyptians in 296, together with their books on alchemy -- "[[peri chumeias kai chrusou ]]"; Caesar 700,000 rolls at Alexandria, and Leo Isaurus 300,000 at Constantinople (viiith cent.); and the Mahomedans all they could lay their sacrilegious hands on -- the world might know to-day more of Atlantis than it does. For Alchemy had its birth-
place in Atlantis during the Fourth Race, and had only its renaissance in Egypt.
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secret was the knowledge of the last islands of Atlantis, indeed, -- on account of the superhuman powers possessed by its inhabitants, the last direct descendants of the gods or divine Kings, as it was thought -- that to divulge its whereabouts and existence was punished by death. Theopompus says as much in his ever-suspected Meropis, when he speaks of the Phoenicians as being the only navigators in the seas which wash the Western coast of Africa; and who did it with such mystery that very often they sunk their own vessels to make the too inquisitive foreigners lose all trace of them.
There are those Orientalists and historians -- and they form the majority -- who, while feeling quite unmoved at the rather crude language of the Bible, and some of the events narrated in it, show great disgust at the immorality in the pantheons of India and Greece.* We may be told that before them Euripides, Pindar, and even Plato, express the same; that they too felt irritated with the tales invented --
"those miserable stories of the poets," as Euripides expresses it ([[haoidon hoide dustenoi logoi]], Hercules furens, 1346, Dindorf's Edition).
But there may have been another reason for this, perhaps. To those who knew that there was more than one key to theogonic symbolism, it was a mistake to have expressed it in a language so crude and misleading. For if the educated and learned philosopher could discern the kernel of wisdom under the coarse rind of the fruit, and knew that the latter concealed the greatest laws and truths of psychic and physical nature, as well as the origin of all things -- not so with the uninitiated profane. For him the dead letter was religion; the interpretation -- sacrilege. And this dead letter could neither edify nor make him more perfect, seeing that such an example was given him by his gods. But
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Professor Max Muller's Lectures -- "on the Philosophy of Mythology" -- are before us. We read his citations of Herakleitos (460 B.C.), declaring that Homer deserved "to be ejected from public assemblies and flogged;" and of Xenophanes "holding Homer and Hesiod responsible for the popular superstitions of Greece. . . . " and for ascribing "to the gods whatever is disgraceful and scandalous among men . . . unlawful acts, such as theft, adultery, and fraud." Finally the Oxford Professor quotes from Professor Jowett's translation of Plato, where the latter tells Adaimantos (Republic) that "the
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young man (in the State) should not be told that in committing the worst of crimes, he is far from doing anything outrageous, and that he may chastise his father (as Zeus did with Kronos) . . in any manner that he likes, and in this will only be following the example of the first and greatest of the gods. . . In my opinion, these stories are not fit to be repeated." To this Dr. Max Muller observes that "the Greek religion was clearly a national and traditional religion, and, as such, it shared both the advantages and disadvantages of this form of religious belief"; while the Christian religion is "an historical and, to a great extent, an individual religion, and it possesses the advantage of an authorised codex and of a settled system of faith" (p. 349). So much the worse if it is "historical," for surely Lot's incident with his daughters would only gain, were it "allegorical."
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 765 THE GOD-BEARING LAND.
to the philosopher -- especially the Initiate -- Hesiod's theogony is as historical as any history can be. Plato accepts it as such, and gives out as much of its truths as his pledges permitted him.
The fact that the Atlantes claimed Uranos for their first king, and that Plato commences his story of Atlantis by the division of the great continent by Neptune, the grandson of Uranos, shows that there were continents and kings before Atlantis. For Neptune, to whose lot that continent fell, finds on a small island only one human couple made of clay (i.e., the first physical human man, whose origin began with the last sub-races of the Third Root-Race). It is their daughter Clito that the god marries, and it is his eldest son Atlas who receives for his part the mountain and the continent which was called by his name.
Now all the gods of Olympus, as well as those of the Hindu Pantheon and the Rishis, were the septiform personations (1) of the noumena of the intelligent Powers of nature; (2) of Cosmic Forces; (3) of celestial bodies; (4) of gods or Dhyan Chohans; (5) of psychic and spiritual powers; (6) of divine kings on earth (or the incarnations of the gods); and (7) of terrestrial heroes or men. The knowledge how to discern among these seven forms the one that is meant, belonged at all times to the Initiates, whose earliest predecessors had created this symbolical and allegorical system.
Thus while Uranos (or the host representing this celestial group) reigned and ruled over the Second Race and their (then) Continent; Kronos or Saturn governed the Lemurians; and Jupiter, Neptune* and others fought in the allegory for Atlantis, which was the whole earth in the day of the Fourth Race. Poseidonis, or the (last) island of Atlantis "the third step of Idaspati" (or Vishnu) in the mystic language of the secret books -- lasted till about 12,000 years ago.** The Atlantes of Diodorus were right in claiming that it was their country, the region surrounding Mount Atlas, where "the gods were born" -- i.e., "incarnated." But it was after their fourth incarnation that they became, for the first time, human Kings and rulers.
Diodorus speaks of Uranos as the first king of Atlantis, confusing, either consciously or otherwise, the continents; but, as shown, Plato indirectly corrects the statement. The first astronomical teacher of men was Uranos, because he is one of the seven Dhyan Chohans of that second period or Race. Thus also in the second Manvantara
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[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Neptune or Poseidon is the Hindu Idaspati, identical with Narayana (the mover on the waters) or Vishnu, and like this Hindu god he is shown crossing the whole horizon in three steps. Idaspati means also "the master of the waters."
** Bailly's assertion that the 9,000 years mentioned by the Egyptian priests do not represent "solar years" is groundless. Bailly knew nothing of geology and its calculations; otherwise he would have spoken differently.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 766 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
(that of Swarochisha), among the seven sons of the Manu, the presiding gods or Rishis of that race, we find Jyotis,* the teacher of astronomy (Jyotisha), one of the names of Brahma. And thus also the Chinese revere Tien (or the sky, Ouranos), and name him as their first teacher of astronomy. Uranos gave birth to the Titans of the Third Race, and it is they who (personified by Saturn-Kronos) mutilated him. For as it is the Titans who fell into generation, when "creation by will was superseded by physical procreation," they needed Uranos no more.
And here a short digression must be permitted and pardoned. In consequence of the last scholarly production of Mr. Gladstone in the Nineteenth Century, "The Greater Gods of Olympos," the ideas of the general public about Greek Mythology have been still further perverted and biassed. Homer is credited with an inner thought, which is regarded by Mr. Gladstone as "the true key to the Homeric conception," whereas this "key" was merely a blind. Poseidon "is indeed essentially of the earth earthy . . . . strong and self-asserting, sensual and intensely jealous and vindictive," -- but this is because he symbolises the Spirit of the Fourth Root-Race, the ruler of the Seas, that race which lives above the surface of the seas ([[limne]], Il. xxiv., 79), which is composed of the giants, the children of Eurymedon, the race which is the father of Polyphemus, the Titan and one-eyed Cyclops. Though Zeus reigns over the Fourth Race, it is Poseidon who rules, and who is the true key to the triad of the Kronid Brothers and to our human races. Poseidon and Nereus are one: the former the ruler or spirit of Atlantis before the beginning of its submersion, the latter, after. Neptune is the titanic strength of the living race; Nereus, its spirit reincarnated in the subsequent Fifth or Aryan Race: and this is what the great Greek scholar of England has not yet discovered, or even dimly perceived. And yet he makes many observations upon the "artfulness" of Homer, who never names Nereus, at whose designation we arrive . . . . only through the patronymic of the Nereids!
Thus the tendency of even the most erudite Hellenists is to confine their speculations to the exoteric images of mythology and to lose sight of their inner meaning: and it is remarkably illustrated in the case of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, as we have shown. While almost the most conspicuous figure of our age as a statesman, he is at the same time one of the most cultured scholars England has given birth to. Grecian literature has been the loving study of his life, and he has found time amid the bustle of public affairs to enrich contemporary literature with contributions to Greek scholarship which will make his name famous through coming generations. At the same time, as his sincere
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[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See Matsya Purana, which places him among the seven Prajapatis of the period.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 767 THE POWER OF NAMES.
admirer, the present writer cannot but feel a deep regret that posterity, while acknowledging his profound erudition and splendid culture, will yet, in the greater light which must then shine upon the whole question of symbolism and mythology, judge that he has failed to grasp the spirit of the religious system which he has often criticised from the dogmatic Christian standpoint. In that future day it will be perceived that the esoteric key to the mysteries of the Christian as well as of the Grecian theogonies and Sciences, is the Secret Doctrine of the pre-historic nations, which, along with others, he has denied. It is that Doctrine alone which can trace the kinship of all human religious speculations or even so-called Revelations, and it is this teaching which infuses the Spirit of life into the lay figures on the Mounts of Meru, Olympus, Walhalla, or Sinai. If Mr. Gladstone were a younger man, his admirers might hope that his scholastic studies would be crowned by the discovery of this underlying truth. As it is, he but wastes the golden hours of his declining years in futile disputations with that giant free-thinker, Col. Ingersoll, each fighting with the weapons of exoteric temper, drawn from the arsenals of ignorant LITERALISM. These two great controversialists are equally blind to the true esoteric meaning of the texts which they hurl at each other's head like iron bullets, while the world alone suffers by such controversies: since the one helps to strengthen the ranks of materialism, and the other those of blind Sectarianism and of the dead letter. And now we may return once more to our immediate subject.
Many a time Atlantis is spoken of under another name, one unknown to our commentators. The power of names is great, and was known since the first men were instructed by the divine masters. And as Solon had studied it, he translated the "Atlantean" names into names devised by himself. In connection with the continent of Atlantis, it is desirable to bear in mind that the accounts which have come down to us from the old Greek writers contain a confusion of statements, some referring to the Great Continent and others to the last small island of Poseidonis. It has become customary to take them all as referring to the latter only, but that this is incorrect is evident from the incompatibility of the various statements as to the size, etc., of "Atlantis."
Thus, in the Timaeus and Critias, Plato says, that the plain surrounding the city was itself surrounded by mountain chains. . . . . And the plain was smooth and level, and of an oblong shape, lying north and south, three thousand stadia in one direction and two thousand in the other. . . . . They surrounded the plain by an enormous canal or dike, 101 feet deep, 606 feet broad, and 1,250 miles in length.
Now in other places the entire size of the island of Poseidonis is given as about the same as that assigned here to the "plain around the
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city" alone. Obviously, one set of statements refers to the great continent, and the other to its last remnant -- Plato's island.
And, again, the standing army of Atlantis is given as upwards of a million men; its navy as 1,200 ships and 240,000 men. Such statements are quite inapplicable to a small island state, of about the size of Ireland!
The Greek allegories give to Atlas, or Atlantis, seven daughters (seven sub-races), whose respective names are Maia, Electra, Taygeta, Asterope, Merope, Alcyone, and Celaeno. This ethnologically, as they are credited with having married gods and with having become the mothers of famous heroes, the founders of many nations and cities. Astronomically, the Atlantides have become the seven Pleiades (?). In occult science the two are connected with the destinies of nations, those destinies being shaped by the past events of their early lives according to Karmic law.
Three great nations claimed in antiquity a direct descent from the kingdom of Saturn or Lemuria (confused already several thousands of years before our era with Atlantis): and these were the Egyptians, the Phoenicians ( Vide Sanchoniathon), and the old Greeks ( Vide Diodorus, after Plato). But the oldest civilized country of Asia -- India -- can be shown to claim the same descent likewise. Sub-
races guided by Karmic law or destiny repeat unconsciously the first steps of their respective mother-
races. As the comparatively fair Brahmins have come -- when invading India with its dark-coloured Dravidians -- from the North, so the Aryan Fifth Race must claim its origin from northern regions. The occult sciences show that the founders (the respective groups of the seven Prajapatis) of the Root Races have all been connected with the Pole Star. In the Commentary we find: --
"He who understands the age of Dhruva* who measures 9090 mortal years, will understand the times of the pralayas, the final destiny of nations, O Lanoo."
Moreover there must have been a good reason why an Asiatic nation should locate its great progenitors and saints in the Ursa Major, a northern constellation. It is 70,000 YEARS, HOWEVER, SINCE THE POLE OF THE EARTH POINTED TO THE FURTHER END OF URSA MINOR'S TAIL; and many more thousand years since the seven Rishis could have been identified with the constellation of Ursa Major.
The Aryan race was born and developed in the far north, though after the sinking of the continent of Atlantis its tribes emigrated further south into Asia. Hence Prometheus is son of Asia, and Deukalion, his son, the Greek Noah -- he who created men out of the stones of mother
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The equivalent of this name is given in the original.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 769 THE SONS OF COELUS AND TERRA.
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earth -- is called a northern Scythe, by Lucian, and Prometheus is made the brother of Atlas and is tied down to Mount Caucasus amid the Snows.*
Greece had her Hyperborean as well as her Southern Apollo. Thus nearly all the gods of Egypt, Greece, and Phoenicia, as well as those of other Pantheons, are of a northern origin and originated in Lemuria, towards the close of the Third Race, after its full physical and physiological evolution had been completed.** All the "fables" of Greece were built on historical facts, if that history had only passed unadulterated by myths to posterity. The "one-eyed" Cyclopes, the giants fabled as the sons of Coelus and Terra -- three in number, according to Hesiod -- were the last three sub-races of the Lemurians, the "one-eye" referring to the Wisdom eye***; for the two front eyes were fully developed as physical organs only in the beginning of the Fourth Race. The allegory of Ulysses, whose companions were devoured while the king of Ithaca was saved by putting out with a fire-brand the eye of Polyphemus, is based upon the psycho-physiological atrophy of the "third" eye. Ulysses belongs to the cycle of the heroes of the Fourth Race, and, though a "sage" in the sight of the latter, must have been a profligate in the opinion of the pastoral Cyclopes.**** His adventure with the latter -- a savage gigantic race, the antithesis of cultured civilization in the Odyssey -- is an allegorical record of the gradual passage from the Cyclopean civilization of stone and colossal buildings to the more sensual and physical culture of the Atlanteans, which finally caused the last of
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Deukalion is said to have brought the worship of Adonis and Osiris into Phoenicia. Now the worship is that of the Sun, lost and found again in its astronomical significance. It is only at the Pole where the Sun dies out for such a length of time as six months, for in latitude 68 [[degrees]] it remains dead only for forty days, as in the festival of Osiris. The two worships were born in the north of Lemuria, or on that continent of which Asia was a kind of broken prolongation, and which stretched up to the Polar regions. This is well shown by de Gebelin's "Allegories d 'Orient," p. 246, and by Bailly; though neither Hercules nor Osiris are solar myths, save in one of their seven aspects.
** The Hyperboreans, now regarded as mythical, were described (Herod, IV., 33-35; Pausanias, 1, 31, 2; V., 7, 8; ad X., 5, 7, 8) as the beloved priests and servants of the gods, and of Apollo chiefly.
*** The Cyclopes are not the only "one-eyed" representatives in tradition. The Arimaspes were a Scythian people, and were also credited with but one eye. (Geographie ancienne, Vol. II, p. 321.) It is they whom Apollo destroyed with his shafts. (See supra.)
**** Ulysses was wrecked on the isle of AEaea, where Circe changed all his companions into pigs for their voluptuousness; and after that he was thrown into Ogygia, the island of Calypso, where for some seven years he lived with the nymph in illicit connection (Odyssey and elsewhere). Now Calypso was a daughter of Atlas (Odys. Book XII.), and all the traditional ancient versions, when speaking of the Isle of Ogygia, say that it was very distant from Greece, and right in the middle of the ocean: thus identifying it with Atlantis.
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the Third Race to lose their all-penetrating spiritual eye. That other allegory, which makes Apollo kill the Cyclops to avenge the death of his son Asclepios, does not refer to the three races represented by the three sons of Heaven and Earth, but to the Hyperborean Arimaspian Cyclopes, the last of the race endowed with the "Wisdom-eye." The former have left relics of their buildings everywhere, in the south as much as in the north; the latter, were confined to the north solely. Thus Apollo -- pre-
eminently the god of the Seers, whose duty it is to punish desecration -- killed them -- his shafts representing human passions, fiery and lethal -- and hid his shaft behind a mountain in the Hyperborean regions. (Hygin. "Astron. Poetique, " Book ii. c. 15). Cosmically and astronomically this Hyperborean god is the Sun personified, which during the course of the sidereal year (25,868 y.) changes the climates on the earth's surface, making of tropical, frigid regions, and vice versa. Psychically and spiritually his significance is far more important. As Mr. Gladstone pertinently remarks in his "Greater Gods of Olympos," "the qualities of Apollo (jointly with Athene) are impossible to be accounted for without repairing to sources, which lie beyond the limit of the traditions most commonly explored for the elucidation of the Greek mythology" (Nineteenth Century, July, 1887.)
The history of Latona (Leto), Apollo's mother, is most pregnant in various meanings. Astronomically, Latona is the polar region and the night, giving birth to the Sun, Apollo, Phoebus, etc. She is born in the Hyperborean countries wherein all the inhabitants were priests of her son, celebrating his resurrection and descent to their country every nineteen years at the renewal of the lunar cycle (Diod. Sic. II. 307). Latona is the Hyperborean Continent, and its race -- geologically.*
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* To make a difference between Lemuria and Atlantis, the ancient writers referred to the latter as the northern or Hyperborean Atlantis, and to the former as the southern. Thus Apollodorus says (Mythology, Book II.): "The golden apples carried away by Hercules are not, as some think, in Lybia; they are in the Hyperborean Atlantis." The Greeks naturalised all the gods they borrowed and made Hellenes of them, and the moderns helped them. Thus also the mythologists have tried to make of Eridan the river Po, in Italy. In the myth of Phaeton it is said that at his death his sisters dropped hot tears which fell into Eridan and were changed into amber! Now amber is found only in the northern seas, in the Baltic. Phaeton, meeting with his death while carrying heat to the frozen stars of the boreal regions, awakening at the Pole the Dragon made rigid by cold, and being hurled down into the Eridan, is an allegory referring directly to the changes of climate in those distant times when, from a frigid zone, the polar lands had become a country with a moderate and warm climate. The usurper of the functions of the sun, Phaeton, being hurled into the Eridan by Jupiter's thunderbolt, is an allusion to the second change that took place in those regions when, once more, the land where "the magnolia blossomed" became the desolate forbidding land of the farthest north and eternal ices. This allegory covers then the events of two pralayas ; and if well understood ought to be a demonstration of the enormous antiquity of the human races.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 771 THE CHILDREN OF NIOBE.
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When the astronomical meaning cedes its place to the spiritual and divine -- Apollo and Athene transforming themselves into the form of birds, the symbol and glyph of the higher divinities and angels -- then the bright god assumes divine creative powers. Apollo becomes the personification of Seership, when he sends the astral double of AEneas to the battle field (II. 431-53), and has the gift of appearing to his Seers without being visible to other persons present -- (Iliad, xvii., 322-36) -- a gift, however, shared by every high Adept.
The King of the Hyperboreans, was, therefore, the son of Boreas, the north-wind, and the High Priest of Apollo. The quarrel of Latona with Niobe (the Atlantean race) -- the mother of seven sons and seven daughters personifying the seven sub-races of the Fourth Race and their seven branches (see Apollodorus for this number) -- allegorizes the history of the two continents. The wrath of "the sons of god," or of "Will and Yoga," at seeing the steady degradation of the Atlanteans was great (See "The Sons of God and the Sacred Island"); and the destruction of the "children of Niobe" by the children of Latona -- Apollo and Diana, the deities of light, wisdom and purity, or the Sun and Moon astronomically, whose influence causes changes in the earth's axis, deluges and other cosmic cataclysms -- is thus very clear.* The fable about the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* So occult and mystic is one of the aspects of Latona that she is made to reappear even in Revelation (xii.) as the woman clothed with the Sun (Apollo) and the Moon (Diana) under her feet, who being with child "cries, travailing in birth, pained to be delivered." A great red Dragon, etc., stands before the woman ready to devour the child. She brings forth the man child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron, and who was caught unto the throne of God (the Sun). The woman fled to the wilderness still pursued by the Dragon, who flees again, and casts out of his mouth water as a flood, when the earth helped the woman and swallowed the flood; and the Dragon went to make war with the remnant of her seed who keep the commandment of God, etc. (See xii., 1, 17.) Anyone, who reads the allegory of Latona pursued by the revenge of jealous Juno, will recognise the identity of the two versions. Juno sends Python, the Dragon, to persecute and destroy Latona and devour her babe. The latter is Apollo, the Sun, for "the man-child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron" of Revelation, is surely not the meek "Son of God," Jesus, but the physical Sun, "who rules all nations"; the Dragon being the North Pole, gradually chasing the early Lemurians from the lands which became more and more Hyperborean and unfit to be inhabited by those who were fast developing into physical men, for they now had to deal with the climatic variations. The Dragon will not allow Latona "to bring forth" -- (the Sun to appear). "She is driven from heaven, and finds no place where she can bring forth," until Neptune (the ocean), moved with pity, makes immovable the floating isle of Delos (the nymph Asteria, hitherto hiding from Jupiter under the waves of the ocean) on which Latona finds refuge and where the bright god [[Delios]] is born, the god, who no sooner appears than he kills Python, the cold and frost of the Arctic region, in whose deadly coils all life becomes extinct. In other words, Latona-Lemuria is transformed into Niobe-Atlantis, over which her son Apollo, or the Sun, reigns -- with an iron rod, truly, since Herodotus makes the Atlantes curse his too great heat. This allegory is reproduced in its other mystic meaning (another of the seven keys) in the [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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never-ceasing tears of Niobe, whose grief causes Zeus to change her into a fountain -- Atlantis covered with water -- is no less graphic as a symbol. Niobe, let it be remembered, is the daughter of one of the Pleiades (or Atlantides) the grand-daughter of Atlas therefore, (See "Metamorphoses of Ovid, " Book VI.), because she represents the last generations of the doomed continent.
A true remark, that of Bailly, which says that Atlantis had an enormous influence on antiquity. "If these names," he adds, "are mere allegories, then all that those fables contain of truth comes from Atlantis; if the fable is a real tradition -- however altered -- then the whole of the ancient history is still in it." (Lettres sur l'Atlantide, p. 137.)
So much so, that all ancient writings -- prose and poetry -- are full of the reminiscences of the Lemuro-
Atlanteans, the first physical races, though the Third and the Fourth in number. Hesiod records the tradition about the men of the age of Bronze, whom Jupiter had made out of ash-wood and who had hearts harder than diamond. Clad in bronze from head to foot they passed their lives in fighting. Monstrous in size, endowed with a terrible strength, invincible arms and hands descended from their shoulders, says the poet (Hesiod, in oper. and dieb. v . 143). Such were the giants of the first physical races. The Iranians have a reference to the later Atlanteans in Yasna ix. 15. Tradition maintains that the "Sons of God," or the great Initiates of the Sacred Island, took advantage of the Deluge, to rid the earth of all the Sorcerers among the Atlanteans. The said verse addresses Zoroaster as one of the "Sons of God." -- It says: "Thou, O Zarathustra, didst make all demons (i.e., Sorcerers), who before roamed the world in human forms, conceal themselves in the earth" (i.e., helped them to get submerged).
The Lemurians, as also the early Atlanteans, were divided into two distinct classes -- the "Sons of Night" or Darkness, and the "Sons of the Sun," or Light. The old books tell us of terrible battles between the two, when the former, leaving their land of Darkness, from whence the Sun departed for long months, descended from their inhospitable regions and "tried to wrench the lord of light" from their better favoured brothers of the equatorial regions. We may be told that the ancients knew nothing of the long night of six months' duration in the Polar regions. Even Herodotus, more learned
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] chapter just cited of the Apocalypse. Latona became a powerful goddess indeed, and saw her son receive worship (solar worship) in almost every fane of antiquity. In his occult aspect Apollo is patron of Number 7. He is born on the seventh of the month, and the swans of Myorica swim seven times around Delos singing that event; he is given seven chords to his Lyre -- the seven rays of the sun and the seven forces of nature. But this only in the astronomical meaning, whereas the above is purely geological.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 773 THE CYCLES OF TIME.
than the rest, only mentions a people who slept for six months in the year, and remained awake the other half. Yet the Greeks knew well that there was a country in the north where the year was divided into a day and night of six months' duration each, for Pliny says so in his Fourth Book, c. 12. They speak of the Cimmerians and of the Hyperboreans, and draw a distinction between the two. The former
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inhabited the Palus Maeotis (between 45 [[degrees]] and 50 [[degrees]] latitude). Plutarch explains that they were but a small portion of a great nation driven away by the Scythians, which nation stopped near Tanais, having crossed Asia. "These warlike multitudes lived formerly on the ocean shores, in dense forests, and under a tenebrous sky. There the pole is almost touching the head, there long nights and days divide the year" (in Mario). As to the Hyperboreans, these peoples, as expressed by Solinus Polyhistor (c. 16), "sow in the morning, reap at noon, gather their fruits in the evening, and store them during the night in their caves."
Even the writers of the Zohar knew of the fact (as shown in iii., fol. 10a), as it is written: "In the Book of Hammannunah, the Old, we learn . . . . there are some countries of the earth which are lightened, whilst others are in darkness; these have the day, when for the former it is night; and there are countries in which it is constantly day, or in which at least the night continues only some instants." (Isaac Myer's "Qabbalah," p. 139).
The island of Delos, the Asteria of the Greek mythology, was never in Greece, a country which, in its day, was not yet in existence, not even in its molecular form. Several writers have shown that it represented a country or an island, far larger than the small dots of land which became Greece. Both Pliny and Diodorus Siculus place it in the Northern seas. One calls it Basilea or "royal" ( Vol. II., p. 225 of Diod.); the other, Pliny, names it Osericta (Book xxxvii, c. 2), a word, according to Rudbeck ( Vol. I., p. 462-464), having had "a significance in the northern languages, equivalent to the Island of the divine Kings or god-Kings," or again the "royal island of the gods," because the gods were born there, i.e., the divine dynasties of the kings of Atlantis proceeded from that place. Let geographers and geologists seek for it among that group of islands discovered by Nordenskiold on his Vega voyage in the arctic regions.* The secret books inform us that the climate has changed in those regions more than once since the first men inhabited those now almost inaccessible latitudes. They were a paradise before they became hell;
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* These islands were "found strewn with fossils of horses, sheep, oxen, etc., among gigantic bones of elephants, mammoths, rhinoceroses," etc. If there was no man on earth at that period "how came horses and sheep to be found in company with the huge antediluvians?" asks a master in a letter. ("Esoteric Buddhism, " 67). The reply is given above in the text.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 774 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
the dark Hades of the Greeks and the cold realm of Shades where the Scandinavian Hel, the goddess-
Queen of the country of the dead, "holds sway deep down in Helheim and Niflheim." Yet, it was the birth-place of Apollo, who was the brightest of gods, in heaven -- astronomically -- as he was the most enlightened of the divine kings who ruled over the early nations, in his human meaning. The latter fact is borne out in the Iliad IV., 239-62, Vide "The Greater gods" -- wherein Apollo is said to have appeared four times in his own form (as the god of the four races) and six times in human form, i.e., as connected with the divine Dynasties of the earlier unseparated Lemurians.
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The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky, vol 2, pt 3, ch 6 cont
It is those early mysterious peoples, their countries (which have now become uninhabitable), as well as the name given to man both dead and alive, which have furnished an opportunity to the ignorant Church fathers for inventing a hell, which they have transformed into a burning instead of a freezing locality.*
It is, of course, evident that it is neither the Hyperboreans, nor the Cimmerians, the Arimaspes, nor even the Scyths -- known to and communicating with the Greeks -- who were our Atlanteans. But they were all the descendants of their last sub-races. The Pelasgians were certainly one of the root-races of future Greece, and were a remnant of a sub-race of Atlantis. Plato hints as much in speaking of the latter, whose name it is averred came from pelagus, the great sea. Noah's Deluge is astronomical and allegorical, but it is not mythical, for the story is based upon the same archaic tradition of men -- or rather of nations -- which were saved during the cataclysms, in canoes, arks, and ships. No one would presume to say that the Chaldean Xisuthrus, the Hindu Vaivasvata, the Chinese Peirun -- the "beloved of the gods," who rescued him from the flood in a canoe -- or the Swedish Belgamer, for whom the gods did the same in the north, are all identical as a personage. But their legends have all sprung from the catastrophe which involved both the continent and the island of Atlantis.
The allegory about the antediluvian giants and their achievements in Sorcery is no myth. Biblical events are revealed indeed. But it is neither by the voice of God amid thunder and lightning on Mount
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* A good proof that all the gods, and religious beliefs, and myths have come from the north, which was also the cradle of physical man, lies in several suggestive words which have originated and remain to this day among the northern tribes in their primeval significance; but although there was a time when all the nations were "of one lip," these words have received a different meaning with the Greeks and Latins. One such word is Mann, Man, a living being, and Manes, dead men. The Laplanders call their corpses to this day manee, ( Voyage de Renard en Laponie I., 184). Mannus is the ancestor of the German race; the Hindu Manu, the thinking being, from man; the Egyptian Menes ; and Minos, the King of Crete, judge of the infernal regions after his death -- all proceed from the same root or word.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 775 WHO WERE THE NEPHILIM?
Sinai, nor by a divine finger tracing the record on tablets of stone, but simply through tradition via pagan sources. It was not surely the Pentateuch that Diodorus was repeating when he wrote upon the Titans -- the giants born of Heaven and Earth, or, rather, born of the Sons of God who took to themselves for wives the daughters of men who were fair. Nor was Pherecydes quoting from Genesis when giving details on those giants which are not to be found in the Jewish Scriptures. He says that the Hyperboreans were of the race of the Titans, which race descended from the earliest giants, and that it was that Hyperborean region which was the birth-place of the first giants. The Commentaries on the sacred books explain that the said region was the far north, the polar lands now, the pre-Lemurian earliest continent, embracing once upon a time the present Greenland, Spitzbergen, Sweden, Norway, etc.
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But who were the Nephilim of Genesis vi. 4? There were Palaeolithic and Neolithic men in Palestine ages before the events recorded in the book of the Beginnings. The theological tradition identifies these Nephilim with hairy men or Satyrs, the latter being mythical in the Fifth Race and the former historical in both the Fourth and Fifth Races. We have stated elsewhere what the prototypes of these Satyrs were, and have spoken of the sexstone of the early and later Atlantean race. What is the meaning of Poseidon's amours under such a variety of animal forms? He became a dolphin to win Amphitrite; a horse, to seduce Ceres; a ram, to deceive Theophane, etc., etc. Poseidon is not only the personation of the Spirit and Race of Atlantis, but also of the vices of these giants. Gesenius and others devote an enormous space to the meaning of the word Nephilim and explain very little. But Esoteric records show these hairy creatures to be the last descendants of those Lemuro-Atlantean races, which begot children on female animals, of species now long extinct; thus producing dumb men, "monsters," as the Stanzas have it.
Now mythology, built upon Hesiod's Theogony, which is but a poetised record of actual traditions, or oral history, speaks of three giants, called Briareus, Kottos, and Gyges, living in a dark country where they were imprisoned by Kronos for their rebellion against him. All the three are endowed by myth with an hundred arms and fifty heads, the latter standing for races, the former for sub-races and tribes. Bearing in mind that in mythology every personage almost is a god or derni-god, and also a king or simple mortal in his second aspect;* and
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Thus, for instance, Gyges is a hundred-armed and fifty-headed monster, a demi-god in one case, and a Lydian, the successor of Candaules, king of the country, in another version. The same is found in the Indian Pantheon, where Rishis and the Sons of Brahma are reborn as mortals.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 776 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
that both stand as symbols for lands, islands, powers of nature, elements, nations, races and sub-races, the esoteric Commentary will become comprehensible. It says that the three giants are three polar lands which have changed form several times, at each new cataclysm, or disappearance of one continent to make room for another. The whole globe is convulsed periodically; and has been so convulsed, since the appearance of the First Race, four times. Yet, though the whole face of the earth was transformed thereby each time, the conformation of the arctic and antarctic poles has but little altered. The polar lands unite and break off from each other into islands and peninsulas, yet remain ever the same. Therefore northern Asia is called the "eternal or perpetual land," and the Antarctic the "ever living" and "the concealed"; while the Mediterranean, Atlantic, Pacific and other regions disappear and reappear in turn, into and above the great waters.
From the first appearance of the great continent of Lemuria, the three polar giants had been imprisoned in their circle by Kronos. Their gaol is surrounded by a wall of bronze, and the exit is through gates fabricated by Poseidon (or Neptune, hence by the seas), which they cannot cross; and it is in that damp region, where eternal darkness reigns, that the three brothers languish. The Iliad (viii., 13) makes of it the Tartaros. When the gods and Titans rebelled in their turn against Zeus -- the deity of the Fourth
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Race -- the father of the gods bethought himself of the imprisoned giants in order to conquer the gods and Titans, and to precipitate the latter into Hades; or, in clearer words, to have Lemuria hurled amid thunder and lightning to the bottom of the seas, so as to make room for Atlantis, which was to be submerged and perish in its turn.* The geological upheaval and deluge of Thessaly was a repetition on a small scale of the great cataclysm; and, remaining impressed on the memory of the Greeks, was merged by them into, and confused with, the general fate of Atlantis. So, also, the war between the Rakshasas of Lanka and the Bharateans, the melee of the Atlanteans and Aryans in their supreme struggle, or the conflict between the Devs and Izeds (or Peris), became, ages later, the struggle of Titans, separated into two inimical camps, and still later the war between the angels of God and the angels of Satan. Historical facts became theological dogmas. Ambitious scholiasts, men of a small sub-
race born but yesterday, and one of the latest issues of the Aryan stock, took upon themselves to overturn the religious
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The continents perish in turn by fire and water: either through earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, or by sinking and the great displacement of waters. Our continents have to perish owing to the former cataclysmal process. The incessant earthquakes of this and the past years may be a warning.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 777 MYTHOLOGY BUILT ON HISTORY.
thought of the world, and succeeded. For nearly two thousand years they impressed thinking Humanity with the belief in the existence of Satan.
But as it is now the conviction of more than one Greek scholar -- as it was that of Bailly and Voltaire -- that Hesiod's theogony was based upon historical facts (see Decharme's Mythol. de la Grece Antique), it becomes easier for the occult teachings to find their way into the minds of thoughtful men, and therefore are these passages from mythology brought forward in our discussion upon modern learning in this Addendum.
Such symbolisms as are found in all the exoteric creeds, are so many landmarks of prehistoric truths. The sunny, happy land, the primitive cradle of the earliest human races, has become several times since then hyperborean and Saturnine*; thus showing the Golden Age and reign of Saturn from multiform aspects. It was many-sided in its character indeed -- climatically, ethnologically and morally. For, the Third, Lemurian Race must be physiologically divided into the early androgynous and the later bi-sexual race; and the climate of its dwelling places and continents into that of an eternal spring and eternal winter, into life and death, purity and impurity. The Cycle of legends is ever being transformed on its journey by popular fancy. Yet it may be cleansed from the dross it has picked up on its way through many nations and through the countless minds which have added their own exuberant additions to the original facts. Leaving for a while the Greek interpretations we may seek for some more corroborations of the latter in the scientific and geological proofs.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
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* Denis, the geographer, tells us that the great sea North of Asia was called glacial, or Saturnine (v. 35). Orpheus (v. 1077) and Pliny (Book IV., c. 16) corroborate the statement by showing that it is its giant inhabitants who gave it the name. And the Secret Doctrine explains both assertions by telling us that all the continents were formed from North to South; and that as the sudden change of climate dwarfed the race that had been born on it, arresting its growth, so, several degrees southward, various conditions had always produced the tallest men in every new humanity, or race. We see it to this day. The tallest men now found are those in Northern countries, while the smallest are Southern Asiatics, Hindus, Chinamen, Japanese, etc. Compare the tall Sikhs and Punjabees, the Afghans, Norwegians, Russians, Northern Germans, Scotchmen, and the English, with the inhabitants of central India and the average European on the continent. Thus also the giants of Atlantis, and hence the Titans of Hesiod, are all Northerners.
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Next Section
Contents
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The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky, vol 2, pt 3, ch 7
The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 2
Theosophical University Press Online Edition
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 778 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
§ VII.
SCIENTIFIC AND GEOLOGICAL PROOFS OF THE
EXISTENCE OF SEVERAL SUBMERGED CONTINENTS.
IT may not be amiss -- for the benefit of those who resolve the tradition of a lost Miocene Atlantis into an "antiquated myth," to append a few scientific admissions on this point. Science, it is true, is largely indifferent to such questions. But there are Scientists ready to admit that, in any case, a cautious agnosticism as to geological problems concerning the remote past is far more philosophical than a priori denial, or even hasty generalizations on insufficient data.
Meanwhile two very interesting instances, that have been lately met with, may be pointed out as "confirming" certain passages in the letter of a Master, published in "Esoteric Buddhism." The eminence of the authorities will not be questioned: --
[[First Column]]
Extract from p. 61 of "Esoteric Buddhism."
No. 1.
"The sinking of the Atlantis (the group of continents and islands) began during the Eocene period . . . . and it culminated in the Miocene, first in the final disappearance of the largest, an event coincident with the elevation of the Alps, and second in the sinking of the last of the fair islands mentioned by Plato."
[[First Column continued on next page]]
[[Second Column]]
Extract from a Lecture by W. Pengelly, F.R.S., F.G.S.
No. 1.
"Was there, as some have believed, an Atlantis -- a continent or Archipelago of large islands occupying the area of the North Atlantic? There is, perhaps, nothing unphilosophical in the hypothesis. For since, as geologists state, 'The Alps have acquired 4,000 and even in some places more than 10,000
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The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky, vol 2, pt 3, ch 7
feet of their present altitude since the commencement of the Eocene epoch ' (Lyell's Principles 2nd Ed. p. 256.) -- a post-Miocene depression might have carried the hypothetical Atlantis into almost abysmal depths."*
[[Second Column continued on next page]]
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Having already given several instances of the vagaries of Science, it is delightful to find such agreement in this particular case. Read in connection with the scientific admission (cited elsewhere) of the geologists' ignorance of even the approximate duration of periods, the following passage is highly instructive: "We are not yet able to assign an approximate date for the most recent epoch at which our Northern Hemisphere was covered with glaciers. According to Mr. Wallace, this epoch may have occurred seventy thousand years ago, while others would assign to it an antiquity of at least two hundred thousand years, and there are yet others who urge strong arguments on behalf of the opinion that a million of years is barely enough to have produced the changes which have taken place since that event." (Fiske, "Cosmic [[Footnote continued on next page]]
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 779 GEOLOGY CORROBORATES OCCULTISM.
[[First Column continued from previous page]]
No. 2.
"Lemuria cannot any more be confounded with the Atlantis continent than Europe with America. Both sank and were drowned with all their 'gods'; yet, between the two catastrophes a short period of about some 700,000 years elapsed; Lemuria flourishing and ending her career just about that trifling lapse of time before the early Eocene Age, since its Race was the Third. Behold the relics of that once great race in some of the flat-headed aborigines of your AUSTRALIA." ("Esoteric Buddhism," p. 55.)
[[Second Column continued from previous page]]
No. 2.
"It would be premature to say, because no evidence has yet been adduced, that men may not have existed in the Eocene Age, especially as it can be shown that a race of men, the lowest we know of, co-
exists with that remnant of the Eocene flora which still survives on the continent and islands of Australia. " (Extract from an article in "Popular Science Review," Vol. V. p. 18, by Professor Seemann, Ph.D., F.L.S., P.A.S.).
Haeckel, who fully accepts the reality of a former Lemuria, also regards the Australians as direct descendants of the Lemurians. "Persistent forms (of both his Lemurian stems,) are in all probability still surviving . . . Papuans and Hottentots . . . Australians . . . one division of the Malays."
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[[End of Columns]]
With regard to a former civilization, of which a portion of these degraded Australians are the last surviving offshoot, the opinion of Gerland is strongly suggestive. Commenting upon the religion and mythology of the tribes, he writes, "The statement that the Australian civilization (?) indicates a higher grade, is nowhere more clearly proved than here, where everything resounds like the expiring voices of a previous and richer age. The idea that the Australians have no religion or mythology is thoroughly false. But this religion is certainly quite deteriorated." (Cited in Schmidt's "Doctrine of Descent of Darwinism, " pp. 301-2.) As to his other statement, namely, that the Australians are a "division of the Malays" ( Vide his ethnological theories in the "Pedigree of Man "), Haeckel is in error, if he classes the Australians with the rest. The Malays and Papuans are a mixed stock, resulting from the intermarriages of the low Atlantean sub-races with the Seventh sub-race of the Third Root-Race. Like the Hottentots, they are of indirect Lemuro-Atlantean descent. It is a most suggestive fact -- to those concrete thinkers who demand a physical proof of Karma -- that the lowest races of men are now rapidly dying out; a phenomenon largely due to an extraordinary sterility setting in among the women, from the time that they were first approached by the Europeans. A process of decimation is taking
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] Philosophy," Vol. II., p. 304). Prof. Lefevre, again, gives us as his estimate 100,000 years. Clearly, then, if modern Science is unable to estimate the date of so comparatively recent an era as the Glacial Epoch, it can hardly impeach the Esoteric Chronology of Race-Periods and Geological Ages.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 780 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
place all over the globe, among those races, whose "time is up" -- among just those stocks, be it remarked, which esoteric philosophy regards as the senile representatives of lost archaic nations. It is inaccurate to maintain that the extinction of a lower race is invariably due to cruelties or abuses perpetrated by colonists. Change of diet, drunkenness, etc., etc., have done much; but those who rely on such data as offering an all-sufficient explanation of the crux, cannot meet the phalanx of facts now so closely arrayed. "Nothing," says even the materialist Lefevre, "can save those that have run their course. . . . It would be necessary to extend their destined cycle. . . . The peoples that have been most spared . . . Hawaiians or Maories, have been no less decimated than the tribes massacred or tainted by European intrusion. " ("Philosophy, " p. 508.)
True; but is not the phenomenon here confirmed of the operation of CYCLIC LAW difficult to account for on materialist lines? Whence the "destined cycle" and the order here testified to? Why does this (Karmic) sterility attack and root out certain races at their "appointed hour"? The answer that it is due to a "mental disproportion" between the colonizing and aboriginal races is obviously evasive, since it does not explain the sudden "checks to fertility" which so frequently supervene. The dying out of the Hawaiians, for instance, is one of the most mysterious problems of the day. Ethnology will sooner or later have to recognize with Occultists that the true solution has to be sought for in a comprehension of the workings of Karma. As Lefevre remarks, "the time is drawing near when there will remain nothing
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The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky, vol 2, pt 3, ch 7
but three great human types" (before the Sixth Root-Race dawns), the white (Aryan, Fifth Root-Race), the yellow, and the African negro -- with their crossings (Atlanto-European divisions). Redskins, Eskimos, Papuans, Australians, Polynesians, etc., etc. -- all are dying out. Those who realize that every Root-Race runs through a gamut of seven sub-races with seven branchlets, etc., will understand the "why." The tide-wave of incarnating EGOS has rolled past them to harvest experience in more developed and less senile stocks; and their extinction is hence a Karmic necessity. Some extraordinary and unexplained statistics as to Race extinction are given in de Quatrefages' "Human Species, " p. 428 et seq. No solution, except on the occult lines, is able to account for these.
But we have digressed from our direct subject. Let us hear now what Professor Huxley has to say on the subject of former Atlantic and Pacific Continents.
He writes in "NATURE," Nov. 4th, 1880: "There is nothing, so far as I am aware, in the biological or geological evidence at present accessible, to render untenable the hypothesis that an area of the mid-
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 781 TRADITION AS TRUE AS HISTORY.
Atlantic or Pacific sea-bed as big as Europe, should have been uplifted as high as Mont Blanc, and have subsided again, any time since the Palaeozoic epoch, if there were any grounds for entertaining it."
That is to say, then, that there is nothing which can militate against positive evidence to the fact; nothing, therefore, against the geological postulates of the Esoteric Philosophy. Dr. Seemann assures us in the "Popular Science Review" (Vol. V., p. 18), article "Australia and Europe formerly one Continent,"* that: --
"The facts which botanists have accumulated for reconstructing these lost maps of the globe are rather comprehensive; and they have not been backward in demonstrating the former existence of large tracts of solid land in parts now occupied by the great oceans. The many striking points of contact between the present flora of the United States and Eastern Asia, induced them to assume that, during the present order of things, there existed a continental connection between South-Eastern Asia and Western America. The singular correspondence of the present flora of the Southern United States with that of the lignite flora of Europe induces them to believe that, in the Miocene period, Europe and America were connected by a land passage, of which Iceland, Madeira, and the other Atlantic islands are remnants; that, in fact, the story of an Atlantis, which an Egyptian priest told to Solon, is not purely fictitious, but rests on a solid historical basis . . . . Europe of the Eocene period received the plants which spread over mountains and plains, valleys and river-banks (from Asia generally), neither exclusively from the South nor from the East. The west also furnished additions, and if at that period these were rather meagre, they show, at all events, that the bridge was already building, which, at a late period, was to facilitate communication between the two continents in such a remarkable manner. At that time some plants of the Western Continent began to reach Europe by means of the island of Atlantis, then probably just rising (?) above the ocean."
And in another number of the same review (Vol. I., p. 143) Mr. Duppa Crotch, M.A., F.L.S., in an
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The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky, vol 2, pt 3, ch 7
article entitled "The Norwegian Lemming and its Migrations," alludes to the same subject.
"Is it probable that land could have existed where now the broad Atlantic rolls? All tradition says so: old Egyptian records speak of Atlantis, as Strabo and others have told us. The Sahara itself is the sand of an ancient sea, and the shells which are found upon its surface
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Undoubtedly a fact and a confirmation of the esoteric conception of the Lemuria which originally not only embraced great areas in the Indian and Pacific oceans, but projected round South Africa into the North Atlantic. Its Atlantic portion subsequently became the geological basis of the future home of the Fourth Race Atlanteans.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 782 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
prove that, no longer ago than the Miocene period, a sea rolled over what is now desert. The voyage of the 'Challenger' has proved the existence of three long ridges* in the Atlantic Ocean,** one extending for more than three thousand miles, and lateral spurs may, by connecting these ridges, account for the marvellous similarity of the fauna of the Atlantic islands.*** . . . . The submerged continent of LEMURIA, in what is now the Indian Ocean, is considered to afford an explanation of many difficulties in the distribution of organic life, and, I think, the existence of a MIOCENE ATLANTIS will be found to have a strong elucidative bearing on subjects of greater interest [Truly So!] than the migration of the lemming. At all events, if it can be shown that land existed in former ages where the North Atlantic now rolls, not only is a motive found for these apparently suicidal migrations, but also a strong collateral proof that what we call instincts are but the blind and sometimes even prejudicial inheritance of previously acquired experiences."
(At certain periods, we learn, multitudes of these animals swim to sea and perish. Coming, as they do, from all parts of Norway, the powerful instinct which survives throughout ages as an inheritance from their progenitors impels them to seek a continent, once existing but now submerged beneath the ocean, and to court a watery grave.)
In an article containing a criticism of Mr. A. R. Wallace's "Island Life" -- a work devoted largely to the question of the distribution of animals, etc. -- Mr. Starkie Gardiner writes ("Subsidence and Elevation," Geological Magazine, June, 1881): --
"By a process of reasoning supported by a large array of facts of different kinds, he arrives at the conclusion that the distribution of life upon the land as we now see it, has been accomplished without the aid of important changes in the relative positions of continents and seas. Yet if we accept his views, we must believe that Asia and Africa, Madagascar and Africa, New Zealand and Australia, Europe and America, have been united at some period not remote geologically, and that seas to the depth of 1,000 fathoms have been bridged over; but we must treat as utterly gratuitous and entirely opposed to
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The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky, vol 2, pt 3, ch 7
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Cf. the published reports of the "Challenger" expedition; also Donnelly's "Atlantis," p. 468 and pp. 46-56, chap. "The Testimony of the Sea."
** Even the cautious Lefevre speaks of the existence of Tertiary men on "upheaved lands, islands and continents then flourishing, but since submerged beneath the waters," and elsewhere introduces a "possible Atlantis" to explain ethnological facts. Cf. his "Philosophy, " Eng. Ed., pp. 478 and 504. Mr. Donnelly remarks with rare intuition that "modern civilization is Atlantean . . . . the 'inventive' faculty of the present age is taking up the delegated work of Creation where Atlantis left it thousands of years ago" (Atlantis, p. 133). He also refers the origin of culture to the Miocene times. It is, however, to be sought for in the teachings given to the Third Race-men by their Divine Rulers -- at a vastly earlier period.
*** An equally "curious" similarity is traced between some of the West Indian and West African fauna.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 783 ATLANTIS, NECESSARY TO ETHNOLOGY.
all the evidences at our command (!!), the supposition that temperate Europe and temperate America, Australia, and South America, have ever been connected except by way of the Arctic or Antarctic circles and that lands now separated by seas of more than 1,000 fathoms depth have ever been united. Mr. Wallace, it must be admitted, has succeeded in explaining the chief features of existing life-distribution, without bridging the Atlantic or Pacific, except towards the Poles, yet I cannot help thinking that some of the facts might perhaps be more easily explained by admitting the former existence of the connection between the coast of Chile and Polynesia* and Great Britain and Florida, shadowed by the submarine banks which stretch between them. Nothing is urged that renders the more direct connection impossible, and no physical reason is advanced why the floor of the ocean should not be upheaved from any depth. The route by which (according to the anti-Atlantean and Lemurian hypotheses of Wallace) the floras of South America and Australia are supposed to have mingled, is beset by almost insurmountable obstacles, and the apparently sudden arrival of a number of sub-tropical American plants in our Eocene flora, necessitates a connection more to the south than the present 1,000 fathom line . . . . forces are unceasingly acting, and there is no reason why an elevating force once set in action in the centre of an ocean should cease to act until a continent is formed. They have acted and lifted out from the sea, in comparatively recent geological times, the loftiest mountains on earth. Mr. Wallace himself admits repeatedly that sea-beds have been elevated 1,000 fathoms and islands have risen up from the depths of 3,000 fathoms; and to suppose that the upheaving forces are limited in power, is, it seems to me, 'utterly gratuitous and entirely opposed to all the evidences at our command.' "
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The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky, vol 2, pt 3, ch 7
The "Father" of English Geology -- Sir Charles Lyell -- was an Uniformitarian in his views of continental formation. On page 492 of his "Antiquity of Man" we find him saying: --
"Professor Unger (Die versunkene Insel Atlantis) and Heer (Flora Tertiaria Helvetiae) have admitted on botanical grounds the former existence of an Atlantic Continent during some part of the Tertiary Period, as affording the only plausible explanation that can be imagined of the analogy between the Miocene flora of central Europe, and the existing flora of Eastern America. Professor Oliver, on the other hand, after showing how many of the American types found fossil in Europe are common to Japan, inclines to the theory, first advanced by Dr. Asa Gray, that the migration of species, to which the community of types in the Eastern States of North America, and the Miocene flora of Europe is due, took place when there was an overland communication from America to central Asia between the fiftieth and sixtieth parallels of latitude, or south of Behring Straits, following the direction of the Aleutian islands. By this course they may have made their way, at any epoch, Miocene, Pliocene, or Pleistocene, antecedently to the Glacial Epoch, to Amoorland, on the East coast of North Asia."
The unnecessary difficulties and complications here incurred in order to avoid the hypothesis of an Atlantic Continent, are really too
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The Pacific portion of the giant Lemurian Continent christened by Dr. Carter Blake, the anthropologist, "Pacificus."
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 784 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
apparent to escape notice. If the botanical evidences stood alone, scepticism would be half legitimate; but in this case all branches of science converge to one point. Science has made blunders, and has exposed itself to greater errors than the admission of our two now invisible continents, would lay it open to. It has denied even the undeniable, from the days of the mathematician Laplace down to our own, and that only a few years ago.* We have Professor Huxley's authority for saying that there is no a priori improbability whatever against possible evidences supporting the belief. ( Vide supra.) But now that the POSITIVE EVIDENCE is brought forward, will that eminent scientist admit the corollary?
Touching on the problem in another place ("Principles of Geology, " pp. 12-13), Sir Charles Lyell tells us: "Respecting the cosmogony of the Egyptian priests, we gather much information from writers of the Grecian sects, who borrowed almost all their tenets from Egypt, and amongst others that of the former successive destruction and renovation of the world. (Continental, not cosmic, catastrophes.) We learn from Plutarch that this was the theme of one of the hymns of Orpheus, so celebrated in the fabulous ages of Greece. It was brought by him from the banks of the Nile; and we even find in his verses, as in the Indian systems, a definite period assigned for the duration of every successive World. The returns of great catastrophes were determined by the present period of the Magnus Annus, or great year -- a cycle composed of the revolutions of the sun, moon, and planets, and terminating when these
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The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky, vol 2, pt 3, ch 7
return together to the sign whence they were supposed at some remote epoch to set out. We learn particularly from the Timaeus of Plato that the Egyptians believed the world to be subject to occasional conflagrations and deluges. The sect of the Stoics adopted most fully the system of catastrophes destined at intervals to destroy the world. These, they taught, were of two kinds -- the cataclysm, or destruction by water, and the Ecpyrosis, or destruction by fire (submarine volcanoes). From the Egyptians they derived the doctrine of the gradual debasement of man from a state of innocence" (nascent simplicity of the first sub-races of each Root-Race). "Towards the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* When Howard read, before the Royal Society of London, a paper on the first serious researches that were made on the aerolites, the Geneva naturalist Pictet, who was present, communicated, on his return to Paris, the facts reported to the French Academy of Sciences. But he was forthwith interrupted by Laplace, the great astronomer, who cried: "Stop! we have had enough of such fables, and know all about them," thus making Pictet feel very small. Globular-shaped lightnings or thunderbolts have been admitted by Science only since Arago demonstrated their existence, says de Rochat ("Forces non-
definies," p. 4): "Every one remembers Dr. Bouilland's misadventure at the Academy of Medicine when he had declared Edison's phonograph 'a trick of ventriloquism! ` "
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 785 ASTRAEA FALLS ON HER HEAD.
termination of each era the gods could no longer bear with the wickedness of man, and a shock of the elements, or a deluge, overwhelmed them; (vide degeneracy into magical practices and gross animality of the Atlanteans) after which calamity, Astraea again descended on the earth to renew the golden age." (Dawn of a new Root-Race.)
Astraea, the goddess of justice, is the last of the deities to forsake the earth, when the gods are said to abandon it and be taken up into heaven by Jupiter again. But, no sooner does Zeus carry away from earth Ganymedes (the object of lust, personified) than the father of the gods throws down Astraea back on the earth again, on which she falls upon her head. Astraea is Virgo, the constellation of the Zodiac. Astronomically it has a very plain significance, and one which gives the Key to the occult meaning. But it is inseparable from Leo, the sign that precedes it, and from the Pleiades and their sisters, the Hyades, of which Aldebaran is the brilliant leader. All of these are connected with the periodical renovations of the earth, with regard to its continents -- even Ganymedes, who in astronomy is Aquarius. It was already shown that while the South Pole is the pit (or the infernal regions figuratively and cosmologically), the North Pole is geographically the first continent; while astronomically and metaphorically the celestial pole, with its pole star in heaven, is Meru, or the seat of Brahma, the throne of Jupiter, etc. For in the age when the gods forsook the earth and were said to ascend into heaven, the ecliptic had become parallel with the meridian, and part of the Zodiac appeared to descend from the north pole to the north horizon. Aldebaran was in conjunction then with the Sun, as it was 40,000 years ago, at the great festival in commemoration of that Magnus Annus, of which Plutarch was speaking. Since that year (40,000 years ago) there has been a retrograde motion of the equator, and about 31,000 years ago Aldebaran was in conjunction with the vernal equinoctial point. The part assigned to Taurus, even in Christian mysticism, is too well known to need repetition. The famous
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Orphic hymn on the great periodical cataclysm divulges the whole esotericism of the event. Pluto (in the pit) carries off Eurydice, bitten by the (polar) serpent. Then Leo, the lion, is vanquished. Now, when the Lion is in the pit, or below the south pole, then Virgo, as the next sign, follows him, and when her head, down to the waist, is below the South horizon -- she is inverted. On the other hand, the Hyades are the rain or Deluge constellations; and Aldebaran (he who follows, or succeeds the daughters of Atlas, or the Pleiades) looks down from the eye of Taurus. It is from this point of the ecliptic that the calculations of the new cycle were commenced. The student has to remember also, that when Ganymedes (Aquarius) is raised to
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 786 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
heaven (or above the horizon of the North Pole) Virgo or Astraea, who is Venus-Lucifer, descends head downwards below the horizon of the South Pole, or the pit; which pit , or the pole, is also the Great Dragon, or the Flood. Let the student exercise his intuition by placing these facts together; no more can be said.
"The connection," comments Lyell, "between the doctrine of successive catastrophes and repeated deteriorations in the moral character of the human race, is more intimate and natural than might at first be imagined. For, in a rude state of society, all great calamities are regarded by the people as judgments of God on the wickedness of man. . . . In like manner in the account given to Solon by the Egyptian priests of the submersion of the island of Atlantis under the waters of the ocean, after repeated shocks of an earthquake, we find that the event happened when Jupiter had seen the moral depravity of the inhabitants."
True; but was it not owing to the fact that all esoteric truths were given out to the public by the Initiates of the temples under the guise of allegories? "Jupiter," is merely the personification of that immutable Cyclic Law, which arrests the downward tendency of each Root-Race, after attaining the zenith of its glory.* Unless we hold with Prof. John Fiske's singularly dogmatic opinion** that every myth "is an explanation by the uncivilized mind, of some natural phenomenon; not an allegory, not an esoteric symbol, for the ingenuity is wasted (! !) which strives to detect in myths the remnants of a refined primeval science -- but an explanation. Primitive men had no profound science to perpetuate by means of allegory [How does Mr. Fiske know?], nor were they such sorry pedants as to talk in riddles when plain language would serve their purpose." We venture to say the language of the Initiated few was far more "plain," and their science-philosophy far more com-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The Cyclic Law of Race-Evolution is most unwelcome to scientists. It is sufficient to mention the fact of "primeval civilization" to excite the frenzy of Darwinians; it being obvious that the further culture and science is pushed back, the more precarious becomes the basis of the ape-ancestor theory. But as Jacolliot says: -- "Whatever there may be in these traditions (submerged continents, etc.), and whatever may have been the place where a civilization more ancient than that of Rome, of Greece, of Egypt, and of India, was developed, it is certain that this civilization did exist, and it is highly important for Science to recover its traces, however feeble and fugitive they be." (Histoire des Vierges ;
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les peuples et les continents disparus, p. 15.) Donnelly has proved the fact from the clearest premises, but the Evolutionists will not listen. A Miocene civilization upsets the "universal stone-age" theory, and that of a continuous ascent of man from animalism! And yet Egypt, at least, runs counter to current hypotheses. There is no stone-age visible there, but a more glorious culture is apparent, the further back we are enabled to carry our retrospect. (Verb. Sap.)
** "Myths and Myth-Makers," p. 21.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 787 INGENIOUS EXPLANATIONS.
prehensive and satisfying alike to the physical and spiritual wants of man, than even the terminology and system respectively elaborated by Mr. Fiske's Master -- Herbert Spencer. What, however, is Sir Charles Lyell's "explanation" of the "myth"? Certainly, he in no way countenances the idea of its "astronomical" origin, as asserted by some writers.
The two interpreters are entirely at variance with one another. Lyell's solution is as follows. A disbeliever in cataclysmal changes, from the absence (?) of any reliable historical data on the point, as well as from a strong bias to the Uniformitarian conceptions of geologic changes,* he attempts to trace the Atlantis "tradition" to the following sources: --
(1) Barbarous tribes connect catastrophes with an avenging God, who is assumed in this way to punish immoral races.
(2) Hence the commencement of a new race is logically a virtuous one.
(3) The primary source of the geologic basis of the tradition was Asia -- a continent subject to violent earthquakes. Exaggerated accounts would thus be handed down the ages.
(4) Egypt, being herself free from earthquakes, nevertheless based her not inconsiderable geologic knowledge on these cataclysmal traditions.
An ingenious "explanation," as all such are. But proving a negative is proverbially a difficult task. Students of esoteric science, who know what the resources of the Egyptian priesthood really were, need no such laboured hypothesis. Moreover, while an imaginative theorist is always able to furnish a reasonable solution of problems which, in one branch of science, seem to necessitate the hypothesis of periodical cataclysmic changes on the surface of our planet, the impartial critic, who is not a
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Violent minor cataclysms and colossal earthquakes are recorded in the annals of most nations -- if not of all. Elevation and subsidence of continents is always in progress. The whole coast of South America has been raised up 10 to 15 feet and settled down again in an hour. Huxley has shown that the British islands have been four times depressed beneath the ocean and subsequently raised again and
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peopled. The Alps, Himalayas and Cordilleras were all the result of depositions drifted on to sea-
bottoms and upheaved by Titanic forces to their present elevation. The Sahara was the basin of a Miocene sea. Within the last five or six thousand years the shores of Sweden, Denmark and Norway have risen from 200 to 600 feet; in Scotland there are raised beaches with outlying stacks and skerries surmounting the shore now eroded by the hungry wave. The North of Europe is still rising from the sea and South America presents the phenomenon of raised beaches of over 1,000 miles in length, now at a height varying from 100 to 1,300 feet above the sea-level. On the other hand, the coast of Greenland is sinking fast, so much so that the Greenlander will not build by the shore. All these phenomena are certain. Why may not a gradual change have given place to a violent cataclysm in remote epochs? -- such cataclysms occurring on a minor scale even now (e.g., the case of Sunda island with 80,000 Malays).
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 788 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
specialist, will recognise the immense difficulty of explaining away the cumulative evidences, -- namely, the archaeological, ethnological, geological, traditional, botanical, and even biological -- in favour of former continents now submerged. When each science is fighting for its own hand, the cumulative force of the evidence in its collectivity is almost invariably lost sight of.
In the "Theosophist" (August, 1880), we wrote: "We have as evidences the most ancient traditions of various and wide-separated peoples -- legends in India, in ancient Greece, Madagascar, Sumatra, Java, and all the principal isles of Polynesia, as well as the legends of both Americas. Among savages; and in the traditions of the richest literature in the world -- the Sanskrit literature of India -- there is an agreement in saying, that, ages ago, there existed in the Pacific Ocean, a large Continent, which by a geological cataclysm was engulfed by the sea,* (Lemuria). And it is our firm belief . . . that most, if not all, of the islands from the Malayan archipelago to Polynesia, are fragments of that once immense submerged Continent. Both Malacca and Polynesia, which lie at the two extremities of the ocean, and which, since the memory of man never had, and never could have any intercourse with, or even a knowledge of each other, have yet a tradition common to all the islands and islets, that their respective countries extended far, far into the Sea: that there were in the world but two immense continents, one inhabited by yellow, the other by dark men; and that the Ocean, by command of the gods, and to punish them for their incessant quarrelling, swallowed them up. Notwithstanding the geographical proof that New Zealand, the Sandwich and Easter Islands, are at a distance from each other of between 800 and 1,000 leagues, and that, according to every testimony, neither these nor any other intermediate islands, for instance, the Marquesan, Society, Fiji, Tahitian, Samoan, and other islands, could, since they became islands, ignorant as their people were of the compass, have communicated with each other before the arrival of Europeans; yet they one and all maintain that their respective countries extended far toward the West, on the Asian side. Moreover, with very small differences, they all speak dialects evidently of the same language; and understand each other with little difficulty; have the same religious beliefs and superstitions; and pretty much the same customs. And as few of the Polynesian islands were discovered earlier than a century ago, the Pacific Ocean itself being unknown to Europe till the days of Columbus, and as these islanders have never ceased repeating the same old traditions since the Europeans first set
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[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* For the opinions of Jacolliot, after long travels through the Polynesian Islands and his proofs of a former great geological cataclysm in the Pacific Ocean, see his "Histoire des Vierges : Peuples et Continents disparus," p. 308.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 789 HAECKEL FOR ONCE IS RIGHT.
foot on their shores, it seems to us a logical inference that our theory is nearer to the truth than any other. "Chance would have to change its name and meaning, were all this due but to chance alone."
"A great series of animal-geographical facts," declares Professor Schmidt, writing in defence of the hypothesis of a former Lemuria, "is explicable only on the theory of the former existence of a Southern Continent of which Australia is a remnant. . . . . " [the distribution of species] "points to the vanished land of the South where perhaps the home of the progenitors of the Maki of Madagascar may also be looked for."*
Mr. A. R. Wallace, in his "Malay Archipelago," arrives at the following conclusion after a review of the mass of evidence at hand: -- "The inference that we must draw from these facts is undoubtedly that the whole of the islands eastwards beyond Borneo and Sumatra do essentially form part of a former Australian or Pacific Continent . . . This continent must have been broken up before the extreme south-
eastern portion of Asia was raised above the waters of the ocean, for a great part of the land of Borneo and Java is known to be geologically of quite recent formation."
According to Haeckel: -- "Southern Asia itself was not the earliest cradle of the human race, but Lemuria, a continent that lay to the South of Asia, and sank later on beneath the surface of the Indian Ocean." ("Pedigree of Man, " Eng. Trans. p. 73.) In one sense Haeckel is right as to Lemuria -- the "cradle of the Human race." That continent was the home of the first physical Human Stock -- the later Third-Race Men. Previous to that epoch the Races were far less consolidated and physiologically quite different. (Haeckel makes Lemuria extend from Sunda Island to Africa and Madagascar and eastwards to Upper India.)
Professor Rutimeyer, the eminent Palaeontologist, asks: -- "Need the conjecture that the almost exclusively graminivorous and insectivorous marsupials, sloths, armadilloes, ant-eaters and ostriches, once possessed an actual point of union in a Southern Continent of which the present flora of Terra del Fuego and Australia must be the remains -- need this conjecture raise difficulties at a moment when from their fossil remains, Heer restores to sight the ancient forests of Smith's Sound and Spitzbergen." (Cited in Schmidt's "Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism, " p. 237.)
Having now dealt generally with the broad scientific attitude on the two questions, it will, perhaps, conduce to an agreeable brevity, if we sum up the more striking isolated facts in favour of that fundamental contention of Esoteric Ethnologists -- the reality of Atlantis. Lemuria
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
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* "Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism, " p. 236. (Cf. also his lengthy arguments on the subject, pp. 231-7.)
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 790 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
is so widely accepted, that further pursuit of the subject is unnecessary. With regard, however, to the former, it is found that: --
(1) The Miocene flora of Europe have their most numerous and striking analogues in the flora of the United States. In the forests of Virginia and Florida are found the magnolias, tulip-trees, evergreen oaks, plane trees, etc., etc., etc., which correspond with European Tertiary flora term for term. How was the migration effected, if we exclude the theory of an Atlantic Continent bridging the ocean between America and Europe? The proposed "explanation" to the effect that the transition was by way of Asia and the Aleutian islands is a mere uncalled-for theory, obviously upset by the fact that a large number of these flora only appear EAST of the Rocky Mountains. This also negatives the idea of a trans-Pacific migration. They are now superseded by European continents and islands to the North.
(2) Skulls exhumed on the banks of the Danube and Rhine bear a striking similarity to those of the Caribs and Old Peruvians (Littre). Monuments have been exhumed in Central America, which bear representations of undoubted negro heads and faces. How are such facts to be accounted for except on the Atlantean hypothesis? What is now N. W. Africa was once connected with Atlantis by a network of islands, few of which now remain.
(3) According to Farrar ("Families of Speech ") the "isolated language" of the Basques has no affinities with the other languages* of Europe, but with "the aboriginal languages of the vast opposite continent (America) and those alone." Professor Broca is also of the same opinion.
Palaeolithic European man of the Miocene and Pliocene times was a pure Atlantean, as we have previously stated. The Basques are, of course, of a much later date than this, but their affinities, as here shown, go far to prove the original extraction of their remote ancestors. The "mysterious" affinity between their tongue and that of the Dravidian races of India will be understood by those who have followed our outline of continental formations and shiftings.
(4) Stones have been found in the Canary Islands bearing sculptured symbols similar to those found on the shore of Lake Superior. Berthollet was induced
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* For further facts as to the isolation of the Basques in Europe and their ethnological relations, cf. Joly, "Man before Metals, " p. 316. B. Davis is disposed to concede, from an examination of the skulls of the Guanches of the Canary Islands and modern Basques, that both belong to a race proper to those ancient islands, of which the Canaries are the remains!! This is a step in advance indeed. De Quatrefages and Hamy also both assign the Cro-Magnon men of South France and the Guanches to
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one type -- a proposition which involves a certain corollary which both these writers may not care to father.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 791 FINAL AND IRREFUTABLE EVIDENCE.
by such evidence to postulate the unity of race of the early men of Canary Islands and America (Cf. Benjamin, the "Atlantic Islands, " p. 130.)
The Guanches of the Canary Islands were lineal descendants of the Atlanteans. This fact will account for the great stature evidenced by their old skeletons, as well as by those of their European congeners the Cro-Magnon Palaeolithic men.
(5) Any experienced mariner has but to navigate the fathomless ocean along the Canary Islands to ask himself the question when or how that group of volcanic and rocky little islands has been formed, surrounded on every side by that vast watery space. Such frequent questions led finally to the expedition of the famous Leopold von Buch, which took place in the first quarter of the present century. Some geologists maintained that the volcanic islands had been raised right from the bottom of the ocean, the depth of which in the immediate vicinity of the island varies from 6,000 to 18,000 feet. Others were inclined to see in these groups, including Madeira, the Azores, and the islands of Cape de Verdes -- the remnants of a gigantic but submerged continent which had once united Africa with America. The latter men of science supported their hypothesis by a mass of evidence in its favour, drawn from ancient "myths." Hoary "superstitions," such as the fairy-like Atlantis of Plato, the Garden of Hesperides, Atlas supporting the world on his shoulders, all of them mythoi connected with the peak of Teneriffe, did not go far with sceptical Science. The identity of animal and vegetable species -- showing either a previous connection between America and the remaining groups of the islands -- (the hypothesis of their having been drifted from the New to the Old World by the waves was too absurd to stand long) -- found more serious consideration. But it is only quite lately, and after Donnelly's book had been published several years, that the theory has greater chances than ever of becoming an accepted fact. Fossils found on the Eastern Coast of South America have now been proved to belong to the Jurassic formations, and are nearly identical with the Jurassic fossils of Western Europe and Northern Africa. The geological structure of both coasts is also almost identical ; the resemblance between the smaller marine animals dwelling in the more shallow waters of South America, the Western African, and the South European coasts, is also very great. All such facts are bound to bring naturalists to the conclusion that there has been, in distant pre-historic ages, a continent which extended from the coast of Venezuela, across the Atlantic Ocean, to the Canarese Islands and North Africa, and from Newfoundland nearly to the coast of France.
(6) The great resemblance between the Jurassic fossils of South
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 792 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
America, North Africa, and Western Europe is a striking enough fact in itself, and admits of no
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explanation, unless the ocean is bridged with an Atlantis. But why, also, is there so marked a similarity between the fauna (animal life) of the -- now -- isolated Atlantic islands? Why did the specimens of Brazilian fauna dredged up by Sir C. Wyville Thompson resemble those of Western Europe? Why does a resemblance exist between many of the West African and West Indian animal groups? Again:
"When the animals and plants of the Old and New World are compared, one cannot but be struck with their identity; all, nearly all belong to the same genera, while many, even of the species, are common to both continents . . . indicating that they radiated from a common centre " (Atlantis), ("Westminster Review, " Jan., 1872).
The horse, according to Science, originated in America. At least, a large proportion of the once "missing links" connecting it with inferior forms have been exhumed from American strata. How did the horse penetrate into Europe and Asia, if no land communication bridged the oceanic interspaces? Or if it is asserted that the horse originated in the New World, how did such forms as the hipparion, etc., get into America in the first instance on the migration hypothesis?
Again "Buffon had . . . remarked in the repetition of the African in the American fauna, how, for example, the lama is a juvenescent and feeble copy of the camel, and how the puma of the New represented the lion of the Old World" (Schmidt, "Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism, " p. 223).
(7) The following quotation runs with No. (2), but its significance is such and the writer cited so authoritative, that it deserves a place to itself: --
"With regard to the primitive dolichocephalae of America, I entertain a hypothesis still more bold, namely, that they are nearly related to the Guanches of the Canary Islands, and to the Atlantic populations of Africa, the Moors, Tuaricks, Copts, which Latham comprises under the name of Egyptian-Atlantidae. We find one and the same form of skull in the Canary Islands, in front of the African coast, and in the Carib islands, on the opposite coast which faces Africa. The colour of the skin on both sides of the Atlantic is represented in these populations as being of a reddish-brown." (Professor Retzius, "Smithsonian Report," 1859, p. 266.)
If, then, Basques and Cro-Magnon Cave-Men are of the same race as the Canarese Guanches, it follows that the former are also allied to the aborigines of America. This is the conclusion which the independent investigations of Retzius, Virchow, and de Quatrefages necessitate. The Atlantean affinities of these three types become patent.
(8) The sea-soundings undertaken by H.M.S. "Challenger" and the "Dolphin," have established the fact that a huge elevation some 3,000 miles in length, projecting upwards from the abysmal depths of the
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 793 RECENT SUGGESTIVE DISCOVERIES.
Atlantic, extends from a point near the British Islands southwards, curving round near Cape de Verde, and running in a south-easterly direction along the West African Coast. This elevation averages some
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9,000 feet in height, and rises above the waves at the Azores, Ascension, and other places. In the ocean depths around the neighbourhood of the former the ribs of a former massive piece of land have been discovered (vide investigations of United States Ship "Dolphin" and others). "The inequalities, the mountains and valleys of its surface could never have been produced in accordance with any known laws for the deposition of sediment, nor by submarine elevation; but, on the contrary, must have been carved by agencies acting above the water-level." -- (Scientific American, July 28th, 1877). It is most probable that necks of land formerly existed knitting Atlantis to South America, somewhere above the mouth of the Amazon; to Africa near Cape de Verde, while a similar point of juncture with Spain is not unlikely, as contended for by Donnelly. ( Vide his chart, "Atlantis," p. 47, Eng. Ed., 1884, though he deals with only a fragment of the real continent.) Whether the latter existed or not, is of no consequence, as the fact that (what is now) N. W. Africa was -- before the elevation of the Sahara and the rupture of the Gibraltar connection -- an extension of Spain. Consequently no difficulty can be raised as to how the migration of the European fauna (etc.) took place.
Enough has now been said from the purely scientific standpoint, and it is needless, in view of the manner in which the subject has now been developed on the lines of esoteric knowledge, to swell the mass of testimony further. In conclusion, the words of one of the most intuitive writers of the day may be cited as admirably illustrative of the opinions of the occultist, who awaits in patience the dawn of the coming day: --
"We are but beginning to understand the past; one hundred years ago the world knew nothing of Pompeii or Herculaneum; nothing of the lingual tie that binds together the Indo-European nations; nothing of the significance of the vast volume of inscriptions upon the tombs and temples of Egypt; nothing of the meaning of the arrow-headed inscriptions of Babylon; nothing of the marvellous civilizations revealed in the remains of Yucatan, Mexico, and Peru. We are on the threshold. Scientific investigation is advancing with giant strides. Who shall say that one hundred years from now, the great museums of the world may not be adorned with gems, statues, arms, and implements from Atlantis, while the libraries of the world shall contain translations of its inscriptions, throwing new light upon all the past history of the human race, and all the great problems which now perplex the thinkers of to-
day."*
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Donnelly, "Atlantis ; the Ante-Diluvian World," p. 480.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 794 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
And now to conclude.
-------
We have concerned ourself with the ancient records of the nations, with the doctrine of chronological and psychic cycles, of which these records are the tangible proof; and with many other subjects, which may, at first sight, seem out of place in this volume.
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But they were necessary in truth. In dealing with the secret annals and traditions of so many nations, whose very origins have never been ascertained on more secure grounds than inferential suppositions, in giving out the beliefs and philosophy of more than prehistoric races, it is not quite as easy to deal with the subject matter as it would be if only the philosophy of one special race, and its evolution, were concerned. The Secret Doctrine is the common property of the countless millions of men born under various climates, in times with which History refuses to deal, and to which esoteric teachings assign dates incompatible with the theories of Geology and Anthropology. The birth and evolution of the Sacred Science of the Past are lost in the very night of Time; and that, even, which is historic -- i.e., that which is found scattered hither and thither throughout ancient classical literature -- is, in almost every case, attributed by modern criticism to lack of observation in the ancient writers, or to superstition born out of the ignorance of antiquity. It is, therefore, impossible to treat this subject as one would the ordinary evolution of an art or science in some well-known historical nation. It is only by bringing before the reader an abundance of proofs all tending to show that in every age, under every condition of civilization and knowledge, the educated classes of every nation made themselves the more or less faithful echoes of one identical system and its fundamental traditions -- that he can be made to see that so many streams of the same water must have had a common source from which they started. What was this source? If coming events are said to cast their shadows before, past events cannot fall to leave their impress behind them. It is, then, by those shadows of the hoary Past and their fantastic silhouettes on the external screen of every religion and philosophy, that we can, by checking them as we go along, and comparing them, trace out finally the body that produced them. There must be truth and fact in that which every people of antiquity accepted and made the foundation of its religions and its faith. Moreover, as Haliburton said, "Hear one side, and you will be in the dark; hear both sides, and all will be clear." The public has hitherto had access to, and heard but one side -- or rather the two one-sided views of two diametrically opposed classes of men, whose prima facie propositions or respective premises differ widely, but whose final conclusions are the same -- Science and Theology. And now our
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 795 OLD MASONIC SYMBOLISM.
readers have an opportunity to hear the other -- the defendants' -- justification on and learn the nature of our arguments.
Were the public to be left to its old opinions: namely, on one side, that Occultism, Magic, the legends of old, etc., were all the outcome of ignorance and superstition; and on the other, that everything outside the orthodox groove was the work of the devil, what would be the result? In other words, had no theosophical and mystic literature obtained a hearing for the few last years, the present work would have had a poor chance of impartial consideration. It would have been proclaimed -- and by many will still be so proclaimed -- a fairy tale woven out of abstruse problems, poised in, and based on the air; built of soap bubbles, bursting at the slightest touch of serious reflection, with no foundation, as it would be alleged, to stand upon. Even "the ancient superstitious and credulous classics" have no word of reference to it in clear and unmistakable terms, and the symbols themselves fail to yield a hint at the existence of such a system. Such would be the verdict of all. But when it becomes undeniably proven that the claim of the modern Asiatic nations to a Secret Science and an esoteric history of the world, is
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based on fact; that, though hitherto unknown to the masses and a veiled mystery even to the learned, (because they never had the key to a right understanding of the abundant hints thrown out by the ancient classics), it is still no fairy tale, but an actuality -- then the present work will become but the pioneer of many more such books. The statement that hitherto even the keys discovered by some great scholars have proved too rusty for use, and that they were but the silent witnesses that there do exist mysteries behind the veil which are unreachable without a new key -- is borne out by too many proofs to be easily dismissed. An instance may be given as an illustration out of the history of Freemasonry.
In his "Franc-maconnerie Occulte," rightly or wrongly, Ragon, an illustrious and learned Belgian Mason, reproaches the English Masons with having materialized and dishonoured Masonry, once based upon the Ancient Mysteries, by adopting, owing to a mistaken notion of the origin of the craft, the name of Free Masonry and Free Masons. The mistake is due, he says, to those who connect Masonry with the building of Solomon's Temple, deriving its origin from it. He derides the idea, and says: . . "The Franc Mason (which is not macon libre, or free masonry) knew well when adopting the title, that it was no question of building a wall, but that of being initiated into the ancient Mysteries veiled under the name of Francmaconnerie (Freemasonry); that his work was only to be the continuation or the renovation of the ancient mysteries, and that he was to become a mason after the manner of Apollo or Amphion. And do not we know that the ancient initiated poets, when speaking of the foundation
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of a city, meant thereby the establishment of a doctrine? Thus Neptune, the god of reasoning, and Apollo, the god of the hidden things, presented themselves as masons before Laomedon, Priam's father, to help him to build the city of Troy -- that is to say, to establish the Trojan religion." (Maconnerie Orthodoxe, p. 44.)
Such veiled sentences with double meaning abound in ancient classical writers. Therefore, had an attempt been made to show that, e.g., Laomedon was the founder of a branch of archaic mysteries in which the earth-bound material soul (the fourth principle), was personified in Menelaus' faithless wife (the fair Helen), if Ragon had not come to corroborate what we asserted, we might be told that no classical author speaks of it, and that Homer shows Laomedon building a city, not an esoteric worship or MYSTERIES! And who are those left now, save a few Initiates, who understand the language and correct meaning of such symbolical terms?
But after having pointed to many a misconceived symbol bearing on our thesis, there still remains more than one difficulty to be overcome. Most important among several such obstacles is that of chronology. But this could hardly be helped.
Wedged in between theological chronology and that of the geologists, backed by all the materialistic Anthropologists who assign dates to man and nature which fit in with their own theories alone -- what could the writer do except what is being done? Namely, since theology places the Deluge 2448 B.C., and the World's Creation only 5890 years ago; and since the accurate researches by the methods of exact Science, have led the geologists and physicists to assign to the incrusted age of our Globe
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between 10 million and 1,000 million of years* (a trifling difference, verily!): and the Anthropologists to vary their divergence of opinion as to the appearance of man -- between 25,000 and 500,000 of years -- what can one who studies the Occult doctrine do, but come out and bravely present the esoteric calculations before the world?
But to do this, corroboration by even a few "historical" proofs was necessary, though all know the real value of the so-called "historical evidence." For, whether man had appeared on earth 18,000 or 18,000,000 years ago, can make no difference to profane History, since it begins hardly a couple of thousand years before our era, and since, even then, it grapples hopelessly with the clash and din of contradictory and mutually-destroying opinions around it. Nevertheless, in view of the respect the average reader has been brought up in for exact science, even that short Past would remain meaningless, unless the esoteric teachings were corroborated and supported on the spot --
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Vide Sir W. Thomson and Mr. Huxley.
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whenever possible -- by references to historical names of a so-called historical period. This is the only guide that can be given to the beginner before he is permitted to start among the (to him) unfamiliar windings of that dark labyrinth called the pre-historic ages. This necessity has been complied with. It is only hoped that the desire to do so, which has led the writer to be constantly bringing ancient and modern evidence as a corroboration of the Archaic and quite unhistoric Past, will not bring on her the accusation of having sorely jumbled up without order or method the various and widely-separated periods of history and tradition. But literary form and method had to be sacrificed to the greater clearness of the general exposition.
To accomplish the proposed task, the writer had to resort to the rather unusual means of dividing each volume or Book into three Parts; the first of which only is the consecutive, though very fragmentary, history of the Cosmogony and the Evolution of Man on this globe. But these two volumes had to serve as a PROLOGUE, and prepare the reader's mind for those which shall now follow. In treating of Cosmogony and then of the Anthropogenesis of mankind, it was necessary to show that no religion, since the very earliest, has ever been entirely based on fiction, as none was the object of special revelation; and that it is dogma alone which has ever been killing primeval truth. Finally, that no human-born doctrine, no creed, however sanctified by custom and antiquity, can compare in sacredness with the religion of Nature. The Key of Wisdom that unlocks the massive gates leading to the arcana of the innermost sanctuaries can be found hidden in her bosom only: and that bosom is in the countries pointed to by the great seer of the past century Emanuel Swedenborg. There lies the heart of nature, that shrine whence issued the early races of primeval Humanity, and which is the cradle of physical man.
Thus far have proceeded the rough outlines of the beliefs and tenets of the archaic, earliest Races contained in their hitherto secret Scriptural records. But our explanations are by no means complete,
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nor do they pretend to give out the full text, or to have been read by the help of more than three or four keys out of the sevenfold bunch of esoteric interpretation, and even this has only been partially accomplished. The work is too gigantic for any one person to undertake, far more to accomplish. Our main concern was simply to prepare the soil. This, we trust we have done. These two volumes only constitute the work of a pioneer who has forced his way into the well-nigh impenetrable jungle of the virgin forests of the Land of the Occult. A commencement has been made to fell and uproot the deadly upas trees of superstition, prejudice, and conceited ignorance, so that these two
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volumes should form for the student a fitting prelude for Volumes III. and IV. Until the rubbish of the ages is cleared away from the minds of the Theosophists to whom these volumes are dedicated, it is impossible that the more practical teaching contained in the Third Volume should be understood. Consequently, it entirely depends upon the reception with which Volumes I. and II. will meet at the hands of Theosophists and Mystics, whether these last two volumes will ever be published, though they are almost completed.
Satyat Nasti paro dharmah.
THERE IS NO RELIGION HIGHER THAN TRUTH.
End of Vol. II.
[[For Index, go to Index of the Secret Doctrine, prepared by John P. Van Mater, on this site]]
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